Resumen de Photios and the Bulgar Language ('toga', tuğ)
This paper investigates a lexical gloss in the final recension of Photios’ Amphilochia (880s), in which the ‘barbarian’ word τῶγα is inserted into excerpts from John Lydos’ De magistratibus (c. 550) as an alternative contemporary term for an animal-hair crest or tassel on a royal standard. Examination of the terminological meaning and currency takes into account also τόγα found twice in De ceremoniis (c. 963–969) in reference to an elaborately crested imperial diadem. In both cases, τῶγα/τόγα is explicitly synonymous with τοῦφα (Late Latin tufa), a plume, crest, tuft or tassel. Exposing misconceptions in older scholarship, analysis of τῶγα/τόγα adduces semantic and morphological criteria in favour of the Turkic etymon tuğ (tūɣ), a royal battle standard distinguished by a horse- or yak-hair tassel(s), as widely documented among martial population-groups of the Eurasian steppe. Historical and cultural contexts tentatively point to a loanword from Danubian Bulgar, the élite linguistic superstratum of the Bulgar Khaganate, and thus a rare specimen of lexical interaction between medieval Greek and an Oğuric Turkic language in a Balkan setting.
