began to make arrangements with China with a view to crushing the Central Turks, and in consequence Bilga was so alarmed that he had to hastily beg old Tunyukuk to incontinently resume his functions as state adviser. Bilga's policy towards China was peaceful, and among other things he was extremely anxious to be honoured (like his rivals the Tibetans and Tunguses) with a more or less genuine Chinese wife. The Chinese Empire having now been at peace for a few years, the Emperor was anxious to celebrate the occasion by making a pilgrimage, customary on such occasions, to a sacred mountain near Confucius' birthplace in East China; but he was afraid that even the peaceful Bilga, when supported by such a brave warrior as the teghin of Köl, and by such an arch-schemer as Tunyukuk, might find, in the absence of the Chinese Court "on tour," a tempting excuse for attacking the capital of Si-ngan Fu (the place where, about this time, the celebrated Nestorian stone was erected). It was therefore arranged, after mature and sagacious deliberation, to send a mission to Bilga in order to buoy up his hopes of getting a girl, and at the same time to pay him the "compliment" of inviting some of his highest officers to join the Imperial train, thus securing hostages for the Turks' good behaviour whilst the Chinese Court was away "in camp." Nothing in Chinese history gives a more vivid picture of Turkish life than the description of these negotiations: how the crafty Chinese envoys were received in the royal tent by the Khan, the Khatun his wife, his brother Köl, and his father-in-law Tunyukuk. In almost every detail it might have been copied from some of the Greek accounts, as translated by Professor Bury, of the Roman missions sent to the camp of Attila in Hungary. The Chinese, as usual, gained their immediate point by falsely promising to use their favourable influence with the Emperor, touching the grant of a wife, if the Turks would support the request in person by sending high officers to join the Emperor in his peaceful pilgrimage. The chief envoy sent was Asete the kharapid, and this very distinct

fact is further emphasized by the casual statement that during the Imperial procession the Emperor shot a hare, which the same Asete "retrieved" for his Majesty, and obsequiously laid at his feet. But Bilga never got the wife, though after that almost annual missions were sent to China. On one of these occasions the Turkish envoy Meilug Chör was very handsomely banquetted; this statement is interesting, because the Emperor, in view of Turkish pressure, had now as good as given way on the subject of a wife, and the last Chinese announcement is that Bilga Khan was poisoned in 734 by the said Meilug Chör, but lived long enough to superintend the massacre of the assassin and all his brood. He was succeeded by several of his sons in succession; but before ten years were out this second Turkish Empire, founded by Kutlug in 682, disappeared for ever, and in 745 the whole inheritance may be said to have passed over to the Ouigours. The usual transformation scenes followed, just as they had done in old Hiung-nu times. The Tunguses (the Cathayans and the Nüchêns, or modern Manchus) had an innings in North China for 300 years; then came the Mongols (one of the petty Turkoid tribes of the Tola-Orkhon region); then for 300 years the native Chinese Ming dynasty; and finally the Manchus.

Now, the point of the whole story is this: If we had not found any ancient Turkish and Chinese memorial inscriptions, the positive statements of Chinese history, however interesting, would have stood upon precisely the same basis as their equally positive statements about the Turks' progenitors, the mysterious Hiung-nu. Turkish history, as told by the Chinese, is to a very limited extent confirmed by Arab and Persian authorities; but the newly-discovered Turkish records form a link between the two, and shed from right to left a double light upon both Eastern and Western records, concealed hitherto by intervening darkness the one from the other. Moreover, an absolutely new script has been discovered and deciphered, and this script confirms the Chinese accounts, so that there can be no question of

"cooking" evidence. The writing has been proved by Dr. Thomsen, who discovered the key to it through the oft-recurring words "Türk" and "Köl teghin," to be a form of Aramæan (probably the Sogdian variety), and both Chinese and Turks mention Sogd as being under the Turks at the time Kotaiba and his Arab legions came East.

The Chinese Imperial memorial tablets in honour of the above-named Bilga Khan, and his younger brother the teghin of Köl, have already been described (Academy, December 21, 1895), and it is therefore sufficient to state here that they confirm the statements of Chinese history in a most satisfactory way. But perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is to find that the Chinese word K'üeh (known to have once had the "power" K'üet, which by a sort of Far-Eastern Grimm's law becomes K'üel or Köl in modern Corean) stands for the Turkish Köl of 1,200 years ago. The importance to philology of such chance-discoveries as these, which are proved to be correct by the Sogdo-AramæanTurkish inscriptions dedicated to the same brothers on the same spot, is almost as great as the importance to the science of history of the ample further proof that the Chinese chronicles can be absolutely trusted to describe foreign matters of over 1,000 years' antiquity with good faith; and therefore that we are pretty safe in accepting analogous Chinese statements as far back as the date of true history and of portable cheap writing material—say, B.C. 300 at the very least.

