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Chotano-Sogdica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Nicholas Sims-Williams
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Extract

The appearance of Sir Harold Bailey's Dictionary of Khotan Saka brings to completion a project conceived as long ago as 1934 and initiated in 1945 with the publication ofKhotanese texts, I. The next two decades saw the appearance of five further volumes of texts (Khotanese Buddhist texts, 1951, and Khotanese texts, II–v, 1954–63) as well as of a much-admired volume of lexical commentary, Khotanese texts, VI: Prolexis to the Book of Zambasta (1967). In style and method the Dictionary closely resembles the Prolexis, demonstrating once again its author's extraordinary erudition and ingenuity, this time on a truly monumental scale.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , February 1983 , pp. 40 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1983

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References

1 Bailey, H. W., Dictionary of Khotan Saka, xvii, 559. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.Google Scholar An invaluable adjunct to Bailey's Dictionary is provided by Emmerick, R. E. and , P. O, Studies in the vocabulary of Khotanese, I, Vienna, 1982 (to be reviewed in BSOAS, XLVI, 2).Google Scholar

2 In support of Bailey's suggestion that ZY (='t) ‘and’ may here have an ‘identifying’ or ‘explicative’ function one may cite the similar usage of the Semitic w- (cf. the material gathered by Baker, D. W., Vetus Testamentum, xxx, 1980, 129–36, especially the dyadic divine names such as Ugaritic kṯr w-ẖ;ss 'Kothar who is Hasis’). Another Sogd. example is the phrase n'šnyẖ cxryy 'ty 'nxrwzn ‘a rolling wheel, that is, zodiac’Google Scholar (M178.112–13, ed. Henning, BSOAS, XII, 2, 1948, 312).Google Scholar

3 e.g. s.vv. āṣka- (Sogd. ĉškw- etc.), Miora- (βlry'), jis'- (βy'yš'ntk, Yayn. ēš-), bata- (wty'), baśdā (βjyk etc.), vast- ('wšt-), hamdajs- (*'nfys-, cf. Lazard, Studia Iranica, v, 2, 1976, 299–300).Google Scholar

4 Occasionally purely theoretical bases, which do not in fact occur in Sogdian without additional prefix or suffix, are cited, as for instance pys- (for npys- ‘ to write’) s.v. pīsai ‘ painter(?)’. Other such forms are δy- (s.v. dajs- ‘ to burn’), pδ'wβ- (s.v. dvamdā), kβ- (s.v.neskauda-), čš- (s.v. vasḳi).

5 In this article I have avoided such inconsistencies but have otherwise followed the spelling (e.g. č for c) and conventions (e.g. the placing of a hyphen at the end of a verbal stem, whether light or heavy) which are employed by Bailey. In Khot. words I replace the subscript hook by an apostrophe for typographical simplicity.

6 If Khot. paha- ‘ cooked’ is from *pazwa-, with Bailey, rather than from *paxθa-, with Emmerick, AM, xvi, 1–2, 1971, 61, the development of *xw to h may be regarded as normal. In any case, before au one might reckon with a dissimilatory loss of *w.

7 On haiya- ‘soon’, which Bailey derives from *frăyah-, see Emmerick, Lautgeschichte und Etymologie (ed. M. Mayrhofer etal.), Wiesbaden, 1980, 171–2.

8 Note that the Chr. spelling pstxwmp- cited by Benveniste is merely a misreading.