Houben 2012 Johannes Bronkhorst and Indian Studies

DEVADATTIYAM Johannes Bronkhorst Felicitation Volume FRANÇOIS VOEGELI, VINCENT ELTSCHINGER, DANIELLE FELLER, MARIA PIERA CANDOTTI, BOGDAN DIACONESCU & MALHAR KULKARNI (EDS) Offprint PETER L ANG Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien ISBN 978-3-0343-0682-9 hb. ISBN 978-3-0351-0373-1 eBook © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2012 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland; info@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com Table of Contents Acknowledgements..............................................................................xi Foreword ........................................................................................... xiii JAN E. M. HOUBEN Johannes Bronkhorst and Indian Studies ..............................................1 GRAMMAR MARIA PIERA CANDOTTI Naming-Procedure and Substitution in Early Sanskrit Grammarians.........................................................................11 GEORGE CARDONA Pāṇini and Padakāras ..........................................................................39 ABHIJIT GHOSH Yāska’s Treatment of Verb vis-à-vis Noun: Will the Verbal Noun Please Stand up?..................................................................................63 JAN E. M. HOUBEN On the bahiraṅga-Rule in Pāṇinian Grammar: Nāgeśa and Nārāyaṇa..........................................................................79 EIVIND KAHRS Bharthari and the Tradition: karmapravacanīya .............................107 MALHAR KULKARNI, ANUJA AJOTIKAR & TANUJA AJOTIKAR Derivation of the Declension of yuṣmad and asmad in Cāndra Vyākaraṇa .........................................................................................123 THOMAS OBERLIES Cāndriana Inedita (Studien zum Cāndravyākaraṇa V) .....................143 HIDEYO OGAWA Patañjali’s View of a Sentence Meaning and Its Acceptance by Bharthari ..........................................................................................159 viii Table of Contents PHILOSOPHY ASHOK AKLUJKAR Authorship of the Saṅkarṣa-kāṇḍa ....................................................191 ELI FRANCO Once Again on the Desires of the Buddha........................................229 VASHISHTA NARAYAN JHA Ontology of Relations. The Approach of Navya Nyāya...................247 KLAUS KARTTUNEN Wise Men and Ascetics. Indian Philosophy and Philosophers in Classical Antiquity............................................................................259 RAFFAELE TORELLA Studies in Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivti. Part V: SelfAwareness and Yogic Perception. ....................................................275 TOSHIHIRO WADA Śaśadhara on Invariable Concomitance (vyāpti) (1) .........................301 VEDIC STUDIES JOEL P. BRERETON On the Particle hí in the gveda .......................................................323 MADHAV M. DESHPANDE Vedas and Their Śākhās: Contested Relationships ...........................341 ASKO PARPOLA The Anupadasūtra of Sāmaveda and Jaimini: Prolegomena to a Forthcoming Edition and Translation ...............................................363 PETER M. SCHARF Vedic Accent: Underlying versus Surface ........................................405 ix Table of Contents BUDDHISM AND JAINISM VINCENT ELTSCHINGER Debate, Salvation and Apologetics. On the Institutionalization of Dialectics in the Buddhist Monastic Environment ...........................429 HARRY FALK Small-Scale Buddhism......................................................................491 PHYLLIS GRANOFF On Reading the Lives of the Jinas. Questions and Answers of Medieval Monks ...............................................................................519 HELMUT KRASSER Bhāviveka, Dharmakīrti and Kumārila .............................................535 GREGORY SCHOPEN The Buddhist Nun as an Urban Landlord and a ‘Legal Person’ in Early India ..................................................................................................595 DHARMAŚĀSTRA AND ARTHAŚĀSTRA CHARLES MALAMOUD Imagination, croyance et gouvernement des hommes. Note sur l’Arthaśāstra ......................................................................................613 PATRICK OLIVELLE Kaṇṭakaśodhana. Courts of Criminal Justice in Ancient India .........629 KIYOTAKA YOSHIMIZU Kumārila and Medhātithi on the Authority of Codified Sources of dharma ..............................................................................................643 EPICS AND PURĀṆAS GREGORY BAILEY Sthavirabuddhayaḥ in the Mārkaṇḍeyasamāsyaparvan of the Mahābhārata. Problems in Locating Critiques of Buddhism in the Mahābhārata......................................................................................685 x Table of Contents JOHN BROCKINGTON The Rāmāyaṇa in the Purāṇas...........................................................703 MARY BROCKINGTON