Sims-Williams, Nicholas (Ed.): Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples

Abstract

One of the greatest iranists of the twentieth century, Professor Sir Harold Walter Bailey, who died on 19th January 1996, would have completed the centenary of his birth on 16th December 1999. Nicholas Sims-Williams marked the date with a symposium held in Cambridge, England, at the Ancient India and Iran Trust which Sir Harold had established in 1979 jointly with two academic couples, and where he had lived and worked during the last fifteen years of his life. Sims-Williams brought together a group of leading linguists and archaeologists in the field of Sir Harold’s academic passion: Indo-Iranian languages and peoples. The thirteen articles collected in this volume are based on presentations given at the symposium and not only cover a wide range of Indo-Iranian topics but also pay tribute to Sir Harold’s life and work. The conference was sponsored by the British Academy, of which Bailey was a fellow for over fifty years, and its proceedings appeared in 2002, the year of the Academy’s own centenary. On the day that would have been Sir Harold’s one hundredth birthday, his distinguished pupil, the late Ronald E. Emmerick, delivered the first Sir Harold Bailey Memorial Lecture, which Bailey himself had endowed at the Oriental Faculty in the University of Cambridge. The lecture, entitled “Hunting the hapax: Sir Harold W. Bailey (1899–1996)”, was in memory of the great scholar and constitutes the first contribution (pp.1–17) to this volume. Emmerick, who also published a detailed account of his teacher’s life (p.1), discusses some of Bailey’s findings that have remained unchallenged. They include his connection of Khotanese śśandaāwith Av. sp n. taand of Khot. śśandrāmatāwith Av. sp n. tāārmaiti(pp.6–9). He also considers views held by Bailey that are unlikely to stand the test of time, in particular the