A Grammar of the Tibetan Language, and Colloquial (Classic Reprint): With Copious Illustrations, and Treating Fully of Spelling, Pronunication, and ... Various Forms of the Verb (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Hannah, Herbert Bruce Clerk

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1330204921 ISBN 13: 9781330204924

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from A Grammar of the Tibetan Language, and Colloquial: With Copious Illustrations, and Treating Fully of Spelling, Pronunication, and the Construction of the Verb, and Including Appendices of the Various Forms of the Verb For many centuries Tibet has been a terra incognita - little or nothing being known about it, as regards either its physical conditions or its inner life. Not, indeed, till a few years ago, when a British force entered Lhasa, the Place of the minor gods, was the veil withdrawn; and even then the withdrawal was only partial, transient, and very local. As for the language, though there have been several gallant attempts to plunge into the labyrinthine obscurities of its construction - notably on the part of Alexander Csoma de Koros in 1834 and subsequently of H. A. Jaschke - that also, it must be confessed, remains more or less a mystery; for no one, I take it, is likely to aver that the present state of our knowledge on the subject is at all satisfactory. Much, no doubt, has been contributed by the more recent labours of Rai Sarat Chandra Das Bahadur, Mr. Vincent Henderson, the Rev, Edward Amundsen, and Mr. C. A. Bell, I. C. S. But, in spite of all, even they, and every one else who has taken up the study, will admit that, wherever one treads, the ground still feels uncomfortably shaky, especially in regard to certain aspects of the so-called verb; wherever he gropes there is something that seems ever to elude him; and, amid the weird philological phantoms that flit uncertainly around in the prevailing gloom, his constant cry, I feel very sure, is still one for more light. I do not for one moment claim for this grammar the character of a scientific work. Many years ago when I was studying the language in Darjeeling, under Kazi Dawa Sam Dup a particularly intelligent and scholarly Tibetan - it was my habit during the course of my mornings lesson to make notes of what I then learnt. After a time these notes became so numerous that for my own

About this edition

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1330204921
• ISBN 13: 9781330204924
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 422