Academic literature on the topic 'Sanscrit literature'

L’inscription sanscrite dite de Lovek, lieu présumé de son origine, a pour objet de relater la donation d’une statue et d’un palanquin à un temple dans Dviradapura au Cambodge par Śaṃkara Paṇḍita, chapelain des trois grands rois du royaume khmer qui ont rempli presque tout le xie siècle de notre ère, Sūryavarman Ier (1002-1050), Udayā-dityavarman II (1050-1066), Harṣavarman III (1066-1080). L’acte de donation est formulé dans la dernière strophe du texte en sanscrit, puis en khmer dans un appendice énumérant toutes les donations pieuses faites par le donateur au cours de sa longue carrière de chapelain royal. Cela est précédé d’un long panégyrique du personnage et de sa famille, dont plusieurs membres de génération en génération au long de trois siècles (du ixe au xie), ont exercé d’importantes fonctions à la cour royale. La charge la plus haute, et la plus influente, parce que la plus proche du pouvoir, a été celle de guru, aussi appelé hotṛ ou purohita, maître dirigeant les rites royaux et conseiller personnel du roi. Il devait avoir une compétence dans trois domaines, pratique du rituel, érudition en langue, littérature et scolastique sanscrites, service du dharma, bon ordre en morale, droit et coutume profane et religieuse. Śaṃkara Paṇḍita fut le guru accompli dans les trois sphères. La conception théologique et l’ordonnan-cement du temple-montagne du Baphuon doivent lui être attribués aux côtés de Sūryavarman Ier et Udayādityavarman II. Il officia lors de la grande cérémonie d’installation d’un Liṅga d’or dans le sanctuaire sommital du Baphuon, qui est le second monument en taille, complexité et prestige après Angkor Vat. Ce texte est composé dans le style de la poésie savante sanscrite. Il est manifeste qu’une inscription sanscrite est composée au Cambodge, comme en Inde, avec égalité de méthode et d’esprit. Mais l’application des con-naissances issues des sources indiennes dans la pratique religieuse et dans les arts au Cambodge est manifestement khmère. Il n’en reste pas moins que la grandeur et la beauté de la conception, comme de la réalisation, sont également partagées entre la stèle inscrite et le monument. Une bonne approche des inscriptions sanscrites du pays khmer est sans conteste la confrontation du texte avec la discipline sanscrite de l’ornementation poétique (alaṃkāraśāstra) et la littérature religieuse tantrique de l’école du Śaivasiddhānta.

In 1784-9 Sir William Jones, then a Supreme Court Judge in Bengal, wrote nine ‘Hymns’ to Hindu deities. In examining one of the ‘Hymns’ – ‘A Hymn to Súrya’ – in more detail, this article maintains that Jones uses the hymnal form as a means of cultural translation, transposing the religious and cultural significance of Vedanta Hinduism poetically into an accessible and uncompromised form. With an emphasis on Jones’ early poetic criticism and his personal fondness for the Hindu religion, this article demonstrates how Jones employs the hymnal form in order to reach a poetic, religious, and cultural ‘original’ through translation.

When Johann Caspar Zeuss laid the foundations of modern Celtic Philology with his Grammatica Celtica (1853), he had at least three immediate forerunners: the English physician and anthropologist James Cowles Prichard (1786–1848) with his book The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations (1831), the Swiss specialist in ballistics and amateur linguist Adolphe Pictet (1799–1875) with his essay ‘De l’affinité des langues celtiques avec le sanscrit’ (1836), and the German founding father of Comparative Philology Franz Bopp (1791–1867) with his treatise ‘Über die celtischen Sprachen vom Gesichtspunkt der vergleichenden Sprachforschung’ (1838). However, as Prichard had died as early as 1848 and Bopp had moved on to studying other branches of Indo-European, it was only Adolphe Pictet who continued his Celtic researches in the wake of Zeuss’ seminal work, publishing articles in scholarly periodicals and corresponding with fellow scholars in Ireland, Britain, France and Germany. For the last sixteen years of his life, Pictet exchanged letters with Whitley Stokes, who was just beginning to make his name in Celtic Philology at that time. While Pictet’s letters to Stokes have yet to be traced, 26 letters and two postcards from Stokes to Pictet are extant among the papers of Adolphe Pictet in the Library of Geneva. Among the papers of the German Celticist and Indologist Ernst Windisch (1844–1918), which are preserved in the Archive of the University of Leipzig, the most extensive collection of letters and postcards in the field of Celtic Studies is due to Kuno Meyer (1858–1919), who was among Windisch’s earliest, most faithful and most productive pupils. Next to this, the most extensive Celtic correspondence of Windisch appears to have been with his French colleague Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville (1827–1910), first professor of Celtic at the Collège de France and long-time editor of Révue celtique. Unlike Windisch, who was an Indo-Europeanist by training and continued to combine an interest in ancient Ireland with one in ancient India for most of his active academic career, d’Arbois de Jubainville was first and foremost an historian with a strong archaeological bent. Both men, however, shared a keen interest in the fabric of ancient civilisations and its reflection in literature. Between 1884 and 1907, more than fifty letters and postcards from d’Arbois to Windisch testify to the cordial relationship between the two scholars, who are among the most important founding fathers of Celtic Studies as an academic discipline in France and Germany. In this paper, I shall try to present an overview of these letters, pointing out in which ways and to which extent they reflect specific problems of research, the institutional setting of Celtic Studies in the decades around 1900, and the personality of the letter writers. In conclusion I shall address the question to what extent a comprehensive analysis and appraisal of as yet unpublished scholarly letters may contribute not only to a profounder understanding of the formation and early history of Celtic Studies, but also to an enhanced appreciation of its present situation.

La tesis “Aspectos de la oralidad en la Bhagavad Gītā” parte de la constatación de la enorme divergencia de las traducciones de la Bhagavad Gītā y de la constatación paralela de la inexistencia de estudios sobre su poética, a pesar de que la obra es, precisamente, un poema. Huyendo de las perspectivas tradicionales usadas para explorar el contenido de la obra, esta tesis se centra en demostrar la relevancia de los postulados de la teoría de la oralidad para poner mejor de manifiesto la realidad subyacente de su forma y sus contenidos. Gracias a este nuevo enfoque, se consigue establecer un mejor marco teórico en el que es posible tratar satisfactoriamente la problemática propuesta inicialmente y determinar la profunda relación de los dos aspectos observados en el punto de partida, a pesar de su aparente independencia inicial. Como complemento a la investigación la tesis aporta un análisis de los versos de la obra sin sandhi, que posibilita el estudio técnico detallado de sus contenidos.
The dissertation “Aspects of Orality in the Bhagavad Gītā”, starts realizing the enormous difference between the different translations of that work. At the same time, one is puzzled to observe that, although the Bhagavad Gītā is a poem, no relevant study dealing with its poetics is currently available. The approach used in this dissertation avoids the perspectives with which the contents of the Bhagavad Gītā are traditionally analyzed and centers on the relevance of orality to bring forward more convincingly the complexity of its contents. Thanks to this new approach, this dissertation makes possible to establish a new theoretical frame where the problems that prompted the investigation in the first place find a more satisfactory resolution. As a complement to the analysis it undertakes, and in order to make possible the study of the technicalities of its contents this dissertation offers a version without sandhi of the verses forming the Bhagavad Gītā.