Introduction: Towards a History of Indic Philology

Orientalistische Literaturzeitung

Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, 2021

Scholars of South Asia have long known of praśasti-s, eulogistic verses often composed in the trans-regional and cosmopolitan Sanskrit language on copperplates, stone slabs, and temple walls, from the early centuries of the Common Era. They have traditionally sieved these documents to recover dynastic histories and processes of state formation and have supposed that as a genre they faded away in the second millennium CE when Islamic polities were established across the subcontinent and new genres of history writing and political discourse were popularized. In making this supposition they have overlooked the fact that praśasti-s continued to be frequently composed and written. Yet, their appearance was neither in public spaces nor in public documents, but frequently at the ends of palm-leaf and paper manuscripts. In this paper, I carefully analyze a corpus of hitherto un-translated praśasti-s and other scribal remarks written at the end of oft illustrated sumptuous Jaina manuscripts prepared between c. 1200 – 1600 in western India. This was a period during which manuscript culture and literary production burgeoned in the region. Through my close reading of these genealogical micro histories, I shed new light on the emergence of new power elites, literati associations, centers of manuscript production, the rise of professional authors and scribes. I also consider the aesthetics and poetics of patronage in the region and ask why patrons in the early centuries of the second millennium CE sought to legitimize their family histories through the use of an archaic genre.

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.

This article considers the relationship between printed, written, and oral traditions in Hindu purāṇas and stotras along with their interaction and intersection with the development of sacred topographies. The question of the universalizing tendencies of purāṇic literature vs. the regionally specific concerns of stotras is raised. After this general discussion, special consideration is given to the Dvādaśajyotirliṅgastotra and the development of the cult of the twelve jyotirliṅgas (liṅgas of light) in the Deccan region. Galley Proof from - Material Culture and Asian Religions: Text, Image, Object, ed. Benjamin J. Fleming and Richard Mann, Routledge 2014.

