Ronald E. Emmerick (†). A Handbook of Khotanese
Ronald E. Emmerick (†). A Handbook of Khotanese. Completed and edited by Mauro Maggi, John S. Sheldon, and Nicholas Sims-Williams. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2024, 347 p. (Beiträge zur Iranistik, 51)
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1In addition to numerous text editions and invaluable grammatical and lexical studies of Khotanese, the late Ronald E. Emmerick prepared an Introduction to Khotanese to guide students on their first steps in this important Middle Iranian language. He had written 24 of the projected 30 lessons before his untimely death in 2001, and although plans were made to complete and update his textbook, for many years only a preliminary version was available on the Internet. That long wait is now over, and it may be said at once that the appearance of this volume is a milestone in Iranian and Central Asian studies.
2The Handbook consists of two parts: “An Introduction to Khotanese,” with graded lessons introducing Khotanese grammar and texts; and “Khotanese and Tumshuqese: a survey,” based on the original draft of Emmerick’s chapter in The Iranian Languages (ed. Gernot Windfuhr; London: Routledge, 2009). Following a brief preface and an introduction to Khotanese phonetics and script, Part I presents the elements of Khotanese in 28 chapters, the original 24 by Emmerick plus 25–28 by Mauro Maggi and John S. Sheldon. Given the considerable variation in even the linguistically most archaic Khotanese manuscripts, the language chosen is naturally an idealized Old Khotanese based on the features of the Śūraṅgamasamādhisūtra (Śgs) and Book of Zambasta (Z), with distinctions noted where appropriate, e.g. Śgs käḍana vs. Z käḍäna ‘on account of’ (§6.11) or gyūna- vs. Z tcīra- ‘time, fois’ (§9.16). Each lesson contains notes on morphology, syntax, and lexicon, followed by vocabulary (with separate lists for idioms and Buddhist technical terms) and translation exercises from Khotanese to English and from English to Khotanese. The order of notes is to some extent arbitrary, but generally proceeds from morphology to syntax to comments on individual lexical items.
3Lesson 29, by Maggi, contains a passage from book 5 of Zambasta on the Buddha’s preaching of the Law to his father King Śuddhodana together with translation, vocabulary, and notes, thereby giving the reader experience of “real” text. Lesson 30, also by Maggi, then presents the Late Khotanese version of this story from the Mañjuśrīnairātmyāvatārasūtra, accompanied by translation, vocabulary, and notes as well as an extremely useful overview of the features distinguishing Late from Old Khotanese. The answers to both sets of exercises are conveniently provided in keys (p. 181–200 Khotanese–English, p. 201–213 English-Khotanese). These are followed by a Khotanese–English glossary (p. 214–245), English–Khotanese glossary (p. 246–263), and subject index (p. 264–272). The English–Khotanese glossary is particularly welcome as a pedagogical aid to the English–Khotanese translation exercises and to build up active knowledge of basic Khotanese vocabulary.
4Part II, the grammatical survey (p. 77–339), summarizes the most important features of (Old) Khotanese and the closely related but poorly attested Tumshuqese. Following an introduction, successive chapters treat the scripts, orthography, phonology, morphology, syntax, and “socio-linguistic features” (including loanwords). The editors have where necessary updated Emmerick’s original formulation and filled in missing sections, particularly in section 6.2 (“Sentence structure”) on types of clauses. The volume concludes with a bibliography (p. 340–347), which lists all works referenced in the survey and is quite complete up to 2023.
5The volume is beautifully produced and carefully edited. Additions to Emmerick’s original text, including new findings on Khotanese grammar, are clearly marked throughout by underscore brackets |_ _|. Among the few remaining errors in the text are the following: p. 146 (§28.16) ‘our king > ‘my king’; p. 208, 19 B.2 byāta yanda > byāta yanīru ‘you (pl.) remember’ (also p. 211, 24 B.3); p. 209, 19 B.6: mäḍāna > mulysgyaṣṣe; p. 209, 20 B.8 kṣīruvo’ > kṣīrañuvo’ (also p. 21 , 23 B.6); p. 211, 24 B.6 brātari rre > rrundi brāte. On p. 212, kā’ñu in 26 B.4 is not introduced until Lesson 27, and karä in 26 B.9 not until Lesson 28. On p. 307 §5.3.1 (2) and (4) the ambiguous “otherwise marked” should be “differently marked” or “marked in another way.”
6With the appearance of this Handbook, Khotanese studies have become accessible as never before to researchers in Iranian and Indo-Iranian philology, Buddhology, Central Asian history, and related disciplines. The three editors, Maggi, Sheldon, and Nicholas Sims-Williams, are to be commended for bringing this volume to publication and thereby introducing the riches of Khotanese to a new generation of scholars.
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Ronald I. Kim, « Ronald E. Emmerick (†). A Handbook of Khotanese », Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 45 | 2023, document 9, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2025, consulté le 17 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abstractairanica/57578 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15h3l
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