Literary Tibetan
During the 7th Century AD Sron-btsan sgam-po, a king in southern Tibet, sent Thon-mi Sambhota, one of his ministers, to India to gather information on Buddhism. The minister then reputedly devised a script for Tibetan based on the Devanagari model and also wrote a grammar of Tibetan based on Sanskrit grammars. The new Tibetan alphabet was used to write Tibetan translations of Buddhists texts. The first Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary, Mahavyutpatti, appeared in the 9th century. Wood block printing, introduced from China, was used in Tibet from an early date and is still used in a few monasteries.
Tibetan literature is mainly concerned with Buddhist themes and includes works translated from Sanskrit and Chinese and original Tibetan works.
Tibetan is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 6 million people in China (Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan), India, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and Nepal.
Sinoquest is proud to open the only Literary Tibetan course in Hangzhou. Beginning Students will first learn the Tibetan alphabet and its pronunciation, before moving on to tackling simple texts and scriptures in the original language.
