Miscellanea Etymologica Tibetica VIII∗

Ting nge ’dzin et alia

Michael Hahn (Marburg)

Der Beitrag diskutiert und kritisiert die Etymologie des tibetischen Ausdrucksting nge ’dzin, der tibetischen Entsprechung von Sanskrit samadhi

”meditative

Versenkung“, die Jan Nattier 1991 vorgeschlagen hat und in der sie die Silbe tingfur das chinesische Wort ting 定 halt, das ebenfalls Sanskrit samadhi ubersetzt.Statt dessen wird eine rein tibetische Erklarung des Ausdrucks versucht, die inEinklang mit den Laut- und Wortbildungsgesetzen des Alttibetischen steht.

1 It is a common phenomenon that the native speaker (or quasi-nativespeaker, in the case of classical languages) of a language is unaware of eventhe most elementary etymologies of words when these are even slightly ob-scured, e. g., by orthography. Thus the ordinary speaker of German todayusually does not see any more the relationship between fertig (“ready”)and Fahrt, a noun derived from fahren (“to go, drive, ride”), with fertigoriginally meaning fahrtbereit or “ready for departure.”1 Likewise, the or-dinary speaker of German is unable to recognize the verb underlying themost frequently used adverb sehr “very”, i. e., *sehren “to hurt” whichhas survived in modern High German only in the compound versehren“to injure, to hurt; to disable.”2 Fortunately, there are a great number of

∗ The first six instalments of these occasional observations are reprinted in MichaelHahn Schlussel zum Lehrbuch der klassischen tibetischen Schriftsprache und Beitrage zurtibetischen Wortkunde (Miscellanea etymologica tibetica I–VI), Marburg 2003 (Indicaet Tibetica. 10a.) The seventh instalment has recently appeared in Jaina-Itihasa-Ratna.Festschrift fur Gustav Roth zum 90. Geburtstag, hrsg. von U. Husken, P. Kiefer-Pulzund A. Peters, Marburg 2006 (Indica et Tibetica. 47.), pp. 237–257.

1 Cf. Friedrich Kluge, Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 22. Auf-lage, Berlin 1989, p. 210.

2 Cf. Kluge, op. cit., p. 664.

Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek, Festschrift fur Roland Bielmeier (2008), 107–118

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etymological dictionaries for most of the Indo-European languages, bothspoken and classical. These dictionaries can be divided into those meantfor general readers and those addressing the specialist. Many such dic-tionaries also exist for the Semitic, Turkic, and Dravidian languages, butcomparatively few for Japanese3 and the important family of Sino-Tibetanlanguages.

Among the Sino-Tibetan languages Classical Tibetan, in particular itsOld Tibetan variety, is an excellent starting point for establishing ety-mologies of the more difficult words, provided this is done on the basis ofgenerally approved principles and sound laws. The rich material for ety-mological research that is provided by the vocabulary of Classical Tibetanhas not been explored sufficiently. There are two main reasons for this.First, the extant vocabulary of Classical Tibetan is not easily accessiblesince it is scattered among a great number of dictionaries, both indige-nous and non-indigenous, and numerous individual studies. Second, theprinciples of derivation have not yet been formulated in their entirety andagreed upon. This task should be accomplished as soon as possible.

The prominent role of Tibetan in the context of reconstructing the rootsand stems (if it is possible to distinguish between these two concepts) ofSino-Tibetan is due to the fact that it became a written language in sev-enth century AD, half a millennium earlier than Burmese to which it isclosely related. When Tibetan was put to writing, the Indian system ofwriting was adopted, which is a strictly phonem(at)ical system. A fewmodifications had to be introduced to express certain phonemes that donot exist in the North Indian languages. Fortunately the inventors of theTibetan script maintained several archaic features which at that time werealready on the verge of dying out, like certain prefixes and suffixes, e. g.,the da drag. This permits us to go back by (presumably) several centuries,before the time of the safe reconstruction of Chinese phonology and mor-phology that is generally held to be the beginning of the seventh centuryAD, the period of “Early Middle Chinese.”4

3 For Japanese we have Samuel E. Martin’s The Japanese Language Through theAges, Yale 1987 which is unsatisfactory in its typographical presentation. My attemptsat buying a Japanese book similar to Kluge were unsuccessful.

