Essays on a range of linguistic, anthropological and demographic topics including oral histories in honour of Luise Hercus; individual essays separately annotated.

The Upani?ads are rich and complex Sanskrit Hindu scriptures dating back to the 8th century BCE and are a staple of world religion courses across the globe. In this volume, Signe Cohen guide readers through on the thirteen "Classical Upani?ads," those generally regarded as the oldest: Bhadrayaka, Chandogya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Isa, Kena, Katha, Mundaka, Svetasvatara, Mandukya, Prasna, Kausitaki, and Maitri Upanisad. Where most survey textbooks present a cursory overview of these texts, The Classical Upani?ads: A Guide provides a nuanced but accessible exploration of the Upani?ads that will benefit both scholars, students, and general readers alike. This volume explores the historical, geographical, and social context of the Classical Upani?ads and discusses issues of dating, authorship, and transmission of the texts. Cohen also breaks down central ideas in the Upani?ads, such as atman, brahman, karma, reincarnation, moksa, knowledge, and sacred sounds (mantras). The text also discusses the importance of the Upani?ads for Hinduism and Indian culture, as well as the reception of the Upani?ads in the West. Through exploring these works, their key characters and ideas, and their impact on Hinduism's core beliefs, Cohen provides the reader a thorough but approachable entry into these seminal texts.

For the first time, the vowels of Avestan are studied comprehensively on the synchronic and diachronic level. All vowel changes which have occurred after the Proto-Iranian stage are discussed, and they are placed in a relative chronology. The phonological system of Avestan at various stages of its development is reconstructed, and the relationship between Old Avestan and Young Avestan is reviewed. Also, many philological details are discussed. This volume is of interest for Indo-Iranian philology, for Indo-European linguistics and for Iranian linguistics.

This collection of articles and review essays, including many hard to find pieces, comprises the most important and fundamental studies of Indian logic and linguistics ever undertaken. Frits Staal is concerned with four basic questions: Are there universals of logic that transcend culture and time? Are there universals of language and linguistics? What is the nature of Indian logic? And what is the nature of Indian linguistics? By addressing these questions, Staal demonstrates that, contrary to the general assumption among Western philosophers, the classical philosophers of India were rationalists, attentive to arguments. They were in this respect unlike contemporary Western thinkers inspired by existentialism or hermeneutics, and like the ancient Chinese, Greeks, and many medieval European schoolmen, only—as Staal says—more so. Universals establishes that Asia's contributions are not only compatible with what has been produced in the West, but a necessary ingredient and an essential component of any future human science.

"In a scholarly career spanning more than fifty years, David Seyfort Ruegg has produced seminal studies on a remarkable range of figures, texts, and issues in Indian and Tibetan thought. His essays on Madhyamaka---many of them classics in the field---are gathered together here for the first time, reminding us of Professor Ruegg's enduring contributions to the field of Buddhist studies."---Donald S. Lopez, University of Michigan --

The thirty-four essays in this volume follow the particular interests of Leonard van der Kuijp, whose groundbreaking research in Tibetan intellectual and cultural history imbued his students with an abiding sense of curiosity and discovery. As part of Leonard van der Kuijp’s research in Tibetan history, as he patiently and expertly revealed treasures of the Tibetan intellectual tradition in fourteenth-century Tsang, or seventeenth-century Lhasa, or eighteenth-century Amdo, he developed an international community of colleagues and students. The thirty-four essays in this volume follow the particular interests of the honoree and express the comprehensive research that his international cohort have engaged in alongside his generous tutelage over the course of forty years. He imbued his students with the abiding sense of curiosity and discovery that can be experienced through every one of his writings, and that can be found as well in these new essays in intellectual, cultural, and institutional history by Christopher Beckwith, the late Hubert Decleer, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Jörg Heimbel and David Jackson, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy, Nathan Hill, Matthew Kapstein, Kurtis Schaeffer, Michael Witzel, Allison Aitken, Yael Bentor, Pieter Verhagen, Todd Lewis, William McGrath, Peter Schwieger, Gray Tuttle, and others.

This introduction to Zoroastrianism presents it as a living faith, with a coherent theology and an ethic of good thoughts, good words and good deeds. The text also contains a glossary of Zoroastrian terms.

Writing in English, German, or French, more than 300 authors provide a historical description of the beginnings and of the early and subsequent development of thinking about language and languages within the relevant historical context. The gradually emerging institutions concerned with the study, organisation, documentation, and distribution are considered as well as those dealing with the utilisation of language related knowledge. Special emphasis has been placed on related disciplines, such as rhetoric, the philosophy of language, cognitive psychology, logic and neurological science.

The second edition of A Dictionary of Tocharian B includes substantially all Tocharian B words found in regularly published texts, as well as all those of the London and Paris collections published digitally (digital publication of the Paris collection is still incomplete), and a substantial number of the Berlin collection published digitally. The number of entries is more than twenty per cent greater than in the first edition. The overall approach is decidedly philological. All words except proper names are provided with example contexts. Each word is given in all its various attested morphological forms, in its variant spellings, and discussed semantically, syntactically (where appropriate), and etymologically. New to the second edition is the assignment, where possible, of the examples of the word's use to their exact chronological period (Archaic, Early, Classical, Late/Colloquial). This dating provides the beginning of the study of the Tocharian B vocabulary on a historical basis. Included are also a reverse English-Tocharian B index and, another innovation to this edition, a general index verborum of Indo-European cognates. Douglas Q. Adams, PhD in Linguistics (1972), University of Chicago, is currently professor emeritus at the University of Idaho. His publications have been largely devoted to explorations of the lexicon and morphology of Proto-Indo-European and, particularly, of Tocharian. He was co-author with James P. Mallory of Queen's University, Belfast, of The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (2006).