--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "koenraad_elst" <koenraad.elst@...>
wrote:
> In V. Mair's series Sino-Platonic Papers, a few Chinese scholars
> have argued for a much larger presence of IE words in Chinese,
> effectively distinguishing Chinese from the other Sino-Tibetan
> languages by its IE component. The most accomplished contributor
> was the late Chang Tsung-Tung, who ends up with over a thousand IE
> words, on closer inspection most of them Germanic. Was he biased
> by his own life in Frankfurt with a German wife? At any rate,
> other Chinese scholars (and their nationality deserves emphasis,
> for Chinese scholarship tends to be chauvinistic, e.g. resenting
> the European presence in the Tarim mummies) have built on his
> theory and argued e.g. that the Yellow Emperor, the legendary
> founder of Chinese culture, was an IE immigrant.
Tsung-tung Chang himself believed the Chinese empire to have been
established by Indo-European conquerors, and identified Huang-ti
(the 'Yellow Emperor'), the legendary founder of the first Chinese
empire, as a "Caucasoid" Indo-European speaker, suggesting that his
name should be actually interpreted as 'Blond Heavenly God'. If this
were enough, Chang even found that the greater number of lexical
parallels to Old Chinese roots is obtained by a systematic
comparison with *Germanic* roots. He thought that, in consequence of
cultural contacts and migratory movements that, according to him,
would have occurred during the third millennium BCE, a Proto-Indo-
European vocabulary showing a Germanic structure became dominant in
Old Chinese, and Indo-European-speaking people gained the leadership
in the Old Chinese main language center.
In this connection, check out my Indo-Eurasian_research message
quoted at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50256
Victor Mair, the editor of _Sino-Platonic Papers_, clarified to me
in private he doesn't want to be held responsible for Tsung-tung
Chang's views. He tried for years to obtain from Dr. Chang's widow
the full list of Chinese-IE lexical comparanda (thousands of them)
found in Chang's unpublished notes, but he finally gave up because
Chang's widow did not agree to make the materials available
for scholarly publication.
This is the text of the obituary Dr. Wolfgang Beher, who has been a
student and assistant of Chang's for many years in Frankfurt, wrote
after Dr. Chang expired in 2000:
<< Dear all,
This is to break the sad news that Chang Tsung-tung, professor of
Chinese at the University of Frankfurt until his retirement last
fall, quite unexpectedly passed away at his home in Frankfurt on
Sunday at the age of 69.
Chang, who hailed from Taiwan and went to a Japanese school, held a
B.A.in economics from Taiwan University, which he pursued in
postgraduate studies at the University of Frankfurt, Germany, since
1956. In 1961 he received a Ph.D. in economics with a dissertation
entitled "Die Grundlagen der chinesischen Volkswirtschaftsplanung"
from Frankfurt University. It was published in two sequels as
Die Entwicklung der festlandchinesischen Landwirtschaft aus der
Sicht der chinesischen Regierung, Koeln : Westdeutscher Verlag, 1961,
118 pp. (Forschungsberichte des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Nr. 936)
Die chinesische Volkswirtschaft : Grundlagen, Organisation, Planung,
Koeln : Westdeutscher Verlag, 1965. - 193 pp. (Forschungsberichte
des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Nr. 1280)
During the mid-sixties he worked as a researcher at the Federal
Statistics Office of the German government in Wiesbaden and became a
German citizen when he acquired "unlimited" official status at that
institution. He also produced translations of Ming-Qing erotic
novels during that period, which he never dared to include into
lists of his publications.
In 1967 (?), he decided to quit the job in Wiesbaden, which
consisted in writing statistical reports on East and Central Asian
countries, to become Instructor in Modern Chinese at Frankfurt
University. In 1970 he received his second Ph.D. (this time in
Sinology) with his dissertation
Der Kult der Shang-Dynastie im Spiegel der Orakelinschriften. Eine
palaeographische Studie zur Religion im archaischen China,
Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1970, 331 pp. (Veroeffentlichungen des
Ostasiatischen Seminars der Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universitaet,
Frankfurt/Main,B1);
(reprinted 1994, Egelsbach, Frankfurt, Washington: Haensel-
Hoenhausen, Deutsche Hochschulschriften, Alte Reihe; 731)
This was a pathbreaking work, daring to present hundreds of bold and
explicit translations of oracle bone inscriptions into a Western
language. It was widely reviewed (most noticeable in a 100 pp.
review article by the late Father Serruys in T'oung-pao) during the
early and mid-seventies in sinological and anthropological journals.
Chang became full professor of Sinology at the University of
Frankfurt and successor of Richard Wilhelm as the head of the "China
Institute" in 1972. During the seventies and early eighties he was
mainly interested in Daoist philosophy. He produced Mss.
translations of the complete Laozi and Zhuangzi into German. Parts
of these translations have been incoroported into his book
Metaphysik, Erkenntnis und praktische Philosophie im Chuang-Tzu:
zur Neu-Interpretation und systematischen Darstellung der
klassischen chinesischen Philosophie, Frankfurt am Main : V.
Klostermann, 1982, 486 pp.
Although the philosophical parts of the book were not well received
by the mainstream sinological community, the book is still worth
reading for many ingenious and inspired translations of the Zhuangzi
and for its insistance on the reconstruction of the rhyming schemes
of the poetical parts of that text. When it first came out it was
even the subject of a one-hour radio-feature in the programme of the
national German Broadcasting Services (Deutschlandfunk).
Since the early eighties Chang embarked on his last major project --
the compilation of a comparative Indo-European-Old Chinese
dictionary. Over the years he became more and more convinced that
both languages are genetically related and, consequently, that the
Sino-Tibetan hypothesis is wrong. Preliminary results of his
occasionally rather swashbuckling and quixotic work on Sino-Indo-
European lexical comparisons can be gathered from his papers
"Zur Herkunft der mittelchinesischen Tonkategorien. Eine Untersuchung
aufgrund der Reimung im Shih-ching und des indogermanischen
Wortschatzes im archaischen Chinesisch", in: Ganz allmaehlich,
Aufsaetze zur ostasiatischen Literatur, insbesondere zur
chinesischen Lyrik (Festschrift G. Debon. Heidelberger
Bibliotheksschriften; 23): 49-65, Heidelberg: Heidelberger
Verlagsanstalt, 1986
Indo-European vocabulary in Old Chinese: a new thesis on the
emergence of Chinese language and civilization in the late
Neolithic Age, Sino-Platonic papers ; no. 7, 1988, 56 pp.
"Old Chinese initial consonant clusters as evidenced in Indo-European
vocabulary/Gu Hanyu fufuyin zai Yin-Ouyu cihui de yinzheng", in:
Yuchi Zhiping & Huang Shuxian eds., Hanyuyanxue guoji xueshu
yantaohui lunwenji (Yuyan Yanjiu 1991 nian zengkan): 19-24, Wuhan:
Huazhong Ligong Daxue, 1991
He leaves several _thousand_ further lexical equations in card-files
and densly written manuscripts.
Sinology has lost a sensitive translator, an inspiring teacher, and a
brilliantly irreverent, heretic and eccentric scholar.
Wolfgang Behr
Bochum, 28.VI.2000 >>
Hope this is of some help,
Francesco