The Pyu language (Pyu:
; my, ပျူ ဘာသာ, ; also Tircul language) is an extinct
Sino-Tibetan language that was mainly spoken in what is now
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
in the first millennium
CE. It was the
vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
of the
Pyu city-states, which thrived between the second century
BCE and the ninth century CE. Its usage declined starting in the late ninth century when the
Bamar people of
Nanzhao began to overtake the Pyu city-states. The language was still in use, at least in royal inscriptions of the
Pagan Kingdom if not in popular vernacular, until the late twelfth century. It became extinct in the thirteenth century, completing the rise of the
Burmese language
Burmese ( my, မြန်မာဘာသာ, MLCTS: ''mranmabhasa'', IPA: ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar (also known as Burma), where it is an official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Burmans, the coun ...
, the language of the Pagan Kingdom, in Upper Burma, the former Pyu realm.
The language is principally known from inscriptions on four stone urns (7th and 8th centuries) found near the Payagyi pagoda (in the modern
Bago Township) and the multi-lingual
Myazedi inscription
Myazedi inscription ( my, မြစေတီ ကျောက်စာ ; also Yazakumar Inscription or the Gubyaukgyi Inscription), inscribed in 1113, is the oldest surviving stone inscription of the Burmese language. "Myazedi" means "emerald stupa" ...
(early 12th century).
These were first deciphered by
Charles Otto Blagden
Charles Otto Blagden (6September 186425August 1949) was an English Orientalist and linguist who specialised in the Malay, Mon and Pyu languages. He is particularly known for his studies of Burmese epigraphic inscriptions in the Mon and Pyu ...
in the early 1910s.
The
Pyu script was a
Brahmic script. The most recent scholarship suggests the Pyu script may have been the source of the Burmese script.
Classification
Blagden (1911: 382) was the first scholar to recognize Pyu as an independent branch of Sino-Tibetan.
Miyake (2021, 2022) argues that Pyu forms a branch of its own within the Sino-Tibetan language phylum due to its divergent phonological and lexical characteristics. Pyu is not a particularly conservative Sino-Tibetan language, as it displays many phonological and lexical innovations as has lost much of the original Proto-Sino-Tibetan morphology.
Miyake (2022) suggests that this may be due to a possible
creoloid origin of Pyu.
Pyu was tentatively classified within the
Lolo-Burmese languages
The Lolo-Burmese languages (also Burmic languages) of Burma and Southern China form a coherent branch of the Sino-Tibetan family.
Names
Until ca. 1950, the endonym ''Lolo'' was written with derogatory characters in Chinese, and for this re ...
by
Matisoff and thought to most likely be
Luish by
Bradley, although Miyake later showed that neither of these hypotheses are plausible.
Van Driem also tentatively classified Pyu as an independent branch of Sino-Tibetan.
Phonology
Marc Miyake reconstructs the
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...
structure of Pyu as:
:(C.)CV(C)(H)
:(preinitial) + syllable
7 vowels are reconstructed.
Miyake reconstructs 43-44 onsets, depending on whether or not the initial
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
is included. Innovative onsets are:
*fricatives: /h ɣ ç ʝ ð v/
*liquids: /R̥ R L̥ L/
*implosive: /ɓ/
10 codas are reconstructed, which are -k, -t, -p, -m, -n, -ŋ, -j, -r, -l, -w. Pyu is apparently
isolating, with no inflection morphology observed.
List of Pyu inscriptions
Vocabulary
Below are selected Pyu basic vocabulary items from
Gordon Luce and
Marc Miyake.
Sound changes
Pyu displays the following sound changes from
Proto-Tibeto-Burman
Proto-Tibeto-Burman (commonly abbreviated PTB) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Tibeto-Burman languages, that is, the Sino-Tibetan languages, except for Chinese. An initial reconstruction was produced by Paul K. Benedict and since refined ...
.
*
sibilant
Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
chain shift: *c > *s > /h/
*
denasalization: *m > /ɓ/ and possibly *ŋ > /g/
* *e-lowering: *e > /ä/
* *sC-cluster compression: *sk, *st, *sp > /kʰ, tʰ, pʰ/
Usage
The language was the vernacular of the Pyu states. But
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
and
Pali
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Theravāda'' Buddh ...
appeared to have co-existed alongside Pyu as the court language. The Chinese records state that the 35 musicians that accompanied the Pyu embassy to the Tang court in 800–802 played music and sang in the ''Fàn'' ( "Sanskrit") language.
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
* Griffiths, Arlo, Marc Miyake & Julian K. Wheatley. 2021.
Corpus of Pyu inscriptions'.
*
*
*
*
External links
The Pre-History of Pyu, Marc MiyakeDatasets for Pyu inscriptions photographed by James Miles
{{Sino-Tibetan branches
Unclassified Sino-Tibetan languages
Languages of Myanmar
Languages attested from the 7th century
Languages extinct in the 13th century