Some Notes on ‘Gold’ and ‘Road’ in Zhangzhung and Tamangic

Isao Honda Earlier Classifi cations of TamangicTamangic is a language group belonging to the Tibeto-Burman family.In Shafer (1955), this language group is called the Gurung Branch, and three languages, Gurung, Murmi, and Thaksya, the latter two being now more commonly known as Tamang and Thakali, are included in the group.Later in his Introduction to Sino-Tibetan, Shafer defended his view by positing thirty-fi ve lexical similarities shared by Gurung, Murmi, and Thaksya (1967: 126-7).Since then, the unity of the group has been widely accepted.It has generally been agreed that we should add to the group, at least, the languages known as Manangba, Nar-Phu, Seke, and Chantyal (Mazaudon 1978(Mazaudon , 1996;; van Driem 2001a).The similarity between Gurung and Tamang was already recognized in Brandreth (1878) and Grierson (1909).In Grierson (1909: 180), Sten Konow further suggests that they are closely related to the Tibetan dialects.Shafer (1955) follows Konow by classifying the Tamangic group (i.e., his Gurung branch) into his Bodish Section, together with the Tibetan dialects and others, such as Takpa, Tsangla (i.e., Tshangla) and Gyarong.To date the proposition that Tamangic languages are close relatives of Tibetan has rarely been questioned.Martine Mazaudon (2005: 79-80), for instance, states, 'No claim is made here concerning the higher level classifi cation of the family [that is, the Bodish branch] but many dialects of Tibetan and Tamangish [i.e., Tamangic] are defi nitely closely related.'