Variation and Change in Tocharian B

Book excerpt: Variation and change in Tocharian B is a systematic and extensive treatment of linguistic variants attested in this most archaic of the two Tocharian languages, which are known through manuscripts from the first millennium CE found along the Northern Silk Road in Xīnjiāng, China. The precise nature of the variants in Tocharian B has been the issue of a long debate. A careful survey of all variants from a wealth of published and unpublished texts shows that most of the variation is due to chronological development. Lists of text classification criteria and overviews of text types make this volume an ideal handbook for the study of the Tocharian lexicon, grammar, and manuscripts. It is of interest for scholars and students of Tocharian and Indo-European alike, and it will be both practical and indispensable for checking variants and their relative chronology.