Absence and Elimination: Madhyamaka Interpretation in the Formation of Scholastic Traditions in Tibet

This paper examines early Tibetan authors’ treatment of “elimination” (viccheda/vyavaccheda), in order to trace competing lines of Madhyamaka exegesis. I compare Gyamarwa’s (rgya dmar ba byang chub grags; twelfth century) treatment of this topic in his Analysis of the Essence of Madhyamaka with that of his teacher Gangpa Sheu (gangs pa she’u) and four early Tibetan Prāsaṅgika authors. I conclude that Gyamarwa knew of Candrakīrti’s Madhyamaka from Atiśa’s followers, but prioritized utilizing Śāntideva’s and Jñānagarbha’s views to support his Madhyamaka position. I reflect further on the nature of “tradition” in early Tibetan scholasticism, focusing on Sangpu Neutok (gsang phu ne’u thog) Monastery.

The Truth about Śrīgupta’s Two Truths: Longchen Rabjampa’s “Lower Svātantrikas” and the Making of a New Philosophical School

Longchen Rabjampa (1308–64), scholar of the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma tradition, presents a novel doxographical taxonomy of the so-called Svātantrika branch of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, which designates the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta (c. 7th/8th century) as the exemplar of a Svātantrika sub-school according to which appearance and emptiness are metaphysically distinct. This paper compares Longchenpa’s characterization of this “distinct-appearance-and-emptiness” view with Śrīgupta’s own account of the two truths. I expose a significant disconnect between Longchenpa’s Śrīgupta and Śrīgupta himself and argue that the impetus for Longchenpa’s doxographical innovation originates not in Buddhist India, but within his own Tibetan intellectual milieu, tracing back to his twelfth-century Sangpu Monastery predecessors, Gyamarwa and Chapa.

Wonders in margine—Mapping the Madhyamaka Network of Gyamarwa Jangchupdrak

The twelfth-century Tibetan scholar Gyamarwa Jangchupdrak (rgya dmar ba byang chub grags) is an important link in the Madhyamaka tradition that stemmed from Ngok Loden Shérap (rngog blo ldan shes rab, 1059–1109). His recently recovered Analysis of the Essence of Madhyamaka offers significant insight into the diverse positions of numerous scholars who took part in the discussion before and around his time, but who are only identified in interlinear notes. In this paper I discuss the identity of these thinkers and the contribution of this text-cum-marginalia to the mapping of early Tibetan Madhyamaka scholars and ideas.

Nepali Intellectuals in Exile: The History of Nepali Printing in 19th- and 20th-Century Benares

Restrictions on the freedom of speech and press, along with the unavailability of competitive printing solutions in Nepal under the Rana regime, caused the centre of gravity of scholarly activities to shift to India. A number of Nepali intellectuals, who came from a variety of backgrounds and had various reasons for having migrated to India, were involved in writing and publishing starting by the end of the 19th century. In those days Benares had few if any peers among Indian cities as a centre of local traditions of education and Sanskrit learning, and as a spiritual, economic and literary destination for Nepalis. Benares, which occupies a special place in Nepali history for its immense contribution to the country’s cultural, social, literary and political evolution, was also the main hub of Nepali print entrepreneurs. This article will delve into early such entrepreneurs and an array of Nepali printing activities in Benares before 1950.

Persian Treatises on Āyurveda: The Shaping of a Genre

This article examines the translation of foreign materials into post-Abbasid Muslim medical culture by looking at the production of Persian works dealing with Ayurvedic medicine. From the 14th century onwards, the composition of Persian texts on Āyurveda emerged in South Asia as a new genre of writing, which was actually a composite genre including various kinds of texts. The Muslim physicians incorporate the other’s learning not by rejecting the principles of their receiving culture but rather by empirically applying the logic of their principles in understanding the foreign environment and the receiving culture. The composition of new texts on Āyurveda in Persian constitutes a prominent aspect of this engagement as well as a central element of the creation of a Persianised version of Ayurvedic treatment more likely to be circulated among Indian Muslim physicians. The Persian treatises apply new linguistic and cognitive categories to the analysis of the translated material; the interpretation based on the criteria of the receiving culture is added to, and sometimes replaces, the criteria of the source culture.

