An Old Khotanese Reader
The Tale of Bhadra
Published on 26. August 2025
Book
Hardback
144 pages
978-3-7520-0917-0 (ISBN)
Description
This reader contains the complete text of the Buddhist 'Tale of Bhadra', the second chapter of the Old Khotanese Book of Zambasta, accompanied by a translation, commentary and glossary. All morphological forms occurring in the text are identified in the glossary and in the introduction, which also includes a survey by Jonathan A. Silk of sources and parallels in other languages. The volume thus provides everything required to make this text accessible either to a student who has already worked through the 'Introduction to Khotanese' which forms the first part of R. E. Emmerick's Handbook of Khotanese (BzI 51, 2024) or even to a complete beginner. It also contains substantial original material, particularly in the commentary and the etymological notes in the glossary, which will be of interest to specialists in Khotanese and in Iranian and Indo-European languages in general.
More details
Persons
Nicholas Sims-Williams, born 1949 in Chatham, England, obtained his PhD at Cambridge in 1978 with a thesis on Christian texts in Sogdian. He joined the staff of SOAS University of London in 1976, becoming Emeritus Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies in 2015. He is a Fellow of several academies and similar bodies including the British Academy. In his research he focuses on the Middle Iranian languages of Afghanistan and Central Asia, taking an equal interest in the languages themselves, with their Indo-European roots, and in their Central Asian setting, with its stimulating mixture of languages, cultures and religions.