Language barriers --- financial barriers

Jean-Luc Chevillard jean-luc.chevillard at UNIV-PARIS-DIDEROT.FR
Fri Mar 6 11:26:44 UTC 2009


I don't think it makes sense to oppose the need to read books (or 
journal) in German and the need to read books (or journals) in Tamil.

Take the case of somebody who is interested in Tamil epigraphy.

That person will probably have read Iravatham Mahadevan's book (/Early 
Tamil Epigraphy/, 2003,
Cre-A [Chennai] and Harvard Oriental Series 62), which is in English.

That person might be interested in reading Oskar von Hinüber's 1986 book
/Das Ältere Mittelindisch im Überblick/, Wien,
which is in German,
because it makes sense to try to understand the languages with which 
Tamil was in contact.

That person might be a regular subscriber to the journal /ஆவணம்/
[Avanam, Journal of the TamilNadu Archaeological Society, Thanjavur],
which is purely in Tamil,
because it is the most efficient way to be informed of new discoveries
in the field of Tamil epigraphy
and because it is edited by very competent scholars.

The more languages one knows, the better.

-- Jean-Luc Chevillard (CNRS, Université Paris-Diderot)


Gruenendahl, Reinhold a écrit :
> George Hart wrote:
>  
>> I can testify that there is an enormous scholarly literature in Tamil that is
>> important for Indological studies -- and that it is in no way inferior in
>> quality or learning to what is in German or English. The same is true of
>> Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu -- and I suspect of the major North Indian
>> languages.
>  
> I would be interested to hear where any of the topics covered in Oskar von
> Hinüber's "Kleine Schriften" are treated in these languages.
>  
>  
>  
>   





More information about the INDOLOGY mailing list