4 Cf. Edwin G. Pulleyblank, Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early MiddleChinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin, Vancouver 1991.

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2 Tibet inherited from India not only the system of writing, along withthe phonological analysis of the language, but also the Indian system ofgrammatical analysis that is one of the greatest achievements of mankind.Modern linguistics is heavily indebted to insights that were gained by In-dian scholars already 2500 years ago. Unfortunately the Indians were notnearly as good with etymology as they were with grammar. The Tibetanscholars did not surpass them but rather fell back behind them. In thisconnection one has to recall that for Tibetan scholars at the end of theeighth century etymology was not just a pastime or a scientific disciplineof a mere theoretical interest but a point of vital importance: it was in-dispensable for the translation of the Buddhist terminology from Sanskritinto Tibetan, and also for the translation of a great number of propernames. Here the task was at least partially facilitated by the fact that In-dian Buddhist literature contains a great number of etymologies of words.Few of them meet the criteria of linguistics or stand the test of time; themajority of them can be classified as “soteriological etymologies” becausethey are fully in line with the Buddhist world view, e. g., the renderingof loka “world” as ’jig rten or “receptacle of perishable (things),” whereloka is derived from a fictitious root *luj that was obviously regarded asa variant of ruj “to break.” We find the etymology explained in the Sgrasbyor bam po gnyis pa, entry No. 361:

loka zhes bya ba lujyata iti zhes bya ba ste | sems can la sogs pa’chi zhing mi rtag la ’jig pa’i gzhi yin pas na ’jig rten zhes bya |5

“As for [the Sanskrit word] loka, it is derived from lujyate ‘it is[bound to be] destroyed;’ therefore [it is to be translated] as ’jig rten,because it is the basis of the death, impermanence, and destructionof living beings and so on.”

5 Quoted from Materials for Tibetan Mongolian Dictionaries, Vol. 2. A CriticalEdition of the Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa, ed. by Mie Ishikawa, Tokyo 1990 (StudiaTibetica No. 18.), p. 113. – The Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa is the well-known shorttreatise, composed at the beginning of the 9th century CE, in which the principles oftranslating Indian works into Tibetan were laid down. In its introduction it gives a reportof the conference at which these principles were formulated, and in a long appendixconsisting of 400 articles it illustrates how important words and technical terms are tobe translated. A Japanese translation of the work can be found in: Nikanbon yakugoshaku: Wayaku to chukai = Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa / Ishikawa Mie yaku, chu.Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 1993. [二卷本訳語釈 : 和訳と注解 = Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa /石川美恵 訳・注, 東京 : 東洋文庫, 1993]

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Here the Tibetans cannot be blamed for their analysis because they simplytranslated what they were told by their Indian counterparts who in turnonly explained what was contained in the abhidharmic and other treatises.

3 There are, however, other examples that illustrate the limited knowl-edge of Tibetan scholars about the morphological structure of their ownlanguage. I would like to quote just one example. In his notes on somedifficult words in Sa skya Pan.d. ita’s (1171–1252) collection of moral max-ims entitled Legs par bshad pa rin po che’i gter or “The Ocean of Well-Formulated Sayings” Dbyangs can dga’ ba’i blo gros writes at stanza 51c:sa le sbram ni | sa las thon pa’i gser rdog po che tsam pa la bshad pasnang ngo | “As for the expression sa le bram, it seems to be a designa-tion for tiny pieces of gold dug out from the earth.”6 This explanation isalso quoted – without correction or comment – in the dictionary Brda dkrolgser gyi me long7 in which the notes and glosses of Tibetan commenta-tors are collected. The term sa le is obviously interpreted as if it were salas “from the earth” in a kind of phonetical transcription (of its modernpronunciation) that is not encountered anywhere else.

