Customer Reviews

How to Read Classical Tibetan, Volume One: Summary of the General Path

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Craig Preston's book _How to Read Classical Tibetan_ (Snow Lion, 2003) examines a short passage (about 30 long lines in all) of the tract "The Great Treatise (or exposition) of the Stages of the Path" (Lam-rim Chen-mo) by the 14th century teacher Tsongkhapa (Btsong-kha-pa), founder of the Gelugpa (Dge-lugs-pa) school of Tibetan Buddhism.

In the course of the introduction and ten chapters the author goes through the long and short titles of the tract and then the 30-line passage, breaking the text into phrases and analyzing them grammatically from word to sentence level. He does this by means of well laid out labeled diagrams in which phrase-level structure is represented by boxes containing the parts of the phrases, which may be simple strings of text or nested boxes of the same type.

He includes a full glossary of the words in the text at the end of the book, and repeats the items occurring in each phrase in the section on the phrase, obviating the need to be constantly flipping between the phrase and the glossary. As far as I could tell he does not customize or enhance the vocabulary items for the individual phrases but copies them verbatim from the glossary, including the different roots of the verbs and the variants of the mutable particles (kyi, tu and so on) each time.

He intentionally focuses on the grammatical structure and literal meaning of the text and does not get into philosophical issues, though he does include, at the end of each chapter, with translations though not analyses or special notes, extracts from a commentary on the section of text in the chapter.

As a total beginner myself I cannot evaluate the accuracy of the book, but it appears to be carefully edited, and the grammatical analyses and translations all seem reasonable to me. He uses the Tibetan alphabet throughout and rarely if ever includes any transliterations. I think this is appropriate. The Tibetan alphabet is easy to master and anyone studying the language should learn it at the very outset.

He also, following Joe Wilson in his _Translating Buddhism from Tibetan_ (Snow Lion, 1992), uses opaque and confusing terminology for the cases (1st case, 2nd case and so on). This terminology derives ultimately from the Sanskrit grammarians and refers to the Sanskrit cases (1st case = nominative 2nd case = accusative 3rd case = instrumental 4th case = dative 5th case = ablative 6th case = genitive 7th case = locative), and does not really fit Tibetan. I would have been happier if he had used the simpler and more descriptive system of Nicolas Tournadre, _Manual of Standard Tibetan_ (Snow Lion, 2003) - a very good book BTW, with an extremely clear and thorough explanation of modern pronunciation (standard Lhasa dialect) - or even avoided the notion of case altogether and simply dealt in terms of the various particles (kyi, kyis, la/r/du etc.) as is done for Japanese (ga, wa, o, no etc.).

The work is clearly aimed at beginners. I would guess that a motivated student could work through the whole book at a chapter at a sitting and be done with it in a couple weeks. I can see it being useful for someone in the early stages of studying Tibetan on their own who wants to read some real Classical Tibetan with a good amount of hand-holding. The only prerequisite I can see, apart from the ability to read the Tibetan alphabet, is a level of comfort with basic grammatical concepts and the activity of detailed word-by-word phrase-by-phrase grammatical analysis.

Preston's book is a great text for self-study.

I particularly appreciate that he used Dzong-ka-pa's page and half Summary of the General Path as the basis of his translation training. This summary is at the end of the three-volume set that has been recently translated as the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. Each volume is around 350 pages. This Summary is, I think, Dzong-ka pa most concise prose writing on the Buddhist path from the beginning clear through to Buddhahood. Although this book is meant for language students I found the basic philosophic text delightfully essency.

This book is best read after having studied Joe Wilson's Translating Buddhism from Tibetan. These two books were written using the same style of grammatical analysis. Wilson's book goes through letter writing and pronunciation rules and then uses paradigm sentences which illustrate the grammar in detail. Preston has taken the next step which walks you through an actual text so you can see how these various paradigms show up in action.

Preston takes each of the pithy sentences of the Summary and breaks them down into clauses and phrases, boxes them, and then clearly labels the parts with both the vocabulary and their grammatical use. Each word in every sentence is labeled with its syntactic function, what type of word or particle it is and its lexical meaning. You are not left guessing about any part of the sentence. He also gives you the English translation below each of these detailed structural outlines. The text is interspersed with helpful philosophic information too. For instance, when the text mentions the ten virtues and ten non-virtues, Preston inserts a list as to what these are.

There are many details that one needs to memorize to learn grammar, I was overwhelmed at times, but remember that there are a finite number of details. For anyone wanting to be able to read or translate accurately this is a critical body of information you need to know. In the early pages of the book Preston lays what he calls the eight basic building blocks of Classical Tibetan syntax. These are the basic elements of any sentence, the subjects, objects, verbs and such.... The rest of the book illustrates how these parts are glued together by particles.

