The Public Life of Sanskrit Manuscripts

Muqarnas , 2016

In: Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities, and Change. Edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Peter Kornicki. Leiden: Brill, 2016.

2000

Library possesses a collection of almost 3,300 Indic manuscripts, the largest such collection in the Western hemisphere. While the vast majority of these manuscripts are from India, there are also a number of manuscripts from Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tibet. Some of the manuscripts had been acquired in chance fashion by the Library and the University Museum before 1930, but in that year, at the request of Professor W. Norman Brown (1892-1975), Provost Josiah Penniman provided a sum of money to purchase Indic manuscripts. Shortly thereafter he obtained a donation from the late Mr. John Gribbel. Substantial contributions from Dr. Charles W. Burr, the Faculty Research Fund, and the Cotton Fund soon followed. The bulk of the manuscripts are the result of purchases made using these funds in India, between 1930 and 1935, under the direction of Professor W. Norman Brown. How this collection of manuscripts came to Penn is a story worth recounting. 3 Since the collection consists primarily of Sanskrit manuscripts, we need first to consider the beginning of Sanskrit Studies at Penn during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, cognate especially to Ancient Greek and Latin. Moreover, Sanskrit remains to India what Latin was to the West: the language of educated discourse and the critical link among the diverse linguistic and regional communities of the subcontinent. One cannot study the cultural heritage of South Asia without recourse to Sanskrit. A manuscript should be dressed up like one's child. Should be guarded from all others like one's wife, Should be carefully treated like a wound on one's body Should be seen everyday like a good friend, Should be securely bound like a prisoner, Should be in constant remembrance like the name of God, Only then will the manuscript not perish.

Aziatische Kunst, 2018

In this essay, I examine two illustrated folios from a dispersed late 15th-century manuscript of the Balagopālastuti in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. By examining the relationship among and between the verses and paintings the Rijksmuseum folios, I reflect upon the devotional and aesthetic response this manuscript might have evoked in a sensitive reader. Aziatische Kunst 48/1 (2018): 42-53. Publication of the Asian Art Society in the Netherlands

2019

Layout & cover design: Sidestone Press Photographs cover: Relief-decorated blocks from the north wall of the antechapel of the tomb of Ry, Berlin inv. no. ÄM 7278. Copyright SMB Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, photo: Jürgen Liepe. Volume editors: Nico Staring, Huw Twiston Davies, Lara Weiss. ISBN 978-90-8890-792-0 (softcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-793-7 (hardcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-794-4 (PDF e-book)

“Scribbling in Newar on the Margins of a Sanskrit Manuscript (Add.2832, University Library, Cambridge)”, in M. Ni Mhaonaigh and M. J. Clarke (eds.), Medieval Multilingual Manuscripts. Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 24. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 199-208., 2022

This Nepalese manuscript of a Sanskrit treatise on horse-medicine, with a Newar colophon, provides an example of the interaction between Sanskrit as a learned, universalising language and the regional vernaculars spoken by those who embraced and disseminated Sanskrit literary culture throughout the South Asian world.

The margins of Indian manuscripts have attracted very little scholarly attention to date. The present paper is aimed at showing, through the example of Kashmirian Sanskrit manuscripts, that Classical Indology has much to gain by studying marginal annotations, first and foremost because the latter often include substantial quotations of texts that are no longer extant, so that they constitute a unique source enabling us to retrieve significant parts of lost works. These marginalia also provide us with an opportunity to understand how certain texts came to be marginalized in the course of time despite their innovative character and the intense exegetic or critical reaction that they might have initially triggered; and they may afford us some rare glimpses into the practical aspects of intellectual life – particularly learning and teaching habits – in medieval India. Published in Silvia D’Intino and Sheldon Pollock (eds.), L’espace du sens: Approches de la philologie indienne. The Space of Meaning: Approaches to Indian Philology, with the collaboration of Michaël Meyer, Paris: De Boccard, Publications de l’Institut de Civilisation Indienne du Collège de France 84, 2018, pp. 305-354.

2015

This thesis is the first attempt to analyze the phenomenon of marginal annotation in North Indian and Nepalese manuscripts from a philological, historical and cultural point of view. A critical edition of selected annotations on texts belonging to different literary genres has been provided (Kālidāsa's Raghuvaṃśa, Abhinavagupta's Īśvarapratyabhijnāvimarśinī), along with a typological classification and a study of their origins and purpose. Also the material aspects of the manuscripts are dealth with. Im Bereich der Forschung der sanskritischen Manuskriptkultur wurde bisher der Erscheinung von Rand- und Interlinearanmerkungen sehr wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Die Analyse einiger ausgewahlten annotierten Manuskripte aus Nordindien und Nepal hat einen Einblick in den Prozess ihrer Herstellung und Uberlieferung in sanskritischen Kulturkreisen ermoglicht. Die Arbeit ist in zwei Teile gegliedert. Der erste Teil besteht aus einer Studie der berucksichtigten annotierten Manuskrip...