A Study of the Word Muktor “冒頓”
Choi Han-Woo
Hoseo University
35th Meeting of the PIAC, Taipei 1992
In the Chinese source Su-shu, the word 冒頓 *mau’-tuən* occurs designating the supreme ruler of the Hsiung-nu. There are two Korean readings of the word, modon and muktor. From the Korean readings, we can know this word is never the same as barator which F. Wirth suggested, because the form bara being two syllables hardly becomes buk or muk with both rounded vowel /o/ and /k/ in Altaic languages. The actual reading of the word in the period of Han should be the first one, *modon or *bodon. The word muktor was coined by the ancient Chinese for a ruler of the Huns, bodon, and its meaning might be qara-tor or “black tor”. The word muk is the Chinese word for the Turk-Hunnic word qara meaning “black”. The title *tor appears in the name sobərtori (蘇伐都利) who was a leader of the ancient Korean village Kohə in Silla. From this we can assume that the word tor was a title meaning avillage headman, leader” coming from the meaning ‘warrior, hero’ or the like. Therefore, the word muktor or buqtor means “black leader”.