Languages: Tibetan
Tibetan is a member of the Trans-Himalayan language family. Also known as Tibeto-Burman and
Sino-Tibetan, this family includes Chinese, Burmese,
Newar, Lepcha, Meithei, and several hundred languages without literary traditions; agreement prevails that Tibetan is on the family’s Bodish branch
(see fig. 1).
Tibetan enters history as the language of the
Yarlung Valley, the cradle of the Tibetan Empire
(Takeuchi, 2012b, 4). Together with the troops of this
empire, the language colonized the entire Tibetan
plateau, extinguishing the languages formerly used
across that territory (Takeuchi, 2012b, 6). The use
of Tibetan across and beyond the plateau at the
height of the empire set the stage for its breakup
into the spoken languages of today. Researchers
often classify Tibetan languages into groups based
on the provinces of Tibet in which they are spoken
(Denwood, 1999, 23–36; Tournadre & Dorje, 2003,
28–32), but the identity of such geographic groupings with genetic groupings remains to be demonstrated (see Sun, 2003, 794–797). The monograph
series Beiträge zur tibetischen Erzählforschung
provides a good point of departure into the vast
research on Tibetan dialects.
The Earliest Tibetan Literature
Paleographic analysis indicates that the Tibetan
script derives from a late Gupta script as used in
Nepal and northern India in the early 7th century
(van Schaik, 2011; but also comp. Schuh, 2013).
Although an often repeated legend avers that a
writing system was developed with the express
purpose of recording the Buddhist scriptures being
imported from India, there is little doubt that
during the empire’s initial expansion, writing was
introduced circa 650 ce to facilitate administration
(Hill, 2010a, 111n4). A gap of about a century separates the invention of the alphabet and the earliest
securely datable extant Tibetan documents. A stele
inscription in front of the Potala Palace, known as
the Zhol or Ngan lam Sri inscription (post-763 ce), is
generally recognized as bearing the oldest sample of
Tibetan writing (Hazod, 2010). However, a bell discovered circa 2010 in Dpa’ ris in eastern Tibet may
date to the earlier reign of Khri Lde gtsug brtsan
(704–755 ce; Lha mchog skyabs, 2011). The capacity
to inscribe writing on a cast bell implies significant
prior familiarity with a writing system. Although the
Old Tibetan Annals, representing the official version
of imperial history, recorded as it happened, dates in
part back to the invention of writing (Dotson, 2009,
10–11), the extant manuscript is probably postimperial (Iwao, 2012).
Two types of material date from the Tibetan
Empire: inscriptions (Li Fang-Kuei & Coblin, 1987;
Iwao et al., 2009) and documents excavated at the
Central Asian forts of Miran and Mazar Tagh (van
Schaik, 2013, 119; Takeuchi, 1997–1998). Old Tibetan
continued to function as a lingua franca of commerce and administration in the oasis cities of
the Silk Road for some decades after the Tibetan
Empire lost control of these territories in the 9th
century (Uray, 1981; 1988; Takeuchi, 1990, 187–189;
2012a; 2012b, 7–9). Paper manuscripts preserved in
the library cave of Dunhuang, sealed during the first
half of the 11th century (Imaeda, 2008), generally
date from this postimperial period. The documents
from Dunhuang include historical texts, official documents, foreign literature in translation, divination
Trans-Himalayan
Bodish
Chinese Burmese ....
Old Tibetan
Tibetan Languages
Bumthang Kurtöp Dzala Dakpa ....
Figure 1: Tree diagram of the Bodish languages
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2015
Also available online – www.brill
BEB, vol. I
918
Languages: Tibetan
texts, and both canonical and noncanonical Buddhist texts. The most important collections of these
documents are found now in London and Paris,
with smaller collections elsewhere. The collections
of both the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Lalou,
1939–1961) and the British Library (La Vallée Poussin, 1962; Iwao et al., 2012) are partially catalogued;
images and metadata for many are available on
the website of the International Dunhuang Project
(http://idp.bl.uk/), and transliterations of many are
available at Old Tibetan Documents Online (otdo.
aa.tufs.ac.jp). J. Dalton and S. van Schaik (2006)
more recently recatalogued the tantric manuscripts
of the British Library. Y. Imaeda et al. (2007) provide
65 well-known and well-studied Tibetan Dunhuang
documents in transliteration with complete bibliographic references.
