Pāṇinian accounts of the Vedic subjunctive:

To determine which Vedic texts Pā?ini knew requires a comprehensive approach that establishes a high correlation between the complete set of linguistic traits his treatise describes and the complete set of linguistic traits exhibited in each text in question. The examination of individual linguistic traits is inadequate to determine which texts he knew because neither the Vedic nor the grammatical tradition is uniform and static. Bronkhorst (Pā?inian Studies: Professor S. D. Joshi Felicitation Volume, p. 75, 1991) calls into question the assumption that Vedic texts were known to Pā?ini in the form we have received them, while Cardona (Pā?inian Studies: Professor S. D. Joshi Felicitation Volume, p. 130, 1991) shows that Pā?ini’s silence concerning certain Vedic forms may be due to deference to certain received exegetical traditions. The current paper considers a case where the Pā?inian grammatical tradition entertains disagreement over the derivation of obscure forms. Doubt concerning the recurrence of the term pit (3.4.92) into 3.4.94 brings into question whether Pā?ini systematically accounts for stem strengthening in the present subjunctive. Kātyāyana, Patañjali, Jayāditya, and Jinendrabuddhi remain silent on the point. Rāmacandra, ?rīkri??a, and Bha??ojidīk?ita assert that pit recurs, thereby allowing stem strengthening. Haradatta, on the other hand, maintains that a rule of indeterminate variation, 3.4.117 chandasy ubhayathā, accounts for it. Nāge?a points out that the latter procedure is more comprehensive in that it accounts for the lack of stem strengthening in exceptional forms, such as kr??vaíte in the R?gveda. The implication is that the former procedure fails to account for the form, which, if Pā?ini’s knowledge of texts were to be established based upon the consideration of individual traits, would imply the absurdity that Pā?ini, as interpreted by Rāmacandra et al. did not know the R?gveda. On the contrary, however, the procedure of Rāmacandra et al. can employ another rule of indeterminate variation: 3.1.85 vyatyayo bahulam. This procedure, which provides a systematic explanation of the present subjunctive generally and requires a rule of indeterminate variation only to account for exceptional forms, is preferable to leaving the account of stem strengthening in the present subjunctive generally to a rule of indeterminate variation. Since both procedures rely on rules of indeterminate variation to account for the R?gvedic form, however, it is impossible to establish either Pā?ini’s knowledge or ignorance of the text on the basis of his account of the subjunctive. The controversy demonstrates that the depth and variety of the Indian grammatical tradition must be taken into account in determining which rules describe which linguistic facts and that it is inadequate to consider individual traits. A comprehensive approach is required.     

Tanūnapāt: Kalos,Philos, and the Vestiges of Trace

This essay probes the aniconic and iconic elements that pervade Indian visual culture and, more specifically, the aniconic impulse that has structured, for nearly two millennia, the cultivated indifference of Indian, especially Sanskrit, reflective traditions toward the plastic arts. Over the last hundred years, inquiries have concentrated largely on the historical and formal aspects of Indian temples, idols, and images. These attempts, however, are based entirely on the conceptual-theoretical frameworks of the Western tradition. By drawing on Sanskrit reflective traditions, I analyze the relations between symbol, icon, desire, and the body, in order to show the epistemic contrasts between the European and the Indian reflective traditions and their implications for differential modes of being.     

Michael Comans,Extracting the Essence of the Śruti: The Śrutisārasamuddharanam of Totakācārya

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Rhetoric,Narrative, and the Remembrance of Death in ʿAttār's Mosibat-nāmeh

This paper examines the anecdotes of ?Attār’s Mosibat-nāmeh as temporal phenomena from the perspective of a reader moving progressively through the text; it is argued that that these anecdotes do not function primarily as carriers of dogmatic information, but as dynamic rhetorical performances designed to prod their audiences into recommitting to a pious mode of life. First, the article shows how the poem’s frame-tale influences a reader’s experience of the embedded anecdotes by encouraging a sequential mode of consumption and contextualizing the work’s pedagogical aims. Next, it is demonstrated that these anecdotes are bound together through formulae and lexical triggers, producing a paratactic structure reminiscent of oral homiletics. Individual anecdotes aim to unsettle readers’ ossified religious understandings, and together they offer a flexible set of heuristics for pious living. Finally, it is argued that ?Attār’s intended readers were likely familiar with the mystical principles that underlie his poems; he therefore did not use narratives to provide completely new teachings, but rather to persuade his audience to more fully embody those pious principles to which they were already committed.     

From “Dead Things” to Immutable,Combinable Mobiles: H.D. Skinner,the Otago Museum and University and the Governance of Māori Populations

This paper draws on Callon's [2005 Callon, Michael. 2005. “Why Virtualism Paves the Way to Political Impotence: A Reply to Daniel Miller's Critique of The Laws of the Markets.” Economic Sociology: European Electronic Newsletter 6 (2): 3–20. [Google Scholar]. “Why Virtualism Paves the Way to Political Impotence: A Reply to Daniel Miller's Critique of The Laws of the Markets.” Economic Sociology: European Electronic Newsletter 6 (2): 3–20] concept of agencement, together with Latour's [1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press] concept of immutable combinable mobiles to illustrate how Henry Devenish Skinner, ethnologist and anthropology lecturer at the Otago Museum and University sought to form and shape Māori identity, history, culture and populations as subjects of liberal government. It does this through an exploration of Skinner's fieldwork and collecting practices. The paper suggests that forms of analysis mediated through the American History School, and the culture area concept were deployed during the emergence of anthropology as a discipline in New Zealand (between 1919 and 1940) to produce ethnographic authority that then acted as a point of connection between scientific networks and the colonial administrative field.     

Harinarayana Bhatt (ed.), The Commentary of Vistubhatta on the Anargharāaghava of Murāri. Critical edition. Volume I: The Commentary of Visnubhatta. Volume II: The Anargharāghava of Murāri as Read by Visnubhatta,Notes, Appendices

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Kaul,Advaitavadini and Chattopadhyay,Sukumar, eds., Kalātattvakośa: A Lexicon of Fundamental Concepts of the Indian Arts. Volume IV: Manifestation of Nature – Srsti Vistāara

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Vintages of the Sāqī-nāma: Fermenting and Blending the Cupbearer's Song in the Sixteenth Century

Drawing on a rich tradition of anacreontic poetry and taking inspiration from works by Nizāmī and Hāfiz, the sāqī-nāma or “cupbearer's song” emerged as an independent genre in the early sixteenth century and flourished throughout the Persian literary world for the next 250 years. Looking back on the development of the genre, the early seventeenth-century literary historians ‘Abd al-Nabī Qazvīnī and Awhadī Balyānī give contrasting accounts of its formation, but both agree on the significance of the work of Hakīm Partuvī Shīrāzī (d. 928/1520–21). An examination of his sāqī-nāma, together with two other early representatives of the genre by Sidqī Astarābādī (d. 952/1545) and Sharaf Jahān Qazvīnī (d. 968/1561), shows how closely this new genre was tied to the politics and ideology of the new Safavid state and reveals profound structural similarities to the preeminent panegyric genre of the Islamicate world, the qasīda. But once the basic components of the sāqī-nāmā were distilled and taken up by poets outside this socio-political environment, the genre proved to be as protean as the wine symbolism at its core. Cupbearer songs from the end of the century, particularly those of Muhammad Sūfī Māzandarānī (d. 1035/1625–26) and Sanjar Kāshānī (d. 1021/1612), show how the basic elements of the genre could be reconfigured to serve a variety of more personal interests.