Newly Discovered Chinese-Khotanese Bilingual Tallies

Abstract

Since 2005, the National Library of China has acquired in succession a group of 35 Chinese-Khotanese bilingual wooden tallies. These (Set I below) are all records of tax collection, dated in the 10th year of the Kaiyuan era of the Tang dynasty (618-907) = 722 CE. In 1998, Aziz Abdurashit of the Bureau of Cultural Relics of Khotan published the Chinese texts of four other bilingual tallies (Set II below),1 which were also noticed by Yutaka Yoshida.2 Aziz Abdurashit’s readings, however, contained many errors which we have endeavoured to correct using new photographs. These tallies are very similar to those in the National Library collection and date from 727, only five years later. We therefore thought it would be appropriate to publish them together. In addition to the Chinese and Khotanese inscriptions, the tallies all contain notches indicating the amount of grain delivered. Deep notches indicate the number of shuo or kūsas (a measure) while shallower ones indicate the number of dou (originally in the vernacular form ) or s am ga/kha. Every deep notch has a small ink dot, and every tenth is painted black, no doubt to facilitate counting. The use of tallies with such notches was common practice in pre-modern Asia, and similar tallies have also been discovered in the Bactrian language.3 However no such tallies have been found in China proper, at Dunhuang, or at Turfan after the eighth century, when paper was most widely used as means of recording. The use of tallies in Khotan may therefore have followed a Central Asian tradition. The information on the tallies is contained in the Chinese and Khotanese texts and in the system of notches. The Chinese text is written (vertically) from the top of one side of the tally (recto) and then continued on the opposite side (verso). Where there were already deep notches, the Chinese scribe avoided them. The Khotanese text was written (horizontally) where the Chinese ended and in some cases, when there was no room on the recto or verso, on the narrow side of the tally (to the right or left of the Chinese recto). Tally no. 14 was cut square and has four flat sides, with the texts written on adjacent sides. The notches were presumably carved first, then the Chinese text was added, and finally the Khotanese. On each tally, a hole was drilled, perhaps for attaching it to the containers in which the grain was delivered. There are still short strings in the holes of tallies 24, 35, and 36-39. The grain was delivered by local Khotanese, and, in the tallies of Set II, the deliverer bore the title chi ban (with variant chu ban ),4 Khot. chau pam .5 From the tallies and other documents, it appears that one of the major responsibilities of a chi ban was to collect tax from local villagers, which he would then hand over to higher officials in the government of Khotan and in the Chinese army of Khotan Garrison.6 Local Chinese officials played key roles in the recording process. In both sets of tallies we have two kinds of officials belonging to the Tang administrative system of the Garrison of Khotan. The title guan (here: “official”) is short for panguan (an administrative assistant), a term attested in Khotanese as phani-kvani.7 In Tang bureaucracy, the position of panguan is higher than that of dian (a subordinate clerk; here: “clerk”), although the panguan is mentioned after the dian in the Chinese text on the tallies. The reason for this is that most of the Chinese texts were written by one and the same person, presumably the clerk, while the administrative assistants added their signatures later for authorization. In Set I, there were apparently two administrative assistants who signed the tallies at different times. Their handwriting was very cursive, so our readings of their names, especially the character bing in Zhang Bing and xiang in Xiang Hui and Xiang Daohui are tentative. The Khotanese text was written after the Chinese by an anonymous scribe or other official, who, in some cases, was not aware of the content of the Chinese, as suggested by the discrepancies between the Chinese and Khotanese texts. One important aspect of these tallies is their relative antiquity, as they are among the oldest dated Chinese documents discovered in the Khotan area.8 Another is the involvement of Chinese officials in the local tax-collection of Khotan at this early period, indicating that Chinese influence was greater than was previously thought.