1

Back to the Past:Another Visit to Gandhara

by Professor Richard Salomon

In a previous article in Asia Notes(Vol. 2.1, 1996-7), I described

my previous tour through northernPakistan, in the region known inancient times as Gandhara, which Itook with Jason Neelis, one of theDepartment of Asian Languagesand Literature’s graduate students.In October 2000 I had the opportu-nity to return to Pakistan with an-other graduate student, AndrewGlass, to revisit some of the sameplaces as well as to see some newones. Andrew and I arrived in Paki-stan early in the morning after along and rather grueling flight fromSeattle to Islamabad, including asix hour layover at London’sHeathrow Airport where I indulgedmyself with a shockingly expensiveafternoon nap at the airport hotel,while Andrew, somewhat moreblessed with youthful energy than I,spent the time with his parents whohad come to meet him at the air-port.

We spent our first day andnight in Islamabad at the

home of an old friend of mine,Aman Ur-Rahman, who shares withthe two of us a passionate enthusi-asm for the ancient history andculture of this fascinating part ofthe world. The next morning, wetook a bus to Peshawar, three hoursride to the west along the fabled

Grand Trunk Road, where wewere to spend the next fourdays. Peshawar is an infinitelyfascinating city, with a reputationfor cultural richness as well as forintrigue and even danger. Eversince it become the capital of thegreat Indo-Central Asian Kushanadynasty under the emperor Kanish-ka nearly two thousand years ago, ithas stood at what is sometimescalled the “crossroads of Asia,”serving as the point of entry andencounter for pilgrims, traders,immigrants and invaders fromAfghanistan, Iran, China, and fromthe western world. Though in re-cent years it has been overwhelmedby huge numbers of refugees fromthe wars in Afghanistan andplagued by drug smuggling, thearms trade, and religious extremistmovements, it still retains its oldflavor of a bustling and exoticmeeting place of the worlds ofCentral Asia and the Indian subcon-tinent.

Here, in the bazaar of thePeshawar’s old city, you wend

your way through constant streamsof churning crowds, all seeming tomove in opposite directions simul-taneously, somehow meltingthrough one another, to the accom-paniment of a dazzling cacophonyof car horns, hawkers’ shouts, andblaring loudspeakers. The entranceto the bazaar takes you first througha jewelers’ bazaar of endless rowsof tiny stalls, their walls with tiledmirrors that reflect, and seem tomultiply, the luxuriant red velvet

cabinets filled with dazzling goldornaments. Turn—or rather, beswept around—a corner, and youfind yourself in the fish market,with row upon row of vendorscalling out and beckoning to you tosample their dozens of species ofriver fish from the Indus. In thenext alley, cooks are stewing pun-gent curries in enormous smoke-blackened bubbling cauldrons. Onand on it goes, through the narrowstreets and alleys, fronted by old-fashioned houses with ornatelycarved wooden facades, now sag-ging and crumbling yet still retain-ing the air of their former glories.But a walk through Peshawar’s oldbazaar is something to be experi-enced rather than described. Every-one should do it at least once in alifetime.

The charms of the old citynotwithstanding, most of our

time in Peshawar was spent at theDepartment of Archaeology ofPeshawar University. Here we gotour first, though far from our lasttaste of the legendary hospitality ofthe Pathans, the dominant ethnicgroup in the Northwest FrontierProvince, of which Peshawar is thecapital. Housed at the University’sguest house and taken under thecare of Professors M. Farooq Swatiand M. Nasim Khan the depart-

Continued on page 9.

2

William G. Boltz, Chairman

Scriptula ex cathedra

Of the various improbabilities Imight have imagined over the

years, certainly ending up as chair-man of this Department ranksamong those near the top of the list.My solace among the surprises of ayear serving in this post has comefrom the guidance and good will Ihave been the beneficiary of fromthe two immediately past chairmen,both now recovering scholars, froma faculty of splendidly cooperativecolleagues, and especially from anoffice staff with a superabundanceof patience, professional expertiseand good-humored tolerance for myinexperienced incipience.

I cannot say I have exactly fallenin love with the business of

being chairman, but it is a learningexperience, and learning some-thing, no matter what, is better thanlearning nothing. Most recently, forexample, I learned that I was ex-pected to write a few notes for thisNewsletter. This “column” in pastNewsletters has been called some-thing like “Notes from the Chair,”and it still is,1 only the language

has been changed to protect thereputation of past columnists from“embarrassment by association.”

Of more moment, coming at theintersection of surprises and

learning experiences, I was sur-prised to learn that it is rumoredthat the Seattle School Systemplans to eliminate the teaching ofall foreign languages save Spanishand Japanese. Superintendent Jo-seph Olchefske is said to be in theprocess of implementing a newpolicy that will limit the teaching offoreign languages in the highschools to just these two. The justi-fication, if such there can be, is thatforeign language teaching in theschools has become “too splin-tered,” or so at least he is reportedto have complained to a group ofconcerned parents.

Both Spanish and Japanese areworthy languages, without

doubt, and ought to be offered inany high school system with claimson excellence. But every one of uswill immediately think of otherlanguages just as worthy and just asdeserving of being offered. If ouraim is to name worthy languagesthat high school students ought tohave a chance to study should theybe so moved, we could start bycontinuing the pairing of a westernEuropean language with an Asianlanguage, and suggest French andChinese. Or, thinking eurocentrical-ly, we could mention German andRussian; from a somewhat broadergeopolitical perspective, we wouldbe inclined to lobby for Arabic andIndonesian. As a simple matter ofmaking a solid humanistic educa-

tion available to high school stu-dents, Latin is essential. And so wecould go on. But all of this linguis-tic diversity is apparently seen bythe upper administrative levels ofthe Seattle School System as un-welcome, leading apparently to anunmanageable “splintering.”

