Adams D.Q. A Dictionary of Tocharian B. Revised and Greatly Enlarged

Amsterdam - New York, 2013. — 964 p. — ISBN: 978-94-012-0936-6.In this second edition of A Dictionary of Tocharian B its purpose remains twofold. Firstly, it is a dictionary, in the ordinary sense, of Tocharian B (or, more properly, Kuchean, the language of Kucha and the Kuchean Kingdom), attested from the fourth through at least the ninth centuries of our era along the northern rim of the Tarim Basin, in the Turfan basin to the northeast, and with outlying finds on the southern rim of the Tarim basin and in Dunhuang in Gansu. Thus the dictionary’s entries have been glossed with enough detail, and provided with sufficient grammatical explanation and examples, that the user can employ it profitably in reading and interpreting actual Tocharian B texts. The dictionary attempts to treat fully the currently known Tocharian B vocabulary, including for instance all proper names and a host of rare technical terms borrowed from Buddhist (Hybrid) Sanskrit. Secondly, it is an etymological dictionary of the language and thus an aid to understanding the place of Tocharian within the Indo- European language family. Defining, translating, and etymologizing, particularly in a language as fragmentarily known as Tocharian B, are not exact sciences; readers are cautioned to take the question marks and “possibly’s,” etc., at full value and should, no doubt, add many of their own.