Work in progress

PK LC 10

Known as:PK LC 10
Cite this page as:Adrian Musitz. "PK LC 10". In A Comprehensive Edition of Tocharian Manuscripts (CEToM). Created and maintained by Melanie Malzahn, Martin Braun, Hannes A. Fellner, and Bernhard Koller. https://cetom.univie.ac.at/?m-pklc10 (accessed 21 Jun. 2025).

Edition

Editor:Adrian Musitz

Provenience

Collection:Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds Pelliot Koutchéen (Paris)

Language and Script

Language:TB
Linguistic stage:late
Script:classical

Text contents

Text genre:Non-literary
Text subgenre:Letter
Verse/Prose:prose

Object

Material: on paper

Transliteration

a1śā saṃ wä rpau sa ma nta
a2ti rṣe yo tko la¯ ¯t yṣu wa
a3rsa pre kaṃ • tu ye si pa¯ ¯st
a4ka rso¯ ¯r ste ta ne sa ṅka nma
a5plo rī ya ceṃ ypa rwe ka rya
a6k❠¯r ya ma ṣṣa nte • plu wa¯ ¯s
a7we si śa¯ ¯k me ña tse ne wai pa
a8rā ce koṃ mne plo ri ya [c]eṃ se
a9ce yna¯ ¯s pi to «†t»«k»o ro mñe tā
a10kaṃ tu po ai ske me • se¯ ¯[s̝]·
a11ye sī we ssa sta ma le wä
a12nta re tā kaṃ tu¯ ¯ś we¯ ¯s ā
a13rwe¯ ¯r ne se¯ ¯m • ko ka le –
a14·[i] ñce¯ ¯k skā ya¯ ¯ñ ka rnā ·[i]

Transcription

a1śāsaṃ wärpau samanta-
a2tirṣe yotkolat yṣuwa-
a3rsa prekṣäṃtu yesi päst
a4kärsor ste tane saṅkanma
a5plorīyaceṃ yparwe kärya-
a6kār yamaṣṣantepluwas
a7wesi śak meñatsene wai pa-
a8rāce koṃmne ploriyaceṃ se
a9ceynas pito koromñen1n2 tā-
a10kaṃ tu po aiske-mese ṣ(p)
a11yesī wessa stamale wä-
a12ntare tākaṃ tuś wes ā-
a13rwer nesemkokale(s)n3
a14(m)iñcek skāya-ñ kärnā(ts)i

Translation

a1+The one having undergone instruction asks the director of Samantatir with friendliness.n4
a3+You have knowledge of it,
a4+the saṅghas here first agreed to musicians.n5
a6+Send us musicians on day of the month ten and on the *parāce-day!n6
a8+Whatever their fee (and) koromñe is, we give them all of it;
a11+And whatever matter may need to be tended to by us for you, we are ready for it.
a13+Try ton7 buy one of the wagons for me.

Commentary

Philological commentary

n1The 'ko' in koromñe looks like the scribe first wrote 'to' and then corrected himself. This is especially noteworthy, since we have toromñe in PK LC 39, which appears to be an uncorrected mistake for koromñe.
n2This looks like a late form of a putative *korauñe or even *kaurauñe. This would suggest an adjective *kore, which seems to be related to koro, whch Adams explains as 'herd-animal; movable chattel (??)' (possibly related to Khotanese *ggūra- 'mule', cf. Dragoni 2022: 115.
n3It looks like 'le' has a virāma-stroke, so the restoration kokale(ci) (going back to Pinault 2008: 392 is very doubtful. There also doesn't seem to be a trace of an i-diacritic, which should be visible judging from the height of the other akṣaras. Taking these facts into account, a more plausible restoration would be kokale(s) or kokale(ś). I have decided that the genitive plural reading is better: 'Try to buy any of the wagons'. If we read it as an allative, it would not be clear what is meant: 'Buy something for the wagon'. This new reading has one problem. We would need to accept that skāya-ñ is an imperative singular when we would much rather expect a plural skāyas-ñ (like in a6 pluwas).
n4The interpretation in Ching 2017: 242 is impossible. Yotkolat is an oblique and cannot be the subject of the clause. We should interpret śāsaṃ wärpau not as 遵照指示, but as a term describing an initiate, the phrase śāsaṃ wärp- being equivalent to Chinese 受戒.
n5käryakār certainly is Sanskrit kriyākāra-, which Edgerton 1953 translates as 'resolution, agreement'. He further says that it is used 'commonly as object of a form of kṛ', which would square perfectly with the use of yām- here. This sentence thus means that the saṅghas first of all made an agreement to hire musicians.
n6Ching 2017: 241 mentions that parāce could be the equivalent of 婆罗遮, a holiday clebrated in Kucha according to the 酉阳杂俎. However, this spelling of the holiday is exclusive to this particular text. All other sources have 苏幕遮 or something of that nature, which would not really fit parāce phonetically. During the holiday, people were wearing masks, doing dances and pranking bystanders by spraying them with muddy water or trapping them with snares. This allegedly warded off demons (cf. the 一切经音义 commentary on 大乘理趣六波罗蜜多经). This kind of pranking seemed to have been notorius. It was also enhanced by the kinds of masks that people were wearing. The first chapter of the 归依三宝品, discussing the effects of old age, says: 又如苏莫遮帽覆人面首,令诸有情见即戏弄 'Also like when the Sumozhe-cap covers a persons head and face, it makes all beings view it as a mockery.' For a full discussion, cf. Ching 2017: 235ff.
n7For miñcek as 'somehow', cf. Peyrot 2018: 78-80

References

Edition

Ching 2017: 242; Adams 2012: 9; Pinault 2008: 392; Peyrot 2018: 78-80

Bibliography

Adams 2012

Adams, Douglas Q. 2012. “Another look at three Kuci-Prākrit–Tocharian B bilinguals.” Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 13: 7–55.

Ching 2017

Ching, Chao-jung. 2017. 吐火罗语世俗文献与古代龟兹历史 – Tocharian secular texts and the history of Ancient Kucha. Beijing: Peking University Press.

Dragoni 2022

Dragoni, Federico. 2022. “Watañi lāntaṃ: Khotanese and Tumshuqese loanwords in Tocharian.” Leiden: Universiteit Leiden. https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A3283440/view.

Edgerton 1953

Edgerton, Franklin. 1953. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit grammar and dictionary. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Peyrot 2018

Peyrot, Michaël. 2018. “Interrogative stems in Hittite and Tocharian.” Indogermanische Forschungen 123: 65–90.

Pinault 2008

Pinault, Georges-Jean. 2008. Chrestomathie tokharienne. Textes et Grammaire. Leuven/Paris: Peeters.