Ronald E. Emmerick’s Handbook of Khotanese consists of two parts: his Introduction to Khotanese, tried and tested with students over the years and here made available in print for the first time; and a systematic survey of Khotanese and the closely related Tumshuqese language. The Introduction, completed with additional chapters by the editors, offers a gradual and comprehensive introduction to Old Khotanese, with translation exercises. Late Khotanese is introduced in the final chapter of the course.

Ronald Eric Emmerick (Sydney, 9 March 1937 – Hamburg, 31 August 2001) completed his doctorate at the University of Cambridge (1965) and was professor of Iranian philology at the University of Hamburg (1971–2001). Before 1971 he had worked at the universities of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), Cambridge (Research Fellow of St. John’s College), Chicago (Oriental Institute), and Sydney (Department of Latin). He was elected a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a corresponding member of the former Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (1990), a corresponding member of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1997), and an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1999). In addition to numerous articles in academic journals, he authored the following books: Tibetan texts concerning Khotan (1967); Saka grammatical studies (1968); The Book of Zambasta, a Khotanese poem on Buddhism (1968); The Sutra of Golden Light (1970, 2nd ed. 1990, 3rd ed. 1996); The Khotanese Śūraṅgamasamādhisūtra (1970); Saka documents VI (1971) and VI (1973); A guide to the literature of Khotan (1979, 2nd ed. 1992); The Siddhasāra of Ravigupta, vol. 1 (1980), vol. 2 (1982); The Tumshuqese Karmavācanā Text (1985); Studies in the vocabulary of Khotanese, vol. 1 (1982), vol. 2 (1987), vol. 3 (1997), all with Prods O. Skjærvø; A Chinese text in Central Asian Brahmi script, with Edwin G. Pulleyblank; Saka documents VII: The St. Petersburg collections (1993), and Saka documents text volume III: the St. Petersburg collections (1995), both with Margarita I. Vorob’ëva-Desjatovskaja.