Aus unseren Neuerwerbungen – Sprachen und Kulturen Asiens, Afrikas und Ozeaniens 2025.8

Handbook on Endangered South Asian and Southeast Asian Languages
The handbook delves into the linguistic features of Southeast Asian and South Asian endangered languages, providing detailed descriptions and analyses. Each chapter covers a range of topics, including linguistic properties, extralinguistic aspects, and issues related to preserving and promoting endangered languages. The book also includes an ethnolinguistic profile for each language, discussing its official status, state of endangerment, demography, and usage. It discusses the methodological issues related to collecting and analyzing linguistic data. Furthermore, the book describes the unique linguistic features of each language, covering phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, and other linguistic aspects. By doing so, the book highlights how new linguistic features and findings can reflect on the community. Given the context of UNESCO’s declaration of the ‚International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2032‘, this book offers valuable insights for students, researchers, policymakers, government agencies, educators, and linguists. It is an informative volume for scholars working on various endangered languages worldwide.
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Peoples of Pingcheng (398–494): Cultural Diversity and Interaction
Compared to the later capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, Luoyang (494–534), Pingcheng on the northern border of the Chinese world has received less scholarly attention despite its far longer capital status (398–494). The main reason is the lack of written sources. In addition, there is the derogatory idea that Pingcheng was a latifundium inhabited by “barbarians,” since the rulers of the Northern Wei were the Tuoba Xianbei from the eastern steppe, who established the first long-term foreign control over northern China. Traditionally, Luoyang is the epitome of the sinicized Tuoba Xianbei, while Pingcheng represents the state of the Tuoba Xianbei who were on the way to “becoming Chinese.” Excavations show that Pingcheng, which was built on the ruins of a garrison from the Han-Dynasty, arose from nothing and the inhabitants came from outside. Burial finds indicate a steadily growing population, which is said to have reached one million in its prime. At first, tombs were erected to indicate their steppe origins. New rites and artifacts emerged in spurts. This corresponds to written records, according to which the city was mainly populated by steppe warriors, followed by forcibly relocated peoples from all conquered northern Chinese regions.
The authors focus on the people(s) in Pingcheng. Zhang’s epigraphic study is devoted to a Xianbei family that arose during the Pingcheng period and remained closely intertwined with the imperial court in the following centuries. Using burial finds, Müller explores the diversity and foreignness of funerary customs and artifacts, the ways in which different ethnic groups communicated and interacted, and the emergence of a new collective identity that was anything but Chinese.
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