Grammar Of Colloquial Tibetan By C A Bell 2d Ed

Author : Herbert Bruce Hannah
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330204924
Total Pages : 422 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (49 download)

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Download or read book A Grammar of the Tibetan Language, and Colloquial written by Herbert Bruce Hannah and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from A Grammar of the Tibetan Language, and Colloquial: With Copious Illustrations, and Treating Fully of Spelling, Pronunication, and the Construction of the Verb, and Including Appendices of the Various Forms of the Verb For many centuries Tibet has been a terra incognita - little or nothing being known about it, as regards either its physical conditions or its inner life. Not, indeed, till a few years ago, when a British force entered Lhasa, the Place of the minor gods, was the veil withdrawn; and even then the withdrawal was only partial, transient, and very local. As for the language, though there have been several gallant attempts to plunge into the labyrinthine obscurities of its construction - notably on the part of Alexander Csoma de Koros in 1834 and subsequently of H. A. Jaschke - that also, it must be confessed, remains more or less a mystery; for no one, I take it, is likely to aver that the present state of our knowledge on the subject is at all satisfactory. Much, no doubt, has been contributed by the more recent labours of Rai Sarat Chandra Das Bahadur, Mr. Vincent Henderson, the Rev, Edward Amundsen, and Mr. C. A. Bell, I. C. S. But, in spite of all, even they, and every one else who has taken up the study, will admit that, wherever one treads, the ground still feels uncomfortably shaky, especially in regard to certain aspects of the so-called verb; wherever he gropes there is something that seems ever to elude him; and, amid the weird philological phantoms that flit uncertainly around in the prevailing gloom, his constant cry, I feel very sure, is still one for more light. I do not for one moment claim for this grammar the character of a scientific work. Many years ago when I was studying the language in Darjeeling, under Kazi Dawa Sam Düp a particularly intelligent and scholarly Tibetan - it was my habit during the course of my mornings lesson to make notes of what I then learnt. After a time these notes became so numerous that for my own convenience I was obliged to reduce them to some degree of order. These ordered notes themselves growing in bulk, the idea occurred to me that I might just as well put them into the form of a book, and this I did - the result being a Ms, which has long lain by me, but which is now about to be published. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.