An Early Jurchen Text Among Rock Representations Near the Arkhara River in the Amur Basin (History, Research Results, and New Evidence)

An Early Jurchen Text Among Rock Representations
Near the Arkhara River in the Amur Basin
(History, Research Results, and New Evidence)

DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2019.47.3.094-103

A.P. Zabiyako
Amur State University, Ignatievskoye shosse 21, Blagoveshchensk, 675027, Russia

Results of field surveys of an inscription on a rock near the Arkhara River, carried out in 2003 and 2014-2018, are outlined. Some graphemes from it are written in red, others in black. The black ones, first discovered in 2003, make up a coherent whole—a hieroglyphic text arranged in three columns consisting of 7, 10, and 7 signs. In 2004, it was proposed that the text was written in the Jurchen hieroglyphic script. In 2014, this hypothesis, based on historical and archaeological evidence, received linguistic support, and the text was translated. Judging by the available date, it was written on December 1, 1127, and is demonstrated to be the earliest Jurchen inscription known to date. The text mentions the author’s name—Shin Terin, and says that he arrived in the Targhando mouke (military-administrative region). Apart from the text written in black, certain graphemes written in red are arranged in a linear sequence, suggesting that this is a text too. For the first time, one of the “red” graphemes is published and shown to belong to Jurchen script. The results suggest that the Arkhara rock gallery includes Jurchen inscriptions that are highly relevant to Jurchen linguistics, toponymy, social and cultural history.

Keywords: Petroglyphs, Arkhara River, grapheme, writing system, Jurchen.