Indo-Tibetan Lexical Resource (2023)

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The Indo-Tibetan Lexical Resource (ITLR) is a collaborative lexical project built around Sanskrit Headwords which are ordered under the rubrics (1) Word/Term/Phrase, (2) Place Name, (3) Personal name, or (4) Title of Scripture/Treatise. It aims to provide occurrences of these lexical items in Indic sources, attested Tibetan translations of them, modern renderings, and references to them in discussions in academic works. The ITLR involves a number of scholars from around the world in various capacities, including editors, advisors, contributors, and visiting fellows, and it cooperates with several institutions.

 

Editors

• Dr. Orna Almogi (Universität Hamburg)
• Mr. Nicola Bajetta (Universität Hamburg)
• Mr. Ryan Conlon (Universität Hamburg)
• Prof. Dr. Martin Delhey (Shandong University)
• Prof. Dr. Harunaga Isaacson (Universität Hamburg)
• Dr. Anne MacDonald (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
• Dr. Kiyonori Nagasaki (DHII and SAT, Tokyo)
• Prof. Dr. Francesco Sferra (University of Naples "L'Orientale")
• Prof. Dr. Masahiro Shimoda (University of Tokyo)
• Dr. Toru Tomabechi (DHII, Tokyo)
• Prof. Dr. Dorji Wangchuk (Universität Hamburg)

Advisors

• Prof. Dr. Emeritus Katsumi Mimaki (University of Kyoto)
• Prof. Dr. Emeritus Akira Saito (University of Tokyo)
• Prof. Dr. Emeritus Lambert Schmithausen (Universität Hamburg)

Individual Contributors

• Dr. Orna Almogi (Universität Hamburg)
• Mr. Nicola Bajetta (Universität Hamburg)
• Alexander Cherniak (Jerusalem)
• Prof. Dr. Martin Delhey (Shandong University)
• Dr. Giuliano Giustarini (Mahidol University)
• Prof. Harunaga Isaacson (Universität Hamburg)
• Dr. Sabine Klein-Schwind (Universität Hamburg)
• Dr. Kenichi Kuranishi (Research Fellow of Taisho University)
• Dr. Anne MacDonald (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
• Dr. Giuliana Martini (Dharma Drum College, Taiwan)
• Dr. Patrick Mc Allister (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
• Dr. Kiyonori Nagasaki (DHII and SAT, Tokyo)
• Dr. Hodo Nakamura (Universität Hamburg/Kyoto)
• Dr. Boram Park (Dongguk University, Seoul)
• Prof. Mattia Salvini (Mahidol University, Bangkok)
• Dr. Margherita Serena Saccone (Instituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, Rome)
• Prof. Francesco Sferra (University of Naples "L'Orientale")
• Dr. Péter Dániel Szántó (University of Oxford)
• Dr. Toru Tomabechi (SAT, University of Tokyo)
• Prof. Dorji Wangchuk (Universität Hamburg)
• Dr. Toshikazuo Watanabe (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
• Dr. Yasutaka Muroya (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
• Dr. Lata Mahesh Deokar (University of Pune)
• Dr. Toshio Horiuchi (Toyo University / Universität Hamburg)
• Dr. Sayaka Kishi (University of Tsukuba, Tokyo)
• Prof. Dr. Hayato Kondō (University of Tsukuba)
• Prof. Dr. Mahesh Ashok Deokar (University of Pune)

Collaborating Projects

• The Vikramaśīla Project (Mie University)
• University of Tsukuba, International Education and Research Laboratory Program for Indian and Tibetan Studies, Institute for Comparative Research in Human and Social Sciences (ICR)

