Zhang Tieshan: A Study of Uighur Contracts and Their Problems

Author: Zhang Tieshan

Source: "Western Studies" WeChat public account

The original article was published in The Western Regions Studies, No. 4, 2021

St. Petersburg Tibetan Uighur Contract Documents (Source: New Collection of Uighur Translations)

The Uighur contract is a first-hand account of Uighur society, economy, and history. Since the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the excavation of Uighur contracts in Turpan, Dunhuang and other places, countries around the world have carried out continuous research on these contracts and achieved fruitful results. However, since most of these contracts are written in Uighur cursive and the collection is scattered, there are certain difficulties in interpreting and sorting them out, so that the use of these contracts is restricted. This article will first introduce the research results of scholars from various countries on the Uighur contract, and then introduce and analyze the various problems in these studies in order to find solutions.

A study of uighur contracts in various countries

1. Foreign research

European countries have a large collection of Uighur literature and have a good tradition of Uighur studies. The study of Uighur contract instruments began with W.W. Radloff in Russia. As early as 1897-1909, he began to study Uighur contract documents and published a series of papers. After Radlov's death, his posthumous work was published by Marov (C.E.Ma лов) as a collection of Uighur Literature (Uigurische Sprachdenkm ler, 1928).

Radloff and Malov's Collection of Uighur Literature is currently the earliest collection of Uighur documents, with a total collection of 103 documents. The publication of the book laid the foundation for the study of Uighur contract documents, but the criteria for the organization of the documents were not completely uniform, and some documents were reprinted in Manchu, some were transcribed in the Slavic alphabet, some were translated into Russian, and some were only translated into German. Because most of the literature lacked plates, after the loss of these documents, it brought great trouble to the research of the academic community, and it was impossible to judge whether the author's interpretation was correct or not.

In the first half of the 20th century, Marov studied several Uighur contracts. In 1951, he was in his Ancient Turkic Literature (Памятники Древнетюркой Письменн ости,Текcты и Исследования,М.-Л.1951) several contract documents published in Ladlov's Collected Uighur Literature.

In 1975, L.V. Clark of the United States completed his doctoral thesis, "Introduction to secular documents in western Uighurs in the 13th and 14th centuries." Although the book was not officially published, it had a great influence in the academic community and was widely cited in the academic community. In this work, Klesch discontinued 141 documents, arguing that 110 of them belonged to the 9th and 14th centuries, described the linguistic structure of the Uighur contract from a linguistic point of view, and evaluated the achievements of Radlov, Marov, Nobuo Yamada, and others.

In recent decades, the German scholar Peter Zieme has successively published and studied a series of Uighur land deeds, slave sale deeds, loan deeds, and house sale deeds collected in Berlin, Germany, which have greatly enriched the number of Uighur contract documents and aroused widespread concern in the academic community.

Although Russian Uighur studies have lost their advantages and there is a situation of lack of convergence, some scholars' research on Uighur contract documents is still worthy of our attention. Л.Ю.Tugu Sheva(Л.Ю.Тугушева) published her latest book, Huiwen Documents Unearthed in Xinjiang in the 10th to 14th centuries (Уйгурскиее деловые документы X- XIV вв.из Восточного Туркестана,Москва,2013), mainly studying the Hui chinese deed documents collected by the Institute of Oriental Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Some of these documents were published for the first time and have high academic value.

Turkey has the basis and tradition of Uighur literature research, and a number of scholars such as Huseyin Namik Orkun, Talat Tekin, and Re id Rahmeti Arat have published some papers on the Uighur contract in the early years. In recent years, Turkey's outstanding achievements in the study of Uighur contracts are A. Melek zyetgin. In her book Islam ncesi uygurlarda toprak hukuku (Istanbul-Nisan, 2014), she studied the land law of Uighur societies at the time in conjunction with Uighur contract documents, and transcribed and translated 40 Uighur contract documents.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Japan began to study Uighur contracts, forming a research team represented by Haneda Hen, Goyafu, Yamada Nobuo, Umemura Tan, and Takao Mori Yasu, and published many weighty papers.

