Nagaraj Paturi
Dr. Joydeep Bagchee posted the following on Indology list:
Dear friends,
Let me share this work you: Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, Philology and Criticism: A Guide to Mahābhārata Textual Criticism.
https://www.academia.edu/36999444/Philology_and_Criticism_Open_Access
There are a lot of nineteenth-century and erroneous views floating around in Indology and epic studies such as Sukthankar’s edition reconstructs a “normative redaction,” Sukthankar classified the mss. by script (Schriftartprämisse), Sukthankar did not create a stemma but a “pedigree of versions,” the “Venn diagram” is an improvement on the stemma, an earlier oral epic was “redacted” by Brahmans, bhakti is a later “interpolation,” the Mahābhārata is a “sectarian” text following the logic of “inclusivism,” we can identify “Kṣatriya” passages based on style, we can apply “layers analysis” (Schichtanalyse), we can still recover an earlier oral epic or a heroic epic by applying “higher criticism,” etc.
These views are NOT defensible either through manuscript evidence or through logic. In our previous book, The Nay Science, we had demonstrated how these views arose from the German Indologists’ racial and nationalist prejudices and the problems with their so-called higher criticism. This new book provides support from lower criticism for that and shows that no Indologist has made a meaningful contribution to Mahābhārata criticism after Sukthankar and his team.
It also addresses the view that a critical edition does not require a stemma or a rigorous procedure for sifting variants and establishes some criteria for any future critical editions of Sanskrit texts.
Vishwa and I look forward to new ways of reading texts meaningfully!
Joydeep Bagchee
Dr. Joydeep BagcheeLudwig-Maximilians-Universität München___________________What, then, is Philosophy?Philosophy is the supremely precious.Plotinus, Enneads I.III.5
vasantkumar bhatt
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Nagaraj Paturi
Philology and Criticism is the first book of its kind. Incisive in its analysis, this book undertakes a rigorous defense of the Mahābhārata critical edition. Following a prologue and an introduction, this book is divided into three chapters. Each chapter states a problem and discusses key concepts and principles in textual criticism pertaining to it.Thereafter, the authors guide the reader through a history of responses to the problem. Each response is posed as an argument (via citing the critic who raised it). The authors address each argument individually in a separate section. In each section, they consider whether the argument can be defended from some perspective. Once they establish that the argument is untenable, they state their conclusion. In this way, they systematically work through contemporary criticisms of the critical edition, focusing primarily on Andreas Bigger’s and Reinhold Grünendahl’s work.
The first chapter addresses the view that the constituted text of the critical edition reconstructs merely a late stage of the transmission. Although several scholars advocate this thesis (James L. Fitzgerald, for instance, thinks the critical edition reconstructs a “Gupta-era archetype,” which he elsewhere calls a “written Sanskrit text” of the epic), the authors focus on the thesis’s author: Andreas Bigger. Bigger holds that the critical edition merely reconstructs a text he calls the “normative redaction” of the Mahābhārata, supposedly the result of “a uniform redaction” of the epic undertaken during its first transcription from a fluid oral tradition. Adluri and Bagchee demonstrate the circularity of this claim. The second chapter addresses the underlying assumption of Bigger’s work, though it also broadens the scope to include other Mahābhārata critics. The authors show that Bigger’s thesis appears plausible only because scholars assume an oral epic preceded the written Sanskrit Mahābhārata. The authors demonstrate that their arguments are not stemmatic and hence do not hold. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the so- called analytic approach to the epic. The authors argue that this approach is premised on an uncritical view of Indian history, whose origins they outlined in their book The Nay Science: A History of German Indology. The third chapter, the longest in this book, addresses a perplexing problem: How were the Mahābhārata manuscripts classified? Were they classified by script as Grünendahl argues? The authors convincingly demonstrate that they were not. As they show, script cannot play a role in classification for it is an external marker. This chapter also addresses Grünendahl’s claim that extensive contamination makes a critical edition of the Mahābhārata unachievable as well as his claim that focusing on a regional recension would have led to a better edition. The conclusion provides a summation not only of this book but also of the authors’ first book. It presents a serious challenge to contemporary Sanskrit philology inasmuch as it relies on opinion rather than argument.
