Zur Didaktik mittelindischer Sprachen.

• Author: Jamison, Stephanre W.
• Position: Lehrbuch der Ardhamagadhi; Maharastri: Grammatischer Abriss und Worterbuch; Sauraseni: Grammatik und Glossar; Magadhi: Grammatik, Textproben Und Glossar - Book review

Zur Didaktik mittelindischer Sprachen. By KLAUS MYLIUS. Beitrage zur Kenntnis sudasiatischer Sprachen und Literaturen, vol. 23. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ, 2013. Pp. 100. [euro]24.

In the same series, with the same author and publisher:

Lehrbuch der Ardhamagadhi...., vol. 24. ..., 2014. Pp. 110. [euro]29.

Maharastri: Grammatischer Abriss und Worterbuch. ..., vol. 25. ..., 2016. Pp. 131. [euro]29.90.

Sauraseni: Grammatik und Glossar. ..., vol. 27. ..., 2018. Pp. 89. [euro]29.90.

Mdgadhl: Grammatik, Textproben und Glossar. ..., vol. 29. ..., 2019. Pp. 74. [euro]29.

The linguistic, literary, and religious riches of the various Middle Indo-Aryan languages are difficult of access for beginners, once they detour off the well-trodden path of Pali. Although these languages have attracted scholars of remarkable skill--just to mention a few of the early giants like Jacobi, Pischel, and Weber and their worthy successors such as Alsdorf, Bloch, Caillat, von Hinuber, Luders. Norman, again naming just a few. But tools that will allow a tyro to make a start on the study of these vernaculars, even a tyro with solid Sanskrit and Pali, are harder to find. The still standard grammar, that of Richard Pischel (Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen, 1900), though packed full with matter, is extremely difficult to use; Mylius refers to it several times as "antididaktisch" (e.g., 2013: 5; 2018: 3), an assessment with which I wholeheartedly concur. Among other things, the word index in its original German version is barely over ten pages, despite the thousands of forms treated in the dense volume: one essentially has to know what the form is and what phonological changes it exemplifies to find it--rather defeating the purpose. Only in the English translation of Subhadra Jha (1957) do we find an adequate--or at least considerably better--index of approximately 150 pages. Oskar von Hiniiber's Das altere Mittelindisch im Uberblick (1985, 2nd enl. and rev. ed. 2001) is invaluable--and much easier to navigate than Pischel--but it is not, nor was it intended to be, a primary pedagogical tool. Individual languages do have versions of Elementarbucher, such as Hermann Jacobi's Ausgewahlte Erzahlungen in Maharastri (1886), which contains a sketch grammar in addition to reading selections and a full glossary to them. And English is better served than German, by Alfred C. Woolner's Introduction to Prakrit (1917, 2nd ed. 1928, 3rd rev. ed. 1939), which gives a general introduction to the...