This imposing 48th volume in the Glasenapp series of collected papers of German Indologists celebrates the career of Richard Pischel (1849–1908) and his magnificent pioneering, but now largely neglected, contribution to most aspects of Indology. Enhanced with the first satisfactory biography and the first complete bibliography, the present work is arranged in twelve sections, covering MIA and Sanskrit linguistics; Vedic and Indo-Iranian; drama, belles-lettres, and epigraphy; Buddhism and (discovered on Pischel's initiative) the Turfan documents; and finally folklore and studies relating to (mainly German) Romani culture. His critical reviews of the fundamental publications of European Indology are amply reproduced: Senart's Aśokan edicts, Andersen's Pali reader, Kielhorn's Mahābhāṣya and Liebich's Cāndra studies, Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India, Caland's ritual for the dead, etc.
Pischel's extensive study of original manuscripts was brought to bear on the knotty problem of the dialect distribution of pekkh-/pecch-, dakkh-/dacch-, dekkh-/dicch- “to see” in Prakrit, and on the four recensions of the Śākuntala. His solutions, rigorously proving Childers’ assumption that dakkh- represents a present-tense adaptation of future-tense drakṣyati (Pali dakkhati), and demonstrating the basic authenticity of the Bengali recension of the drama, however cogent, can hardly be said to have gained full acceptance even now. In the case of dakkh-, he retracted his solution in Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen, for no good reason, in favour of a derivation from an invented *dṛkṣati, which CDIAL has accepted. But his original solution has been made entirely plausible by recognition of future-tense applications of the present-tense forms gacchati and acchati in Pali. Since the palatal syllables in future gacchii, dacchii and present gacchai, pecchai were virtually indistinguishable in Prakrit pronunciation, there was ample scope for using the originally future-tense dakkha(t)i and dacchai as presents, beside the use of present-tense gacchati and acchati as futures.
He derived acchati “remains” not from an invented aniṭ future of ās- “to sit, remain”, but from ās- with an original *ska present-tense suffix. This again has been borne out by Pali samacchare “they sat down together”. He retracted it, however, in Gr. Pk., in favour of a semantically improbable derivation from ṛcchati “moves, goes”. CDIAL has substituted derivation from ākṣeti “dwells, inhabits”, but the prevalence of reflexes of *kṣ in the modern languages that prompted this might be merely another instance of the substitution of kkh for cch. Could acchati, together with icchati, indicate that an original simpler *ka suffix has been amalgamated with root-final s to produce the anomalous *ska?
In KZ 34 Pischel mustered evidence in favour of the continued effect of Vedic accentuation in the reduction in Prakrit of post-tonic syllables (aṇiya, eesiṃ < ánīka, etéṣām) and pre-tonic syllables (gahiya, pagaya, tuṇhiya < gṛhītá, *prākṛtá, *tūṣṇī́ká) versus retention in taīya and taijja, [soya and] sotta, tuṇhikka < tṛtī́ya, srótas, and (with later accentuation) *tūṣṇī́ka. In KZ 35, however, he withdrew the assumption that tuṇhikka attests *tūṣṇīka in favour of a rule that gemination occurred only before accented final vowels, whereby tuṇhiya and tuṇhikka are, it seems, merely doublets. The possibility of retracted accent remains, however, as well as the alternative possibility of a suffixal -ikya (which he mentions again in GGA 1881). In any case, the proposals would have been much more attractive if stated in terms of a stress accent that had replaced Vedic intonation and, as in Russian, had not yet adopted the fixed stress pattern of classical Sanskrit and Prakrit.
“Materialien zur Kenntnis des Apabhraṃśa” presents a critical edition and translation of Hemacandra's specimens of Apabhraṃśa verse, designed as an appendix to Pischel's indispensable Grammatik der Prākrit-Sprachen.
His study of the Prakrit grammarians and manuscript usage enabled him to bring some order into the orthographic chaos of Śaurasenī and Māhārāṣṭrī. His analysis of Trivikrama's treasury of “deśī” vocabulary, i.e. of Prakrit words that are not, or could not be recognized as being of Sanskrit origin, is a mine of information that has long been overlooked. Pischel's identification of the mysterious Āḍhyarāja in Harṣacarita as an epithet of King Harṣa seems also to have been largely forgotten.
His forays into Iranian, Vedic, dramaturgy (puppet theatre and shadow plays), and epigraphy are of interest, in particular his showing that the Aśokan materials reproduced by Führer are genuine, unlike the description that Führer gave of his fictional archaeological discoveries. It is in any case obvious that faking Brahmi inscriptions was well beyond Führer's capabilities. There are also Pischel's early reactions to the Kharoshti, Brahmi, and Tocharian documents that were emerging from Central Asia. As always in the Glasenapp series, the volumes are immaculately presented, with indexes of words discussed, authors cited, personal and place names, texts cited, and topics discussed. A worthy tribute to an outstanding scholar.
