Philology and Criticism: A Guide to Mahābhārata Textual Criticism (Cultural, Historical and Textual Studies of South Asian Religions, 1184)

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. Cover Front Matter Half-title Series information Title page Dedication Copyright information Table of contents List of illustrations Foreword Preface Acknowledgements Prologue Chapter Int-Epi Chapter Summaries Introduction: Ad Fontes, Non Ultra Fontes! About This Book Why a Critical Edition? What Is a Critical Edition? How to Interpret the Critical Edition Conclusion Chapter One: Arguments for a Hyperarchetypal Inference The Normative Redaction Hypothesis Normative Redaction, Archetype and Original Criticism: Higher and Lower The Argument from Spread and the Argument from Resilience The Argument from Empty Reference The Argument from Loss Understanding “Contamination” Chapter Two: Reconstructing the Source of Contamination Contamination: Hyperarchetypal and Extra-stemmatic Identifying the Source of Contamination The Argument from Uncertainty The Argument from Oral Source The Argument from (Postulated) Antiquity and the Argument from Ideology Chapter Three: Confusions Regarding Classification Classification: Typological and Genealogical Determining Filiation Eliminating Witnesses The Argument from Brevity and the Argument from False Premises The Argument from a Misapprehension Concerning Classification (Schriftartprämisse) The Argument from Extensive Contamination The Argument from Independent Recensions The Argument from Expertise Introduction: AD Fontes, Non Ultra Fontes! About This Book Why a Critical Edition? What Is a Critical Edition? How to Interpret the Critical Edition Conclusion Notes Chapter One Arguments for a Hyperarchetypal Inference The Normative Redaction Hypothesis Normative Redaction, Archetype and Original Criticism: Higher and Lower The Argument from Spread and the Argument from Resilience The Argument from Empty Reference The Argument from Loss Notes Chapter Two Reconstructing the Source of Contamination Understanding “Contamination” Contamination: Hyperarchetypal and Extra- stemmatic Identifying the Source of Contamination The Argument from Uncertainty The Argument from Oral Source The Argument from (Postulated) Antiquity and the Argument from Ideology Notes Chapter Three Confusions Regarding Classification Classification: Typological and Genealogical Determining Filiation Eliminating Witnesses The Argument from Brevity and the Argument from False Premises The Argument from a Misapprehension Concerning Classification (Schriftartprämisse) Classification, Choice of Sigla, Elimination of Manuscripts and Construction of a Stemma Content as the Real Basis for Classification, Descent from Ancestors, Ideal Types and Divergence from the Norm The Argument from Extensive Contamination The Argument from Independent Recensions The Argument from Expertise Notes Conclusion: Textual Criticism and Indology Notes Epilogue Notes End Matter Appendices 1. The Volumes of the Critical Edition 2. Editions Besides the Critical Edition 3. English Translations of the Mahābhārata 4. How to Use the Critical Apparatus 5. How Editors Reconstructed the Reading of the Archetype 6. How to Cite the MahAbhArata 7. The Extent of the Mahābhārata’s Books 8. The 18 Parvans and 100 Upaparvans of the Mahābhārata 9. The Arrangement of the Parvans in the Southern Recension 10. Other Narrative Divisions 11. Sukthankar’s Table of the Manuscripts Collated for the Ādiparvan 12. Extent of the Sārada Codex for the Ādiparvan 13. Abbreviations and Diacritical Signs Used in the Critical Edition 14. Abbreviated Concordance of the Principal Editions of the Mahābhārata 15. Stemmata for the Different Parvans of the Mahābhārata 16. Commentaries on the Mahābhārata Philosophical Affiliations and Milieu Aim in Reading the Mahābhārata Extent of the Commentaries and Published Editions Finding Guide to the Commentaries 17. Commentaries on the Bhagavadgītā 18. The Use of Venn Diagrams to Depict Manuscript Relationships Glossary Annotated Bibliography The Mahābhārata Critical Edition Editors’ Introductions from the Mahābhārata Critical Edition Reviews of the Mahābhārata Critical Edition Editions Other than the Critical Edition Translations (Including Reviews) of the Critical Edition or the Vulgate Problems in Mahābhārata Textual Criticism Mahābhārata Commentators, Commentators’ Editions and Chronological Surveys Commentators’ Editions of the Bhagavadgītā