The Translation of Buddhist Texts
Begun already in the 8th century, the translation
of Buddhist literature into the Tibetan tongue continues to this day. For example, Dge ’dun chos ’phel
published his translation from Pali of the Dhammapada in 1946 (Chompel, 1946), and in 2010 ’Bri gung
skyabs mgon che tshang translated the second section of the Chan-related Leng qie shīzī ji (楞伽師資
記; Records of the Laṅkāvatāra Masters) to augment
the missing sections of an existing old Dunhuang
version. The flow of texts also goes in the other direction; there is currently an ongoing project to translate Tibetan sūtras found in the Kanjur into Chinese
(http://khyentsefoundation.org/2014/03/ddbc/), and
the 84000 project (http://84000.co/) aims to translate the entire Kanjur into English. Nonetheless, the
preponderance of translation work took place long
ago. The bulk of non-tantric material was translated
already during the latter part of the Tibetan Empire
(c. 760–850 ce), and tantric materials were translated mostly before the decline of Buddhism in India
in the 13th century.
Standardization and Language
Reform in Translations of the Imperial
Period
Important for an understanding of the language of
Buddhist texts is the existence of a particular style
of “Translationese,” which characterizes most translations into Tibetan, not only from Indic language
sources but also from Chinese and other languages.
This style of language attempts at times to mechanically reproduce the syntax of its source, at the same
time that it creates a vocabulary from Tibetan wordstock with which to render new ideas, terms, and
concepts. There was, moreover, a self-consciousness
to this process among the Tibetan scholars responsible for translation and editing of Buddhist literature. One example of this self-consciousness is the
effort at standardization that was undertaken both
to revise existing translations and to set parameters
for new translation works. The colophons of revised
early Tibetan translations refer to the language
reform that resulted in a “new terminology.” For
example, the Lalitavistara was translated and corrected “in conformity with the decision relative to
the new terminology” (bskad gsar bcad kyis kyang
bcos nas gtan la phab pa; see Simonsson, 1957, 223n2;
Scherrer-Schaub, 2002, 310n133). What this reform
meant in terms of the daily practice of translators
and editors remains unclear. The confused tale of
reform is a story of three triples: three edicts, three
treatises, and three catalogues.
The timing and import of the three edicts are subject to disagreement. For example, Bsod nams rgyal
mtshan in the Rgyal rabs gsal ba’i me long (1368)
explains that at the time of Khri Gtsug lde brtsan
(r. 815–841), translation practices were standardized
according to a “new terminology” (skad gsar bcad)
following the prescriptions of three edicts (bka’ bcas
rnam pa gsum du mdzad do; Uray, 1989, 7; Sørensen,
1994), but Rin chen bkra shis in his Li shi gur khang
(1536) separates each of the “edicts” from one another
in time: the first is from the invention of the alphabet
(c. 650 ce) until the reign of Khri Srong lde brtsan
(742–800[?]), the second during the reign of Khri
Gtsug lde brtsan (r. 815–841), and the third from the
time of Rin chen bzang po (958–1055) until the time
of Dharmapālabhadra (1441–1526; see Taube, 1978,
173–174). Relying on the oldest available primary
sources, C. Scherrer-Schaub (2002) concludes that
the dating of the first edict is uncertain, the second
edict was issued probably in 783 ce (but possibly in
795), and the third edict appeared in 815 ce. It seems
that the third edict was essentially a renewal of the
second, and the first edict could be a retrospective
invention, part of the public-relations efforts of Khri
Srong lde btsan to present the national conversion
to Buddhism as a renewal of the efforts of his ancestor Khri Srong brtsan (605[?]–649).