In 1993, Oda Shounei, Tsimer, Tamaki Umemura, and Takao Mori yasu co-edited and completed the three-volume "Integration of Contract Documents" (Osaka University Press, 1993). The first volume of the book contains 18 essays by Nobuo Yamada on Uighur contracts; the second volume is a transcription, Japanese translation, German translation, and omission of 121 Uighur contracts one by one. Of the 121 deeds, there were 29 deeds of sale, 3 deeds of exchange, 14 lease deeds, 30 loan deeds, 3 adopted child deeds, 2 hostage deeds, 1 slave emancipation deed, 6 wills and family property division deeds and 33 other contracts; The book is currently the most extensive and well-researched work on Uighur contracts.

In the past one or two decades, Japanese scholars have traveled all over the world to conduct field investigations of Uighur literature collected by various countries, and have obtained first-hand information and research results, among which Matsui Tai, who has achieved the greatest results and the most results in the study of Uighur contracts, has published a large number of relevant treatises.

2. Study of the Uighur Contract on the Mainland

The study of Uighur contracts in mainland China began in the 1950s, and Feng Jiasheng published a number of papers on Uighur contracts. These papers have created a precedent for the study of mainland Uighur contracts, especially the three Bin Tong (Shan Bin) deeds of sale published by him have important academic value and have received wide attention from the international academic community.

Since the 1980s, the study of Uighur contracts has begun to recover. During this period, Geng Shimin, Li Jingwei, Liu Ge, Yang Fuxue, Niu Ruji, Zhang Tieshan and others published a large number of papers. Most of these papers are translations of predecessor research into Chinese, or combined with Chinese historical materials to discuss a certain historical and economic issue, and few new contracts are published.

However, after a period of introduction and digestion, the mainland published several monographs on Uighur contracts, and an unprecedented prosperity appeared.

Li Jingwei published two books, "Research on The Socio-Economic Documents of the Turpan Uighur Language" (Xinjiang People's Publishing House, 1996) and "Research on the Socio-Economic Documents of the Uighur Language" (Xinjiang University Press, 1996). The former contains 107 instruments, which are divided into 6 categories, including the instruments of buying and selling people, the documents of renting and selling land, the instruments of lending, the documents related to taxation and servitude, various economic documents and other documents, and these documents are transcribed, translated into Chinese and annotated. The latter contains 184 instruments, of which 3 have been included in the previous book, and the rest are not repeated. Later, on the basis of the first two books, Li Shi revised and published the "Compilation of Uighur Socio-Economic Documents" (Gansu Nationalities Publishing House, 2012). The three books of Lee Ching-wai are most notable, citing extensively the work of Russian scholars.

Geng Shimin published A Study of Uighur Socio-Economic Documents (Minzu University of China Press, 2006). The book contains 128 documents, which are divided into 6 categories: administrative documents, slave buying and selling documents, buying and selling exchange land documents, leasing documents, loan documents and other documents, and the documents are transcribed in Uighur, Translated into Chinese and annotated respectively. Geng's work was basically written on the basis of the three-volume Japanese "Integration of Uighur Contracts".

Liu Ge has published "A Preliminary Study of Uighur Contract Documents" (Taipei: Wunan Book Publishing Company, 2000), "Translation of Uighur Buying and Selling Documents" (Zhonghua Bookstore, 2006), "Research on uighur contract discontinuation - Kunshan Zhiyu" (Zhonghua Bookstore, 2015), and "Research on the Structure and Chronology of Uighur Contracts- Picking Flowers in Khotan" (Zhonghua Bookstore, 2020). These treatises reflect Liu Ge's long-standing views on case-by-case issues in Uighur contract research, some of which have been neglected for a long time in Uighur contract research.

Ii. Problems in the study of Uighur contracts

Although scholars around the world have published many Uighur contracts after a hundred years of efforts, and combined with the social, economic, historical, linguistic, cultural and other elements at that time, conducted multi-faceted research on Uighur society, published or published thousands of treatises, there are still some problems in research, which have not been well solved until today, thus affecting the depth and breadth of Uighur contract research. Let's discuss it from both macro and micro levels.

