KLEINE SCHRIFTEN . By Oskar von Hinüber ; edited by HarryFalk and WalterSlaje . Veroffentlichungen der Glasenapp-Stiftung, 47. 2 vols . Wiesbaden : Harrassowitz , 2009 . Pp . liv + 1165 . $267.00 .
摘要
Neither the hefty price tag nor the appearance of being in German (in fact, more than half the articles and a number of the book reviews are in English) should obscure the fact that the publication of this two‐volume collection of von Hinüber's work is a major event in Buddhist Studies for the Anglophone scholarly community. No college or university library with a serious interest in Buddhism should be without these books. Some of the articles, to be sure, discuss detailed philological issues of Pali, Sanskrit, and various dialects of Middle Indic, which will be accessible only to specialists; but many also raise important wider issues, for example, the nature of Buddhist Law, the nature and history of Pali (“Pali as an Artificial Language,”“On the Tradition of Pali Texts in India, Ceylon and Burma”), “Origins and Variety of Buddhist Sanskrit,”“Old Age and Old Monks in Pali Buddhism,” the date of the Buddha, and “Buddhism in Gilgit Between India and Central Asia.” Von Hinüber's writing is lucid and accessible. The volume features extensive indices.
