Christopher Beckwith :: Faculty
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Professor, Central Eurasian Studies Education
Ph.D. in Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies, 1977 |
Research Interests
The history of the scholastic-scientific method; history of early Central Asia; ethnolinguistic history of early Central Eurasia and East Asia; historical linguistics (primarily Indo-European, Tibeto-Burman, Chinese, Japanese-Koguryoic, Turkic); theoretical phonology; Mandarin structure; typological linguistics; and computational linguistics.
Courses Recently Taught
- U190 Introduction to Inner Asia
- U582 Old Tibetan
- U595 Introduction to Central Eurasian History
- U673 Central Eurasian Languages
Publication Highlights
Warriors of the Cloisters: The Central Asian Origins of Science in the Medieval World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Revised paperback edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
İpek Yolu İmparatorlukları: Bronz Çağı’ndan Günümüze Orta Asya Tarihi. Turkish translation of the preceding book. Ankara: Odtü Yayıncılık, 2011.
Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages III. Halle: IITBS GmbH, 2008.
Phoronyms: Classifiers, Class Nouns, and the Pseudopartitive Construction. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007.
Koguryo, the Language of Japan’s Continental Relatives: An Introduction to the Historical-Comparative Study of the Japanese-Koguryoic Languages, with a Preliminary Description of Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese. Second Edition. Leiden: Brill, 2007 (first edition, 2004).
Koguryŏ: Ilbon-ŭl taeryuk-kwa yŏngyŏlsik’yŏ junŭn ŏn’ŏ. Korean translation of the preceding book. Seoul: Koguryŏ yŏn’gu jaedan, 2006.
Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages II. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middl
e Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987; paperback edition, with a new afterword, 1993.
Selected Articles
On the Ethnolinguistic Position of Manchu and the Manchus within Central Eurasia and East Asia. Manzokushi kenkyū 10 (2011), pp. 17-30.
On Zhangzhung and Bon. In: Henk Blezer, ed., Emerging Bon. Halle: IITBS GmbH, 2012, pp. 164-184.
Pyrrho’s Logic: A Reexamination of Aristocles’ Record of Timon’s Account. Elenchos 32.2 (2011), pp. 287-327.
A Note on the Heavenly Kings of Ancient Central Eurasia. Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 17 (2010), pp. 7-10.
Old Chinese Loanwords in Korean. In: Sang-Oak Lee, ed., Contemporary Korean Linguistics: International Perspectives. Seoul: Thaehaksa, 2010, pp. 1-22.
The Sarvāstivādin Buddhist Scholastic Method in Medieval Islam and Tibet. In: Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett, and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, eds., Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010, pp. 163-175.
The Dating and Interpretation of the Old Tibetan Inscriptions. Central Asiatic Journal, 54.2 (2010) pp. 290-317 (with Michael L. Walter).
On the Meaning of Old Tibetan rje-blon during the Tibetan Empire Period. Journal Asiatique 298.2 (2010), pp. 535-548 (with Michael L. Walter).
Could There Be a Korean–Japanese Linguistic Relationship Theory? Science, the Data, and the Alternatives. A State-of-the-Field Article. International Journal of Asian Studies 7.2 (2010), pp. 201-219.
The Frankish Name of the King of the Turks. Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 15 (2006/7), pp. 5-11.
A Note on the Name and Identity of the Junghars. Mongolian Studies 29 (2007), pp. 41-46.
On the Proto-Indo-European Obstruent System. Historische Sprachforschung 2007, 120: 1-19.
The Frankish Name of the King of the Turks. Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 2006/7, 15: 5-11.
On the Proto-Indo-European Obstruent System. Historische Sprachforschung 2007, 120: 1-19.
Methodological Observations on Some Recent Studies of the Early Ethnolinguistic History of Korea and Vicinity. Altai Hakpo 2006, 16: 199-234.
Introduction: Toward a Tibeto-Burman Theory. In: C.I. Beckwith, ed., Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages II. Leiden: Brill, 2006, 1-38.
The Sonority Sequencing Principle and Old Tibetan Syllable Margins. In: C.I. Beckwith, ed., Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages II. Leiden: Brill, 2006, 45-55.
Old Tibetan and the Dialects and Periodization of Old Chinese. In: C.I. Beckwith, ed., Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages II. Leiden: Brill, 2006, 179-200.
The Ethnolinguistic History of the Early Korean Peninsula Region: Japanese-Koguryoic and Other Languages in the Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla Kingdoms. Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies, 2005, Vol. 2-2: 34-64.
On the Chinese Names for Tibet, Tabghatch, and the Turks. Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 2005, 14: 5-20.
The Sino-Tibetan Problem. In: C.I. Beckwith, ed. Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages. Leiden: Brill, 2002, 113-157.
The Idea of a Classifier System: Theoretical Problems in the Analysis of Japanese Noun Specification. Web Journal of Formal, Computational and Cognitive Linguistics, 1999. (Valery Solovyev, ed., Web Journal of Formal, Computational and Cognitive Linguistics, 1997-1999, CD edition, Kazan, 2000.)
Noun Specification and Classification in Uzbek. Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 40.1, 1998, 124-140.
The Morphological Argument for the Existence of Sino-Tibetan. Pan-Asiatic Linguistics: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Languages and Linguistics, January 8-10, 1996, Vol. III. Bangkok, 1996, 812-826.
The Impact of the Horse and Silk Trade on the Economies of T’ang China and the Uighur Empire: On the Importance of International Commerce in the Early Middle Ages. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 34, 1991, 183-198.
The Medieval Scholastic Method in Tibet and the West. In: L. Epstein and R. Sherburne, ed., Reflections on Tibetan Culture: Essays in Memory of Turrell V. Wylie. Lewiston, N.Y., 1990, 307-313.
The Location and Population of Tibet According to Early Islamic Sources. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Vol. 43, 1989, 163-170.
The Tibetans in the Ordos and North China: Considerations on the Role of the Tibetan Empire in World History. In: C.I. Beckwith, ed., Silver on Lapis. Bloomington, 1987, 3-11.
Aspects of the Early History of the Central Asian Guard Corps in Islam. Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, Vol. 4, l984, 29-43.
The Plan of the City of Peace: Central Asian Iranian Factors in Early ‘Abbâsid Design. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Vol. 38, l984, 128-147.
Current research projects
- Old Tibetan and early Indic epigraphy
- Central Eurasian and East Asian history and linguistics
- Early Chinese-Central Eurasian onomastics
- Reconstruction of Old Chinese
- Early religious-philosophical interaction between Central Eurasia and the periphery
- Early Buddhism and early Pyrrhonism
Selected Awards and Honors
- 2009 PROSE Award of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for best book in the category ‘World History & Biography/Autobiography’ for Empires of the Silk Road (Princeton University Press).
- Fulbright-University of Vienna Distinguished Chair in Humanities and Cultural Studies, 2009.
- Numata Distinguished Guest Speaker Series Lecturer, Oxford University, 2008.
- Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2004), 2005-2006.
- Japan Foundation Fellowship (2001), 2001-2002.
- MacArthur Fellowship, The MacArthur Foundation (1986), 1986-1991.
