Dear Jan,

thank you for your observations and proposals. In brief, we keep lists of many more glossaries in our drawers, which we ourselves „miss“ no less badly than you. We would have loved to add more, but the “present stage of the project” you refer to is actually its final stage. The „Description“ provided on the search site informs the careful reader that funding was granted by the DFG for three years only. Therefore, the

volume of the data to be included had to be limited right from the outset, and a manageable choice had to be made. What you get is what we could manage to achieve in the allotted time.

Given that even the data base as such had to be developed in the course of those three years and that every single entry of every single glossary had to be adapted to the structure of the pw (hand-picked) for the purpose of the intended synoptic representation – not to speak of proof-reading –, any claim to completeness would have amounted to hubris. We have consciously never made such a claim

Even though two works of Renou are deplorably missing, I agree, there are still about fifteen other lexicographical works from Renou’s pen included in the NWS, which spares you checking all of them separately when hunting for a single word.

Since the NWS is almost limitlessly expandable, it is only a matter of raising funds for completing it in a

truly

satisfying manner. Everybody, who is interested in expanding it further, is cordially invited to

come up with feasible ideas for fundraising.

> From your reference to Oliver Hellwig's 2009 Wörterbuch der mittelalterlichen indischen Alchemie with as specific topic "Mineralogy" should we conclude that the contributions of this dictionary to other fields such as alchemical instruments have not been used?

It depends on whether one likes to approach the NWS from a theoretical or from a practical perspective: The theorist, relying on conclusions drawn from a tag he has spotted, will refrain from search efforts and meet less success than the more practical person, who blithely types, e.g., „māraṇa“ and feels rewarded by a result, which at the same time would also answer your question about “mineralogy only”, were it indeed put earnestly, which, I trust, it was not, but with mild irony

only

. I like that.

In any case, we will of course adjust the topic. Thank you for alerting us to it!

Kind regards,

Walter

2017-05-31 19:41 GMT+02:00 Jan E.M. Houben <jemhouben@gmail.com>:

Dear Walter, Dear Jürgen,
This is an excellent initiative, thanks for sharing this significant new research tool !

Since you base yourself on lexicographical works "seit den Petersburger Wörterbüchern von O. Böhtlingk (speziell dem „pw“, 1879-89) und dem darauf aufbauenden Werk von R. Schmidt (1928)" it is not immediately clear whether pre-1928 critical studies in lexicography (critical of the remarkable work done by Böhtlingk and Roth) have sufficiently been taken into account.
Think of Johann Georg Bühler 1894 The Roots of the Dhâtupâṭha not found in Literature, Indian Antiquary 23 (1894) 141-154, 250-255; WZKM 8, 17-42, 122-136, partially reprinted in Staal J. F. (ed.) A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians, MIT Press, 1972, 194-204.
J.G. Bühler is quite critical of earlier lexicographical efforts: “no Sanskritist can afford to leave the modern vernaculars out of the range of his studies, if he wishes really to understand the ancient language” (1894: 150).

I am curious why you list « Suppl[e]ment to Dictionary of Pāṇinian Grammatical Terminology. » Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 90 (for 2009) : 127-151 (actual date of appearance: 2011), but not Roodbergen's Dictionary of Pāṇinian Grammatical Terminology itself (Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 2008).

You have taken several lexicographical works of Louis Renou into account, but I do not see
Renou, Louis. 1953. Vocabulaire du rituel védique. Paris: C. Klincksieck.
Renou, Louis. 1957. Terminologie Grammaticale du Sanskrit. 2e impression. Paris: Champion.

I also miss in your list Caland, Willem and Victor Henry 1906-07: L'Agniṣṭoma. Description complète de la forme normale du Sacrifice de Soma dans le culte védique. Tome I-II. Paris: Ernest Leroux, which contains a list of terms relevant to Vedic ritual.

Specific studies of medical terminology seem not to have received sufficient attention in this stage of your project.
I guess that a study such as A. Raison, "Un dictionnaire de matière médicale d'après les chapitres III à XII du Rajanighantu", which appeared in G.J. Meulenbeld (Ed.) (1984), 251--260, would be usable.

From your reference to Oliver Hellwig's 2009 Wörterbuch der mittelalterlichen indischen Alchemie with as specific topic "Mineralogy" should we conclude that the contributions of this dictionary to other fields such as alchemical instruments have not been used?

Jan Houben

Jan E.M. HOUBEN
Directeur d’Études
Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite
Professor of South Asian History and Philology
École Pratique des Hautes Études
Sciences historiques et philologiques
54, rue Saint-Jacques
CS 20525 – 75005 Paris
johannes.houben@ephe.sorbonne.fr
https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

www.ephe.fr

On 31 May 2017 at 11:50, Walter Slaje via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear Colleagues,

we should like to inform the members of this list that a cumulative Sanskrit dictionary with the German title „Nachtragswörterbuch des Sanskrit“ (NWS), the result of a joint project at the universities of Halle and Marburg and funded by the DFG, is accessible as a trial version:

http://nws.uzi.uni-halle.de/?lang=en

The new search tool lists lexicographical addenda from c. 170
dictionaries and glossaries, which postdate Böhtlingk's
"Sanskrit-Wörterbuch in kürzerer Fassung" (1879-89) as well as
R. Schmidts "Nachträge" (1928):

http://nws.uzi.uni-halle.de/dictionaries?lang=en

The search page provides a synoptic search in all three sources:

http://nws.uzi.uni-halle.de/search?lang=en

General information is provided here:

http://nws.uzi.uni-halle.de/description?lang=de

Basic usage is probably self-explanatory, but do use the button
"Help and useful hints" on the search page and the menu "Description".

Corrections and other feedback can be sent to nws@uzi.uni-halle.de.

We hope that the NWS will be of some use for Sanskritists.

Kind regards,

Walter Slaje (Halle) and Jürgen Hanneder (Marburg)

-----------------------------
Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
Hermann-Löns-Str. 1
D-99425 Weimar
Deutschland

Ego ex animi mei sententia spondeo ac polliceor
studia humanitatis impigro labore culturum et provecturum
non sordidi lucri causa nec ad vanam captandam gloriam,
sed quo magis veritas propagetur et lux eius, qua salus
humani generis continetur, clarius effulgeat.
Vindobonae, die XXI. mensis Novembris MCMLXXXIII.

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