Three lexicographical works assisted the authorized work of translating Buddhist texts and revising
earlier translation: the Bye brag tu rtogs byed chen
Languages: Tibetan
po (Mahāvyutpatti), the Bye brag tu rtogs byed’ bring
po, and the Bye brag tu rtogs byed chung ngu. The
second work is better known under the title Sgra
sbyor bam po gnyis pa. The third work is no longer extant. The two extant works were in circulation at least by 814 ce (Uray, 1989; Panglung, 1994;
Scherrer-Schaub, 2002; Hermann-Pfandt, 2008).
As the work of translation progressed, it became
necessary to keep track of the completed translations. Three catalogues aided in this purpose,
Lhan kar ma, ’Phang thang ma, and Mchims phu
ma, reflecting respectively the collections held at
the imperial residences of Lhan kar, ’Phang thang,
and Mchims phu. The Mchims phu ma is no longer
extant. The exact dating of the catalogues is controversial – G. Halkias (2004) and B. Dotson (2007) date
the Lhan kar ma to 824 ce, and the ’Phang thang ma
to 842 ce, whereas A. Hermann-Pfandt (2008) dates
them respectively to 812 and 806 ce.
N. Simonsson (1957) remains the seminal study
comparing Sanskrit originals with early and later
translations of the same text as a window into the
ateliers of translators and revisers. However, his
detailed study has not yet been followed up by
enough subsequent research to yield a coherent
overall picture. Because no available Tibetan Buddhist text is securely datable to before 783 ce, even an
exhaustive diachronic study of Tibetan translations
may fail to shed light on the effects of the reforms
associated with the “new terminology.” While later
Tibetan writers, such as the aforementioned Rin
chen bkra shis, place all of those linguistic features
now associated with “Old Tibetan” into the period
before the first edict (Taube, 1978, 173–174), this
view is not correct. These features are pervasive in
Dunhuang texts and other materials that postdate
the Tibetan Empire (see Tropper, 2010, 17), and the
occasional old feature, such as la stsogs pa instead of
la sogs pa (generally “et cetera”), is found even in the
18th-century Derge Kanjur (comp. D 341, mdo sde,
a, 138a5).
The translation of such a large volume of Buddhist works, mostly from Sanskrit, required the redeployment of inherited vocabulary to Buddhist ends
and the coining of new terminology. Many existing
terms received new interpretations or new associations. For example, the word mdo originally (and frequently still) refers to a place where roads or rivers
meet. This word was then apparently used as a metaphor for a text in which various points were brought
together – used in this sense, for example, in the
term mjal dum gyi mdo chen po (great treaty accord)
919
in the east face of the Sino-Tibetan treaty inscription
of 821/822 ce, which stands in front of the Jokhang
Temple in Lhasa. From that metaphorical use, it was
only a small step to use mdo as a calque of Sanskrit
sūtra, the discourse of the Buddha. However, the
word mdo is not a literal translation of sūtra, which
means “thread,” “string,” and so forth. In other cases
terms were carefully calqued on the Sanskrit original, thus Sanskrit tathāgata (“thus-gone”) became
Tibetan de bzhin gshegs pa (“thus gone”). For example, the Sanskrit word arhat, which derives from the
root arh-, “to be worthy,” is translated in Tibetan as
dgra bcom pa (“one who conquers the enemy”), utilizing a traditional Indian idea that arhat is formed
from the noun ari (enemy) and the root han- (to
slay). Although such neologisms may be based on
historically incorrect etymological analyses, in the
vast majority of cases, it is demonstrable that the
etymologies on which the translation equivalents
were created are found deployed in Indian Buddhist
literature, and thus represent traditional Buddhist
interpretations of important terms (Simonsson,
1957, 269–270; Verhagen, 2001, 67–69, 75).
Reading “According to Context”
One often encounters the claim that the elaborate
inflectional categories of Sanskrit allow for a greater
reliability and precision in the interpretation of
Sanskrit Buddhist texts, whereas in Chinese and
Tibetan, one must “rely on context” to know who is
doing what to whom. It is, however, merely a greater
familiarity with Sanskrit grammar as opposed to
Tibetan grammar and a comparative lack of research
into Tibetan that leads to such an impression.
