Home Gudgeon and gist Language Log Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6

Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6

Language Log 2017-12-23

From March through July of 2016, we had a long-running series of posts comparing words in Indo-European and in Old Sinitic (OS),  See especially the first item in this series, and don't miss the comments to all of the posts:

Today's post is not about a sword per se, but it is about an armament for parrying sword thrusts.  It was inspired by seeing the following entry in Paul Kroll, ed., A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 104a:  fá 瞂  pelta; small shield — Middle Sinitic bjwot.  I asked Paul where he got that beautiful word "pelta", and he replied:  "One of the benefits of my early classical studies. I got it from Vergil, but it’s originally Greek."

Because I previously was familiar neither with "fá 瞂" nor with "pelta", my eye lingered on that entry, and within a couple of seconds I was struck by the comparable sounds of the two words:  Middle Sinitic (MS) bjwot and "pelta".  Curious about the resemblance in sound and meaning of two short, practical terms, neither of which I had encountered before, I decided to look into them a bit more deeply.

From Wiktionary, I learned that a pelta is "A small shield, especially one of an approximately elliptical form, or crescent-shaped."  English acquired the word from Latin ("a shield", which derived it from Ancient Greek πέλτη (péltē, “shield”).

Etymology

From Ancient Greek πέλτη (péltē).

Pronunciation

(Classical) IPA(key): /ˈpel.ta/, [ˈpɛɫ.ta]

Noun

pelta f (genitive peltae); first declension

1. a small crescent–shaped shield of Thracian design.

A peltast carrying a pelte shield (pelta)

Now that I could see with my own eyes what a nicely decorated pelta looked like more than two thousand years ago and was captivated by the stylish garb of the peltast wielding it, I was hooked and had to find out more about it.

William Smith, LLD. William Wayte. G. E. Marindin, ed., A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Albemarle Street, London. John Murray. 1890):

PELTA (πέλτη), a small shield. Iphicrates, observing that the ancient CLIPEUS was cumbrous and inconvenient, introduced among the Greeks a much smaller and lighter shield, from which those who bore it took the name of peltastae [EXERCITUS Vol. I. p. 776]. It consisted principally of a frame of wood or wickerwork (Xen. Anab. 2.1, § 6), covered with skin or leather, without the metallic rim. [ANTYX]. (Timaeus, Lex. Plat. s. v.) Light and small shields of a great variety of shapes were used by numerous nations before the adoption of them by the Greeks. The round target or cetra was a species of the pelta, and was used especially by the people of Spain and Mauretania. [CETRA] The pelta is also said to have been quadrangular (Schol. in Thuc. 2.29). A light shield of similar construction was part of the national armour of Thrace (Thuc. 2.29; Eurip. Aloes. 498, Rhes. 410; Max. Tyr. Diss. 19.1, 23.2) and of various parts of Asia, and was on this account attributed to the Amazons, in whose hands it appears on the works of ancient art sometimes elliptic, as in the bronzes of Siris (woodcut, p. 79), and at other times variously sinuated on the margin, but most commonly [p. 2.364]with a semicircular indentation on one side ( “lunatis peltis,” Verg. A. 1.490, 11.663). Varro, L. L. 7.43, compares this to the ancile. [SALII] A vase fragment in the British Museum (No. E 793) shows clearly the form and construction of the lunata pelta; two Persians exhibit the two sides of the shield.

Peltae, from a vase in the British Museum.

The Spanish Wikipedia has a good article on pelta that includes one of my favorite objects from antiquity, this gold comb preserved in the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg), which was found in a kurgan (burial mound) at Solokha, Dneiper River region on the northern Black Sea:

Here we see another crescent pelta in action.  What is most suggestive about this piece is that the warriors are Scythians, who flourished from the 9th c. to the 1st c. BC in the western and central Eurasian steppes, but ranged all the way to East Asia, with their influences extending far into what is now South China.  This puts them in the right time and right place to be involved in the possible cultural transmission of the peltae which we know they employed.  The Scythian languages belonged to the Eastern branch of the Iranian languages, so we shall keep them in mind when below we go looking for possible cognates or borrowings of "pelta".

For those who wish to get a better idea of who the Scythians were, what they looked like, how and where they lived, etc., I highly recommend the wonderful exhibition, "Scythians:  warriors of ancient Siberia", which is being shown at the British Museum from 14 September 2017 – 14 January 2018.  If you cannot make it in person, there is an excellent catalog with the same title as that of the exhibition:  Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia.

