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30 LEWIS MAYOFigure 4Old Uyghur text fro m Dunhuang containing the proverb aboutthe tuyghunlwhite goshawk. Or.S212 (1 16). By permission of theBritish Librarygoshawks are subject to different systems of powerand sense.The white goshawk had the following linguisticand political organisation in Uyghur:Moreover amongst proverbs there is: the bird ofprey (falcon) (toyan or toqan).Its offspring (oyli" ) are nine in number;of these nine, one is the white goshawk (tuyun).Because it is a bird of prey it is rapacious;because it is fierce it is predatory 91The white goshawk92-tuyun or tuyyun93 (orin more convenient romanised form, tuyghun)-91 There are two instances of the proverb amongst the oldUyghur documents from Dunhuang, 0r.8212 (116) and1'.2969. These are probably repetitions on the same piece ofpaper which has subsequently been divided. A transcriptionand French translation is found in Hamilton, ManuscritsOui'gours du IXe-Xe sii!cle de Touen-houang, voLl, Ms.no.17, pp.98-9. A translation also appears with slightamendments in L. Bazin and J. Hamilton, "L'Origine du nomTibet," in Tibetan history and language: studies dedicated toUray Giza on his seventieth birthday, ed. Ernst Steinkellner(Vienna: Arbeitskreis fur tibetische und buddhistische StudienUniversitat Wien, 1991), p.24. I thank Igor de Rachewiltz forbringing the work of Hamilton and Bazin to my attention, andfor kindly lending me a copy of the Hamilton volumes ofUyghur documents. A transcription and Chinese translation ofthe texts appears in Yang Fuxue and Niu Ruji, ShazhouHuihuji qi wenxian [The Shazhou Uyghurs and their documents](Lanzhou: Gansu Wenhua Chubanshe, 1995), pp.108-10 andpp.126--7, also pp.57-8. My thanks to Yang Fuxuef(tlforpresenting me with a copy of this book.92 In Khirgiz and kazakh cognates of the word tuyghundenote white goshawks (see Svetlana Jacquesson, "La chasseau vol en Asie Centrale," IV.5.4.2). In the 1986 transcription,Hamilton translates the name of the bird as "white falcon," butp.21 of the Hamilton and Bazin article gives various reasonsin support of the suggestion that the bird in question is thewhite goshawk. Their identification of the bird with a whitegoshawk comes from Von Le Coq in "Bemerkungen uberturkische Falkenrei," Baessler-Archiv, vol.4, fasc.1 (1913),citing D. C. Phillot's translation of the Persian falconry classicBaznama as their source for identifying it as a goshawk,pp.10--11. The tuyyun is identified as a white falcon inWilhelm Radloff, Versuch eines W6rterbuches der TUrk-dialecte('s-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1960), vol.3, p.1423. An accompanyingentry states that the word tuyyun means "hero" aswell as "white falcon." On the presence of the word in NewPersian, see the entry in Gerhard Doerfer, TUrkische undmongolische Elemente im Neupersische Band II, TUrkischeElemente im Neupersische, alif bis ta (Wiesbaden: FranzI
BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER31is a bird of distinction. This distinction is the result of a causal chain: it israpacious because it is a bird of prey, a descendant of the progenitor falcon,and because it is rapacious-fierce-it is predatory. Its distinguishingfeatures, the qualities it derives from the lineage in which it belongs, arerapacity and predatoriness-tutyan and qapyan, nouns formed from verbalroots which denote taking and seizing. But it is also a subordinate. It is oneof the nine offspring of the falcon progenitor: it is given a position in astructure of genealogy which situates its distinction in relation to an ancestor.The status of offspring is a political one: it is that of son/child (oyul), a statusthat is not simply or necessarily the position of a literal descendant, but thatof one who acknowledges the suzerainty of a father-progenitor, the positionoccupied by the qaghan. Political relations are ordered in familial terms(which means that familial relations are also political relations). In the Turkicpolitical rhetoric from the days of steppe empire, the construction of theimperial state, the el, is deeply bound up with the construction of clanaffiliation. This is narrated constantly in the monuments erected by Turk andUyghur powerholders in the great imperial age of the seventh and eighthcenturies to