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87-656: Chinese chroniclers might have mentioned Telengits as Middle Chinese : * tâ-lâm-kât , 多覽葛 ( Standard Mandarin Chinese : duōlǎngé ). During Dzungar domination, the Telengits had to pay a fur tribute or yasak to the Dzungars. The Telengits in the 14th century created their own principality (the Ulus or Orda ). This principality was known in Russian documents of the 16th−18th century as

174-700: A pantheon of deities worshiped by Burkhanists (see list below), but Ak-Burkhan nevertheless provides the name of the religion in Russian , and hence into other languages. The Altaian name for the religion is Ak Jang "the White Faith". "White" refers to its emphasis on the upper world in the three-world cosmology of Tengrism . Alternatively, the name may also allude to Ak Jang's rejection of animal sacrifices in favor of offerings of horse milk or horse-milk alcohol. Jang means authority; faith; custom; law or principle; and canon or rules of ensemble. In more colloquial settings,

261-492: A phonemic split of their tone categories. Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with a lower pitch, and by the late Tang dynasty , each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials, known as the "upper" and "lower". When voicing was lost in most varieties (except in the Wu and Old Xiang groups and some Gan dialects), this distinction became phonemic, yielding up to eight tonal categories, with

348-542: A Late Middle Chinese koiné and cannot very easily be used to determine the pronunciation of Early Middle Chinese. During the Early Middle Chinese period, large amounts of Chinese vocabulary were systematically borrowed by Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese (collectively the Sino-Xenic pronunciations ), but many distinctions were inevitably lost in mapping Chinese phonology onto foreign phonological systems. For example,

435-504: A better understanding and analysis of Classical Chinese poetry , such as the study of Tang poetry . The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a few original sources. The most important of these is the Qieyun rime dictionary (601) and its revisions. The Qieyun is often used together with interpretations in Song dynasty rime tables such as

522-482: A close analysis of regularities in the system and co-occurrence relationships between the initials and finals indicated by the fanqie characters. However, the analysis inevitably shows some influence from LMC, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting difficult aspects of the system. The Yunjing is organized into 43 tables, each covering several Qieyun rhyme classes, and classified as: Each table has 23 columns, one for each initial consonant. Although

609-516: A compact presentation. Each square in a table contains a character corresponding to a particular homophone class in the Qieyun , if any such character exists. From this arrangement, each homophone class can be placed in the above categories. The rime dictionaries and rime tables identify categories of phonetic distinctions but do not indicate the actual pronunciations of these categories. The varied pronunciations of words in modern varieties of Chinese can help, but most modern varieties descend from

696-556: A detrimental "craze". Older versions of the rime dictionaries and rime tables came to light over the first half of the 20th century, and were used by such linguists as Wang Li , Dong Tonghe and Li Rong in their own reconstructions. Edwin Pulleyblank argued that the systems of the Qieyun and the rime tables should be reconstructed as two separate (but related) systems, which he called Early and Late Middle Chinese, respectively. He further argued that his Late Middle Chinese reflected

783-498: A hierarchy of oral epic singers) and accommodating itself to the pre-existing Altaian folk religion . It exists today in several revival forms. On the whole, the Burkhanist movement was shown to be a syncretistic phenomenon combining elements of ancient pre-shamanist, shamanist, Tibetan Buddhist and Eastern Orthodox Christian beliefs. According to a professor of Tomsk State University Liudmila Sherstova, it emerged in response to

870-422: A hierarchy of tone, rhyme and homophony. Characters with identical pronunciations are grouped into homophone classes, whose pronunciation is described using two fanqie characters, the first of which has the initial sound of the characters in the homophone class and second of which has the same sound as the rest of the syllable (the final). The use of fanqie was an important innovation of the Qieyun and allowed

957-428: A large number of consonants and vowels, many of them very unevenly distributed. Accepting Karlgren's reconstruction as a description of medieval speech, Chao Yuen Ren and Samuel E. Martin analysed its contrasts to extract a phonemic description. Hugh M. Stimson used a simplified version of Martin's system as an approximate indication of the pronunciation of Tang poetry. Karlgren himself viewed phonemic analysis as