Before adducing late Classical and Medieval languages that may be operative in our search for possible links between the eastern and western manifestations of this particular type of shield, we would do well to pay attention to the origins of the word in Greek.  This is what Frisk has to say in his Griechische Etymologishces Wörterbuch, p. 501:

Seems likely it derives from IE words for covering or blanket (but poss. related to a stretched skin, like Latin pellis {skin], which may have a different IE root in *pel).

We would do well, however, to take into account these off-the-cuff remarks by Don Ringe:

I think Frisk's caution is very much in order.  Of the various words for weapons and pieces of armor, not one clearly goes back to PIE–and that's what you'd expect, because weapons technology was constantly being upgraded even in the bronze age (the only difference being that "constantly" probably meant "every few generations" instead of "every few years"), and new things are usually denoted by new words.  Under pélma Frisk lists a grabbag of words with divergent meanings, all beginning with *pel- (which could be a root, but there's no verb with such a root–'approach' is *pelh2-) but with all sorts of apparent suffixes.  The only really reconstructable word is *pel-n- 'skin', and that's Germanic and Italic only, so far as I can remember.  Not good enough.

In general, it's a bad idea to work with roots unless there's an actual verb attested somewhere.  What gets transmitted from generation to generation is *words*, so those should be the basis of etymology.  In the case of a basic IE verb, the root *is* the verb; otherwise roots are mostly too abstract.  The only exception I can think of is the Caland system.

Jumping from the earliest layers of the history of "pelta", I would like now to examine mostly medieval words for shields (especially smaller ones) that circulated in Central Asia.  This is by no means to say that I believe any of the particular words mentioned here may have served as the basis for a borrowing into Sinitic as fá 瞂 (MS bjwot), though some of them might be reflexes of earlier forms that might have been involved in the transmission.

I asked colleagues who are specialists in premodern Central Asian languages what words they know of for "shield" in the languages they study.  Their replies follow herewith.

Nicholas S-W:

I know Sogd. ptsāδ, MP/Parth. ispar and magind, Man. MP also maginn (Semitic LW).

Hiroshi Kumamoto:

Middle Persian has spar (Mackenzie Pahl. Dict. q.v.), which goes back to OP *spara- (spara-barai in Hesychios; see LSJ).

Peter Goldin:

You might want to look at H.W. Bailey’s Dictionary of Khotan-Saka (CUP, 1979, pb printing: 2010): p. 266: baṭha- “cuirass” – from *varθra-, cf. Osset. (Digor) ŭart “shield”, Zor.P. vartik, gurtik, gurtakh “defensive armor"

1. 305: be̬sa- “shield” from var- “to cover” 2. 228: pāḍaka “covering, envelope, missive document” < *partaka. ZorP pltkˈ *partak “covering”, NPers. pardah “covering , veil”, ZopP. spar “shield”  NPers. sipar

see also p. 65 kaucāha̬ra “covering”  and explanations noted there.

Martin Schwartz:

Offhand, for Central Asiatic Iranian I only know a word for 'shield' whose correct meaning I supplied long ago, Sogdian, Man. <pts'd>, S. <pts'∂>, both = /ptsâ∂/ < OIr. *patisâda- ' a covering'.  Man. MPers. <mgynd> /magind/  'shield' vel sim. is from an Aramaic. form with *-nn-, of which *-nd- is a dialectal variant to be expected in  a MPers. borrowing.  I wonder if MPers. spar rightly mentioned by Professor Kumamoto is not from the same root as Pers. parda 'curtain' (s- movable? or more likely < *us-in Hesychius' time, 5th or 6th cent. CE?).

As to Sogd. /ptsâ∂/'shield' (also Christian in Estrangela script as /pts'd/).

OIr. pati is a preverb often indicating 'facing, counter to, again, against', cf. the functions of Lat. re-.The root is *sad = Skt. chad 'to cover'  (not in Chung, Dict. Ir. Verb).The *-sâda- part is a usual noun formation from the root..Iranian cognates include Avestan sâ∂antî-, in context 'who wears reeds? and s.s and leather', ergo a (protective??) garment of some sort'; with  preverb, Pashto psôl- 'to wear'.

*pati-sâda- > 'shield' as *'that which covers someone against something'

Btw, as for the Aram. *maginn- cf. Heb. mVginnâ(h) 'shield', Sem. root g-n-n 'to cover'; inner-Aram. geminate nasal dlalectally developing stop, and reflected by MPers. $ambad 'Saturday,

gund 'military troop', $ambalîd 'fenugreek', and zandîk 'manichæoid heretic' < zaddîq-, *zandîq'

self-designation 'righteous' (NOT 'adherent of the Zand', as still commonly found in Iranistic lit. ).