commemorate their achievements and to admonish theirdescendants and people.94 To position the white goshawk as one of the nineoffspring of the progenitor bird of prey is to structure its life using the centralmodels of Uyghur politics-the lineage of the nine clans which were thepolitical core of the eighth- and ninth-century Uyghur empire.95The capturing power of the tuyghun and all its heroic attributes aretransferred to the khan through the constitution of relations of son-likesubordination and affiliation. With the demand that Longjia princes sendthemselves as hostages to the khan that was made at the same time as thewhite goshawk was sent as a gift, the linkage between power over distinguishedfierce birds ' and power over princes, who would henceforth beestablished as subordinate clients within the Uyghur political order, is direct.The establishment of Uyghur power in the Gansu corridor was simultaneouslythe constitution of a political ordering of hunting-bird hostages and a politicalordering of princely hostages. The articulation of the tuyghun proverbiallyas a fierce and predatory descendant-prince in a ninefold order of othersubordinate-descendants is not simply a legendary or "totemic" set ofcorrespondences with the ordering of the clans in the Uyghur imperial state.96By taking princely hostages from the Longjia and in receiving the fiercecapturing talents of the tuyghun/white goshawk, the khan could potentiallyISteiner Verlag,1965), p.657-8. Notes on theword tuyghun, its cognates and its relationshipto other categories of hunting bird in modernKirghiz and Kazakh are found in G. N. Simakov,SokoLinaya okhota i kuL't khishchykh ptits vsrednei azii [Falconry and the cult of birds ofprey in Central Asia] (St Petersburg: EthnographicaPetropolitana, 1998), pp.207-8. IIthank Andrei Lan'kov for generously givingme a copy of this book. Svetlana Jacquessonpoints out that in Bashkir tuyghun is used asa modifier in the name for a variety ofgyrfalcon, a usage analogous to, (and probablyderived from), its presence in Mongolian inthe word toyiyon Songqor, which is the whitegyrfalcon, also called eayan songqor(Singqorlis an alternative spelling). (I thank Igor deRachewiltz for additional advice on this.)Jacquesson notes that in Kalmyk Mongolian,however, tuyghun refers not to a gyrfalconbut to a white goshawk. She suggests thatthese examples show that tuyghun is notstrictly linked to a family of birds, eithergoshawks or falcons, but was rather asyntagm originally denoting a white bird(presumably a white raptor). (SeeJacquesson, "La chasse au vol en AsieCentrale," IV.5.4.2.)93 In both the manuscripts 0r.8212 (116)and P.2969 the bird name is tuyun (twyywn).Hamilton argues that this is a scribal mistakefor tuyyun (twyywn)-the first syllableshould be written twy---which would betuy, rather than tw for tu. One effect of thisis to make the "kinship" between tuyyun(white goshawk) and toyan (falcon-theword for the ancestral bird in the text) moreemphatic, because it increases the graphicsimilarity (the words appear as twywn andtwyan respectively).94 For the runic inscriptions of the Turkempire in the eighth century, see thetranscriptions and English translations inTalat Tekin, A grammar oj Orkhon Turkic(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press,1968). For inscriptions of the Uyghur empire,see G. J. Ramstedt, "Zwei uigurischeRuneninschriften in der Nord Mongolei,"Journal de La Societe Finno-ougrienne 300913} 1--{i3; S. G. Klyashtorny, "The TerkhinInscription," Acta Orientalia AcademiaeScientiarum Hungaricae 36 0982} 335-6;and S. G. Klyashtorny, "The Tes Inscriptionof the Uyghur BagO Qaghan," Acta OrientaliaAcademiae Scientiarum Hungaricae39 (1985) 137-5695 On the clan/tribal structures of the Uyghurempire, see James Hamilton, "Toquz-ayuzet on-uyyur," JournaL Asiatique 250 (1962)22--{i3, and Denis Sinor, "The Uyghur empireof Mongolia," in Denis Sinor, Studies inmedieval Inner ASia, Variorum CollectedStudies Series (Aldershor, Hants: Ashgate,1997), pp.1-29.96 Hamilton has suggested that the ninedescendants of the bird of prey refer to thenine clans of the Uyghurs dominated by theruling clan, which is here the progenitorancestor-falcon. See Hamilton and Bazin,"L'Origine du nom Tibet," p.24.
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