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1044-525: A major aspect of Turko-Mongolic religion, distinct from shamanism. After the arrest of Chet and Chugul, Tyryi Akemchi arose to become the most prominent iarlikchi , and helped organize the movement. Having been exposed to Buddhism through his years as a translator in Mongolia, Tyryi added a number of Buddhist trappings to Burkhanist ritual, such as bells. Within a decade, most of the Altaian population had joined

1131-453: A prelude to his reconstruction of Old Chinese , produced a revision of Karlgren's notation , adding new notations for the few categories not distinguished by Karlgren, without assigning them pronunciations. This notation is still widely used, but its symbols, based on Johan August Lundell 's Swedish Dialect Alphabet , differ from the familiar International Phonetic Alphabet . To remedy this, William H. Baxter produced his own notation for

1218-436: A process now known as tonogenesis . Haudricourt further proposed that tone in the other languages, including Middle Chinese, had a similar origin. Other scholars have since uncovered transcriptional and other evidence for these consonants in early forms of Chinese, and many linguists now believe that Old Chinese was atonal. Around the end of the first millennium AD, Middle Chinese and the southeast Asian languages experienced

1305-475: A six-way contrast in unchecked syllables and a two-way contrast in checked syllables. Cantonese maintains these tones and has developed an additional distinction in checked syllables, resulting in a total of nine tonal categories. However, most varieties have fewer tonal distinctions. For example, in Mandarin dialects the lower rising category merged with the departing category to form the modern falling tone, leaving

1392-416: A slightly different set of initials from the traditional set. Moreover, most scholars believe that some distinctions among the 36 initials were no longer current at the time of the rime tables, but were retained under the influence of the earlier dictionaries. Early Middle Chinese (EMC) had three types of stops: voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. There were five series of coronal obstruents , with

1479-562: A strong influence in Telengit culture while Orthodoxy has seen a recent revival among the Telengits. The Altaians and the Telengits feel a connection to the land that they live on. They are supposed to worship their special homeland that is considered sacred. Telengits say that if an Altaian leaves the Altai, he or she will become ill and die, not because of any longing or emotional distress, but because of physical separation. After they have lived on

1566-548: A system of four tones. Furthermore, final stop consonants disappeared in most Mandarin dialects, and such syllables were reassigned to one of the other four tones. Burkhanism Burkhanism or Ak Jang ( Altay : Ак јаҥ , romanized:  Ak çaņ , lit.   'the White Faith';) is an indigenist new religious movement that flourished among the Altai people of Russia 's Altai Republic between 1904 and

1653-414: A three-way distinction between dental (or alveolar ), retroflex and palatal among fricatives and affricates , and a two-way dental/retroflex distinction among stop consonants . The following table shows the initials of Early Middle Chinese, with their traditional names and approximate values: Old Chinese had a simpler system with no palatal or retroflex consonants; the more complex system of EMC

1740-426: A vowel, an optional final consonant and a tone. Their reconstruction is much more difficult than the initials due to the combination of multiple phonemes into a single class. The generally accepted final consonants are semivowels /j/ and /w/ , nasals /m/ , /n/ and /ŋ/ , and stops /p/ , /t/ and /k/ . Some authors also propose codas /wŋ/ and /wk/ , based on the separate treatment of certain rhyme classes in

1827-403: Is further classified as follows: Each table also has 16 rows, with a group of 4 rows for each of the four tones of the traditional system in which finals ending in /p/ , /t/ or /k/ are considered to be checked tone variants of finals ending in /m/ , /n/ or /ŋ/ rather than separate finals in their own right. The significance of the 4 rows within each tone is difficult to interpret, and

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1914-420: Is strongly debated. These rows are usually denoted I, II, III and IV, and are thought to relate to differences in palatalization or retroflexion of the syllable's initial or medial, or differences in the quality of similar main vowels (e.g. /ɑ/ , /a/ , /ɛ/ ). Other scholars do not view them not as phonetic categories, but instead as formal devices exploiting distributional patterns in the Qieyun to achieve

