高天恩。Yuri Knorozov

 

高天恩

昨天下午李振清教授賢伉儷來延吉街舍下小敍，我們的交情可以追溯到半個多世紀之前，那時我們分別在師大和台大擔任講師及助教，每年夏天會在大學聯考英文閱卷處碰到面。那時的閱卷教室還沒有冷氣，只是在地板上放一個大塑膠盆，裡面堆滿了氷塊，用電扇吹著。那大約是1970年代初的事吧。

  1973年夏天我們倆搭同一班飛機， 泛美航空（Pan Am)前往檀香山去就讀夏威夷大學的研究所，拿的是美國國務院透過東西文化中心頒發的全額獎學金，包括來回機票及每月的生活補助，免費住在夏威夷大學旁的東西文化中心十二層樓的宿舍：Hale Manoa （彩虹大廈）。 那時正逢美國國力最強的時段，他們從亞洲各國挑選成績優秀的窮學生，把大家送到夏大讀書，同時也挑選美國本土的學生跟我們共同生活。美式的「統戰」策略吧？！ 反正，振清大哥去念博士班，我念碩士班。二十一個月之後我拿到碩士學位回國，他仍在攻讀博士學位。三年後我又第二次拿到東西中心奬學金回到夏大攻讀博士學位，又跟振清大哥短期聚首，直到他拿到博士，回台任教於師大英語系所。

  幾十年來，物換星移，朋友們及同事們來來去去，一些夏威夷大學的老友，包括尹建中與湯聿昂夫婦、余德培、徐木蘭、林茂盛、楊國棟、余玉照、黃光國，一個個的走了。昨天振清大哥在我家客廳跟我細數這些故人，真的是不勝唏噓啊！ 好在我們都有堅定的佛教信仰，唏噓之餘，仍能釋懷，胸中珍存美好的回憶，同時仰首向前，俯仰無愧，一步一腳印，走在菩提大道上。

Yuri Knorozov was a Soviet linguist who deciphered the Mayan script in 1953. He had a habit of listing his Siamese cat Asya as a co-author to many of his works; however, his editors would always remove her. Knorozov would also use this photo with Asya as his official author photo and would get upset whenever his editors would crop her out.

Deciphering the Mayan script was extremely challenging because there was no Rosetta Stone to provide translations into other languages. The only clues that remained were from Mayan stelae (stone monuments) that were scattered throughout several different ruins.

Knorozov worked in isolation in the Soviet Union and was able to make major advancements without ever stepping foot in Central America. His breakthrough was rejecting the notion that the Maya glyphs were based on an alphabet but rather a syllabary (a set of written characters representing syllables).

When Knorozov published his work, he was attacked and dismissed by several prominent academics, most notably, J. Eric S. Thompson, a British scholar who believed that the Mayan script was anti-phonetic and based on ideographic principles. It also did not help that Knorozov published his research during the height of the Cold War when Western scholars were quick to dismiss the works of Soviet scholars as being tainted by Marxist ideology.

It took decades for Knorozov to finally receive the recognition he deserved. One of Knorozov's earliest supporters was an American Anthropology professor at Yale by the name of Michael D. Coe who would later go on to write, "Yuri Knorozov, a man who was far removed from the Western scientific establishment and who, prior to the late 1980s, never saw a Mayan ruin nor touched a real Mayan inscription, had nevertheless, against all odds, made possible the modern decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing."