Alessandro Del Tomba
Biographic Data
| ID | 715904 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alessandro Del Tomba |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alessandro |
| FAMILY NAME | Del Tomba |
| SIGNATURE | DEL TOMBA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sapienza University of Rome |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0509-5040 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Towards a Reedition of the Sanskrit Jīvakapustaka: Philological Analysis of the Formulas with Parallels
The tenth-century bilingual manuscript Ch. ii.003 ( IOL Khot 87–110) from Dunhuang preserves the Āyurvedic medical treatise known as the Jīvakapustaka . Alternating corrupt Sanskrit verse with Late Khotanese prose, the text contains ninety-three prescriptions, of which only a few find clear parallels in the Sanskrit Āyurvedic literature. Building on earlier scholarship, this article examines twenty-nine formulas with identifiable Āyurvedic corres…
From Khotanese to Sanskrit and Back: A Linguistic Analysis of the Sanskrit Jīvakapustaka and Its Implications for Late Khotanese Morphophonology
The incomplete bilingual manuscript Ch. ii.003, likely dating to the tenth century, preserves the Jīvakapustaka , an Āyurvedic medical treatise written in corrupted Sanskrit verses with accompanying Late Khotanese prose translation. The text presents considerable difficulties owing to its very late form of Khotanese and to its unorthodox and metrically irregular Sanskrit. Through close comparison with the twenty-nine prescriptions that correspond…
Transmission history and textual criticism of the Sanskrit Jīvakapustaka in light of the Mahātikta formula and its Siddhasāra parallel
The Āyurvedic medical treatise known as Jīvakapustaka is preserved in an incomplete tenth-century manuscript from Dunhuang, which alternates Sanskrit verse and Late Khotanese prose. This article pursues two primary objectives. Firstly, it offers a new edition, translation, and linguistic commentary on both the Sanskrit original and the Khotanese rendition of the Mahātikta formula ( Jīvakapustaka 38), with comparative remarks on its parallel in th…
The Phonology of rr and r in Khotanese
This article is the second installment of a study examining the origin and development of rr and r in Khotanese. Determining the phonological values of these two rhotic sounds remains complex, much like interpreting their palaeography. Drawing on the conclusions from the first installment published in 2025, this article aims to clarify their phonological and phonetic values in initial and internal position. Through an examination of synchronic an…
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Khotanese ysare ‘old age’, śve ‘dog’ and the development of *- u̯āh
Action nouns in *-i̯a- and a new verbal stem *jsīn- "to kill" in Khotanese
This article addresses derivational issues related to palatalization in Khotanese, focusing on action nouns of the kīra- type (< *-i̯a-). It is argued that diachronic palatalization conforms to the rules of synchronic palatalization and that the origin of the hapax legomenon jsīna- "killing" (Z 13.124), which apparently violates these rules, needs to be interpreted differently. It is traced back to a reduplicated Indo-Iranian verbal stem *ǰa-ghn-…
Variation and change in the formal marking of Khotanese (II)
In the transition from Old to Late Khotanese, several modifications took place which deeply modified the structure of the language. The substantial phonological changes that affected Late Khotanese word-finally had an obvious impact on morphology and syntax. Building on my previous study on variation and change in the formal marking of the genitive-dative singular in Old Khotanese (Del Tomba 2022), the aim of the present article is to analyse the…
Variation and change in the formal marking of Khotanese I: A diachronic study on the genitive-dative singular in Old Khotanese
In Khotanese, masculine nominals of the a-declension tend to lose the formal distinction between nominative singular -ä and genitive-dative singular -i. Likewise, the diphthongs ei and ai interchange freely in post-archaic Old Khotanese not only within but also at the end of a word, thus eliminating the distinction between nominative singular -ei and genitive-dative singular -ai of the secondary aa-declension. The aim of this article is to invest…
A Central Asian Buddhist Term: Remarks on Khotanese saña- and Tocharian B sāñ, A ṣāñ
The Khotanese masculine substantive saña - ‘artifice, expedient, means, method’ cannot be a loanword from the Gāndhārī feminine saṃña ‘perception, idea’ ( saṃjñā -), as has been recently suggested. Bilingual evidence for its meaning, its metrical use, and the contexts where it occurs show unambiguously that it differs formally and semantically from the Khotanese feminine saṃñā - ‘idea, notion, perception, etc.’, the actual loanword from Gāndhārī …
Action nouns in *-i̯a- and a new verbal stem *jsīn- "to kill" in Khotanese
This article addresses derivational issues related to palatalization in Khotanese, focusing on action nouns of the kīra- type (< *-i̯a-). It is argued that diachronic palatalization conforms to the rules of synchronic palatalization and that the origin of the hapax legomenon jsīna- "killing" (Z 13.124), which apparently violates these rules, needs to be interpreted differently. It is traced back to a reduplicated Indo-Iranian verbal stem *ǰa-ghn-…
