Om namah siddham

[madhav.deshpande at um.cc.umich.edu]

        There has been some good discussion about "om namah siddham."  It 
seems to appear as the first statement of a 17th century commentary on the
Shaunakiiyaa Caturaadhyaayikaa by an author named Krishnadaasa.  He gives
a rather Hinduized interpretation of the statement.  Probably the author
is from Western India, i.e. Gujarat, Rajasthan, or Maharashtra, and is
deeply influenced by Saarasvata-VyaakaraNa and Bhattoji's Siddhaanta Kaumudi.
        He makes an interesting argument about the vocalic r in Sanskrit.
He refers to some scholar's view that the vocalic r must be actually
consonantal, because the consonant r preceding the vocalic r is written
on top of the vocalic r, as in the word nir+Rti.  While the argument
clearly confuses phonology with orthography, is it possible to date the
beginning of such a possible argument based on our knowledge of the evolution
of scripts? 
                Madhav Deshpande
 


> From mehta at kc235-2.mgmt.purdue.edu 25 1993 Oct U 13:58:15
Date: 25 Oct 1993 13:58:15 U
From: "Mehta, Shailendra" <mehta at kc235-2.mgmt.purdue.edu>
Subject: RE: Reference to "Sky-gazing" in Vijnana-bhairava


J.B. Sharma writes:

".... Tantra means technique, and the study and applications of techniques 
is technology. Quoting a modern tantric, "Science is our method, our 
aim is religion". So what I implied by my earlier post is that modern 
astronomers/scientists are modern tantrics. Tantra is technique   
oriented and not doctrinaire, and whereas tantra has been suppressed 
in India for some time, the west has seen a flowering of tantra 
(technology) in recent history. Tantra-like approaches can be found 
in many old traditions of other cultures, and hence bespeak of the 
human condition as opposed to just a particular Indian tradition.....
........."
 

I am not sure that I can agree with you until I see more evidence. The word
'tantra" itself apparently means loom, and hence has the connotations of the
Greek 'techne'. But that is where the similarity ends. I have not seen any
evidence that schools of tantra ever studied technology in the narrow sense of
the term - that is fields such as metallurgy and the like. 

 If one includes exploration of the processes of consciouness in the domain of
technology, then perhaps it might be true. But even there I would have
reservations. There seems to be such a frightening accretion of ritual in
tantric texts that it often obscures much that they might have had to say.But I
could be wrong and will defer to better judgement.

Shailendra Raj Mehta
mehta at mgmt.purdue.edu 




 


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Subject: RE: Reference to "Sky-gazing" in Vijnana-bhairava