Lecture by Professor Shivaji Singh, Gorakhpur, UP, India on the occasion of National Education Day, November 11, 2016, organized by ICHR, New Delhi. I am indeed very grateful to Professor Y. Sudarshan Rao, Chairman Indian Council of Historical Research, for so kindly inviting me to deliver the 9th Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture this Education Day. Receiving an indication of confidence from one’s professional colleagues is always reassuring, but while I value the kind gesture extended to me, in the innermost parts of my heart somewhere I feel like echoing Shaheed Sarmad’s words: ‘Sharmindaye zurme khudama O rehmate to’ (Ashamed I am of my derelictions despite your compassion sublime). Prologue and the Problem Instead of talking big on philosophies and theories of history (as is often done at such occasions) or raising issues such as ‘What do Indians need, a History or the Past?’ (as was actually done by Professor S. N. Balagangadhara of Gent University, Belgium, year before last in this very Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture), I have chosen for the present lecture a specific and limited – though a somewhat difficult - problem. It relates to writing afresh the early history of India necessitated by recently gathered new data and evidence. At present, as we all know, there are two separate versions of the early history of India down to 2000 BCE. The one, based on literary sources, primarily the Ṛigveda, talks about the Bharatas, the Pūrus, the Paṇis, the Kīkaṭas and other such Ārya and non-Ārya (Dāsa) peoples and provides a general description of the social, economic, political and religious conditions in the period. The other, based on archaeological record, throws light on mainly the material culture of various communities and groups of communities distinguished as the Hakrans, the Kot Dijians, the Amrians, the Balakotians, the Harappans of this or that domain, etc. There is no one-to-one correspondence between these two versions of history even though they relate to one and the same peoples within broadly the same space-time contexts! Earlier, under the spell of the Aryan invasion/migration theories, the Harappan Civilization (designated also as the Indus, Indus-Saraswati or Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization) was thought to precede the Vedic Civilization. Naturally, therefore, the history books described the Harappan Civilization first and the Early Vedic (that is, Rigvedic) Civilization afterwards in different subsequent chapters. But, now, when that spell is over and archaeological findings in the valley of Vedic River Sarasvati (Ghaggar-Hakra) have drastically changed the perspective ‘connecting impartibly’, so to say, the Rigvedic people with the Harappans and their contemporaries, it is no more justified to do so. So clear and decisive is this Sarasvati evidence (rediscovery of the Lost River Sarasvati with majority of Harappan sites in its valley and other cultural and chronological facts that show that the Harappan Civilization should better be designated as Sarasvati Civilization) that many scholars, who earlier believed in Vedic-Harappan dichotomy and shared the view of Aryan arrival in India from outside, now, accept Vedic-Harappan identity. A noteworthy example of this shift in perception is presented by Professor B. B. Lal who is an internationally recognized archaeologist and well-known for his extremely judicious approach. I name him particularly because as a former Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, he has been an eye witness and himself an active participant in harvesting much of that data and evidence we call the ‘Sarasvati evidence’. As many of you know, he earlier believed in the theory of Aryan arrival in India from outside and traced its imprints in what is known as the PGW Culture. By 1997, the year in which his magnum opus The Earliest Civilization of South Asia was published, he realized that it was time to rethink, and by 2015 he was compelled to frankly admit that the Vedic people were themselves the Harappans, neither ‘invaders’ nor ‘immigrants’. The view that the Vedic people were themselves the Harappans is the accepted view of the majority of scholars in India today. In fact, it has been so for the last over two decades. Being extremely judicious, B. B. Lal has taken time in lending his authoritative stamp to it, which indeed is valuable for changing public perception at large. In scholarly circles, however, the view is not new. However, the text books continue to describe the Harappn and Vedic cultures one after the other in separate and subsequent chapters as if the two were two different cultures. This is totally inappropriate to say the least. If the Vedic people are themselves the Harappans, isn’t it anomalous to describe their history separately in distinct chapters? Even the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training), a Government of India organization entrusted with the extremely important task of preparing school textbooks, has not as yet been able to properly interlace together the archaeological and literary data about early Indian history so as to wash away any indication of Vedic-Harappan dichotomy though now it accepts that the theory of Aryan arrival in India from outside is untenable. In this lecture we shall revisit the Vedic-Harappan relationship issue without any preconceived notions, try to remove certain misconceptions still prevailing and finally indicate the possible ways and means to integrate together into one the two aforementioned literary and archaeological versions of early history of India. The aim is to underline maximum one-to-one correspondence between the two pictures leading to their thorough correlation and final identity. Obviously, this is not a very easy task. It would need a prolonged team work of archaeologists, scholars of Vedic literature, linguists and natural scientists to accomplish it. But the present talk would be amply justified, I believe, if we disperse from this Sabhāgāra (Auditorium) with a clearer understanding of the basics involved and a workable outline of the tasks ahead. Brushing aside the cobwebs Before we attempt to write afresh a factual history of early India, cleaning the table off all the dirt and filth accumulated on it during the last over two centuries is essential. This dirt and filth is of various hues but the most unwanted of all is the cobweb relating to the controversy whether the Rigvedic people were an indigenous people of India or had arrived here from somewhere outside. Well, the borders of India, particularly its north-western segment had never been sealed. People have been coming in and going out since times immemorial. But, a motivated and biased theory called the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) was propounded in early decades of the 19th century mainly to justify the British colonial rule in India. It was not a theory, just a hypothesis. It was not based on any historically attested facts but on another linguistically surmised hypothesis. But these epistemological niceties were overlooked. The power of political correctness soon turned this so-called theory into a Gospel Truth. Unfortunately at the time, historiography was in a nebulous state. History was conceived mostly as a series of events, not basically as concomitant processes, and concepts like interacting socio-cultural systems were unknown. The situation left the arena free for motives and biases to gain the upper hand. Understanding early Indian history was misdirected by a so-called theory The Aryans invaded India, destroyed the cities of the Indus Valley and killed, converted and drove away its inhabitants, the Dravidians, to South India! This was the scenario the Aryan Invasion Theory presented before us about the early history of India. It dominated the historical discourse for an unexpectedly long duration. Although there always were some scholars who never accepted it, the AIT was almost unanimously accepted and became the standard view. In a prestigious UNESCO publication of 1963 (History of Mankind, Volume 1), it was stated by Sir Leonard Woolley: “The Harappā civilization was non-Aryan and was destroyed by the Aryans … … who were a non-urbanized people and semi-barbarous.” One feels surprised at the use of the word ‘semi-barbarous’ for the Aryans, that is, Vedic Āryas. In fact, Professor R. C. Majumdar, who was a Member of the International Commission that supervised the drafting of the above History of Mankind, Volume 1, objected to such a portrayal of Vedic people. But he was silenced by saying that the Aryans were yet pre-urban and hence could not be called civilized. Majumdar’s efforts could bring out only a minor change: the word ‘barbarous’ in the original draft was replaced by ‘semi-barbarous’. All this is on record. Noteworthy is the fact that R. C. Majumdar defended the image of the ‘Aryans’; he did not challenge the AIT. Such was the spell of the AIT till 1960s at least. It must also be noted in passant, that the terms ‘savage’, ‘barbarous’ and ‘civilized’ became popular after Lewis H. Morgan subtitled his book Ancient Society, published in 1877, as ‘Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization’. This model of human progress was adopted by Frederick Engels in his famous essay: ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State’ published originally in German in 1884. V. G. Childe brought this concept in archaeology. Leonard Woolley, who wrote the relevant chapter of the UNESCO publication, we are talking about, was using this faulty materialist model. Needless to add: the materialist model of human progress is unacceptable to anyone who does not share a materialist model of human progress and history.