Visiting Scholars

• Dr. Toshikazuo Watanabe (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
  ITLR Fellow: 01–10.12.2016
• Dr. Yasutaka Muroya (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
  ITLR Fellow: 01–10.12.2016
• Dr. Lata Mahesh Deokar
  ITLR Fellow: 01.11–31.12.2016
• Dr. Sayaka Kishi (University of Tsukuba, Tokyo)
  ITLR Fellow: 1.6–31.8.2015
• Boram Park (Dongguk University, Seoul)
  15.06–31.07.2014
• Alexander Cherniak (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
  23.03–06.04.2013
• Dr. Sabine Klein-Schwind (Universität Hamburg)
  15.06–14.09.2014, 01.01–31.03.2014, 01.04–30.06.2013, 01.11.2012–31.01.2013
• Dr. Kenichi Kuranishi (Taisho University, Tokyo)
  28.09–27.12.2012
• Dr. Anne MacDonald (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
  09.12–23.12.2012
• Dr. Giuliana Martini (Dharma Drum College, Taiwan)
  01.07–15.09.2011
• Dr. Patrick Mc Allister (University of Heidelberg)
  22.03–06.04.2013
• Dr. Serena Saccone (Instituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, Rome)
  15.11–04.12.2012
• Dr. Péter-Dániel Szántó (University of Oxford)
  01.08–12.08.2011

 

Core Institutions

• The Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS), Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg
• University of Tokyo: Center for Evolving Humanities and SAT [Saṃgaṇikīkṛtam Taiśotripiṭakam] Daizōkyō Text Database committee
• The International Institute for Digital Humanities (DHII), Tokyo
  
  

Collaborating Institutions

• University of Tsukuba, International Education and Research Laboratory Program for Indian and Tibetan Studies, Institute for Comparative Research in Human and Social Sciences (ICR).
• Mie University: “The Vikramaśīla Project”

(i) General Remarks

The overriding objective of the ITLR is the creation of a reliable and expandable lexical resource that facilitates the study of Indian and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism as well as the investigation of many texts and ideas transmitted via Indic and Tibetan sources that are not exclusively Buddhist. Designed as a digital platform for researchers from the fields of classical Indology, Tibetology, and Buddhology, the ITLR accumulates and stores lexical items that are the products (or by-products) of research carried out within the framework of selected projects devoted to the investigation of Indian and Indo-Tibetan Buddhist literature, and that in many cases end up tucked away in scholarly footnotes. It intends to provide scholars with information about lexical items of various kinds, and in the long term will be able to provide the necessary infrastructure for collaborative research and other forms of cooperation, including cooperation between traditional and modern academics. It aims to become a digital treasury of reliable lexical data that serves the broader scholarly community interested in Indic and Tibetan compositions and thought.

One of the special features of the ITLR is that it attempts to provide for the individual Sanskrit Headwords equivalents in other Indic languages and in Tibetan, together with attestations in the form of references to primary and/or secondary sources. This is also the case for fixed enumerative sets (known in Tibetan as chos kyi rnam grangs) inasmuch as both the occurrence of the set as such as well as the bilingual individual items are verified and backed up by sources.

The fact that the ITLR is an Indo-Tibetan lexical resource has consequences for both its structure and content:

To begin, the database’s point of departure, namely, the Headword, is in Sanskrit. In accordance with the linguistic situation of Buddhist Sanskrit texts, Headwords from classical Sanskrit as well as Headwords from the different varieties of hybrid Sanskrit, especially those assessed by Franklin Edgerton (1953) as belonging to ‘Buddhist-Hybrid Sanskrit,’ are taken into consideration. Equivalents of Sanskrit terms in other Indic languages may be included as well, though not as independent Headwords.

Second, the database attempts to provide Tibetan equivalents for the Headword whenever possible. Contributors are also encouraged to add equivalents from other non-Indic Buddhist languages (e.g., Chinese) whenever this might be desirable or necessary from an Indological and general Buddhological perspective.

In terms of its concept, nature, structure, content, scope, target, and not least the degree of accuracy and reliability strived for, the ITLR database is unique. It does not duplicate any existing online or offline Indo-Tibetan lexical source/resource. In general, scholars engaged in the study of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist texts and ideas lack a Sanskrit-Tibetan lexical resource that caters to their needs and is sufficiently reliable—be it traditional or modern, electronic or printed, accessible online or offline. The raison d’être of the ITLR database is to redress the situation and try to fill this gap. Some traditional Sanskrit-Tibetan lexicons are indeed available, or rather what may be more fittingly characterized as bilingual lists of words (i.e., skad gnyis shan sbyar), such as those by mDo-mkhar-ba Tshe-ring-dbang-rgyal (1697–1763), Mi-pham rNam-rgyal-rgya-mtsho (1846–1912), and dMu-dge bSam-gtan (1914–1993). But these works (a) are riddled with scribal and other errors, particularly in their Sanskrit sections, partly because they are often based on older lexicographical lists which in turn also contained numerous errors, (b) have not been thus far properly edited, (c) as a rule provide no sources, and (d) occasionally contain falsely ‘reconstructed’ and thus ‘ghost’ Sanskrit words. Thus, these skad gnyis shan sbyar sources are actually unusable as they now stand. The ITLR, however, does not disregard these sources, but attempts, whenever possible, to (a) record the Sanskrit-Tibetan correspondence found in them under the section “Tibetan Rendering/s of the Skt Headword: In Sources with Bi/Multilingual Attestations” (which is second in the rank of sources for bilingual attestations), (b) cross-check against other Sanskrit sources and ensure that the word exists and is correct, and (c) point out any errors (if detected) and propose corrections.

