Text, script and language in Bactria and Serindia

This collective volume unites ten papers by international specialists in history, philology, linguistics, palaeography and archaeology, dealing with texts written in Bactrian, Khotanese, Tumshuqese, Tocharian, and Gāndhārī (Niya-Prakrit) from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Northwest China, as well as with classical Chinese Buddhist scriptures and the newly discovered Almosi inscriptions of Tajikistan. With studies of the Kharoṣṭhī, Brāhmī, Graeco-Bactrian scripts and the “unknown Kushan script”, the book presents important advances in longstanding problems of Central Asian philology. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working on cultural and linguistic interactions in Kushan and post-Kushan times.

The book is addressed primarily to a scholarly audience. It unites ten articles on history, palaeography and linguistics in Central Asia. Ching Chao-jung discusses the translation procedure of Buddhist Sanskrit texts into Chinese and the consequences this has for the interpretation of the geographical terms Bactria and Tukharistan. Alessandro Del Tomba makes an edition and comparative study of the Khotanese and Sanskrit Mahāvaidehaghr̥ta, a medical text that is very difficult to interpret. The Sanskrit text is very corrupt and a detailed analysis and reconstruction are made. Federico Dragoni studies the origin and development of the so-called subscript hook of Khotanese Brāhmī, which is a genuinely Khotanese addition to the Brāhmī script that was originally designed for Sanskrit. Pavel B. Lurje discusses the history of the decipherment of the “unknown script” of Bactria, with important additions and corrections. Francesca Michetti studies the origin on Bactrian final -o by looking systematically at the oldest Bactrian outcomes of Old Iranian endings. Miyamoto Ryoichi studies the gods Wakhsh and Rām-sēt in Bactrian documents. Ogihara Hirotoshi gives a re-analysis of the ownership clause in Tumshuqese sale contracts, which are very difficult to decipher, and where each new reading and interpretation changes our understanding of the poorly attested Tumshuqese language. Michaël Peyrot investigates the Brāhmī diacritic ä, which is found in Tocharian and Khotanese, and constitutes an addition in these two varieties of Brāhmī compared to the original Brāhmī variants for Sanskrit. Niels Schoubben discusses three cases of loanwords between Gāndhārī and Eastern Middle Iranian and offers an annotated translation of a Gāndhārī sale contract written on silk. Nicholas Sims-Williams makes a new edition of the Bactrian inscription of Ayrtam.

• Edited by Chao-jung Ching
• Edited by Michael Peyrot