Thirteen lessons introducing novice language-learners to major grammatical concepts in classical Sanskrit, using example texts from actual philosophical, poetic, and epic texts. Includes lessons on reading commentaries, working with Sanskrit in translation, and poetic meter and figures of speech. -/- Under contract with Hackett Publishing. Estimated publication year: 2023.

It is true for many disciplines within the humanities that there are numerous excellent works that introduce the beginner to the basic building blocks of the discipline, and also many advanced studies for the accomplished scholar, but few works that help the student get from the beginning stage to the advanced level. That has certainly been true of the discipline of Sanskrit. Once a student has devoted a couple of years to working through one of the excellent introductions to (...) the language by Ashok Aklujkar, Michael Coulson, Madhav Deshpande, Robert Goldman, or Walter Maurer, there have been hardly any intermediate texts to help the student systematically progress to more advanced levels. Now, however, with the publication of Scholastic Sanskrit, an important step has been taken toward filling that lacuna. This book assumes that the student has learned enough about Sanskrit grammar and syntax to be ready to begin plunging into the vast corpus comprising the many genres of Sanskrit literature. It is built on the conviction that even a student at the early stages of exploring Sanskrit literature can benefit from the work of traditional commentators; it is also built on the observation that until now there have not been reliable guides to help the student make intelligent use of Sanskrit commentaries. (shrink)

Buddhist Manuscripts from Central Asia: The British Library Sanskrit Fragments, vol. II. Edited by Seishi Karashima and Klaus Wille. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, 2009. Vol. II.1: pp. 668. Vol. II.2: 382 plates.

This is a brief review of the Rasa theory of Indian aesthetics and the works I have done on the same. A major source of the Indian system of classification of emotional states comes from the ‘Natyasastra’, the ancient Indian treatise on the performing arts, which dates back to the 2nd Century AD (or much earlier, pg. LXXXVI: Natyasastra, Ghosh, 1951). The ‘Natyasastra’ speaks about ‘sentiments’ or ‘Rasas’ (pg.102: Natyasastra, Ghosh, 1951) which are produced when certain ‘dominant states’ (sthayi Bhava), (...) ‘transitory states’ (vyabhicari Bhava) and ‘temperamental states’ (sattvika Bhava) of emotions come together (pgs.102, 105: Natyasastra, Ghosh, 1951). This Rasa theory, which is still widely followed in classical Indian performing arts, classifies eight Rasas or sentiments which are: Sringara (erotic), Hasya (comic), Karuna (pathetic), Raudra (furious), Vira (heroic), Bhayanaka (terrible), Bibhatsa (odious) and Adbhuta (marvellous). There was a later addition of the ninth sentiment or Rasa called Santa (peace) in later Sanskrit poetics (pg.102: Natyasastra, Ghosh, 1951). According to ancient Indian aesthetics (especially in the context of Bharatas’ ‘Natyasastra’, Anandavardhana’s ‘Dhvanyaloka’ and Abhinavagupta’s ‘Abhinavabharati’), ‘Rasa’ is the relishable state of elemental human emotions called ‘Bhavas’. Bharata’s ‘Natyasastra’ originally spoke of eight Rasas. The concept of the 9th Rasa was a later interpolation by the Kashmiri Shaivist Abhinavagupta (10th Century AD) and also his predecessor Anandavardhana (9th Century AD). Abhinavagupta extends the eight Rasas by adding the concept of the Santa Rasa which he regards as the essence of all Rasas. It is this 9th Rasa which according to Abhinavagupta lets the Rasika attain the aesthetic detachment and savour the essences of all other Rasas and therefore the true aesthetic delight. The introduction of 9th Rasa integrates the concepts of Bharata’s Rasasutra and Patanjali’s Yoga theory – the detachment necessary to introspect inwards into the inherent state of freedom and bliss (aesthetic consciousness). (shrink)

To talk about ethics and the moral life in India, and whether and when Indians misunderstood each other’s views, we must know something about what Indians thought about ethical and moral issues. However, there is a commonly held view among scholars of Indian thought that Indians, and especially their intellectuals, were not really interested in ethical matters (Matilal 1989, 5; Raju 1967, 27; Devaraja 1962, v-vi; Deutsch 1969, 99). This view is false and strange. Understanding how it is that posterity (...) has managed to misunderstand ethics and the moral life in India so profoundly is not something that we can address without thinking about issues pertaining to scholarship, interpretation and translation. Most importantly, studying a culture demands a philosophical engagement with the categories against which one attempts to understand it. If one believes, as many scholars do, that it is a rigorous study of Sanskrit and other classical Indian languages alone that holds the key to understanding classical India, then there is apparently neither need nor room for such reflection. It is this very same failure to engage philosophically with the category of the ethical and its place in translation that has allowed many modern Indians to misunderstand Indians of yore. (This is a paper I wrote in 2008 for an edited volume by Jyotirmaya Sharma for Penguin India, which unfortunately did not come to fruition. Since then, a lot has changed with respect to Sharma’s relationship to Penguin India, so perhaps this was all just prescient karma. I have circulated it with friends, who want to refer to it, so I thought I would upload it. Please refer to it as an online source: PhilPapers being the placed published. SR). (shrink)

