Review: Wörterbuch der tibetischen Schriftsprache by Herbert Franke, Jens-Uwe Hartmann and Thomas O. Höllmann (original) (raw)
Even though the study of Tibet and her language and literature has matured considerably since its early beginnings in the 19th century, there are still only few bilingual dictionaries of the Tibetan language, most being mere wordlists. Since the 1960, when Tibetan exiles arrived in India and subsequently in the West, a multitude of hitherto unknown or inaccessible literary sources became available, but the situation did not improve considerably. As a result, scholars and students of the Tibetan language still have to rely on the excellent dictionaries published by Heinrich August Jäschke (1817–1883) in 1871 (German version, English version followed in 1881) and Sarat Chandra Das (1849–1917) in 1902. It is all the more pleasing to see the publication of the ambitious Wörterbuch der tibetischen Schriftsprache or ‘Dictionary of Literary Tibetan’ by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften). To date four volumes up to the letter tha have been published in 34 fascicles and, at the time of writing this review, more fascicles are being published in rapid succession. The Wörterbuch definitely has the potential of becoming the most comprehensive and largest bilingual dictionary of the Tibetan language. Moreover, it is the first attempt at compiling a bilingual standard Tibetan dictionary, meeting scholarly criteria and providing both textual references as well as a German translation for each term.1 Its aim is a description of the written Tibetan language from its beginnings in the 8th century to the 19th century. ...
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