В. Г. Гузев. Избранное

489 The Turkic Runic script: Is the hypothesis of its indigenous origin no more viable? enous nature of this script. V. Thomsen ends his consideration of obvious and. presumable pictograms as follows: “Il va sans dire que ‘la verification exacte de ces rapprochements est hors de ‘question” 1 . E. D. Polivanov also refrains from a further discussion of the “ideographic motif”: “...for it would imply taking a deliberately dangerous path, which is devoid of the criterion of authenticity” 2 . As for the scholars (A. C. E in re, A. Mahmutov et al.) who approached the idea about pictographic origin of the runic signs without having formed their own view concerning the OTRS organization, without having taken into consideration the experience of grammatology, they were able to make only superficial speculations, unpersuasive argumentation and unmethodical in- terpretation of the material 3 . Nevertheless, the contradiction existing since the decipherment of the OTRS — between the presence of indications in favour of its indigenous- ness, on the one hand, and scholar’s firm belief in its foreign origin, on the other — remains unsolved. The following observation of grammatologists, although it is more rel- evant to the modern period, seems to be rather useful for the solving of this contradiction: writing systems invented under the conditions of intensive cultural exchange and contact with languages which have already had their writing systems normally undergo rapid evolution through the same stag- es — pictorial, syllabic and verbal 4 . In J. Friedrich ’ s view, the writing systems of this kind may be called “imitatively created” 5 . The obvious background of the OTRS invention was marked by a sig- nificantly increased rate of cultural exchange in the contact zone of two su- percivilizations — those of the Far East; (Chinese) and the Near East (Se- mitic-Iranian) in the Pre-Turkic and Ancient Turkic periods ( the first half and middle of the 1st millennium B. C.). Another factor which favoured the emergence of the OTRS consisted in the acute need of the establishing Tur- kic states of perfect (from the point of view of that period.) communicative means for administrative, political and ideological purposes. The ways for the solving of these problems were rather limited: 1. The use of foreign languages and writings for the domestic needs of the Turkic Empire. Such possibility was realized in the First Turkic Qaghanat, 1 Thomsen V., op. cit., p. 79. 2 Polivanov E. D., op.cit., p. 178. 3 Emre A. C., Sur l’origine de l’alphabet vieux turc (dit alphabet runique de Siberie). Istanbul, 1938; А. Махмутов Как возник древнетюркский алфавит. Исследования по тюркологии. Алма-Ата 1969, рр. 141–147. 4 Friedrich J., op. cit., P. 194–206; V. B. Kasevich; op. cit., p. 152. 5 Friedrich J., op. cit., pp.194.