Modes of Philology in Medieval South India by Cox W. .

Book Series: Philological Encounters Monographs

Abstract

In Modes of Philology in Medieval South India, Whitney Cox rethinks the textual practices of a diverse collection of scholars and poets writing in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Prakrit in far southern India between the 11th and the 14th centuries CE.

1 online resource (xii, 196 pages) :
Philology was everywhere and nowhere in classical South Asia. While its civilizations possessed remarkably sophisticated tools and methods of textual analysis, interpretation, and transmission, they lacked any sense of a common disciplinary or intellectual project uniting these; indeed they lacked a word for 'philology' altogether. Arguing that such pseudepigraphical genres as the Sanskrit 'puranas' and tantras incorporated modes of philological reading and writing, Cox demonstrates the ways in which the production of these works in turn motivated the invention of new kinds of 'sastric' scholarship. Combining close textual analysis with wider theoretical concerns, Cox traces this philological transformation in the works of the dramaturgist Saradatanaya, the celebrated Vaisnava poet-theologian Venkatanatha, and the maverick Saiva mystic Mahesvarananda
Includes bibliographical references and index
Resource, viewed January 4, 2017
Front Matter -- Introduction: Towards a History of Indic Philology -- Textual Pasts and Futures -- Bearing the Nāṭyaveda: Śāradātanaya's Bhāvaprakāśana -- Veṅkaṭanātha and the Limits of Philological Argument -- Flowers of Language: Maheśvarānanda's Mahārthamañjarī -- Conclusions: Philology as Politics, Philology as Science -- Bibliography -- Index