Space

Chapter 5 recovers the contours of the manuscript economy in early modern India for texts in Sanskrit logic. It identifies the “reading community” as the primary unit of this economy. Then, it studies how these reading communities forge values and consumption priorities within themselves and across space; and stresses that the category of the court or polity is not useful in thinking through these issues. Instead, it argues that this space functioned and was sustained not by the court but on the basis of both intellectual and emotional relations between Sanskrit logicians and “the text” as these scholars responded to novelty in philosophical arguments. The arguments in this chapter are based on a survey of approximate 4,800 manuscripts listed in a number of manuscript surveys and catalogs.