One cluster — two roots: the sinographs 要, 求, 球 and their Old Iranian parallels

ABSTRACT The present article continues the series of studies "The Old Iranian Origins of Chinese Lexis," examining three sinographs — 要 (yào), 求 (qiú), and 球 (qiú) — which at first glance belong to different semantic spheres: modal necessity, active search, and the form of a round object. However, their phonetic proximity and the stable compound 要求 (yāoqiú) "to demand, to strive for" point to the existence of a deeper systemic connection that remains unexplained within the framework of traditional Chinese etymology. The source base of the study includes early written monuments (oracle bone inscriptions, Zhou bronze inscriptions), the fundamental dictionary Shuowen Jiezi with Duan Yucai's commentaries, a spectrum of modern reconstructions of Old Chinese pronunciation, as well as Old Iranian and Indo-Iranian linguistic material. The methodological foundation is verificational analysis, which presupposes the primacy of semantics and phonetic approximation under conditions of dialectal heterogeneity of the Old Chinese language. At the core of this study lies a contradiction: while the Shuowen Jiezi offers graphic interpretations that trace 求 to «fur clothing» and 要 to the depiction of the «waist», the actual usage of these characters in the earliest texts reveals a semantic unity in the sphere of volition and necessity. Of particular interest is the fact that the character 求 serves as the graphic representative of a single phonetic cluster uniting two distinct semantic groups: words meaning "to ask, to demand" (賕, 逑, as well as 訄, which, although it does not contain the component 求, belongs to the same phonetico-semantic nest) and words meaning "round, spherical object" (毬, 梂, 莍). Such distribution cannot be coincidental and requires going beyond the Chinese linguistic tradition proper to explain why one and the same phonetic contour could serve two different semantic fields. The question to be answered is as follows: can the unity of this phonetic cluster be explained as a result of the internal development of the Chinese language, or should its origins be sought in a broader Eurasian context, specifically in the language contacts of the Shang-Zhou era? The answer requires a sequential examination of the Chinese material, an independent analysis of Iranian roots, and subsequent verification at the phonetic, semantic, graphic, and chronological levels. Keywords: Old Chinese; Old Iranian languages; 要; 求; 球; language contacts; borrowings; etymology; phonetic cluster; sinographic writing; phonetic reconstruction; verificational analysis.