A New Review of the “Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir” by Shishir Bhattacharja

 This book is a collection of twenty one articles on the work and life of a number of scholars of Kashmir starting from the medieval period up to the beginning of the 20 th century. The main objective of this volume is to present a compendium of the contribution of Kashmir to the study of Sanskrit language and linguistics as well as other subjects such as philosophy, aesthetics and theology to the extent that they concern language and grammar. As most of the articles in this volume do not, unfortunately, deal with grammar or lexicon directly (had it been the other way round, its title ‘Linguistic traditions in Kashmir’ would have been more justified!), I shall comment only on those they do.

 In the first article Mukulabhaṭṭa and Vyañjanā (28-40) M. M. Agrawal describes the view of Mukulabhaṭṭa, a Kashmiri grammarian, regarding lakṣanā (metaphoric use) of words and the counter criticism of his views by Mammaṭa, another grammarian from Kashmir. The second, the third and the fourth are three long articles by Ashok Aklujkar. In Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya as a key to Happy Kashmir (41-87) Aklujkar tries to show with citations from different grammarians including Kalhaṇa that (i) Mahābhāṣya was studied in Kashmir and (ii) Patañjali was a Kashmirian by birth. In Gonardīya, Gonikā-putra, Patañjali and Gonandīya (88-172) he claims that Gonandīya and Patañjali are two different names of the same person whereas Gonardīya and Gonikā-putra may not be the names of Patañjali. In Patañjali: A Kashmirian (173-205) Aklujkar gives arguments in support of his claim that Kashmir was the homeland of Patañjali.

Bettina Baümer, the author of the fifth article, The Three Grammatical Persons and Trika (206-222) shows, following Abhinavagupta, how the three persons –I, you and he/it – instantiate the god Śiva, the goddess Śakti and Nara, the human beings respectively. In the sixth article, The Treatment of the Present tense in the Kāśmīraśabdāmṛta of Isvara Kaul: A Pāṇinian grammar of Kashmiri (223–270) Estella Del Bon and Vincenzo Vergiani describe the contents of Isvara Kaul’s grammar Kāśmīraśabdāmṛta. The seventh and the eighth articles are written by Johannes Bronkhorst. In A note on Kashmir and Orthodox Pāṇinian Grammar (271-280), Bronkhorst tries to show how Kashmir had played a key role in the preservation of the grammatical tradition associated with Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya. In Udbhaṭa, a Grammarian and a Cārvāka (281-299), he points to the existence of different non-orthodox Pāṇinian grammatical traditions, which, since at least the time of Bhartṛhari, (i) used Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī as their main reference but (ii) gave new interpretations to a number of its rules, and (iii) did not recognize Patañjali, one of the timuni (three sages or three great grammarians of Ancient India) (Pāṇini and Kātyāyana being the two others), as an authority.

In Theoretical Precedents of the Kātantra (300-367), the 9th article, George Cardona explains why Kātantra is not just a brief textbook but a different way of looking at Sanskrit grammar. Kātantra is believed to be written by Śarvavarman to teach Sanskrit grammar to the king Satavāhana within a very short period of six months. According to Kathāsaritsāgara, a collection of stories, Satavāhna wanted to excel in grammar as soon as possible because one of his queens, during a common bath, laughed at him for his poor knowledge of Sandhi he confused modakai (ma-udak-ai) paritaraya (don’t-water-with-throw) ‘don’t throw water at me’ for modak-ai paritaraya (sweet-balls-with-throw) ‘throw sweet-balls at me’, had some sweet-balls brought by some servant and thrown them towards the queen.

 There was a debate among Indian grammarians regarding i) whether one needs rules to derive words with taddhita affixes, or ii) the words that are supposed to be outputs of those rules are in fact listed in the lexicon. For example, one can derive a fruit name like amalaka from its tree name amalaki, or consider both of the words as distinct lexical entries. According to Cardona many grammarians including the composer of Kātantra believed that both amalaka and amalaki (and many other similar words) are listed in the lexicon, and hence, there is no need to include rules to derive fruit names from tree names or vice-versa in grammar (morphology).

In Kṣīrākhyātā Catuṣpadī, Notes on Kṣīrasvāmin’s Comments on the Four Basic Grammatical Categories (368-376), the 10th article by M.G. Dhadphale, the author talks about different works by Kṣīrasvāmin on Sanskrit nouns, verbs, upasargas (prefixes) and nipātas. In the 11th article Three Kashmirian texts on Sanskrit syntax: Kuḍaka’s Samanvayadis, Devaśarmana’s Samanvayapradīpa and Samanvayapradīpa saṅketa (377-398), Oliver Hahn talks about three different texts on Sanskrit syntax which deal with the whole range of possible syntactic relations between words and gives definition of a sentence and its parts. These manuscripts which now belong to the National Library of Austria in Vienna had been collected by the archeological explorer Marcus Aurel Stein in 1894.

In the 12th article Jayanta’s Interpretation of Pāṇini 1.4.42 (399-409), V.N. Jha talks about the grammarian Jayantabhaṭṭa’s theory of Pramāṇa, his opponents’ objections against this theory and Jayantabhaṭṭa’s reply to those objections. S.D. Joshi explains in the 13th article On Nāgeśabhaṭṭa’s Misunderstanding of Kaiyaṭa, the Kashmirian commentator of Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya (410-418) how Nāgeśabhaṭṭa (1670-1750) misunderstood some rules of Pradīpa a commentary on Pāṇini’s grammar by the 11th century grammarian Kaiyaṭa. In the 14th article The Śāradā manuscripts of the Kāśikāvṛtti – Part II (419-428) Malhar Kulkarni compares different manuscripts of Kāśikāvṛtti, one of the major works in the tradition of Pāṇini’s grammar, in order to identify different stages of development of this text.

