Another Death in the Family

 

Foreground: Takeuchi Tsuguhito (lft.) and Elliot Sperling (rt.)
on board a boat in Bergen (Norway), 2016

Just this morning I heard the very unwanted news that my old friend Tsugu* had, very early this morning, died after a few years of illness. I don’t want to say much right now except to convey the news, since many of you knew him and will need to find your own ways to grieve. I hadn’t heard from Tsugu since an email of January 6, when he told me he was no longer capable of doing productive work, which already gave cause for sadness. Tsugu is known to everyone in Tibetan studies, particularly for his studies of the very challenging Old Tibetan documents from Dunhuang. The documents he studied included written contracts and inscribed woodslips, the most difficult of all the difficult texts surviving from that period, not only to decipher, but to understand as part of a living context. I will just append an incomplete and preliminary list of his publications below, knowing full well that his students will produce a complete and perfect bibliography in his memory before long. Anyway, it is the human being, not the scholarly researcher, we will miss the most.

(*His fellow students in Indiana nicknamed him Tsugu out of friendship and affection, without intending any disrespect.)

TAKEUCHI TSUGUHITO (1951-2021)

& Maho Iuchi, Tibetan Texts fom Khara-khoto in the Stein Collection of the British Library, "Studies in Old Tibetan Texts from Central Asia" series no. 2, The Toyo Bunko (Tokyo 2016).

& Yasuhiko Nagano, Sumie Ueda. “Preliminary Analysis of the Old Zhangzhung Language and Manuscripts.”  IN: Y. Nagano & R. LaPolla, eds., New Research on Zhangzhung and Related Himalayan Languages, National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka 2001), pp. 45-96.

& Ai Nishida, “Present Stage of Deciphering Old Zhangzhung.” Senri Ethnological Studies, vol. 75 (2009), pp. 151-165.

“A Group of Old Tibetan Letters Written under Kuei-i-chün: A Preliminary Study for the Classification of Old Tibetan Letters.”  Acta Orientalia Hungarica, vol. 44 (1990), pp. 175-190.

“A Passage from the Shih Chi in the Old Tibetan Chronicle.”  IN: Barbara Nimri Aziz and Matthew Kapstein, eds., Soundings in Tibetan Civilization, Manohar (New Delhi 1985), pp. 135-146.

“A Preliminary Study of Old Tibetan Letters Unearthed from Tun-huang & Chinese Turkestan.”  IN: Z. Yamaguchi, ed., Buddhism & Society in Tibet, Shunjû-sha (Tokyo 1986), pp. 563-602.

A Study of the Old Tibetan Contracts, PhD dissertation, Indiana University (Bloomington 1994), in 371 pages.  University Microfilms no. AAT 9418843.

“Chibetto-no Kotowaza” [Proverbs in Tibet]. IN: T. Shibata et al., eds., Sekai Kotowaza Daijiten (Tokyo 1995), pp. 277-287.

“Chûô-ajia shutsudo Ko-chibeto-go kachiku baibai-monjo” [The Old Tibetan Contracts for Cattle Sales].  Studies on the Inner Asian Languages [Kobe], vol. 5 (date?), pp. 33-67.

“Formation and Transformation of Old Tibetan.” Journal of the Research Institute of Foreign Studies [Kobe City University of Foreign Studies], vol. 49 (2012), pp. 3-18.

“Glegs tshas: Writing Boards of Chinese Scribes in Tibetan-Ruled Dunhuang.” IN: Brandon Dotson, Kazushi Iwao and Tsuguhito Takeuchi, eds., Scribes, Texts, and Rituals in Early Tibet and Dunhuang, Reichert Verlag (Wiesbaden 2012), pp. 101-109, 150-153.

“Kh. Tib. (Kozlov 4): Contracts for the Borrowing of Barley.” Manuscripta Orientalia, vol. 1, no. 1 (1995), pp. 49-52.

“'Lead' and 'Face': On the Formation of Honorific Vocabulary in Tibetan” [in Japanese].  Kokubun Gakkaishi, Kyoto University of Education (1991).

“Military Administration and Military Duties in Tibetan-Ruled Central Asia.” IN: Alex McKay, Tibet and Her Neighbours: A History, Edition Hansjörg Mayer (London 2013), pp. 43-54.  Woodslips, rationing cards.