Nala, Yudhiṣṭhira, and Rāma. Fitting the Narrative Pattern .............731 DANIELLE FELLER Two Tales of Vanishing Wives. Sītā’s Trials Reconsidered in the Light of the Story of Saraṇyū............................................................755 JAMES L. FITZGERALD Philosophy’s ‘Wheel of Fire’ (alātacakra) and Its Epic Background .......................................................................................773 OTHER TOPICS IRAWATI KULKARNI & MALHAR KULKARNI A Note on Manuscripts in the S. P. Pandit Collection......................811 THE EDITORS Johannes Bronkhorst: An Ongoing Bibliography.............................825 JAN E. M. HOUBEN Johannes Bronkhorst and Indian Studies* Intellectual courage. Independent thinking. Those who, like me, have had the privilege to have him as research guide or teacher and those who still have that privilege will know very well that these are characteristics par excellence of Johannes Bronkhorst. Two characteristics which are also evident from his numerous research publications which, in addition, show a wide research interest that covers the domains of Indian philosophy, Sanskrit grammar, Buddhology and Vedic studies.1 We see courage to throw oneself into the most difficult problems in these domains, such as: Pāṇinian grammar and its relation with Vedic texts; the history of Buddhist thought starting in early Abhidharma texts; underlying presuppositions in early classical philosophical systems including the philosophy of grammar; the chronological relationship between Upaniṣads mutually and with Buddhism. We see independent thinking that gives argued defence of standpoints that deviate from or are opposite to established consensus. Established consensus and widespread scholarly opinions are never adhered to on the basis of authoritative names in either the western or the Indian tradition but they are either accepted or rejected on the basis of rigorous arguments that start from direct textual evidence. Johannes was born on 17th July 1946 in Schiedam into a family of two brothers and a sister all born before WW II. His younger brother was born almost two years later. His father was a chemical engineer and * 1 I thank Ruud Bronkhorst and Joy Manné for suggestions for improvement and especially for additional information on Johannes’ young years and on the beginnings of Johannes Bronkhorst’s scholarly career, and the editors of this volume for additional information on recent years of his work in Lausanne. From the beginning of his scholarly career, these specific indological and buddhological domains have a broader background in Johannes’ interest in psychoanalysis, brain science, religious studies, and human nature, for which see now his Absorption: Two Studies on Human Nature (BRONKHORST 2010). In June 2011, he has organised an interdisciplinary conference in Lausanne with the title “Why are humans religious?”. 2 Jan E. M. Houben member of the church council of Protestant denomination (“vrijgemaakt gereformeerd”). Every Sunday the family went to church twice. Johannes’ paternal uncle, physicist by profession, was an atheist. At a young age Johannes was thus exposed to Protestant Christian belief and instruction and also to the rational questioning of Christian doctrines by his uncle. Johannes’s secondary education took place at the Groen van Prinstererlyceum in the neighbouring city Vlaardingen between 1958–1964. There he followed the gymnasium bèta programme (grammar school with mathematics and physics), which in the Dutch educational system is the best preparation for a university study in any field. Johannes began his studies of Mathematics and Physics at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. After passing the kandidaatsexamen,2 he and a friend decided to make a great journey: from West-Africa to India. After arriving in India they secured places at the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur in order to study Sanskrit. Johannes had heard earlier that in India traditional scholars use and speak an ancient classical language, Sanskrit, and he wanted to see this for himself. Because of illness his friend soon had to go back to the Netherlands where he resumed his previous study, Geology. Johannes stayed and threw himself with much enthusiasm into the study of Sanskrit. Unlike his Indian fellow students who had studied Sanskrit and its literature throughout their earlier schooling, Johannes had to start from scratch. Soon he learned of the existence of an internationally renowned Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit at Pune (then still spelled Poona). He applied to become student there but was refused admission. It was 1971, and there was much tension within Pakistan (at that time still consisting of a western and an eastern part) and between Pakistan and India. When the Indo-Pakistani war broke out in early December 1971, people in general and foreigners in particular were advised to leave cities in risk zones. This included Jaipur. Johannes decided to go to Goa and stay there till the situation in Jaipur would become more favourable. 