Although this book was written using a Geluk text, grammar knows no partisan boundaries. I am now reading a root Kagyu text and I see that the same grammatical structures apply. This book will help you read any of the Tibetan Buddhist literature.

As far as I know there are no other books written for students who are just starting to read Classical Tibetan. As a language student I found this book immensely helpful.

I won't go into great detail because many other reviews already have, but this is truly an excellent book for the beginner-intermediate level. Two things, mainly, became clear to me after working my way through this book:

1) It is obviously written by a teacher who is skiiled, thorough, and loves his material. It is clear that a LOT of care and thought has gone into this book and its presentation, and this makes it perfect for self-learners (like myself). Though at first the endless diagrams and grammatical commentary might seem overwhelming, actually most of it is quite useful and as you progress you can just ignore what you feel you don't need anymore. As another reviewer pointed out, Preston also clarifies and drives home the important difference between transitive and intransitive verbs that was utterly lost on me in Wilson's "Translating Buddhism from Tibetan." Picky though it may seem at first it is a crucial difference you will eventually have to learn, and Preston gets you started. Another great thing about the book itself is that while the actual amount of text in Tibetan is small and manageable, included at the end of each chapter is the text WITH additional (traditional Tibetan scholarly) commentary, which looks like it about doubles the text you can learn from and means you can return to this book after finishing it for a much more challenging read when you feel like it.

2)This book is very much the sequel to, and dependent on, Joe Wilson's "Translating Buddhism from Tibetan." It is the absolutely perfect and logical next step after working through Wilson's book, but I have a hard time imagining getting through this book without having waded through Wilson's 700+ page tome. Preston's 'diagramming,' his grammatical terminology, even the Tibetan vocabulary itself, is all drawn largey from Wilson's book and style (Preston was a student of Wilson's). It is a controversial system (see critiques of Wilson's book on here), but personally I find it very useful. But again, I don't think there is much point in attempting this book until you have completed 'TBFT.' One last thing is that I also disagree with some other reviewers' comments: I would say the book is hardly for 'beginners', since a quite considerable familiarity with reading Tibetan script and even a decent vocabular seem pretty essential to really get through this book; on the other hand, fresh from finishing Wilson's TBFT, it didn't take me nearly as long to work through it as people have suggested. Preston suggests 60+ hours of class time, PLUS self-study, and others here have suggested a few weeks. Like I said, fresh from Wilson's book I delved straight into this one, and went through it all in 5 days, spending about 5 hours each day on it. I am now reviewing and ensuring I memorize all the vocab, but I think 35 hours or so is a reasonable amount of time to spend on it. Then you can move on to Preston's "Vol. 2" which is quite similar, and similarly excellent!

Hi guys, well i've been living in Nepal for the last 4 years and i can tell you that learning tibetan (and by this i mean really know it) its really hard, but i found that wilson's book is actually great not only coz it does work but also coz it provides you with the tools to do it... its the best next thing just after learning tibetan from tibetan grammarians

so what i would suggest is...
get wilson's book, then if you are completely new go through the whole book, coz it provides basic concept on Buddhism and lots of vocab (all really useful)... if you are a bit more experience then learn by heart apendixes 4 and 5 which deals with verbs, and clases which are a primordial part of tibetan (but for some reason some "serious" books dont even mention them... oh by the way tibetans do study tibetan talking about cases)...then move on to...

Craig preston's how to read classical tibetan... which if you don't know by heart appendix 4 n 5 is rather useless... but otherwise excellent to show how to make the complex sentences (pages long at times) into short and readable clauses or sentences... besides it also completes wilsons lack of talk or not wanting to talk about transitive and intransitive verbs (which they also exist in tibetan and are of great importance when trying to get across the right meaning)

last but not least... in my experience there have been tons of mistranslations all over the place even by "famous" translators... thats why i recommend Tony Duff's excellent Illuminator dictionary...

until the day that someone explains tibetan grammar the way tibetan study it and understand it these are the tools for anyone who is serious about learning tibetan, and when the time is right go and get teachings on tibetan from a tibetan grammarian... then the whole world is open to you... once again i think these are the best for whats outer but once you see the real thing you wont go back...

PS. by the way, the presentation on the cases its as its shown in the tibetan way specially if you memorize wilsons approach... why do people say that easier is better??? lack of diligence i guess... to become a translator is not easy specially when it comes to Dharma coz there is the danger of corrupting the teachings which it would be terrible for everyone... please study hard whether you find it hard or not... is for all sentient beings sake...

Dear correspondant,
This book has been sent to a friend as a gift, so i cannot review it myself,
best regards
armel

If you are smart and diligent enough to get it, this is your book. Trust me that this man knows what he is talking about. Readable format, great organization, engaging subject matter, "How to read classical tibetan" has it all. Coming from a master of classical tibetan and all-around great guy, this book is where its at.