(Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary)
Dialect or orthographic irregularity: re-reading the Zhiyuan yiyu
68th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Bangkok 2026
One of the earliest Sino-Mongol glossaries, the Zhiyuan yiyu 至元譯語 (also known as Menggu yiyu 蒙古譯語) appeared in 1282, during the Zhiyuan 至元 ’Reaching the Origins’ (i.e. ’beginning of the Yuan’) imperial era. The oldest known copy was included in a block print version of the Shilin Guangji 事林廣 記 preserved in the Tokyo Cabinet Library of, and another fragmentary copy is available at the Vatican Library. The reconstruction of the work was begun by Ligeti, but however successful his scientific career was, he was unable to fully complete this work, and after his death in 1987, it was György Kara who finally completed the remaining work. Kara corrected, edited and explained the lexical data reconstructed by Ligeti, and also prepared a thorough index. The results were finally published in the 44th issue of Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, in two separate articles (Ligeti-Kara: Un vocabulaire sino-mongol des Yuan le Tche-yuan yi-yu. In: AOH 44 (1990) pp. 259-277.; Kara Gy.: Zhiyuan yiyu, Index alphabetique des mots mongols. In: AOH 44 (1990) pp. 279-344). The majority of the then published lexical reconstructions of the glossary containing 541 entries can still be considered acceptable and valid, but it is worth re-examining the data of some uncertain reconstructions in the hope of successful decipherment. Another important task is the content analysis of the vocabulary found here, about which Professor Christopher Atwood is currently carrying out a groundbreaking work providing a characterization of the hypothesized Jiün dialect. This type of research helps us to better understand the linguistic history of the period represented by the document. In this presentation I attempt to introduce a few thoughts about these tasks as well, as a few new readings.