2 In the Dutch system of university education at that time, the kandidaatsexamen was an important advanced exam which followed the first three years of a five or six year programme. This exam and the corresponding title of kandidaat disappeared towards the end of the 1980s. Johannes Bronkhorst and Indian Studies 3 When Johannes arrived at the train station,3 all the trains were full, but one friendly ticket conductor let him onto the train. The ticket conductor and Johannes agreed as follows. The ticket conductor would check if there was a seat. If there wasn’t, Johannes would leave at the next stop. A while after the train had left, this ticket conductor came to tell Johannes that, unfortunately, there was indeed no place for him. Therefore, he had to leave the train at the next station, which turned out to be… Pune. Johannes got off and decided to have a look at that famous Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, for which he had been unable to get admission. He met the head of the center, Prof. R. N. Dandekar, explained to him how he arrived in Pune and mentioned, en passant, that his earlier application to become student at the Centre in Pune had been rejected. Professor Dandekar immediately picked up the phone, made a call, and informed Johannes that he had now been accepted. Besides attending the classes of the M.A. programme of the Centre, Johannes was much in contact with traditional Sanskrit scholars, pandits, with whom he studied Sanskrit texts beyond those belonging to the prescribed University programme. Every day he went to such a traditional scholar to read and analyze ancient texts for a few hours. To prepare for his classes and reading sessions with pandits, he would get up at five o’clock in the morning to study, sitting on the floor with his books and manuscripts on a lectern. In some of his later books he mentions Pandit Shivarama Krishna Shastri and Professor K. V. Abhyankar as traditional scholars who were most important for him. For a while, he also studied with Muni Jambuvijayaji, a Jain monk and world famous scholar, and wandered with him from village to village.4 3 4 This anecdote is confirmed from various sources. However, it is not immediately clear which train station was involved. In the 1970s a trip from Jaipur to Goa would normally start with taking a bus from Jaipur to Delhi, next a train from Delhi to Bombay, and finally a train (or bus) from Bombay to Goa. A train trip from Bombay to Goa could have a stop in Pune and would probably require a further change of trains and even of rails from broad to metre gauge. Johannes might therefore have met his fateful ticket conductor at the second part of his trip in Bombay. From Johannes I heard the following anecdote about this period. Muni Jambuvijayaji once suggested that Johannes should become a monk in his tradition. Johannes did not quite know how to refuse politely. He made the excuse that he did not want to pull his hair out. At that time he wore his hair long. “It’s not that bad,” the Muni said and before Johannes knew what was happening he reached over and pulled out a handful of hair. Johannes was not persuaded! 4 Jan E. M. Houben In Pune, he studied further with a towering figure who has a strong background both in traditional learning and in modern linguistics, Dr. S. D. Joshi. In 1974, Dr. Joshi succeeded Prof. Dandekar as director of the Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit. After earning his M.A. degree in Pune, Johannes Bronkhorst stayed on to work on a Ph.D. thesis on one of the most difficult subjects in Sanskrit studies: the metarules of Pāṇinian grammar. This thesis sought to demonstrate that on an important but difficult point in the system of Pāṇinian grammar, the view of the last great master of Pāṇinian grammar, Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa (end seventeenth – beginning eighteenth century), was not well transmitted to his immediate student Pāyaguṇḍa. This thesis was controversial from the beginning, as it cast doubt on the dogma of the high reliability of the traditional transmission of Sanskrit learning. The thesis was submitted and accepted by the University of Poona in 1979. Seven years later it was published as Tradition and Argument in Classical Indian Linguistics (Dordrecht, 1986).5 In the meantime, Johannes had returned to the Netherlands where he obtained a second Ph.D. degree with a different thesis on theoretical aspects of Pāṇini’s grammar. This thesis he defended at Leiden University in 1980, with Professor T. Vetter as promotor. A new chapter started in Johannes’ life and indological career, a chapter which is known to a larger circle. Johannes remained associated with the University of Leiden, Kern Institute, where he contributed to a revival of the Association of Friends of the Kern Institute.6 