Within a discussion on the sphoṭa in the Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Veṅkaṭanātha adds a quote he ascribes to the Mahābhārata. The quote is found in a different form in other printed works by Veṅkaṭanātha and in the various manuscripts of the Seśvaramīmāṃsā. However, I could not identify anything similar in the Mahābhārata itself.
The SM 1902 edition reads:
sphoṭas tvaṃ varṇasaṃghasthaḥ iti mahābhāratavacanam
The Mahābhārata statement “You are the sphoṭa, which is present in the conjunction of phonemes”.
I am editing a portion of the Seśvaramīmāṃsā on a linguistic controversy about what is the vehicle of meaning. As often the case in Indian philosophy, an upholder of the sphoṭa theory speaks and says that the sphoṭa is the vehicle of the meaning, as hinted at by our own intuition that we understand a meaning śabdāt, i.e., from a unitary linguistic unit, not from various phonemes. The opponent replies saying that no independent sphoṭa exists independently and above the single phonemes, like no unitary assembly (pariṣad) exists independently of the single people composing it. The Sphoṭavādin replies that phonemes are unable to convey the meaning either one by one or collectively (because they never exist as a collective entity, given that they disappear right after having been pronounced.
Following the approval of the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts”, the University of Hamburg invites applications for 55 new positions for research associates. The initial fixed term is three years. The application deadline is 16 November 2018.
Further information and calls for applications: https://www.written-artefacts.uni-hamburg.de/en/vacant-positions.html
For a lucky coincidence, two long term projects of mine reached completion almost at the same time.
You can therefore read on the 2017 issue of the Journal of World Philosophies the (Open Access) papers on philosophy of language which are the result of a project led by Malcolm Keating and myself (see here). I am grateful to the journal’s editor, Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach for her help and support throughout the process.
On the 2017 issue Kervan you can read the lead papers on epistemology of testimony, printed cultures and conceptualisation of sexuality which are the result of the 2013 Coffee Break Conference held in Turin and edited by Daniele Cuneo, Camillo Formigatti and myself. I am grateful to the journal’s editor, Mauro Tosco for his help and support throughout the process.
Enjoy and please let me know your comments and criticisms!
In the first post of this series, I discussed the importance of studying Mīmāṃsā within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and especially within the work of Veṅkaṭanātha. This post focusses on the importance of a specific work by Veṅkaṭanātha, namely his Seśvaramīmāṃsā (henceforth SM).
In the last two months, I have been busy deciphering two manuscripts of the Seśvaramīmāṃsā by Veṅkaṭanātha. One of them is in Telegu and the other in Grantha. The first one is a clearly recent one, written on paper in a sort of notebook and dated to 1893 CE. The other one has no colophon at all. Both end abruptly.
As part of my current project, I am collating some South Indian manuscripts. So far, I have been collating a recent Telegu transcript on paper and a Grantha one on palm leaf.
1. At the end of the training phase, I was able to collate one folio per day of the former (written in a modern notebook with 38 lines per page). This means that I will be able to collate it in full in 66 days, almost three working months. Supposing that I just register variants in a file which has already the text I am editing, I will probably save one third of the time, so let me settle for two months but the last pages of the manuscript contain an unpublished text, so that these needed to be collated anyway.
2. I just measured the time I need for the Grantha palm leaf manuscript after the training phase: 90 minutes for each side of a folio. Since the manuscript has 58 folios, this means I will need 174 hours to collate it, which means 43,5 working days (I can only collate for about 4–5 hours a day, since I cannot focus for longer than one hour on collating and I need to do something else in between), which means little more than two months. If I forget about a separate collation and just insert variants, I will probably need less, perhaps one month and ten days.
3. Next I will collate a damaged palm-leaf manuscript in Grantha containing 35 folios, which will take me little more than one month or two and a half weeks.
4. Then, a further palm-leaf manuscript in Grantha counting 153 folios, which amounts to little less than six months or four months.
5. Then, a last palm-leaf manuscript in Grantha counting 22 folios, which amounts to less than one month or two weeks.
6.–7. Last, I have a two transcripts on paper, written in Grantha in a modern notebooks, summing up to 638 pages. This risks to mean that I will have to invest 4 years on them (!). They contain an unpublished text and the collation cannot be avoided in their case.
This being said, collating in full is better than registering variants (since the latter process inclines one to read what one has in the model instead of reading the manuscript afresh) and preparing critical editions is better than accepting published texts uncritically. Still, it is extremely time-demanding (unless one enjoys collating and does it as her hobby). How important must be the text in order for a scholar to engage in a critical edition? How flawed the edition, in case of published texts? How important must be the text in order to engage in the collation of several manuscripts of an unpublished work?
Part of the problem lies also in the fact that some answers are only found while working on the manuscript(s) and the edition(s), so that an a priori answer is impossible. Thus, I test each manuscript by:
What are your strategies? When do you decide that collating is worthwile?
(apologies again for the lack of diacritics, I am still at home)
After several years, I could finally hold grasp of the editio princeps of Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā. I found it in the University library in Kiel (too good that German Indology has managed to acquire so many important books!), in a volume collecting other works (see below), presumably because they were all parts of the same series.