[palistudy] Re: Book queries --Baptist Pali Grammars

>I would be extremely interested in photocopies --especially of the latter of
>the two (James Gray's 1883 "Elements of Pali Grammar"), which I am told is
>fairly short (and should not be very onerous to reproduce or ship).
>However, if the first of the two (Rasmus Rask's) is enormous, or presents
>other difficulties, please advise.

Hi,

Acc to my friend Gunilla, Rask is a mere 16 pages. By the way, a copy
is for sale from a Danish used bookstore:

RASK, RASMUS: Singalesisk Skriftlære. Kolombo 1821. 16 s. Samt.
hlvlrd. Contp. half cloth on marbled boards, title label on upper
cover, rubbed.
¶ Bibl. Dan. IV, 83. I 1816 drog Rask ud på en stor rejse, der førte
ham helt til Sydøstasien. Han var væk i 6ˆ år og ruten gik fra
Sverige, Finland, Rusland tværs gennem Persien til Indien og Ceylon.
Motivationen for rejsen var hans studier af vore forfædres oprindelse
og forbindelsen mellem de europæiske og asiatiske sprog.
The famous linguist Rasmus Rask (1787-1832) spent two years (1820-22)
of his long travels in India, where he went from Bombay to Calcutta,
Madras, Trankebar, and then Ceylon. He returned to Denmark in 1823
with a treasure of manuscripts that he had collected for the
University Library and the Royal Library, which, thanks to him, now
holds the most important collection of Pali manuscripts in Europe.
After his return he taught as Professor of the History of Literature
in Copenhagen.
The present book "The Written Language of Singhalese" is very rare
and was printed (in Danish) in Ceylon. First and only edition. In
this work Rask compares the Singhalese with Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil,
Telugi and other Asian languages. He deals with the phonetics,
pronunciation, accentuation and numerals.
USD~ 2,173 · ask Peter Grosell's Antikvariat, København K (DK) · GRO90166 ·

Only 2000 dollars :-)

Anyhow, Gunilla said she could scan it and make a PDF file over the
weekend. Gray is supposed to be around somewhere, and it sounds
interesting to me too, so I hope we can make it available in an
e-edition also.

best regards,

/Rett