Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples

by Sims-Williams, Nicholas

• ISBN13: 9780197262856
• ISBN10: 0197262856
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-27
• Publisher: British Academy

Summary

The exciting recent developments in our understanding of the history of the Indo-Iranian languages and their speakers are surveyed and assessed by a group of internationally renowned linguists and archaeologists. In the last few years the materials available for the study of the older Indo-Iranian languages have increased dramatically: there have been sensational discoveries of texts in the ancient languages of northwest India and northern Afghanistan. Previously known data has been exploited in new ways using innovative techniques for compiling, manipulating and disseminating electronic text and digital images. And archaeological finds in India, Pakistan and Central Asia have given rise to new hypotheses concerning the history and pre-history of the Indo-Iranian peoples.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Abbreviations	viii
Hunting the hapax: Sir Harold W. Bailey (1899-1996)	1	(18)
†Ronald E. Emmerick
Archaeological models and Asian Indo-Europeans	19	(24)
J. K. Mallory
From the dialects of Old Indo-Aryan to Proto-Indo-Aryan and Proto-Iranian	43	(60)
Asko Parpola
The Nuristani languages	103	(16)
Almuth Degener
Gandhari and the other Indo-Aryan languages in the light of newly-discovered Kharosthi manuscripts	119	(16)
Richard Salomon
Pali and the languages of early Buddhism	135	(16)
K. R. Norman
The vocabulary of Buddhist Sanskrit: Problems and perspectives	151	(14)
O. Von Hinuber
The Avestan language and its problems	165	(24)
Jost Gippert
Scythian elements in Old Iranian	189	(14)
Alexander Lubotsky
Regional interaction in Central Asia and Northwest India in the Kidarite and Hephthalite periods	203	(22)
Frantz Grenet
Ancient Afghanistan and its invaders: Linguistic evidence from the Bactrian documents and inscriptions	225	(18)
Nicholas Sims-Williams
Tocharian and Indo-Iranian: Relations between two linguistic areas	243	(42)
Georges-Jean Pinault
Professor Sir Harold Bailey: An appreciation	285
†Ilya Gershevitch