Rasmus Christian Rask's
Singalesisk Skriftlære 
(Sinhalese Script)
Download PDF  (13MB)

Bibl. Dan. IV, 83. I 1816 drog Rask ud på en stor rejse, der førte ham helt til Sydøstasien. Han var væk i 6½ år og ruten gik fra Sverige, Finland, Rusland tværs gennem Persien til Indien og Ceylon. Motivationen for rejsen var hans studier af vore forfædres oprindelse og forbindelsen mellem de europæiske og asiatiske sprog.

The famous linguist Rasmus Rask (1787-1832) spent two years (1820-22) of his long travels in India, where he went from Bombay to Calcutta, Madras, Trankebar, and then Ceylon. He returned to Denmark in 1823 with a treasure of manuscripts that he had collected for the University Library and the Royal Library, which, thanks to him, now holds the most important collection of Pali manuscripts in Europe. After his return he taught as Professor of the History of Literature in Copenhagen.

The present book "The Written Language of Singhalese" is very rare and was printed (in Danish) in Ceylon. First and only edition. In this work Rask compares the Singhalese with Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil, Telugi and other Asian languages. He deals with the phonetics, pronunciation, accentuation and numerals.

Text above from http://www.grosell.dk/pg5000.html, an 'antiquarian bookseller' listing the volume as: RASK, RASMUS: Singalesisk Skriftlære. Kolombo 1821. 16 s. Samt. hlvlrd. Contp. half cloth on marbled boards, title label on upper cover, rubbed. #90166. DKK12.500 / EUR1680

File supplied by Everett (Rett) Thiele and uploaded on 2005-01-15.   For more information on Rask, see his entry in Wikipedia.

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