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The Ongin Inscription

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Gerard Clauson
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Extract

The Ongin inscription was discovered in 1891, the year I was born, in Outer Mongolia on the Manet mountains, near a tributary of the River Ongin, from which it takes its name, at a point a little north-east of 46° N., 102° E., that is about 100 miles south of the two great “Orkhon Inscriptions” and some 250 miles west-southwest of the inscription of Toñukuk.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 89 , Issue 3-4 , October 1957 , pp. 177 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1957

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References

page 177 note 1 I quote the Memorial to Kül Tégin as “I.”, that to Bilge Kağan as “II.”, and the inscription of Toñukuk as “T.”. The first two are quoted by side (E. = East, etc.) and line on the side, T. only by the line. In quoting them, I have used the text in H. N. Orkun's Eski Türk Yazitlari, Istanbul, 1936 ff., checked by reference to the published reproductions. The present inscription I refer to as “O.”. I refer to Prof. V. V. Radloff as “R.”, and I quote B. Atalay's translation of Mahmūd al-KaşǦārī's Dīwānu'l-Luğāti'l-Turk as “Kaş.”, followed by the volume (i, etc.) and page (1, etc.).

page 179 note 1 The exact pronunciation of this name is still uncertain. In I., II., and T., it is spelt il2t2r2s2, in O. l2t2r2S2. In the Chinese transcriptions recorded by Hirth in his article Nachworte zur Inschrift des Tonjukuk in R.'s Zweite Folge (see above), pp. 53 and 108, it is spelt (in Karlgren's reconstruction of “Ancient Chinese”) γiet. d'iet. lji (or i). śiḙ. The first character, γiet is habitually used to transcribe the Turkish word él “realm”, and I feel reasonably sure that the pronunciation was Éltériş. It may be, therefore, that, unlike most early Turkish personal names, it had a “meaning”, something like “a gathering together of the realm”. If so, it seems probable that this was not his original personal name, but one assumed when he refounded the Northern Türkü Dynasty in a.d. 682.