2001-441: Is thought to have arisen from a combination of Old Chinese obstruents with a following /r/ and/or /j/ . Bernhard Karlgren developed the first modern reconstruction of Middle Chinese . The main differences between Karlgren and newer reconstructions of the initials are: Other sources from around the same time as the Qieyun reveal a slightly different system, which is believed to reflect southern pronunciation. In this system,

2088-513: The Teleut land  [ ru ] ( Russian : Телеутская Землица ; Teleutskaya zemlyatsa ) and is termed by modern historians the "Telengit Ulus". The Telengit princes, titled Biy , for a long time retained independence, and later had only a formal dependence between the states (Russia and the Dzungar Khanate ); Telengits even inflicted defeats on both, until they were finally conquered by

2175-587: The Yunjing , Qiyin lüe , and the later Qieyun zhizhangtu and Sisheng dengzi . The documentary sources are supplemented by comparison with modern Chinese varieties , pronunciation of Chinese words borrowed by other languages—particularly Japanese , Korean and Vietnamese — transcription into Chinese characters of foreign names, transcription of Chinese names in alphabetic scripts such as Brahmi , Tibetan and Uyghur, and evidence regarding rhyme and tone patterns from classical Chinese poetry . Chinese scholars of

2262-455: The Northern and Southern dynasties period were concerned with the correct recitation of the classics. Various schools produced dictionaries to codify reading pronunciations and the associated rhyme conventions of regulated verse. The Qieyun (601) was an attempt to merge the distinctions in six earlier dictionaries, which were eclipsed by its success and are no longer extant. It was accepted as

2349-484: The Qieyun and rime table categories for use in his reconstruction of Old Chinese. All reconstructions of Middle Chinese since Karlgren have followed his approach of beginning with the categories extracted from the rime dictionaries and tables, and using dialect and Sino-Xenic data (and in some cases transcription data) in a subsidiary role to fill in sound values for these categories. Jerry Norman and W. South Coblin have criticized this approach, arguing that viewing

2436-473: The Qieyun are assumed to have the same nuclear vowel and coda, but often have different medials. Middle Chinese reconstructions by different modern linguists vary. These differences are minor and fairly uncontroversial in terms of consonants; however, there is a more significant difference as to the vowels. The most widely used transcriptions are Li Fang-Kuei's modification of Karlgren's reconstruction and William Baxter's typeable notation . The preface of

2523-431: The Qieyun system is no longer viewed as describing a single form of speech, linguists argue that this enhances its value in reconstructing earlier forms of Chinese, just as a cross-dialectal description of English pronunciations contains more information about earlier forms of English than any single modern form. The emphasis has shifted from precise phones to the structure of the phonological system. Li Fang-Kuei , as

2610-543: The Qieyun system to cross-dialectal descriptions of English pronunciations, such as John C. Wells 's lexical sets , or the notation used in some dictionaries. For example, the words "trap", "bath", "palm", "lot", "cloth" and "thought" contain four different vowels in Received Pronunciation and three in General American ; these pronunciations and others can be specified in terms of these six cases. Although

2697-577: The Qieyun were known, and scholars relied on the Guangyun (1008), a much expanded edition from the Song dynasty. However, significant sections of a version of the Qieyun itself were subsequently discovered in the caves of Dunhuang , and a complete copy of Wang Renxu's 706 edition from the Palace Library was found in 1947. The rhyme dictionaries organize Chinese characters by their pronunciation, according to

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2784-484: The Sino-Xenic pronunciations used in the reading traditions of neighbouring countries. Several other scholars have produced their own reconstructions using similar methods. The Qieyun system is often used as a framework for Chinese dialectology. With the exception of Min varieties, which show independent developments from Old Chinese, modern Chinese varieties can be largely treated as divergent developments from Middle Chinese. The study of Middle Chinese also provides for

2871-460: The Yunjing distinguishes 36 initials, they are placed in 23 columns by combining palatals, retroflexes, and dentals under the same column. This does not lead to cases where two homophone classes are conflated, as the grades (rows) are arranged so that all would-be minimal pairs distinguished only by the retroflex vs. palatal vs. alveolar character of the initial end up in different rows. Each initial

