The Origin of Tibetan Writing and (written) Grammar

I talk about the beginning of Tibetan writing and (studied) grammar through a series of treatises, written by a minister who had extensively studied the Sanskrit models; the analysis of the actual texts starts at 5:45. As I mention in the video, Tony Duff’s Standard Tibetan Grammar volumes I and II talk about Thonmi’s treatises in depth and feature many commentaries on them, but also about things like their historical context and foreign influence. Outside of these, I made use of John Powers’ Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (part 2, about Tibetan history) for some historical information, as well as some other various articles with some minor contributions The article which initially inspired me to research this topic was an article by Roberta Raine titled, “Translating the Tibetan Buddhist canon: Past strategies, future prospects”; one can find it on academic sites. It covers many important later events that affected the Tibetan language and translation, so it is worth a read for those interested in the history of translation from Sanskrit to Tibetan.