Claus Peter Zoller Knihy

The book offers a new perspective on the emergence and spread of Indo-Aryan in North India. Based on the analysis of more than 200 Indo-Aryan languages and dialects, it proves that there was more than just one immigration of Indo-Aryan speakers to North India. This left clear marks on the modern Indo-Aryan languages. When the Vedic-speaking Indo-Aryans arrived in northern India, there were already speakers of other Indo-Aryan dialects that were slightly more archaic than Vedic. Traces of these somewhat more archaic dialects are mainly found in peripheral Indo-Aryan languages between the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. They are therefore called outer languages, while the descendants of Vedic and Classical Sanskrit (e. g. Pali and Hindi) are called inner languages. Outer and inner languages differ not only in terms of archaicity, but they have also developed differently, especially in phonology. The book also addresses the question of the linguistic situation in North India before the arrival of the first Indo-Aryans. Again, it is these peripheral languages, albeit along with many small Tibeto-Burmese Himalayan languages, that have preserved the richest linguistic data showing that prehistoric North India was dominated by Austro-Asiatic languages before the arrival of the Indo-Aryans.

Die erste vollständige Dokumentation eines mündlichen Mahabharata-Epos aus dem Himalaya umfasst eine grammatische und stilistische Analyse der poetischen Sprache sowie Untersuchungen zum geschichtlichen Hintergrund mündlicher Mahabharata-Traditionen in Indien und deren Verhältnis zum klassischen Sanskrit-Epos. Dabei wird argumentiert, dass zwischen der schriftlichen Tradition und den mündlichen Traditionen zwar jahrhundertelang Wechselwirkungen stattfanden, die mündlichen Epentraditionen aber nicht direkt auf den Sanskrittext zurückgeführt werden können. Die Panduan (‚Stimme der Pandavas‘) ist ein mythologisches Epos mit vielen Motiven, die im Sanskrittext nicht erscheinen. Sie besingt den Kampf zwischen den göttlichen Pandavas und den dämonischen Kauravas um universale Herrschaft, die sich symbolisch als Weltenbaum manifestiert. Das Epos wird von professionellen Barden alljährlich im Februar im Rahmen eines Festes zu Ehren des Gottes Mahasu vorgetragen; das Buch eruiert deshalb auch die komplexen religiösen Verflechtungen zwischen regionaler Gottheit und panindischer Epentradition. Die Sprache ist Bangani, eine Varietät des indoarischen West Pahari, doch unterscheidet sich die poetische Sprache stark von der Alltagsdiktion. Der achtstündige Aufführungstext liegt in Transkription und Übersetzung vor und ist mit zahlreichen Kommentaren und Erklärungen versehen.

Volume 1 of A Grammar and Dictionary of Indus Kohistani contains around 8.000 lemmata, many of which are supplemented with parallels from adjacent dialects, from other Dardic, from Nuristani, Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dravidian and Munda languages, and from Burushaski. The lemmata have been, wherever possible, provided with information about their origin, and they are connected by numerous cross-references. Since Indus Kohistani is a pitch accent language with complicated rules governing the behaviour of the two pitch accents in compounding, derivation, and inflexion, the lemmata are not only marked with their appropriate pitch accents, but the behaviour of the accents (change of value, shift) is illustrated with a large number of inflected forms and cross-references. And since Indus Kohistani has a rich (and frequently irregular) inner and outer conjugation, most verbs are provided with many finite and participle forms. In addition, the dictionary contains two indexes (English - Indus Kohistani and Old Indo-Aryan - Indus Kohistani), and lists with place and clan names, names of the months, etc.