The specific and immediate object of my present paper is to draw attention to the very remarkable further discovery of Madame Klementz, who two years ago (1897) found at Baïn Tsokto (thirty miles east of Urga) the stone sarcophagus of Tunyukuk, together with two square pillars recording in his own words his great services to Kutlug, whom he styles Elteres Khan. Tunyukuk also alludes shortly to the glorious reign of Merchör, whom he calls Kapagan Khan; he then states that his own declaration or lament (which has a Bismarckian ring of disappointment

about it) was composed in the reign of Bilga Khan, i.e., not earlier than 716. It so happens that both the Turks and the Chinese give "Bilga" Khan as the name of Kutlug's eldest son and Merchör's successor; but, apart from this direct evidence, the events described in the sixty odd lines of Tunyukuk's inscription, and the specific mention made therein of brothers, uncle, nephew, and so on, prove beyond doubt that Elteres and Kapagan are simply the Chinese Kutlug and Merchör. The difference in nomenclature almost certainly arises from the tabu of private names on the Turkish side, and from the persistence of the Chinese in ignoring the rights of tabu on the Turkish side, the rule having always been that all the world must name itself to the Emperor, who alone is tabu; unless, that is to say, the Son of Heaven as a special favour grants the "right not to use your private name," which was twice done to the Khans, or Zenghi (as I have ventured to call them in my A Thousand Years of the Tartars), of the ancient Hiung-nu.

Tunyukuk's inscription has recently been translated, in his usual admirable and thorough style, by Dr. W. Radloff, of the Imperial Russian Academy. His work Die Inschrift des Tonjukuk is supplemented by a very learned Nachworte by Dr. Fried. Hirth of Munich. Finally, the volume containing the above two excellent treatises is enriched and completed by a paper on the Arabischen Quellen, bearing upon the subject of the seventh and eighth century Turks, contributed by Professor W. Barthold, the whole being in German, but happily printed in the Roman instead of the Gothic character. Dr. Hirth, who has already well established his title to be considered one of our soundest and most cosmopolitan sinologists, very properly describes Dr. Radloff as the Beichtvater of Turkish inscriptions. On the other hand, Dr. Radloff, in summing up the results of Professors Hirth and Barthold's labours, leaves them each a perfectly free hand in his own department, and shows no disposition whatever to encroach upon the privileges of those Fachmänner in their own speciality.

The limits accorded to me by the obliging editor of the Asiatic Quarterly Review do not permit me to enter at length into such intricate questions as the identity of this or that Turk, Ouigour, or Kirghiz tribe; the exact branch of the Upper Selenga, Upper Irtish, or Upepr Yenisei, such and such armies actually crossed; when certain exactly identified historical persons took part in this or that war; or the precise way in which the Turks counted their years, arranged their decimals, or began their legal day. All these, and scores of other specific technical points around which the battle of sinologues and turkologues still rages, will be discussed at length in the next China Review, whose printing resources fortunately permit of the lavish use of Chinese character, so necessary for full elucidation: to that publication I refer those who take a special interest in precise details. I may, however, here mention one point which forms a pivot about which turns a very bold and far-reaching theory propounded by Dr. Hirth. He suggests, and indeed attempts to prove, that the renegade Asete Yüan-chên, or Turkish page with a Chinese name, who deserted his masters the Chinese in order to follow the rising star of Kutlug, was one and the same person with Tunyukuk; moreover, that Asete the kharapid, who went as envoy to China in 725, was the same person as Tunyukuk, and therefore as Asete Yüan-chên. The chief grounds upon which Dr. Hirth bases this very remarkable, not to say audacious, theory are (1) that whilst the Chinese do not mention Tunyukuk previous to 716, Tunyukuk says nothing about himself subsequent to 716; (2) whilst the Chinese say Asete Yüan-chên assisted Kutlug to establish himself about 682-3, and was killed in a fight with the Türgäs about 690, Tunyukuk says nothing of Asete Yüan-chên at all, but ascribes identical services to himself, including the Türgäs War (minus, of course, the death). Dr. Hirth's theory is that the Chinese were mistaken or misled to believe in Asete Yüan-chên's death; that this wily personage "played 'possum" in order not to spoil the game of Merchör, who was at first disposed to try diplomacy with the Chinese;