“Old Tibetan Buddhist Texts from the Post-Tibetan Imperial Period (mid-9 C. to late 10 C.).” IN: Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, ed., Old Tibetan Studies Dedicated to the Memory of R.E. Emmerick, Brill (Leiden 2012), pp. 205-214.

Old Tibetan Contracts from Central Asia, Daizo Shuppan (Tokyo 1995).

“Old Tibetan Loan Contracts.”  Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, vol. 51 (1993), pp. 25-83.

Old Tibetan Manuscripts from East Turkestan in the Stein Collection of the British Library, Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, Toyo Bunko (Tokyo 1997-1998), in 3 vols.

“Old Tibetan Rock Inscriptions near Alchi.” Journal of the Research Institute of Foreign Studies [Kobe City University of Foreign Studies], vol. 49 (2012), pp. 29-70.

“On the Old Tibetan Sale Contracts.” IN: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Narita 1989, Naritasan Shinshoji (Narita 1992), pp. 773-792.

“On the Old Tibetan Word Lho-bal.”  Proceedings of the 31st CISHAAN (Tokyo 1984), vol. 2, pp. 986-987.

“On the Tibetan Texts in the Otani Collection.” IN: A. Haneda, ed., Documents et Archives provenant de L'asie centrale (Kyoto 1990), pp. 203-214.

Preface.  IN: T. Takeuchi et al., Current Issues and Progress in Tibetan Studies, Research Institute of Foreign Studies (Kobe 2013), p. 1.

“Preliminary Report on the Tibetan Texts in the Otani Collection.” IN: A. Wezler et al., eds., Proceedings of the XXXII Intenational Congress for Asian and North African Studies (ZDMG: Suppl. 9) (1992) pp. ?

“Sociolinguistic Implications of the Use of Tibetan in East Turkestan from the End of Tibetan Domination through the Tangut Period (9th-12th c.).” IN: Desmond Durken-Meisterernst et al., eds., Turfan Revisited: First Century of Research into the Arts and Cultures of the Silk Road, Dietrich Reimer Verlag (Berlin 2004), pp. 341-348.

“Split Ergativity Patterns in Transitive and Intransitive Sentences in Tibetan: A Reconsideration.” IN: Y. Nishi et al., eds., New Horizons in Tibeto-Burman Morphosyntax (Osaka 1995), pp. 277-288.

“The Function of Auxiliary Verbs in Tibetan Predicates and Their Historical Development.” IN: Roberto Vitali et al., eds., Trails of the Tibetan Tradition, Papers for Elliot Sperling, Amnye Machen Institute (McLeod Ganj 2014), pp. 401-415.

“The Old Zhangzhung Manuscript Stein Or 8212/188.” IN: Christopher I. Beckwith, ed., Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages, Brill (Leiden 2002), pp. 1-11.

“The Tibetans and Uighurs in Pei-t'ing, An-hsi (Kucha), and Hsi-chou (790-860 A.D.).”  Kinki Daigaku Kyōyōbu Kenkyū Kiyō, vol. 17, no. 3 (1986), pp. 51-68.

“Three Old Tibetan Contracts in the Hedin Collection.”  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 57, pt. 3 (1994), pp. 576-587.

“Tibetan Military System and Its Activities from Khotan to Lop-nor.” IN: Susan Whitfield, ed., The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith, The British Library (London 2004), pp. 50-56, plus illustrations.

“Tonkô-Torukisutan shutsudo Chibetto go tengami bunsho no kenkyû josetsu [0014]” [A Preliminary Study of Old Tibetan Letters Unearthed from Tun-huang and Chinese Turkestan]. IN: Zuiho Yamaguchi, ed., Buddhism and Society in Tibet [Chibetto no Bukkyô to shakai] (Tokyo 1986), pp. 563-602.

“Tshan: Subordinate Administrative Units of the Thousand-Districts in the Tibetan Empire.” IN: Per Kvaerne, ed., Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Fagernes 1992, The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture (Oslo 1994), pp. 848-862.

“Tshar, srang & tshan: Administrative Units in Tibetan-Ruled Khotan.” Journal of Inner Asian Art & Archaeology, vol. 3 (2008), pp. 145-148.