The pair of volumes under notice is the product of two meetings, held in 2009 and 2010, of the International Indology Graduate Research Symposium which provides an invaluable regular forum for early career researchers in classical Indian studies. The purposes of review can best be served by signalling the volumes' diverse contents and areas of concern.
Volume one of Puṣpikā contains twenty contributions. In “Defining the Svara bearing unit in the śikṣāvedāṅga literature: unmasking a veiled debate” Giovanni Ciotti considers the discussions carried out in a range of authoritative grammatical texts concerning which part of a word bears the svara (here translated as “pitch modulation”).
In “Purāṇic transformations in Coḷa Cidambaram: the Cidambaramāhātmya and the Sūtasaṃhitā” Whitney Cox analyses the interrelationships between three passages in the Cidambaramāhātmya and the Sūtasaṃhitā to demonstrate that the creation of the former and the expansion and redaction of the latter were parallel processes most likely effected in the same brahmanical milieu.
In “Unfuzzying the fuzzy: the distinction between rasas and bhāvas in Bharata and Abhinavagupta” Daniele Cuneo identifies the author of the Nāṭyaśāstra as having conceived of rasas as heightened bhāvas, or emotional states, as opposed to Abhinavagupta's view of rasa and bhāva as distinct emotional states, while conceding that these interpretations are less secure in the case of two rasas, śṛṅgāra and karuṇa.
In “A contribution of Vedānta to the history of Mīmāṃsā: Prakāśātman's interpretation of ‘verbal effectuation’ (śabdabhāvanā)” Hugo David examines the evolution of the concept of śabdabhāvanā between the seventh and tenth centuries, with particular reference to the possible influence of the Vidhiviveka of Maṇḍana Miśra upon Prakāśātman's Śābdanirṇaya.
In “Married women and courtesans: marriage and women's room for manoeuvre as depicted in the Kathā-sarit-sāgara” Iris Iran Farkhondeh compares the accounts of female status found in normative dharmaśāstra texts with descriptions of various types of female behaviour in Somadeva's celebrated narrative work, arguing that this juxtaposition enables broader conclusions to be drawn about social status in medieval India.
In “Towards a new edition of the corpus of Pallava inscriptions” Emmanuel Francis provides fresh readings of inscriptions of Narasiṃhavarman II and maps out the contours of a provisional new corpus of Pallava inscriptions which is nearly 30 per cent larger than the collection of T.V. Mahalingan published in 1988.
In “Did Mīmāṃsā authors formulate a theory of action?” Elisa Freschi argues that insights about action originally produced by Mīmāmsakas in the context of exegesis of Vedic ritual were to have a broader philosophical significance for later discussions of subjects such as intentionality.
In “Trajectories of dance on the surface of theatrical meanings: a contribution to the theory of rasa from the fourth chapter of the Abhinavabhāratī” Elisa Ganser discusses how Abhinavagupta, in treating dance as a component of theatre, integrated this performative idiom into his wider aesthetic discourse.
In “Dravya as a permanent referent: the potential Sarvāstivāda influence on Patañjali's Paspaśāhnika” Alastair Gornall speculates that the discussion about permanent dravya and impermanent ākṛti by the grammarian Patañjali may have been influenced by non-mainstream Sarvāstivādin thought as articulated by Dharmatrāta.
In “Rituals in the Mahāsāhasrapramardanasūtra” Gergely Hidas edits and translates a passage from a Pañcarakṣā text containing a ritual used by the Mahayāna and Vajrayāna to effect both state protection and safeguarding from illness.
In “The Liṅgodbhava myth in early Śaiva sources” Nirajan Kafle concludes on the basis of an examination of a range of early Śaiva and Purāṇic texts that the earliest traceable version of the myth of the primordial worship of the liṅga occurs in the Śivadharmaśāstra.
In “Yantras in the Buddhist Tantras: Yamāritantras and related literature” Kenichi Kuranishi focuses on the Kṛṣṇayamāritantra to demonstrate how yantra ritual synthesized external preparatory actions and internal modes of visualization.
In “Śaiva Siddhānta Śrāddha: towards an evaluation of the socio-religious landscape envisaged by pre-12th century sources” Nina Mirnig examines how the appearance of brahmanical funeral rituals within the Śaiva milieu was rationalized in a variety of Saiddhāntika manuals in the interests of expanding the clientele of lay devotees beyond those initiated into the tradition.
