Sprigg, R. K.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereRoy Andrew Miller: Studies in the grammatical tradition in Tibet. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Series iii—Studies in the History of Linguistics, Vol. 6.) xix, 142 pp. Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1976. Guilders 40.R. K. SpriggBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 41 / Issue 01 / February 1978, pp 184 ­ 185DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00058122, Published online: 24 December 2009Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00058122How to cite this article:R. K. Sprigg (1978). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 41, pp 184­185 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00058122Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 17 Oct 2012184 REVIEWSThe Lokanandanataka is a dramatic versionof the Manicuda legend (Jataka) found in theTanjur. In his first chapter, Hahn discussesthe question of the alleged author, Candrago-min, and gives a list of some 55 works attri-buted to him in the Peking Tanjur. (To thesemay be added a lost musical work, according toa commentary on the Bol-mo bstan-bcos ofSakya Pandita.) Hahn briefly reviews theevidence for Candragomin's identity anddating, coming down in favour of a fifth-century date, and goes on to investigate insome detail the history of the text, with fulldiscussion of the contributions of Handura-kande, La Vallee Poussin, and others, sum-marizing his conclusions in a chart on p. 23.A study of the many errors and oddities in thetext leads Hahn to the conclusion that theversion included in the Zhva-lu Tanjur wastaken directly from the translator's imperfectautograph copy (one might almost say draft),a conclusion which fits in well enough with thedates of the translator and of the compilationof the Zhva-lu Tanjur.Hahn's problem is thus whether to produce(a) a reconstruction of the translator's auto-graph or (b) a reconstruction of what wouldhave been a ' correct' translation. HisTibetan text in fact approximates to (a), hisGerman translation to (6) (since the translator,in Hahn's opinion, has made errors in inter-preting the meaning of the Sanskrit, in anumber of cases). This seems a common-sensesolution in the circumstances.Hahn rates the Lokanandanataka highly asdramatic art, within the limitations of itsgenre; a judgement with which I heartilyagree. Here then is the earliest completeBuddhist drama, a worthy contribution toSanskrit literature, presented in an editionand translation with full critical apparatus : anotable contribution to Indo-Tibetan studies.The Vrttamdlastuti of Jfianasrimitra is acollection of examples of 149 different metricalcombinations. Hahn follows the same generalprocedure as for the Lokanandanataka, aimingto place the work and its author in theircontexts. He concludes that there are goodgrounds for identifying Jnanasrimitra with theeleventh-century philosopher of that name.In the course of his remarks on the languageof the Tibetan, Hahn picks out the syllable dagas being not a plural suffix but a device of thetranslator of the first part of the work (Shong-ston rDo-rje-rgyal-mtshan) to fill out the metre.The examples given seem somewhat indecisive,in the absence of both the original text and thetranslator himself. The same goes for theparallel usage of mams. Because mams isslipped in to fill out the line, does this make itany less plural ?In his remarks on ' Rhythmus ' Hahn againgives the impression of overanalysing his data.He concludes that the ' Baustein ' of Tibetanmetre is the trochee, its syllables distinguishedby stress rather than length, and backs this upby a quantitative grammatical analysis of theTibetan metrical foot. The trouble is that hisgrammatical assumptions are nowhere stated,though presumably they are those given in hisown manual of Tibetan grammar. Thedistinction between ' wordstem-particle/suffix ', ' two wordstems ', and ' two-syllableword ' seem otiose in this context, if indeedthey have any grammatical as distinct frometymological significance, which I rather doubt.Now Tibetan metre intuitively falls into two-syllabled feet, especially when heard recitedby a native