The ITLR also integrates, whenever applicable, the lexical entries in the Sanskrit-Tibetan lexicons known as the Mahāvyutpatti and Madhyavyutpatti (≈ sGra sbyor bam po gnyis pa), and likewise attempts to correct mistakes of various kinds found in the existing editions. While the entries in the Mahāvyutpatti have been incorporated into one of the database’s four categories (i.e., Word/Term/Phrase, Personal Name, Place Name, and Title of Scripture/Treatise), an attempt has been made to retain one of the special features of the Mahāvyutpatti, namely, its thematic or topical categorization. This has been realized through the section “Enumerations,” which reflects what the Tibetan scholarly tradition attempted to achieve through a type of literature called ‘numerical lists of key Dharmic terms or concepts’ (chos kyi rnam grangs). The ITLR also relies on modern Sanskrit-Tibetan lexical works, particularly indices, which serve as secondary sources for bilingual Sanskrit-Tibetan attestations for the ITLR. To date, several indices have been considered, selected in order to cover different literary genres and philosophical directions, namely, the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Hirakawa 1978), the deity list of the Vajrāvalī (Mori 2009), the Saṃvarodaya (Tsuda 1974), and the Suvarṇaprabhāsottama (Nobel 1950). Here, too, errors are pointed out and addressed by the ITLR editors. Other indices have been occasionally considered as well.

Modern dictionaries have additionally been taken into consideration. These include J. S. Negi’s impressive sixteen-volume Tibetan-Sanskrit Dictionary (Negi 1993–2015)—which is of immense value owing to its citation of short pertinent texts in context—and, owing to their nature and scope, widely used Sanskrit dictionaries—such as the seven-volume Sanskrit-German dictionary (Böhtlingk & Roth 1855–1875, often referred to as the Petersburger Wörterbuch = PW) and A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Monier-Williams 1899 = MW). Given that the latter, however, do not particularly focus on Buddhist terms and do not contain Sanskrit-Tibetan correspondences, other dictionaries such as Edgerton’s Buddhist-Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary (BHSD) have been consulted. It is to be noted, however, that Edgerton was not really interested in the study of Buddhist texts and ideas as such, let alone the study of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, and chose to focus rather on the linguistic aspect of what he called ‘Buddhist-Hybrid Sanskrit,’ thus categorically disregarding anything that he considered to be pure ‘Classical Sanskrit’ lexemes even when they expressed fundamental or key Buddhist concepts (e.g., nirvāṇa). He selectively took over only terms that he considered ‘Buddhist-Hybrid Sanskrit’ and mentions Tibetan renderings of words from the Mahāvyutpatti only occasionally.

(ii) The Structure of the ITLR Entries

The ITLR is generally structured around four main lexical categories: (a) Word/Term/Phrase, (b) Personal Name, (c) Place Name, and (d) Title of Scripture/Treatise. Each of these four categories is structured slightly differently. The category “Word/Term/Phrase,” for example, is broken down into the following subentries.

