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A passage for editorial review. * I A GRAMMAR OF THE TIBETAN LANGUAGI A GRAMMAR OF THE TIBETAN LANGUAGE Literary and Colloquial With copious Illustrations, and treating fully of Spelling, Pronunciation and the Construction of the Verb, and including Appendices of the various forms of the Verb HERBERT BRUCE HANNAH MOTILAL BA Delhi V'ar atiasi N ARSIDASS Patna Madras ©MOT1LAL BANARSIDASS Head Office: Bungalow Road. Delhi MO 007 Branches: Chowk. Varanas, 221 001 007 Ashok Rajpath. Patna 800 004 6 Appar Swamy Koil Street, Mylapore Madras 600 004 First Edition: Calcutta, 1912 Reprinted: Delhi, 1978, 1985 ISBN ; 0-89581 — 187—1 A-45 C N , ! 1 r-,! rldia pK y Sh t an ' ilal Jaj n at Shri Jainendra Press N^rendra PAL *V N ® w Delhi HO 028 and published by kash Jam for Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 110 007 dedicated TO E. DENISON ROSS, TO WHOSE INTEREST IN TIBETAN IT IS DUE THAT LANGUAGE HAS FOR THE FIRST TIME BEEN INTRODUCED INTO THE CURRICULUM OF A UNIVERSITY. ■ U‘ PREFACE. For many centuries Tibet has been a terra incognita -uctie 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 Not, indeed, till a few years ago, when a British force entered Lhasa, the ‘ Place of the minor gods,” was the veil withdrawn ; and even then the withdrawal was only partial, transient and very local As for the language, though there have been several gallant attempts to plunge into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 . 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 o Hai Sarat Chandra Das Bahadur, Mr. Vincent Henderson the Rev Kdward Amundsen, and Mr. C. A. Bell, I.C.8. But, in spite of all even t ey, 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 prevafling gloom, his constant cry, I feel very sure, is still one for more I do not for one moment claim for this grammar the character of a scientific work. Many years ago when I was studying the langua-e in arjeeling, under Kazi Dawa Sam Dup-a particularly intelligent and scholarly Tibetan—it was my habit during the course of my morning’s esson to make notes of what I then learnt. After a time these notes became so numerous that for my own convenience I was obliged to i educe them to some degree of order. These ordered notes themselves growing in bulk, the idea occurred to me that I might just as well nut them into the form of a book, and this I did-the result being a MS 1,eh has lon S ]am b y but which is now about to be publish .( It is merely another attempt on the part of one who has tried VI PREFACE. to profit by the works of others, to re-state {originally for his own private satisfaction) what has already been achieved in a field of obscure and somewhat difficult research ; to correct or modify % previous effort, wherever correction or modification seemed necessary or desirable; and even, to some extent, to supplement it in one or two respects which appeared to be susceptible of further elucidation and expansion. Both Literary and Colloquial Tibetan have been dealt with, the particular dialect chosen for exposition being that standard one, known a-s the or C Kd\ which is now spoken in and around the centre of Tibetan Civilisation—-Lhasa. This is the dialect in which, as the result of centuries of develop¬ ing Lamaic culture, the phonetic values of Tibetan are found to have undergone a greater degree of change from those of the original speech than anv of the other dialects. Wm/ In other regions of Tibet, it is said , the prefixes, superposed letters, and suffixes, are still more or less pronounced as of old, and the original vowel-sounds are still more or less unaltered, in a degree corresponding to the remoteness of the speakers from, or their proximity to, the Holy City. The difficulties confronting the student of Tibetan are considerably enhanced by the fact that in addition to the Literary Language and the Modern Colloquial, it also possesses a totally different vocabulary the employment of which is dc ngucuy when one is conversing or corres¬ ponding with a person of quality. This is known as the Honorific Language ; and besides that there is another called the High Honorific, which is only used when addressing exalted personages such as the Dalai Lama or the Tashi Lama. With these honorific forms of speech, however, this work is not particularly concerned. The student, if so inclined, can easily hunt