This paper addresses the near impossibility of writing the social history of knowledge production in India. It also considers the question of the historicity of Sanskrit traditions. It concludes with pointing at a major lacuna in the SKS project, namely the examination or ritual and religious knowledge.

The distinct function of ātmanepada in Sanskrit language remains a sort of linguist mystery in Sanskrit studies. In this article, I analyze the larger implications and subliminal meaning of ātmanepada by moving beyond the realm of linguistics, which has been the dominant approach, and entering the territory of philosophy and, more specifically, the purportful approach of traditional Indian philosophy of language represented by Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya. Bhartṛhari’s analytical procedure seeks to unveil the ontological interdependence that binds together the constituent elements of (...) linguistic sentences, understood as modal appearances of the ever present foundational ground of the world/word—Brahman as Vāc. This is our referential guide to the semantic reconstruction of ātmanepada’s teleology. (shrink)