Via Christopher Culver I learned that

the Indo-European team at the University of Texas at Austin has added a Tocharian course to their Early Indo-European Online series of language lessons.

The Ancient (not "Vedic"!) Sanskrit course also looks interesting, insofar as its stated aim is to overcome millennia of misinterpretation. For example:

In listing the nouns in -van I have included the word grā́van, as it is used by Arthur Macdonell in his Vedic Grammar for Students to illustrate the declension. But I do not believe, as Vedic scholars do, that it means 'ritual stone for pressing out the Soma juice', but that it describes a man who sings (see section 22 in Lesson 5).

(Insert cruel joke about singers who can in fact be profitably described as ritual stones for pressing out the Soma juice.)

I wrote an obit for Yanase "Anpanman" Takashi over at Néojaponisme.

What is left of Anpanman, then, when the historical accretions are stripped away? Or, rather, what has been at the core of Anpanman through all his adventures and transmigrations? Well... anko.

Come to think of it, Daniel Morales's review of Murakami Haruki's new book also went up there recently. Don't miss the exclusive blog-only follow-up, either.

Yo, check this out:

汝なんじ向むかい了りょう [upside-down 了りょう] 樹き枝えだ頭あたま坐禪ざぜん去さ時とき得え不ふ

This is from the Léngjiā shīzījì 楞伽師資しし記き, "Record of the Laṅkā[vatāra-sūtra] Masters and Disciples," a sort of proto-koan collection from 8th-Century China. The speaker is Yùquán Shénxiù 玉たま泉いずみ神かみ秀しげる who is, regrettably, nowadays most famous for losing a poetry contest with Dàjiàn "What is it that's dusty again? Gotcha!" Huìnéng 大だい鑒惠能のう. The meaning of the sentence, according to Yanagida Seizan 柳田やなぎだ聖きよし山さん, editor of the edition I'm reading, is:

Can you sit zazen at the end of a drooping tree branch, or not?

Since I can't, obviously what caught my interest was the word written with 了りょう followed by an upside-down 了りょう. In Japanese this is pronounced ryōchō and means "droop." Yanagida says that it's in the 五ご王おう経けい, "Five Kings Sutra," but both CBETA and the University of Tokyo's database only seem to have the word with both kanji right-side-up:

T0523_.14.0796b07: ... 腹中ふくちゅう了りょう了りょう。亦また
T0523_.14.0796b08: 如倒懸かか。受苦じゅく無量むりょう。

... The inside of their guts was 了りょう了りょう, and it was as if they were hung upside down, enduring limitless pain.

(Admittedly, that doesn't make any sense if 了りょう了りょう is supposed to have its usual meaning of "lucid" or "perceptive", so I can totally believe that the second 了りょう was supposed to be upside down, and was turned the right way up by some stonehearted copyist at a later date.)

Yanagida offers some other places it can be found, including premodern authors noting its oddness, so it certainly seems to exist, but I can't dig up any evidence of it online -- not even of 了りょう鳥とり, a phonetic substitution that was apparently used by scribes who just could not handle an upside-down character in their books. I suspect that this is one of those quirks of the Chinese writing system that did not make the cut during the Grand Digitization. O tempora! o moji!