Memorial for Yelü Yanning

41°38′N 120°12′E / 41.63°N 120.20°E / 41.63; 120.20 The Memorial for Yelü Yanning (耶律延寧), also known as the Epitaph for Yelü Yanning, is the oldest known Khitan inscription of significant length and currently the oldest major written attestation of a Mongolic (or Para-Mongolic) language. Dated 986, it is inscribed with 19 lines (271 characters) of Khitan large script. It was found in the winter of 1964 on Baimu Mountain in northwest Baishugou Village, Xiwujiazi Township, Chaoyang County, Liaoning Province, China[1] and is now kept in the Liaoning Provincial Museum.[2]

The Khitan word ⟨jau⟩ ("hundred") which occurs in line 13 of the upper-right Khitan section of the inscription and which is written with the large script character 百 is one of the earliest fully deciphered Mongolic words preserved in a Mongolic inscription.

Yelü Yanning

Duke Yelü Yanning (947-986) is not mentioned directly in the Liaoshi or other Khitan historical documents. The discovery of his memorial inscription in 1964 gave the first information about him. Yelü Yanning was a high ranking Khitan military officer of the Liao dynasty. Yelü Yanning's family belonged to the imperial household[3] and had a place in the horizontal gers of the Khitan Khan. His great-grandfather Nieligu 臬離骨 (*Niargu),[note 1] grandfather Zhiwubu [⿱止日]午不 and his father Sage 薩割 were all widely known as brave and expert warriors who repeatedly accomplished meritorious deeds.[6] His father Sage was given the title of "imperial tutor honorable duke" 太師令公.[7] When the Jingzong Emperor Yelü Xian succeeded to the throne, Yelü Yanning was recruited as a jinshi 近侍 (palace attendant). Yelü Yanning was gradually given the titles of "righteousness-defending outstanding minister" 保義功臣, "sublime fortunate minister" 崇祿大夫, "acting grand protector" 檢校太保, "senior general of the left imperial insignia guard" 左金吾衛大將軍, and "imperial censor in chief" 御史大夫. He was granted a fief of 500 families in Qishui County, having been dubbed its "high pillar of state and dynasty-founding viscount" 上柱國漆水縣開國子.[8]

Yanning scrupulously performed his guard duties, always ensuring the Emperor's safety and earning the deep trust of the Jingzong Emperor and Empress Xiao Chuo. When the Jingzong Emperor died in 982, Yanning "wished he could follow him in death".[9] After the Jingzong Emperor's death, Empress Xiao was regent. In view of his immense loyalty, she went even further in granting Yanning the titles of "righteousness-defending outstanding minister of Fengjie" 保義奉節功臣, "jiedushi (military governor) of Yujueli" 羽厥里節度使, "specially promoted acting grand marshal" 特進檢校太尉, and "honorary chancellor" 同政事門下平章事. He was granted a fief of 700 families as "high pillar of state and dynasty-founding earl" of Qishui County 上柱國漆水縣開國伯.[10]

During this time the Zubu confederacy (Keraites) in central Mongolia raised armies against the Liao dynasty and pushed eastwards, profoundly affecting the Niaogu, Dilie, Shiwei (Mongols) and others. Emperor Shengzong Yelü Longxu and Empress Xiao sent Yelü Yanning to pacify the northern borderland. Yelü Yanning reached the area of present-day Hulunbuir in Inner Mongolia near the source of the Heilongjiang river and continued to the Kherlen River in present-day eastern Mongolia where he met with success. He died on the 30th day of the 12th month of the third year of the Tonghe period (11 February 986) due to complications from his wounds. He was 39 years old.[11]

Inscription

The memorial stone is 84 cm long and 83 cm wide. The Khitan large script section comprises 19 lines (271 characters) on the upper half of the stone, and the Chinese section comprises 24 lines (511 characters) on the lower half,[2] with 3 of those lines taking up the entire vertical length at the left margin. The two texts are not bilingual translations of each other. The date of composition is given as the 18th day of the 11th month of the fourth year of Tonghe (21 December 986). There is no author name given, at least in the Chinese version, implying that the author might have been of low status and merely part of the deceased's retinue.[12] A rubbing of the epitaph was first published in Wenwu 文物: Cultural Relics, issue 7, in 1980.

Nearly all the identifiable dates and titles come from the Chinese portion of the epitaph. The preface introduces Yelü Yanning with the much higher-status titles and achievements granted to him after Emperor Jingzong's death by the then-"present emperor";[13] this would have been Emperor Shengzong or, more likely, the Empress Dowager Chengtian (former Empress Xiao), who was de facto ruler due to Shengzong's young age.

Interpretation of the Khitan text is rather sparse and only a few phrases, words and morphological suffixes have been identified. Most of these are also borrowings from Chinese, generally semantic and phonetic but sometimes graphemic. The first four characters in line 2, [⿻⿽丿㇄⿱一⺄]皇帝 [then □ ɣuɑŋ ti],[14] were identified in the 1990s as referring to the Tianzan Emperor 天贊皇帝[15] (likely Jingzong, who reigned 948-982). Later, the gloss for the second character was rescinded in a 2014 work, leaving its status uncertain.[16] Lines 4-5 contain the phrase 金[⿰亻⿻㇋㇏]太将[⿱口⿻⿱一八㇉]午 [□ □ tɑi siɑŋ kun ir], glossed as 金吾大將軍號 jinwu dajiangjun hao "the title of senior general of the imperial insignia", probably corresponding to 左金吾衛大將軍 zuo jinwuwei dajiangjun "senior general of the left imperial insignia guard" in line 9 of the Chinese.[17] In line 9, the first four characters mean 父母之子 "child of the father and mother".[16] In line 13, characters 9-10 [⿱䒑卬][⿱日朩] [setu ʃi] transcribe 節度使 jiedushi "military governor". From lines 1 and 12 of the Chinese, Yanning is described as the jiedushi of Yujueli; he eventually died there.[18] There are other assorted characters, such as "northwest", "five", "hundred" and "state."

