Note sur le dialecte chinois de la région du Hexi aux IXe-Xe siècles

Abstract

Texts composed in Chinese but written down in Tibetan script are the most informative documents about the dialects spoken in the region of Dunhuang during the 9th and the 10th centuries. This period saw the end of the Tibetan occupation (until 848) and the more and more independent Chinese regime called Guiyijun. The present study first gives chronological precisions on two of the four documents studied by Luo Changpei in 1933: 1° India Office C 129, dated "after 896", has other texts on the verso which are edited here (C 112 A, B, C and C 133); 2° India Office C 130, dated "after 848", has a colophon edited, translated and annotated here. The author then presents eight texts from the Fonds Pelliot Tibétain composed in Chinese but written in Tibetan script. The dates of these documents extend from 820 (HS) to the end of the 9th century (99) and until the 10th century (NT, DA, P) . The latter three texts show new phonetic elements which cannot, in the author's opinion, be direct developments from the earlier dialect. It rather has to be assumed that, during the period studied here, a standard Chinese language, already strongly influenced by the local dialect, coexisted with the dialect of the Hexi region. With the progressive isolation of Hexi from central China, the regional dialect flourished and increasingly modified the language of the 10th century documents. Therefore the language changes observed between the texts of the 9th and those of the 10th century do not reflect a linear development of one dialect but the transformation of a standard Chinese language under the growing influence of a regional dialect.