Turrell Verl "Terry" Wylie (August 20, 1927 – August 25, 1984) was an American scholar, Tibetologist, sinologist and professor known as one of the 20th century's leading scholars of

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

. He taught as a professor of Tibetan Studies at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

and served as the first chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. Wylie founded the Tibetan Studies program at the University of Washington, the first of its kind in the United States, setting a major precedent for future programs and research in the field. His system for rendering the

Tibetan language Tibetan language may refer to: * Lhasa Tibetan or Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dialect * Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard * Any of the other Tibetic languages See also * Ol ...

in Latin script, known as

Wylie transliteration Wylie transliteration is a method for Transliteration, transliterating Tibetan script using only the letters available on a typical English-language typewriter. The system is named for the American scholar Turrell V. Wylie, who created the system ...

, is the primary system used for transcribing Tibetan in academic and historical contexts.

Life and career

Turrell V. "Terry" Wylie was born in Durango, Colorado on August 20, 1927. He attended the

as an undergraduate student, where he graduated with a B.A. degree. Wylie continued on at Washington as a graduate student, receiving a Ph.D. in Chinese in 1958 with a dissertation entitled "The Geography of Tibet According to the ''Dzam-gling-rgyas-bshad''". Wylie also studied under Giuseppe Tucci, an early pioneer of Buddhist studies in the West, and he was one of very few American scholars in the field whose education "combined solid linguistic preparation with a rigorous command of text-oriented philological discipline." Wylie is best known for the system of Tibetan

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...

described in his groundbreaking article "A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription", which was published in 1959 in the '' Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies''. Today, it is an almost universally adopted scheme for accurately representing the

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

of Tibetan in the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

, and is commonly referred to as the ''

''. Following the

People's Liberation Army The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). It consists of four Military branch, services—People's Liberation Army Ground Force, Ground Force, People's ...

's takeover of

, Wylie invited the first group of Tibetan refugees to Seattle in 1960, courtesy of the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

. Among them included Geshe Nawang L. Nornang, a renowned lecturer of Tibetan language at the University of Washington who subsequently worked with Wylie to establish the first Tibetan Studies program in America under the National Defense Education Act, and Lhadon Karsip, co-contributor with Geshe Nornang to ''A Manual of Spoken Tibetan'' (1964). Also in the group were Sakya Dagchen Rinpoche, a hierarch of the Sakya school of

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, D ...

, and Dezhung Rinpoche, co-founder of the Sakya Dharma Center in Seattle. Wylie died on August 25, 1984. Upon his death, the

14th Dalai Lama The 14th Dalai Lama (born 6 July 1935; full spiritual name: Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, shortened as Tenzin Gyatso; ) is the incumbent Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism. He served a ...

remarked: "Dr. Wylie's strong and genuine feelings for the Tibetan people and their just cause will long remain deeply appreciated. In the death of Dr. Wylie we have lost a true friend and a distinguished scholar of Tibetan studies." At the memorial service on 9 October 1984, Jigmie Yuthok speaking on behalf of the Seattle Tibetan Community said, "As a scholar in the truest sense of the word, whose life-long research in the histories of Tibet and China led him to discern fact from fiction, he stood up for the truth of Tibet's independent status and spoke out at every opportunity even in the face of overwhelming opposition from numerous vested interest groups. He was not the one to compromise anything for the Truth. To the Tibetans here in particular, he was a great teacher, a mentor, a patron, and an affectionate brother whose kindness and generosity had nurtured the first batch of Tibetans that he brought to Seattle in 1960 to grow into a thriving little community it is today."

Publications (selection)

Books

* (1950) ''A Tibetan religious geography of Nepal'' (Serie Orientale Roma XLII), Rome, Istituto per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente * (1957) ''A Place Name Index to George N. Roerich's translation of the Blue Annals'' (Serie Orientale Roma XV), Rome, Istituto per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente * (1975) ''Tibet’s role in Inner Asia''. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University, Asian Studies Research Institute

Articles

* (1959) A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription. ''Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies'' (Vol. 22) p. 261-267 * (1959) Dating the Tibetan Geography 'Dzam-gling-rgyas-bshad through its description of the western hemisphere. Central Asiatic Journal (vol. IV-4), p. 300-311 * (1964
Ro-Langs: The Tibetan Zombie
''History of Religions'', Vol. 4, No. 1 (Summer, 1964), pp. 69–80 * (1965) The Tibetan Tradition of Geography. ''Bulletin of Tibetology'', Summer, 1964 p. 69-80 * (1982) Dating the Death of Naropa. ''Indological and Buddhist Studies'' (Editor L. Hercus, Canberra), pp. 687–91

References

;Footnotes ;Works cited *

External links

A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wylie, Turrell V. Tibetologists 1927 births 1984 deaths University of Washington faculty 20th-century American historians University of Washington alumni Tibet–United States relations