Source: Permanent International Altaistic Conference Newsletter, No. 10, October 1975, p. 8.

On Volga-Bulgarian bačna

Talât Tekin, Ankara

In one of the Volga-Bulgarian inscriptions recently published by G.V. Yusupov,¹ there occurs a sentence which reads: صَفَرَ اَيِحْ بَجْنَ اَتِ² Yusupov translates this sentence into Russian as follows: Сафара месяца в начале было.³ Following the translation of the inscription, he tries to explain the rather puzzling phrase بَجْنَ اَتِ bačna eti. On this phrase he says: “The expression بَجْنَ اَتِ is rather incomprehensible. Judging from the fact that it occurs after صَفَرَ اَیِحْ, one may suppose that it is the name of a month in the Bulgarian national calendar. Comparing this expression with the Turkic جچم وقتی ‘harvest time’ (correct as بِچم وقتی i.e., bičim waqtı),⁴ one may regard it as the name of the month of harvesting crops.”⁵

Although Yusupov’s translation of the phrase بَجْنَ اَتِ bačna eti is correct, his remarks on it are not. The word bačna is obviously the Volga-Bulgarian equivalent of Common Turkic bašında “at the beginning.” Morphologically, it is similar to Volga-Bulgarian اِشْنَ išna “in, within” which can be analyzed as deriving from iš-i-n-ä (*ič-i-n-ä),⁶ i.e., bačna < bač-i-n-a. Thus, the whole sentence can be transcribed and translated into English as follows: safar ayuxi bačna eti “It was at the beginning of the Month of Safar.”

The word bačna makes it clear that the Volga-Bulgarian word for “head, beginning” was bač, probably deriving from an earlier *balč. As is generally known, Ramstedt assumed that the Chuvash word puś “head” goes back, because of its final /ś/, not to Common Turkic baš, but to hypothetical *balč which perfectly corresponds to Goldi balča, balja “Kopf, Gesicht.”⁷ Now, the Volga-Bulgarian bač in bačna proves this assumption of his. It also testifies to the theory that Turkic /š/ derives, in some cases (i.e., in the cases that it corresponds to Chuvash /ś/), from the sound groups /lč/ and /lǰ/.

Footnotes

1. Yusupov, G. V., “Itogi polevyx epigrafičeskix issledovaniĭ 1961–1963 gg. v Tatarskoĭ ASSR,” Epigrafika Vostoka XXI (1972), pp. 48–55.
2. Ibid., p. 53.
3. Ibid., p. 54.
4. Budagov, L. Z., Sravnitel’nyĭ Slovar’ Turetsko-Tatarskix Narečiĭ, Vol. I, Sanktpeterburg 1869, p. 245.
5. Ysypov, op. cit., p. 54
6. See Pritsak, O., “Bolgaro-Tschuvaschica,” UAJb 31 (1959), pp. 301, 302, 303.
7. Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft I, Lautlehre, Bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Pentti Aalto, MSFOu 104:1, 1957, p. 109.