In Uvaṭa, the Kashmirian Prātiśākhya Commentator (429-445), the 15th article, Nirmala Kulkarni discusses mainly the contribution of Uvaṭa, a grammarian-cum-phonetician, to Indian grammatical tradition. Kulkarni also revisits the ‘Uvaṭa controversy’ – different issues concerning his personal history, his time, birthplace and genealogy. In The Mythico-ritual Syntax of Omnipotence, on Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta’s Use of Kriyākāraka Theory to Explain Śiva’s Action (446-488), the 16th article, David Peter Lawrence examines the interpretation of Sanskrit syntax from the point of view of Śiva-Śakti mythology by two Kashmiri philosopher, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta who lived in the 10th and 11th century respectively.

In his short note (the 17th article), Some Peculiar vocables in the Paippalāda- saṃhitā (489-494) Hukam Chand Patyal brings to light some rare words that appear in the Paippalāda-saṃhita of the Atharva-veda. In the 18th article The First Among the Learned: Kashmiri Poeticians on Grammarians (495-507) C. Rajendran describes how poeticians used to regard grammarians in Kashmir. According to Rajendran there were two different periods in the history of Kashmiri poetics: (i) The pre-dhvani period and (ii) the post-dhvani one. For the poeticians of the pre-dhvani period (Bhāmaha, Vāmana and Ānandavardhana among others) the grammarians are prathame hi vidvāṃso vaiyākaraṇāḥ ‘the first among the learned’. In this period the knowledge of grammar was considered a prerequisite for writing poetry because it was thought that poets should know how to use (correct) words that are allowed by the grammar and only those. Mahimabhaṭṭa, a poetician-cum-grammarian of the post-dhvani period, does not agree with the above mentioned criteria of absolute grammaticality of poetic works. Following Pāṇini’s famous dictum sarve sarvārthavācakāḥ (all-all sense-denote) Mahimabhaṭṭa states that all words can theoretically denote all senses (this reminds me Frege (1848-1925) who said that no word is used in the same sense twice in the same text). He averred that terms like śabda ‘word’, apaśabda ‘slang’ and asādhuśabda ‘improper word’(?) used by grammarians are only relative concepts and not absolute ones. Mahimabhaṭṭa draws our attention to the indispensability of pragmatics when he says in his book Vyaktiviveka that contextual and extralinguistic features must be taken into account for some act of communication to take place. Hence, a proper word may be unable to convey the intended meaning if it lacks contextual/pragmatic reinforcements while even a wrong word can denote the intended sense if it is accompanied with contextual and other accessories. Mahimabhaṭṭa counters the arguments of Patañjali regarding the use of correct word with the explanations given by Patañjali himself. The demerit produced by the use of a grammatically incorrect ‘bits and pieces’ here and there is counterbalanced by the ‘good final results’ of the whole poem, or as Rajendran states (P. 504), “by the profuse merit generated by the hearing, retaining, understanding and practicing of the ideas contained in the scientific discourse.” Notwithstanding that Mahimabhaṭṭa is reverential to trimuni and gives reference from their work in support of his own views, he makes an interesting distinction between Pāṇini and his blind followers whom he calls sarcastically khaṇdikopādhyāyas (piece-expert) ‘experts of bits and pieces’. Mahimabhaṭṭa also refers to Bhartṛhari abundantly but, unlike Abhinavagupta among others, he is skeptical about Bhartṛhari’s key concept of Sphoṭa.

In the 19th article From an adversary to the main ally, the place of Bhartṛhari in the Kashmirian Śaiva Advaita (508–524), the author Raffaele Torella describes how some adversaries of Bhartṛhari, namely Somānanda and Utpaladeva who belong to the Pratyabhijñā school of Kashmir later became his followers to a certain extent and used some of Bhartṛhari’s doctrines to construct their own views about the world and the language. In the 20th article Helārāja’s Defense of the Padāvadhika Method of Grammatical Explanation (525–549), Vincenzo Vergiani presents a particular view of Sanskrit grammar by Helārāja, a grammarian and a commentator of Bhartṛhari, who lived in Kashmir in the 10th century.

In the 21st article The Impact of Cāndra Vyākaraṇa on the Kāśikā (550–561), the author P. Visalakshy explains the extent to which the author of Kāśikā (vṛtti), an explanatory text on Pāṇini’s grammar as well its commentaries (vārttikas) by Kātyāyan and Patañjali, is influenced by Cāndra vyākaraṇa, one of the eight ancient schools of grammar (Indra, Kāśakṛtsna, Āpiśali, Śākaṭāyana, Pāṇini, Amara, and Jainendra being the seven others). Kāśikā is believed to have been composed in the 5th century by Jayāditya (identified as Jayāpīḍa by Belvelkar), a king of Kashmir and his minister Vāmana.

Some of the authors cited above describe the theoretical stand of particular scholars whereas some others try to identify those scholars both historically and geographically. Although there are scholars such as Patañjali whose direct relation with Kashmir is less than certain, most of the scholars cited in this volume do belong to Kashmir. This collection shows that the grammatical tradition in Kashmir has remained mainly Pāṇinian, notwithstanding that other grammatical schools namely Kātantra and Cāndra (which were not necessarily composed in Kashmir) were very popular in this area (as in other parts of South Asia, specially Bengal) until very recently. Although these grammars were used as pedagogical manuals and/or abridged versions of Aṣṭādyāyī, they were rich in insights that are different from those of Pāṇini’s. It is said that Kātantra and Cāndra were used by the general populace who tried to access Sanskrit language whereas Aṣṭādyāyī was reserved exclusively for higher studies in the Sanskrit language and grammar.

This volume has a foreword by Kapila Vatsyayan (vii-ix) and a preface by Ashok Aklujkar (xi-xiv), one of the two editors. Mrinal Kaul, the other editor, gives a life sketch of Pandit Dinanath Yaksh (1921-2004) who has been a doyen in the field of Sanskrit grammatical exegesis in Kashmir and to whose memory the present volume is dedicated (xxvi-xxxiii) and a detailed introduction (1-27). The twenty one articles mentioned above are followed by five appendices (565-584) in which Mrinal Kaul presents a list of the manuscripts found in the area of Kashmir, a note on each one of the contributors (585-592) and a general index (593-609).

To conclude, this well-edited book of a considerable size (about 650 pages) helps the reader guess the extent to which Kashmir was an important site for linguistic research in ancient and medieval India.

