Prakritic "Kroraina" and Old Sinitic reconstructions of "Loulan", part 2

What follows is Doug Adams' draft of an excursus that is not trying to be complete in itself (i.e., it's not a free-standing article), but rather something that will provide a certain amount of orientation to readers of the review of Schmidt's Nachlass (for which see the first item in the "Readings" below).

[Excursus: The Name of Lóulán/Kroraina: It is universally assumed (1) that Lóulán (the contemporary Chinese pronunciation of the relevant Chinese characters) and Niya-Prākrit Kroraina (Sogdian krwr’n) refer to the same place[1] and, further, (2) that they are, at bottom, the same word.  In discussions of Lóulán/Kroraina, Lóulán is confidently given the earlier (Old/Middle?—the age is not usually noted) Chinese pronunciation of *γləulan or the like (Schmidt gives *γlaulan).  Since Middle Chinese (ca. 600 AD) /l/ is known to reflect Old Chinese (ca. 1000-200 BC) /r/, it would seem to be a short hop to a reconstruction of *γrəuran in, say, 500 BC.

But, in discussions focused on Chinese alone, Schuessler (2009) reconstructs Old Chinese *ro and *ran for the two characters and Baxter (1992) reconstructs *ro and *g-ran.  There were Old Chinese syllables of the shape *γrô, *grô, and *krô, but in Schuessler’s (and Baxter’s) opinion they would have given modern Mandarin hóu, góu, and kóu (via Later Han Chinese *go, *ko, and *kho, and Middle Chinese γəu, kəu, khəu (Schuessler, 2009:146-147).  What you do not get is *Kro > **Klo > ***lóu.  Indeed, there is widespread (not universal) agreement that lán goes back to an Old Chinese *g-ran, but that lóu goes back to simple Old Chinese *ro, with no velar “prefix.”  (Some researchers would take the equation of lóu with the first syllable of Kroraina as by itself sufficient to reconstruct Old Chinese *g-ro, but most would not.)  Not knowing exactly when the “prefix” was lost, we could most reasonably reconstruct (a late) Old Chinese *ro-g-ran or *ro-ran.[2] A reconstruction *g-ro-g-ran might be possible, but NOT **g-ro-ran, which Prakrit Kroraina would seem to demand. The answer may lie in the supposition that we do not see the result of direct borrowing by Old Chinese of a Tocharian C place-name, but rather the complicating effect of the transmission of that name via one or more (unknown) intermediate languages.  In any case there appears to be no warrant to reconstruct an Old Chinese *γləulan as the antecedent for Lo-lan of the Han era.[3]]

[1] So already in the latter part of the nineteenth century by Karl Himly (1836-1904), as reported in Conrady (1920:162).

[2] If a Chinese *rəuran, or the like, had existed at some time in the second half of the first millennium BC, it would have been an obvious source for the Khotanese equivalent, raurana-, given by Schmidt. However, one might note that this Khotanese raurana-, given confidently by Schmidt, does not appear in Bailey (1979), nor in Bailey (1985) which is substantially devoted to Khotanese geographical terms from Kashgar to Lop Nor.  Until it is better supported, we should perhaps treat it as a vox nihili.  [VHM:  The Khotanese is actually raurata (Staël-Holstein scroll apud Kumamoto in the o.p.)]  Ptolemy’s Chaurana, which is sometimes brought into this discussion, is best left aside as well.  If it refers to anything real at all (and Ptolemy’s information on Inner Asia is most sketchy), its position suggests Khotan rather than anything further east (see Stevenson, 1932:145 and Asia, map 8).

[3] The discussion in this subsection has been much aided by the material gathered on-line in Victor Mair’s Prakritic “Kroraina” and Old Sinitic reconstructions of “Loulan”, to which the reader is referred for much fascinating information.

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Readings

"Prakritic 'Kroraina' and Old Sinitic reconstructions of 'Loulan'" (5/14/19)

"Tocharian C: its discovery and implications" (4/2/19)

"Tocharian, Turkic, and Old Sinitic 'ten thousand'" (4/23/19)