The “very productive” Tibetan scholar Dbyans can dga’ ba’i blo gros’lived from 1740 until 1827.8 We have to accept the fact that for a Tibetanscholar of the 18th/19th century the very elementary intensive form of aqualitative verb like gsal ba “to be clear, bright” was no longer recogniz-able once it was written in its defective spelling sa le (ba) instead of itsregular form gsal le ba. For the formation cf. my Lehrbuch der klassischentibetischen Schriftsprache, §§ 17.9 and 17.10.9 The expression sa le sbram(with sbram-bu “unwrought gold, bar-gold”) is hence to be analysed as“intensively shining gold (in which the impurities are removed).”

6 The Tibetan text of these notes on the Sa skya legs bhad is easily accessiblethrough Helmut Eimer’s valuable paper “dByans-can dga’ ba’i blo gros’ Explanation ofSome Expressions from the Sa skya legs bshad,” Vicitrakusumanjali: Volume presentedto Richard Othon Meisezahl on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, ed. by HelmutEimer, Bonn 1986 (Indica et Tibetica. 11.), pp. 49–60.

7 Compiled by Btsan-lha ngag-dbang tshul-khrims, Beijing 1997.8 A concise sketch of his life and works can be found in Ulrike Roesler’s as yet

unpublished D. Litt. thesis Der dPe chos rin chen spuns pa des Po-to-ba Rin-chen-gsal.Die Verschmelzung indischer und tibetischer Traditionen in einem fruhen “Stufenwegzur Erleuchtung” (lam rim), 2006, chapter 7.1.2.1.

9 7th edition, Swisttal-Odendorf 1996, pp. 189–190.

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The Tibetan-Sanskrit Dictionary of J. S. Negi10 lists two more expres-sions with sa le(r) as their first member:

1) The first entry is sa ler gda’ which renders Skt. uttanatam. yati, heremeaning “becomes shallow”. It occurs in stanza 35 of the famous hymn inpraise of the Buddha, the Prasadapratibhodbhava alias Satapancasatka byMatr.cet.a which runs as follows:

gos.padottanatam. yati gambhıryam. lavanambhasah. |yada te buddhigambhıryam agadhaparam ıks.yate ||“The depth of the salt ocean becomes shallow as a puddlewhen the unfathomable, boundless depth of your wisdom is beheld.”(Translation by Shackleton Bailey)| gang tshe khyod kyi dgongs pa’i dkyel || gting dang pha rol medbrtags na || rgya mtsho’i zab pa nyid kyang ni || gnag rjes lta bur sa ler gda’ |

The reading sa le is confirmed by the Tibetan version of *Nandipriya’scommentary on the Prasadapratibhodbhava, so there is no reason to specu-late about a possible textual corruption. I suspect that the Tibetan trans-lators misunderstood uttana as “turned upside down, made visible” whichis one of the basic meanings of uttana. Sa ler gda’ would then mean “ismanifest,” or, in the context of the stanza “(the depth of the ocean) be-comes obviously (that of a puddle).” Otherwise the expression sa ler gda’would remain entirely obscure. The usual Tibetan equivalents of “shallow”are kong kong, sa gzhongs, or gting thung ngu.

2) The second entry is sa ler mdzad which renders apavr.n. oti sma “(he)exposed, displayed, revealed.” It is taken from the famous MahayanasutraSaddharmapun. d. arıka or “The Lotus of the Good Law” and the wholephrase runs as follows:

evam eva bhagavam. s tam. mahantam. ratnastupam. . . . daks. in. aya has-tangulya madhye samudghat.yapavr.n. oti sma. (ed. Kern/Nanjio, p.2492–3),,In exactly this manner the Buddha opened the great stupa made ofjewels with the finger of his right hand and revealed it(s content).”. . . bcom ldan ’das kyis rin po che’i mchod rten chen po de phyagg.yas pa’i sor mos dbus nas phye ste sa ler mdzad do |

10 Vols. 1–16, Sarnath 1993–2005.

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Since here the meaning of the expression sa ler mdzad is obviously “mademanifest, visible” the interpretation of the preceding passage from thePrasadapratibhodbhava becomes even more likely.