While I disagree with the authors in some respects (most notably on the southern recension’s place in the Mahābhārata tradition), Philology and Criticism will stimulate debate. It poses a major challenge to scholars who have made unguarded statements about the Mahābhārata’s origins in an oral tradition. As I have argued since 2001 (Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader’s Guide to the Education of the Dharma King), the notion of an oral epic is a myth. The Mahābhārata is clearly a written text. In all likelihood, a small group of Brahmans created it.. T. P. Mahadevan identifies these Brahmans with the historical Pūrvaśikha Brahmans. In spite of the text’s expansion and changes, no evidence exists that it was ever transmitted orally. Philology and Criticism conclusively vindicates this view. As I demonstrated in my review of Fitzgerald’s translation of Books 11 and 12 of the Mahābhārata (in the Journal of the American Oriental Society), those who resurrect the oral hypothesis do so for ideological reasons rather than because persuasive historical evidence exists. Relying on nineteenth- century views of the epic (whose assumptions Adluri and Bagchee criticized in their first book), they overlook the fact that the archetype presupposes a written transmission. Adluri and Bagchee have staked their position, and scholars in the future will have to account for their view in some way.
I hardly need add that Philology and Criticism is essential reading for Mahābhārata scholars. This book significantly advances our knowledge of the critical edition. It is an essential reference work— not least because of its appendices, which enable scholars to consult details of the edition without carrying around all 19 volumes of the edition. Philology and Criticism also addresses a major lacuna in Mahābhārata studies today. It is the first work to explain what the Mahābhārata critical edition is, how it was created, what its merits are and why criticisms of the edition are frequently based on insufficient knowledge of the principles involved. Though aimed at an advanced audience, the analysis is clear and systematic, and the arguments can be followed by anyone who takes the time and trouble (and perhaps uses paper and a pencil). In that sense it is not a difficult book to read, though its scope is breathtaking. Few today in Mahābhārata studies have such a thorough grasp of the critical edition or are as qualified to speak to the issues of textuality, orality, the manuscript tradition, what can be reconstructed and what can be shown with philological methods. In my assessment, the authors present a cogent interpretation of the critical edition. Their clarification of its overarching project is brilliant and makes a lasting contribution to the field.
Alf Hiltebeitel, Foreword, Philology and Criticism: A Guide to Mahābhārata Textual Criticism (2018)
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Nagaraj Paturi
From Dr Sunthar Visuvalingam's Abhinavagupta list:
This book is a guidebook. That means it is intended for use. The reader must make use of the tools presented herein to test for herself the validity and rigor of the arguments of contemporary Mahābhārata scholars. This is all the more necessary as hardly a field of scholarship existing today is as rife with competing and contradictory theories as contemporary Mahābhārata studies. […] Regrettably, Mahābhārata studies has long been a stronghold of neo-Aryanist ideology, anti-Semitism and Romantic fantasy. Thus, this book has had to be equal parts guidebook and polemical essay. As such, it owes as much to the tradition of Nietzsche as to that of West. There is no doubt in our minds that the great editors of classical and medieval texts made enduring contributions to the study of texts and, in particular, to the canons of method that enable us to expunge centuries of error and dross and come closer to the authors’ original texts. There is also no doubt in our minds that these techniques are also applicable (with the necessary riders and adjustments) to the study of Indian texts. […] In fact, there is an entire tradition of Indian editors (not only V. S. Sukthankar, to whom this book is dedicated, but also S. K. Belvalkar, P. L. Vaidya and others) who could rightfully take their place alongside the great editors in the classics. But (and we are no less convinced of this than of the applicability of textual criticism to the Mahābhārata) textual criticism cannot and may not be used to promote ideological agendas.[… The reader] will find examples of circular reasoning, conclusions that do not follow from their premises, arguments ad baculum and appeals to inappropriate authority. And she will find that the only two constants among these theses, theories and dogmatic positions are that Indians are not capable of reading their texts critically and that priests are corrupt and mendacious. This failure to engage with the theory of textual criticism has extracted a heavy price. It has meant that Mahābhārata scholars have not kept abreast of recent developments in textual criticism, whether in the areas of hermeneutics, literary criticism, structuralism, post- Lachmannian theories of critical editing or the study of variantistica— in short, that entire field that is today denoted by the term “ecdotics” and encompasses the study of textual cultures in the widest sense. It has meant that scholarship on the epic, even considered as arising out of and responding to the documentary impulse, has failed to contribute in any meaningful way to a history of the text. Against this intellectually stunted and resentment- driven science, Sukthankar’s genius stands out all the brighter.
