Summer School for Ancient Trans-Himalayan Languages (SSATH)

The Summer School for Ancient Trans-Himalayan Languages (SSATH), hosted by the Centre for Asian Studies at Trinity College Dublin, is a two-week long summer school that features courses in four ancient languages from the Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) family, and weekend workshops on three more languages. The morning courses will serve as introductions to Old Tibetan, Tangut, and Classical Newar. In the afternoon, reading courses with different content geared toward those looking for a more intensive course experience will be available for the three aforementioned languages, with an additional course on Old Chinese excavated documents and historical phonology. These courses will run for ten days over the course of two weeks. On both Saturdays, there will be additional supplementary workshops on Classical Yi, Old Meitei, and Old Burmese. As a general rule, courses will be open to everyone of all education levels, though, for some of the intensive reading courses, some background in Sanskrit or another ancient Asian language would be beneficial.

This summer school will be of interest to those in the fields of Historical Linguistics, Descriptive Linguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, Palaeography, Religious Studies, Buddhist Studies, (Asian) History, and Ancient Literature. The instructors will include scholars both from Trinity College Dublin and from other institutions around the world. As such, the school will serve as a great opportunity to meet and connect with specialists in the fields mentioned above.