The Pyu language (Pyu: ;
Burmese: ပျူ ဘာသာ, IPA:[pjùbàðà]; also Tircul language) is an extinct
Sino-Tibetan language that was mainly spoken in what is now
Myanmar in the first millennium
CE. It was the
vernacular of the
Pyu city-states, which thrived between the second century
BCE and the ninth century CE. Its usage declined starting in the late ninth century when the
Bamar people of
Nanzhao began to overtake the Pyu city-states. The language was still in use, at least in royal inscriptions of the
Pagan Kingdom if not in popular vernacular, until the late twelfth century. It became extinct in the thirteenth century, completing the rise of the
Burmese language, the language of the Pagan Kingdom, in Upper Burma, the former Pyu realm.[1]
The language is principally known from inscriptions on four stone urns (7th and 8th centuries) found near the Payagyi pagoda (in the modern
Bago Township) and the multi-lingual
Myazedi inscription (early 12th century).[2][3] These were first deciphered by
Charles Otto Blagden in the early 1910s.[3]
The
Pyu script was a
Brahmic script. The most recent scholarship suggests the Pyu script may have been the source of the Burmese script.[4]
Classification
Blagden (1911: 382) was the first scholar to recognize Pyu as an independent branch of Sino-Tibetan.[5]Miyake (2021, 2022) argues that Pyu forms a branch of its own within the Sino-Tibetan language phylum due to its divergent phonological and lexical characteristics. Pyu is not a particularly conservative Sino-Tibetan language, as it displays many phonological and
lexical innovations as has lost much of the original Proto-Sino-Tibetan morphology.[6][7] Miyake (2022) suggests that this may be due to a possible
creoloid origin of Pyu.[8]
Pyu was tentatively classified within the
Lolo-Burmese languages by
Matisoff and thought to most likely be
Luish by
Bradley, although Miyake later showed that neither of these hypotheses are plausible.
Van Driem also tentatively classified Pyu as an independent branch of Sino-Tibetan.[9]
The language was the vernacular of the Pyu states. But
Sanskrit and
Pali appeared to have co-existed alongside Pyu as the court language. The Chinese records state that the 35 musicians that accompanied the Pyu embassy to the Tang court in 800–802 played music and sang in the Fàn (
梵 "Sanskrit") language.[37]
^Miyake, Marc (2022-01-28). Alves, Mark; Sidwell, Paul (eds.). "The Prehistory of Pyu". Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society: Papers from the 30th Conference of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (2021). 15 (3): 1–40.
hdl:
10524/52498.
ISSN1836-6821.[verification needed]
^
Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU001) held at the Archaeological Museum at Halin [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.579711
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU004) around a funerary urn held by the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.581381
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of the quadrilingual Pyu inscription (PYU007) kept in an inscription shed on the grounds of the Myazedi pagoda in Pagan [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.579873
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of the quadrilingual Pyu inscription (PYU008) held at the Pagan museum, originally found in the grounds of the Myazedi pagoda [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/10.5281/zenodo.580158
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU010) kept in one of two inscription sheds on the grounds of the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.580597
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a bilingual Pyu inscription (PYU011) held at the Pagan museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.580282
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Sanskrit-Pyu bilingual inscription (PYU012) around the base of a Buddha statue held by the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.581383
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU022) held by the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.581468
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU025) on the base of a funerary urn held at the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.580777
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU028) kept in one of two inscription sheds on the grounds of the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.580791
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU029) kept in one of two inscription sheds on the grounds of the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.581217
^Miles, James, & Hill, Nathan W. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscriptions (PYU032) kept in an inscription shed on the grounds of a pagoda in Myittha [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.579848
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU039) kept in an inscription shed on the grounds of a monastery in Myittha [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.579725
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU042) kept in one of two inscription sheds on the grounds of the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set].
. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.581251
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU055) held by the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.806133
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU056) held by the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.806148
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU057) held by the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.806163
^
Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscriptions (PYU060) kept in the inscription shed outside the Archaeological Museum at Halin [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.579695
^
Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscriptions (PYU061) held at the Archaeological Museum at Halin [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.579710
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU063) held at the National Museum (Burmese: အမျိုးသား ပြတိုက်) in Rangoon [Data set]. Zenodo.
http://doi.org/doi:
10.5281/zenodo.806174
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription on a gold ring (PYU105) held by the Śrī Kṣetra museum [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.806168
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU160) discovered in Śrī Kṣetra [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.823725
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU163) [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.825673
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU164) [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.825685
^Miles, James. (2016). Documentation of a Pyu inscription (PYU167) [Data set]. Zenodo.
doi:
10.5281/zenodo.823753
^Luce, George. 1985. Phases of Pre-Pagan Burma: languages and history (volume 2). Oxford University Press.
ISBN0-19-713595-1. pp. 66–69.
Aung-Thwin, Michael (2005). The mists of Rāmañña: The Legend that was Lower Burma (illustrated ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
ISBN978-0-8248-2886-8.
Shafer, Robert (1943). "Further analysis of the Pyu inscriptions". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 7 (4): 313–366.
doi:
10.2307/2717831.
JSTOR2717831.