1. Macro aspect

(1) Classification of Uighur contracts

Scholars have different views on the definition and classification of "contract". Therefore, specific to the Uighur documents, the classification of Uighur contracts varies from house to house.

The "Integration of Uighur Contract Documents" by Nobuo Yamada et al. divides Uighur contracts into 9 categories: sales and purchase instruments; exchange documents; loan documents; consumer loan documents; adopted children documents; hostage documents; slave emancipation documents; last words, family property division documents; and miscellaneous documents.

In order to avoid the divergence of the classification of contract instruments, mainland academic circles generally use the term "socio-economic instrument", but from the specific situation of the classification, the scope of "socio-economic instrument" is obviously larger than that of "contract", which also includes various orders, letters, etc. For the classification of Chinese documents unearthed in Turpan, some scholars have classified the documents according to the catalogue "Turpan Excavated Documents" edited by Tang Changru and the "Turpan Documents" collected by Chen Guocan and Liu Yong in the Ningle Art Museum in Japan, and then classified the documents according to the recognition and use of the documents, and a total of 128 categories were counted.

In his book "Research on Uighur Socio-Economic Documents", Geng Shimin divided Uighur documents into 6 categories: administrative documents (including edicts, monastic tax exemption orders, Manichaean monastic documents, marriage petitions, apportionment orders, apportionment orders, household registration, requests for tax exemptions, etc.); slave buying and selling documents; buying and selling land documents; leasing documents; loan documents; and other documents (including wills, miscellaneous categories, letters, household expenses, and Buddha statues, etc.).

In his book "Research on the Socio-Economic Documents of the Uighurs in Turpan", Li Jingwei divides the Uighur documents into 7 categories: documents for buying and selling people; documents for renting and selling land; documents for lending; documents related to taxes and servitude; various types of economic records; and other documents.

In his other book, A Study of Uighur Socio-Economic Documents, Li Jingwei divides Uighur documents into 7 categories: slave trade and population pawns; land sales, leaseholds, and exchange documents; loan documents; letter documents; various economic records; property distribution documents; and other documents.

From the above classification of Uighur documents, it can be seen that there are both consistencies and differences. As for the attribution classification of a specific Uighur document, the difference between the houses is even greater.

(2) Comparative study of contracts with other languages

Academics have made great achievements in the interpretation and research of Uighur contracts, but in terms of the procedures and contents of contracts, their relationship with other ethnic contract documents, especially the inheritance relationship with Chinese contracts, has relatively few comparative research results in this regard. Liu Ge, Qi Xiaohong, and others have paid attention to the problem of comparative study of contracts, and they have special discussions.

In terms of the sale and purchase contracts, Hexiaohong saw the Sogdian contracts in the Western Regions in the Middle Ages, such as the Sogdian contract of buying female slaves in the sixteenth year of Gaochang Yanshou (639 AD) from Tomb No. 135 in Astana, Turpan, the "Sixteenth Year of the Great Calendar (781 AD) Jie Xie Hechuan People's Bomenrozi Selling Wild Camel Contract" unearthed in Khotan and Han Chinese, and the comparison with Han related contracts unearthed in Turpan. Fruitful results have been achieved and convincing conclusions have been drawn. In the comparison of sogdian slave bonds in the 7th century, it is seen that some Sogdian contracts are influenced by the Chinese trading voucher model, while also retaining some of the customary characteristics of the Sogdian peoples. In the comparison of the 8th century Khotanese camel deed, it is found that there is complete consistency with the Han Wen Tang Kaiyuan Twenty-one Year (733) Stone Dyeing Classic Buy Maqi, from the content to the form. In the comparison of the various trade deeds of the Uighurs in the 13th and 14th centuries, it is found that the form and phrase of the deed text have a consistent relationship with similar Chinese documents in the Tang Dynasty, from identity to adaptation, and then imitation.

Scholars such as Chen Guocan, Liu Ge, and Zhang Tieshan have also explored the relevant sources of vocabulary in their treatises, combined with the Chinese contracts unearthed in Dunhuang and Turpan. For example, Liu Ge examined the relationship between bir g üksüz in the Uighur contract and the "no debt" in the Chinese contract, and believed that the Uighur script was inherited from the linguistic phenomenon in the similar Chinese texts of the 13th and 14th centuries. She also examines the relationship between bil- in Uighur contracts and "zhi" in Chinese contracts, and is also a typical example of the influence of Uighur contract formats on Chinese contracts.

