ORAZIO’S DICTIONARY
Friar Orazio of
Pennabilli is popular with orientalists for his translations of historical
writings in Italian and in Tibetan, but, mostly, because he compiled the
first Tibetan dictionary (Tibetan/Italian and Italian/Tibetan) in a Western
language. He had been working on it since his arrival in Tibet, in 1716,
until 1732.
After many vicissitudes, in the early nineteenth century the manuscript
found its way in Schroeter’s hands, a Protestant missionary in Bengali who,
changing the Italian with the English, published the first Tibetan/English
dictionary in Serampore in 1826.
Afterwards these manuscripts disappeared.
Then, after long, lucky researches, in India I found the two manuscripts. They need to be photographed, restored and
studied. They are about 400 unnumbered sheets with more than 20,000 terms
and idioms from Italian to Tibetan and from Tibetan to Italian. It’s
certainly friar Orazio’s dictionary.
The Italian/Tibetan manuscript is incomplete: it begins with the letter “N”
(the noun of a religious person of Sachiatuba).
But there is another Tibetan/Italian dictionary.
In India I have also discovered another document handwritten by different people on English/Nepalese paper, dating from the nineteenth century; it’s bound, in good condition and its title is “Italian/Tibetan Dictionary”. From my copies and from the comparison with the original manuscripts by friar Orazio, I am sure it’s a copy, written in a good handwriting, of friar Orazio’s dictionary. Surely, it was written before the printing of Schroeter’s dictionary (Tibetan/English dating from 1826).
This manuscript starts with the letter “A” and ends with the “S”.
I analysed this document carefully: from letter “A” to letter “N” it lists 13,350 terms translated in Tibetan.
In conclusion, we have all the elements to piece together friar Orazio’s Italian/Tibetan and Tibetan/Italian dictionary.