2958-562: The Yunjing identifies a traditional set of 36 initials , each named with an exemplary character. An earlier version comprising 30 initials is known from fragments among the Dunhuang manuscripts . In contrast, identifying the initials of the Qieyun required a painstaking analysis of fanqie relationships across the whole dictionary, a task first undertaken by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in 1842 and refined by others since. This analysis revealed

3045-412: The fanqie spelling 德紅 , the pronunciation of 德 was given as 多特 , and the pronunciation of 多 was given as 德河 , from which we can conclude that the words 東 , 德 and 多 all had the same initial sound. The Qieyun classified homonyms under 193 rhyme classes, each of which is placed within one of the four tones. A single rhyme class may contain multiple finals, generally differing only in

3132-406: The "costume-wearing" specialists who communicate with the underworld gods.) Both rejections are likely to have been inspired by oral epic lore, which regularly features shamans as villains. Some sources speak of a list of "Twenty Commandments" for Burkhanism. The evidence for this is sparse. Alcohol and tobacco were proscribed in the early years. Chugul came to be venerated as the main recipient of

3219-403: The "even" or "level", "rising" and "departing" tones, occur in open syllables and syllables ending with nasal consonants . The remaining syllables, ending in stop consonants , were described as the " entering " tone counterparts of syllables ending with the corresponding nasals. The Qieyun and its successors were organized around these categories, with two volumes for the even tone, which had

3306-454: The "three worlds" of Mongolic and Turkic tradition. (These are the upper, middle, and lower worlds—in other words heaven, earth, and the underworld.) However, it rejects worship of traditional deities associated with the underworld. In addition, it imports into worship many figures from Altaian oral epic lore, which were not worshipped in the "shamanic" part of the Altaian religion. Uch Kurbustan —"Uch" means "three", while "Kurbustan" comes from

3393-453: The 1930s. The Russian Empire was suspicious of the movement's potential to stir up native unrest and perhaps involve outside powers. The Soviet Union ultimately suppressed it for fear of its potential to unify Siberian Turkic peoples under a common nationalism. Originally millenarian , charismatic and anti- shamanic , the Burkhanist movement gradually lost most of these qualities—becoming increasingly routine, institutionalized (around

3480-596: The Altaian Spiritual Mission, who were afraid of the potential of the competing religion to decrease the Orthodox Christian flock in Altai. Chet and Chugul were arrested, Chugul was released, and after a prolonged trial Chet was fully exonerated by court and released in 1906. Researcher Andrei A. Znamenski compares the Burkanist movement to other indigenous revitalizing movements around the world, such as

3567-587: The Altaians. Even after the Telengits were classified as a separate group, there were still discrepancies as to what subgroups would be included under the ethnic group of the Telengits. In 2000, Telengits were listed as part of "Small Numbered Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Federation on the Russian and Soviet censuses". In 2002, they were considered their own category on the census and there were 2,398 Telengits. However, this number may be inaccurate because in

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3654-405: The Cantonese scholar Chen Li in a careful analysis published in his Qieyun kao (1842). Chen's method was to equate two fanqie initials (or finals) whenever one was used in the fanqie spelling of the pronunciation of the other, and to follow chains of such equivalences to identify groups of spellers for each initial or final. For example, the pronunciation of the character 東 was given using

3741-639: The Dzungar Khanate in the 18th century. They then became part of the khanate , as an ulus of four thousand yurts. The Telengits, whom the Khuntaiji had resettled on the Ili River , when the turmoil in the Dzungar Khanate began, took the opportunity to return to their homeland and tried to get to the Altai . Many people were lost along the way due to the raids of the Manchurians , Kazakhs , and Khalkha Mongols At

3828-921: The Native American Ghost Dance or the Melanesian Cargo Cult . An exhaustively detailed treatment of the comparisons and comparability of Burkhanism with the Melanesian Cargo Cult, the Mennonites, the Dukhobors of Georgia, the Mariitsy of Nizhnii Novgorod, and many other movements, is provided in Sherstova's dissertation from the 1980s. Znamenski says, the prime motivating factor was Altaians' fear of displacement by Russian colonists, Russification , and subjection to taxation and conscription on