The Uighurs have long been active in the key routes of the Silk Road, and their culture, especially the contract culture, must be influenced by various aspects in terms of writing format and contract vocabulary. A comparative study of contracts with other languages is imperative.

(3) Township rules and civil covenants, legal procedures, etc. still need to be studied in depth

In terms of quantity, the Uighur contracts are not very large, about 200 pieces, but most of them involve the socio-economic conditions of the Uighurs in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and provide valuable first-hand materials for in-depth study of the land system, taxation system, usury, class relations, ethnic relations, language and writing of the Uighur society at that time.

It can be seen from the Land Sale and Purchase Deeds and Slave Trade Deeds of the Uighur Contract that land is privately owned and can be bought and sold, and slaves are also privately owned and can also be bought and sold, and landlords and slave owners have the right to use and buy and sell the land and population they own. The sale and purchase of land and human beings is not only legal, but also has some conventional township rules, and there are certain provisions on the punishment for breach of contract. These township rules and civil covenants, legal procedures, etc. still need to be studied.

The sale of land and human beings is not only a social system problem, but also an economic problem, which involves all aspects of the economy: (1) agricultural problems. The land orientation and four to four to the range of the land sale and purchase deed can understand the layout of farmland and water conservancy irrigation at that time, crop varieties, etc. (2) Currency issues. The purchase and sale of land and people is cashed in the form of currency, which reveals the types of currencies at that time, the scope of currency circulation, and the comparison between various currencies. (3) Price issues. Land and deeds of sale and purchase also involve price issues. The price of land varies according to the quality of the land, and the price of the population varies according to age, sex and ability.

2. Micro level

(1) The issue of the discontinuation of contracts

The dating of the Uighur contract is currently the most debated issue in academia. Because most of the Uighur contracts are seriously damaged, many have no chronology, even if there is a chronology, it is also the use of the Uighur commonly used twelve genus chronology method, it is difficult to specify a contract to a certain year, can not determine the chronology, the use value of the contract will be greatly reduced. Therefore, the problem of the discontinuation of the Uighur contract is a very important problem that must be solved.

At present, the academic community mainly adopts the following methods for the discontinuation of the Uighur contract.

The first method is to observe the literal characteristics of uighur contracts. It is mainly based on the different stages of development of the Uighur script, and certain characteristics are reflected in the writing. For example, in early literature, the consonant letters q, x, γ are no difference, and in later literature, q is represented by two dots in front of the left, x is represented by adding a point in front of the left, and γ is not marked; in the early literature, the letter representing n is not preceded by a point, and in the later literature n is indicated by a little in front of the left; in the early literature, the consonant letters s and are not distinguished, and later add two dots to the right of the letter, and the non-point is indicated; the consonant letter z and often mixed, sometimes two points are added to the right, Without dots, it still means z; the consonant letters d and t, although written differently, were often used in later periods, especially in Uighur literature in the Yuan Dynasty, and so on. These characteristics of the different historical periods of development of the Uighur script are, in general, the general characteristics of the Uighur script.

However, the literal character of the Uighur contract is influenced by many factors. According to Liu Ge, who has copied more than 100 contracts, the calligraphy of a document has to consider the following factors. The first is the preservation of the document, the second is the chapter of the document, referring to the white cloth, the third is the knot of the text, the fourth is the strokes of the text, the elegance of the lines, the fifth is the style of calligraphy, and so on. If the document is preserved intact, the reader can recognize it, the chapter and knot of the document are reasonable, and the strokes and lines are beautiful, it shows that the calligraphy level of the writer is relatively high; if the document is broken and incomplete, then the chapter of the document cannot be discussed. The calligraphic effect of the instrument is also affected by the writing instrument, the writing of the brush is flexible and smooth, and the words written with the hard pen are firm and angular. Without talking about the structure of the text and whether it is written correctly, it is difficult to say whether the knots of the words are reasonable, whether they are smooth lines or chicken chops.

