Belvarkar Text Critic

Journal of Vaishnava Studies, 2011

T raditionally, the end objective of textual criticism is to examine the extant manuscripts of a literary tradition with the purpose of reconstructing the most ancient version of the text possible. Consequently, once such a text is established and variants provided through a critical apparatus, little remains to be done by the textual critic. Once he has dealt with the chores of "lower" textual criticism, the result of his work will be handed to the literary critic, who will then perform the noble task of "higher" criticism. As Walter Gabler says: Not altogether unlike a car assembled in the factory and then sold to an owner left to explore and utilize all its built-in capacity, a text was constructed in the editor's workshop and handed to the critic who, expected to accept it as definitive (and himself expecting to take it as such), was left to perform on it his criticism (1990: 153). Of course, scholars can always agree or disagree with editorial choices, challenge readings on different grounds, or indeed question the entire undertaking, but other than that textual studies seemingly take us no further. However, this may not be the case any longer. Textual studies do not necessarily have to do only with the editing of a text. This paper proposes that the time-honoured division between lower and higher criticism may become inoperative if we incorporate to our notion of textual evolution a few concepts borrowed from evolutionary biology. The arguments I will offer come from my experience working for several years with phylogenetic programs-the same 211

IndiaFacts.org, 2018

International Journal of Hindu Studies, 15, no. 1 (April 2011): 1-7, 2011

"An Overview of Mahābhārata Scholarship" --- Errata: In the above published article, errors introduced in the production process were identified on pages 165 and 174 and are detailed as follows: 1. In the last line of the abstract there is a free-standing ‘h’. It should read ‘Mbh’ (the abbreviation for the text as indicated in the first line of the abstract). 2. In the reference section ‘Brodbeck (2007)’ should read ‘Brodbeck & Black, eds. (2007)’.

Ecumenica, 2020

Philology and Criticism: A Guide to Mahābhārata Textual Criticism, 2018

Philology and Criticism contrasts the Mahābhārata’s preservation and transmission within the Indian scribal and commentarial traditions with Sanskrit philology after 1900, as German Indologists proposed a critical edition of the Mahābhārata to validate their racial and nationalist views. Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee show how, in contrast to the Indologists’ unscientific theories, V. S. Sukthankar assimilated the principles of neo-Lachmannian textual criticism to defend the transmitted text and its traditional reception as a work of law, philosophy and salvation. The authors demonstrate why, after the edition’s completion, no justification exists for claiming that an earlier heroic epic existed, that the Brahmans redacted the heroic epic to produce the Mahābhārata or that they interpolated “sectarian” gods such as Vis.n.u and Śiva into the work. By demonstrating how the Indologists committed technical errors, cited flawed and biased scholarship and used circular argumentation to validate their racist and anti-Semitic theories, Philology and Criticism frees readers to approach the Mahābhārata as “the principal monument of bhakti” (Madeleine Biardeau). The authoritative guide to the critical edition’s correct use and interpretation, Philology and Criticism urges South Asianists to view Hinduism as a complex debate about ontology and ethics rather than through the lenses of “Brahmanism” and “sectarianism.” It launches a new world philology—one that is plural and self-reflexive rather than Eurocentric and ahistorical.

Religious Studies Review 41 No. 4 (2015): 153–74