Nicholas Sims-Williams

The Book of Zambasta

Metre and stress in old Khotanese

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The nature of Old Khotanese metre has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. Nicholas Sims-Williams presents a new metrical analysis of the Book of Zambasta, the longest surviving Khotanese poem, arguing that the metre is based on the quantitative (moraic) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion.

Produktdetails

• Beiträge zur Iranistik 49
• Verlag: Reichert
• Artikelnr. des Verlages: 10688
• Seitenzahl: 310
• Erscheinungstermin: 13. April 2023
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 24mm x 176mm x 247mm
• Gewicht: 660g
• ISBN-13: 9783752006889
• Artikelnr.: 66918144

Autorenporträt

Nicholas Sims-Williams, born 1949 in Chatham, England, obtained his PhD at Cambridge in 1978 with a thesis on Christian texts in Sogdian. He joined the staff of SOAS University of London in 1976, becoming Emeritus Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies in 2015. He is a Fellow of several academies and similar bodies including the British Academy. In his research he focuses on the Middle Iranian languages of Afghanistan and Central Asia, taking an equal interest in the languages themselves, with their Indo-European roots, and in their Central Asian setting, with its stimulating mixture of languages, cultures and religions.

Rezensionen

[...] this volume contains an accessible and thought-provoking analysis of the Old Khotanese metrical system of the Book of Zambasta. Its morphological and phonological consequences are also considered, leading the author to formulate an innovative view of the nature and position of stress in Old Khotanese. The open-access metrical scansion of the updated text of the poem will become an essential didactic and reference tool for students and researchers alike. Specialists of Khotanese will find many stimulating points of discussion in the first part of the book. Additionally, this is a volume that cannot be missed by experts in neighbouring (Middle) Iranian and Central Asian languages: they can now easily access a body of knowledge that was previously available only to a restricted circle of researchers.
From Federico Dragoni, in: Orientalische Literaturzeitung 119(1), 2024, S. 55-57.