Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T08:06:23.335Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lurching towards ergativity: expressions of agency in the Niya Documents1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Stephanie W. Jamison
Stephanie W. Jamison
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Niya Documents are a collection of some 760 or so texts, on wood, paper, leather, silk, etc., which were found (primarily) by Sir Aurel Stein in his Central Asian expeditions of 1900–01, 1906 07, 1913–14, at several ruined sites around Niya on the southern Silk Route. They are short texts, ranging from sentence fragments and brief lists to well-preserved connected texts of up to long lines, and they contain administrative records (deeds, bills of sale, etc.) and administrative correspondence (about criminal and civil complaints, tax collection, governmental management, and dangers from without) of the kingdom of Shan-Shan or Kroraina. One of their remarkable features to an indologist is that they are more or less securely datable, to a period of approximately 90 years in the third century A.D.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 64 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atwood, Ch. 1991. ‘Life in the third-fourth century Cadh'ota. A survey of information gathered from the Prakrit documents found north of Minfeng (Niyä)’, Central Asiatic Journal 35, 161–199.Google Scholar
Boyer, A. M., Rapson, E. J. and Senart, E.. Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan Part I (1920), II (1927), E. J. Rapson and P. S. Noble, Part III (1929).Google Scholar
Brough, J. 1965. ‘Comments on third-century Shan-shan and the history of Buddhism’, BSOAS XXVIII/3582–612.Google Scholar
Bubenik, V. 1996. The structure and development of Middle Indo-Aryan dialects. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.Google Scholar
Burrow, Th. 1935. ‘Tocharian elements in the Kharoṣṭhi documents from Chinese Turkestan’, JRAS, 667–675.Google Scholar
Burrow, Th. 1937. The language of the Kharoṣṭhī documents from Chinese Turkestan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burrow, Th. 1937– 1939. ‘Further Kharoṣṭhī documents from Niya’, BSOAS IX/11–23.Google Scholar
Burrow, Th. 1940. A translation of the Kharoṣṭhi documents from Chinese Turkestan. (James G. Furlong Fund.) London: The Royal Asiatic Society.Google Scholar
Dixon, R. M. W. 1994. Ergativity. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics.) Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fussmann, G. 1989. ‘Gāndhārī écrite, Gāndhārī parlée’, in Caillat, C., Dialectes dans les littératures indo-aryennes, Paris: Publications de l'lnstitut de Civilisation Indienne. Édition et diffusion de Boccard. 433–501.Google Scholar
Meicun, Lin, 1990. ‘A new Kharoṣṭhī wooden tablet from China’, BSOAS 53/2, 283–291.Google Scholar
Masica, C. P. 1991. The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Salomon, R. 1986. ‘A new Kharoṣṭhī document from Central Asia’, BEI 4, 341–351.Google Scholar
Salomon, R. 1988. ‘Two new Kharoṣṭhī documents from Central Asia’, Central Asiatic Journal 32, 98–108.Google Scholar
Wright, J. C. 1998. ‘Memoir: Thomas Burrow, 1909–1986’, Proc. Brit. Acad. 97, 235–254.Google Scholar