Plurilingualism in Traditional Eurasian Scholarship

Thinking in Many Tongues
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-46466-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 3, 484 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 956 g

Reihe: Ancient Languages and Civilizations

Was plurilingualism the exception or the norm in traditional Eurasian scholarship? This volume presents a selection of primary sources—in many cases translated into English for the first time—with introductions that provide fascinating historical materials for challenging notions of the ways in which traditional Eurasian scholars dealt with plurilingualism and monolingualism. Comparative in approach, global in scope, and historical in orientation, it engages with the growing discussion of plurilingualism and focuses on fundamental scholarly practices in various premodern and early modern societies—Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Jewish, Islamic, Ancient Greek, and Roman—asking how these were conceived by the agents themselves. The volume will be an indispensable resource for courses on these subjects and on the history of scholarship and reflection on language throughout the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Most, Glenn W.

Schäfer, Dagmar

Saarela, Mårten Söderblom

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Mehrsprachigkeit
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer and Michele Loporcaro

Part 1 Language Diversity

1.1 Introduction

Glenn W. Most

1.2 The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9)

Joel S. Baden

1.3 A 5th-Century BCE Greek Historian Discusses the Pelasgians and the Origins of the Greek Language

Herodotus, Histories

Filippomaria Pontani

1.4 Language Arose from Spontaneous Feelings and Reactions to Nature

The Doctrine of Epicurus (4th Century BCE) and Lucretius (1st Century BCE)

Filippomaria Pontani

1.5 Language Diversity Is a Result of Social Interaction

Xunzi’s View on Plurilingualism in 3rd-Century BCE China

Dagmar Schäfer

1.6 Language Is a Collective Product of Mankind

Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History (1st Century BCE)

Filippomaria Pontani

1.7 A 1st-Century BCE/CE Greek Geographer Discusses What a “Barbarian” Language Is in Terms of Homer and the Carians

Strabo, Geography

Filippomaria Pontani

1.8 Plurilingualism in China and Inner Asia in the 12th Century CE

“Khitan Reciting Poetry”

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Part 2 Etymology

2.1 Introduction

Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer and Michele Loporcaro

2.2 An Early Post-Vedic Treatise on the Etymological Explanation of Words

Yaska, Etymology

Johannes Bronkhorst

2.3 A 4th-Century BCE Greek Philosophical Analysis of the Methods and Limits of Etymology

Plato, Cratylus

Glenn W. Most

2.4 A 1st-Century BCE Roman Polymath’s Explanation of the Mysteries of Latin

Varro, On the Latin Language

Glenn W. Most and Michele Loporcaro

2.5 A 1st-Century CE Stoic Etymological and Allegorical Explanation of Greek Gods

Cornutus, Compendium of Greek Theology

Glenn W. Most

2.6 Zheng Xuan and Commentarial Etymology (2nd Century CE)

Dagmar Schäfer

2.7 Etymology in the Most Important Reference Encyclopedia of Late Antiquity (ca. 600?CE)

Isidore of Seville, Etymologies

Michele Loporcaro and Glenn W. Most

2.8 Buddhist Etymologies from First-Millennium India and China

Works by Vasubandhu, Sthiramati and Paramartha

Roy Tzohar

2.9 An Influential Latin Dictionary and Its Etymologies (12th Century CE) in the Linguistic Landscape of Medieval Europe

Hugutio of Pisa’s Derivationes

Michele Loporcaro

Part 3 Lexicography

3.1 Introduction

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

3.2 Lexicality and Lexicons from Mesopotamia

Markham J. Geller

3.3 Translating Oriental Words into Greek

A Papyrus Glossary from the 1st Century CE

Filippomaria Pontani

3.4 The Making of Monolingual Dictionaries

The Prefaces to the Lexica of Hesychius (6th Century CE) and Photius (9th Century CE)

Filippomaria Pontani

3.5 A 10th-Century CE Byzantine Encyclopedia and Lexicon

Suda, Letter Sigma

Glenn W. Most

3.6 A Dictionary of the Imperial Capital

Shen Qiliang’s Da Qing quanshu (1683)

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Part 4 Translation

4.1 Introduction

Dagmar Schäfer and Markham J. Geller

4.2 Translators of Sumerian

The Unsung Heroes of Babylonian Scholarship

Markham J. Geller

4.3 The Earliest and Most Complete Story of the Translation of the Pentateuch into Greek (2nd Century BCE)

The Letter of Aristeas

Benjamin G. Wright III

4.4 “Faithful” and “Unfaithful” Translations

The Greco-Latin Tradition in Jerome’s Letter to Pammachius (395/396?CE)

Filippomaria Pontani

4.5 A 4th-Century CE Buddhist Note on Sanskrit-Chinese Translation

Dao’an’s Preface to the Abridgement of the Mahaprajñaparamita Sutra

Bill M. Mak

4.6 An 8th-Century CE Indian Astronomical Treatise in Chinese

The Nine Seizers Canon by Qutan Xida

Bill M. Mak

4.7 Two 8th-Century CE Recensions of Amoghavajra’s Buddhist Astral Compendium, Treatise on Lunar Mansions and Planets

Bill M. Mak

4.8 Arabic and Arabo-Latin Translations of Euclid’s Elements

Sonja Brentjes

Part 5 Writing Systems

5.1 Introduction

Dagmar Schäfer, Markham J. Geller and Glenn W. Most

5.2 A 4th-Century BCE Greek Philosophical Myth about the Egyptian Origins of Writing

Plato, Phaedrus

Glenn W. Most

5.3 A Buddhist Mahayana Account of the Coming into Being of Language

The Descent into La?ka Scripture (La?kavatarasutra)

Roy Tzohar

5.4 Stories of Origin

Ibn al-Nadim, Kitab al-Fihrist

Sonja Brentjes

5.5 Inventing or Adapting Scripts in Inner Asia

The Jin and Yuan Histories and the Early Manchu Veritable Records Juxtaposed (1340s–1630s)

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

5.6 An Essay on the Use of Chinese and Korean Language in Late 18th-Century CE Choson

Yu Tukkong, “Hyang’o pan, Hwao pan”

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Glenn W. Most, PhD (Yale/Tübingen, 1980) is a classicist and comparatist. He retired in November 2020 as Professor of Greek Philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and remains a regular Visiting Professor on the Committee on Social Thought (University of Chicago) and External Scientific Member of the MPIGW, Berlin. He has published numerous articles and books on Classics, philosophy, the history of religion, and comparative literature, among other fields.

Dagmar Schäfer, PhD (University of Würzburg, 1996) is a sinologist and historian of science. She is Director of Department 3 (Artifacts, Action, Knowledge) at the MPIWG, Berlin, and Honorary Professor at Freie Universität Berlin. Author of The Crafting of the 10,000 Things (University of Chicago Press, 2011), she has published widely on the premodern history of China (Song–Ming) and the changing role of artifacts in the creation, diffusion, and use of scientific and technological knowledge.

Mårten Söderblom Saarela, PhD (Princeton University, 2015) is a historian of the Qing empire and Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei. He is the author of The Early Modern Travels of Manchu: A Script and Its Study in East Asia and Europe (Penn, 2020), and co-editor of Saksaha: A Journal of Manchu Studies.