Description
Book SynopsisPhilology was everywhere and nowhere in classical South Asia. While its civilizations possessed remarkably sophisticated tools and methods of textual analysis, interpretation, and transmission, they lacked any sense of a common disciplinary or intellectual project uniting these; indeed they lacked a word for ‘philology’ altogether. Arguing that such pseudepigraphical genres as the Sanskrit purāṇas and tantras incorporated modes of philological reading and writing, Cox demonstrates the ways in which the production of these works in turn motivated the invention of new kinds of śāstric scholarship. Combining close textual analysis with wider theoretical concerns, Cox traces this philological transformation in the works of the dramaturgist Śāradātanaya, the celebrated Vaiṣṇava poet-theologian Veṅkaṭanātha, and the maverick Śaiva mystic Maheśvarānanda.
Table of ContentsTable of Contents Acknowledgments A note on the transliteration, presentation, and citation of primary texts I. Introduction: towards a history of Indic philology Philology? Indian philology? Existing studies Parameters II. Textual Pasts and Futures The southern pseudepigrapha: an overview A case study: the Sūtasaṃhitā Methods of the anonymous philology: the ‘toolkit’ Appropriation and adaptation: Cekkiḻār’s Pĕriyapurāṇam Conclusions: looking ahead III. Bearing the Nāṭyaveda: Śāradātanaya’s Bhāvaprakāśana Introduction: nāṭya as a form of knowledge At Śāradā’s side: the author and his work Bharatavṛddha, Śiva, Padmabhū, Vāsuki ‘Following the Kalpavallī’ “Lost or as good as lost” IV. Veṅkaṭanātha and the limits of philological argument Snakes versus Eagles Rite and Contamination Earlier canons of Vaiṣṇava textual criticism On the shores of the milk ocean: Veṅkaṭanātha’s poetry as philology V. Flowers of language: Maheśvarānanda’s Mahārthamañjarī The dream The pleasures of the text Ambiguity and auto-philology Writing, reading, and the hermeneutical yogin Maheśvarānanda’s Gītā VI. Conclusions: philology as politics, philology as science Context one: philology in and as temple-state politics Context two: Indic philology and the history of science 1. Non-reductive historicism 2. The refusal of teleology 3. The agency of the non-human Problems and prospects Bibliography
