This Fourth Sunday of Advent we present Grammatik der Tibetischen Sprache from 1839. It was written by Isaac Jacob Schmidt (1779-1847), a Moravian missionary to the Kalmyks (Хальмгуд in their own language), born in Amsterdam but for many years working in St. Petersburg. Schmidt published what was possibly the first grammar of Mongolian in 1831 and then this grammar of Tibetan in 1839. He also published Mongolian and Tibetan dictionaries, and a number of Bible parts in Kalmyk and other languages. As we can see from the title page Schmidt was a member of the Imperial Academy of Science, by which is meant the Russian Academy of Science, but also of the Royal Asiatic Society in London and Société Asiatique in Paris. The book is dedicated to Count Sergey Semionovich Uvarov (Сергeй Семёнович Увaров, 1786-1855), minister of national education and president of the Academy of Science 1818-1855.
The book explains Tibetan grammar, and also has reading exercises with German translation. You can read the whole book online. As much as the content is interesting in itself, the previous owner of our copy is also of interest. Hermann Dawson-Gröne (from 1923 Dawson-Grove, 1878-?) was a British colonial customs officer, trained in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and Sanskrit at Trinity College in Dublin. He was sent to work in China in 1902, and stayed on the rest of his career, working in Shanghai, Shantou (Guangdong), Harbin (Heilongjiang), Shashi (Hubei) and many other places. Dawson-Gröne retired in 1935, but did not go back to Europe and stayed on in Hong Kong. During World War II he and his wife were attacked by Japanese troops during the occupation, and survived over three years of internment. How this book came to our collection in Gothenburg? I have no idea, but most likely it was bought by Tor Ulving (1916-2014), Karlgren student and one of my predecessors, who had a special interest in Tibetan language. Ulving even compiled his own ”Lhasa-Swedish dictionary”, never published but still kept at the department in its manuscript form.