Appendix II 

 CHINESE ELEMENTS IN TURKI 



On the preceding pages I had occasion to make reference in more 

 than one instance to words of the Turk! language spoken in Chinese 

 Turkistan. A. v. Le Coq 1 has appended an excellent TurkI vocabulary 

 to a collection of texts recorded by him in the territory of Turfan. This 

 list contains a certain percentage of Chinese loan-words which I wish 

 briefly to discuss here. 



In general, these have been correctly recognized and indicated by 

 Le Coq, though not identified with their Chinese equivalents. But 

 several pointed out as such are not Chinese; while there are others 

 which are Chinese, but are not so designated; and a certain number 

 of words put down as Chinese are left in doubt by the addition of an 

 interrogation-mark. To the first class belongs yan-za ("tobacco-pipe"), 

 alleged to be Chinese; on the contrary, this is a thoroughly Altaic word, 

 no trace of which is to be discovered in Chinese. 2 It is khamsa or xamsa 

 in Yakut, already indicated by Boehtlingk. 3 It is gangsa or gantsa 

 in Mongol; 4 gansa in the Buryat dialect of Selengin. 5 The word has 

 further invaded the Ugrian territory: Wogul qansa, Ostyak xonsa, and 

 Samoyed xansa. 6 It is noteworthy that the term has also found its way 

 into Tibetan, where its status as a loan-word has not yet been recog- 

 nized. It is written in the form gan-zag (pronounced gan-za; Kovalevski 

 writes it gansa, and Ramsay gives it as kanzak for West-Tibetan); 

 this spelling is due to popular assimilation of the word with Tibetan 

 gah-zag ("man, person"). 



In ju-xai gill ("narcissus") I am unable, as suggested by the author, 

 to recognize a Chinese-Turkish formation. The narcissus is styled in 



1 Sprichworter und Lieder aus der Gegend von Turfan, Baessler-Archiv, Beiheft 

 I, 1910. 



2 The Chinese word for a tobacco-pipe, (yen-) tai, is found as dai in Golde and 

 other Tungusian languages, because the Tungusian tribes receive their pipes from 

 China. 



* Jakutisches Worterbuch, p. 79. 



* Kovalevski, Dictionnaire mongol, pp. 980, 982. 



* Castren, Burjatische Sprachlehre, p. 130. 



6 A. Ahlquist (Journal de la Societe finno-ougrienne, Vol. VIII, 1890, p. 9), 

 who regards the Ugrian words as loans from Turkish. 



577 



