Xiongnu (Hunnic) Shanyu

One of the most hotly debated questions in early Chinese studies is the origin and pronunciation of the title of the ruler of the Xiongnu (Huns), which is written with these two Sinographs, 單于.  The current scholarly consensus is that the Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) pronunciation should be chányú.  Although it is much contested, the current scholarly consensus for the pronunciation of the name of the son of the first Xiongnu ruler, Tóumàn, is Mòdú (r. 209-174 BC): 

Modun, Maodun, Modu (simplified Chinese: 冒顿单于; traditional Chinese: 冒頓單于; pinyin: Mòdùn Chányú ~ Màodùn Chányú, c. 234 – c. 174 BCE), also known as Mete khan across a number of Turkic languages, was the son of Touman and the founder of the empire of the Xiongnu. He came to power by ordering his men to kill his father in 209 BCE.

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The following is a guest post by Penglin Wang, which takes a different approach, and for the first time offers a novel source for the Hunnic title.  The state he refers to is Shanshan, better known as Loulan, which would make its language Indo-European (Tocharian or Gandhari Prakrit), for which see here.

For caṃkura as a Gandhari Prakrit title, see A Dictionary of Gāndhārī here.

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Xiongnu Shanyu (單于) and Shanshan Caṃkura (An Official Title)

Historians have pointed to Xiongnu as a regional power interacting with and exploiting statelets in the Western Regions, especially in the Tarim Basin, which featured urban centers known for their cultural brilliance. The inception of the title shanyu dates from the late third century BCE and was used for the Xiongnu leader Touman and his son Maodun, who committed patricide to usurp the shanyu throne, and further adopted by subsequent successors. Since both shanyu and caṃkura (čaṃkura) functioned as official titles respectively by the Xiongnu and the Shanshan rulers, to connect them together etymologically depends on their phonetic comparability. Hanshu (94.3828) decisively resolved the pronunciation of the Xiongnu title equivalent to shanyu (善于 ["good at"]). Lead phonologists have converged in reconstructing *‘źi̯än for shan and *gi̯u for yu (Karlgren 1923:251 #854, 371 #1317) and the like for each. More significant in the latter phonetic context is the use of character 于 in Yutian (于窴) in Shiji (123.3169) and Yutian (于闐) in Hanshu (96.3881) as Chinese transcriptions of the name Khotan, with both forms containing the same yu used in shanyu. In its early spread through the Tarim Basin into Inner Asia and beyond, Khotan became known to people with different linguistic backgrounds. In profiling Khotan, Datang Xiyuji completed in 646 offered several of its alternative names in different languages: Qusadanna (瞿薩旦那) meaning ‘the milk of earth’ as translated into Chinese, Huanna (涣那) in local language, Yudun (于遁) in Xiongnu, and Qudan (屈丹) in Indic. For these names for Khotan the actual dates of initial use are probably considerably earlier. Concerning the attestation of the Xiongnu name Yudun for Khotan, it recurs in the early eleventh century when Xin Tangshu (221.6235) was written, its survival in the Chinese sources should be appreciated in the study of the title shanyu because of its sharing of the same character 于 in Yudun and can thus serve as strong evidence in favor of the phonetic value of yu both in shanyu and in yudun recurrently corresponding to the ku of Shanshan (鄯善 or Kroraina) caṃkura and kho of Shanshan Khotaṃna in Kharoṣṭhī script in the third century. The third 于 is found in the Xiongnu title huyu (護于 Hanshu 94.3827) in turn connected with Shanshan official title ogu. Based on these correspondences I propose that the pronunciation of shanyu be adjusted to ǰanğu, with ra of caṃkura unrepresented, and of huyu to ɣoğu.

 

References and Sources

Burrow, T. 1937. The Language of the Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Chinese Turkestan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Datang xiyuji (The great Tang records on the Western Regions). https://zh.wikisource. org/wiki/大唐西域記/.

Hanshu (漢書 Book of Han) compiled by Ban Gu in 82. http://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihp/hanji.htm.

Karlgren, B. 1923. Analytic dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner.

Shiji (史記 Records of the Grand Historian) written by Sima Qian in 91 BC. http://hanchi. ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihp/hanji.htm.

Xin Tangshu (新唐書 New Book of Tang) compiled under Ouyang Xiu in 1060. http://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihp/hanji.htm.

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Selected readings

• "Prakritic 'Kroraina' and Old Sinitic reconstructions of 'Loulan'" (5/14/19) — with detailed discussion by numerous specialists in various relevant languages.
• "Tocharian C: its discovery and implications" (4/2/19)
• "'Tocharian C' Again: The Plot Thickens and the Mystery Deepens" (9/25/19)
• "Mongolian museum mystery" (3/2/21)
• "'Mulan' is a masculine, non-Sinitic name" (7/15/19)