This view reflects a seriousmisconception of how crucial

and how fundamental languageinstruction is to education overall.Linguistic diversity is as critical tothe well being of the educationaldomain as biodiversity is to theecological. (Linguistic diversity isin fact a form of biodiversity,though you would never know itfrom the linguistically impover-ished culture that predominates inthe U.S.) The worst effect of such apolicy is not the unavailability oflanguages for study (though that isbad enough); it is that such a policyfosters an impression that foreignlanguage study is marginal, dis-missible, expendable, or whateveradditional synonym we might wishto invoke. It is bad policy for theSeattle high school students whowill become UW students, and it isa woefully short-sighted and ill-informed policy for the city’s edu-cational system overall. Let us hopethat this rumor is just a rumor, andnever becomes a fact. �

_____________________________1 Latinists, pedants, and enthusiasts of the

history of board games will recognize that

this claim is not entirely correct, but we need

not be overly concerned with such a special-

ized readership at the moment. For most of

us scriptula will mean ‘jottings,’ or ‘(little)

notes’ (of no particular consequence), and

that is, to be sure, my intended meaning

here.

3

Notes from our LanguagePrograms

Professor Richard Salomonwas named to the Byron W. &

Alice L. Lockwood Professorshipin the Humanities for the periodfrom 16 December 2000 through 15June 2003. In a letter to Asian L&Lfaculty dated January 25, 2001,Professor Boltz noted: “The charterthat establishes the LockwoodProfessorship in the Humanitiesemphasizes, among other aspects ofthe humanities, that ‘[t]hrough thestudy of languages and literaturewe learn how people communicateand express themselves. Throughthe study of philosophy and com-parative religion we understand themoral, ethical, and logical bases ofthought and action.’ These aspects,and others, taken together give us away to ‘appreciate the rich culturalfabric that ties us together as humanbeings.’ ‘As scientific and techno-logical advances produce rapid andsometimes unsettling changes inour world, it is essential that societymaintain its humanistic heritage. Itis for this reason that the LockwoodFoundation [establishes this Profes-sorship], to encourage the scholarlystudy of all aspects of our culturaland intellectual heritage.’ These aresentiments and tenets that we canall understand, support and act on.It is an honor for the Department tohave one of our senior professors

recognized for his contributions tothe study of the humanities in thisway, and on behalf of all of us Iextend our sincere congratulationsto Rich on this occasion.”

Professor Heidi Pauwels pre-sented a research report at the

Eighth Conference on Early Litera-ture in New-Indo Aryan Languages,held at K. University of Leuven inLouvain, Belgium August 23-26,2000, on the topic “Hagiography byand about Hariram Vyas.” Prof.Pauwels also presented a talk forthe panel on Epics organized byJohn Brockington at the EuropeanConference of Modern South AsianStudies, held at the University ofEdinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, Sep-tember 6-9, 2000, on the topic “Thecourtship and the wedding of Ramaand Sita, past and present.”

The proceedings of the first confer-ence are to be published in Delhi byManohar, those of the second con-ference will be published as a spe-cial issue of RocznikOrientalityczny in Prague sometime in the spring of 2001.

During Autumn Quarter, 2000,Prof. Pauwels was engaged in

writing her book In Praise of HolyMen: Imagining Religious Communi-ties in Medieval India, a project madepossible by a University of Washing-ton Royalty Research Fellowship.

Professor Anne Yue-Hashimoto(elected Vice President of the

International Association of ChineseLinguistics for 1998-99, and Presi-dent of the International Associa-tion of Chinese Linguistics for1999-2000) spent five months inHong Kong last year—Januarythrough April, 2000—as VisitingProfessor at the Department ofChinese Language and Literature ofthe Chinese University of HongKong, teaching a graduate seminarin Cantonese linguistics (with 18students—the greatest number,Prof. Yue exclaims, she ever had inone class!) and working on variousaspects of the reconstruction ofproto-Yue phonology. In May,2000, Prof. Yue was Visiting Pro-fessor at the Language InformationSciences Research Centre of theCity University of Hong Kong,working on a monograph on theDancun dialect of Taishan. In lateJune, Prof. Yue went to Shaoguan innorthern Guangdong province to doa preliminary survey of the dialectof Shaoguan city and a suburbanvariety of the Wantou village,which were investigated in 1929 bythe late Professor Yuen Ren Chao.The ultimate goal is to observelinguistic change in these dialectssince 1929 and to study their inter-esting tone change phenomenon. �

New Graduate Students

Since Autumn, 1998, the Department has welcomed twenty-

eight students into the ranks of itsgraduate programs in Chinese, Japa-nese, South Asian and Korean Lan-guages and Literature. Of thetwenty-eight, two have graduatedwith terminal M.A.s (Ms. GongHang Su, Chinese, Autumn, 2000and Ms. Tomoko Nakaone, Japanese,Autumn, 2000)), one left the pro-

gram, and the remaining are, asfollows: pursuing studies in Chineselanguage and literature, Mr. KevinJensen, Mr. Robert Orndorff, Ms.Jungim Chang, Mr. Chi On (Andy)Chin, Mr. Jason Hendryx, Ms. Xiao-qiao Ling, Ms. Kyoung-ok Noh, Mr.Timothy O’Neill, Mr. Charles Sanft,Ms. Ping Wang; pursuing studies inJapanese language and literature,Mr. Jon Holt, Ms. Fusae Ekida, Mr.Philip Kaffen, Ms. Fumiyo Koba-yashi, Ms. Gulzemin Ozrenk, Ms.

Sachi Schmidt-Hori; pursuing stud-ies in Korean language and litera-ture, Ms. Jina Kim, Ms. MeewhaLee, Ms. Jemma Song, Ms. Hye-jinSidney; pursuing studies in SouthAsian languages and literature, Ms.Diane Johnson, Mr. Michael Tandy,Mr. Jonathan Lawson, Mr. Ara Se-merjian, Mr. David Smith. TheDepartment is proud of its newstudents and encourages them intheir ambition for academic excel-lence. �

4

Cap and Gown

Between Summer Quarter,1998, and Summer Quarter,

2001, the Department of AsianLanguages and Literature has grad-uated nine doctoral candidates andeleven Master’s candidates. Ph.D.swere earned by the following:Andrea Lingenfelter (Ching-HsienWang), Summer, 1998, ChristineMarran (John W. Treat), Summer,1998, Hamit Zakir (Ilse Cirtautas),Spring, 1999, Jeffrey Crosland(Anne Yue-Hashimoto), Autumn,1999, Keith Dede (Anne Yue-Hashimoto), Autumn, 1999, Timo-thy Lenz (Richard Salomon),Autumn, 1999, Rachel DiNitto(John W. Treat), Summer, 2000,Yeow-Chong Wu (David Knechtg-es), Autumn, 2000, RavinderSingh (Michael Shapiro), Winter,2001, Valerie Ritter (MichaelShapiro), Spring, 2001. Ph.D. can-didate Jason Neelis (RichardSalomon) is scheduled to defendhis dissertation on June 7, 2001.