The “Pizza Effect” in Indian Philosophy

We all know what “the pizza effect” means. For those who do not, let me elaborate. Pizza was first exported to the United States, processed and reshaped by Americans, and then exported back to Italy thus becoming the popular Italian food. What Italians know or what the world knows today as the Italian Pizza is basically the form that Americans gave it. Likewise what we today know as “Indian philosophy” is mostly the understanding that is significantly influenced by European elaborations. The term “Indian philosophy” used to sound an extremely loaded word to me some years back and our recent course on comparative philosophy has made me realize how significantly hollow this term is. Nonetheless, we cannot but use this expression for want of a better term. In this paper I am going to show how eclectic the term and concept “Indian philosophy” is using a post-colonial method. I will argue that it is only using a comparative method that it is possible to discuss the authentic and holistic “Indian philosophy”. I must say that I have been influenced by what Daya Krishna calls a “comparative ‘comparative method’” and I am trying to use this method in explaining what is “comparative” about the “comparative method”. I think Daya Krishna made assiduous efforts through all his writings on Indian philosophy to take it out of the model of understanding that Europeans had tried to fit it in and what was, under the spell of Orientalism, followed by modern Indian writers of the history of Indian philosophy. In other words European Orientalists made unceasing efforts to understand Indian philosophy from the perspective of Western philosophy. Now since it was this understanding of Indian philosophy that was accessible to modern Indian intelligentsia, the modern understanding of Indian philosophy suffered or in some sense is still suffering from what we call “the pizza effect” here.

In what we are going to discuss in the forthcoming pages, one thing is absolutely clear: the notion of Indian philosophy as we know it today is broadly based on the misconceived notions of European-understanding of it and their Indian followers. In this post-colonial world we want to come out of that colonial hangover and explore what Daya Krishna calls “authentic Indian philosophy”. In fact there is nothing “authentic” about any philosophy at all. Philosophy is beyond “authentic” and “not-authentic”. But here we intend to explore how and why were the ideas manipulated; ideas those grew out in ancient and early medieval India as a part of thought process of the intelligence that used the method of expression as the Sanskrit. In this paper I shall be dealing with India philosophy, nay South Asian philosophy, only in its Sanskrit sources because I also believe that Orientalism has also offered an undue advantage to Indian philosophy of only including within its arena the Sanskrit sources, be it Hindu, Buddhist or Jaina. Philosophy written in any other language barring Sanskrit in what we now know as South Asia does not seem to find a place in books on Indian philosophy. Scholars like Daya Krishna and Andrew Nicholson have also felt this concern vacuum. In my discussion with some commoners from India I have often come across the romantic idea that “philosophy in India is hidden in Sanskrit alone” which to me is outrightly unacceptable. This is the result of the Brahmanic hegemony and I plead for the inclusion of the philosophical works written in whatsoever South Asian languages in the main-stream discourse on Indian philosophy. Now getting back to our point of trying to understand how Indian intellectuals were trying to understand their own philosophical systems , I cannot help but quoting Daya Krishna:

The deepest anguish of the Indian intellectual is that he is unrecognized in the West as an equal, or as an intellectual at all. (p. xiv)

We have already known how the ideologies of the minds of colonized people work and what Daya Krishna points out above is in fact the central theme of how colonized Indian mind was working in making its efforts to understand itself through Other’s eyes. One of the dilemmas of Indian intellectuals writing on “their own” philosophy was that they were writing at a time when India was experiencing a strong cultural flux under the British colonial rule. To illustrate my point and also the one made by Daya Krishna above I add from Bhushan and Garfield:

The failure of recognition is tragic. These philosophers wrote in a context of cultural fusion generated by the British colonial rule in India. They were self-consciously writing both as Indian intellectuals for an Indian audience and as participants in a developing global community constructed in part by the British Empire. They pursued Indian philosophy in a language and format that could render it both accessible and acceptable to the Anglophone world abroad. In their attempt to write and to think for both audiences they were taken seriously by neither”. (p. xiv)

In their recently edited volume titled Indian Philosophy in English From Renaissance to Independence Bhushan and Garfield have brought forward to us the Indian authors who played a prominent role in shaping modern India and its understanding of its own philosophy. This anthology of the essays on Indian philosophy was written by those Indian intellectual of the 19th century who “demonstrate that the colonial Indian philosophical communities were important participants in global dialogue, and revealing the roots of contemporary Indian philosophical thought”. This sounds contrary to what Daya Krishna might have to say;

“Anybody who is writing in English is not an Indian philosopher…..What the British produced was a strange species–a stranger in his own country. The Indian mind and sensibility and thinking [during the colonial period] was shaped by an alien civilization. [The British] created a new kind of Indian who was not merely cut off from his civilization, but was educated in a different way. The strangeness of the species is that their terms of reference are the West ….. They put [philosophical problems] in a Western way. This picture of Indian philosophy that has been presented by Radhakrishanan, Hiryanna and others …..[each of whom is an Indian, writing philosophy in English during the colonial period] is not the story of Indian philosophy. We have been fed on the Western presentation of Indian philosophy, which hardly captures the spirit and history of Indian philosophy…..If I were not to know Indian philosophy myself, I would say that [their presentation] is wonderful, that it presents it clearly, with great insight and understanding. Now I know a little Indian philosophy, I say that they did not……They are not concerned with the problems that Indian philosophers were concerned with.”

These words of Daya Krishna are very challenging for a modern student of Indian philosophy. Being himself an adapt in Indian philosophical literatures he knew how slowly and strongly, but deeply and remarkably the Orientalism has transformed the South Asian minds and what can they see today when they look at their own thoughtful literature. Exploring this deep psychological state of loss and recovery of Self under Colonialism, Asis Nandy says;

Colonialism is also a psychological state rooted in earlier forms of social consciousness in both the colonizers and the colonized. It represents a certain cultural continuity and carries a certain cultural baggage……… It also explains why colonialism never seems to end with formal political freedom. As a state of mind, colonialism is an indigenous process released by external forces. Its sources lie deep in the minds of the rulers and the ruled. Perhaps that which begins in the minds of men must also end in the minds of men (p. 2-3).

