Khotanese is a Middle Iranian language with a large amount of Buddhist literature extant, hence the interest. Khotan itself was a thriving center of Buddhism in Inner (or Central Asia) for most of the first millennium after the birth of Christ, so the study of Khotan and Khotanese literature is important in understanding the spread of Buddhism from India to the rest of Asia. I'll be talking more and more about all things Khotanese as I get to various topics since this is one of the main areas that I am researching.
I've been working on this list in the hope of eventually creating a composite index of Khotanese words. Not necessarily a dictionary, but merely an index that lists where words are discussed since Bailey's dictionary only lists words of Iranian origin, and you often have to check in a variety of places to find a particular lemma. And this gets wearisome, so a master index is necessary. It's not like using a single dictionary while working in other language; I often have to check in three or four places without any guarantee of finding what I'm looking for. Eventually, with a master index in hand, the time to work through a text should be cut way down, but of course, I have to put in the time to create a list in the first place.
The 3rd volume of Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese is an ideal place to start since it is itself an index for all three volumes and the lemmata correct mistakes, problems, or ghostwords in Sir. H. W. Bailey's Dictionary of Khotan Saka. Incidentally, if you'd like to purchase a copy of this extremely rare dictionary for my use, it's only about $700. You'd have my eternal gratitude, of course.
So I'm going through making an index of the lemmata or headwords with a minimal amount of information such as location in the volumes and the translation of the particular term, and I have run into a surprising number of words that I had to look up so I thought I'd share them and their definitions with you in no particular order:
1. beestings - n. first milk given by cow after calving
2. supervenient - adj. surprising, unexpected
3. efflate - to fill with breath; to puff up.
4. simplex - having only one part or element; "a simplex word has no affixes and is not part of a compound--like `boy' compared with `boyish' or `house' compared with `houseboat'
5. raphe - n. seam joining two halves or parts of a body part (Anatomy); median line of the cell wall of a diatom (Botany)
6. clyster-pipe - n. injection of a liquid through the anus to stimulate evacuation; sometimes used for diagnostic purposes
Learn Khotanese, improve your English vocabulary!
For the pedants: Emmerick, R.E., and P.O. Skjærvø. 1997. Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese III, (Veröffentlichungen der iranischen Kommission herausgegeben von Heiner Eichner und Rüdiger Schmitt Band 27). Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften.
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