A Study Of Tibetan Phonological Transcription In Tangut Buddhism Fragments

The research of Tangut phonology is valuable in the historical linguistic study of Sino-Tibetan languages, as Tangut is one of the four Sino-Tibetan languages in the early stage of history which possesses a writing system. However, the reconstruction of Tangut phonology has to rely heavily on various internal and external materials, due to the fact that the Tangut language is already extinct, and the Tangut writing system is a non-phonological character one. Among the Khara-Khoto manuscripts, there are about30Tangut fragments with phonological transcription in the Tibetan script, which provide important information towards the reconstruction of Tangut phonology. Besides, the Tibetan transcription itself also reflects the phonological features of the Tibetan language in the12th century. These fragments are little known by previous scholars. The only systematic study of them was a manual, based on the Tibetan transcription of7fragments, edited by N. A. Nevsky in1926.This thesis investigates20Tangut fragments with phonological transcription in Tibetan which have been preserved in the Russian and British collections. First all Tangut characters and their Tibetan transcription are identified, followed by a rearrangement of them in the form of a manual. After that the phonological representation of Tibetan transcription is to be studied by a systematic comparison between Chinese transcriptions, Sanskrit transcriptions and the basic scripts, prescripts, superscripts, subscripts, postscripts and vowel symbols of Tibetan transcriptions. Such a comparison will give light to the phonological features of the Tibetan language in the12th century. Finally the Tibetan transcription will be arranged by initial and rhyme categories of their corresponding Tangut characters. It contributes to the examination of the previous reconstruction schemes of Tangut phonology. Several suggestions are made on the modification of the reconstruction scheme.This thesis classifies the Tibetan transcriptions into six types of handwriting, according to the origin of fragments, the content of fragments, and the writing style of Tibetan transcriptions. These handwritings are labeled from A to F. It demonstrates that, for the first time, the practice of transcription varied among different handwritings. It also points out that the inconsistency of transcription formats noticed by previous scholars are in fact due to different transcription practices among different handwritings, as manifested in the use of prescripts. Apart from that, this thesis gives a preliminary study on the content of the fragments. It is suggested that fragments of handwriting A should be a Tibetan Buddhism sloka on Marici, while fragments of handwriting B and C should be related to the Sadhanamala mantra of Vajaryanist Tibetan Buddhism. Fragments of handwriting D should be a kind of man ngag.In the analysis of phonological representation of the Tibetan transcription, it is found that the sound value of basic scripts remained the feature of Old Tibetan, that the voiced obstructs have not yet devoiced. The examination on prescripts gives further evidence to the observation made by Nie (1986) and Anakawa (1999). When prescripts g and d are combined with nasal basic scripts, they can change the syllable tone to the one corresponding to the level tone in Tangut. In the Tibetan transcription the prescript b marks the roundness of the syllable. Subscript w basically only appears in handwriting A, which also marks the roundness of the syllable. The phonological features as reflected by the Tibetan transcription suggest that the language of transcribers was a dialect in the stage between the Old Tibetan and the modern Kham dialect. Tones had already appeared, while the pronunciation of prescripts g and d had been weakened. Their sound values had lost when preceding nasal initials, leaving behind the function of distinguishing tones. However the feature was still preserved as a weak glottal stop in front of other consonants, as a result the corresponding parts can change the sound value of many non-nasal basic scripts to mark special consonants in Tangut. The sound of prescript b had shifted from a pre-initial to a co-articulated position, which marked the final stage before its disappearance.By examining previous reconstruction schemes of Tangut phonology, it is evident from the Tibetan transcription that an Id-initial should be separated from the I-initial. Besides it points out that there are regular use of prescripts in front of voiced obstruents, suggesting that there should be a pre-initial consonant, which is probably a weak nasal or glottal sound.Lastly, this thesis edited all the Tibetan transcriptions with Tangut characters into a manual, which included524Tangut characters in total. The manual also provides the information of initial and rhyme category of each Tangut character, together with their corresponding transcriptions in Tibetan, Chinese and Sanskrit. This manual provides the most detailed information ever on the Tibetan transcription of Tangut characters.