Reading and comparing theories on sentence-meaning (part 1)

The Mīmāṃsaka Śālikanātha is Prabhākara’s main interpreter, yet he is also an original thinker. How much of Śālikanātha’s anvitābhidhāna theory for sentence signification is already there in Prabhākara’s Bṛhatī? We will find out reading the Bṛhatī and comparing it with Śālikanātha’s commentary thereon and with Śālikanātha’s elaboration of the topic in his independent treatise, the Vākyārthamātṛkā, during this workshop.

Dividing words in transcription

I am often busy correcting my students’ essays and I often notice, when they decide to transcribe Sanskrit texts, that they have no idea about where to introduce white spaces. Hence, I thought of explaining it here, in case other students may need help with that.

  1. Be clear about what you are doing: You are transcribing a text from one writing system to another. It does not make sense to retain in the new writing systems peculiarities which only make sense in the original one.
  2. Therefore, you don’t need to reproduce in Roman alphabet the white spaces of the Devanagari (or of any other South Asian alphabet). For instance, mām eva, not māmeva, although the Devanagari would have मामेव.
  3. Just use spaces between words.
  4. What is a word? Use the Grammarians’ definition “whatever has a verbal or nominal ending” and add that the ending has to be visible (no lopa admitted).
  5. Accordingly, you don’t need a white space within the elements of a compound. For instance, kṛṣṇacaraṇāravindayugalaṃ vande and not kṛṣṇa caraṇa aravinda yugalaṃ vande.
  6. What about en-dashes, you might ask? You can use among elements of compounds, in order to make the life of your audience easier, especially in the case of longer compounds. Just be consistent and remember that the actual ending of the members of a compound are not visible. For instance, śrī anavadhikānantaprītisahitā can be transcribed as anavadhika-ananta-prīti-sahitā, but NOT as anavadhikā-ananta-prīti-sahitā.
  7. Some authors use conventions to show that a sandhi has taken place. For instance, anavadhikânanta, meaning that there has been a sandhi of a+a.

Good luck with your essays and transcriptions!

Is a Christian scholar better equipped to understand and translate early Christian texts? Yes and no

Or, better: Is a culturally Christian scholar better equipped to understand and translate early Christian texts?

Let me stipulate that “culturally Christian” denotes a scholar who was educated in a Christian milieu and knows Christianity from the inside. She might be more or less devout at the present point of her life. This stipulation is needed in order to avoid deciding about the inner life of people, which is, by definition, imperceptible and therefore undecidable.

Now, a culturally Christian scholar surely has some advantages over a non-Christian one, insofar as she will immediately recognise what is meant by short hints in a text. She will probably also be more likely to apply the principle of charity which —in my humble opinion— is a needed approach to the study of ancient philosophy.

However, a non-Christian scholar will have the opposite advantage, namely he will not try to understand small hints found in the text, because he will not immediately see them against the background of their successive evolution.

For instance, let us take the controversial problem of whether Jesus defined himself as God in the synoptic Gospels. The synoptic Gospels, unlike the Gospel of John, do not contain clear statements in this regard. Jesus rather defines himself as “the son of Man” (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου). A culturally Christian scholar knows that Jesus is believed to be the second person of God (no matter how sure she is in her faith) and will therefore interpret the ambiguous statements of Jesus in the Gospels according to this knowledge. By contrast, a non-Christian scholar will be freer to think that perhaps Jesus was not at all claiming to be God in the synoptic Gospels.

Hence the question: Given the same degree of scholarship (and assuming that this can be ascertained), should we prefer scholars who are culturally close to the texts they are going to study and translate? In the case of texts which need to be approached by a team of scholars, should we prefer them to be ALL culturally close to the texts?