Old Tibetan documents are the oldest extant monuments of the Tibetan language. Their exploration, although successfully flourishing in the last two decades, has been considerably impeded by often unintelligible and obsolete vocabulary that was bound to the particular cultural and political context of the Tibetan Empire that collapsed in the 840s CE. The present publication aims at clarifying a part of this vocabulary by examining nearly 400 Old Tibetan compounds. In Part I an attempt has been undertaken to define a compound and to provide the first linguistic classification of Old Tibetan compounds. Part II concentrates on a lexicological analysis of the compounds and strives to explain their etymology, word-formation, and usage in Old Tibetan. Contents of Volume 1: Introduction, Indices, References, Part I: Compounding in Old Tibetan, Part II: Old Tibetan Compounds. Lexicological Analysis. Lexemes 1-119

In The Mardzong Manuscripts Agnieszka Helman-Ważny and Charles Ramble recount the discovery of a cache of Bön and Buddhist manuscripts, some over seven centuries old, in the remote Mardzong caves in Mustang, Nepal, and subsequent research on the collection.

There are more native speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages than of any other language family in the world. Our records of these languages are among the oldest for any human language, and the amount of active research on them has multiplied in the last few decades. Now in its second edition and fully updated to include new research, The Sino-Tibetan Languages includes overview articles on individual languages, with an emphasis on the less commonly described languages, as well as descriptions and comments on the subgroups in which they occur. There are overviews of the whole family on genetic classification and language contact, syntax and morphology, and also on word order typology. There are also more detailed overview articles on the phonology, morphosyntax, and writing system of just the Sinitic side of the family. Supplementing these overviews are articles on Shanghainese, Cantonese and Mandarin dialects. Tibeto-Burman is reviewed by genetic or geographical sub-group, with overview articles on some of the major groups and areas, and there are also detailed descriptions of 41 individual Tibeto-Burman languages, written by world experts in the field. Designed for students and researchers of Asian languages, The Sino-Tibetan Languages is a detailed overview of the field. This book is invaluable to language students, experts requiring concise, but thorough, information on related languages, and researchers working in historical, typological and comparative linguistics.

Historical Dictionary of Tibet, Second Edition is a comprehensive resource for Tibetan history, politics, religion, major figures, prehistory and paleontology, with a primary emphasis on the modern period. It also covers the surrounding areas influenced by Tibetan religion and culture, including India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Central Asia, and Russia. It contains a chronology, a glossary, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Tibet.

The first complete English translation of an important thirteenth-century history that sheds light on Tibet’s imperial past and on the transmission of the Buddhadharma into Central Asia. Translated here into English for the first time in its entirety by perhaps the foremost living expert on Tibetan histories, this engaging translation, along with its ample annotation, is a must-have for serious readers and scholars of Buddhist studies. In this history, discover the first extensive biography of the Buddha composed in the Tibetan language, along with an account of subsequent Indian Buddhist history, particularly the writing of Buddhist treatises. The story then moves to Tibet, with an emphasis on the rulers of the Tibetan empire, the translators of Buddhist texts, and the lineages that transmitted doctrine and meditative practice. It concludes with an account of the demise of the monastic order followed by a look forward to the advent of the future Buddha Maitreya. The composer of this remarkably ecumenical Buddhist history compiled some of the most important early sources on the Tibetan imperial period preserved in his time, and his work may be the best record we have of those sources today. Dan Martin has rendered the richness of this history an accessible part of the world’s literary heritage.

This book explores the key notion of effortlessness in the early Dzogchen tradition of Tibet, focusing on a set of hitherto unstudied commentaries by Nubchen Sangye Yeshe (10th century).