The University of Texas at Austin; College of Liberal Arts

Early Indo-European Texts

Tocharian B

Our plan for this text series is to present five readings for Tocharian A and five for Tocharian B. Every reading contains a complete grammatical analysis of each word. As part of the series design, we employ only original texts; this of course implies that the grammatical structures employed in any given text may come from any aspect of the Tocharian grammatical system, whether covered in previous or subsequent texts. Thus the reader may encounter grammatical analyses employing terminology that is not yet familiar. We urge the reader to glean whatever information is possible from the analysis and accompanying translation, but not to get bogged down in the details. As one progresses through the texts, these points will become clearer. For the grasshopper who likes to leap about, we point to the Table of Contents where one can jump to the description of a specific grammatical topic.

Because the Tocharian languages are so similar w.r.t. grammar and morphology, discussing the grammar of one language in isolation from the other would prove redundant. Therefore the structures of the two languages are treated simultaneously in the grammar points of each text. If the reader chooses, he or she may simply ignore the details of one language while concentrating on the other.

Note: there are great disparities in capability among personal computers in contemporary use. Unfortunately, support for Unicode® and/or the repertoire of fonts installed on your personal computer cannot be detected by a web server! Accordingly, we have prepared multiple versions of each text; this set of texts is for systems/browsers with Unicode support and fonts spanning the Unicode 3 character set relevant to Tocharian. (You may switch to other versions via links below.) Texts are still under development, hence subject to change at any time:
  1. Exerpt from The "Last Supper" of the Buddha (B107/THT107)
  2. The "Last Supper" of the Buddha (B107/THT107), cont'd
  3. The "Last Supper" of the Buddha (B107/THT107), cont'd
  4. The "Last Supper" of the Buddha (B107/THT107), cont'd
  5. The "Last Supper" of the Buddha (B107/THT107), cont'd
  6. Appendix 1: A Clinic on Looking Up Tocharian Words