reader. Furthermore, Tibetan poetsare very reluctant as a rule to begin a foot withone of the word-final particles such as kyi or tu.I believe that these simple observations are allthat Hahn is saying, and I do not see how theypoint to a ' trochee ' with initial stress. Hahnnowhere defines the ' word ', an entity whichis by no means obvious, especially in this textwhich is a tour de force of a very artificialnature, and yet surely stress has to be some-how related to the word.These minor criticisms apart (along with ageneral feeling that a sledgehammer is veryoften being used to crack a nut), I can onlyexpress the keenest admiration for Hahn'sthoroughness, perceptiveness, and sheerscholarly energy. Each metrical example isgiven in transliteration, and then in Germantranslation, all doubtful or noteworthy expres-sions are thoroughly annotated, the metre isidentified, and references are given to itsoccurrences in other texts. There follows theentire Mongolian version, then Tibetan-Mongolian and Mongolian-Tibetan lists ofequivalents. There is a full bibliography.Both these works represent significant stepsforward in our knowledge of Tibetan literatureand its Sanskrit originals.PHILIP DENWOODRoy ANDREW MILLER : Studies in thegrammatical tradition in Tibet. (Am-sterdam Studies in the Theory andHistory of Linguistic Science. Seriesin—Studies in the History of Lin-guistics, Vol. 6.) xix, 142 pp. Amster-dam : John Benjamins B.V., 1976.Guilders 40.Studies is a reprint of seven articles publishedbetween 1962 and 1973, three of which nowhave a page or so of addenda and corrigenda,while a fourth has been substantially revised.There are also four indexes, of which three areespecially useful: ' Grammatical and technicalterms and items ', ' Titles of texts and otherprimary sources (Tibetan, Indie, Chinese,etc.) ', and ' Names of peoples, places, andmiscellaneous terms (Tibetan, Indie, Chinese,etc.) ' ; a number of obvious misprints, suchas ' Mahapanhita' (p. 19), have, however,been left uncorrected.All but one of the seven articles are eitherstudies of early grammatical treatises andcommentaries, especially the two textsascribed to the mysterious Thonmi Sambhota,the Sum-cu-pa and the Rtags-kyi-'jug-pa, orresearch into problems in terminology andorthography; they contain perceptive, andeven enthralling, inquiries into, for example,REVIEWS 185the possible Tantric origin of the elusive gram-matical terms ali and kali, and into the prob-lem of the number of vowel units recognized bythe early grammarians, the four units indepen-dently symbolized in the orthography as thedbyangs bzhi {-i, -u, -e, -o) versus the five thatresult from adding to these the vowel -a depen-dently symbolized by syllabic symbols such asthe 30 gsal-byed (lea, kha, ga, etc.). The seventharticle, ' A grammatical sketch of ClassicalTibetan ', lies outside the scope of the book'stitle: it is a phonemic and grammaticalanalysis by Professor Miller himself, which hethen applies to two short Classical Tibetantexts. The first six articles, at least, unite togive a good impression of the struggles of theTibetan grammarians to master differences oflanguage typology and of written medium intheir attempt to be faithful to Sanskrit models.There are, however, a number of small butsignificant respects in which the author'stranslations are less than faithful to the gram-matical tradition that he is illustrating; theysuggest that he is not fully responsive to thecharacter of the Tibetan writing system.I have especially in mind his practice oftranslating the names of the symbols ka, kha,ga, etc. of the original (pp. 23-4 and elsewhere)as ' k, kh, g ', etc. (enticed, it would seem, bya desire to interpret them as ' phonemes ofTibet'). The Tibetan grammarians couldeasily have devised a means of symbolizinghis ' k, kh, g ', etc. through some such symbolsas " ] . . . , . . . , specifying only thesyllable-initial sounds, regardless of vowel;but their alphabet-cum-syllabary accords withtheir tradition of chanting texts, whereas amore abstract sort of symbolization such ask-, kh-, g- does not.The author's description of the Tibetanwriting system, jn the last of his studies, as' an alphabet based on syllabic principles ' istoo inexact. It is important, for a properunderstanding of the resources of the Tibetanscript, that the alphabetic and the syllabiccomponents be kept separate and distinct.Measured against a typical syllabic script suchas the Japanese kana series the 30 gsal-byed ofthe Tibetan system (IJ'-IST) are clearly to beregarded as a syllabary; indeed all ortho-graphic syllables in -a(-), such as mjal, sgam,and skra, are examples of the syllabic com-ponent of the script, though these threesyllables also exemplify its other component,the alphabetic, through symbols drawn fromthe sngon-'jug (m-), rjes-'jug (-1, -m), sa-mgo(«-), and ra-btags (-r-) categories. Some of thealphabetic elements are linear; others arenon-linear. The linear alphabetic elementscomprise the (five) sngon-'jug (pre-radicals),the (ten) rjes-'jug (finals), and the (two)yang-'jug (post-finals); the non-linear elementscomprise the superscript symbols 1-, r-, and s-(of the la-mgo, ra-mgo, and sa-mgo series), thesubscript symbols -y-, -r-, and -w- (of theya-btags, ra-btags, and wa-zur series), and,specially significant here, the superscriptsymbols -», -e, and -o, and the subscript -u, ofthe dbyangs series, which somewhat resemblesuch superscript and subscript modifiers asthe tilde and the cedilla of European scripts.Since the syllabic type of symbol symbolizesa syllabic vowel (-a) equally with an initialconsonant (or a non-syllabic vowel), e.g. k-,kh-, y-, h-, the author's remark ' gsal byed,which all sources agree has reference to" consonants " ', as opposed to ' the term ali 'which ' has reference to " vowels " ', gives amisleading prominence to the initial, andconsonant, component at the expense of thefinal, and vowel, component (though it is onlyfair to say that he does draw attention to theuse of the revealing term gsal-byed tha-ma ' inorder to express the vowel o ' in a passage citedfrom Zamatog). I would therefore avoid theterm consonant as a translation for gsal-byedin favour of the neutral, and therefore morerepresentative, term radical; for it is impos-sible to refer to the -a vowel except throughthe term gsal-byed (or, more specifically,Zamatog's gsal-byed tha-ma). My reason foremphasizing this view of the Tibetan scriptas a compound of alphabetic and syllabiccomponents is that it seems to me to solve thesecond of the two problems raised by theauthor, in the third of his papers, the meaningof gsal-byed in sloka 1 of the Sum-cu-pa.yi ge 'ah U kah li gnis/'ah li gsal byed 'i sogs bzi/kah li sum cu tham paho/.After considering other interpretations of' gsal byed ' here the author translates it as' make " clear " ', in spite of the peculiarsyntax: ' [if we] make clear the ali [theyconsist of] four, '», etc., [and] the kali arethirty ' ; but my view of the script suggests tome tnat the three lines should be translated' Symbols : vowel, consonant—two.The vowels: radical, the four in i, etc.The consonants total thirty ',in which the dependency symbolized -a of theradicals (gsal byed) is associated with the fourindependently symbolized vowels -i, etc., as amember of the ali category.A further minor but significant infidelity inthe author's translations is his anachronistichabit of translating yi-ge ' letter , ' symbol' by' phoneme '. This has the effect of giving whatis meant as a phonetic interpretation of thescript the appearance of a phonemic analysis.It can hardly be that the painstaking andconsidered labours of Bloomfield, Sapir,Swadesh, Twaddell, and Bloch, to name onlya few of the pioneers who strove to make thephoneme concept safe for linguistics, shouldhave been anticipated by an eighteenth-centuryTibetan orthoepist.R. K. SPRIGGDAVID L. SNELLGROVE and TADEUSZSKORUPSKI : The cultural heritage ofLadakh. Vol. 1. Central Ladakh.(Central Asian Studies.) xvi, 144 pp.,12 plates, map [on end-papers].Warminster: Aris and Phillips Ltd.,[1977]. £12.50.Now that Tibet is closed to Western scholarssomething of Tibetan culture survives and can

Studies in the Grammatical Tradition in Tibet by Roy Andrew Miller

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Studies in the Grammatical Tradition in Tibet by Roy Andrew Miller

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