3915-656: The Soghdian "Khormazta" (and thence from the Avestan " Ahura Mazda "). Thus, a triune God. Though imported from oral epics, Uch Kurbustan is a generalized spirit rather than a hero of stories with a personality. He may be analogous with the Turko-Mongolian High God Tengri ("Heaven"). Rather than an import from Buddhism, Christianity, or Turkic Islam, this particular trinity is likely to have been inspired by other triune gods and heroes from Turkic culture (sometimes in

4002-585: The beginning of the 18th century, the Telengits formed two volosts , which became part of Russia much later, unlike other Altains, who came under Russian rule in 1756. On October 10, 1864, the First Chui Volost became part of the Russian Empire, and only on January 12, 1865, the inhabitants of the Second Chui Volost became citizens of Russia. There are many groups that live in the Altai region, with

4089-468: The centuries following the publication of the Qieyun . Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese and the variant revealed by the rime tables as Late Middle Chinese . The dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. Karlgren was the first to attempt a reconstruction of the sounds of Middle Chinese , comparing its categories with modern varieties of Chinese and

4176-657: The context of the census questions, many Telengits, 8,000 or 9,000 would consider themselves Altaians and not Telengits. In 2004, the NGO "Development of the Telengit People" was established. This group is an active part in the local political area in regard to issues of Telengit land rights. Most Telengits were historically nomadic or semi-nomadic cattle herders. They commonly raised sheep, cattle, goats, and horses. Traditional Telengit dwellings included felt yurts. Modern Telengits live in wooden homes but commonly inhabit yurts during

4263-439: The dialect data through the rime dictionaries and rime tables distorts the evidence. They argue for a full application of the comparative method to the modern varieties, supplemented by systematic use of transcription data. The traditional analysis of the Chinese syllable , derived from the fanqie method, is into an initial consonant, or "initial", ( shēngmǔ 聲母 ) and a final ( yùnmǔ 韻母 ). Modern linguists subdivide

4350-423: The dictionaries. Finals with vocalic and nasal codas may have one of three tones , named level, rising and departing. Finals with stop codas are distributed in the same way as corresponding nasal finals, and are described as their entering tone counterparts. There is much less agreement regarding the medials and vowels. It is generally agreed that "closed" finals had a rounded glide /w/ or vowel /u/ , and that

4437-444: The dictionary recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties . However, based on the preface of the Qieyun , most scholars now believe that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of

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4524-535: The different languages. In 1954, André-Georges Haudricourt showed that Vietnamese counterparts of the rising and departing tones corresponded to final /ʔ/ and /s/ , respectively, in other (atonal) Austroasiatic languages . He thus argued that the Austroasiatic proto-language had been atonal, and that the development of tones in Vietnamese had been conditioned by these consonants, which had subsequently disappeared,

4611-513: The different subgroups of the Altaians , identified as they are by the territory they occupy. This inevitably caused many problems, including how to ethnically classify them. It was the political leaders of the Ulagan district who first advocated that the Telengits be recognized as a separate Indigenous group in Russian law. Before this, there was often confusion because the Telengits were classified under

4698-470: The earlier palatal consonants. The remainder of a syllable after the initial consonant is the final, represented in the Qieyun by several equivalent second fanqie spellers. Each final is contained within a single rhyme class, but a rhyme class may contain between one and four finals. Finals are usually analysed as consisting of an optional medial, either a semivowel , reduced vowel or some combination of these,

4785-532: The end of the 19th century, European students of Chinese sought to solve this problem by applying the methods of historical linguistics that had been used in reconstructing Proto-Indo-European . Volpicelli (1896) and Schaank (1897) compared the rime tables at the front of the Kangxi Dictionary with modern pronunciations in several varieties, but had little knowledge of linguistics. Bernhard Karlgren , trained in transcription of Swedish dialects, carried out