For his re5 6 This work has proved to be a hard nut to crack. The first and as far as I know only review appears thirteen years after the publication of the book, in 1999, and is written by another specialist in Pāṇinian grammar who studied in Pune (and who may have been familiar with at least the outlines of Johannes’ thesis since 1979) : Dominik Wujastyk. In his survey of research in Pāṇinian studies, George Cardona reports that BRONKHORST (1986) discusses “the paribhāṣā asiddhaṁ bahiraṅgam antaraṅge (no. 50 in KIELHORN [1868])” (CARDONA 1999: 145). He adds that “[t]o deal appropriately with Bronkhorst’s challenging study would require considering all the examples Nāgeśa deals with along with the next paribhāṣā (pbh. 51: nājānantarye bahiṣṭvaprakptiḥ) as well as places in the Mahābhāṣya where these issues are also taken up” (CARDONA 1999: 146); and concludes: “I cannot do this in the present survey.” Apparently still unaware of Wujastyk’s review, he further observes in a note that he does “not know of any major review to consider Bronkhorst’s arguments” (CARDONA 1999: 286 n. 27). At present, i.e., since 2009, the Kern Institute itself is merged in a Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies of the Faculty of Humanities (Geestesweten- Johannes Bronkhorst and Indian Studies 5 search, Johannes received stipends such as the prestigious Christiaan Huygens fellowship of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences). In 1987, I finished my “doctoraalexamen” (M.A. programme) at the Department of Oriental Languages and Cultures of the University of Utrecht and together with my professor, Henk Bodewitz, we decided to ask Johannes Bronkhorst of Leiden University to be second promotor for a planned Ph.D. project on the philosophy of language of the ancient Indian grammarian Bharthari. Johannes agreed and this was the beginning of four years of intensive cooperation on the dissertation.7 In the same year, 1987, the 7th World Sanskrit Conference was organized in Leiden (23–29 August) and Johannes Bronkhorst was one of its organizers. Soon afterwards, Johannes was appointed professor at the Université de Lausanne in the chair of Sanskrit and Indian Studies in the Section de Langues et Civilisations Orientales. Together with his wife, Joy Manné, he moved from Leiden to Lausanne. In 1991, I had an opportunity to be in Lausanne for one year to work on my dissertation. I could admire how Johannes was a very critical but always encouraging study guide for me, and for his many other Ph.D. students as well. He accepted to direct a number of Ph.D. theses concerned with a great variety of Indological topics, thus displaying his many interests. He was also a dedicated teacher. In answer to his students’ wishes and interests, he read over the years an impressive number of Sanskrit texts with them, leaving out virtually no field of ancient Indian studies, not even mathematics! In more recent years, he also started using his – consenting and thrilled – students as “guinea pigs,” testing his most recent discoveries and theories on them. Johannes also worked with great dedication and in a spirit of teamwork for the progress of Indian Studies at the Université de Lausanne. In 1990, sensing the growing interest in the study of religion, Johannes cofounded the DIHSR (Département interfacultaire d’histoire et de sciences des religions). It is now a thriving and very active inter-faculty de- 7 schappen) of Leiden University. The Association of Friends of the Kern Institute is still active in organizing meetings and events for everyone interested in South Asian studies. This thesis was prepared in Utrecht, Vancouver and Lausanne and defended in Utrecht in november 1992 with Johannes Bronkhorst as member of the jury. 6 Jan E. M. Houben partment that attracts a greater number of students and researchers every year. In a time when organizing seminars, workshops, etc., was not yet fashionable, Johannes organized or co-organized international workshops8 including important international events such as the first international conference on Bharthari (University of Poona, January 6–8, 1992), a panel on Vaiśeṣika, an ancient Indian system of natural philosophy (ICANAS in Hongkong, August 23–27, 1993), a conference on Sāṁkhya (Lausanne, November 6–8, 1998), a seminar on Rationality in Asia (Leiden, June 4–5, 1999). On all of these occasions Johannes ensured that the various competing viewpoints were represented, that discussions were based on solid textual bases, and that nothing was to be easily taken for granted. A work in which several earlier findings and ideas9 find a place and form the basis of a new argument is Johannes Bronkhorst’s recent Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India (2007). This publication can be expected to be indispensible for decades to come for the study of ancient India – or South Asia – not as an archive of Indo-Aryan ‘origins’ but as an area for which unique