Reviews Of Different Books

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REVIEWS to be edited on the basis of the Kanjur editions and the Tun-huang manuscripts mentioned above. A careful study of the manuscripts of the Chinese text and of the two Tibetan translations will probably be useful for an understanding of difficult passages in the Sogdian version. Australian National University J. W. de Jong Dravidian Linguistics (Seminar Papers), Proceedings of the Seminar on Comparative Dravidian, held at the Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, January 11-14, 1968. Ed. by S. Agesthialingom and N. Kumaraswami Raja (= Annamalai University Dept. of Linguistics Publication, No. 17), Annamalainagar, 1969, 279 pp. K. V. Subbaiya and L. V. Ramaswami Aiyar are the two names of Indian scholars who, in the first half of our century, emerged as very outstanding contributors to comparative Dravidian studies and who, together with Western scholars - J. Vinson, J. Bloch, E. H. Tuttle, P. Meile, F. B.J. Kuiper, A. Master, and, above all, T. Burrow, and M. B. Emeneau - laid the foundations for solid comparative and historical scholarship in the field of Dravidian. This first stage of building up solid grounds reached its peak when Burrow and Emenau published their Dravidian Etymological Dictionary and its Supplement (Oxford, 1961, 1968). The cornerstones and the main points of departure were set to indicate basic trends of and directions for further studies.1 In the late sixties, new names of a younger generation of Indian scholars emerged (many of them former students of Burrow, Emeneau, Bh. Krishnamurti and V. I. Subramoniam); most of them gathered round the Centre of Advanced Study in Linguistics, Annamalai University. The collection under review represents the result of a seminar conducted under the auspices of the Centre in January 1968. As a whole, the collection is "most impressive and substantial", as Emeneau says. However, it contains papers of different value and of varying impact. Some of them break new paths and represent lasting contributions to the field, like Krishnamurti's "Dravidian Nasals in Brahui" or Subrahmanyam's "The Central Dravidian Languages"; others are of more ephemeral nature, like Schiffman's "Language Change and Language Distance" or Kameswari's lexicostatistic approach to Dravidian. In toto, there are eighteen papers in the collection. Five of them are dedicated exclusively to phonology (of Telugu, Yerukala, Kodagu and Brahui). Seven papers deal with grammar - problems of morphology and syntax. There is a phonological plus morphological treatment of Parji, One of the papers is of a dialectological character, one deals with the classificatory problems, one describes "new" Dravidian languages, and two papers deal with chronological questions. Of the phonological papers, probably the most important is Krishnamurti's treatment of the reflexes of Dravidian nasals in Brahui (pp. 65-74). Br. d- is established as the regular reflex of PDr. *n- in six definitive etymologies (*neyttV:r/*nett Vr 'blood', *ne:r. *ner-V-nal 'yesterday', *ne:r : *ner-V-'to cut off', *ne:r 'sun, time', *ni:r 'water', *ne:r 'who'). In seven items, PDr. *n- > Br. n-. The development *n- > Br. d- is in 1 Apart from linguistics, there are other aspects of "Dravidian" India which are at present being very actively studied (though undoubtedly linguistic interests are in the forefront), so that one may indeed speak nowadays of Dravidology as an important field of Oriental studies. Important "discoveries" were made and substantial contributions published in the fields of social anthropology, politology, history, but less interest has been shown so far in Dravidian textology, textual criticism and philology, not to speak of literary history and Literaturwissenschaft which are almost totally lacking. of Oriental studies. Importancial anthropology, politology, and philology, not to