4872-494: The entering tone was short (as the syllable ended in a voiceless stop) and probably high. The tone system of Middle Chinese is strikingly similar to those of its neighbours in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area — proto-Hmong–Mien , proto-Tai and early Vietnamese —none of which is genetically related to Chinese. Moreover, the earliest strata of loans display a regular correspondence between tonal categories in

4959-532: The final into an optional "medial" glide ( yùntóu 韻頭 ), a main vowel or "nucleus" ( yùnfù 韻腹 ) and an optional final consonant or "coda" ( yùnwěi 韻尾 ). Most reconstructions of Middle Chinese include the glides /j/ and /w/ , as well as a combination /jw/ , but many also include vocalic "glides" such as /i̯/ in a diphthong /i̯e/ . Final consonants /j/ , /w/ , /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , /p/ , /t/ and /k/ are widely accepted, sometimes with additional codas such as /wk/ or /wŋ/ . Rhyming syllables in

5046-468: The first systematic survey of modern varieties of Chinese. He used the oldest known rime tables as descriptions of the sounds of the rime dictionaries, and also studied the Guangyun , at that time the oldest known rime dictionary. Unaware of Chen Li's study, he repeated the analysis of the fanqie required to identify the initials and finals of the dictionary. He believed that the resulting categories reflected

5133-400: The following table shows the pronunciation of the numerals in three modern Chinese varieties, as well as borrowed forms in Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese: Although the evidence from Chinese transcriptions of foreign words is much more limited, and is similarly obscured by the mapping of foreign pronunciations onto Chinese phonology, it serves as direct evidence of a sort that is lacking in all

5220-522: The form of a god with three sons). Uch Kurbustan is connected with the following three messianic heroes, also from Altaian oral epic lore: The gods of the upper world, or aru tos ("pure ancestors"), are considered fragments or emanations of Uch Kurbustan. Burkhanism calls these Burkhans . Among them are: Gods of the "middle world"—i.e. the familiar spheres of nature and human affairs—include numerous local spirits, such as spirits associated with mountains ( taika-eezi ) or springs ( arzhans ), or "masters of

5307-413: The game". They may also be associated with particular clans ( seok ). More generalized ones include: Historically, Burkhanism rejected the traditional gods of the underworld, notably Erlik ( Yerlik ), its chief. This rejection is closely related to Burkhanism's rejection of Altaian shamanism, and corresponding elevation of oral epic singers ( yarlikchi ). (By "shaman" is here meant manjaktu kam s, i.e.

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5394-486: The land, they become one with it. That is why it is so severe when one is separated from their homeland. Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese ) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the Qieyun , a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren believed that

5481-415: The level tone as mid ( ˧ or 33), the rising tone as mid rising ( ˧˥ or 35), the departing tone as high falling ( ˥˩ or 51), and the entering tone as ˧3ʔ. Some scholars have voiced doubts about the degree to which the names were descriptive, because they are also examples of the tone categories. Some descriptions from contemporaries and other data seem to suggest a somewhat different picture. For example,

5568-596: The medial (especially when it is /w/ ) or in so-called chongniu doublets. The Yunjing ( c.  1150 AD ) is the oldest of the so-called rime tables , which provide a more detailed phonological analysis of the system contained in the Qieyun . The Yunjing was created centuries after the Qieyun , and the authors of the Yunjing were attempting to interpret a phonological system that differed in significant ways from that of their own Late Middle Chinese (LMC) dialect. They were aware of this, and attempted to reconstruct Qieyun phonology as well as possible through

5655-481: The most words, and one volume each for the other tones. The pitch contours of modern reflexes of the four Middle Chinese tones vary so widely that linguists have not been able to establish the probable Middle Chinese values by means of the comparative method . Karlgren interpreted the names of the first three tones literally as level, rising and falling pitch contours, respectively, and this interpretation remains widely accepted. Accordingly, Pan and Zhang reconstruct

5742-455: The name Buddha — derived from Middle Chinese 佛 (MC bjut, “Buddha”) and Old Turkic 𐰴𐰣 (qan, “ruler, king”) — yet Burkhanism is not considered Buddhist, as the term is also used in shamanistic nomenclature. For example, in Mongolian shamanism , the name of the most sacred mountain, the rumored birthplace and final resting spot of Genghis Khan , is also Burkhan Khaldun . Ak-Burkhan is only one of