M.A.s were earned by thefollowing: Mary Hirsch,

Chinese, Summer, 1998, TimothyLenz, South Asian, Winter, 1998,Douglas Osto, South Asian,Spring, 1999, Deborah Shamoon,Japanese, Spring, 1999, AdamRoss, Chinese, Summer, 1999,Charles Exley, Japanese, Autumn,1999, Paul Davidson, Japanese,Summer, 2000, Andrew Glass,South Asian, Summer, 2000, Timo-thy Miller, Chinese, Autumn,2000, Tomoko Nakaone, Japanese,Autumn, 2000, Gong Hang Su,Chinese, Autumn, 2000.

Between Autumn, 2000, andSummer, 2001, B.A.s were

earned by the following students. InJapanese Language and Literature:Bryce Berger, Sun Hee Helen Cho,Maria Dooley, Jean Fuh, SeavHuor Lim, Nicholas O’Neill, An-drew Rouse, Aaron Vanover, JuliaBlack, Josh Moonghen Choi,Kevin Egan, John Hunter, HanakoMomono, Jane Otaki, YukikoSodos, Ti Wang, Gretchen Bu-

cholz, Stephen Dieker, SummerFloyd, Gary Lau, Sarah Ode-gaard, Andrew Remter, JennieUmamoto, Tara Yamamoto, MarkBrachmann, Benjamin Ritter. InChinese Language and Literature:Chun-Wu Andrew Chang. InSouth Asian Languages and Litera-ture: Dung Dinh Truong.

The Department wishes to extendits hardiest congratulations to eachand every graduate.

At its annual Graduation andAwards Reception (held this

year on May 31, 2001, in the Ro-tunda of Parrington Hall), the De-partment of Asian Languages andLiterature honors three Tatsumiawardees, Mr. Scott RichardBlow, Mr. Chien-hsin Tsai, andMr. Zachary Huntting; WylieScholarship awardee, Mr. AndrewGlass; and Book Gift awardees,Ms. Fusae Ekida and Mr. DungDinh Truong.

Congratulations to these students! �

Second Language AcquisitionProcesses in the Classroom:Learning Japanese

by Professor Amy Snyder Ohta

In the field of Second LanguageAcquisition (SLA), the bulk of the

research literature is about howEnglish is learned. Amy SnyderOhta, Assistant Professor of Japa-nese, is changing that through herresearch on how the Japanese lan-guage is acquired by adults in theclassroom setting. Dr. Ohta’s newbook, Second Language AcquisitionProcesses in the Classroom: Learn-ing Japanese, published byLawrence Erlbaum Associates, willbe of interest to language teachers aswell as SLA researchers.

Second Language Acquisition isan original study of the learning

processes of seven adult learners ofJapanese enrolled in first and secondyear Japanese courses. Data werecollected by recording the sevenlearners as they interacted in theirclasses. The chapters investigate howlearners make use of classroominteraction in learning Japanese. Thefirst chapter provides an overview of

the sociocognitive framework usedto inform the study. Other chaptersinvestigate the role of private speech(self addressed speech) in languagelearning, how learning occurs duringstudent-student and student-teacherinteraction, corrective feedback, thedevelopment of interactional style,the use of English in the classroom,and the relationship between teach-ing techniques and classroom out-comes. The publisher expects thebook to be of interest to the SLAfield as a whole, and to be used incourses on classroom research,second language acquisition, andforeign/second language teachingmethods. Professor Ohta hopes that herresearch will both help to broaden theperspective of SLA researchers beyondstudies of European languages, and thather findings will be useful in improvingthe teaching of Japanese and otherAsian languages. �

5

“Professor Li Fang-kuei:a Personal Memoir”

by Prof. Anne Yue-Hashimoto

Everyone familiar with the studyof Chinese linguistics knows

the academic contributions of Pro-fessor Li Fang-kuei in the field, andspecifically in the areas of histori-cal phonology, Tai and Tibetanlinguistics, and Amerindian lan-guages. Many have fond memoriesof him as a teacher, as well. I wouldlike to share some stories whichProfessor Li related (in Chinese, tofriends and colleagues at my house)during a visit he made to Seattle onSeptember 9, 1986, touching uponhis student life and fieldwork.

Professor Li spent four years atthe high school of the École

Peking Normale Superieure, andfour years at the Tsing Hua JuniorCollege before leaving for Americathrough Shanghai in 1924. His two-week trip took him to Hawaii, andthence to Seattle, where he boardeda train for Ann Arbor, Michigan.During his two years at the Univer-sity of Michigan (Li graduated in1926) he studied Latin epics anddrama, Medieval French, Old Eng-lish, Gothic, Middle English dia-

lects (with Samuel Moore) andexperimental phonetics. Mooreonce surprised and horrified hisseminar by giving an unannouncedexamination at the end of the term.A passage from Middle Englishwas given to the students to identifythe sources of certain vocabularyitems, whether they were fromsouthern English, and so forth. Thenext day, when Moore saw LiFang-kuei across the street oncampus (Li was trying hard toavoid him!), he ran toward thisquiet student and told him that hefelt he had “discovered” Li from hisexamination. That evening he invit-ed Li to his house for dinner. Moorewas at that time the moving force incompiling a Middle English dictio-nary, but he unfortunately died afew years later without completingthe work.

Edward Sapir interviewed LiFang-kuei and became his

mentor at the University of Chica-go. Li studied American Indianlinguistics and general linguisticswith Sapir, comparative Latin andGreek, Ancient Greek, Persian,Sanskrit, and Old Church Slavicwith Carl Darling Buck, who wasthe chairman at the time, and Ger-manic linguistics, Old High Ger-man, and Sanskrit grammar withBloomfield. By the beginning of1927, Li had finished all of hiscourse work, and Bloomfield sug-gested a dissertation topic to him:the Old English genitive case;however, by this time Li had al-ready started writing about thegrammar of an American Indianlanguage. By the spring of 1928, LiFang-kuei was finished with hisdissertation, though he had to waituntil December to get his degreebecause he had forgotten to applyto be a Ph.D. candidate! In addi-tion, he had to pass French andGerman language examinations. Hetook and passed his French exam,but was excused from the German,

inasmuch as the examiner was hisclassmate in German!

