Are Chinese his-p'i and kuo-lo IE Loan Words

The IE origin of Chin. mi ‘honey’, ancient and archaic Chin. m iět , first pointed out by E. Polivanov, is by now generally accepted. The question from which IE language the word was borrowed, however, is still unanswered. During the latter half of the first millennium B.C., the Chinese had contact not only with the Tokharians, but also with other IE peoples. In a letter to the present writer, dated August 29, 1938, E. Sapir wrote, ‘I suspect strongly that at least two distinct IE languages appeared in Chinese Turkestan and West China at a quite early date and that these two languages belonged to distinct branches of IE.‘ If the two words discussed in this paper are IE loan words in Chinese, as I believe they are, they might be of some help in clarifying the problem of the IE languages spoken in the western Chinese borderlands

Economics · Linguistics · Loan · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Chinese history and philosophy · Finance · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Philosophy