PRELIMINARY RESEARCH FOR CHAGHATAY LANGUAGE STUDIES BASED ON TWO MANUSCRIPTS OF THE CHINGIZ-NAMA: TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE HISTORY OF ALTYN ORDA

The “Chingiz-nama” has come to play a crucial role in researching the history of the Altyn Orda, or the Jochi Ulus. It was written in the Khiva Khanate, one of the successor states of the Jochi Ulus. The Chingiz-nama is a historical text written not in standard Chaghatay, but in a form of Chaghatay influenced by the western Turkic languages. The authors aim to describe the language of this historical text. Two extant manuscripts of the Chingiz-nama exist: the Tashkent manuscript and the Istanbul manuscript. This study reviewed the research history of these two manuscripts and proposed several linguistic avenues for studying the Chaghatay language of the Chingiz-nama. When examining the corresponding pages between the Tashkent and Istanbul manuscripts, it was found that the Tashkent manuscript, consisting of 36a-59a (47 pages), corresponds to Ia-IIb and 16a-48a (69 pages) of the Istanbul manuscript. This result differed from Validov’s (1915: 320) assertion that the Tashkent manuscript corresponded to the 15b-46b of the Istanbul manuscript. Additionally, we focused on two narratives within the Chingiz-nama: the story of Chingiz Khan, and the story of Ichen Khan (Orda Khan) and Sayin Khan (Batu Khan) (Tashkent: 37b (56) - 40a (157)) as preliminary research, comparing the script, vocabulary, and grammar of both manuscripts. The Tashkent manuscript showed more frequent insertion of the -n- sound than the Istanbul manuscript, greater retention of -r- in the verb er- and the postposition birlä , and more frequent use of the relative pronoun ki . Based on the linguistic features above, it was found that the Tashkent manuscript exhibits characteristics of a western dialect more than the Istanbul manuscript, retains older features of Turkic languages, and shows Persian influence.