While Li Fang-kuei waited forhis degree, Buck suggested

that he enroll at Harvard to studyVedic and Buddhist Sanskrit, Tibet-an and Tibetan Buddhist texts. Halfa year later, Li felt bored (wu-liao)and decided to visit Europe. Hewent first to England, but there wasno Sinologist there. In France hemet Paul Pelliot and the TibetanistHolstein, and learned phoneticsfrom a priest. He went to Berlinarmed with a letter of recommenda-tion from Franz Boas, and metLessing and Walter Simon. Simonasked his opinion of Karlgren, andshowed him his comparative Tibet-an and Chinese paper. Boas wantedhim to visit a phonetician in Ham-burg, but it turned out that thisphonetician had already gone toAfrica, so Li went to the zoo in-stead. (Hmm. There is a similaritybetween Li Fang-kuei and JerryNorman as far as zoos are con-cerned.) From Germany, Li took aboat to Quebec and nudged his waytoward Montreal, where he foundhimself out of money! Fortunately,the University of Chicago sent him$3000 by cable for fieldwork.

In the summer of 1927, Sapirsuggested fieldwork to Li Fang-

kuei, and took him to California forinitiation. They stopped at Berkeleyto see Kroeber and stayed at theFaculty Club. They were to go tonorthern California. At the time,Humboldt County was very muchanti-Chinese, so Sapir had to makespecial arrangements with localofficials. From Eureka they took abus to the Hupo reservation wherethey stayed for two or three weeks.Sapir showed Li Fang-kuei first-hand how to ask questions duringfieldwork sessions, but Li was onhis own for his work with the Mat-tole Indians, who at that time were

Continued on page 6.

Professor Li Fang-kuei

6

virtually extinct. Li’s first task wasto find where the Mattole lived. Forthis field trip he returned to Eureka,took a bus south to Petrolia, and lo!by the mouth of the Mattole river,near the ocean, learned of the exist-ence of a single family in the vicin-ity. Li walked along the river,crossed it barefoot, borrowed ahorse from a farmer (it was his firstexperience riding a horse) andfinally found the Indian family. Thefather was about seventy years oldand blind; the son was about twen-ty. Li stayed in a hotel ten milesaway, spending six hours a daywith his informant (the son) forabout a month, paying him fortycents an hour. There were thingsthe son did not know, however, andLi continued his southward journeyalong the Wailaki reservation andworked on other Athabaskan lan-guages. By the beginning of 1928,Li had finished his Mattole report.

Li Fang-kuei went to Canadatwice to work on the Atha-

baskan languages. The first trip wasmade in 1927. Li took the trainfrom Chicago through North Dako-ta to Edmonton, reaching FordChipewyan on Lake Athabaskan byboat. He spent one summer writingseveral articles on Chipewyan andreturned to Chicago in the autumn,taking a boat to a small town calledWaterace and then a train by way ofEdmonton to Chicago.

His second field trip commenced at the end of his Euro-

pean journey. From Montreal hetook the Trans-Canada NationalRailway to Edmonton, then trav-eled by riverboat to Slave Lake andto Good Hope, where he spent twomonths. Seven to eight thousandfish flowed down the McKenzieRiver from the North Pole everyday. At Good Hope, Li bought

eggs, bread, and canned beef. With-in a month these provisions wereexhausted and there was no boat toreturn to Good Hope for more. Ahunter stationed not far away hadprovisions in his cabin. Li tookflour and yeast to make bread, andsince the hunter was not there, leftmoney in his cabin. An AmericanIndian brought Li a fish each day,and the fish supplied three meals(head, middle, and tail). Li boughtbacon for grease, and a frying pan.The fish parts were either fried orboiled in water. To gather firewood,Li went into the forest (shàng sh n kn mùtou) every day with his Indianguide, armed with an axe, to chopdown six pine trees. Each mancarried “home” three on his shoul-ders! A kerosene bucket served asthe stove. So Li’s daily choresincluded cutting down (and chop-ping) firewood, making a fire,boiling water, and making bread.The bread he made did not rise, butinstead became hard as rock. Li hadto cut the bread into pieces andsoak the pieces in water beforeeating them. Canned fruit had to bebought, with one can lasting severaldays. The Indians he worked withwere of the Hare tribe, and theolder members could speak En-glish. Fieldwork progressed veryslowly because of the daily cookingchores, and Li could not gather asmuch material as he wanted. Thelanguage was also very complicatedin its verbal inflections of person,number, tense, and so forth. Toanalyze one verb, dozens of formshad to be collected. Li warned thatsometimes one did not know whatone got for the elicited forms. Forexample, he would ask how to say“I went” and later find that theanswer he had been given was “youwent”! Further, he could stay onlyone or two months because of thesevere cold that arrived after Sep-tember. And there was only oneboat scheduled to return.

After this field trip, Li traveledto Vancouver to take a steamer

back to China. It was Sapir whoprovided him with funds from theRockefeller Foundation for a year,both for traveling expenses and forfield work in China. Sapir hadconsidered the possibility of arelationship between Sino-Tibetanand Athabaskan. (When askedabout this idea of Sapir’s more thanthirty years ago back in the Mid-West, Li smiled and answered,“Distant as the floating clouds!”) Liwent to Peking through Shanghai,where he met Cai Yuanpei, theDirector of Academia Sinica at thetime. He was invited to join theAcademia Sinica, but because ofhis commitment to the RockefellerFoundation, he accepted only anhonorary appointment. Li then wentto northern Guangdong throughShanghai and Canton, to Lianjiang,where the Yaos lived, and contin-ued down to Haikou by boat. Hecould not, however, enter Li Shanbecause of the existing unstablesocial situation, although he suc-ceeded in collecting materials forLi and Hainanese languages. Afterreturning to Canton, he gatheredsome Hainanese speakers for pho-netic experiment, making his ownexperimental instrument—using aholed canned tube for cigarettesand rubber bands to connect it witha thing (he could not describe ex-actly what it was—of course it washis own invention!). When implo-sives were pronounced, the thingwould fall inward. This was thefirst time that implosives werediscovered in China. In early 1930,Li wrote to the Rockefeller Founda-tion to terminate his fellowship, forhe had become a research memberof the Institute of History and Phi-lology after returning to Peking,together with Chao Yuen Ren andLuo Xintian. �

“Memoir” continued from page 5.