Despite the fact that Tibetan translations from
Sanskrit, which make up the vast majority of translated Buddhist literature, often allow a rather close
reconstruction of both the word-stock and syntax
of the underlying Sanskrit source text, the Tibetan
system of case marking is quite different and rather
incompatible with that of Sanskrit. Tibetan distinguishes ten cases:
1. absolutive: Ø;
2. agentive: -kyis (~ -gyis, -gis, -yis, -s);
3. genitive: -kyi (~ -gyi, -gi, -’i, -yi);
4. allative: -la;
5. locative: -na;
6. terminative: -tu (~ -du, -ru, -su, -r);
7. ablative: -las;
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Languages: Tibetan
8. elative: -nas;
9. associative: -dang; and
10. comparative: -bas (~ -pas; Hill, 2012).
Tibetan does not mark case on each individual word
as does Sanskrit but instead only once at the end of
each noun phrase (Gruppenflexion). The incompatibility of the grammatical structures of the two languages has led to confusion both within the Tibetan
grammatical tradition and in the study of Tibetan
in modern academia. As Tibetan distinguishes ten
cases, two more than the eight cases of Sanskrit, one
cannot claim that in this regard Tibetan is by nature
less precise than Sanskrit.
Tibetan is a so-called ergative language. From
the perspective of European grammar, this means
that in intransitive clauses, the “subject” is in the
absolutive case, but in transitive clauses, the “subject” is in the agentive case and the “object” is in the
absolutive case. Thus, the case alignment of Tibetan
transitive clauses is superficially similar to passives
in European languages (Schmidt, 1839, 61; Schiefner,
1855, 418; von der Gabelentz, 1861, 472; Giraudeau,
1916, iv; Tournadre, 1996; Vollmann, 2008). Restating these case uses from the Tibetan perspective,
the absolutive is used for the single nominal argument of an intransitive clause (ngus pa’i mchi ma Ø
char bzhin du bab nas : “the tears of [their] weeping fell like rain”; D 341, mdo sde, a, 132a1–2) and
the patient of a transitive clause (ngas de dag kun Ø
bsad nas: “I killed them all”; D 341, mdo sde, a, 169b1),
whereas the agentive is used for the agent of a transitive clause (bcom ldan ’das kyis chos bstan pas: “the
Bhagavān taught the dharma”; D 341, mdo sde, a,
153b2). The agentive also marks instruments: bcom
ldan ’das kyis utpal sngon po dang ’dra ba shin tu rno
ba’i ral gris sha bcad cing: “The Bhagavān cut flesh
with a very sharp sword like a blue utpala lotus”;
Bailey, 1951, 42).
A Tibetan verb consists of four monosyllabic
stems: present, past, future, and imperative (Hill,
2010b). Not all verbs separately distinguish the four
stems (e.g. gshegs, “ to go,” has only one form); those
that do distinguish all four do so in a complicated
way involving ablaut, prefixes, and suffixes (e.g.
gsod, bsad, gsad, and sod, “to kill”; za, zos/bzas, bza’,
and zos, “to eat”); these morphological processes are
complex and opaque (Hill, 2010b; 2014). Although
broadly speaking the names of the four stems do
say something about their use, their meaning and
function is also poorly understood (Zeisler, 2004;
for a study of the verb forms in Sanskrit and Tibetan
as used in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, see Taube, 1953–
1954).