Literature in Layers: An Early Theory of Retelling the Sanskrit Epics

This essay reconstructs an early chapter in the history of theorizing the diverse Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata literature of South Asia. Drawing upon the tenth-century literary theorist Kuntaka’s discussions of the Udāttarāghava, Uttararāmacarita, Veṇīsaṃhāra, Kirātārjunīya, and Abhijñānaśākuntala—all Sanskrit poetic (kāvya) compositions that depict stories from the Rāmāyaṇa or the Mahābhārata—I show how, in Kuntaka’s understanding, these works repair certain narrative inconsistencies and ethical ambiguities in the epics themselves. Building on the foundation laid by his predecessor, Ānandavardhana, Kuntaka illuminates the various layers of meaning that a work of literature can encompass. He shows that the epics’ different narrative layers send conflicting messages about proper conduct. He suggests, moreover, that an audience experiences a kāvya retelling of an epic story as a layered entity—a layer of epic narrative beneath a layer of kāvya—and argues that an awareness of these layers can contribute to the audience’s ethical self-cultivation. Kuntaka’s theory of retelling (truly re-telling: telling again, purposefully, and differently from a previous accepted telling) represents an important theoretical account of the relationships between South Asia’s many Rāmāyaṇas and many Mahābhāratas.

How to Carve a King: Janna’s Inscription in the Temple of Amṛteśvara

The article provides a reading of a twelfth-century inscription composed by a courtly poet in Karnataka. At its most rudimentary level, the inscription praises the king and glorifies his commander. However, a closer reading demonstrates the poet playing with the conventions of his time. One of the techniques used to enhance the power of the ruler was to represent the commanders as replicas of their king. The author turns this mechanism into the inscription’s poetic motif. He uses the very dynamic of reduplication to subtly show the limits in the construction of power.

The Limits of Text and Tradition: Theosophy, Translation, and Transnational Vedānta in the fin-de-siècle

Part of a larger project interrogating literal and discursive translation in late-colonial Vedāntic thought, this paper focuses on Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society and its key ideologue. Blavatsky grounded her articulation of Theosophical teachings in a mysterious source text, purportedly written in a sacerdotal language known as the Senzar. In presenting herself as its translator, Blavatsky deftly maneuvers between competing philosophies of language and knowledge paradigms, from philology to occultism. This allows her to simultaneously frame Theosophy as continuous with Vedāntic and Buddhist thought and as superseding them, thus effectively articulating a new—universal—teaching. Utilizing translation theory as an analytical and hermeneutical lens, this paper examines some of Blavatsky’s more notable discursive mechanics and their textual afterlives, tracing the tensions between authorship and authority, tradition and innovation, the particular and the universal. It is proposed that attending to such translational practices (or claims thereof) points to broader questions of meaning-making and commensurability implicated in any project of articulating a tradition across linguistic, cultural, temporal and geographical spaces—as well as its limits and challenges.

Translation in a Multilingual Context: The Mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil Languages in Medieval South Indian Śrīvaiṣṇava Religious Tradition

In this paper, I investigate South Asian multilinguality by focusing on the medieval South Indian Śrīvaiṣṇava religious tradition (originated in the tenth century CE), which employ Sanskrit, Tamil, and Maṇipravāḷa, a hybrid language comprising both Sanskrit and Tamil, in their composition. Through the lens of translation and hybridity, I propose to complicate the recent scholarship on the Sanskrit and vernacular languages (e.g., Pollock and interlocutors) and also respond to the scholarly call for research that addresses the distinctive history of South Asian multilinguality. In particular, it explores the use of multiple linguistic media by one of the most significant Śrīvaiṣṇava theologians, Vedāntadeśika (c. 1268–1369 CE), in his Rahasyatrayasāra. The Rahasyatrayasāra which deals with soteriological and ritual aspects of the Śrīvaiṣṇavas was composed in Maṇipravāḷa and furnished with Sanskrit and Tamil opening and concluding verses. Through the investigation of the Maṇipravāḷa content in relation to the verses in the Rahasyatrayasāra, I argue that Maṇipravāḷa can be considered translation as it brings the Sanskrit and Tamil streams of the tradition together into a single context that can accommodate both. For a multilingual community like the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, Maṇipravāḷa, which represents translation into a hybrid, makes possible the collective religious identity.