7

“Nineteen Ninety-EightSymposium Dedicated to theMemory of Professor LiFang-kuei (1902-87)”

by Prof. Anne Yue-Hashimoto

Linguistic Change and the Chi-nese Dialects from the Per-

spectives of Historical Documenta-tion and Language Contact, anInternational Symposium organizedby Professor Anne Yue (Depart-ment of Asian Languages and Liter-ature), in memory of Professor LiFang-kuei, distinguished scholarand teacher at the University ofWashington from 1949 - 1967, tookplace between August 17 and Au-gust 19, 1998, at the University ofWashington’s Faculty Center. TheSymposium was sponsored andsubsidized by the Department ofAsian Languages and Literature,the Chinese Studies Program of theJackson School of InternationalStudies, the College of Arts andSciences, and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation of InternationalScholarly Exchange, which awardeda generous grant of $25,000 for theoccasion. Twenty-nine scholarsfrom all over the world presentedpapers for eleven panels.

Opening remarks by DeanMichael Halleran were fol-

lowed by an account, in both Chi-nese and English, of the history ofSinology and Sinologists at theUniversity of Washington by Pro-fessor David Knechtges, then Chairof the Department of Asian Lan-guages and Literature, and remarksby Professor Jerry Norman, succes-sor to the position of Li Fang-kueibetween 1971 and his retirement in1998. Ting Pang-Hsin, AgassizProfessor at UC Berkeley and Deanof the College of Humanities andSocial Sciences at the Hong KongUniversity of Science and Technol-ogy, and South Coblin, Professor atthe University of Iowa, both ofwhom can be considered among the

most distinguished students of LiFang-kuei, narrated Memories of aGreat Scholar-Teacher. The firstkeynote address, Linguistic Co-evolution, was given by William S-Y Wang (City University of HongKong and Professor Emeritus at UCBerkeley). First-day speakers in-cluded Ting Pang-Hsin, TakashimaKenichi (University of BritishColumbia), Anne Yue, HirayamaHisao (Waseda University andProfessor Emeritus at Tokyo Uni-versity), William Baxter III (Uni-versity of Michigan), South Coblin,and Iwata Ray (Shizuoka Universi-ty), on topics ranging from non-Chinese linguistics, oracle bonesinscriptions, to Mandarin tones andphylogeny, and the Jiang-Huaidialect.

The second day of the Sympo-sium began with a special

presentation by the eldest daughterof Li Fang-kuei, Lindy Li Mark(California State University atHayward) on A Dialect Approach toSpeech in Kunqu Performance.Professor. Mark’s performancetugged at the hearts of those whohave heard Li Fang-kuei himselfaccompanying with flute the kunquperformance of Madame Li XuYing. Another keynote address,Voicing in the Shyrbei Dialect, wasgiven by Jerry Norman. Second-day speakers included Zhang Min(National University of Singapore),Hou Jingyi (Institute of Linguistics,Chinese Academy of Social Scienc-es, Beijing), Huang Xuezhen (Insti-tute of Linguistics, ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences,Beijing), You Rujie (Fudan Univer-sity), Li Xiaofan (Peking Universi-ty), Wu Yunji (University ofMelbourne), Laurent Sagart (Centrede National de la Recherche Scien-tifique, Paris) and Yan Sen (JiangxiNormal University) on topics relat-ing to the dialects of SouthernMandarin, Jin, Wu includingSuzhou, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, and tothe Woman’s Script. Third-day

speakers included Mei Tsu-Lin(Cornell University), Shi Qisheng(Zhongshan University), Lien Chin-fa (National Tsing Hua University),Samuel H-N Cheung (UC Berkeleyand Hong Kong University ofScience and Technology), andBenjamin T’sou (City University ofHong Kong), on topics relating tothe Min and Yue dialects.

An unannounced tribute toProfessor Jerry Norman, who

retired from the Department ofAsian Languages and Literature atthe end of Spring Quarter, 1998,took place in the afternoon of thethird day. The session was plannedby Anne Yue and David Branner(alumnus of the Department ofAsian Languages). It was keptsecret to ensure the attendance ofProfessor Norman, who had noinkling of it until he noticed fromthe program that all UW graduatesand graduate students in Chineselinguistics were lumped together inthe last two panels, and made aremark about it. Mei Tsu-Lin, afriend of more than thirty years,and David Branner, one of Nor-man’s best students, delivered thetribute, followed by six papers fromstudents whom Norman had super-vised or taught: Stephen Wadley(Portland State University), KeithDede (then Ph.C., Department ofAsian Languages and Literature,currently at Lewis and Clark Col-lege), Richard Simmons (RutgersUniversity), Yu Zhiqiang (BaruchCollege), Jeffrey Crosland (thenPh.C., Department of Asian Lan-guages and Literature, currently atIUP, Beijing), and David Branner(currently at the University ofMaryland).

The Symposium was made veryspecial by the attendance of

two of Professor Li’s three children(Lindy and his youngest childAnnie) and three grandchildren. Its

Continued on page 12.

8

Additions to the Faculty

In the last two years (and sincethe publication of our last newslet-

ter), the Department has been enhancedby the addition of new faculty in virtu-ally all of its language programs. InAutumn, 2000, the Department wasjoined by Prof. John ChristopherHamm, M.A., Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley:Traditional Chinese fiction and drama,performance literature and popularculture, 20th century literature and film.Classes Prof. Hamm has taught in theDepartment include Beginning Manda-rin (Chin 111, 112, 113), PremodernChinese Narrative (Chin 380), GenreStudies in Wuxia Xiaoshuo (Chin 580),and History of Chinese Literature: LateImperial to Modern (Chin 463), Ad-vanced Readings in Modern Chinese(Chin 482), and Studies in ChineseDrama (Chin 575). Prof. Hamm will beon teaching release Autumn Quarter,2001, revising his dissertation, TheSword, the Book, and the Nation: JinYong’s Martial Arts Fiction, for publi-cation. Prof. Hamm has recently pre-sented a paper, “Jin Yong and theGuangdong School of Martial ArtsFiction,” at the International Confer-ence on Jin Yong’s Fiction at PekingUniversity, and another, “Genre Fictionand the Negotiation of the LiteraryField,” at the conference “ChinesePopular Culture Unveiled” at Colum-bia University.

