2010 Pondicherry publications 2

[Dominic Goodall]

Jean-Luc Chevillard has announced one of our publications earlier this year (Pondicherry Inscriptions, volume 2), but our other recent publications haven't yet been signalled on this list.
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La geste de Rama : poème à double sens de Sandhyākaranandin (Introduction, texte, traduction, analyses)

Sylvain Brocquet, Collection Indologie n°110, IFP/EFEO, 2010, vii, 523 p. 
Language: French. 1000 Rs (43 €)
ISBN (IFP): 978-81-8470-174-6. 
ISBN (EFEO): 978-2-85539-676-7.


The Rāmacaritam by Sandhyākaranandin, a narrative poem of 215 stanzas (of which 215 survive), is a perfect example of poetry with two meanings: by constant use of śleṣa, it contrives to summarize the plot of the Rāmāyaṇa and to relate the recovery of Eastern Bengal, during the eleventh century AD, by Rāmapāla, a ruler of the Pāla dynasty. The last chapter extends beyond the martial story and deals with the succession of the epic hero and of the historical king. Some thirty stanzas add a third meaning, of theological character, to the two main ones.

This book provides the transliterated Sanskrit text (the transliteration is duplicated to reveal the different morphological analyses), a separate translation of each meaning, and a close analysis of polysemous sequences. An introduction sheds light on the literary and historical context on the one hand, on the linguistic and rhetorical devices which generate polysemy on the other hand. The book is complemented with several appendices containing: another famous literary example of double entendre, a list of known inscriptions issued by the rulers who are referred to in the poem, and the text and the translation of one of the main epigraphs. Two indices record all the polysemous words and all those of historical or geographical purport.

Keywords: Bengal, double meaning, court poetry, epic

About the author:
Sylvain Brocquet Sylvain Brocquet studied Classical languages and Indology. In 1992-1994, a scholarship at the French Institute of Pondicherry enabled him to publish a Ph.D. thesis, the title of which is The Sanskrit Inscriptions of the Pallavas : Poetry, Ritual, Ideology (Lille, Presses du Septentrion, 1997). He is currently professor in Comparative Linguistics of Ancient Languages at the Université de Provence. He writes about Sanskrit Inscriptions of India, Sanskrit Poetics and Court Poetry. He has also produced translations of literary works into French (theatre, tales), and is involved in several research projects (Bengal and South-Indian Epigraphy), with various institutions: Maison de l’Orient (Lyon), French Institute of Pondicherry, French School of Asian Studies.