Gāndhārī and the other Indo-Aryan languages in the light of newly-discovered Kharoṣṭhī manuscripts

This chapter focuses on a language whose very name was first proposed by the great scholar whose career is celebrated in this volume. For it was Harold Bailey's 1946 article whose title ‘Gāndhārī’ introduced that name for the first time. The discussion covers the varieties of literary Gāndhārī, the historical development of Gāndhārī as a literary language, the character of literary Gāndhārī, and Gāndhārī and the modern language of the northwest.

Scythian elements in Old Iranian

This chapter examines whether there are Scythian loanwords in the Old Iranian languages, namely Avestan and Old Persian. Since all three languages are closely related, it is not simple to prove borrowing. Old Persian vocabulary contains many words which must be of Iranian but non-Persian origin. These words are usually attributed to Median, but it is in principle equally possible that they are borrowed from any other Iranian language, including Scythian. Only when we find phonological features which are characteristic of Scythian can we be confident that we are indeed dealing with a Scythian loanword.

Professor Sir Harold Bailey: An appreciation

This chapter details the life and career of Sir Harold Bailey. It also describes the contents of his library. Bailey joined the Ancient India and Iran Trust in order to secure a permanent home for his books, where they would serve no longer only himself as they had done in Southacre and in Queens' College, but also other scholars both during and after his lifetime. His is a library that eminently deserves preservation, since for the continuation of research on the lines evolved by him there is not to be found in the British Isles a compact study space more thoughtfully equipped. Dating back longest is the acquisition of Iranological books and articles. These Bailey began to assemble when in 1929 he became at the London School of Oriental Studies the first holder of its Lectureship in Iranian Studies. If the Irano-Indian holdings are impressive, so is the library's equipment in respect of Indo-European language groups other than the Indo-Iranian.

Tocharian and Indo-Iranian: relations between two linguistic areas

Since the beginning of Tocharian studies, the two languages of the ‘Tocharian’ group have interested Iranianists as well as Indologists because of the proximity of the sites where Tocharian manuscripts and those in Iranian languages, such as Khotanese and Sogdian, were discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century. In respect of the contents of the texts, which are almost all of Buddhist inspiration, Tocharian studies fall into the Indian sphere. This chapter focuses on lexical problems in Tocharian which need to be approached from the perspective of language contact, in order to exemplify the problems of research in this field.

Regional interaction in Central Asia and Northwest India in the Kidarite and Hephthalite periods

In a previous paper the author attempted to show that there was a deep crisis in Sogdiana and Bactria, but that this crisis mostly affected the second half of the fourth century and, at least in Sogdiana, was quickly followed by a new phase of intense urbanisation, which provided the base for the economic and cultural flowering of the seventh century. This chapter stresses the contributions of the Kidarite and Hephthalite states, which can be credited for an opening up of Sogdiana and for the dissemination of elements of Indian culture in regions which they had not reached even in Kushan times. Besides evidence provided by texts and coins, the chapter makes use of recent archaeological discoveries and other material which is still too little known. The chapter also draws on conversations with Boris Marshak, the excavator of Panjikent, and with Etienne de la Vaissiere, whose wrote a thesis on the subject entitled Histoire des marchands sogdiens.

Archaeological models and Asian Indo-Europeans

Archaeological attempts to discern prehistoric linguistic dispersals are packaged in a variety of models that must all rest on at least one assumption: the archaeological record in some form or another provides proxy evidence for linguistic entities or, at least, language shift. All of these models are well rehearsed in the area of Indo-European dispersals in Asia, particularly with reference to Indo-Iranian origins and migrations. This chapter discusses the following models: continuity, discontinuity, geographical, cultural, and contact models.

Ancient Afghanistan and its invaders: Linguistic evidence from the Bactrian documents and inscriptions

During the last ten years the corpus of Bactrian texts has increased dramatically. The dates of the Bactrian documents range from 342 to 781 a.d., a span of more than four centuries extending through the Kushano-Sasanian, Kidarite, Hephthalite, and Turkish periods, well into Islamic times. Apart from a few unidentifiable fragments and texts of uncertain type, the new Bactrian documents may be divided into four groups: (i) legal documents such as contracts and receipts; (ii) lists and accounts; (iii) letters; and (iv) Buddhist texts. As a result of these new finds, the corpus of Bactrian available for study is now much larger-perhaps as much as a hundred times larger—than it was ten years ago. Our knowledge of the Bactrian lexicon has increased correspondingly, perhaps by three or four times. This chapter examines this enlarged Bactrian vocabulary for linguistic data in the form of names and titles, loanwords and calques, in which one may hope to identify traces of the languages of the many peoples who held sway in Bactria during the course of its long and turbulent history.

The Avestan language and its problems

This chapter analyses the problems associated with the Avestan language. A consensus has been reached both in the analysis of individual Avestan word-forms and in the interpretation of the texts which depends on this analysis. However, the Avestan tradition still conceals many a riddle to be solved by later generations of investigators. In principle, this may be due to three well-known reasons: Firstly, we have to take into account the fact that the Avestan corpus is rather small: less than 1,700,000 characters if arranged in a plain text format. The second reason why we cannot expect to find ad hoc solutions to the problems offered by the Avestan tradition is the fact that we do not dispose of an immediate descendant of the Avestan language in Middle and New Iranian times. The third reason why we are still far from being able to solve all the riddles posed by the Avestan tradition lies in the circumstances of the transmission of the Avestan texts themselves. The chapter suggests that further progress in Avestan studies can only be achieved by taking a closer look at the similarities and interdependencies which connect the Avestan language with Vedic Old lndic.

Hunting the hapax: Sir Harold W. Bailey (1899–1996)

This chapter presents a speech that details the life and career of Harold Walter Bailey. It also addresses the question of whether he himself coined the phrase ‘hunting the hapax’. Bailey was very fond of hapaxes and he collected them not in order to do away with them but to try to account for them as what he would call ‘interesting words’. This approach has of course some justification when one is dealing with a language that is no longer spoken and that is known only as a result of studying a limited text corpus. In fact, however, Bailey's Dictionary of Khotan Saka contains hapaxes on almost every page, many of which will not survive the test of time—even though Bailey has been at great pains to defend them.

The vocabulary of Buddhist Sanskrit: Problems and perspectives

This chapter analyses the problems associated with Buddhist Sanskrit vocabulary. The obvious reason for these problems is the well-known linguistic diversity that prevailed in the vast area of India in ancient times as it does today. The first to experience them were most likely the early Buddhist monks, when they propagated their faith and tried to make themselves understood beyond Magadha, the original home of Buddhism, and then in the course of time even beyond India. These problems were gradually exported from India, as Buddhists in Central Asia and finally in China started to struggle with strange Sanskrit — or even worse Gāndhārī — words in their attempt to translate new and alien concepts into Chinese and other languages.