The article deals with the problem of teaching Russian speaking. Chinese students of philology at the pre-university stage of preparation. The author approaches the solution of the problem through practice-oriented learning using information and communication technologies. The article discusses the possibilities of interactive exercises for teaching speaking, implemented on the basis of information and communication technologies, presents examples of exercises and ways of working with them. The author analyzes the motivational preferences of students for tasks in an interactive mode, (...) examines the influence of using an interactive electronic system of exercises on the level of development of students' speaking skills. (shrink)

Among Digitized Manuscripts: Philology, Codicology, Paleography in a Digital World. By L. W. C. van Lit. Handbook of Oriental Studies, I, vol. 137. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. xi + 333. $150, €125, open access: https://brill.com/view/title/56196.

A somewhat problematic book has recently been devoted to one of the most fascinating works of Kashmirian Śaiva Advaita: the Śivadṛṣṭi by Somānanda. This furnishes the occasion for broader reflection on the role of philology in dealing with the complex texts of the Pratyabhijñā tradition.

The article examines the developments that made the legend of an Asian migration into Europe part of mainstream historiography during the eighteenth century. It was believed that the Norse god Odin was in fact a historical person, who had migrated from Asia to with the north of Europe with his tribe. The significance of this legend to how medieval poetry was received and debated in England has received little attention. The study falls into three sections. The first will trace the (...) significance of the Odin migration legend in discovering Germanic cultural origins. The second section examines the impact of the legend on philological studies, primarily in establishing a new category: the Gothic (i.e. Teutonic/germanic) poetic tradition. The final section will focus on the debate between two of the most important eighteenth-century pioneers of vernacular poetic tradition: Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton. Their discussion over whether the Asian foundation of Germanic (and thereby English) tradition had paved the way for later Arabian influences is instructive, as it shows how Eastern “others” were negotiated in the discovery of cultural and national roots. (shrink)

Using new archival material, this article reconstructs the editorial history of Philosophical Grammar, an edition that Rush Rhees crafted from Wittgenstein's papers. Contrasting the often‐held view that Rhees, in editing Philosophical Grammar, arbitrarily interfered with Wittgenstein's Big Typescript, the article illuminates the work, motives and reasons that underlie Rhees’ editing. Although recent philological evidence supports his editorial decisions, Rhees, at the time, made them based on his desire to do justice to his understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophical orientation. Against this background, (...) purely text‐philological criticism of Philosophical Grammar seems to come from a philosophical culture that was alien to Rhees. (shrink)

Antiquarianism, Language, and Medical Philology: From Early Modern to Modern Sino-Japanese Medical Discourses. Edited by Benjamin A. Elman. Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Studies, vol. 12. Boston: Brill, 2015. Pp. viii + 232. $135.

Aristotle Poetics: Editio Maior of the Greek Text with Historial Introductions and Philological Commentaries. Edited by Leonardo Tarán and Dimitri Gutas. Mnemosyne Supplements, vol. 338. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xiii + 536. $226, €162.

Prophecy in the Ancient Near East: A Philological and Sociological Comparison. By Jonathan Stökl. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, vol. 56. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xvi + 297. $151.

In the late first and early second millennia, mainland Southeast Asians created sophisticated techniques to accurately and efficiently render Pali into local vernaculars, including Burmese, Khmer, Khün, Lanna, Lao, Lü, Mon, and Siamese. These techniques for vernacular reading, parallel to approaches for reading Latin in medieval Europe and Literary Sinitic in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, led to the development of bitexts that contained a mix of Pali and vernacular material. Such bitexts, arranged in both interlinear and interphrasal formats, gradually allowed (...) second-millennium Southeast Asian writers to sprout a vernacular literature from the established branches of Pali genres. Bitexts themselves formed the basis for a new literary style that stemmed from the techniques of vernacular reading, a style that set the standard for belles-lettres until the early twentieth century. The spread of Pali-vernacular bitexts in Southeast Asia allowed for the literary elevation of the vernacular without renouncing the cosmopolitan idiom of Pali. To support these arguments, this article draws on some of the earliest examples of bitexts in Central Thailand and Northern Thailand. These include a hitherto undeciphered form of manuscript annotation in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Siam; two of the oldest palm-leaf documents surviving in any Tai language, from sixteenth-century Lanna; and the oldest known Pali-Siamese literary work, thought to be composed in 1482. These bitexts provide detailed evidence for vernacular reading and the emergence of vernacular literature in mainland Southeast Asian in general and Thailand in particular. (shrink)

Num. 21:14 contains one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Pentateuch בּסוּ ָפה The usual interpretations of ֶאת turn the phrase into gibberish because they require the presence of a verb, which is nowhere to be found. Some scholars have supplied an understood verb; others have resorted to emendation. A better solution is available: ֶאת in our passage is a verb masquerading as a preposition. It is easily construed, without the slightest change, as an archaic apocopated/biliteral imperative of א-ת-י, (...) meaning “come!” This construal of ֶאת transforms our understanding of Num. 21:14–20 in many ways. For example, it reveals that ַעל־ ֵכּן יֵָא ַמר ְבּ ֵסֶפר ִמ ְלֲחמ ֹת הʹ ֶאת־ָו ֵהב, “On account of that, it is said in the Book of the Wars of the Lord, ‘Come to Waheb’,” bears a striking resemblance to ַעל־ ֵכּן י ֹא ְמרוּ ַהמּ ֹ ְשׁ ִלים בּ ֹאוּ ֶח ְשׁבּוֹן, “On account of that, the bards say, ‘Come to Heshbon’,” thirteen verses later. More generally, the new construal, taken together with some pertinent geographic, ethnographic, and hydrologic facts, makes possible a new, more coherent reading of the entire passage. (shrink)