5829-528: The needs of a new people—the Altai-kizhi or Altaians who sought to distinguish themselves from the neighboring and related tribes and for whom Burkhanism became a religious form of their ethnic identity. Burkhanism is the usual English-language scholarly name, which has its origin in the Russian academic usage. One of the Burkhanist deities is Ak-Burkhan, or "White Burkhan". Burkhan is the Turkified version of

5916-462: The new faith. In 1918 Gregorii Choros-Gurkin and other Altaian leaders declared the formation of something called the " Karakorum-Altaian Regional Government " ( Karakorum-Altaiskaia Okruzhnaia Uprava ), with the object of establishing an "Karakorum-Altai Republic" . This was intended to include not only Altai but also neighboring republics of Tuva and Khakassia. It was forcibly dissolved with arrival of Bolshevik power in 1922. Burkhanism accepts

6003-455: The oldest known description of the tones, which is found in a Song dynasty quotation from the early 9th century Yuanhe Yunpu 元和韻譜 (no longer extant): Level tone is sad and stable. Rising tone is strident and rising. Departing tone is clear and distant. Entering tone is straight and abrupt. In 880, the Japanese monk Annen, citing an account from the early 8th century, stated the level tone

6090-461: The original message. This was much less true of Chet, although both were addressed with honorific titles. Russian painter Nicholas Roerich and his wife Helena Roerich passed through Altai in 1926. Nicholas painted Oirat—Messenger of the White Burkhan based on his understanding of the movement. (Note that the painting's title apparently gets the theology backward—it was rather White Burkhan who

6177-569: The other types of data, since the pronunciation of the foreign languages borrowed from—especially Sanskrit and Gandhari —is known in great detail. For example, the nasal initials /m n ŋ/ were used to transcribe Sanskrit nasals in the early Tang, but later they were used for Sanskrit unaspirated voiced initials /b d ɡ/ , suggesting that they had become prenasalized stops [ᵐb] [ⁿd] [ᵑɡ] in some northwestern Chinese dialects. The rime dictionaries and rime tables yield phonological categories, but with little hint of what sounds they represent. At

6264-438: The preceding system of Old Chinese phonology (early 1st millennium BC). The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid-12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated and convenient analysis of the Qieyun phonology. The rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over

6351-405: The pronunciation of all characters to be described exactly; earlier dictionaries simply described the pronunciation of unfamiliar characters in terms of the most similar-sounding familiar character. The fanqie system uses multiple equivalent characters to represent each particular initial, and likewise for finals. The categories of initials and finals actually represented were first identified by

6438-420: The retroflex dentals are represented with the dentals, while elsewhere they have merged with the retroflex sibilants. In the south these have also merged with the dental sibilants, but the distinction is retained in most Mandarin dialects. The palatal series of modern Mandarin dialects, resulting from a merger of palatal allophones of dental sibilants and velars, is a much more recent development, unconnected with

6525-485: The same basis as Russian peasants. Andrei Vinogradov (thesis linked below) sees Burkhanism as a typical nomadic Turko-Mongolian mobilization pattern—aiming to link families and clans ( seok ) into a steppe empire (which in this case never materialized). The Burkhanists' veneration of heroes from oral epics, he says, serves much the same cultural centralizing function as the veneration of other divine heroes such as Gesar , Manas , or Genghis Khan . As such it constitutes

6612-483: The second or fourth rows for some initials. Most linguists agree that division-III finals contained a /j/ medial and that division-I finals had no such medial, but further details vary between reconstructions. To account for the many rhyme classes distinguished by the Qieyun , Karlgren proposed 16 vowels and 4 medials. Later scholars have proposed numerous variations. The four tones of Middle Chinese were first listed by Shen Yue c.  500 AD . The first three,

