As has been obvious to anyone who has looked at them, there is a special relationship between the two earliest extant works on Sanskrit poetics: Bhāmaha’s Kāvyālaṃkāra (Ornamenting Poetry) and Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa (The Mirror of Poetry). The two not only share an analytical framework and many aspects of their organization but also often employ the selfsame language and imagery when they are defining and exemplifying what is by and large a shared repertoire of literary devices. In addition, they also betray (...) highly specific disagreements regarding the nature and aesthetic value of a set of literary phenomena. It has thus long been clear to Indologists that the two are in conversation with one another, but the nature of the conversation and its directionality have never been determined: Was Bhāmaha responding to Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa ? Was Daṇḍin making a rejoinder to Bhāmaha’s Kāvyālaṃkāra ? Were the two authors contemporaries who directly interacted with one another? Or was their interaction indirect and mediated through other texts that are no longer extant? Determining the nature of the interrelations between the two authors and their texts may teach us a great deal about the origins of Sanskrit poetics, the direction in which it developed during its formative period, and the way in which some of the disagreements between Daṇḍin and Bhāmaha metamorphosed in later time. By reviewing existing scholarship, considering new evidence, and taking a fresh look at some of the passages that have long stood at the center of this debate, this article sets out to answer the question of the texts’ relationship and relative chronology. (shrink)

Recorded in Nirukta 1.15–16, the controversy between Kautsa and Yāska on whether the Vedic mantras are meaningful or not represents a turning point in the traditional interpretation of the Veda. While references to this controversy are often found in literature, a systematic discussion of the whole episode has not to our knowledge been undertaken. This paper offers a detailed analysis of this controversy. We first review previous scholarship and elucidate the structure and rationale of the controversy. Then, we provide an (...) annotated translation in which we propose new solutions to several philological and interpretive issues. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the scholastic technique of the Theravāda scholar-monk Chapaṭa Saddhammajotipāla. Chapaṭa is the author of several scholastic treatises in Pāli, the most voluminous of which is the Suttaniddesa, a commentary on the Pāli grammar of Kaccāyana. I offer a general introduction to the Pāli grammatical tradition and especially to the Pāli grammatical tradition of Burma, together with an introduction to the life and works of Chapaṭa. I also offer the first annotated translation of a passage from the (...) Suttaniddesa and in this way I show how the scholastic technique of Chapaṭa is based on a precise use of quotations, mainly from other Pāli or Sanskrit grammatical texts, but also from Buddhist literature. I finally give a preliminary assessment of typology and purpose of every different type of quotation. Although this paper consists mainly of preliminary work, it is the first essay entirely devoted to the Suttaniddesa, which is one of the most important grammatical works in the Theravāda tradition. (shrink)

From the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Indian intellectuals produced numerous Sanskrit–Persian bilingual lexicons and Sanskrit grammatical accounts of Persian. However, these language analyses have been largely unexplored in modern scholarship. Select works have occasionally been noticed, but the majority of such texts languish unpublished. Furthermore, these works remain untheorized as a sustained, in-depth response on the part of India’s traditional elite to tremendous political and cultural changes. These bilingual grammars and lexicons are one of the few direct, written ways (...) that Sanskrit intellectuals attempted to make sense of Indo-Persian culture in premodern and early modern India. Here I provide the most comprehensive account to date of the texts that constitute this analytical tradition according to three major categories: general lexicons, full grammars, and specialized glossaries. I further draw out the insights offered by these materials into how early modern thinkers used language analysis to try to understand the growth of Persian on the subcontinent. (shrink)