4 The preceding discussion of sa le in its various contexts was deliber-ately chosen as a prelude to the central topic of this paper, the etymologyof ting nge ’dzin, the well-known and frequently occurring Tibetan equiv-alent of the Skt. term samadhi “concentration, (in German:) Sammlung.”It is surprising that until recently no one has attempted to give an ex-planation of this term. When I talked to colleagues about it I sometimesheard very fantastic interpretations, like “Oh, I believe, it is a Bon termmeaning ‘blue’ . . . ”

A couple of years ago, in a book devoted to quite a different topic11 Istumbled upon a lengthy and learned footnote that discusses the etymol-ogy of ting nge ’dzin, suggesting a (partial) Chinese origin of the term.This is the text:

“The expression ting-nge ’dzin, which serves as the regular Tibetanequivalent of Skt. samadhi “contemplation, meditative absorption”(Mvy. nos. 126, 145, 506–623, 736, 811 and passim), exhibits severalanomalous features. First, while the usual Tibetan practice is to ren-der Sanskrit technical terms into Tibetan by means of etymologicaltranslation (based on real or fictional etymologies), there is no visi-ble connection between the literal meaning of Skt. samadhi (“puttingtogether, joining or combining with”) (< sam-a-

√dha, MW 1159c)

and Tib. ting-nge ’dzin (lit. “to grasp ting nge,” in which the ele-ment ting-nge is unattested separately), unless perhaps the Tibetansexcerpted the elements a-

√dha, alone and interpreted them in the

fairly uncommon sense of “keep, hold, possess” (MW 138b). Second,the elements ting and nge, whether taken together or separately,have no apparent etymologies in Tibetan. Third, the initial lettert-, while not unknown in Tibetan, is relatively rare, occurring mostcommonly in loan words of Indian (or occasionally Chinese) originor in onomatopoeic expressions (Das, 512a–19b).Given that the majority of the Tibetan words in initial t- are offoreign origin, we might consider the possibility that ting-nge repre-sents a loan word borrowed into Tibetan during the early stages of

11 Jan Nattier, Once Upon a Future Time. Studies in a Buddhist Philosophy of De-cline, Berkeley 1991.

Miscellanea Etymologica Tibetica VIII 113

the formation of the Buddhist vocabulary (that is, prior to the timewhen the convention of translating rather than transliterating for-eign terms was put into effect). The word was clearly well establishedalready during the imperial period, since it appears in numerous en-tries in the Mahavyutpatti, a compilation dating from the early 9th

century, and it occurs in at least one of the titles (no. 535) of Bud-dhist works translated into Tibetan by the time of King Khri-sronglde-btsan (d. 797 CE); see M. Lalou, “Les textes bouddhiques autemps du roi Khri-sron-lde-bcan,” Journal Asiatique, CCXLI (1953),313–53. No Indian antecedent for the term ting-nge is readily appar-ent. On the Chinese side, however, the word ting 定 (“establish, fix,settle”) is used as one of the standard translations of Skt. samadhi.An antecedent of the component nge is less apparent, but perhaps weshould consider the expression ting-i 定意, another Chinese trans-lation of samadhi, (see Paul Harrison, The Samadhi of the DirectEncounter, 246).It is also possible (though in my view considerably less likely) thatthe syllable nge is a native Tibetan suffix of the type discussed byG. Uray in “The suffix -e in Tibetan” (Acta Orientalia [Budapest][1953] 3, 229–44). All such formations cited by Uray, however, arebased on native Tibetan words, not on loan words from other lan-guages, and as noted above there is no Tibetan term *ting on whichsuch a formation could have been based.Whatever the source of the second syllable in this expression, it seemsquite clear that the first syllable of Tibetan ting-nge is a loan wordfrom Chinese ting. In view of the still-lively debate concerning theextent of Chinese (especially Ch’an) influence on early Tibetan Bud-dhism, the presence of a Chinese loan word meaning “meditation” inthe earliest layer of Tibetan Buddhist vocabulary is of considerablesignificance as evidence of the extent of Chinese input during theformative stages of that tradition.”12