Introductions to Textual Criticism Advanced Works in Textual Criticism Problems in Textual Criticism/Computer-Aided Analysis Theoretical Perspectives, Romance Philology and Italian Textual Criticism Discussions of the Mahābhārata Critical Edition Discussions of the Mahābhārata and the Mahābhārata Tradition Overviews of Mahābhārata Scholarship Overviews of Bhagavadgītā Scholarship Philosophical Interpretations Oral Epics, Metrical and Statistical Analysis, Search for the Heroic Epic Histories and Historical Reconstructions Indian History, Epigraphy and Manuscript Culture Textual Traditions and Editions of Texts Other than the Mahābhārata German Scholarship/ Errors in Textual Criticism The Background of the Mahābhārata Critical Edition/Biographic Sources Philology, Textuality and the Value of Textual Criticism Additional Sources Notes Index "In the early twentieth century, one of the largest attempts at producing a critical edition of any text in any language got underway in India. Headed by V.S. Sukthankar, editors at the Bhandarkar Institute proposed producing a critical edition of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, a text that in its vulgate or popular edition spans nearly one hundred thousand verses. This book is the story of what this critical edition tells us about the science of textual criticism, and how that science was used (and sometimes abused). Against the critics of the project, this book undertakes a defense of the critical edition. It demonstrates that the edition, far from dismissing the various regional versions, undertakes to preserve a pan-Indic Mahābhārata tradition. The critical edition's gesture is essentially conservative, and inclusive. Rather than discard additional passages, it preserves them in an appendix. Rather than give precedence to the critics' theories of a heroic original Âryan epic riddled with Brahmanic "corruptions, " it bases itself on the manuscript evidence to show that there was never any other epic but this: the Mahābhārata with its eighteen-parvan architecture, a work of philosophy, law, cosmology, and didactics. By exposing and critiquing many misconceptions regarding the Mahābhārata critical edition (above all, those of Andreas Bigger and Reinhold Grunendahl), this book aims to provide readers not only with a guide to this edition but also with an assessment of its true place in intellectual history. Extensive appendices, detailed drawings of stemmata, and discussions of the basic principles at work in different contexts make this book an essential resource for the student of the Mahābhārata as well as of textual and literary criticism"--Résumé de l'éditeur "In the early twentieth century, one of the largest attempts at producing a critical edition of any text in any language got underway in India. Headed by V.S. Sukthankar, editors at the Bhandarkar Institute proposed producing a critical edition of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, a text that in its vulgate or popular edition spans nearly one hundred thousand verses. This book is the story of what this critical edition tells us about the science of textual criticism, and how that science was used (and sometimes abused). Against the critics of the project, this book undertakes a defense of the critical edition. It demonstrates that the edition, far from dismissing the various regional versions, undertakes to preserve a pan-Indic Mahābhārata tradition. The critical edition's gesture is essentially conservative, and inclusive. Rather than discard additional passages, it preserves them in an appendix. Rather than give precedence to the critics' theories of a heroic original Âryan epic riddled with Brahmanic "corruptions," it bases itself on the manuscript evidence to show that there was never any other epic but this: the Mahābhārata with its eighteen-parvan architecture, a work of philosophy, law, cosmology, and didactics. By exposing and critiquing many misconceptions regarding the Mahābhārata critical edition (above all, those of Andreas Bigger and Reinhold Grunendahl), this book aims to provide readers not only with a guide to this edition but also with an assessment of its true place in intellectual history. Extensive appendices, detailed drawings of stemmata, and discussions of the basic principles at work in different contexts make this book an essential resource for the student of the Mahābhārata as well as of textual and literary criticism"-- Provided by publisher