English summary: The Spitzer Manuscript is one of the oldest Sanskrit manuscripts found on the Silk Road. The work preserved in it is unique; no further manuscripts of it have been discovered so far, nor is it transmitted in Tibetan or Chinese translations. The present volume contains an introduction which summarizes previous research and discusses grammatical, lexical and palaeographical aspects of the work, together with an outline of its content. It is followed by a complete facsimile edition of the (...) fragments accompanied by transliterations. These are supplemented by transcriptions of some fragments which are no longer available, recovered from the estate of the Indologist Dr. Moritz Spitzer. A concordance juxtaposes the earlier and present-day arrangements of the fragments, and an extensive character table documents the peculiarities of the Ku'a'a-Brahma script used in the manuscript. A complete word index and a study which aims at reconstructing the last part of the manuscript conclude the volume. As well as Buddhist scholastics the work also deals with a number of non-Buddhist topics, such as a theory of Vaise'ika qualities completely unknown from other sources it contains, inter alia, the oldest list of books of the Mahabharata and an enumeration of the sixty-four arts and sciences. The last part of the work is devoted to dialectics. German description: Das Spitzer-Manuskript ist eine der altesten Sanskrithandschriften, die an der Seidenstrasse gefunden wurde. Das in ihm erhaltene Werk ist ein Unikum; bis jetzt wurden keine weiteren Manuskripte dieses Werkes entdeckt und es ist auch nicht in tibetischer oder chinesischer Ubersetzung uberliefert. Der vorliegende Band enthalt eine Einleitung, die den Forschungsstand zusammenfasst, grammatische, lexikalische und palaographische Aspekte des Werks diskutiert und eine Inhaltsubersicht bietet. \nHierauf folgt eine vollstandige Faksimileausgabe der Fragmente zusammen mit ihren Transliterationen. Diese werden erganzt durch Transkriptionen einiger verloren gegangener Fragmente, die dem Nachlass des Indologen Dr. Moritz Spitzer entnommen wurden. Eine Konkordanz stellt die heutige und fruhere Anordnung der Fragmente gegenuber; eine ausfuhrliche Zeichentabelle dokumentiert die Besonderheiten der Ku'a'a-Brahma -Schrift des Manuskripts. Ein vollstandiger Wortindex und eine Studie, die die Rekonstruktion des letzten Teils des Manuskripts zum Ziel hat, beschliessen den Band. Neben Themen der buddhistischen Scholastik behandelt das Werk auch eine Zahl nicht-buddhistischer Themen, wie eine Vaise'ika-Theorie der Eigenschaften, die aus anderen Quellen nicht bekannt ist; ferner enthalt es u. a. die alteste Liste der Bucher des Mahabharata und eine Aufzahlung der vierundsechzig Kunste und Wissenschaften. Der letzte Teil des Werkes ist der Dialektik gewidmet. (shrink)

In English, [1e] occurs only in have got, but it is included here because of its importance in other languages. In Vedic Sanskrit and ancient Greek, for example, the perfect of many achievement predicates can be used to denote the result state. A good semantics of the perfect should therefore have something to say about it.

Sabdabrahma Siddhanta, popularized by Patanjali and Bhartruhari will be scientifically analyzed. Sphota Vada, proposed and nurtured by the Sanskrit grammarians will be interpreted from modern physics and communication engineering points of view. Insight about the theory of language and modes of language acquisition and communication available in the Brahma Kanda of Vakyapadeeyam will be translated into modern computational terms. A flowchart of language processing in humans will be given. A gross model of human language acquisition, comprehension and communication process (...) forming the basis to develop software for relevant mind-machine modeling will be presented. The implications of such a model to artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences will be discussed. The essentiality and necessity of a physics, communication engineering , biophysical and biochemical insight as both complementary and supplementary to using mathematical and computational methods in delineating the theory of Sanskrit language is put forward. Natural language comprehension as distinct and different from natural language processing is pointed out. (shrink)

Sanskrit nominal compounds, highly productive at all stages of the language, are normally formed by combining bare nominal stems (sometimes with special stem-forming endings) into a compound stem, which bears exactly one lexical accent. A class of Vedic dvandva compounds (also known as copulative compounds, co-ordinating compounds, or co-compounds) diverge from this pattern in that each of their constituents has a separate word accent and what looks like a dual case ending.1 They are invariably definite, and refer to conventionally (...) associated pairs of divine or human beings, or personified natural and ritual objects. (shrink)

ignate remote or historical past, the perfect being furthermore restricted to events not witnessed by the speaker.3 In the intervening stage of Vedic Sanskrit, the past tenses show a complex mix of temporal, aspectual, and discourse functions. On top of that, Rigvedic retains the injunctive, a chameleon-like category of underspecified finite verbs whose many uses partly overlap with those of the past tenses. The present study of the Rigvedic system is offered as a preliminary step towards the reconstruction and (...) theoretical interpretation of this aspect-to-tense trajectory. (shrink)

