The Book of Zambasta - Metre and stress in Old Khotanese

The nature of Old Khotanese metre has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. Nicholas Sims-Williams presents a new metrical analysis of the Book of Zambasta, the longest surviving Khotanese poem, arguing that the metre is based on the quantitative (moraic) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion.

"Ehsan Yarshater Book Award for Pre-Islamic Iran" of the Persian Heritage Foundation (2023).

Khotanese, a language belonging to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, which was spoken in the first millennium CE, has a rich literature including the Book of Zambasta, a poetic exposition of Mahayana Buddhism in 24 chapters. This poem makes use of three metres, whose nature has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. While its first editor, Ernst Leumann (1859-1931), regarded Khotanese metre as essentially quantitative (moraic) and derived it from a Proto-Indo-European metrical system supposedly reflected also in the Greek hexameter and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, other scholars have understood it in very different ways: as a purely stress-based metre related to that of poetry in some other Iranian languages; as an adaptation of Indian metrics; or as representing a transitional stage from a quantitative to a stress-based system. The present work offers a closely-argued new analysis, demonstrating that the metre is indeed based on the quantitative (morai c) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion. Additional fully searchable text-files available online make it possible for any reader to check the arguments and results.

Rezension:

[...] this volume contains an accessible and thought-provoking analysis of the Old Khotanese metrical system of the Book of Zambasta. Its morphological and phonological consequences are also considered, leading the author to formulate an innovative view of the nature and position of stress in Old Khotanese. The open-access metrical scansion of the updated text of the poem will become an essential didactic and reference tool for students and researchers alike. Specialists of Khotanese will find many stimulating points of discussion in the first part of the book. Additionally, this is a volume that cannot be missed by experts in neighbouring (Middle) Iranian and Central Asian languages: they can now easily access a body of knowledge that was previously available only to a restricted circle of researchers.
From Federico Dragoni, in: Orientalische Literaturzeitung 119(1), 2024, S. 55-57.