Jabogan
The inscription is situated in the district Üst-Qan of the Republic Altai.
An Old Turkic inscription on a big stone was found in the vicinity of the village Jabogan of the Republic Mountaneous Altay in 1927 by Erke Shatin, an inhabitant of the Jabogan village. He has carved his name, the year and the name of his village on the stane under the inscription. Later, he told about his find to his son, but could not show the place. The son rediscovered it in 2004. He brought the stone with the inscription to Gorno-Altajsk and gave it to Victor Kočeev, one of participants of our expeditions. In 2009, Victor Kočeev, Larisa Tybykova and Irina Nevskaya handed it to the Republican Museum.
§ This is a unique find for Mountaneous Altay: firstly, it is one of the best preserved inscriptions in this area, secondly, it is the longest one.
§ The inscription is situated on a piece of a rock which is 57 cm long and 24 cm wide. It was found to the North-West of the village Jabogan.
The inscription consists of 5 lines (the second line is interrupted by an uneven segment of the rock, but continues after it) and 113 Runes. Some of the runes have shapes that have not been found anywhere else in Altai.
Runic transliteration
Latin transliteration
1) y2 r2 d2 k2 I y2 g2 r2 ŋ2/n1 d1 g2 r2 A t2 ŋ2 r2 d2 k2 I Up/t2 č/g2 ŋ2/l2 Ük t2 n2…
2) k2 š1 n2 g2 y1 r2 nč/n2 l2 Ük y1 l1 m š1 y1 r1 g2 U A r2 s2 ŋ2/l2 nč Ü
3) k1 t1 l1 t2 n2 d2 r2 ŋ2/l2 g2 A k2 Ük t1 k2 Ü m š1 d2 r2 ŋ2/l2 g2 A t2 m/U r1 g2 t1 t2? U/z č d2/s2 r2 ŋ2/l2 g2
4) b2/y1 t2 g2 b2/y1 l2/ŋ2 d2 A s2 z ŋ2 š1 ŋ2 : d2 g2 Ü t2 I b2/y1 l2/ŋ2 t2 r2 l2/ŋ2
5) r1 s2 r1 ŋ2/U nč Ü
Transcription
1) y(ä)rd(ä)ki y(e)g (ä)r (e)ng(i)r // y(e)gr(e)n (a)dg(ï)r : t(ä)ŋr(i)d(ä)ki täglökt(ä)n …// t(ä)ŋr(i)d(ä)ki täglök t(egi)n
2) k(i)š(i) (e)ng(ä)y (ä)r(i)nč (e)l kü (a)y(a)lm(ï)š (a)y(a)rgu A (ä)r s(ä)ŋ(ü)nčü
3) (a)k (a)t (a)lt(u)n (ä)d(ä)rl(i)g –A, kök (a)t küm(ü)š (ä)d(ä)rl(i)g –A, tor(u)g (a)t tuč (ä)d(ä)rl(i)g
4) (ä)v t(ä)g (ä)v(i)ŋdä // b(i)t(i)g b(e)ldä s(i)z(i)ŋ (е)š(i)ŋ : (ä)dgüti (ä)v(i)ŋ t(ä)r(i)l
5) (a)r(ï)s(a)r … (e)nč(g)ü
Translation
1) the best of men on the earth is descending / a chestnut horse: on the heaven … because (he) gets blind // … as if being blinded in the heaven / in the heaven the blind prince...(?)
2) if a person descends, Äl Kü, the adorned, the man who should be praised, as a general...
3) a white horse with a golden saddle, a dark-grey horse with a silver saddle, a brown horse with a bronze saddle ….
4) like a house. In your house (there is) your wife. … you house should be filled well (lit.: it should be collected, let them come together) …
5) if he purifies – (there will be) peace.
Comments
1. The inscription is difficult to read. Partially it is due to the fact that the stone, most probably, contains only a part of the inscription because the stone was split from a rock. Partially it is because of unusual forms of some signs. The sign that we transliterate as š1, has an unusual form, so we are not sure whether it is a graphic variant of the sign š. Otherwise the inscripton has mostly typical Yenisei forms of Runic signs. However, the sing t1 and b2 are rounded. Thus, b2 is closer to the Orkhon form of this sign.