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ 臬離骨 is also the Chinese transcription of the Khitan female personal name Niargun.[4] Substantives or substantive-derived adjectival names have an -n/-ȵ ending in Khitan epitaphs when used as female personal names or male courtesy names, but lose this ending as male personal names. As Nieligu here is a male personal name (諱 huì, the (possibly taboo) name of a deceased elder), the Khitan form is *Niargu.[5]

Citations

  1. ^ Yu 1985, pp. 201–202
  2. ^ a b Liu & Yu 1990, p. 391, 231
  3. ^ Epitaph for Yelü Yanning, Chinese section, line 4: "其先祖已來是皇親"
  4. ^ Yoshimoto 2014, p. 128
  5. ^ Yoshimoto 2014, p. 111
  6. ^ Yanning, lines 4-5: "曾祖諱臬離骨，祖諱[⿱止日]午不，考諱薩割，并名已勇聞。"
  7. ^ Yanning, line 6
  8. ^ Yanning, lines 8-10
  9. ^ Yanning, line 11: "皇帝卧朝之日，願隨從死。"
  10. ^ Yanning, lines 11-14
  11. ^ Yanning, lines 16-17
  12. ^ Pursey 2020, p. 67
  13. ^ Yanning, line 11: "今上皇帝念此忠赤"
  14. ^ Liu & Wang 2004, pp. 61–99, as quoted in West
  15. ^ Liu 1998, p. 320, line 2
  16. ^ a b Liu 2014, p. 514, as quoted in NADPH 2018, 第六部分 契丹大字图版 (Part 6. Khitan large script plates)
  17. ^ Liu 1998, p. 321, line 9
  18. ^ Yanning, line 17: "於羽厥里瘡疾而薨"

Sources

  • 耶律延寧墓誌  [Epitaph for Yelü Yanning] (in Chinese). 21 December 986 – via Wikisource.
  • Liu Fengzhu 劉鳳翥 (1998). "Qìdān dàzì liùshí nián zhī yánjiū" 契丹大字六十年之研究 [Sixty years of research on the Khitan large script] (PDF). 中國文化研究所學報 [Journal of Chinese Studies] (in Chinese). 7: 313–338. doi:10.29708/JCS.CUHK.199801_(7).0014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 July 2025. Retrieved 15 September 2025.
  • Liu Fengzhu 刘凤翥 (2014). Qìdān wénzì yánjiū lèibiān 契丹文字研究类编 [Collection of Research on the Khitan scripts] (in Chinese). Vol. 2. China Social Science Publishers 中国社会科学出版社.
  • Liu Fengzhu 劉鳳翥; Wang Yunlong 王雲龍 (2004). "Qìdān dàzì "Yēlǜ Chāngyǔn mùzhìmíng" zhī yánjiū" 契丹大字《耶律昌允墓誌銘》之研究 [A study on the Epitaph for Yelü Changyun in Khitan large script]. 燕京學報 [Yenching Journal of Chinese Studies] (in Chinese). 17: 61–99.
  • Liu Fengzhu 劉鳳翥; Yu Baolin 于寶林 (1990). "Qìdān zì" 契丹字 [Khitan large characters]. In Fu Maoli 傅懋栗 (ed.). 中國民族古文字圖錄 [Illustrations of ancient writing systems of Chinese nationalities] (in Chinese). Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe. pp. 247–395. ISBN 978-7-5004-0296-1.
  • NADPH (4 July 2018). ""Qìdān wénzì yánjiū lèibiān" jīng yǎn lù" 《契丹文字研究类编》经眼录 [Catalogue of "Collection of Research on the Khitan scripts"]. Retrieved 27 September 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
  • Pursey, Lance (2020). The necropolitan elite of northeast China in the long eleventh century: a social history of Liao dynasty epitaphs (907-1125) (PDF) (PhD thesis). University of Birmingham. Archived from the original on 22 September 2025. Retrieved 27 September 2025.
  • West, Andrew. "List of Khitan Large Character Reconstructions in Liu and Wang 2004". babelstone.co.uk. Retrieved 27 September 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
  • Yoshimoto Chieko 吉本 知慧子 (2014). 契丹女子の命名習俗に関する再考察: 金啓孮先生逝去十周年を記念して [A reexamination on the naming customs of Khitan women: commemorating the 10th death anniversary of Jin Qicong] (PDF). The Journal of Cultural Sciences 立命館文學 (in Japanese) (638): 128–105. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 June 2023. Retrieved 4 October 2025.
  • Yu Baolin 于寶林 (1985). "Qìdān wénzì wénxiàn lùnzhù jiětí (shàng)" 契丹文字文獻論著解題（上） [Bibliography of Khitan documents and research (Part 1)]. Wenxian 文獻 (in Chinese) (1): 198–224. ISSN 1000-0437.


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