In “Constituents of Buddhahood as presented in the Buddhabhūmisūtra and the 9th chapter of the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra: a comparative analysis” Ayako Nakamura analyses the manner in which two important Mahāyāna works construct a framework, in particular with regard to gnosis, within which the state of Buddhahood can be fully conceptualized.
In “The gaṇacchandas in the Indian metrical tradition” Andrew Ollett traces the core of the gaṇacchandas metrical module back to the fourth century bce in the shape of a taxonomy of stanzaic forms and charts its development in subsequent usage and theory.
In “Anātmatā, soteriology and moral psychology in Indian Buddhism” Antoine Panaiotti discusses Buddhism's insight that dismantling false conceptions of selfhood leads to cessation of suffering, concluding that the Buddha of the Pali canon held that realization of anātmatā is the sole way to deliverance.
In “Pāramārthika or apāramārthika? On the ontological status of separation according to Abhinavagupta” Isabelle Ratié examines a passage in the Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī to elucidate Utpaladeva's and Abhinavagupta's position on the conceptualization of separation between consciousness and object and consciouness and another consciousness.
In “Thy Fierce Lotus-Feet: danger and benevolence in medieval Sanskrit poems to Mahiṣāsuramardinī-Durgā” Bihani Sarkar discusses the various portrayals of the goddess Durgā in a wide range of medieval sources such as the Haravijaya, the Gauḍavaho and the Caṇḍīśataka.
In “Minor Vajrayāna texts II: a new manuscript of the Gurupañcāśikā” Péter-Dániel Szántó provides a diplomatic transcript of a manuscript of a work describing the Tantric Buddhist guru.
In “Can we infer unestablished entities? A Mādhva contribution to the Indian theory of inference” Michael Williams discusses the Mādhva debate with Advaita Vedāntins on the issue of the nature of inference, concluding that the Dvaitin Jayatīrtha held that the existence of non-established entities such as omniscient beings might possibly be legitimately inferred.
Volume two of Puṣpikā contains eight contributions. In “Refuge and reform: snakes, gleaners and Niṣādas in Early Kāvya” Simon Brodbeck suggests ways in which Mahābhārata narratives of slaughter, displacement, rural livelihood and deforestation can be read in postcolonial terms.
In “Like a howling Piśāca: a note on the pronunciation of the Ṛgvedasaṃhitā” Giovanni Ciotti investigates the phenomenon of vedalakṣaṇa, the language-related intellectual procedures dedicated to preserving the words of Vedic texts, and applies some of its insights to restore the form of Ṛgveda 1.127.6.
In “Does the subject have desires? The Ātman in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā” Elisa Freschi proposes that the subject as conceived in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā is intrinsically possessed of desire and as such must necessarily be constituted as a moral subject and a dynamic agent.
In “Kārakas in Cāndra grammar: an interpretation from the Pāli Buddhist Śāstras” Alastair Gornall discusses how a group of twelfth-century Lankan grammarians of the Mogallāna tradition interpreted case endings in a manner which often differs from the procedures of the Cāndra system.
In “The three jewels and the formation of the Pāñcarātra canon” Robert Leach argues that the idea of the supremacy of the three main Pāñcarātra scriptures (the Jayākhyasaṃhitā, the Sātvasaṃhitā and the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā) emerged as late as the fourteenth century in the environment of the so-called Āgamasiddhānta tradition.
In “Preliminary survey of Sanskrit manuscripts of the Bodhicaryāvatāra” Daniel Stender provides an inventory of manuscripts drawn on for published editions of Śāntideva's famous poem and also draws attention to manuscripts which have not so far been consulted.
In “Asiddha vs. Asiddhavat in Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya” Malgorzata Sulich-Cowley argues that in Pāṇini's grammatical system the terms asiddha and asiddhavat refer to two different ways of ordering rules.
In “Continuity and change in Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.1–4” Paolo Visigalli offers a close reading of one of the best-known passages of early brahmanical literature, situating Uddālaka's teaching to Śvetaketu fully within the context of Vedic cosmogony.
As will be clear, there is something in the two Puṣpikā collections for virtually every Indologist, with the unfortunate exception of those benighted souls who have elected to pursue Jain studies. The reader of these volumes, which have been produced to a commendably high standard, will undoubtedly be left with the impression that the immediate future of Indological research is in good hands, and it is to be hoped that more such volumes will continue to appear on a regular basis.
