Ricerc@Sapienza

The aim of the project is to investigate the formation, transmission and adaptation of medical knowledge and related technical vocabulary through contact linguistic analysis in multilingual and multicultural environments of ancient Eastern societies. The main topics of investigation are the following: 1. The transmission of Indian medicine in Central Asia; 2. The formation of medical knowledge in the Hittite kingdom; 3. Medicine and botany in the Zoroastrian world. These topics give rise to several sub-issues that will be explored through specific sub-projects. Although the main focus will be on Indo-European languages, other language families will also be analysed. The languages that this project aims to cover are: Indo-Aryan varieties (Sanskrit [Skt.] and Prakrits), Tocharian languages, Khotanese [Khot.], Tibetan [Tib.], Hittite [Hitt,], Luwian, Akkadian [Akk.], Avestan, Middle Persian (Pahlavi), Parthian, Greek [Gk.], and Aramaic. The project will employ a multidisciplinary approach, aiming to transcend the boundaries of disciplines that have been cultivated separately, including historical sociolinguistics, language contact, philology, the history of medicine and medical literature, ethnobotany and palaeobotany, Digital Humanities, codicology, and epigraphy. The project is expected to yield the following innovative results: 1. A digital lexicon of medical terms in Tocharian B; 2. Edition, translation, and linguistic analysis of the Khotanese Jivakapustaka; 3. Translation techniques in the medical lexicon of the Siddhasara; 4. Investigations into Anatolian medical vocabulary; 5. Onomasiological and semasiological indexes of Hittite medical terms; 6. Origin and development of plant names in Avestan and Pahlavi. The ultimate goal is to unveil texts, languages, and cultures within the framework of linguistic and cultural contacts spanning from the ancient Near East to India and Central Asia.