$ = s-hacek (sh), ^ = macron.

It occurred to me that in the obscure Av. passage with sâ∂aiiaNtî-, the word which looks like 'reeds' can probably mean 'canes', which figure in some kinds of armor and shields.

Marcel Erdal:

Kalkan was a light shield, and then there was tura, a shield one could stand behind. Kalkan was also borrowed into contact languages. Iranian terms (starting with Avestan spâra) do not seem to have had a chance with the warlike Turks (note Turkish siper, though). (There also was vrėdra, related to English ‘guard’.)

Mehmet Olmez:

kalkan (from Clauson) could be an answer for your question?

kalkan ‘shield’; s.i.a.m.l.g. except NE(?). L.w. in Mong., Pe., etc. Doerfer III 1518. Uyğ. xıv Chin.—Uyğ. Dict. ‘shield’ kalkan R II 254; Ligeti 161: Xak. xı kalkan ‘shield’ (al-turs) in one of the two dialects (al-luğatayn) Kaş. I 441 (verse); kalkaŋ al-turs dialect form (luğa) of kalkan III 386; o.o. of kalkan II 356, 19; III 82 (yapın-); 221 (tura:): KB 4263 (tayaklık): xııı (?) Tef. kalkan ‘shield’ 196: xıv Muh. al-turs kalka:n Mel. 71, 8; Rif. 173:Çağ. xv ff. kalkan  sipar ‘shield’ San. 275v. 27 (quotn.): Xwar. xııı (?) ditto Oğ. 38, 98: xıv ditto Qutb 129: Kom. ditto CCG; Gr.: Kıp. xııı al-turs kalka:n Hou. 13, 15: xıv kalkan al-micann ‘shield’ İd. 74: xv al-daraqa‘leather shield’ kalka:n, with a sound between -k- and -ğ- but nearer to -k- Kav. 64, 1: daraxa kalkan Tuh. 15b. 7: Osm. xıv ff. kalkan noted in phr. TTS I 406; II 568; III 398. (Clauson 621 a)

I just remembered tura. Here is TURA from Clauson 531a (and may be there is more information at Doerfer II 958):

2 tura: basically ‘something to shelter behind’ used both for permanent fortifications, and for portable ‘breastworks’ which could be moved about and fixed temporarily to the ground. A l.-w. in the first meaning in Mong. (Kow. 1879, Haltod 432) and Pe. and other languaes, see Doerfer II 958; it survives in most NE languages R III 1446, and Khak. where the meaning has attenuated, through ‘stockade, fortified village’ to ‘town’ and even ‘house’. Xak. xı tura: kalkan al-turs wa’l-daraqa wa kull mā tasattara bihi’l-racul mina’l-aduww ‘brastwork, shield, and anything that a man shelters behind from the enemy’ Kş. III 221; o.o. II 356, 19 (kalkan tura: daraqatuhu wa tursuhu); III 106, 14 (?, text perhaps corrupt): KB kara baylıkın kıldı özke tura ‘he made the wealth of the common people a protection for himself’ 256; (some men expose themselves to swords and battle axes in battle) kayusı turada yuluğda karır ‘some grow old behind breast works in security (?, or as hostages)’ 1736; o.o. 5263 (ordu:), 6434: xııı(?) Tef. bustānnuŋ turası  ‘a garden wall’ 312: xıv Muh. al-qal‘a  ‘fortress’ tu:ra: Mel. 75, 15; Rif. 179: Çağ. xv ff. tura  (‘with -u’) ‘a shield (kalkan) the height of a man which soldiers hold in front of them in battle and fight behind’ Vel. 203 (quotns.); tura ‘iron rods and plates of iron which they fasten together with chains and hooks on the day of battle and make into a line of defence (ḥisār-i laşkar) behind which they stand to fight’ San. 173r. 16 (quotns.).

Stefan Georg:

On the last mentioned term, consult Doerfer „Russ. tury „Schanzkörbe“ in: Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 29, 1961, 288 – 301 – not exactly a portable shield, of course.

The Tk. kalkan was of course rather successful as a loan, as evidenced by Mongolian  qalq-a.