Manuscript and Text Cultures, 2024

Since the invention of the Indian writing system around the third century BC, Sanskrit literature was no longer exclusively oral. However, not all genres immediately adopted the new possibilities. In order to fully understand the orality and writing of Sanskrit literature, I will first define a threefold division of what I call 'the compositional complex', the totality of processes involved in the creation of texts and their subsequent usages. The first stage is the composition of the text, the second is its preservation for the sake of future generations, and the third is its transmission to the audience. Each stage can be oral or written. After a brief discussion of secondary literature on the compositional complex of the Vedas, the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas, I look for textinternal evidence for the compositional complex of Purāṇas in the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa, 'the Purāṇa of the future'. On the basis of this single Purāṇa, it is possible to make a reconstruction of the composition, preservation, and transmission of Purāṇas, where orality and writing intertwine.

Erscheinungsformen kultureller Prozesse, 1990

IndiaFacts.org, 2018

The comparatively late tantric embodiment of so-called Hinduism gives final shape to a conception the germs of which had indeed been present in the Indian religious world from the earliest times on — namely, that religious practices and the attendant prescriptive texts must constantly evolve and adapt under the pressure of the “heaviness of time” (kālagaurava) — by sanctioning in a recurrent strophe the partition of the Scriptures according to the declining world ages (yuga): whereas vedic ritual as laid down in the “Heard” Revelation (śruti) was fit for the Perfect Age, new and less demanding forms of worship, with their corresponding Scriptures, had to be promulgated down the course of time to cater to the failing powers of the human generations: the “Remembered” Codes (smṛti) in the following Age of Triads, then the “Ancient” Lore (purāṇa) in the Age of Duality and finally the “Newcome” Tradition (āgama) in the present Age of Strife. Outside the tantric context, however, the Purāṇas have been regarded as the authoritative Scriptures also for the present age of degeneration, and they have fulfilled their role as custodians and upholders of the living tradition by various strategies aimed at striking a difficult and sometimes precarious balance between conservation and innovation. Indeed, the notion of constant adaptive evolution is built-in in the very name of the Purāṇas, which according to a long-established (para)etymology defines them as “from of old becoming ever new”. This paper will analyze some of the ways the authors of this remarkable class of texts have gone about their wondrous task of making for change while ensuring continuity.