Although Tibetan lacks person agreement, other
means do much the same work in making explicit
who is doing what. The modern Tibetan languages are
well known for encoding the source of information
by which a speaker has come to know of what he or
she says (Tournadre, 1996; Hill, 2013c), and such evidential systems have been characteristic of the language from an early period (Takeuchi, 1990, 12; 2012b,
11–12; 2015, 410; Hill, 2013b). Similarly, clause-marking
morphemes are not well understood; there are many
options, -na, -nas, -te, -cing, -pa-la, -pa-las, -pa-dang,
and -pas, all of which mean something like “then” or
“and.” These suffixes appear to distinguish whether
or not the subject changes from one clause to the
next (Zadoks, 2002; Haller, 2009). Increasing scrutiny of Tibetan grammar will no doubt lead to an
appreciation for the refinement of the structure of
the Tibetan language and yield new insights into
and better understanding of Buddhist canonical
literature.
The Tibetan language has a refined system of
honorific terminology, in which certain vocabulary
items replace others when used, for instance, of the
Buddha or an honored teacher. This applies equally
to nouns, adjectives, and verbs. An example of this
is the variety of verbs that all can be translated as
“to speak”/“to say”: smra ba/lab pa conveys a neutral stance with regard to the person who speaks
or is spoken to; gsung ba indicates that the speaker
is someone who is highly regarded by the person
who reports this act; zhu ba marks that the person
addressed is considered to be of high standing, while
giving lesser importance to the speaker himself. The
latter category is often found in the first person.
These three different levels of honorific verbs are
less systematized in the earliest Tibetan literature
but soon after became very common in written
and spoken Tibetan alike (Kitamura Hajime, 1975;
Takeuchi, 1987; DeLancey, 1998).
In overall sentence structure, there is a tendency
for translations to maintain a syntax that attempts
fidelity to the original; these in many cases might be
called calques, both in their syntax and in the formation of their vocabulary. This can lead to shorter
sentences than would be expected in native Tibetan,
usually terminated by final particles (e.g. in the case
of the copula, yin no). A clear instance of the artificiality of translations is the precise calquing of Sanskrit preverbs in Buddhist neologisms. For example,
rab tu ’byung ba at face value in Tibetan means
“to emerge thoroughly,” but is used to mean “to
take ordination” with Sanskrit pravrajyā as a model
(comp. Inaba Shōju, 1954, 101–105; Dimitrov, 2007).
Languages: Tibetan
In contrast, original Tibetan compositions tolerate
extremely long sentences that make use of extensive
subordination and generally eschew final particles.
While the vocabulary of Buddhist texts composed
in Tibetan generally follows established translation equivalents for technical terms (in contrast
to the nonreligious literature of legal documents,
contracts, etc., which tends to innovate or borrow
terms from neighboring languages such as Chinese,
Mongolian, or Manchu), a hallmark of this style is an
extensive use of clipping (a common pattern abbreviates phrases with an AB-CD structure as AC, such
that thal rang stands for thal ’gyur ba and rang rgyud
pa, i.e.*Prāsaṅgika and *Svātantrika), as well as the
coining of new terminology for concepts not present
in the inherited Indic tradition.
Comparable with the syntactic divergence witnessed in translations versus indigenous compositions, there is a large difference between the syntax
of prose versus that of verse or poetry. Due to strict
restrictions on the syllable length of lines, extensive compounding in the latter often leads to the
omission of relational morphology. An example is
khrag ’thung dam can rgya mtsho (“blood-drinkingguardian-ocean”; de Jong, 1959, 119) where in prose
one might have expected khrag ’thung ba’i dam
can gyi rgya mtsho (“ocean of guardians who drink
blood”). This phenomenon has received scant attention. Another understudied area of Tibetan poetry is
metrics (Poucha, 1950, 1954; Vekerdi, 1952). Tibetan
does not allow reproduction of the often complex
meters of Sanskrit verse, and in place of Sanskrit
heavy and light syllables, Tibetan verse utilizes
stressed and unstressed syllables. Translators, therefore, although not in an always unified or systematic manner, attempted to reproduce variations in
Sanskrit meters by varying the length of the lines
of Tibetan verse. An aspect of Tibetan prosody that
should not be overlooked is the increasing poeticization of Tibetan prose that begins in the second
half of the 13th century, under the influence of the
Tibetan translation of Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa (Mirror
of Poetics; see Tucci, 1949, 104; van der Kuijp, 1996),
a process in which increased awareness of Indian
norms of poetics more or less directly shaped developing Tibetan styles of composition.
