THE LANGUAGES OF SOUTH ASIA a catalogue of rare books: dictionaries, grammars, manuals, & literature. with several important works on Tibetan Catalogue 31 John Randall (Books of Asia) John Randall (Books of Asia) [email protected] +44 (0)20 7636 2216 www.booksofasia.com VAT Number : GB 245 9117 54 Cover illustration taken from no. 4 (Colebrooke) in this catalogue; inside cover illustrations taken from no. 206 (Williams). © John Randall (Books of Asia) 2017 THE LANGUAGES OF SOUTH ASIA Catalogue 31 John Randall (Books of Asia) INTRODUCTION The conversion of the East India Company from trading concern to regional power South Asia, home to six distinct linguistic gave further impetus to the study of South families, remains one of the most Asian languages. Employees of the linguistically complex regions on earth. Company were charged with producing According to the 2001 Census of India, linguistic guides for official purposes. 1,721 languages and dialects were spoken as Military officers needed language skills to mother tongues. Of these, 29 had one issue commands to locally recruited troops. million or more speakers, and a further 31 And as the Company sought to perpetuate more than 100,000. the Mughal system of rule, knowledge of Persian as well as regional languages was The political implications of such dizzying essential for revenue collectors and diversity have been no less complex. Since administrators of justice. 1953, there have been many attempts to re- divide the country along linguistic lines. As All the while, some independent European recently as 2014, the new state of Telangana scholars demonstrated a genuine interest in was created as a homeland for Telugu and empathy for South Asian languages and speakers. However, all initiatives to impose their literatures. The considerable influence one dominant language on a multilingual of translations from Indian works on population have been strongly resisted. A German romantic literature in the early 19th plan to make Hindi the language of India’s century is but one example. Christian central government had to be abandoned in missionaries requiring fluency in local the 1960s after violent protests in the languages to achieve their ambitions of Dravidian south. conversion were another group committed to studying Indian languages. The efforts of Historically, South Asian languages have William Carey, founder of the Serampore been at the heart of the development of the Mission, who compiled grammars of six science of linguistics. The three fathers of Indian languages, stand out. the science – Ferdinand de la Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield and Edward Sapir – all Only more recently has the important role studied Sanskrit. The rediscovery of the played by Indian munshis and maulvis as sophisticated analysis of language perfected intermediaries to the indigenous traditions by Pāṇini and other Sanskrit grammarians of linguistic knowledge been fully by the 3rd century BCE further powered the recognized. development of linguistics in the West. The greater imperial agenda of language The Enlightenment use of language investigation culminated in Sir George comparison to study how mankind had Grierson’s monumental Linguistic Survey of populated the globe can be traced back to India, published in eleven volumes between Sir William Jones’s third presidential 1903 and 1928, which documented 723 address to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in languages and dialects. 1786, in which he elucidated the In 1984, a second Linguistic Survey of India connections between Indian and European was initiated under the umbrella of the languages. Indian Census. The aim was to record changes in India’s linguistic make-up in the six decades since Grierson’s Survey, and to ii correct its shortcomings, such as its under- representation of southern Indian languages. By 2010, some forty percent of the Survey had been completed, but it was then replaced by a new initiative, the People’s Linguistic Survey. Here the priority was to record the languages of India’s tribal groups and other minority communities as a counter to ‘linguicism’, or discrimination against an individual on the basis of mother tongue. The first few of the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT projected fifty volumes were published in 2017. This catalogue benefited greatly from the generous and A rapid erosion of India’s linguistic heritage has occurred in the past century alone: one knowledgeable assistance of fifth of India’s languages were lost in the Graham Shaw. first half of the twentieth century, and another third during the second half. With the immense jigsaw of South Asia’s languages still being pieced together, we trust that this judicious collection of more than 200 books tracing three centuries of study and printing – and the sheer variety of scholarship, literature and art that sprang up in response – adds one small piece more to the whole. iii SANSKRIT p.1 Maithili p.80 Mikir p.81 NORTH Hindi p.15 Oriya p.81 Kashmiri p.17 WEST Nepali p.18 Brahui p.82 Pahari p.20 Gujarati p.82 Pashto p.21 Marathi p.85 Persian p.25 Sindhi p.87 Panjabi p.29 SOUTH Saraiki p.34 Dakhni p.90 Urdu p.35 Kannada p.90 Malayalam p.92 TIBETAN p.64 Tamil p.96 EAST Andamanese p.70 Telugu p.104 Assamese p.70 Tulu p.108 Bengali p.72 SINHALESE p.109 Bihari p.77 Divehi p.112 Dafla p.78 GENERAL & Khondi p.78 MIXED WORKS p.113 Kului p.79 Lephcha p.79 iv SANSKRIT [Birrel & Garnett 12; Updike, Printing Types i (1951), pp.181-3; Smitskamp PO 206.]