Adluri & Bagchee, “Preface” to Philology and Criticism
In two books now, we have found that whenever Indologists say that their work is secular, scientific, philological, critical and the like, what they really mean is that they are interested in a separation of the realia from the meaning of the text. This separation, however, is anything but secular, since the emphasis on the realia over the text’s philosophical meaning is a characteristic feature of neo-Protestant theology, corresponding to the belief that only a reconstruction of the historical conditions (not only the events and personalities but also the moral and social codes) prevalent at the time the books of the Old and New Testaments were composed can permit readers to represent to themselves the respective authors’ state of mind at the time and hence, in an act of sympathetic understanding or Einfühlung, feel or experience what the author felt or experienced when writing the book in question. This task was all the more urgent in the case of those books that were held to be divinely inspired, for at stake was nothing less than gaining access to the true meaning of scripture, which had become contentious in the wake of challenges to the authority of the church. Yet, if the realia truly hold the key to understanding the text—indeed, if only they permit a correct understanding of the text, as the Indologists contend—then, in reading the German Indologists’ work, we also must focus on the historical realia. If knowing about cattle is important to understanding the Vedic mind, how much more important is it to know about the Indologists’ religious and political commitments, especially as these translated into positions of authority, state-sponsored salaries and the ability to make self-authenticating statements? In our next book, we plan to do exactly this.
Adluri & Bagchee, “Epilogue” to Philology and Criticism (p.339)
This panel examines the remaining tasks for Mahābhārata studies following the completion of the Mahābhārata critical edition (CE). As several scholars have recently argued, the completion of the CE represents a “watershed” in Mahābhārata studies (Adluri 2013). This panel provides an overview of contemporary debates concerning the CE’s reception and proper use. Does it, as some argue, merely reconstruct a “normative redaction” such that “higher criticism” can reconstruct an earlier stage of the transmission (Bigger 1998)? Or does it, as others argue, offer a definitive text for exploring the Mahābhārata’s “literary design” (Hiltebeitel 2001, Adluri and Bagchee, eds. 2016)? This three-part workshop covers textual criticism and the creation of the Mahābhārata CE, the application of “critical” methods to the Mahābhārata and the Bhagavadgītā, and the Mahābhārata’s traditional reception. It is intended as an introduction for students wishing to undertake research into the Mahābhārata.
“After the Critical Edition: What Next for Mahābhārata Studies” World Sanskrit Conference (July 9-13)
Dear Sunthar,
I will be presenting on this panel:
After the Critical Edition:
What Next For Mahābhārata
Studies?
Joydeep Bagchee
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Working With the Mahābhārata Critical Edition
Vishwa Adluri
Hunter College, New York
Higher Criticism and the Bhagavadgītā: Lessons From a Close Reading
Jahnavi Bidnur
Indic Academy
Prayojana and Phala: The Mahābhārata’s Reception Through Its Commentaries
Monday, July 9
2-4pm
Buchanan D219
UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
VANCOUVER, CANADA
The panel invitation and a campus map are also attached. Please feel free to share.
Best regards,
Vishwa
Dr. Vishwa Adluri
Adjunct Professor
Hunter College
1241 W, 695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065
212 772 4989
www.presocratics.org
Nagaraj Paturi
Veeranarayana Pandurangi
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Nagaraj Paturi
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