Christopher I. Beckwith Knihy

This book on the pre-modern Tibeto-Burman languages represents a movement to establish a field of Tibeto-Burman comparative-historical linguistics according to the classical Indo-European model. The book contains papers by T. Takeuchi on Old Zhang-zhung, A. Zadoks on Old Tibetan, K. Tamot on Early Classical Newari; C. Beckwith on Pyu, R. Yanson on Old Burmese, S. Chelliah and S. Ray on Early Meithei, D. Bradley on Tibeto-Burman, and C. Beckwith on Sino-Tibetan. Glossaries of several early Tibeto-Burman languages are included. It provides information, not found in any other source, on early Tibeto-Burman literary languages and their position within Tibeto-Burman as well as their relationship to Chinese and other languages.

This is the first book devoted to the phoronym, a largely overlooked grammatical category that includes measures such as «cup» in «a cup of tea», classifiers such as «head» in «ten head of cattle», and other types, all of which occur in the pseudopartitive construction. Both measures and noun classification (the defining feature of classifiers) are thought to occur in all languages, so the phoronym is a linguistic universal. This book is the first to combine the two major theoretical approaches to the topic and includes the first detailed studies of group classifiers and repeaters, as well as the first study of classifiers in Finnish and Russian. It also covers class nouns and their components – which are connected grammatically and semantically to both classifiers and gender – and discusses possible connections of classifiers with sublinguistic cognition. The analysis focuses on Mandarin Chinese, English, Japanese, and Thai, but Finnish, Hungarian, Tibetan, Uzbek, and other languages are also discussed.

Presents a history of early Buddhism based solely on dateable artefacts and archaeology rather than received tradition, much of which data is provided by studying Pyrrho's history

A history of Central Eurasia since ancient times. It presents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. It describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols.

Prologue: Central Eurasian innovators -- The Scythians in the Central Eurasian steppes -- The Scythians in media and Central Asia -- The Scytho-Mede Persian empire -- One eternal royal line -- Imperial Scythian in the Persian empire -- Classical Scythian in the central Eurasian steppes Eurasia -- The Scythian empire in chao and the first Chinese empire -- The Scythian capitals of Media, Chao, and Ch'in -- Epilogue: Scythian philosophy and the classical age.

This narrative history of the Tibetan Empire in Central Asia from about A.D. 600 to 866 depicts the struggles of the great Tibetan, Turkic, Arab, and Chinese powers for dominance over the Silk Road lands that connected Europe and East Asia. It shows the importance of overland contacts between East and West in the Early Middle Ages and elucidates Tibet's role in the conflict over Central Asia.