1. “Headword” (Sanskrit). If not a phrase, the Headword is in the stem form (in the case of nouns) or in the root form (in the case of verbs).
2. “Grammatical Information.” Includes information such as gender, parts of speech, etc.
3. “Taxonomical Labels.” It should be noted that these labels have not been considered obligatory and merely serve as an orientation aid.
4. “Variant.” Records variant forms of the Headword.
5. “Non-Sanskrit Indic Language.” Records Indic, in particular Middle Indo-Aryan (e.g., Pāli), variants of the Headword.
6. “Tibetan Rendering/s of the Skt Headword.” This subentry is further divided into three subcategories that relate to the sources, which are arranged according to their level of authority: (i) “In Tibetan Translations with Available Skt,” (ii) “In Sources with Bi/Multilingual Attestations,” and (iii) “In Tibetan Translations with no Available Skt or in Autochthonous Works without Bi/Multilingual Attestations.”
7. “Chinese Rendering/s of the Skt Headword,” with the same three subcategories as in (6). This subentry has not been widely implemented for the sake of limiting the scope of the ITLR.
8. “Modern Rendering/s” (of the Headword). To date, priority has been given to English, but renderings into other languages such as German or French are occasionally supplied.
9. “Key Information.” When applicable, succinct information related to the Headword, which cannot be gathered from the modern rendering alone, is provided.
10. “Occurrences in Primary Sources: Indic.” Passages found in Indic sources that contain the Headword are provided. The cited textual passage may contain a definition, explanation, or description of the Headword, or be the locus classicus of the Headword, or contain a rare or remarkable occurrence of it, and it may be in the original language (usually Sanskrit, but occasionally Pāli) and/or in its translation into one of the classical Buddhist languages (mostly Tibetan, but occasionally Chinese), and occasionally also in its translation in a modern language (usually English, but occasionally German or French).
11. “Occurrences in Primary Sources: Tibetan Autochthonous Works.” Records, when applicable, citations from passages containing definitions, explanations, descriptions, locus classicus, and other meaningful occurrences of the Headword found in indigenous Tibetan works (i.e., works that are not translations from the Sanskrit).
12. “Discussions in Secondary Sources.” This subentry provides summaries of or references to previous research on the Headword.
13. “Paryāya.” Includes metonymous words that refer to the Headword, with their Tibetan renderings, based on Abhidhāna (mNgon-brjod) literature. To date no information has been recorded in this category.
14. “Enumerations.” Records, when applicable, fixed sets of items occurring in Indo-Tibetan sources (e.g., 5 skandhas). This subentry has been included because it retains the usefulness of traditional ways of arranging key terms and concepts.
15. “Subclassifications.” Records ways the Headword (e.g., name of a Buddhist school) has been subclassified.
16. “Analogies.” Records and explains analogies used in Indic and Tibetan sources, which are often not self-explanatory.
17. “General Remarks.” Contains information that cannot be included in any of the other subentries.

Each of the above subentries do not necessarily contain data. They allow, however, an ITLR entry to constantly grow in size and improve in quality. All of the information given is backed up by primary or secondary sources or references. When information stems from the contributors/editors themselves, they are referred to as the source.

(iii) Planned Future Development of the ITLR

The ITLR aspires to become a major repository of accurate and reliable lexical data and related information. In the coming months and years, the number of published entries will steadily increase, and published entries will be revised when necessary and enlarged whenever possible. In order to facilitate input into the ITLR, the Khyentse Center has been inviting scholars as short- or long-term ITLR fellows. Regular ITLR Editorial Retreats serve to advance the publication of entries.

 

History

Although the idea of the ITLR had been conceived years earlier, it was significantly developed during the “Brainstorming Session: Indo-Tibetan Lexical Resource (ITLR)” held at the University of Hamburg on November 24, 2009. The subsequent exploration of possibilities for financial and technical support was met with two exciting opportunities for progress. The first came in the form of offers for collaboration and technical expertise from the International Institute for Digital Humanities (DHII) and SAT [Saṃgaṇikīkṛtam Taiśotripiṭakam] Daizōkyō Text Database, both situated in Tokyo. The second was the Khyentse Foundation’s approval of a grant application for the establishment of a research center for Tibetan Buddhist textual scholarship, which would have the ITLR as its core component. On January 6, 2011, the Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS) was officially established, and activities to create the ITLR began.

In the years since the commencement of the collaboration between the KC-TBTS and DHII/SAT, the Hamburg–Tokyo team has conducted many workshops and repeatedly met to plan, develop, and improve the database and its content. Members of the team have additionally presented the project to interested scholars and potential collaborators/contributors at a number of universities and international conferences. The project’s editors, ITLR fellows, and other individuals continue to input and enhance the quality of the ITLR data. In the months and years to come, the focus will be on (a) increasing the number of entries and augmenting or adding details to existing entries, and (b) editing the substantial mass of data already entered.