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Tibetan Studies in Japan
Hajime Nakamura
This is a short article which is aimed at giving a brief survey of Tibetan studies in post-war Japan. When necessary, reference will be made to studies preceeding the War. First the writer wanted to have his students keep a list of reference works in this field, but as it has become clear that Western scholars and intellectuals are very eager to know how our studies are progressing, he tentatively mimeographed and distributed copies of it to several persons. Subsequently, at the request of the Organisation, this slightly revised version was published.
It is impossible to mention all the Tibetan studies in Japan in this short article because the publications and articles are so numerous. Therefore, they have been limited to the following.
(1) All the works which were awarded prizes by the Academy of Japan;
(2) All the works which were recommended as valuable or noteworthy in "the Japan Science Review. Humanistic Studies” published by the Union of Ja. panese Association of Humanistic Studies. (文科系學會連合編集,研究論文集);
(3) All the works which were recommended as noteworthy by the Japanese Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies (# 0 919);
(4) All the works which were mentioned in “ Bibliographie de l'Orientalisme Japonais”, published by the “Maison Franco-Japonaise";
(5) The works by Japanese scholars which were reviewed in Western journals, or referred to as authoritative by Western scholars ;
(6) The works which were considered noteworthy by the author.
Therefore, although this article is not exhaustive the author hopes that this will give a fairly accurate perspective of post-war Japanese scholarship in Tibetan studies.
I Language
Formerly several introductory books to the Tibetan language were published. E. H. Johnston clarified that the Tibetan characters are very similar to those of a stone inscription (500 A. D.) found at Gorakhpur. This fact betrays that Characters had already been instituted before Thonmi-Sambhoța.
S. Yoshimura asserts as follows:
(3)
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