Inner Asian words for paper and silk.

• Author: Norman, Jerry
• Position: Essay

China has contributed a number of important products to world civilization; among these are silk, paper, and tea. At different points in history these products become highly significant in international trade. Tea, although drunk in China since ancient times, seems not to have spread to other parts of the world until relatively late, probably during the late Ming and early Ching dynasties, around five hundred years ago. Tea is a product whose Chinese name spread with the thing itself. English "tea" comes via Spanish from a Southern Miin form [te.sup.2] (Shiahmen [te.sup.2], Chaurjou [te.sup.2]). Another form exemplified by Mongolian cai, travelled westward through Inner Asia. Some have surmised that this form comes from Northern Chinese charyeh "tea leaves." So we have two basic words for "tea," the first of which spread through maritime trade and the second by overland transmission. Both of these basic terms for "tea" are from the same etymon, being no more than dialectal variants. Forms related to English "tea" are used throughout Western Europe (with the exception of Portuguese cha, which is probably based on a Cantonese original). The Inner Asian term spread far and wide--into Mongolian, Manchu, the Turkic languages, Persian, and the languages of the Indian subcontinent. "Tea" illustrates a case where a product and its Chinese name spread in tandem. The cases of "paper" and "silk" are different. The things themselves spread abroad much earlier than did tea, but the ordinary Chinese designations for these things did not travel with the products.

The English word for "paper," along with many European words for this item derive from Greek papyros, which in origin referred to a writing material made from the papyrus reed produced in Egypt. Papyrus was not paper strictly speaking since the methods for producing it and paper were very different; papyrus was made from a reed-like plant (Cyperus papyrus) that grew in the Nile Delta. Papyrus held up relatively well in dry climates like Egypt's but tended to deteriorate in the damper climates of Europe. Over time it was used less and less due to the extinction of the papyrus plant in Egypt, and it was gradually replaced almost entirely by parchment in the West.

According to traditional accounts, paper was invented in 108 C.E. by Tsay Luen, an official of the Eastern Hann court, but there is archaeological and textual evidence that paper existed as much as a century or more before Tsay Luen. Sites in Shinjiang, Gansuh, Inner Mongolia, and Shaanshi have yielded early specimens of paper made from hempen material. From available evidence it would appear that paper was invented in China sometime during the Western Hann Dynasty (206 B.C.E-25 C.E.). The most common materials used at this early date were various items made from hemp, both hemp proper (Cannabis sativa) and ramie (Boehmeria nivea), usually in the form of old rope, fishnets, and hempen cloth. In the biography of Tsay Luen, tree bark is also mentioned as a raw material for papermaking (Pan 1979: 24-25).

Before the invention of paper, the Chinese used various other materials for writing. The earliest examples of Chinese writing are found inscribed on bones and shells as well as cast on bronze vessels. Obviously all of these materials were unwieldy and unsuited to the preservation of extended texts. At an early date, other materials came to be used, i.e., bamboo and wooden strips and silk. Bamboo and wooden strips could be tied in bundles and preserved; silk likewise could be rolled and easily stored. However, both materials had serious drawbacks: bamboo and wooden strips were heavy and bulky; silk was very expensive to use as a writing material.

Pan Jyishing (1979: 28) thinks that early papermaking was influenced by techniques used for making silken floss or batting. Sericulture and silk manufacture were already well developed in the Shang Dynasty (seventeenth to eleventh centuries B.C.E.). In silk manufacture the best cocoons were used for spinning and weaving; damaged or deformed cocoons were used for making floss, which could be used as padding in various objects such as clothes. In making floss or batting, the inferior cocoons were processed by boiling them in lime water; then they were soaked for several days to remove the gum, whereupon they were washed. After washing, the floss was beaten and finally dried. Most of these processes are also employed in papermaking. The Chinese script form for "paper" jyy (MC tsje:) has a silk radical, suggesting that it may originally have referred to some sort of silk product, probably a kind of silk floss. Perhaps jyy was subsequently used for "paper" because the earlier silk product and paper were made by similar processes.

In the Shuowen jieetzyh the famous graphic dictionary from the very end of the first century C.E., jyy is defined as follows:

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "Jyy is one bamboo frame of silk floss."

The original jyy was, then, probably some sort of silk floss and was later applied to paper because of the similarities in making silk floss paper.

Unlike the case of tea, when paper was exported, its native name did not accompany it. Cf. Mongolian cayasu, Manchu hoosan, Old Turkic qayat/qayazm, Persian kagid, Japanese kami, Korean chong-i.

If we look up the character jyy, the Chinese graph for paper, in the Goangyunn rime book, an eleventh-century compendium of Chinese graphs that provides information on both pronunciation and meaning, we find something very interesting. After quoting two sources on the meaning of jyy (one of which is from the biography of Tsay Luen), the Goangyunn goes on to comment, "in the How-Weyshu it says that those who had the name Keehour changed their surname to Jyy." (1) The How-Wey, more commonly known as the Northern Wey Dynasty (386-534), was a Shianbei dynasty. The Shianbei were originally from the area south of the Argun river in present-day Inner Mongolia. (2) They were an offshoot of the earlier Donghwu along with the Uhwan. There can be little doubt that the Shianbei were a Mongolic people, as Louis Ligeti (1970) has demonstrated. In the year 439 the Shianbei unified North China and established the Northern Wey Dynasty with its capital at Pyngcherng in Northern Shanshi and later at Luohyang in Hernan.

When Shiawwen Dih moved the capital to Luohyang in 493, he instituted a policy of radical sinification. As a part of this policy, Shiawwen Dih required all of his officials to exchange their original Shianbei surnames for Chinese names. This was done in two different ways: a...