A Central Asian Buddhist Term: Remarks on Khotanese saña- and Tocharian B sāñ, A ṣāñ
The Khotanese masculine substantive saña - ‘artifice, expedient, means, method’ cannot be a loanword from the Gāndhārī feminine saṃña ‘perception, idea’ ( saṃjñā -), as has been recently suggested. Bilingual evidence for its meaning, its metrical use, and the contexts where it occurs show unambiguously that it differs formally and semantically from the Khotanese feminine saṃñā - ‘idea, notion, perception, etc.’, the actual loanword from Gāndhārī …
A Central Asian Buddhist Term: Remarks on Khotanese saña- and Tocharian B sāñ, A ṣāñ
The Khotanese masculine substantive saña - ‘artifice, expedient, means, method’ cannot be a loanword from the Gāndhārī feminine saṃña ‘perception, idea’ ( saṃjñā -), as has been recently suggested. Bilingual evidence for its meaning, its metrical use, and the contexts where it occurs show unambiguously that it differs formally and semantically from the Khotanese feminine saṃñā - ‘idea, notion, perception, etc.’, the actual loanword from Gāndhārī …
Variation and change in the formal marking of Khotanese I: A diachronic study on the genitive-dative singular in Old Khotanese
In Khotanese, masculine nominals of the a-declension tend to lose the formal distinction between nominative singular -ä and genitive-dative singular -i. Likewise, the diphthongs ei and ai interchange freely in post-archaic Old Khotanese not only within but also at the end of a word, thus eliminating the distinction between nominative singular -ei and genitive-dative singular -ai of the secondary aa-declension. The aim of this article is to invest…
Variation and change in the formal marking of Khotanese (II)
In the transition from Old to Late Khotanese, several modifications took place which deeply modified the structure of the language. The substantial phonological changes that affected Late Khotanese word-finally had an obvious impact on morphology and syntax. Building on my previous study on variation and change in the formal marking of the genitive-dative singular in Old Khotanese (Del Tomba 2022), the aim of the present article is to analyse the…
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Khotanese ysare ‘old age’, śve ‘dog’ and the development of *- u̯āh
Action nouns in *-i̯a- and a new verbal stem *jsīn- "to kill" in Khotanese
This article addresses derivational issues related to palatalization in Khotanese, focusing on action nouns of the kīra- type (< *-i̯a-). It is argued that diachronic palatalization conforms to the rules of synchronic palatalization and that the origin of the hapax legomenon jsīna- "killing" (Z 13.124), which apparently violates these rules, needs to be interpreted differently. It is traced back to a reduplicated Indo-Iranian verbal stem *ǰa-ghn-…
Transmission history and textual criticism of the Sanskrit Jīvakapustaka in light of the Mahātikta formula and its Siddhasāra parallel
The Āyurvedic medical treatise known as Jīvakapustaka is preserved in an incomplete tenth-century manuscript from Dunhuang, which alternates Sanskrit verse and Late Khotanese prose. This article pursues two primary objectives. Firstly, it offers a new edition, translation, and linguistic commentary on both the Sanskrit original and the Khotanese rendition of the Mahātikta formula ( Jīvakapustaka 38), with comparative remarks on its parallel in th…
The Phonology of rr and r in Khotanese
This article is the second installment of a study examining the origin and development of rr and r in Khotanese. Determining the phonological values of these two rhotic sounds remains complex, much like interpreting their palaeography. Drawing on the conclusions from the first installment published in 2025, this article aims to clarify their phonological and phonetic values in initial and internal position. Through an examination of synchronic an…
Towards a Reedition of the Sanskrit Jīvakapustaka: Philological Analysis of the Formulas with Parallels
The tenth-century bilingual manuscript Ch. ii.003 ( IOL Khot 87–110) from Dunhuang preserves the Āyurvedic medical treatise known as the Jīvakapustaka . Alternating corrupt Sanskrit verse with Late Khotanese prose, the text contains ninety-three prescriptions, of which only a few find clear parallels in the Sanskrit Āyurvedic literature. Building on earlier scholarship, this article examines twenty-nine formulas with identifiable Āyurvedic corres…
From Khotanese to Sanskrit and Back: A Linguistic Analysis of the Sanskrit Jīvakapustaka and Its Implications for Late Khotanese Morphophonology
The incomplete bilingual manuscript Ch. ii.003, likely dating to the tenth century, preserves the Jīvakapustaka , an Āyurvedic medical treatise written in corrupted Sanskrit verses with accompanying Late Khotanese prose translation. The text presents considerable difficulties owing to its very late form of Khotanese and to its unorthodox and metrically irregular Sanskrit. Through close comparison with the twenty-nine prescriptions that correspond…
Eurasian Exchange Networks (6 works) · Indian and Buddhist Studies (6 works) · Linguistics and Cultural Studies (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Linguistics (4 works) · Linguistics and language evolution (4 works) · Sanskrit (4 works) · Art (2 works) · History (2 works) · Literature (2 works)