Thus, the character of the Text is a powerful factor in the assertion of the Uighur contract, but not the only absolute factor.

The second approach is to use language knowledge. For example, it can be judged from the perspective of vocabulary: contracts containing words such as ao (banknote), ungdung bao ao (Zhongtong Bao banknote), daruγa (Daru Huachi), uluγ süü (His Majesty the Mongol Emperor) are judged to be the Mongolian Yuan period.

Clark also believed that the word aqa (brother) was a Mongolian word, and used the word to judge the date of the contract as the Mongolian Yuan era. Liu Ge had made a similar judgment.

In a treatise on penalties for breach of contract, Umemuratan proposed the following substitutable terms, such as aqa (brother), yastuq (ingot), ao (banknote), uluγ süü (His Majesty the Mongol Emperor), and in ü (in zhu).

The use of the relevant vocabulary to break the Uighur contract is undoubtedly an effective method, because the vocabulary is the most easily changed in the language, and each era has a special vocabulary for each era. However, the use of some vocabulary to break the generation also has a certain amount of trouble, must be cautious, but also take into account some other factors. For example, the use of the word aqa (brother) to break the generation is unreliable, because Mongolian and Uighur languages belong to the same language family, and from primitive times, they have many common words, and later influence each other, borrowing a lot of borrowed words from each other. Some words are difficult to say clearly about the source and flow, or when they were borrowed.

Using the evolution of speech to give contract generations is also a common method in the academic community. For example, Geng Shimin proposed in a series of treatises that the phonetic characteristics of the Yuan Dynasty Uighur literature are that s and , d and t are indiscriminate , and there is a phenomenon of substitution. However, the development and change of speech is a long-term process, and it is not comprehensive to use this alone to break the Uighur contract. In early contracts , the indistinguishment of s and , d , and t also occurred.

There are also some scholars who have used certain grammatical phenomena to break the Uighur contract, such as Clark once proposed that if the conditional attachment component in the Uighur instrument is sa or s, then this is a grammatical phenomenon after the 13th century, if it is sar or s r, it is before the 13th century. However, the development and change of grammar is also a long process like the change of speech. It is also obviously one-sided to use only certain grammatical phenomena to break the generation.

A third approach is to use a set of related contracts as an analogy. If several contracts unearthed at the same site have the same personal name, place name, etc., if one of them has the conditions for generation, then the age of several other related contracts can also be broken. For example, Yamada Nobuo used this method in his research on the writing of related contracts such as qay mdu/qay mtu, bintong (pintung), and bolm, and proposed that the contract for bintong could be set as 1280, at this time using Yuan dynasty banknotes.

The fourth approach is to examine the format of the contract. Due to the influence of socio-political, economic, cultural and other factors, the format of the contract is often marked by the times. Therefore, they can also be used as an important reference for contract generation. Liu Ge broke the 29 Uighur buying and selling contracts into the 13th to 14th centuries according to the format cliché.

The question of the discontinuation of the Uighur contract has been studied by many previous scholars. Among them, Yamada Nobuo's statement is more general, believing that it is the 9th to 14th centuries. Based on his long-term copying of Uighur contracts and his study of their vocabulary and sentences, Liu Ge believes that most of them belong to the 13th and 14th centuries.

The discontinuation of the Uighur contract is an important and complex issue. The above several generation-breaking methods have merits, but they cannot be used as the only method, and should be comprehensively considered and analyzed specifically.

(2) Proper noun issues

There are many proper names such as names, place names, tax names, and terms in uighur contracts, which play a very important role in the interpretation and study of Uighur contracts, but because the contract text is scrawled, and many are damaged, and cannot be coherent, resulting in different readings of some proper nouns, and even the understanding of some proper nouns.

Personal names appear in each contract, and they mostly involve buyers, sellers, seers, writers, etc. Different interpretations of common names vary from house to house, mainly due to the inaccuracy of the original Uighur text. Such as the name of the person or read as krsin, or read as k rsin; the name of the person or read as klirt or read as k lirt, etc.