It might sound like I am getting off the main theme of our paper, but I want to emphasize the fact that Daya Krishna had understood this problem of the “colonized state of mind” where people simply have fossilized their ‘philosophy’ by regarding it as ancient and thus letting it die deep in the past. In other words, what Indian philosophy is today is that one can study it as a subject of past, say history, but not as a subject of present. And this is one of the major problems when we look at Indian philosophy today. I think we must note Chakravarthy’s comments here:

Faced with the task of analyzing developments or social practices in modern India, few if any Indian social scientists or social scientists of India would argue seriously with, say, the thirteenth-century logician Gaṅgeśa or with the grammarian and the linguist philosopher Bhartṛhari (fifth to sixth centuries), or with the tenth-or eleventh-century aesthetician Abhinavagupta. Sad though it is, one result of European colonial rule in South Asia is that the intellectual traditions once unbroken and alive in Sanskrit or Persian or Arabic are now only matters of historical research for most – perhaps all – modern social scientists in the region. They treat these traditions as truly dead, as history” (p. )

For the serious students of Indian philosophy the challenge is to think how it could be brought out from the dead chamber and make it alive by making people think through it. It sounds indeed so ironical that Indian philosophy is often tagged with the expression “it is more of a way of life”, but it has simply remained confined to its death. A good example could be the state of Indian philosophy in Indian universities today. From my personal experience having been a part of a number of Indian universities, I feel that the courses are designed such that students “know” about Indian philosophy, but do not develop an edge to see what it is. Nicholson further adds;

Students in literary theory today, whether in Calcutta or Cambridge, take more inspiration from Aristotle than from Abhinavagupta. If they are acquainted with Indian philosophy at all, it is regarded only as a historical curiosity, not as a vital philosophical tradition (p. 21).

Daya Krishna had a deep realization of the above mentioned fact and he emphasized that the Indian philosophy should not be regarded as something full and final. In addition to this he also raises another problem related to the various schools of thought belonging to different traditions and the individuals who contributed to these schools or traditions. The problem precisely is that we have never thought of looking at for instance Śaṅkara independently from his tradition. Reading Śaṅkara as a representative of the Advaita Vedānta is simply compromising his personal philosophical genius at the cost of the affiliation with his traditional school. Daya Krishna says:

No distinction, therefore, is ever drawn between the thought of an individual thinker and the thought of the school. A school is, in an important sense, an abstraction. It is a logical construction springing out of the writings of a number of thinkers who share a certain similarity of the outlook in tackling similar problems……Basically, this is the reality of the ‘schools’ of Indian philosophy. Yet it is never presented as such. Śāṁkhya, for example, is identified too much with Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s work, or Vedānta with the work of Śaṅkara. But this is due to the confusion between the thought of an individual thinker and the style of thought which he exemplifies and to which he contributes in some manner. All that Saṁkara has written is not strictly Advaita Vedānta. Nor is all that Īśvarakṛṣṇa has written, Sāṁkhya. Unless this is realized, writings on Indian philosophy will continuously do injustice either to the complexity of thought of the individual thinker concerned, or to the uniqueness of the style of thought they are writing about (p. 14).

This and many other problems persist in Indian philosophy because we never explored the historiography of Indian philosophy in detail. This exercise has only started to begin recently with scholars like Richard King and Andrew Nicholson. For someone like me who is based in textual studies of the Sanskrit sources of Indian philosophy, knowing that Arthur Schopenhauer read the Latin translation of the Upaniṣads which had been translated by French writer Anquetil du Perron from the Persian translation of Prince Dara Shikoh entitled Sirre-Akbar (“The Great Secret”) was a shock. It was a shock because my first teacher of Indian philosophy had told me that I should read Arthur Schopenhauer and Paul Deussen if I really wanted to understand Indian philosophy. Paul Deussen who was highly influenced by Schopenhauer and his ideas about Indian philosophy, had its most direct influence of the nineteenth-century German idealism on the young discipline of Indology through his writings particularly on Upaniṣadas. Deussen played an important role in shaping what we today know as Indian philosophy. He regarded Upaniṣads as unambiguously Vedāntic in their outlook and also claimed that the Sāṁkhya was a school that later grew out of the Upaniṣads. He seriously treated Indian philosophy in a comparative way and made philosophical claims based on insights from Eastern and Western philosophy. His widely read translations of the Upaniṣads had an enormous effect in scholarly opinion of Vedānta in the twentieth century, and it was he more than any one else who was responsible for the opinion that Advaita Vedānta was the genuine representation of the Upaniṣads. (Nicholson: p. 134). Here is exactly where we understand the value of Daya Krishna’s “comparative ‘comparative method’” lies. Deussen used a comparative method to understand Indian philosophy and today we understand that his comparative method needs to be looked through an authentic or a more refined comparative method. Nicholson’s comments about Deussen’s approach are worth a note here;

Despite his recognition that India contained a multiplicity of philosophical voices, not just one, through his historical typology he was able to uphold the notion inherited from Schopenhauer of a “concordance of Indian, Greek, and German metaphysics; the world is māyā, is illusion, says Śaṅkara;-it is a world of shadows, not of realities, says Plato;-it is ‘appearance only, not the thing in itself’, says Kant”. This unified vision of the world’s philosophies championed by Deussen became enormously popular in the twentieth century, and its influence is still felt today” (p. 138).

Deussen was constructing “his” understanding of Indian philosophy surrounding Vedānta system alone. He even thought that the “whole Sāṁkhya system is nothing but a result of the denigration of the Vedānta by means of the growth of realistic tendencies” (p. 136). According to him the Yoga and Sāṁkhya were simply the lower stages of development of the highly polished philosophy namely the Vedānta. We will see later in the paper how his ideas were solely based on the Sarvadraśanasaṃgraha of Mādhava, a fourteenth-century Advaita Vadāntin.

