07.5.20.23:59: INTO THE 荒川 WILD RIVER*

Many thanks to a reader for generously sharing copies of four articles on Tangut by 荒川慎太郎 Arakawa Shintarou and a non-Tangut yet relevant article by Roy Andrew Miller. Until now, all my knowledge of Arakawa's work has been secondhand through the website of Tangutologist 小高裕次 Kotaka Yuuji. Unfortunately, I won't be able to blog for at least a week. But while I'm offline, I will be reading the articles so I can post my comments starting at the end of this month. What I've seen so far is very exciting:

- the outlines of Arakawa's phonological reconstruction of Tangut (which I've discussed in parts seven, eight, and nine of the "Riddle of the Rhymes" series)

- the best argument I've seen for treating the 'prefixes' in Tibetan transcriptions of Tangut as tonal indicators (contrary to my decade-old assumption)

- the first analysis of Tangut rhyming poetry that I've ever seen

- Arakawa's review of Gong Hwang-cherng's 西夏語文研究論文集 Collected Papers on Tangut Philology (2002)

However, when I come back, I should also write the rest of "Kiy to the Fortress". I also have more to say about the Yelü clan.

*Jpn 荒 ara means 'wild' and Jpn 川 kawa means 'river'.