Das altere Mittelindisch im Uberblick.

• Position: Brief Reviews - Book Review

Das altere Mittelindisch im Uberblick. By OSCAR VON HINUBER. 2nd rev. ed. Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaft, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, vol. 467; Veroffentlichungen der Kommission fur Sprachen und Kulturen Sudasiens, no. 20. Vienna: VERLAG DER OSTERREICHISCHEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFT, 2001. Pp. 343. OS 620.

The publication of the second revised and expanded edition of this magisterial and indispensable overview of the Middle Indic languages is most welcome. The first edition was published in 1986 (reviewed in this journal by W. L. Smith, JAOS 108 [1988]: 185-86) and immediately filled a need for an up-to-date, linguistically informed, and bibliographically rich treatment of Pali and the Prakrits, supplementing the still useful but dated treatments of Geiger (Pali, 1916) and Pischel (Prakrits, 1900). There have been a number of developments in Middle Indic studies in the fifteen years following the first publication, much of it due to the assiduous activities of the author himself, and a new edition was certainly a desideratum, both to register the many additions to the scholarly literature on the subject and to incorporate some dramatic changes to the field. Among these...