Coming to another issue that Ninian Smart has raised is related to the problem of categorization of the Indian philosophy into the āstika and nāstika schools. This is another example that makes us think how eclectic the categorization of Indian philosophy is. I think this is an important issue and there are many examples one can offer about the inconsistent ways in which this categorization of Indian philosophy has been implements. This concept was vaguely present in the early Sanskrit texts like the Mahābhārata and the Buddhacarita of Aśvaghośa, but the present classification was of central significance to the late medieval doxographers. Uniquely enough a sixth century Tamil text titled Maṇimekalai seems to offer such an idea that culminates in regarding the Buddhist logic as the final school. This text has been completely overlooked by historians of Indian philosophy because it was not written in Sanskrit (p. 149). Haribhadra Suri (eighth century), a Jaina author enumerates the six schools of Indian philosophy as Buddhism, Nyāya, Sāṁkhya, Jaina, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā (p. 155). Later, the most famous doxography was composed by the fourteenth century scholar Mādhavācārya in his famous text titled the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha. He discussed fifteen schools of Indian philosophy in this book using a hierarchical order starting from the materialists and culminating in the Vedānta. Being himself a Vedāntin he propounded that all schools of Indian philosophy culminate in Vedānta. In his opinion only the Advaita Vedānta was the authentic Vedānta, and he regarded the other schools of Vedāntas as the nāstika schools. It was Mādhava’s popular classification of āstika and nāstika that Deussen had inherited, explains Nicholson;

Although it has been praised in the past for the clarity with which it presents philosophical doctrines, for my purposes it is most interesting for its ideological slant, and the techniques and the dominance of Advaita philosophy in the modern period that the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha has often been considered an accurate depiction of the Indian philosophical schools, so much so that Deussen’s volume on India in his Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie is largely based on Mādhava’s text (p. 159).

In conclusion I think in the post-colonial world today we have started realizing where the flaws of our approach and understanding a colonial ideology lies and the comparative method as shows above is a remedy if applied carefully makes us realize that we study Indian philosophy in disguise. In the recent times the philosophers like Karl H. Potter and Alex Watson have advocated for the study of Indian philosophy as Indian philosophy and I think I agree with them in the sense that we should first try to understand the native philosophical systems of any culture without comparing them with the systems those we may already know of. And only after we try to learn the basic skeleton of a system should we we using the comparative method. I would prefer calling the former “the internal comparative method” and the latter “the external comparative method”. In the context of Sanskrit sources it becomes an imperative task to go back to the original Sanskrit texts of Indian philosophy and not depending solely on the understanding of the translations. The time also demands revised translations of the important Sanskrit texts in Indian philosophy so that we cannot be mislead by the Deussenian approach.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. 1. Daya Krishna, (1989) Comparative Philosophy: What is it and What it Ought to Be in Interpreting Across Boundaries. Larson and Deutsch, eds. MLBD, Delhi.
2. 2. Halbfass, W., (1990) India and Europe, An Essay on Philosophical Understanding, MLBD, Delhi.
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4. 4. Bhushan, Nalini and Garfield, Jay. L., (eds.) (2010) Indian Philosophy in English – from Renaissance to Independence, OUP, New York.
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7. 7. Krishna, Daya., (1991) Indian Philosophy – A Counter Perspective, OUP, Delhi.
8. 8. Larson, Gerald,., (1989) Introduction: The ‘Age-Old Distinction Between the Same and the Other Interpreting Across Boundaries. Larson and Deutsch, eds. MLBD, Delhi.
9. 9. Nandy, Ashis., (1983) The Intimate Enemy – Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism, OUP, Delhi.
10. 10. Nicholson, Andrew, J., (2010) Unifying Hinduism – Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, Columbia University Press: New York.
11. 11. Breckenridge, Carol. A. and van der Veer, Peter (1993) Orientalism and the Post-Colonial Predicament – Perspectives in South Asia, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
12. 12. Raghuramaraju, (2006) Debates in Indian Philosophy – Classical, Colonial, and Contemporary, OUP, Delhi.
13. 13. Pappu, Rama Rao, (1982) Indian Philosophy : Past and Future, MLBD, Delhi.
14. 14. Smart, Ninian, (1989). The Analogy of Meaning and the Tasks of Comparative Philosophy, Interpreting Across Boundaries. Larson and Deutsch, eds. MLBD, Delhi.

।। नागराजविरचितं काश्मीरवैभवम् ।।

 