Undergraduate education is aprominent interest of Prof.

Hamm, who serves on the Depart-ment’s Undergraduate Studies Com-mittee and the Humanities CenterCurriculum Forum, a committee focus-ing on issues of pedagogy and curricu-lar development. He admits to feelingexcited to be working with an adjunctprofessor in our Department (newlyhired by the Department of Compara-tive Literature), Prof. Yomi Braester, onmodern Chinese literature and film, andhopes for a collaboration with Prof.Braester on a possible conference onChinese urban literature and film.

Prof. Hamm and his wife, ZhouXue, are the proud parents of a

young son, Lyle Strother TianxiaoHamm, and the combination of a newjob and fatherhood leaves him littletime for hobbies, though in his youngerdays he was himself a practitioner ofthe martial arts.

The Department was joined in Autumn,1998, by two new faculty in Chineseand Japanese, respectively.

Prof. Zev Handel, M.A., Ph.D.,U.C., Berkeley: Chinese historical

phonology, Sino-Tibetan linguistics,was hired as a visiting lecturer in Chi-nese in 1998, and as Assistant Professorin 1999. He has taught Second-YearChinese (Chin 211, 212, 213), TheChinese Language (Chin 342), MiddleChinese Phonology: Methods andMaterials (Chin 532), and Introductionto Chinese Historical Phonology (Chin542).

In September, 2000, Prof. Handel made a two-week inspection and

evaluation tour of University of Wash-ington affiliated language programs inChina, including CIEE Beijing, Shang-hai, and Nanjing; CET Harbin, andOUS/CUN Beijing. In 1999, he wasUW representative to the Inter-Univer-sity Board for Chinese LanguageStudies; to the Board of the OregonUniversity System Chinese StudyAbroad Program; and to the Interna-tional Faculty Council exploratorymeetings with delegations from Tsing-hua University (Beijing) and SichuanUniversity (Chengdu). Prof. Handelchaired the Department’s ComputerCommittee, and has overseen theproject to revise and redesign theDepartment’s web site. He has deviseda series of new course numbers tofacilitate credit transfer for studentsengaged in Chinese study abroad. Prof.Handel will be a Visiting Professor atthe Hong Kong University of Scienceand Technology for the 2001/2002academic year. While there, he willteach a course on Sino-Tibetan linguis-

tics and carry out research on OldChinese phonology.

Prof. Adam Kern, Ph.D., Har-vard University: Early modern

Japanese literature, drama, and culture(popular and visual). Prof. Kern hastaught classes in Japanese literature(Japan 321, 322), Classical Japanese(Japan 471, 472), and in AdvancedReadings in Classical Japanese Litera-ture (Japan 571, 572, the latter sched-uled for Spring, 2002). During theacademic year 1999/2000, Prof. Kernworked in Tokyo, Japan on a transla-tion volume of 18th century comicbooks (called kiby shi). The volume iscurrently under review.

Also new to the Departmentsince 1998 are three temporary

faculty: Dr. Mark Allon (hired in1998), Postdoctoral Research Associ-ate, Sanskrit, working on the BuddhistManuscript Project (headed by Prof.Richard Salomon); Dr. DavinderBhowmik (hired Autumn, 2000),modern Japanese literature; and Dr.Timothy Lenz (hired Autumn, 2000),Postdoctoral Research Associate,Sanskrit, working on the BuddhistManuscript Project.

Five lecturers and one teachingassociate have joined the faculty:

Ms. Fumiko Takeda, Japanese lan-guage, M.A., University of Oregon; Dr.Soohee Kim, Korean language, M.A.,Florida International University, Mi-ami, Ph.D., Linguistics, University ofWashington; Dr. Jeffrey Dreyfuss,Indonesian language, M.A., Ph.D.,University of Michigan; Dr. K. P.Singh, Hindi language, M.Phil., M.A.,Center for the Study of Social Systems,Jawaharlal Nehru University, Ph.D.,University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dr.Nyan-ping Bi, Chinese language,Ph.D., Indiana University; Ms. LaurenDivina, Tagalog language, M.A. Seat-tle University, and Teaching AssociateMs. Miyako McDavid, Japaneselanguage, M.A., University of Pitts-burgh. �

9

ment’s experts in Gandharan artand epigraphy respectively, we hadour every need catered to through-out our visit. One of the high pointswas a day trip to several archaeo-logical sites in the area to the northof Peshawar. We visited, amongother places, the village of Shahba-zgarhi, where in the 3rd century BCthe Indian emperor Ashoka had histhirteen edicts on moral and reli-gious principles carved onto hugeboulders; the hilltop Buddhist mon-asteries of Takht-i-bahi and Jamal-garhi; and the mounds of theancient cities at Charsadda, whichwas the capital city of Gandhara inthe time of the Indo-Scythian dy-nasties in the first centuries BC andAD.

From Peshawar, we drovenortheastward over the Mala-

kand Pass to the Swat Valley, thelegendary paradise of later Bud-dhist lore. Despite modern ravagesof overpopulation, poverty, anddeforestation, it is still easy to seehow Swat got its reputation as a

sort of heaven on earth. One sensesthis especially when visiting any ofthe Buddhist stupas (stone domesbuilt over sacred relics of the Bud-dha’s body) that were built in vastnumbers in Swat, beginning aboutthe 3rd century BC and continuingfor many centuries. The Buddhistsfavored sites with scenic vistas,often deep in the side valleys to theeast of the Swat River. One suchsite we visited, the Malam Jabbastupa, was high up in the snow-capped mountains, in an exquisitelybeautiful mountain meadow, cutthrough by meandering crystalstreams. It was in remote placeslike this, according to some archae-ologists, that Buddhism breathed itslast gasp in Swat, as it retreatedhigher and higher into the moun-tains to escape the hostility of thenew religion, Islam. But even inthese dire straits, the few remainingBuddhists apparently managed tofind scenic locations for their lasthomes. Unfortunately, little morethan piles of rubble remain of themonastic and ritual structures atthis site; but with a little imagina-tion one can still picture the survi-vors of Buddhist Swat living outtheir last days, pondering the immi-nent fulfillment of the Buddha’sprophecy that the dharma woulddisappear after a thousand years.