In Middle Iranian lgg. we have Khotanese be’sa- ‚shield‘, from the same root which was mentioned by M. Erdal (Old Khotanese baṭha- ‚cuirass', Osset. wart ‚shield‘ (noun)

Soghdian has pts’δ (patsāδ), with a different background < *sa:d- ‚cover, protect‘, with a preverb, to this root belongs also Npers. chador ‚veil‘ (but via indirect transmission, involving Indic/Skt., rather than pure Iranian paths).

Middle Persian has also mgyn (/maginn/) and Parthian has mgynd – which is Aramaic, cf. Syriac magn/mgenna:, acc. to Payne-Smith 2006 „clypeus“, which would be a kind of small round bronze shield, if the gloss is to be taken literally.

Khwarezmian seems to have 'βnyk ‚shield‘ (with several compounds), which might be called like that because it had military signs on it, „banner shield“ or the like (but this is far from certain)..

For Tocharian, a term for this doesn’t seem to be recorded – peaceful Tocharian monks.

So much for pelta and its congeners, from Greek πέλτη (péltē) through various Iranian terms.  I don't think that Tocharian kalkan is relevant, though tura might conceivably be for dùn 盾 ("shield") — I'm on the road as I write this paragraph, so I don't have Schuessler's dictionaries to check the OS reconstruction, but Zhengzhang Shangfang has /duənX/.

Now what can we say for fá 瞂?  Not much, I'm afraid, and that would explain why I wasn't familiar with it before beginning the research for this post.

It is noteworthy that the fá 瞂 (MS bjwot) is associated with the Rong 戎, an ancient people of the west who were famous for their military prowess.  Indeed, their name stands for "arms", "armaments", and "military affairs".

The first we hear of the fá 瞂 (MS bjwot) is in the Shījīng 詩經 (Poetry Classic), which might date to the 6th c. BC or even a bit earlier (though undergoing editing several centuries later), where it appears in the third line of the third stanza of the "Qín fēng, 'Xiǎo Róng'" 秦風小戎 ("Airs of Qing, 'Lesser Rong'").  It is interesting that here it is written as fá 伐 ("cut; chop; attack; strike; cut down; fell"), clearly a homophonous character borrowing for whatever word they were trying to write.

The fact that fá 瞂 shows up later as a newly constructed graph is instructive, since it is composed of the character for dùn 盾 ("shield") on the left as its semantophore and bá 犮 ("pull up") on the right as phonophore.  Further evidence that fá 瞂 is merely an attempt to record the sound of a borrowed word or a word that was being passed around in the oral realm without a fixed written form is provided by the fact that this same word is also tellingly written with bá 犮 ("pull up") as the phonophore on the right, but gé 革 ("leather" [N.B.!]) on the left as semantophore.  Equally revealing is that the same word may also be written with dùn 盾 ("shield") on the left as semantophore and fá 伐 ("cut; chop; attack; strike; cut down; fell") on the right as phonophore.

Schuessler's OS reconstruction for fá 伐 is *bat and his OS reconstruction for bá 犮 is *bât.

As many of my historical phonologist friends never tire of telling me, we should not take OS reconstructions too literally.  They are not meant to reflect the actual pronunciation of Sinitic as it would have been spoken circa 600 BC, but rather are to be thought of more as formulaic representations of phonological relationships and principles.  They are only very rough, theoretical approximations of OS pronunciations.  (Some historical phonologists do take their OS reconstructions literally, but it is my impression that most do not.) Aside from simply working out the history of early trans-Eurasian cultural exchanges, my purpose in pursuing the linguistic aspects of these inquiries is to try to provide some solid phonological pegs upon which to hang future OS reconstructions.  Since I have hundreds more Sino-IE comparanda linked by sound, meaning, and historical, archeological, visual, and / or material evidence, I'm fairly confident that some of them will contribute to the investigations of historical linguists who have an interest in cross-cultural contacts.  If all goes well, I may be able to present two or three more within the next few weeks before classes begin again.  Meanwhile, the conceptual framework for this type of research may be found in these books:

Victor H. Mair, ed., The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia (Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man Inc. in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Museum Publications, 1998).  2 vols.

P. Mallory and Victor H.Mair,The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (London:  Thames & Hudson, 2000).

"Early Indo-Europeans in Xinjiang" (11/19/08).

Victor H. Mair, ed., Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World (Honolulu:  University of Hawai'i Press, 2006).

Victor H. Mair, "Language and Script: Biology, Archaeology, and (Pre)History," International Review of Chinese Linguistics, 1.1 (1996), 31a-41b.

etc.

[Thanks to Ralph Rosen, Peter Lorge, David Graff, Judith Lerner, and the other colleagues whom I have mentioned by name in the body of the post.]