श्रीचक्रोपरिसंस्थितां सुरनुतां श्रीराजराजेश्वरीं

श्रीविद्याजननीं शिवां त्रिनयनां कारुण्यवारांनिधिम् ।

श्रीकाश्मीरपुराधिवासनिरतां श्रीकण्ठचेतोहरां

श्रीवाणीपरिसेवितां पुरहरां वन्दे महादेवताम् ।। 1 ।।

सुमंगलाभालविभूषणांका विभाति रेखेव सुकुंकुमस्य  ।

काश्मीरभूः कुंकुमजन्मभूमिर्दिश्युत्तरस्यां भारताख्यखण्डे ।। 2 ।।

अनादिकालादपि कश्यपस्य कृपेव या भाति हिमालयाग्रे ।

गीर्वाणवाणीकवितामयी सा काश्मीरभूमिर्जयति प्रशस्ता ।। 3 ।।

यत्र द्राक्षा मधुरमधुरं दिव्यधारां प्रसूते

नेत्रानन्दं विदधति तथा कुंकुमं केसराश्च ।।

शैवाद्वैतं हृदयसुखमाप्यातनोति प्रभूतं

काश्मीरास्ते भरतवसुधाभूषणानीव भान्ति ।। 4 ।।

यत्र स्त्रीणां लसति मधुरा चारुगीर्वाणवाणी

वाणी साक्षान्निवसति मनोहारिणी सर्वशक्तिः ।

शक्तेस्तत्त्वं भुवनविदितं द्योतते नव्यभासा-

भासाख्यो वा जयति जनताचिद्विकासोऽभिवादः ।।5 ।।

द्राक्षाकुंकुमकेसरैर्विलसिता विद्वदजनप्रेयसी

शैवाद्वैतसुधाभिवृष्टिविकसद् ज्ञानांकुरोल्लासिनी ।

वाणीपीठविजृम्भिता जनमनश्शान्तिप्रदा निर्मला

काश्मीराख्यमहामही विजयते सौन्दर्यशोभान्विता ।। 6 ।।

मुनिरभिनवगुप्तो बिल्हणः कल्हणश्च

ध्वनिरसगुणतो ये काव्भेदान्वितेनुः ।

सरसकविवरेण्यः क्षेमपूर्वेन्द्रनामा

धवलतमयशस्काः सन्ति काश्मीरकास्ते ।। 7 ।।

निखिलकविसमूहो रम्यकाश्मीरजातः

रुचिरतमवचोभिः संस्कृतैः काव्यवृद्धिम् ।

अभिनवतररीत्या संविधाय प्रशस्तिं

निरुपमनिरवद्यां प्राप्तवान्पूर्णमत्र ।। 8 ।।

रसभरितफलानां जन्मभूमिः प्रभूतं

रससहितकृतीनां सृष्टिकर्त्री शतानाम् ।

रसिकजनसुखानां मूलहेतुर्बहूनां

सरससरसिजातानां भाति काश्मीरभूमिः ।। 9 ।।

काश्मीरजातकवितारसबिन्दुसिक्तं

गीर्वाणवाङ्मयमतीवं चमत्कृतं हि ।

बुद्धेर्विकासममलं सुखमात्मनश्च

केषां ददाति न वरं सकृदप्यधीतम् ।। 10 ।।

न भारतसमः खण्डो न संस्कृतसमं वचः ।

न काश्मीरसमो देशो न तत्काव्यसमं भुविः ।। 11 ।।

यत्कारुण्यलवैनैव जगदुन्मीलति क्षणात् ।

तां वन्दे शारदां देवीं काश्मीरपुरवासिनीम् ।। 12 ।।

 

 

Kṣemendra: Three Satires from Ancient Kashmir

A New English Translation by A.N.D. Haksar

“Corruption in government, hypocrisy in religion, avaricious greed in business: these are some of the targets of Kshemendra’s one-thousand-year-old satires. So are superstition and sexual obsession, anomalies in education and a host of other ills of the time. Written by a celebrated name in classical Sanskrit literature, these little known exposés of fourteenth-century society find resonance in the Indian subcontinent even today.”

http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/en/content/three-satires-ancient-kashmir

Centre for Research in the Historiography and Intellectual Culture of Kashmir

Centre for Research in the Historiography and Intellectual Culture of Kashmir

Kashmiri Film – “Habba Khatoon”

Book Review: Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir: Essays in Memory of Pandit Dinanath Yaksh

Book Review: Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir: Essays in Memory of Pandit Dinanath Yaksh

Name of Book : Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir: Essays in Memory of Pandit Dinanath Yaksh
Edited by : Mrinal Kaul and Ashok Aklujkar, New Delhi & Jammu
Published by : DK Print world and The Harabhatta Shastri Indological Research Institute.
Price : Rs. 1250; US$ 62.50.Pages : xxxiii + 609.
Review by : Raj Nath Bhat, Professor, Department of Linguistics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.

Sanskrit scholarship suffered a sudden break and a loss of momentum when Persian came to occupy her place as the language of administration and royalty in the sub-continent. The tradition of a continuous flow of commentaries and treatises on earlier knowledge texts either slowed down or stopped. Even the preservation of knowledge texts became an uphill task. The destruction of libraries added a new dimension to the colossal loss of the knowledge and tradition of a civilization. A revival of Sanskrit learning made a second beginning during the British rule and a huge corpus of manuscripts have been procured and preserved.

For over two millennia, ‘Sanskrit-Kashmir’ has been a major centre of learning and scholarship in almost all branches of knowledge. During the last century or more Kashmir Shaivism and aesthetics has engaged scholars’ attention in a noticeable way, but very little has been done to explore the linguistic traditions of the region. The present Volume brought out in memory of Pandit Dinanath Yaksh – one of the doyens of Sanskrit scholarship of the twentieth century – is a noble, rich, refreshing and scholarly tribute to the great Pundit. The Volume comprises twenty-one essays authored by nineteen eminent scholars including such stalwarts as George Cardona, Johannes Bronkhorst, VN Jha, Raffaele Torella, C. Rajendran, P. Visalakshy, Bettina Baumer, HC Patyal among others. Mrinal Kaul, one of the editors – has given a thoughtful introduction to the linguistic traditions of Kashmir, besides providing, in the appendices, a very rich list of Sanskrit manuscripts from Kashmir that are available across the country and abroad.

The world of scholarship has maintained for quite some time now that Patanjali, the author of Mahabhashya, was a native of Gonda- east-central India, but Ashok Aklujkar in the present Volume argues that Patanjali was a native of the region between Madra and Punjab i.e. Kashmir. Despite being a grammatical text, Mahabhashya for several centuries occupied a pride of place with the kings as well as scholars in Kashmir. The rulers ensured continuation of its study which was linked to the welfare of the region and royalty. The Mahabhashya provides ample geographical details that can relate it to Kashmir. Aklujkar’s meticulously worked out essays cover nearly two hundred pages of the Volume.