Language Change
Like all languages, Tibetan continuously changes.
As an example, although modern pronunciation of
921
Tibetan is related to orthography in complicated
ways, reading out Tibetan in transliteration, with
its plethora of consonants, giving value to each
element, well approximates the language’s sound
during the early imperial period; dialects such as
Balti, spoken in areas remote from the political
center, provide evidence of such pronunciations by
maintaining complex onsets (e.g. Balti bzhi, “four”;
see Sprigg, 2002, 38). Nonetheless, in a few places,
orthography misleads – that is, the entire initial cluster agrees in voicing, and finals are voiceless (Hill,
2010a). Thus, bsgrub was pronounced [bzgrup],
and bskal was pronounced [pskal]. In contrast, a
reasonable approximation to the pronunciation of
these syllables in the speech of Lhasa today would
be [trup L] and [kää H] (where L and H represent
“low” and “high” tones). The system of personal pronouns offers a second example of language change
(Hill, 2007; 2010d; 2013a). In Early Old Tibetan of the
8th and 9th centuries, the respectful use of the plural
khyed for a singular (pluralis majestatis) is absent,
but by the advent of Classical Tibetan one or two
centuries later, this usage was in place (Hill, 2013a).
Grammars and Dictionaries
S. DeLancey (2003) provides a short overview of
Classical Tibetan grammar. P. Schwieger (2009)
offers the best reference grammar, but K. Gyurmé
(1992) is also profitably consulted. Generations
of Tibetologists began their study of Tibetan with
M. Hahn’s Lehrbuch der klassischen tibetischen
Schriftsprache (1994), and C. Sommerschuh’s Einführung in die tibetische Schriftsprache (2008) provides
an excellent more recent alternative (comp. Hill,
2010c). Inaba Shōju (1954) offers a detailed comparison with Sanskrit grammar.
The single most impressive work of Tibetan lexicography is the ongoing Wörterbuch der tibetischen
Schriftsprache published by the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Francke et al., 2005ff.).
Each entry gives copious citations of original
sources precisely cited to page and line number.
The use of previous dictionaries is carefully distinguished from the evidence of textual attestations.
In addition, thorough reference to previous scholarship is given when relevant. Especially so long as this
work remains incomplete, several other resources
are also valuable. H.A. Jäschke (1881) wrote a lexicographical work of the highest standard that is
still important today. Lokesh Chandra compiled
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Languages: Tibetan
a 12-volume Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary on the
basis of canonical Buddhists texts available in both
languages (1958–1961), continued with seven supplementary volumes (1992–1994) and a one-volume
Sanskrit-Tibetan index (2007). J.S. Negi (1993–2004)
compiled another 16-volume Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary. It includes extensive quotations in addition
to citations and makes reference to a larger number
of texts than does Lokesh Chandra’s. In addition,
there are bilingual indices available for a number
of Tibetan translations of Sanskrit Buddhist texts,
including the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Hirakawa,
1973–1978), Bodhicaryāvatāra (Weller, 1952–1955),
Kāśyapaparivarta (Weller, 1933), Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra (Nagao, 1958–1961), Meghadūta
(Chimpa et al., 2011), Nyāyabindu (Obermiller, 1927–
1928), Prasannapadā Madhyamakavṛtti (Yamaguchi,
1974), Yogācārabhūmi (Yokoyama, 1996), Laṅkāvatārasūtra (Suzuki, 2000), Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtra (Inagaki,
1984), and Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (Ejima et al.,
1985–1993). Ngag dbang tshul khrims (1997) provides a dictionary of difficult or archaic words, drawing heavily on Tibetan commentarial literature. This
work provides attestations and cites the works in
which they are found, but it does not specify page
and line numbers and has an inadequate bibliography; consequently, these citations are not easily
verified. The most widely used Tibetan dictionary is
Zhang Yisun’s (1985).
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