Inscription of Hüis Tolgoi


The Inscription of Hüis Tolgoi is a monolingual inscription found in Bulgan Province, Mongolia in 1975 by D. Navaan. The 11-line text is written in vertical Brahmi script running right to left with horizontal marks separating words. The language of the inscription was unknown until the joint expedition of Alexander Vovin, Étienne de la Vaissière, Dieter Maue and Mehmet Ölmez to Mongolia in 2014 for closer imaging of the stele. Due to certain morphological peculiarities the language of the inscription was hypothesized to be Para-Mongolic rather than Indo-European or Turkic. Dieter Maue, a specialist in Sanskrit and Brahmi, deciphered the Brahmi script of the inscription. It was subsequently analyzed by linguist Alexander Vovin who remarked on the similarity of the HT language to mainstream Mongolic as opposed to the more southern Khitan language. Mehmet Ölmez elaborated on the details of the expedition while Étienne de la Vaissière provided a historian's perspective and dated the inscription to shortly after the death of Niri Qaghan in 603.

Transliteration and tentative translation


This is Alexander Vovin's tentative translation.

This is Dieter Maue's transliteration.