persusasions are in addition impressed by its remarkable conciseness, and by the rigorous consistency with which it deploys its semi-formalized metalanguage, a grammatically and lexically regimented form of Sanskrit. Empiricists like Bloomfield also admired it for another, more specific reason, namely that it is based on nothing but very general principles such as simplicity, without prior commitments to any scheme of “universal grammar”, or so it seems, and proceeds from a strictly synchronic perspective. Generative linguists for their part have (...) marveled especially at its ingenious technical devices, and at intricate system of conventions governing rule application and rule interaction that it presupposes, which seem to uncannily anticipate ideas of modern linguistic theory (if only because many of them were originally borrowed from P¯. (shrink)

The arrival in 1909 of the library of manuscripts now known as the Chandra Shum Shere collection increased by well over six thousand the already substantial holdings of the Bodleian and Indian Institute libraries, and made Oxford the repository of the largest known collection of Sanskrit manuscripts outside the Indian subcontinent. It is a huge and uniquely valuable collection of paper and palm leaf manuscripts, purchased for Oxford University by Sir Chandra Shum Shere, the then Prime Minister of Nepal. (...) The General Editor of the catalogue of the collection is Dr Jonathan Katz, Consultant to the Oriental Department of the Bodleian Library, formerly Librarian of the Indian Institute, and present Master of the Queen's Scholars at Westminster School. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the history of the book in pre-modern South Asia looking at the production, circulation, fruition and preservation of manuscripts in different areas and across time. Edited by the team of the Cambridge-based Sanskrit Manuscripts Project and including contributions of the researchers who collaborated with it, it covers a wide range of topics related to South Asian manuscript culture: from the material dimension and the complicated interactions of manuscripts with printing in late medieval Tibet and (...) in modern Tamil Nadu, to reading, writing, editing and educational practices, from manuscripts as sources for the study of religious, literary and intellectual traditions, to the creation of collections in medieval India and Cambodia, and the formation of the Cambridge collections in the colonial period. The contributions reflect the variety of idioms, literary genres, religious movements, and social actors of ancient South Asia, as well as the variety of approaches, interests and specialisms of the authors, and their impassionate engagement with manuscripts. (shrink)

Classical Sanskrit poem on Krishna, Hindu deity, also, illustrating the rules of Sanskrit grammar as in Aṣṭādhyāyi of Pāṇini; based on rare manuscripts.

The Amaraughaprabodha is a Sanskrit Śaiva yoga text attributed by its colophons to Gorakṣanātha. It was first published by Kalyani Devi Mallik in 1954 and has been discussed in various secondary sources. Most notably, Christian Bouy identified this work as a source text for the Haṭhapradīpikā of Svātmārāma. This article presents new manuscript evidence for a shorter recension of the Amaraughaprabodha than the one published by Mallik. Comparing the differences between the short and long recensions reveals that the structure (...) of the shorter one is more cohesive and closer to the original design of the work. The close relationship of the Amaraughaprabodha's short recension with an eleventh-century Vajrayāna work on yoga called the Amṛtasiddhi provides unique insights into how early teachings on Haṭhayoga were formulated. Although the practice of the physical techniques is largely the same in both texts, the author of the Amaraughaprabodha removed or obscured Vajrayāna terminology, added Śaiva metaphysics and framed Haṭhayoga as subordinate to a Śaiva yoga known as Rājayoga. This article proposes that the Amaraughaprabodha's short recension is probably the earliest known work to combine Haṭha- with Rājayoga, on the basis of this recension’s close relationship with the Amṛtasiddhi, its rudimentary nature and the likelihood that Svātmārāma used it, and not the long recension, for composing the Haṭhapradīpikā. (shrink)

1891. The recovered manuscript of Aristotle's Constitutional History of Athens, now for the first time given to the world from the unique text in the British...

This issue presents the research on early Chinese texts by Cao Feng, a philosophy professor at Tsinghua University. He is an expert in early Chinese political philosophy and philosophy of language found in transmitted and excavated texts. His extensive education in Japan has left him well versed in Japanese sinology. Although a critical researcher in the field of early Chinese thought and a very prolific writer in both Chinese and Japanese, Cao Feng is little known in the West. This issue (...) introduces three papers selected in consultation with the author: a reflection on the study of excavated texts, the "Huang" component of so-called Huang-Lao thought, and views on language in the Laozi. (shrink)

Prof Dr. Vaman Mahadev Kulkarni is a well-known Scholar, Teacher and Researcher in the field of Sanskrit and Prakrit Studies, especially, Poetics, Jainism and Manuscript-studies. This publicity-shy gentleman-scholar contributed his mite to the research fields from various angles. A Felicitation Volume in his honours was a long felt desideratum, in view of his solid and outstanding contributions, distinguishing him from other scholars in ways more than one.