5 I have quoted this passage in extenso because it is exemplary in sev-eral respects: 1) The approach to the problem is a scholarly one, based onlogical considerations, on clear reasoning and deduction. The passage iswell documented by secondary literature, and an original solution is pre-sented. 2) In the end, however, the author seems to be carried away by

12 Nattier, op. cit., pp. 252–3, note 8. The abbreviations in the passage refer to thefollowing works: Mvy = Mahavyutpatti, ed. R. Sakaki, Kyoto 1925; MW = M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Oxford 1899; Das = Sarat Chandra Das, ATibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit synonyms, Calcutta 1902.

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her own conclusions. What originally was just a “possibility” in the secondparagraph becomes “quite clear” in the last paragraph, and moreover far-reaching conclusions are drawn from the (tentative) etymology of a singleword; cf. the last sentence of the concluding paragraph. 3) The footnoteillustrates the great risk of etymological speculations if one is not fullyfamiliar with the sound laws of the respective language and the overallprinciples of word formation in that particular period. Such speculationmight easily overlook the obvious, as in this specific case.

In my opinion, the greatest weakness of Nattier’s attempt at explainingting nge ’dzin is that the assumed Chinese origin of such a central termwould be an absolutely isolated phenomenon. If we analyze the wholevocabulary of the Mahavyutpatti as well as that of the *Madhyavyutpattialias Sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa we will not find any other dogmatic orotherwise basic term that is derived from a Chinese word. No pesuasivereason can be given for the inclusion of an isolated Chinese word in acorpus of almost 10,000 words and expressions. Moreover, we would haveto assume a strange hybrid translation consisting of a Chinese word (ting),an absolutely unclear syllable (nge), and finally a Tibetan word (’dzin).

The second weakness of Nattier’s etymology was already pointed to bythe author herself: the impossibility of giving a convincing interpretationof the second syllable nge. A good etymology does not stop half way;either the whole expression is explained coherently or one has to admitignoramus.

In fact Nattier was so close to the correct solution when she referredto Uray’s paper on the suffix -e in Tibetan. The only thing that pre-vented her from finding it was that she did not take into consideration thewell-attested phenomenon of the loss of initials and even finals of Tibetansyllables when they are used in compounds.

6 Despite the fact that this phenomenon is very common, it is unfortu-nately not given much attention in the standard introductions to ClassicalTibetan. Hence it is easily overlooked. The example chosen in the thirdsection of my paper is a good illustration: the original form gsal le “shin-ing intensively”, from the root gsal plus the intensive particle -e (whichrepeats the preceding final consonant), became reduced to sa le due tothe loss of the prefix g- and the final -l. Other examples belonging to the

Miscellanea Etymologica Tibetica VIII 115

basic vocabulary of Tibetan are yon tan “property, quality; virtue,” fromyon *gtan “what is given to someone or something permanently,” nan tan“earnestness, application, exertion, assiduity,” clearly derived from *mnangtan* “permanent pressure (on oneself),” or a simple word like nyi shu“twenty,” originally *gnyis bcu*, where gnyis “two” lost both its initial g-and its final -s, but only after the final -s had modified the initial c- of(the already defective form) cu (for bcu “ten”) to shu.