Of the eight grammatical schools of ancient India, namely Indra, Kashakrtsna, Apishali, Shaktayana, Panini, Amara and Chandra, the Paninian grammatical thought has pervaded the linguistic scholarship in Kashmir and there have been scholars who went on to modify, reinterpret, even differ from the dominant Paninian tradition on several occasions. Rajatarangini testifies to the fact that “Kashmir has played a key role in the preservation of the commentarial tradition associated with the Mahabhashya” ( p.278). Two kinds of Paninian grammarians co-existed in Kashmir- the orthodox who followed Patanjali and Bhartrihari rigorously, and free thinkers who proposed altogether different interpretations of Astadhyaya where this seemed useful. Udbhata (8th cent.CE) belonged to the latter class. Sadly, the free thinkers could not last longer and their texts were subsequently lost. Katantra, a pedagogical grammar of Sanskrit, introduced by Sharvavarman shows a very strong dependence on Panini and Katyayana despite differing from Astadhyaya in its treatment of some phonological rules and derivational processes. Uvata, a predecessor of Mahidhara, for the first time makes a distinction between Shiksha texts and Pratishakhyas- the former is a text of phonetics and the latter that of phonology. Chandra vyakarana does not discuss Vedic Sanskrit, hence the Vedic portion of Panini is absent in it. Chandra vyakarana and Katantra have impacted Kashika in a significant way. Kashika is believed to be a joint work of the king Jayaditya and his minister Vamana and it is an “excellent aid for understanding the pithy sutras of Panini” ( p.560). The grammatical thought pervades monistic Shaivism in a very subtle way. In Trika singular, dual and plural numbers are analogous to Shiva, Shakti, and nara respectively (p.215). Shaivas do not believe in any unrelated components of a sentence. For the mall syntax is related through the agent (p. 468). Utpaladeva, a disciple of Somananda, in his masterpiece Ishwara pratyabhijnakarika overwhelmingly appropriates Bhartrhari’s epistemology to oppose the Buddhist notion of depersonalized universe made up of discrete and discontinuous realities, and to establish the Shaiva doctrine of absolutely unitary universe. The strong influence of Paninian thought can be gauged from the fact that in the last quarter of the nineteenth century Pandit Ishwara Kaula authored the first ever grammar of Kashmiri in Sanskrit which was published by the Asiatic Society under the guidance of Sir GA Grierson.

In her Foreword to the Volume, Kapila Vatsyayan rightly observes that the vigorous intellectual tradition of Kashmir in varied fields exhibits an interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary epistemological base. She believes that the Volume shall persuade scholars in future to undertake elaborate analyses of texts and commentaries from Kashmir preserved in different parts of India and abroad. The Volume indeed provides ample material for researchers to be motivated and persuaded to undertake research on a massive scale on the philosophical and linguistic heritage of the subcontinent- Buddhist, Vaishnava, Jain, Shaiva etc. I wish the editors bring out a series of Volumes in the years to come where all schools of thought get plenty of space and exposure. The editors deserve all admiration and praise for conceiving and subsequently working out a Volume of such superb merit and scholarship.

The publishers deserve a word of admiration too for the care and attention with which they have brought it out. I could find just one singular error in the whole text on p. 30, para 1, line four classifie as in place of classifies.

SOURCE:   http://ikashmir.net/rnbhat/12.html

Join Kashmir Studies Discussion Group

We welcome you all to the group titled “Kashmir Studies” that was launched to create a common platform for Eastern and Western, traditional and modern scholars, professors and graduate students for discussing and exchanging their academic study and research about any aspects of the Ancient and Medieval Kashmir. We also look forward debating on various academic perspectives about Ancient and Medieval Kashmir through it’s source materials in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and Kashmiri languages. The title of the group should not be confused with the Saiva studies alone, but we are aiming to look at a broader intellectual history of Kashmir from the time immemorial to our own times.

I will make it sure that no non-academic persons join this group who usually tend to waste time of academicians. Generally all the members should be affiliates of an academic institute or a research body or could be emeritus or retired professors. Exceptionally we can also have amongst us some independent research scholars of advanced academic caliber.

Please follow the links below to join the group. I am hoping that this platform will prove useful to all of us by having genuine discussions on Kashmirian Studies in general.  Please feel free to exchange your thoughts with us. Looking forward to read your comments, suggestions and questions.

Yours sincerely,

Mrinal Kaul

(Moderator)

http://groups.google.com/group/kashmirian-saiva-studies?hl=en

A Fresh Review of the “Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir” (2011).

By Professor Saroja Bhate (Former Professor of Sanskrit, University of Pune; Former Secretary, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune) email: <saroja@bhates.net>

Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir : Essays in Memory of Pandit Dinanath Yaksha, Mrinal Kaul & Ashok Aklujkar (eds.), DK Printworld (P) Ltd., F-52, Bali Nagar, New Delhi 110015. Web-site: dkprintworld.com. First edition year : 2008. xxxiii + 609 pp. Bibliographic Details : Appendicies ; Indices. 

“Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir” edited by Mrinal Kaul and Ashok Aklujkar is a very appropriate tribute to the memory of Pandit Dinanath Yaksha, “the towering figure of traditional learning in Kashmir”, whose main field of study was linguistics. It is a testimony in letters to the multifaceted Kashmiri scholarship, to its profound depth as well as to its ingenuity. As Kapila Vatsyayan pointed out in her forward, Kashmir’s contribution to the study of language was not paid due attention and the present volume has fulfilled the desideratum.

The Volume contains 21 papers by renowned scholars on different aspects of language studied and discussed by Kashmiri Pandits through the ages. Even a cursory glance at the table of contents reveals the vast range of approaches with which the phenomenon of language was examined in Kashmir. Here we get a glimpse into the world of diversified insights into the world of words. The Volume opens with a life-sketch of Pandit Dinanath Yaksa and introduction by Mrinal Kaul, one of the editors. The introduction itself is a well-studied document on the history of the development of grammatical tradition in Kashmir. The introduction ends with valuable directions and suggestions for future research which provide useful guidelines for prospective researchers. Three profound essays by Ashok Aklujkar are focused on the issue of Kashmir as the provenance of Patañjali, the greatest among the three sages of Pāṇinian tradition, though each one of them elaborates a single, related point. Aklujkar has, following the style of a traditional Sanskrit Pandit, presented first a mighty pūrvapakṣa and then a mightier uttarapakṣa. His view of Kashmir as the domicile of Patañjali is based on the following arguments: 1. There are references in Sanskrit texts which show that Kashmir tradition of learning attached great importance to the study of Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya not only as an object of academic achievement but also for good governance. 2. Gonardīya, one of the epithets of Patañjali is a corrupt form of a Gonandīya derived from Gonanda which is the name of a founding figure in the area of governance for the Kashmirians. 3. Nàgas were venerated in Kashmir and Patañjali was worshipped as the incarnation of the divine serpent, śeṣa. 4. The existing manuscripts of the Mahābhāṣya probably go back to a manuscript written in Kashmir. Aklujkar has spared no pains in proving his point with his logical acumen accompanied by a rich score of citations establishing a special connection between Kashmir and Patañjali. Notwithstanding his application of perfect research methodology and higher textual criticism we have to wait until a conclusive evidence presents itself to put a stamp on his thesis. However, all the three essays by Aklujkar certainly convey the hidden message “that in the highly troubled state of contemporary Kashmir we should, regardless of how unrealistic it may seem at present, aim at creating a situation in which MB (Mahābhāṣya) expertise again begins to flourish” (p. 87).

