[INDOLOGY] The Paṇḍit Collection (COMDC 7.2)

[Hartmut Buescher]

Dear colleagues,



it is a pleasure to inform you that, with some delay, the publication of a
new

Sanskrit catalogue in the COMDC series (https://tinyurl.com/y3lknzmq) has

become available. Actually consisting in 2 volumes (872 pp., 80+
illustrations),

it constitutes COMDC 7.2 and may be ordered from NIAS Press, hence let me

refer you to this link providing you with some basic information

(http://www.niaspress.dk/books/catalogue-sanskrit-manuscripts-0).



Describing the Royal Danish Library’s (http://www.kb.dk/da/index.html)

so-called *Paṇḍit Collection*, being much larger than all the three
collections

described in COMDC 7.1 together, COMDC 7.2 may be said to be contextually

related to a recent larger indological project focusing on *Sanskrit
Knowledge *

*Systems at the Eve of Colonialism*, which similar to other contributions
such as

*The Pandit: Traditional Scholarship in India* (ed. Axel Michaels, 2001),
has

contributed with valuable perspectives to an investigation of “the
structure and

social context of Sanskrit science and knowledge from 1550 to 1750.”



That is, complementing our understanding of the *paṇḍita* in a panorama of
external,

historical and socio-political, circumstances, this catalogue of a Paṇḍit’s
collection

of Sanskrit manuscripts provides, phenomenologically speaking, many
insights into

a Paṇḍit‘s lifeworld, it opens doors, one might say, to his inner life, to
his numerous

mental and intellectual spaces of intentional horizons spanning from the
Vedas to the

epics and *Purāṇa*s, from grammar to lexicography, from astrology to
palmistry, from

the legal works of *Dharmaśāstra* to the dramatic and poetic works of
*Kāvya* and *Subhāṣita*,

from the ritual domains of the *Śrautasūtra*s and *Gṛhyasūtra*s to
innumerable forms

of *prayoga*s and *pūjā*s, including Tantric variations, not to forget his
fondness for

the emotional spheres of *stotra* and his knowledge of at least some
branches of

philosophy and *Yogaśāstra*.



Given the many illustrations associated with analytic descriptions
addressing all

the three levels (the physical, the semiotic and the semantic) embodied in
manuscripts

as pre-modern instruments of transmitting knowledge from generation to
generation,

it may likewise be a useful tool when initially introducing students to the
very fundamental

Indological issue of reading, or at least being aware of the horizon of,
manuscripts,

then, from the outset, better to grasp the necessary tasks of philology,
the latter

not least also as a proper foundation for assertions related to
hermeneutical issues

of textual interpretation.



Myself being (*unzeitgemäß* ”smartphonelessly”) off to India again

for the following weeks, let me wish you – as long as this may still

be possible without sounding ironical – a wonderful autumn season,



Hartmut Buescher


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