TochPhrase

Presentation about TochPhrase

The so-called Tocharians were an Indo-European speaking people from Central Asia, having inhabited the Tarim basin, in present-day Xinjiang province (China), who spoke and wrote two closely related Indo-European languages of the same branch, Tocharian A and Tocharian B. The Tocharian literature in known from manuscripts with can be roughly dated between end of 4th century CE and beginning of 11th century CE ; the bulk of the texts can be dated between 6th and 8th centuries CE. The majority of Tocharian literary and religious texts belong to Buddhism, and most of them are translations or adaptations of Buddhist texts known in other languages of Central Asia. The models of these texts can be found in Sanskrit or in Middle Indic texts, in Pāli or Gāndhārī. However, most of Tocharian texts are known through fragments of manuscripts, which have been more or less worn out. The knowledge of parallel texts or of the Sanskrit and Middle indic models is often decisive to complete sentences, and then to identify the texts in question. It is also well known that Buddhist texts in any language contain the same terminology. They resort also to a set of more or less formulaic phrases which express key notions and themes of Buddhism. The aim of the database "TochPhrase" is about collecting through investigation of the Tocharian A and B texts Buddhist terms and phrases which can be connected with dictionaries of Buddhist terminology, such as the Mahāvyutpatti, and with all sorts of records in different languages of Buddhism. See also the list of concepts as covered by Helmut Eimer, Buddhistische Begriffsreihen als Skizzen des Erlösungsweges, Wien, 2006 (Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 65). This Tocharian-oriented database will survey non-canonical as well as canonical texts.