In Swat, Andrew and I were theguest of the Italian Archaeologi-

cal Mission in Saidu Sharif, a ven-erable institution that has beenoperating since the 1950’s, andwhich has carried out numerousexcavations which have proved tobe of critical importance for thestudy of Buddhist art and culture inGandhara. Here we were treated bythe director, Professor Pier-francesco Callieri, and his studentsand colleagues, to five days ofItalian hospitality that was fully amatch for its Pathan counterpart (andwhich we were happy to reciprocatewhen Callieri visited the University

of Washington in January 2001). Inthe Italian manner, spirits alwaysseemed to be high at the mission,especially at mealtime, which fea-tured Italian dishes, expertly adapt-ed to local available items by anancient Pathan cook who had per-fected this unique culinary art overmany decades of service to themission. The excellent meals wererendered all the more enjoyable bya steady stream of cheerful banterand jokes in Italian; the spirit wasinfectious, and it was easy to sharein the laughter, even when wedidn’t understand a word.

This is not to say that nothinggot done at the mission. Quite

to the contrary, the rule seemed tobe “work hard, play hard,” andeveryone was expected to risepromptly at 4:30 each morning, tobe ready to depart at 5 o’clock forthe excavation site at Barikot. Bar-ikot is a large hill on the left bankof the lower Swat River,

The Hindu temple atop Barikothill, with the Swat River in thebackground

extraordinarily rich in relics ofdiverse periods, from the 2nd centu-ry BC Indo-Greek city site at thebase of the hill to the 8th centuryAD Hindu temple at the crest,which is currently being excavated.Indeed, the Barikot hill encapsu-lates the entire ancient history ofSwat, from the time when it wasseized by Alexander the Great in

Professors M. Nasim Khan andM. Farooq Swati at the ancientBuddhist monastery of Takht-i-bahi.

“Gandara” continued from page 1.

Continued on page 10.

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327 BC, opening the door to theHellenistic culture of the Indo-Greek period, up to the destructionof the aforementioned Hindu tem-ple around the eleventh century ADafter the arrival of Islam in theregion.

Later, Prof. Callieri tookAndrew and me for a personal

guided tour of an important stupasite located on the outskirts of themodern town of Saidu Sharif. Here,he pointed out to us the fine detailsof the stratigraphy and constructiontechniques that enabled the excava-tors to date the most importantphase of construction to the firsthalf of the first century AD, andwhich led them to postulate a majorexpansion of Buddhism in theregion at this time. This was a mostinteresting and welcome conclusionfor us, as it corresponds perfectlywith the conclusions that we hadindependently reached from ourstudies of the recently discoveredGandharan Buddhist scrolls, whichseem to date from the same period.

During our stay at the mission,Prof. Callieri put at our dis-

posal a trusted and highly experi-enced guide, Duwar Khan,who—as he liked to point out withgreat pride—had been working forthe mission for thirty-five years. Hespent three full days with us, tramp-ing over the hills and footpaths ofthe Swat Valley in search of stupasand inscriptions. Though he lookedto be well in his sixties, at least, heclambered over the steep hillsideslike a young man. It seemed to beall that Andrew (himself a moun-tain climber!) could do to keep upwith him; as for me, I gave uptrying early on, and Duwar Khanspent much of his time sitting onrocks, waiting patiently for me tocrawl my way up to him, puffingand sweating all the way. Hebrought us to many interesting

places which we would have foundonly with great difficulty, if at all,without his help. Among them werethe stupas at Arab Khan China, setin a pleasant hillside glade with afine view of the Jambil Valleybelow. Here we met some ratherragged looking local farmers who,despite their evidently limitedmeans, insisted in good Pathanfashion that we have tea and bis-cuits with them. Some minuteslater, our host returned from thenearby village with a battered ther-mos full of steaming tea, which wedrank while seated on our im-promptu seats of honor, flat stoneslabs he picked up from an adjacentfield. Like every Pathan we met,our host provided the best that hecould for his honored guests.

Because there was so much tosee in Swat, and because our

situation there was so enjoyable, weremained several days longer thanplanned. But finally we tore our-selves away and went on to ournext destination, the town of Chilason the upper Indus River. FromSwat, we drove eastward over arutted, winding road over theShangla Pass to Besham, where wemet the Karakorum Highway. Thisroad, stretching from the GrandTrunk Road to the 16,000 foot highKhunjerab Pass at the border withthe Xinjiang region of China, wascompleted in 1973 under a jointPakistani-Chinese project. With thecompletion of the highway, thejourney along the upper IndusRiver and onward to the Chineseborder, which had hitherto been anextremely arduous and dangeroustrip, became relatively safe andfast. One should not, however,envision anything like an Americanfreeway; the Karakorum Highwayis a winding two-lane road clingingto the steep cliffs along the gorgesof the river, hundreds of feet below.Though an impressive feat of engi-neering in exceedingly difficultterrain, the highway gives the im-

pression of having been built inhaste, and many sections are peri-odically washed out by torrentsfrom the cliffs above or torn up byrockslides. Twice we had to stop towait while workers standing onnarrow ledges high on the cliffs—with no helmets or safety equip-ment—broke off loose boulderswith jack hammers, which thencame tumbling down on the roadbelow, to be pushed over the edgeby bulldozers.

Our goal in visiting the Chilasarea was to see some of the

dozens of sites along the upperIndus River where in ancient timesmerchants, pilgrims, and hunterscarved thousands of inscriptionsand petroglyphs into the huge boul-ders along the riverside. Theseartifacts (which are being compre-hensively studied by Jason Neelisin his doctoral dissertation) presentthe modern scholar or visitor with avast gallery of graffiti left by travel-ers from India, China, and Iranfrom the 2nd to the 8th centuries AD.The diversity of scripts and lan-guages is an epigraphist’s delight,which kept Andrew and me busyfor many happy hours: hundreds ofinscriptions in the Gandhari lan-guage written in Kharoshthi script,in Sanskrit in Brahmi script, inIranian languages such as Sogdianand Parthian, and even a few straygraffiti in Chinese and Hebrew. Theinscriptions are by turns informa-tive, as in the one by a Sogdianmerchant who prays “May I quick-ly reach Tashkurgan and see mybrothers there,” and poignant, as inthe lament of one Bhotalamka-Radijiya, who sadly informs us “Ihave lost my money, and lost my-self.”

