Between Camel and Unicorn
The above discussions demonstrate the plausibility of a “unicorn” interpretation of the name Pulan/Mulan by the word bulān. Yet one has to admit that phonetically the word buγra also sounds like a plausible solution. A comprehensive exposition of the Mulan question, therefore, cannot be closed without reviewing some additional material or old controversies in Altaic linguistics in this regard.
Let us take another look of the word buγra. It is noted that this gender-specific word was not, and still is not, the primary term for “camel” in Altaic languages, as the Turkic word tevē and its numerous variations and cognates in other tongues have an undisputed claim in this regard.56 This leads me to question the original meaning of buγra.
Even today within the Turkic family, buγra does not universally mean “a camel stallion.” In Yakut, the cognate word būr stands for “male (deer).” The similar meaning (“male elk”) is found in several other Turkic languages.57 This, plus the Suomi-Finnish word peura, “game animal,” has led Matti Räsänen to state that “buγra does not mean, originally, male camel, but a male reindeer.”58In other words, similar to bulān, “unicorn,” buγra also had a cervid origin. Gerhard Doerfer appears to accept the possibility of such a “semantic change (Bedeutungswandlung)” while disallowing Räsänen's Suomi-Finnish cognates.59
Whether Räsänen's conclusion is correct or not, it would seem natural to assume that ancient people might not be overly concerned about the taxonomic accuracy regarding the Cervidae and the Camelidae, or for that matter among many herbivore ruminants. What Räsänen has mentioned is but one example of this disregard of scientific rigor. One can also cite the Yakuts' use of the word taba, a cognate of the general Turkic word tevē, “camel,” for “reindeer.”60 This mix-up of the Cervidae and the Camelidae is also reflected in the Chinese name tuolu, “camel-deer,” for Alces alces, a large cervid. According to an eleventh-century source, this large member of the deer family, and presumably its name too, was from the “Northern Barbarians.”61 I also cite the Chinese character luo for luotuo, “camel,” which originally had nothing to do with Camelidae, but meant a “white horse with black mane,” adding an equestrian angle to this linguistic jumble of herbivorous quadrupeds. It may be noted that the meaning of the word bulān in Caucasian languages becomes “bison” (e.g., Chechen bula, “bison”).62 The original meaning of the English word “deer” may be another example. According to the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “deer” originally meant “beast: usually a quadruped.” The German cognate Tier, “animal,” certainly attests to this general meaning.
It would not therefore seem farfetched to further Räsänen's theory regarding bγra to include also the Tuoba, who originated in a forest region where camels would, to say the least, hardly be a daily concern. Even today we see many seemingly redundant expressions such as bγra tävä in Ottoman Turkish, which supports the thesis that the meaning “camel” for bγra was not the original. This can also be compared with the Iranian-origin mäjä, widely borrowed into Turkic, meaning generally “female animal” and in particular “she-camel.”63
At this point, a certain parallel if not cognitive relationship can be observed among the Altaic words bγra, “camel stallion”; buγu, “deer stag”; and buqa, “bull,” as has previously been both suggested and rebuked by Altaic linguists, and may continue to be debated in the future.64 A distinct common thread in these words, however, is undeniable, in that all three primarily refer to a male ruminant quadruped.
Finally, let us examine the word bulān again. The short vowel length in the first syllable seems to have excluded any possibility of a preexisting velar. Its etymology, befitting a “unicorn,” has remained a mystery. After all, according to Chinese tradition, a unicorn is a combination of many animal characteristics, including that of a deer, a horse, a buffalo or bison, and so on. W. Bang, while acknowledging the ambiguous etymology, suggests that the form bulān may have been influenced by qulān, “wild ass.”65 It is Gerard Clauson who points out that -lān appears to be a generic animal suffix.66 There are at least seven such names listed by al-Kašγarī: pulān, “elk”; qulān, “wild ass”; arslān, “lion”; burslān, “tiger”; aplān, “rat”; yamlān, “rat”; and yilān, “snake.”67 I can further add baklān, “a particular kind of lamb,”68 and qaplān, “tiger.”69 Because these names cut across several animal groups—carnivore, herbivore (both ruminants and rodents), and reptiles—it is very tempting to ascribe the suffix to possible personification or deification of totemic animals. In any case, the real signifying root of bulān would have to be bu-. As such, its primary meaning of “a large male cervid” would put this word into the same general “stag/bull” category discussed earlier.
Indeed, in his excellent Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages, Sergei Starostin proposed an Altaic root *mula, “a kind of deer,” with Tungusic *mul- and Proto-Mongolian *maral, “mountain deer,” and Proto-Turkic *bulan, “elk.”70 This root, especially the Proto-Turkic form, would be a near perfect fit for the Tuoba name Mulan.
In conclusion, it is difficult to determine with certainty the original form for any word in the ancient Tuoba language, which has been dead and lost for over a millennium. But it is fairly safe to infer that the name Mulan, transcribing either bulān or buklān, once belonged to the same “stag/bull” word group in the Altaic family that included, inter alia, the only native Altaic word for “unicorn.”
Chapter 3
Brotherly Matters and the Canine Image:
The Invasion of “Barbarian” Tongues
“All within the Four Seas Are One's Brothers”
It is likely that the great sage's leading disciple, Zixia, had in mind Confucius's ideal of a perfect society of “great harmony” and universal human love when he consoled a fellow disciple who complained about “having no brothers (read: none of his brothers behaved in a brotherly way)”: “Let the superior man never fail reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to others and observant of propriety—then all within the four seas will be his brothers.”1
This is but one example of the importance of brotherhood, by blood or not, in traditional Sinitic societies. Moreover, with the Confucian emphasis on maintaining the proper societal as well as familial order, a clear distinction between xiong, “elder brother,” and di, “younger brother,” was a perennial characteristic of the Chinese language, social mores, and consciousness, in sharp contrast to that of most Indo-European societies. In fact, xiongdi or “elder-brother-younger-brother,” was one of the five cardinal human relations (lun) in Confucianism, the other four being lord-subject, father-son, husband-wife, and friend-friend.
In this historical context, it is rather startling to observe that, while the familial and societal functions of this central kinship notion of “elder brother” have been kept largely intact and even expanded through the ages, the morphologic carrier of this term in China today has been usurped by a different kinship term, ge (Wade- Giles ko). The latter term permeates all Chinese dialects today and plays a much extended linguistic role beyond a familial vocative. It is indeed amazing to hear this term and its variants in formal speeches, daily conversations, and folk love songs everywhere, from big metropolises like Shanghai to the remotest inland mountain villages. In contrast, the original Sinitic term xiong has now been banished to a few archaic and largely literary binomes.
The original Confucian notion of pan-brotherhood