If we accept the presupposition that nge is the intensive particle, thenall we have to do is find out which prefix was lost before ting. The an-swer is very simple, it is g-. The noun gting, meaning “bottom; depth,”is ultimately derived from the verb ’ding ba “to spread on the ground.”In combination with the intensive particle -e it means “fundamentally,thoroughly, ‘from the bottom’, (in German:) ‘grundlich’.” The whole ex-pression ting nge ’dzin then means “to grasp something fundamentally,in its true nature,” and this can be done only during meditation sinceotherwise one is deluded by the limited truth (sam. vr. tisatya) of the empir-ical world. This is, in fact, a very considerate and well-chosen rendering.Someone might have qualms about the combination of a noun with theintensive particle. I believe it suffice to point to the verbal origin of gtingand also to a very common word like rtog ge “logic, ‘intensive reasoning’,”from rtog pa “to scrutinize,” which is generally regarded as a noun. Soting nge ’dzin is etymologically an entirely Tibetan word and fully in linewith other dogmatic and philosophical terms coined at the beginning ofthe 9th century AD.

7 The sceptic might ask again: “Well, I accept that ting nge could be anintensive formation of gting, but why this strange and puzzling renderingof sam(-a) instead of choosing one of the more common adverbs like kun tuor yang dag par that we know from countless other translations of Indianterms?” The answer is that the mechanical renderings of the second period(from the 10th century onwards) were proscribed during the first periodof translations (from c. 800–850 CE) by the principles laid down in Sgrasbyor bam po gnyis pa. The relevant paragraph runs as follows:

116 Michael Hahn

(20) pa ri dang | sam dang | u pa lta bu sogs te | tshig gi phraddang rgyan lta bur ’byung ba rnams bsgyur na don dang mthunzhing ’byor ba’i thabs ni | yongs su zhe ’am | yang dag pa zhe’am | nye ba zhes sgra bzhin du sgyur cig | don lhag par snyegspa med pa rnams ni tshig gi lhad kyis bsnan mi dgos kyis donbzhin du thogs shig |“While translating words like pari, sam, upa etc., i. e., such[words], that are particles (tshig gi phrad) or have a kind of(lta bu) ornamental [function] (rgyan), the method (thabs) toachieve correspondence with the meaning (don dang mthunzhing ’byor ba) [is as follows]:One should translate literally (sgra bzhin du) using [adverbialexpressions like] yongs su [= completely], yang dag pa [= inthe right manner] or nye ba [= near to, approximately].However, in the case of such [particles whose usage] does notadd (snyegs pa) to the meaning (don lhag pa) [of the simpleword] it is not necessary to enlarge [the translation] by addi-tional words, but one should translate (thogs shig) accordingto the meaning (don bzhin du).”13

Thus we find many instances where an adverb that is omitted in theearly translations is translated quite regularly in the later period. Skt.anutapa “regret, remorse” is simply ’gyod pa in the Tibetan Jatakamalafrom the 9th century while later we usually find rjes su ’gyod pa “to regretin hindsight” with the superfluous rjes su “after(wards), in accordancewith” (literally “in the trace of”), as a rendering the Skt. prefix anu-.

On the other hand in the early translations we find many peculiar ren-derings of Sanskrit prefixes, obviously done in an attempt at expressingthe specific and peculiar meanings they have in their respective contexts.To quote just a few examples:

a) Skt. udana “solemn uttering (of the Buddha)” becomes ched du brjod pa“that which is spoken in a meaningful manner.” Ched “greatness; impor-tance” is a noun derived from the qualitative verb che “to be great” withthe help of the noun suffix -d.