6699-562: The speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties . He interpreted the many distinctions as a narrow transcription of the precise sounds of this language, which he sought to reconstruct by treating the Sino-Xenic and modern dialect pronunciations as reflexes of the Qieyun categories. A small number of Qieyun categories were not distinguished in any of the surviving pronunciations, and Karlgren assigned them identical reconstructions. Karlgren's transcription involved

6786-440: The standard language of the late Tang dynasty. The preface of the Qieyun recovered in 1947 indicates that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period (a diasystem ). Most linguists now believe that no single dialect contained all the distinctions recorded, but that each distinction did occur somewhere. Several scholars have compared

6873-449: The standard reading pronunciation during the Tang dynasty , and went through several revisions and expansions over the following centuries. The Qieyun is thus the oldest surviving rhyme dictionary and the main source for the pronunciation of characters in Early Middle Chinese (EMC). At the time of Bernhard Karlgren 's seminal work on Middle Chinese in the early 20th century, only fragments of

6960-436: The summer months. Traditional dress was similar for both men and women. The dress was composed of long-sleeved shirts, breeches, and robes. Double-breasted sheepskin coats, fur hats, and high boots were also commonly worn. Married women additionally wore a sleeveless jacket over their coats. Most Telengits practice shamanism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Smaller numbers practice Burkhanism . Shamanism continues to exert

7047-426: The term may also be used as a "way of doing things" and is used in reference to religions as well as political systems. In April 1904 Chet Chelpan (or, Chot Chelpanov) and his adopted daughter Chugul Sarok Chandyk reported visions of a rider dressed in white, and riding a white horse. This figure, whom they called Ak-Burkhan ("White Burkhan"), announced the imminent arrival of the mythical messianic hero Oirat Khan who

7134-506: The territorial groupings being somewhat fluid. For these reasons it may be difficult to distinguish between them. Telengits (or Telengut) live along the Chuya River in the western Altai and call themselves Chui-kizhi (Chuya people). Sometimes they intermix with other groups that live around the river. With this intermixing, it is often difficult to establish boundaries and distinguish the individual groups. There are no sharp distinctions among

7221-500: The voiced fricatives /z/ and /ʐ/ are not distinguished from the voiced affricates /dz/ and /ɖʐ/ , respectively, and the retroflex stops are not distinguished from the dental stops. Several changes occurred between the time of the Qieyun and the rime tables: The following table shows a representative account of the initials of Late Middle Chinese. The voicing distinction is retained in modern Wu and Old Xiang dialects, but has disappeared from other varieties. In Min dialects

7308-435: The vowels in "outer" finals were more open than those in "inner" finals. The interpretation of the "divisions" is more controversial. Three classes of Qieyun finals occur exclusively in the first, second or fourth rows of the rime tables, respectively, and have thus been labelled finals of divisions I, II and IV. The remaining finals are labelled division-III finals because they occur in the third row, but they may also occur in

7395-538: Was actually a real historical figure— Khoit - Oirat prince Amursana . The central figure in the research of Burkhanism in the past forty years, however, has demonstrated that Oirot-khan is a mythologized image of the Dzungar past of the people of Altai-kizhi. Chet and Chugul gathered thousands of Altaians for prayer meetings, initially in the Tereng Valley. These were violently suppressed by mobs of Russians, instigated by

7482-407: Was straight and low, ... the rising tone was straight and high, ... the departing tone was slightly drawn out, ... the entering tone stops abruptly Based on Annen's description, other similar statements and related data, Mei Tsu-lin concluded that the level tone was long, level and low, the rising tone was short, level and high, the departing tone was somewhat long and probably high and rising, and

7569-808: Was the messenger for Oirat.) Followers of Agni Yoga , an esoteric movement founded by the Roerichs, have encouraged a recent revival of interest in Burkhanism among non-Altaians. At the same time they have insisted on a link with Tibetan Buddhism and a veneration of Mount Belukha , elements not found in traditional Burkhanism. A number of Burkhanist revival organizations emerged during the 1990s, mostly as attempts to formulate or preserve an Altaian ethno-nationalist identity. To that end many of them have been persuaded to reconsider earlier Burkhanism's vexed relationship with shamanism and/or Buddhism. According to recent statistical studies, up to 70 % or 81 % (data of

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