Jie people


The Jié were members of a tribe of Northern China in the 4th century. During the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, they were known by the Chinese as one of the Five Barbarians. Under Shi Le, they established the Later Zhao state. The Jie were "completely exterminated" by Ran Min in the Wei–Jie war in 350 AD following the fall of the Later Zhao. Chinese historians continued to document Jie people and their activities after the Wei-Jie war.
The ethnicity of the Jie is unclear, with some scholars suggesting a Turkic origin, whereas newer research proposes that they spoke a Yeniseian language instead.

Name and origins

There are widely differing accounts of the exact ethnic origins of the Jie, with the most supported theories suggesting that the Jie were of Yeniseian, Turkic, Yuezhi, or even Sino-Tibetan in origin.
According to the Book of Wei, the name Jie was derived from the Jiéshì area, where the Jie resided.
According to the Book of Jin, the ancestors of Shi Le were a part of the multi-ethnic Xiongnu tribe known as Qiāngqú. Edwin Pulleyblank believes the Qiangqu represent the Kangju state of Sogdia. Although Pulleyblank suggested that they might have been Tocharian in origin, most scholars believe that Kangju was constituted by an Eastern Iranian people. Some have linked the names Shi and Jie to a Sogdian statelet known as 石國 Shíguó. Also, An Lushan, a Tang rebel general, had a Sogdian stepfather and was called a Jiehu.
Others claim that the Jie were an ancient Yeniseian-speaking tribe related to the Ket people, who today live between the Ob and Yenisey rivers—the character 羯 is pronounced git or kit in Cantonese, giet in Hakka and katsu in Japanese, implying that the ancient pronunciation might have been fairly close to Ket . The root may be transliterated as Jié- or Tsze2- and an older form, < kiat, may also be reconstructed. This ethnonym might be cognate with the ethnonyms of Yeniseian-speaking peoples, such as the Ket and the Kott. Pulleyblank connected the ethnonym to Proto-Yeniseian *qeˀt/s "stone". Vovin et al. also pointed to *keˀt "person, human being" as another possible source. Furthermore, Vovin has demonstrated that the single known phrase in the Jie language is a better fit to Yeniseian languages than Turkic languages. Alexander Vovin also suggests that the Xiongnu spoke a Yeniseian language, further connecting them with the Jie people.
Western Washington University historical linguist Edward Vajda spent a year in Siberia studying the Ket people and their language and his findings helped substantiate such conjecture into the origins of the Ket people, where DNA claims show genetic affinities with people of China and Myanmar, suggesting a Sino-Tibetan origin. He further proposes a relationship of the Ket language to the Na-Dene languages indigenous to Canada and western United States, and even suggests the tonal system of the Ket language is closer to that of Vietnamese than any of the native Siberian languages.
Among the Yeniseian languages, Jie is hypothesized to be Pumpokolic. Vovin, Vajda, and de la Vaissière have suggested that Jie shares the same idiosyncrasies with the Pumpokol language, and the two are therefore closely related. This argument is strengthened by the fact that in northern Mongolia, Yeniseian-derived hydronyms have been demonstrated to be exclusively Pumpokolic, while influence from other Yeniseian languages is only found further north. This therefore lends credence to the theory that the Jie are a Pumpokolic-speaking tribe, and confirms that the Pumpokolic-speaking Yeniseians existed in the core territory of the Xiongnu state.
Other sources link the Jie to the Lesser Yuezhi, who remained in China as vassals of the Xiongnu and then the Han dynasty.

Jie language

Only one phrase in the native language of the Jie is known. The source for this phrase was a Kuchean Buddhist monk and missionary Fotudeng. It was recorded in the Book of Jin as 秀支 替戾剛 僕谷 劬禿當 and said to have a connection to Shi Le's fight against Liu Yao in 328. The phrase was glossed with a Chinese translation:
TextMiddle ChineseGloss
秀支軍 'army'
替戾剛出 'go out'
僕谷劉曜胡位 'Liu Yao's barbarian title'
劬禿當捉 'capture'

This phrase has been analyzed in a number of publications. Shiratori, Ramstedt, Bazin, von Gabain, and Shervashidze recognized Turkic lexicon, and gave their versions of the transcription and translation:
RamstedtBazinvon GabainShervashidze
Sükä talıqın
bügüg tutun!		Süg tägti ıdqaŋ
boquγıγ tutqaŋ!		Särig tılıtqan
buγuγ kötürkän		Sükâ tol'iqtin
buγuγ qodigotin
Go with a war
captured bügü!		Send the army to attack,
capture the commander!		You'd put forth the army,
you'd take the deer		You came to the army
Deposed buγuγ

Edwin G. Pulleyblank remarked that the Turkic interpretations cannot be considered very successful because they conflict with the phonetic values of the Chinese text and with the Chinese translation. Instead, he suggested a connection with the Yeniseian languages.
Alexander Vovin gave the following translation based on Yeniseian. Vovin suggests a connection with the Southern Yeniseian branch.
Vovin
suke t-i-r-ek-ang bok-kok k-o-t-o-kt-ang
armies PV-CM-PERF-go out-3pp bok-kok PV-?-OBJ-CM-catch-3pp
Armies have gone out. will catch Bokkok.

History

In 319, Jie general Shi Le established the state of Later Zhao in North China, which supplanted the Xiongnu-led Han Zhao state. However, the Later Zhao state collapsed in 351. In the period between 350 and 352, during the Wei–Jie war, General Ran Min ordered the complete extermination of the Jie, who were easily identified by high noses and full beards, leading to large numbers being killed. According to some sources more than 200,000 of them were slain. Despite this, the Jie continue to appear occasionally in history over the next 200 years. Both Erzhu Rong and Hou Jing, two famous warlords of the Northern Dynasties, were identified as Qihu and Jiehu respectively and modern scholars have suggested that they could have been be related to the Jie.

Cultural influences

recorded in the Book of Jin chronicle that at around 340 a Jie state Later Zhao's scholar Xie Fei serving as a Head of Healing Department in the Later Zhao State Chancellery, was a mechanical engineer who built a south-pointing chariot, a directional compass vehicle that apparently did not use magnetic principle, but was operated by use of differential gears, or a similar angular differential principle.
For the great ingenuity shown in the construction of the device, the Later Zhao Emperor Shi Hu granted Jie Fei the noble title of hou without land possessions and rewarded him generously.

Citations