. 1. [Amaduzzi, Giovanni Cristoforo, and Cassiano Beligatti.] First Sanskrit grammar Alphabetum Brammhanicum seu 2. [Werdin, Johann Philipp.] Indostanum. Universitatis Kasi. Rome, Sidharubam seu grammatica Typis Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Samscrdamica cui accedit dissertatio Fide, 1771. historico-critica in languam First edition. 8vo, 20 x 14 cm; pp.xx, 152. Text samscrdamicam vulgo samscret dictam. with printed devanagari characters. Modern half Rome, Typographia Sacrae Congregationis de calf over marbled boards; untrimmed and Propaganda Fide, 1790. unopened; a few leaves spotted. Stamps of the Propaganda Fide to title-page and p.152. First edition. 4to, 26 x 19 cm; pp.188. Sanskrit [79740] text in grantha. Later vellum; boards a little £850 soiled, a few pages toned. Propaganda Fide stamps to title-page and p.188. [120772] A Sanskrit alphabet as used at Kasi £1,000 University, Benares, with various Christian prayers provided in parallel The first Sanskrit grammar published, Latin and Hindi, largely prepared by preceding Colebrooke and Wilkins. The Cassiano Beligatti, a Franciscan grammar is preceded by a long historical missionary active in northern India examination of Sanskrit, its sources and from 1738 to 1756. Amaduzzi’s preface texts, scripts, and the history of provides a bibliographic survey of European Sanskrit studies to date. European Sanskrit studies. Giovanni Amaduzzi (1740-1792) was a distinguished philologist and superintendent of the press of the Propaganda Fide at Rome; during his Johann Philipp Werdin (1748-1806), or tenure numerous alphabets and Wesdin, was an Austrian Carmelite, also grammars for non-European languages known by his Latin name, Paulinus a were produced. He appears to have Sancto Bartholomaeo. He went to been involved in designing the new Kerala as a missionary in 1774, where fonts employed in many of these books. he learnt Malayalam and Sanskrit; on his return to Rome in 1789 he was 1 appointed Vicar-General of his order printed in romanized Sanskrit and became private secretary to throughout, whereas the first used Cardinal Stefano Borgia, Secretary to grantha characters. He also expanded the Propaganda Fide. Borgia financed the introductions to all sections of the the production of several works on grammar. India, of which this was the first. First Sanskrit grammar 3. Werdin, Johann Philipp. Vyacarana seu locupletissima printed in India Samscrdamicae linguae institutio. seu 4. Colebrooke, Henry Thomas. locupletissima Samscrdamicae linguae A grammar of the Sanscrit language. institutio. In usum fidei praeconum in Volume I. [All published.] Calcutta, India Orientali, et virorum litteratorum printed at the Honorable Company's Press, in Europa adornata. Rome, Typis S. 1805. Congreg. de Propag. Fide, 1804. First edition. Folio, 31 x 20 cm; pp.xxii, 369, [1, Second edition. 4to, 28 x 21 cm; pp.xxiv, 333, blank], [4]. Text in English and Sanskrit. [1, imprimatur]; 1 folding plate. Very good Modern half morocco over marbled boards; contemporary half-vellum over marbled boards, lightly browned throughout. Some minor spine gilt, with morocco lettering-piece. Small worming to margins; old repairs to gutters of Propaganda Fide stamp to title-page, initial pages, and margins of final pages. Ink contemporary paper labels to spine and front inscription of the College of Fort William and pastedown. [80120] their stamp in Arabic and devanagari characters £1,500 to verso of title. [79981] £3,500 The first and only volume of Colebrooke’s Sanskrit grammar published, based on his extensive study of India’s ancient grammatical tradition, which deals with Sanskrit phonetics and script, the nominal system, general features of the verbal system and the roots of the first class. The second volume, unpublished, would have contained the roots of the other nine classes, compounds, syntax, and Vedic peculiarities and prosody. A partial manuscript in Colebrooke’s hand is now part of the British Library’s collection An enlarged and revised edition of (MS.Eur/D.432). Werdin’s 1790 Sanskrit grammar, issued under a new title, beginning vyacarana Max Müller praised Colebrooke’s (vyakarana), Sanskrit for grammar. grammar as by far the best of the four earliest published, surpassing those of Werdin made significant changes in William Carey, Henry Pitts Forster, and response to the comments of readers of Charles Wilkins: “Among these four the first edition, omitting the historical publications, which as first attempts at review of European studies of the making the ancient language of India Sanskrit language and the comparative accessible to European scholars, table of alphabets.