them up for himself, after he has acquired a working knowledge of the ordinary Literary or book language and the modern colloquial. Attention is particularly invited to the earlier paragraphs of the Grammar dealing with the important subject of Pronunciation, in w hich an endeavour lias been made, on principles more systematic and accurate than those hitherto in vogue, to ascertain, fix, and express in roman characters, the subtle distinctions that lurk between the numerous phonetic values of the Tibetan consonants and vowels; also PREFACE. VII to the paragraph explanatory of the use of the Tibetan Dictionary ; and to the tabular statement showing what dominant consonants in a Tibetan word take particular prefixes. A paragraph has also been exclusively devoted to an exhaustive treatment of the subject of Spelling. This is a most useful accomplish¬ ment, and one that the student should take some pains to acquire. The so-called verb has also been elaborately treated in the fiodv of the book; but in the appendices a novel and perhaps somewhat riskv attempt has been made (how far successfully remains to be seen) to present it in the guise of skeleton conjugations or paradigms. These forms, however, should not be taken too literally, as they are not always absolute or rigid expressions, but are liable to frequent modifica¬ tion, or moulding, in accordance with the elusive and temporizing genius of the Tibetan sentence, the construction of which is unique, and can only be appreciated after much mental effort and distress. As a matter of fact the only real verb in Tibetan is the verb To be, whether in the form of Yin-pa, or Yopa, and the beginner is advised to master it at as early a stage as possible in the course of his studies. He should make special note of the manner in which Literary differs from Colloquial Also of the important fact that is sometimes a substantive verb, meaning To be present. To exist , and sometimes a mere copula or an auxiliary like Sjaj'q | All other verbs are practically a kind of noun-phrases, dependent for their^significations upon the various moods and tenses of these two verbs and C*JJ | Throughout, the observations explanatory of each subject are followed by numerous illustrations, both Colloquial and Literary, the latter being mostly taken from the Tibetan version of the New Testa¬ ment—a mine of idiomatic wealth. Amongst these illustrations will be found a few culled from Jaschke’s and Das’s Dictionaries, or from Amundsen’s Primer. In most of such cases either the names or the initials of these authors have been given, but in one or two instances (from Amundsen) on p. 256, the reference has been omitted bv an oversight. vm PREFACE. Up to a certain stage the romanized equivalent of the Tibetan is given : but after that the student is left to discern the proper pro¬ nunciation by means of his own unaided skill. Here it may interest others as well as students of Tibetap to men¬ tion that Oh, the jewel in the lotus! Lieutenant-Colonel Waddell’s 0 jxi'ntc hum , hri, is wholly inadequate and indeed inaccurate. Om does not mean Oh at all, and the phrase as a whole, is much deeper and more complex in its signification than the above rendering would imply. Om alone is an all-embracing expression, and stands mystically for the incarnation of the Deity, or rather for the immanence of the Supreme Being in, as well as for Its transcendence above, the phenome¬ nal or existent world, so far as the terms ‘immanence’ and ‘tran¬ scendence ’ arc applicable to the relations subsisting between that world and Pure Subsistence. In other words, it stands for the never-ending kosmic process of the self-effacing involution of Paramatman, or Brah¬ man, into Existence, or the world of Matter, and Its self-expressing evolution through Matter back to Substantial Being. This process, indeed, constitutes the famous so-called “Wheel of Life” in its Kosmic aspect. The formula may be roughly analysed thus : — - The source of all speech N Embodiment W - >, ,, vitality n of the „ ' Trinity. cy - ,, ,, thrilling consciousness - Wish-granting jewel ; symbolical of also of the Psychical Atman or Spiritual Ego. spiritual re-birth. Lotus ; symbolical of temporal blessings ; biune man and of 0 r\ NO ’ |v.i nishads It is, or I am, omnipresent. Set the universal Life Principle, or Satyasya Satyam of the i. the Houraenal Reality underlying Empirical Reality.