Yenisei Kirghiz

The Yenisei Kirghiz or Xiajiasi (zh-c|c=黠戛斯) were an ancient people that dwelled at the headwaters of the Yenisei River and Minusinsk Depression between the 3rd century BCE to 9th century. From the 6th century onwards, they were subjugated by various peoples including the Gokturks, Xueyantuo, Chinese and Uyghurs. The Xiajiasi first appeared as Gekun, in other sources of the Han period these people are called Jiankun. Unlike the Dingling, the Gekun remained in the far north in post-Han times and were still in approximately the same region in the 9th century when they participated in the overthrow of the Uyghur Empire.

There is a discussion of the change of name in the "Tang Huiyao" (961 CE) article on Jiegu which very likely comes from the "Xu Huiyao" of Yang Shaofu and others completed in 852, the passage begins:

"Now there are those who change the designation to Hegesi. This is also an old name among the the northern barbarians... The change to Xiajiasi is probably because barbarian sounds are sometimes quick and sometimes slow so that the transcription of the words are not the same. When it is sometimes pronounced Xiajiasi, it is just that the word is quick. When I enquired from the translation clerk, he said that xiajia had the meaning of "yellow head and red face" and that this was what the Uyghurs called them'.'

This passage follows after immediately on a quotation from a lost "Records of Western Regions" by Gai Jiayun, who was Protector General of Anxi, the point of which is to record a legend that dark haired people among the Kirghiz were descendants of Chinese general Li Ling, who was captured by the Xiongnu. Since the Turks were being described as people of small stature in the "Tangshu". The description of the Kirghiz as tall, blue-eyed blonds early excited the interest of scholars, who assumed that they could not have originally been Turkic in language. We find even Ligeti cited the opinions of various scholars who had proposed to see them as Germanic, Slav, Yenisei Ostiaks, while he himself, following Castrén and Schott, favoured a Samoyed origin on the basis of an etymology for a supposed Kirghiz word "qaša" or "qaš" for "iron". As stated by Pullyblank:

"As far as I can see the only basis for the assumption that the Kirghiz were not originally Turkic in language is the fact that they are described as blonds, hardly an acceptable argument in the light of present day ideas about the independence of language and race. As Ligeti himself admitted, other evidence about the Kirghiz language in Tang sources shows clearly that at that time they were Turkic speaking and there is no earlier evidence at all about their language. Even the word qaša or qaš may, I think, be Turkic. The Tongdian says: "Whenever the sky rains iron, they gather it and use it. They call it jiasha (LMC kiaa-şaa). They make knives and swords with it that are very sharp." The Tang Huiyao is the same except that it leaves out the foregin word jiasha. "Raining iron" must surely refer to meteorites. The editor who copied the passage into the Xin Tangshu unfortunately misunderstood it and changed it to, "Whenever it rains, their custom is always to get iron," which is rather nonsensical. Ligeti unfortunately used only the Xin Tangshu passage without referring to the Tongdian. His restoration of qaša or qaš seems quite acceptable but I doubt that word simply meant "iron". It seems rather to refer specifically to "meteorite" or "meteoric iron"."

Etymology and names

The trisyllabic forms with Chinese -sz for Turkic final -z appear only from the end of 8th century onward. Before that time we have a series of Chinese transcriptions referring to the same people and stretching back to the 2nd century BCE, which end either in -n or -t:
*Gekun (EMC kέrjk kwən), 2nd century BCE. "Shiji" 110, "Hanshu" 94a.
*Jiankun (EMC khέn kwən), 1st century BCE onward. "Hanshu" 70.
*Qigu (EMC kέt kwət), 6th century. "Zhoushu" 50.
*Hegu (EMC γət kwət), 6th century. "Suishu" 84.
*Jiegu (EMC kέt kwət), 6-8th century. "Tongdian" 200, "Book of Tang" 194b, and "Tang Huiyao" 100.

Neither -n nor -t provides a good equivalent for -z. The most serious attempt to explain these forms seems still to be that of Paul Pelliot in 1920. Pelliot suggested that Middle Chinese -t stands for Turkic -z, which would be quite unusual and would need supporting evidence, but then his references to Mongol plurals in -t suggest that he thinks that the name of the Kirghiz, like that of the Turks, first became known to the Chinese though Mongol speaking intermediaries. There is still less plausibility in the suggestion that the Kirghiz, who first became known as a people conquered by that Xiongnu and then re-emerged associated with other Turkic peoples in the 6th century, should have had Mongol style suffixes attached to all the various forms of their name that were transcribed into Chinese up to the 9th century.

The change of "r" to "z" in Turkic which is implied by the Chinese forms of the name Kirghiz should not give any comfort to those who want to explain Mongolian and Tungusic cognates with "r" as Turkic loanwords. The peoples mentioned in sources of the Han period that can be identified as Turkic was Dingling (later Tiele, out of whom the Uyghurs emerged), the Jiankun (later Kirghiz), the Xinli (later Sir/Xue), and possibly also the Hujie or Wujie, were all, at that period, north and west of the Xiongnu in general area where we find the Kirghiz at the beginning of Tang.

References

*Pulleyblank, Edwin G (2002). "Central Asia and Non-Chinese Peoples of Ancient China". Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 0-86078-859-8.
*Chavannes Ed. [http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/chavannes_edouard/toukiue/chav_toukiue.doc "Documents sur les Tou-kiue (Turcs) occidentaux" ("Documents on the Western Tujue")] (1904)