13 Text quoted from Nils Simonsson, Indo-tibetische Studien I, Uppsala 1957 p. 255.

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b) Skt. vyutpatti “analysis” becomes bye brag tu rtogs par byed pa “that whichmakes one understand (a matter) in (every) detail.” As one can see inthe dictionary of Negi there are numerous other expressions in which byebrag corresponds to the Sanskrit prefix vi - which in later time is generallyrendered mechanically by rnam par “in a classified manner,” whether thisis suitable in the respective context or not.

c) Skt. *visis. t.a “distinguished” (in *visis. t.astava14) becomes khyad par du’phags pa “he who is elevated in a distinctive manner.”

d) Skt. sam. skara “predispositions, conditioned states” becomes ’du byed“joint action,” (?) with ’du “to gather together (intrans.)” rendering theSanskrit prefix sam-. Likewise, Skt. sam. skr. ta “conditioned, formed” be-came ’du byas “jointly done, effected.”

e) Skt. vinipıd. ita- is rendered by ’jebs par gzir gyur nas in Sis.yalekha 32where ’jebs pa is the exact equivalent of German “sehr” in the sense of“painfully.”15

Another example of a peculiar way of expressing the Sanskrit prefix pra-is its rendition by rab as final member of a compound, e. g., in shes rab“wisdom” for Skt. prajna or gsung rab “sermon” for Skt. pravacana. Asis well known, in the later period Skt. pra- is generally rendered mechan-ically by the adverb rab(-tu) “in a high degree.”

8 I think, these few examples are sufficient to illustrate the need for thetwo tasks hinted at earlier as preparatory work for the compilation of anetymological dictionary of Tibetan:

a) The collection of the rich material of the Old Tibetan vocabulary that iscurrently scattered over a great number of monographs and papers of quitediverse natures. Sometimes, as in the case of Nattier, important consider-ations are hidden at places where they can easily escape the eye of theinterested linguist.

b) The systematic description of the principles of the Tibetan word formation.This refers to phonology, morphology, morphonology, and semantics.

14 Thus following Schneider’s suggestion for an emendation of the commonly knowntitle Vises.astava. Cf. Johannes Schneider, Der Lobpreis der Vorzuglichkeit des Buddha,Bonn 1993 (Indica et Tibetica. 23.), p. 14, note 6.

15 For this passage and its analysis cf. Michael Hahn, “Miscellanea etymologica ti-betica VII,” (cf. footnote 1), pp. 249–51.

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The second of these tasks is the topic of a Ph. D. currently being written atthe Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies (Fachgebiet Indologie undTibetologie) of the Philipps University Marburg. As for the first task, weare currently applying for a research grant that will support the collectionof the material together in one place so that it can be input into a database.

The first task cannot be done mechanically; it requires a certain expe-rience in the field of Tibetan literature. Tibetan scholars have compiledseveral dictionaries of the vocabulary of the “old language” (skad rny-ing) together with definitions of the meaning of these words. Here weencounter the same problem as with the Indian indigenous works of lex-icography: when we do not find the word in actual usage we cannot besure whether the definition is correct or merely the perpetuation of an oldentry of doubtful origin. Therefore the information of the dictionaries hasto be coordinated with editions and studies of Old Tibetan documents,many of which are fortunately accompanied by glossaries or word indexes.

A second point of importance is the system of classification of Tibetanscholars. This seems to have been done on a very subjective basis: “ ‘Old’is what I do not understand or what I would not use anymore.” Thereforewords like ting nge ’dzin or gtsug lag16 which certainly belong to theoldest layer of the Tibetan vocabulary are not styled as rnying “old” inthe Tibetan-Tibetan-Chinese dictionary of Zhang Yisun.17 On the otherhands a word like te por, an older synonym of shin tu “very”, is styledas “old” although it occurs in the translations of the 13th century authorShong ston Rdo-rje rgyal mtshan.18 Here the judgement of the compilerbecomes vital in the process of selecting the vocabulary for the planneddatabase.

16 For the etymology of this word cf Michael Hahn, “Miscelleanea etymologica tibe-tica V” (cf. footnote 1).

17 Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo, Beijing 1985.18 Cf. Michael Hahn, Jnanasrımitras Vr.ttamalastuti, Wiesbaden 1971, p. 225–6.