There are some proper nouns, such as tutung "du tong", sangun "general", b g "Burke", toy n "Daoren", a ari "mage", etc. can be used as both official and personal names. Thus, when these nouns are used with personal names, some scholars interpret them as××× generals, ××× Burke, ××× mages, and some interpret these terms as part of the personal names.

Some important place names in the Uighur contract, such as qo o (Gaochang), lük üng (Liuzhong), etc., are relatively clear, but there are many more minor place names whose specific locations are unclear. For example, if a piece of land is four to a certain canal, the name of the canal can only be transliterated temporarily, and the place name is indicated in parentheses.

There are also some tax names in the tax name contract that are not clear, that is, we do not know which tax or tax name they correspond to in the Chinese historical texts, such as qav t tax, bas γ tax, birt tax, irt tax, qodγu tax, sal γ tax, tüdün tax, umdu tax, etc., they specifically refer to, we are not completely clear, so we have to mark the original Uighur name of this tax for future study.

(3) Quantifier problems

There are many quantifiers in the Uighur contract that represent units of capacity, units of weight, units of liquid, units of length, units of currency, units of area, and so on. Because many quantifiers are not precise, it is impossible to know exactly the capacity, weight, length, etc. they represent, which brings a lot of confusion to the research. Such as bir qap bor "a leather bag of wine". It is not clear how much this "one leather bag" has.

(4) Problems of transcription and translation

The issue of transliteration of the Uighur contract involves the transcribe system. At present, the international common Uighur transliteration system is not exactly the same, there are four sets of transcribed letters: one is based on the Latin alphabet, plus a few special symbols specifically used to transscribe The Uighur alphabet, and according to the harmonious law of uighur literature language and the results of historical comparative linguistic research, the vowels and consonants are distinguished, the so-called "phonetically type Uighur Latin transliteration letters". Japanese and mainland scholars mostly use this set of transcription methods. The second is based on the Latin alphabet, plus a few special symbols specifically used to transscribe the Uighur alphabet, but some vowels and consonants are not distinguished, and are directly transcribed in accordance with the original writing form, the so-called "unmarked vowel-style Uighur Latin alphabet transliteration letter". Individual European scholars have used this set of transcription methods. The third is based on the Slavic alphabet, plus some special symbols specifically used to transscribe the Uighur alphabet, the so-called "Uighur Slavic transcribed letter". Radloff's Uighur Literature is one of these transliteration methods. The fourth is that the treatises of Turkish scholars used the Turkish letters , etc. when transcribing the Uighur script.

Some researchers in mainland China are precisely because they do not understand the above uighur transcribed letter systems, so they directly cite the transcribed letters of different systems in their treatises, resulting in confusion in the use of different systems of transcribed letters in a work or even a paper, which brings a lot of unnecessary trouble to research.

Translation is of course a comprehensive problem, which involves many factors such as the transcription of the original text, the breaking of sentences in the original text, the understanding of certain keywords, etc., each of which may cause different translations and different translations.

In addition to the above translation problems, there is also a problem in the mainland academic circles, that is, the problem of inconsistent use of words in Chinese translations. Liu Ge had noticed the seriousness of the problem. For example, Based on the handwriting of the person who wrote the contract, the seal in the contract, the place of origin of the contract, the location of the land sold or rented in some contracts, and the title of his relatives, he found that 16 contracts were related to the large landlord qay mtu. However, in Li Jingwei's "Research on the Socio-Economic Documents of the Turpan Uighur Language" and "Research on the Socio-Economic Documents of the Uighur Language", many names are used in Chinese more casually, such as translating the same person's name tor as "Turqi" or "Tolchi", and translating m s r la as "Mi Si'er Si la", "Mi Si'er Sera", "Mi Si'er Si La", "Mi Si'er Si La", and so on.

The above summarizes the problems existing in the study of Uighur contracts from both macro and micro aspects. We believe that with the continuous discovery and in-depth study of the new Uighur covenant, these problems will also attract more and more attention from researchers and eventually be satisfactorily resolved.

Author Affilications:Institute of Chinese Minority Languages, Minzu University of China

Comments from omitted, the full version please refer to the original text.

Editor: Xiang Yu

Proofreader: Water Life

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