2. The first line contains two lexemes used for two opposite notions: the Sky and the Earth. It was pretty clear from the very beginning that the sequences y2 r2 d2 k2 I and t2 ŋ2 r2 d2 k2 I should be read as yerdäki and täŋridäki. The rest was less clear. Thus the following sequence y2 g2 r2 ŋ2/n1 d1 g2 r2 A can be read as (e)g (ä)r (a)d(a) (ä)g(i)r or y(e)gr(e)n (a)dg(ï)r giving us two very different interpretation: ‘the best of men on the earth is bent by unhappiness’ or ‘a heavenly brown horse’.
The rest of line 2 : t2 ŋ2 r2 d2 k2 I Up/t2 č/g2 ŋ2/l2 Ük t2 n2… is also open for further discussions and suggestions. It is a remarkable fact that there is an inscription which has practically the same wording. It is the inscription Ak-Ölön found in Kyrgyzstan (see Tabaldiev, Alimov, Belek 2010); the fact was pointed to me by Ryzbek Alimov in a personal communication. However, the first and the second part of line 1 of the Jabogan inscription and the corresponding parts of the Ak-Köl inscription are in the reverse word order.
Their reading of the inscription is as follows:
§
[Kok (?)] teŋrideki teglük tigin : yerdeki yegren adïglïk üni özi bir
‘The Blind Prince on the Heaven, his voice of the brown (chestnut) bear on the Earth and he himself and are one (and the same).’
(Tabaldiev, Alimov, Belek 2010)
Our second interpretation of the first part of line 1 is quite close to their yerdeki yegren adïglïk. The question is whether part 2 of our inscription should be read as teŋridäki teglök te(gi)n. For this interpretation we lack the sign g2 in tegin. Thus, we propose two alternative readings: t(ä)ŋr(i)d(ä)ki täglökt(ä)n …// t(ä)ŋr(i)d(ä)ki täglök t(egi)n that could mean three things ‘in the heaven because (he) gets blind // … as if being blinded in the heaven / in the heaven the blind prince. We have to suppose that g2 in tegin was omitted in case of the second reading. Nevertheless, this interpretation allows a logical continuation in line 2.
3. The second line is read by us as k(i)š(i) (e)ng(ä)y (ä)r(i)nč (e)l kü (a)y(a)lm(ï)š (a)y(a)rgu A (ä)r s(ä)ŋ(ü)nčü ‘if a person descends, Äl Kü, the adorned, the man who should be adorned as a general’. The sing A in this line is a punctuation mark.
4. The third line is the only one in this inscription that can be consuidered to be perfectly deciphered : ) (a)k (a)t (a)lt(u)n (ä)d(ä)rl(i)g –A, kök (a)t küm(ü)š (ä)d(ä)rl(i)g –A, tor(u)g (a)t tuč (ä)d(ä)rl(i)g ‘a white horse with a golden saddle, a dark-grey horse with a silver saddle, a brown horse with a bronze saddle’. My first reading published on the Internet on the website of the Altai Runic inscriptions proved to be correct in the middle part: … kök (a)t küm(ü)š (ä)d(ä)rl(i)g … ‘a dark-grey horse with a silver saddle’, although it was crititized by Marcel Erdal in the point that the attribute grey is not used for a horse colour. However, the Turkish colleague Xatice Şirin User has proposed the perfect reading of the beginning and the end of this line at the international Runic symposium "Türk Kültürünün Gelişme Çağları: Başlangıç ve Yazıtlar Çağı" in Ulaan-Bator in 2011. The alliteration of the names for horse colours and for the colours of metals their saddles made off makes this line a piece of an ancient Turkic verse.
5. The fourth line is unclear. We can read its first segment as … b(i)t(i)g b(e)ldä ‘the letter is at the waist’. This variant was proposed by Peter Zieme who suggested that the whole text could be about the medieval post. The rest of the line is also unclear, It could be read as … (ä)v(i)ŋdä // s(i)z(i)ŋ (е)š(i)ŋ : (ä)dgüti (ä)v(i)ŋ t(ä)r(i)l ‘In your house (there is) your wife. … you house should be filled well (lit.: it should be collected, let them come together)’.
6. The last line is also unclear.