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.
About the Author
Vishwa Adluri holds PhDs in philosophy, Indology and Sanskrit from the New School for Social Research, Philipps-Universität Marburg and Deccan College. He teaches at Hunter College, New York, USA.
Joydeep Bagchee has a PhD in philosophy from the New School for Social Research and teaches at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.
Author(s): Vishwa Adluri, Joydeep Bagchee
Series: (Cultural, Historical and Textual Studies of South Asian Religions Book 1184)
Publisher: Anthem Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 570
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Series information......Page 4
Title page......Page 5
Dedication......Page 7
Copyright information......Page 6
Table of contents......Page 11
List of illustrations......Page 13
Foreword......Page 17
Preface......Page 19
Acknowledgements......Page 23
Prologue......Page 25
Conclusion......Page 35
The Argument from Spread and the Argument from Resilience......Page 36
The Argument from Loss......Page 37
The Argument from Oral Source......Page 38
Classification: Typological and Genealogical......Page 39
The Argument from a Misapprehension Concerning Classification (Schriftartprämisse)......Page 40
The Argument from Independent Recensions......Page 41
The Argument from Expertise......Page 42
Why a Critical Edition?......Page 45
What Is a Critical Edition?......Page 46
How to Interpret the Critical Edition......Page 51
Conclusion......Page 54
Notes......Page 62
The Normative Redaction Hypothesis......Page 79
Normative Redaction, Archetype and Original......Page 80
Criticism: Higher and Lower......Page 83
The Argument from Spread and the Argument from Resilience......Page 88
The Argument from Empty Reference......Page 101
The Argument from Loss......Page 109
Notes......Page 123
Understanding “Contamination”......Page 153
Contamination: Hyperarchetypal and Extra- stemmatic......Page 154
Identifying the Source of Contamination......Page 156
The Argument from Uncertainty......Page 160
The Argument from Oral Source......Page 165
The Argument from (Postulated) Antiquity and the Argument from Ideology......Page 174
Notes......Page 178
Classification: Typological and Genealogical......Page 197
Determining Filiation......Page 198
Eliminating Witnesses......Page 201
The Argument from Brevity and the Argument from False Premises......Page 203
The Argument from a Misapprehension Concerning Classification (Schriftartprämisse)......Page 216
Classification, Choice of Sigla, Elimination of Manuscripts and Construction of a Stemma......Page 219
Content as the Real Basis for Classification, Descent from Ancestors, Ideal Types and Divergence from the Norm......Page 226
The Argument from Extensive Contamination......Page 243
The Argument from Independent Recensions......Page 281
The Argument from Expertise......Page 303
Notes......Page 308
Conclusion: Textual Criticism and Indology......Page 353
Notes......Page 358
Notes......Page 373
1. The Volumes of the Critical Edition......Page 377
2. Editions Besides the Critical Edition......Page 379
3. English Translations of the Mahābhārata......Page 381
4. How to Use the Critical Apparatus......Page 385
5. How Editors Reconstructed the Reading of the Archetype......Page 389
6. How to Cite the MahAbhArata......Page 391
7. The Extent of the Mahābhārata’s Books......Page 393
8. The 18 Parvans and 100 Upaparvans of the Mahābhārata......Page 395
9. The Arrangement of the Parvans in the Southern Recension......Page 401
10. Other Narrative Divisions......Page 413
11. Sukthankar’s Table of the Manuscripts Collated for the Ādiparvan......Page 417
12. Extent of the Sārada Codex for the Ādiparvan......Page 419
13. Abbreviations and Diacritical Signs Used in the Critical Edition......Page 421
14. Abbreviated Concordance of the Principal Editions of the Mahābhārata......Page 423
15. Stemmata for the Different Parvans of the Mahābhārata......Page 427
Philosophical Affiliations and Milieu......Page 431
Aim in Reading the Mahābhārata......Page 432
Extent of the Commentaries and Published Editions......Page 434
Finding Guide to the Commentaries......Page 437
17. Commentaries on the Bhagavadgītā......Page 459
18. The Use of Venn Diagrams to Depict Manuscript Relationships......Page 463
Glossary......Page 515
The Mahābhārata Critical Edition......Page 527
Editors’ Introductions from the Mahābhārata Critical Edition......Page 528
Reviews of the Mahābhārata Critical Edition......Page 529
Translations (Including Reviews) of the Critical Edition or the Vulgate......Page 531
Problems in Mahābhārata Textual Criticism......Page 533
Mahābhārata Commentators, Commentators’ Editions and Chronological Surveys......Page 534
Commentators’ Editions of the Bhagavadgītā......Page 535
Introductions to Textual Criticism......Page 536
Advanced Works in Textual Criticism......Page 537
Problems in Textual Criticism/Computer-Aided Analysis......Page 538
Theoretical Perspectives, Romance Philology and Italian Textual Criticism......Page 540
Discussions of the Mahābhārata Critical Edition......Page 541
Philosophical Interpretations......Page 543
Oral Epics, Metrical and Statistical Analysis, Search for the Heroic Epic......Page 544
Histories and Historical Reconstructions......Page 545
Indian History, Epigraphy and Manuscript Culture......Page 546
German Scholarship/ Errors in Textual Criticism......Page 547
The Background of the Mahābhārata Critical Edition/Biographic Sources......Page 550
Additional Sources......Page 553
Notes......Page 558
Index......Page 559
