________________
152
REVIEWS
sanscrite kamp à la lumière des faits iraniens'; Siegfried Lienhard, 'Sanskrit kapi and karenu'; Wilhelm Rau, 'Die Brennlinse im alten Indien’; Gyula Wojtilla, 'Some Problems of the Sanskrit Terminology of Agriculture'. In the sections on Middle Indo-Aryan there are papers by Colette Caillat, 'Grammatical Incorrections. Stylistic Choices, Linguistic Trends – With Reference to Middle Indo-Aryan', and by K. R. Norman, 'The Dialectical Variety of Middle Indo-Aryan'. It is certainly not necessary to mention other titles since undoubtedly every Sanskrit scholar will consult this volume and find a number of papers of special interest."
Australian National University
J. W. DE JONG
Oskar von Hinüber, Das ältere Mittelindisch im Überblick (Öst. Ak. d. Wiss., Phil.-hist. Kl. Sitzungsber. 467 Band – Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Sprache und Kulturen Südasiens Heft 20). Wien, Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1986. 209 pp. ÖS 350,-; DM 50,
In his preface, von Hinüber points out that Richard Pischel's Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen (Strassburg, 1900) and Wilhelm Geiger's Pali. . Literatur und Sprache (Strassburg, 1916) are at present largely antiquated, and that it is not superfluous to summarize the results obtained in the last seventy years.
Von Hinüber uses the term older Middle-Indian to designate both Pāli and Prākrt with the exclusion of Apabhramsa. He also includes in his work epigraphical Middle-Indian, Gāndhārī and Buddhist Sanskrit.
Von Hinüber's work is divided into four parts: Introduction (pp. 19–24), Sources (pp. 25-56), Middle-Indian Languages known from literary texts (pp. 57–70) and Historical Grammar of Middle-Indian (pp. 71-200).
Von Hinüber expresses the hope in his preface that in a not too distant future his overview will be superseded and replaced by a new "Geiger" and a new "Pischel". He remarks that it would be possible to write a work replacing Geiger's grammar, but that a new grammar of Prākrt languages cannot be expected in the near future. However, it seems unlikely that von Hinüber's overview will be repaced unless von Hinüber himself undertakes this arduous task. Let us hope that von Hinüber will publish from time to time supplements incorporating new results and references to recent literature.
In the last twenty years, von Hinüber has made important contributions