Many other inscriptionscontain pious Buddhist senti-

ments, and these often accompanycarvings, often casual or rude, but

Continued on page 12.

“Gandara” continued from page 9.

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Donors 1997/2001The Department of Asian Languages and Literature gratefully acknowledges the generosity of its donors over the past year:

Estate of Dr. Shu-koo & Isabella Yen KaoLawrence L. & Margie A. Griffin

Katherine H. HuberGregory H. Sherry L. Schuler

William T. & Jacalyn Midori CarrollAmy H. Choe

Kurt D. BeidlerKanlayanee Sitasuwan

Linda TestaJohn K. Nyquist

Thatcher E. DeaneProfessor and Mrs. Robert E. Entenmann

Linda L. MarkMr. & Mrs. Daniel Bensky

Al SteinmetzRoderick D. Bush

Daniel HsiehMichael & Joana Shapiro

Ming-Jiun & Shu-Shen H. WuChing I & Sabrina S. TuSaraswathy Ramanathan

Pang-Hsin & Chen Chi TingKenji & Patricia M. YamadaLawrence & Lois S. Markus

Lauretta M. GrillAlbert & Dorothy Marden

G. TselosTed T. & Margaret Yasuda

Takeshi & Fumiko Morita ImaiFlorence M. Fujita

Harry M. & Noriko TatsumiSam Fogg, Rare Books Limited

Sang Ran Lee

UW Department of Asian Languages and LiteratureYou may wish to support the Department of Asian Languages and Literature by making a contribution to one of its specificfunds. You can do this by sending a check made out to “University of Washington Foundation” with one of the funds listedbelow designated on the memo line of your check. Please send the check along with this form to:

Administrative AssistantDepartment of Asian Languages and Literature

Box 353521University of Washington

Seattle, WA 98195Please check the appropriate fund(s):

° Friends of Asian Languages and Literature Fund: used for discretionary purposes to support ongoing cultural programs andactivities, some general services to the Department and other special events which require the use of non-University funds.

° Henry S. Tatsumi Endowed Scholarship Fund: honors the late Professor Tatsumi and rewards excellence by students in thestudy of the Japanese language at the University of Washington.

° Yen Fu Endowed Scholarship Fund: honors the great Chinese translator Yen Fu and provides assistance to students who havedemonstrated a knowledge of or interest in the Chinese language and culture.

° Turrell V. Wylie Endowment Fund: honors former Chairman and Professor of Tibetan Turrell V. Wylie and provides scholar-ships to graduates or undergraduates in the Department.

° Andrew L. Markus Memorial Endowment Fund: honors the late Professor Markus and is used to support library acquisi-tions in the area of Classical Japanese.

° Friends of Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project: The Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project relies on grants & gifts fromfoundations and individual donors, and appreciates contributions of any size, which will assist us in meeting the high costs ofpublishing the British Library scrolls. Contributions support post-doctoral & graduate student research appointments, costs ofresearch & publication, and improvements in our technological capacities.

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success depended not only on the enthusiastic support of theparticipants (not a few of whom have been taught by Li Fang-kuei or his students or are acquainted with him), generous fund-ing from various units of the University and the ChiangChing-Kuo Foundation, but also on help in preparation by vari-ous individuals, including Virginia Lore, Jeff Crosland, Li Xiao-fan, Yan Sen, and Ken-ichi Takashima.. Special thanks to KeithDede, who served as jack-of-all-trades, Youngie Yoon, who tookcare of air fares and budget matters, and Robert Orndorff, whoreproduced through high-tech Li Fang-kuei’s personal letter forthe cover-page background and his portrait for the collection ofconference proceedings.

Let us all hope that the finetradition in Chinese linguistics established here by Professor

Li Fang-kuei half a century ago will continue to flourish after theretirement of his eminent successor, Professor Jerry Norman.

A volume of selected paperspresented at the symposium in memory of Li Fang-kuei was

published in December, 2000, by the Academia Sinica of Taiwan,with Ting Pang-Hsin and Anne Yue as co-editors, and supportedby a publication grant by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation. �

“Sympoium” continued from page 7.

Stupas, Kharoshthi inscriiptions,and petroglyphs carved on a rockat Chilas.

sometimes quite magnificent, ofstupas or other Buddhist symbolsand images. These carvings thusvisually document, on the one

hand, the trade in silk, spices, jew-els, and other luxury goods betweenthe Indian subcontinent and Chi-nese Central Asia, and, on the otherhand, the spread of Buddhism, handin hand with trade, from its Indianhomeland into East Asia. Whilesearching out these remarkablecarvings, one is literally followingin the footsteps of the Buddhistmerchants, and perhaps of theirmonastic companions, who helpedto make Buddhism into a worldreligion.

One should keep in mind,though, that this was a two-

way street, for it was also throughthe same route along the Indus thatXuanzang and other Chinese monksjourneyed to India in search ofBuddhist manuscripts, which theybrought back China to be translatedinto Chinese. Reading the Chinesepilgrims’ accounts of the terriblehardships they underwent in thispassage, one can hardly fail tomarvel at what risks and laborspeople undertook in ancient times,for the sake of both spiritual and

material motives; for the traffic inworldly trinkets and in the quest forenlightenment went hand in handalong this perilous route.

After two happy days ofclambering among the rocks

of the inscription sites at Shatial,Oshibat, Chilas, and Thalpan, thetime had come for me to return toIslamabad. Now the extra days wespent in Swat came back to hauntme, as we had only begun to see allof the points of interest at thesesites, let alone the many othersfurther up the Karakorum Highway.While Andrew was able to stay onanother week and travel as far northas Gilgit and Skardu, in the highKarakorum Mountains, my trip wasalmost over, except for quick stopson the way back at Mansehra, tosee another set of Ashokan rockinscriptions, and at the magnificentarchaeological remains of Taxila,one of the great cities of the ancientworld. Then it was on to Londonfor a quick visit to the British Li-brary, and home to Seattle, andback to work again. �

“Gandara” continued from page 10.