Lexical Notes on the Khotanese Piṇḍaśāstra

Abstract

The single Chinese scroll comprised of manuscripts P 2893 (Paris) and Ch. 00265 (London) contains the Late Khotanese āyurvedic text conventionally titled Piṇḍaśāstra and so far unidentified in other languages. As a contribution to the interpretation of the text and to the knowledge of Khotanese medical terminology, the article offers two etymologies and reinterprets two ghostwords paying close attention to the contexts where they occur: (1) dūvara- ‘watery abdominal swelling, dropsy’ is a loanword from Gāndhārī *dag̱odara- < Old Indian dakodara- and, like Tibetan dmu rdzing, translates the Sanskrit general term udara- ‘abdominal swelling’; (2) the accusative plural pīrą̄nā and genitive plural pīrą̄nāṃ are from pirānaa- ‘worm grains’, a compound of pära- ‘worm’ and -ānaa- < Iranian *dāna-ka- ‘(single) grain, seed’, referring to the proglottids of tapeworms in excrement; (3) āvaṃjsä is not a hapax meaning ‘compact’ (Bailey) but should be read ā-v-aṃ jsä ‘or with them’; (4) bu’jsai is not a hapax meaning ‘fiery’ (Bailey) but the regular outcome of the Old Khotanese nominative plural buljse from buljsaā- ‘virtue’.