articles on textual transmission

[Dominic Goodall]

This collection of articles (some in French, some in English) about  
textual transmission in India has just been
published from the EFEO in Paris (diffusion at efeo.net):

Écrire et transmettre en Inde classique

Gérard Colas & Gerdi Gerschheimer (eds.),  « Etudes thématiques », n 
°23, 2009, 18,5 x 27,5 cm, 328 p.

ISBN : 978 2 85539 098 7
ISSN : 1269-8067

The transmission of texts in premodern India cannot be dissociated  
from their use. Studying the milieux in which they were produced, as  
well as the literary genres to which they belong, can explain in part  
the ways in which they came into being, were read and underwent  
transformation. Some works, for example, are to a great extent shaped  
by being rooted in a fluid oral tradition; others have been submitted  
to the strictures of a learned discipline; others again have been  
transmitted by more than one path at the same time. Belles-lettres,  
works of grammar and philosophy, epigraphy, religious literature and  
ritual manuals all present different situations. The papers in this  
volume consider such situations with a shared perspective: the need to  
go beyond a simplistic opposition between orality and writing, an  
opposition which reveals itself to be not particularly fruitful for  
the study of premodern India, and to contribute towards a critique of  
text-criticism, thus refining philological methods.

(For a cover image, see http://www.efeo.fr/publications/vdp.shtml)


CONTENTS

Introduction. Gérard Colas et Gerdi Gerschheimer

- Première partie : normes, canons, lecteurs
Texts and What to Do with Them: Dādūpanthī Compilations (Monika  
Horstmann)
Les lecteurs jaina śvetāmbara face à leur canon (Nalini Balbir)
Retracer la transmission des textes littéraires à l’aide des textes  
« théoriques » de l’Alaṅkāraśāstra ancien : quelques exemples  
tirés du Raghuvaṃśa (Dominic Goodall)

- Deuxième partie : Texte, écriture, imitation
Transmission sans écriture dans l’Inde ancienne : énigme et  
structure rituelle (Jan E. M. Houben)
The Fine Art of Forgery in India (Richard Salomon)
The Alchemy of Poetry: Poetic Borrowing and the Transmission of Texts  
(Phyllis Granoff)

- Troisième partie: textes labiles, textes fixés
Copier, interpréter, transformer, représenter, ou Des modes de la  
diffusion des Écritures et de l’écrit dans le bouddhisme indien  
(Cristina Scherrer-Schaub)
Transmission et recréation purāṇique : le cas du  
Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa (Christophe Vielle)
On the Absence of Urtexts and Otiose Ācāryas: Buildings, Books, and  
Lay Buddhist Ritual at Gilgit (Gregory Schopen)
Des rites de temple aux commentaires : les différentes transmissions  
du Pāramātmika (Gérard Colas)

- Quatrième partie : les maîtres retrouvés
The Pantheon of Tamil Grammarians: A Short History of the Myth of  
Agastya’s Twelve Disciples (Jean-Luc Chevillard)
Critique et transmission textuelles dans la tradition pāṇinéenne  
(Johannes Bronkhorst)
Sthitasya gatiś cintanīyā ? À propos de la « Glose concise  
» (Laghuvṛtti) du Ṣaḍdarśanasamuccaya de Haribhadra (Gerdi  
Gerschheimer)

Résumés / abstracts
Auteurs / Authors