and extensive sources are available that provide remarkably detailed information on peoples, cultures and languages in contact, in interaction and in transformation from at least a millenium before CE onwards.10 8 9 10 In his own department, Johannes also organizes workshops – Tuesday evenings – for Ph.D. students, so that they learn how to present their ideas and to argue them. Colleagues and previous students come too in order to listen. So he serves his science, and he serves his students with the same impeccable integrity. The thesis that there are two distinct traditions of meditation (BRONKHORST 1993) and two distinct sources of Indian asceticism (1998), for instance, are here part of a larger argument. Among eight appendices, three deal with the relationship between the grammarians (Pāṇini, Patañjali) and Vedic literature, a problem area which had Johannes’ intense attention earlier (e.g., 1991). Greater Magadha deals with very early stages of Indian thought, and hence also with presumed correspondences between microcosm and macrocosm and correspondences presupposed in “fanciful etymologies” (2001a). Although not directly relevant to the early stage of thinking discussed in Greater Magadha, contributions to our understanding of presupposed “correspondences” in the later, developed systems of Indian philosophy (e.g., BRONKHORST 1999) deserve to be mentioned here as well. The findings in Greater Magadha and earlier studies invite for a re-evaluation of the relationship between European and Indian thought and culture: 2001b, 2003. For ancient India as a supposed “archive of (Indo-Aryan, Indo-European, IndoGerman) origins” see Pascal RABAULT-FEUERHAHN 2008; for Johannes Bronk- Johannes Bronkhorst and Indian Studies 7 In the light of the preceding it is no exaggeration to say that Johannes Bronkhorst is one of the major specialists in Indian Studies of the late 20th and early 21st century who has contributed most significantly to the study of major religious and philosophical systems – Brahmanism, Buddhism, Jainism – in Asia and the world. Thank you, Johannes, for all you have done so far for Indian Studies and for your former and current students, instilling in them the highest scientific, intellectual and human standards. We wish you the creative energy to continue to work for Indian Studies for many years to come. References BRONKHORST, Johannes 1986: Tradition and Argument in Classical Indian Linguistics. The Bahiraṅga-Paribhāṣā in the Paribhāṣenduśekhara. Dordrecht: D. Reidel (Studies of Classical India 6). 1991: “Pāṇini and the Veda reconsidered.” In Saroja BHATE & Madhav M. DESHPANDE (eds), Pāṇinian Studies. Professor S. D. Joshi Felicitation Volume, pp. 75–121. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies. 1993: The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India. First [Indian] Edition [with Preface to the second edition, minor corrections and improvements; first edition: Stuttgart 1986]. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 1998: The Two Sources of Indian Asceticism. First Indian Edition [with Preface to the second edition, rearranged Introduction and additonal footnotes; first edition: Bern 1993]. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 1999: Langage et Réalité. Sur un épisode de la pensée indienne. [Avec une préface de Ch. MALAMOUD.] Turnhout: Brepols (Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Section des Sciences Religieuses, vol. 105). 2001a: “Etymology and Magic. Yāska’s Nirukta, Plato’s Cratylus and the Riddle of Semantic Etymologies.” Numen 48, pp. 147–203. 2001b: “Pourquoi la Philosophie existe-t-elle en Inde?” In J. BRONKHORST (ed.), Etudes de Lettres 2001/3. La Rationalité en Asie/Rationality in Asia. Actes du Colloque de l’Institut International pour les Etudes Asiatiques (IIAS), tenu à Leiden, les 4 et 5 juin 1999, pp. 7–48. Lausanne: Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Lausanne. 2003: “Sylvain Lévy et les origines du théatre indien.” Asiatische Studien / Etudes Asiatiques 57.4, pp. 793–811. horst’s Greater Magadha as an example of a much needed reorientation in Indology or Indian Studies see HOUBEN 2008: 134–135 and n. 8. 8 Jan E. M. Houben 2007: Greater Magadha. Studies in the Culture of Early India. Leiden: Brill (Handbook of Oriental Studies II: India, Vol. 19.). 2010: Absorption. Two Studies in Human Nature. <http://www.bronkhorst-absorption. info> [accessed 15.02.2012]. CARDONA, George 1999: Recent Research in Pāṇinian Studies. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. HOUBEN, Jan E. M. 2008: “Postscript: towards a New Indology and New Sanskrit Studies.” In Iwona MILEWSKA (ed.), Cracow Indological Studies Vol. X: Future of Indology, Cracow, pp. 129–144. RABAULT-FEUERHAHN, Pascal 2008: L’archive des origines. Sanskrit, philologie, anthropologie dans l’Allemagne du XIXe siècle. Paris: Cerf. WUJASTYK, Dominik 1999: Review of Bronkhorst 1986. Indo-Iranian Journal 42, pp. 172–176.