6th International Symposium Oriental Studies

95 The 6 th International Symposium on Oriental Ancient Documents Studies Wu Yingzhe The Last-words of the Messire of Xiao Chala in the Khitan Small Script The Epitaph of Messire of Xiao Chala ( 蕭查剌相公墓志銘 ; 1113 A.D.) is also known as The Epitaph of Xiao-Min ( 蕭旼墓志銘 ). It is a precious historical material discovered in recent years. There are some last-words from the tomb owner recorded in the epitaph. According to the author’s opinion, the last-words are bilingual. Through the comparison of two languages, and reference to mediaeval Mongolian characteristics, the author of the paper interprets the meaning of the Khitan characters denoting “say most often”, “take to wife”, “get up”, “rank”, “leave”, “can”, “face to face”, “meet”, “soon” and “rare”. Meanwhile, according to the wording in habits and the phonetic characteristics of mediaeval Mongolian, the author suggests pronunciations of some Khitan characters reading: reads “es”, reads “ul”, reads “od” etc. Key words: Khitan Small Script, epitaph, loan-words, interpretation.