New Materials on the Khitan Small Script ─ A Critical Edition of Xiao Dilu and Yelu Xiangwen; Corpus Scriptorum Chitanorum I

This book contains the critical publication of two recently discovered epigraphic documents in the Khitan Small Script. Khitan was a Para-Mongolic language once spoken in southern Manchuria but extinct since several centuries and preserved only in a limited corpus of epigraphic inscriptions written in two differen native scripts, the Khitan Small Script and the Khitan Large Script. Both scripts are only partially deciphered, but recent progress on, especially, the Khitan Small Script allows texts to be read and translated with relative accuracy.

The two texts published here, dating from AD 1091 and 1114, are reproduced in the original script, in Romanization, and photographically. They are accompanied by linguistic comments, translations, and an index. The publication constitutes a substantial addition to the extant corpus of Khitan Small Script documents. It also contains significant additions to the previous database on Khitan vocabulary and grammar. This is the first time that Khitan texts are published in a comprehensive critical edition. The book also contains an up-to-date summary of the history and present state of Khitan Small Script studies.

Wu Yingzhe is Associate Professor at the School of Mongolian Studies, Inner Mongolia University. He has specialized in Khitan studies since the early 1990s and has been active both locating previously unknown inscriptions and studying them from the linguistic and philological points of view. He is the author of Research on the Grammatical Category of Gender in the Khitan Small Script (in Chinese).
Juha Janhunen is Professor at the Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki, and an Honorary Professor of Inner Mongolia University. He has worked on comparative Altaic issues, including Khitan, since the 1970s, and has also had long-time field projects in various parts of Northeast Asia. He is the author of Manchuria: An Ethnic History and the editor of The Mongolic Languages.