Estella Del Bon and Vincenzo Vergiani have, in their essay on the treatment of present tense in the Kāśmīraśabdāmṛtam, a grammar of Kashmiri in Pāṇinian style, have tried to show, on the basis of their study, though confined to a limited section of the grammar, how the grammar of Kashmiri represents `an impressive intellectual breakthrough’ (p.224) by achieving `the unprecedented grammar of a “vernacular” language’ (p. 224). Use of the Pāṇinian model in writing grammars of regional languages is not uncommon in the history of Indian grammatical literature. However, here we have, for the first time, a complete grammar of a vernacular composed by using Pāṇinian terminology and technique to some extent. This study opens, in fact, a new chapter in the study of Pāṇini as a model. It further underscores the invincible character of the Pāṇinian model of grammar.

In Kashmir the influence of Pāṇini transcended linguistic area and exerted itself on the philosophical deliberations. Application of some of the Pāṇinian grammatical categories in the argument on certain philosophical issues by Kashmiri Pandits of the past has been a topic of the essays by Bettine Bäumer, David Peter Lawrence and Raffaele Torella. These essays represent well studied documents illustrating how Pāṇinian grammatical concepts are pressed into service by the philosophers of Kashmir. Kashmir emerges from the two essays by Johannes Bronkhorst as a thriving centre in the past, of both, orthodox as well as non-orthodox schools of interpretation of Pāṇini. His observation, namely, that “Kashmir may have saved the now orthodox tradition of Pāṇinian interpretation” is based, mainly, on the interpretation of the well-known set of verses at the end of the second kāṇḍa of Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari which describes the history of the downfall and revival of the tradition of the Mahābhāṣya studied. According to him the new interpretation of the words parvata and dākṣiṇātya in the verses offered by him leads to the conclusion that “the Mahābhāṣya had survived only in the form of the book south of Kashmir, whereas the oral tradition was still alive in Kashmir” (p. 277). Puṇyarāja, the traditional commentator explains, however, parvatāt as referring to a part of a mountain range in Shreelanka and refers to a grammar composed by Rāvaṇa, a mythical personality, which was handed over to Candra and Vasurata by a spirit. Apparently, this mythical interpretation hardly makes any sense. It cannot be, however, dispensed with.

In his second essay Bronkhorst presents Udbhaṭa as a non-orthodox grammarian interpreting Pāṇini independent of Mahābhāṣya. His observation, namely, that Udbhaṭa represented the group of “Pāṇinian freethinkers” (p. 298) is interesting. It is, however, hard to state with conviction about a tradition (if at all) which is lost. Geroge Cardona has elaborately dealt with the issue of omission of certain sections of grammar in the Kātantravyākaraṇa and argued that this omission is due not to the need for brevity alone, but it can be traced back to the theoretical discussions that took place among the grammarians of different schools including the Pāṇinian school. Oliver Hann’s essay on the three Kashmirian texts on Sanskrit syntax has illuminated a so far unknown corner of the tradition of linguistics in Kashmir, namely, the Samanvaya texts. Hann has, in fact, carried further the task, already commenced by Slaje, by giving a detailed account of the three Samanvaya texts with reference to the nature and contents of the manuscripts as well as their interdependence. The essay points out that the authors of these texts dealt with the whole range of possible syntactic relations within a sentence as well as between sentences. Hann has also recorded the terminological deviations from Pāṇinian tradition found in these texts, which show some influence of the Kātantra tradition.

Essays by V. N. Jha, S. D. Joshi, Nirmala Kulkarni, H. C. Patyal, Vincenzo Vergiani and P. Visalakshy deal with specific issues in the works of the linguistics of the past such as Jayantabhaṭṭa, Kaiyaṭa, Uvaṭa and Helarāja who are believed to have belonged to Kashmir. All these scholars have brought to light certain new aspects of the works of these authors. In his essay Malhar Kulkarni has presented a close scrutiny of a part of the Śāradā manuscripts of the Kāśikāvṛtti and has concluded that the Kashmir tradition of Kāśikā manuscripts represents a shorter version and that further study of the Kāśikā manuscripts might lead one to claim that Kashmir preserved the ur-text of Kāśikā. The essay is based on a careful study of the Śāradā manuscripts and has thrown a challenge before the students of Pāṇinian tradition, particularly of Kāśikā. The three appendices giving details about the select manuscripts lists followed by authors-and-works lists constitute very important data in the form of a corpus of texts from Kashmir dealing with linguistics. They have enhanced the value of the volume as a research aid. They are, in fact, an invitation to prospective students and scholars to revive the tradition of linguistic studies in Kashmir.

The volume is thus rich with scholarly discussions pertaining to various aspects including historical, textual, inter-textual, exegetical and also pertaining to manuscriptology. Mrinal Kaul, the budding and promising scholar deserves great compliments not only for stringing together valuable research contributions from specialists but also for giving a detailed outline for further research. Further generations of research scholars will, I am sure, remain grateful to the editors for providing guidelines for further research in linguistics. Lastly, the volume has succeeded in bringing Kashmir on the Indological map and in drawing attention to the fact that it still remains a fertile soil for studies in linguistics.

Can I be Personal – VII (Lost Battle)

Lost Battle

❦

There is a cry hidden beneath my grin

I lost myself when it came to win

The dismal dungeon I am in

Losing light and gaining grim

I came in search of intellectual stimulation

And ended up entering dire depression

Contracting and hiding within 

The ghastly sluttish void  around me

My own self hounds me

In pursuit of what I was and what I am

Dim, slow and low runs the beat

Celebrating its own defeat

I tightened my own noose 

Thinking I can never lose

But I did

My own battle 

Bereft of an army and a shield

I died in despair with no yield

❧