The 'Indian Books' in ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabban al-Ṭabarī's Paradise of Wisdom.A new Arabic edition, first-time English translation, lore-historical introduction and multilingual glossaries

该项目围绕着一篇独特的阿拉伯论文展开，该论文由波斯学者ʿAlīibn Sahl Rabban al-ṬAbarī附加到他于公元850年完成的医学哲学厨师-d‘œuvre之后。正文以《智慧的天堂》为题，附录以《印第安人的书籍摘录》为标题。在这篇附加的论文中，作者向以穆斯林为主的听众解释了阿育吠陀医学的基本原理，并概要地和系统地介绍了它的显著特征。他的论述是基于一些相关的梵文著作，这些著作大约在两代人之前被翻译成阿拉伯语。Ṭabarī并不提倡印第安人的教义，而是将自己局限于忠实地表达他们的思想，从而展示了一种中立的距离，我们今天将其称为‘客观’，在中世纪的背景下，这种距离可能被正确地视为例外。ṬAbarī的S论文，构思在阿拉伯-伊斯兰科学史的形成时期，在所有方面都是一个非常重要的文件，而且，没有文学先驱，也确实没有产生类似的研究在它之后。对于我们对阿拉伯科学史的理解，ṬAbarī的S论文代表了一个名副其实的宝库，其中包含着原本无法获得的信息，一个中心和被忽视的来源。对于Indology领域，我们也可以期待获得新的和重要的见解：ṬAbarī在撰写他的论文时使用的阿拉伯语翻译部分来自梵文版本，比目前所有可用的阿育吠陀手稿早了近一千年。ṬAbarī的所谓“印度书”--著名的，但在阿拉伯学家中几乎没有研究，在印度学家中几乎一无所知--与大部分工作一起在1928年编辑，并在20世纪50年代部分翻译成德语。然而，阿拉伯文本的版本在语言学上是不可用的，完全基于这个有缺陷的版本的部分德文翻译也同样不可靠。因此，我们提议编写一个新的、关键的阿拉伯文本版本，利用目前已知的所有手稿证人；在新确定的文本的基础上，我们将提供带注释的英文翻译；将在介绍性研究中对所获得的材料进行评价和解释，首先重点是与错综复杂的文本传递有关的问题；最后，我们设想汇编多语种词汇(阿拉伯语-梵语-英语)，从而使人们能够查阅所有在语言学上相关的术语。这一研究项目的成果将以专著形式出版。

This project centres around a unique Arabic treatise that was appended by the Persian scholar ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabban al-Ṭabarī to his medico-philosophical chef-d'œuvre, completed in the year 850 AD. The main work bears the title Paradise of Wisdom, the appendix is headed by "Extracts from the Books of the Indians". In this appended treatise, the author explains to a largely Muslim audience the basic tenets of Ayurvedic medicine, and presents its salient features summarily and systematically. His expositions are based on a number of relevant Sanskrit writings that had been translated into Arabic about two generations earlier. Ṭabarī does not advocate the teachings of the Indians, but rather confines himself to a faithful rendition of their ideas, thereby displaying a kind of neutral distance which we today would call 'objective' and which in a medieval context might rightly be regarded as exceptional. Ṭabarī's treatise, conceived during a formative period in Arabo-Islamic scientific history, is in all respects a highly important document which, moreover, had no literary precursors nor indeed did it engender similar investigations in its wake. For our understanding of Arabic scientific history, Ṭabarī's treatise represents a veritable treasure chest of otherwise unattainable information, a source both central and neglected. For the field of Indology, too, we can expect to gain new and significant insights: the Arabic translations used by Ṭabarī when writing his treatise proceeded on their part from Sanskrit versions that predate all currently available Ayurvedic manuscripts by nearly a thousand years. The so-called "Indian Books" of Ṭabarī — famous but hardly studied among Arabists, almost unknown among Indologists — were edited in 1928, together with the bulk of the work, and partially translated into German in the 1950s. The edition of the Arabic text, however, is philologically unusable, and the partial German translation, which is based exclusively on this deficient edition, is equally unreliable. We are therefore proposing to prepare a new, critical edition of the Arabic text, drawing on all manuscript witnesses that are now known; on the basis of a newly established text, we will then provide an annotated English translation; the material suchwise acquired will be evaluated and interpreted in an introductory study, focusing first and foremost on questions related to the intricacies of textual transmission; finally, we envisage to compile multilingual glossaries (Arabic‒Sanskrit‒English), and thereby to give access to all philologically relevant terms. The results of this research project will be published in the form of a monograph.