The present paper is an inventory and a description of the known manuscripts of the Nyāyamañjarī, meant as a tool for philological research on Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s magnum opus. The inventory is gradually built through a systematic analysis of archival data found in catalogi catalogorum, bibliographies of catalogues, individual catalogues, unpublished lists, and editions of the Nyāyamañjarī. The list is followed by a concise description of each manuscript, including an external description, an outline of the contents, and historical information.

Classical Indian Thought and the English Language: Perspectives and Problems, edited by Mohini Mullick and Madhuri Santanam Sondhi, contains the proceedings of the workshop "Rendering of the Categories of Classical Indian Thought in the English Language: Perspectives and Problems," held in New Delhi in December 2011. Of the ten papers included in this volume, those by Sudipta Kaviraj, S. N. Balagangadhara, and Claus Oetke concern methodological issues of broader application, so they will be reviewed here in greater detail.Each paper is (...) followed by the response of a discussant and by a debate in the form of selected questions and comments from the audience at the workshop. The most relevant points raised in these... (shrink)

The epistemology of śabda is one of the main themes in Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī, and, in the hypotheses explored in this paper, also the conceptual basis of Jayanta’s textual re-use. The sixth chapter of the Nyāyamañjarī contains a debate between Vaiyākaraṇas and Mīmāṃsakas who, respectively, advocated an holistic or atomistic theory of language. Selected Jayanta’s re-uses from Vyākaraṇa, Mīmāṃsā, and Nyāya sources are here surveyed and analyzed, with a focus on their meaning and on the context. The method of analysis (...) is partially following Moravcsik’s scheme for a classification of citations, as well as Small’s classification by symbolic functions. By re-using texts Jayanta not only imparted authority to his own arguments, but also reassessed the relation of his tradition with other ones. Re-used ideas and words stand for symbols of those authors’ tenets, and those authors represent symbols of their respective traditions. Moreover, by quoting a certain author Jayanta often anointed him with a symbolic status of trustworthy authority, and his statement with a status of śabdapramāṇa. (shrink)

The Nyayamanjari was composed in Kashmir, in the ninth century CE, by Bhatta Jayanta. It is a compendium of theses concerning ontological, epistemological and linguistic issues developed in the classical period of Indian philosophy. Jayanta's approximate date is confirmed by both internal and external evidences, so the Nyayamanjari has become a landmark in the historiography of Indian philosophy. Despite its relevance, however, the history of the textual transmission of the Nyayamanjari is in many respects still unknown. This new critical edition (...) is based on a comprehensive inventory of all the known sources, on a detailed description of the manuscripts, on a textual bibliography of the printed editions, on a genealogical study of the textual transmission, and on a rich apparatus of the indirect transmission. An important result of this research has been the development of a new, rigorous, and yet pragmatic method to edit Nyayamanjari passages, without the demand of formidable resources in terms of time, man-power, and funds. The first part of this publication includes all the propaedeutic steps in view of the critical edition. More specifically, it consists of the recensio of the known Nyayamanjari sources, including their inventory, their description, the collation of their variants, and the study of their genealogy, resulting in a fully documented stemma codicum which guides the editorial choices during the reconstruction of the edited text. The second part contains the critical edition, which covers the first of the three sections composing the sixth book of the Nyayamanjari. This particular section consists of a discussion on semantics and epistemology from the perspective of the Vyakarana, Mimansa and Nyaya traditions, hinging around the holistic theory of the sphota. (shrink)

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy of Language presents a systematic survey of philosophy of language in the Indian tradition, providing an up-to-date research resource for better understanding the history and future direction of the field. Each chapter addresses a particular philosophical problem from the viewpoint of seminal traditions and specific thinkers. Covering the philosophical insight on language found in the mainstream philosophies of Vyakarana, Mima?sa, Nyaya, Vedanta, Buddhism, and Alankarasastra, the chapters tackle crucial semantic and pragmatic questions such (...) as the relation of the speaker to reality, the use of metalanguage, the distinction between sentences, elliptic statements, and figurative usages, and the impact of textual structures on the philosophical message. Complete with further reading suggestions and an annotated bibliography, this collection makes an important contribution to both Eastern and Western contemporary philosophy of language. (shrink)