[INDOLOGY] Fwd: A request for some literature

[Suchandra Ghosh]

Dear Colleagues,
Please see the mail below.
Regards,
Suchandra


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Goran Perić <goran.1099 at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 25, 2024 at 7:52 PM
Subject: A request for some literature
To: <indology-owner at list.indology.info>


Dear Indology Committee,

I am writing to you on the recommendation of Professor McComas Taylor. I
would like to request you and other members of the forum for help to obtain
some literature I want and to ask you if you could refer me to some
articles or books which are of relevance to a paper I want to revise.
However, before moving forward, I think I should introduce myself.

I am a master's student of English at the University of Belgrade who is
currently writing a master's thesis on Leonard Bloomfield’s linguistic
views and contributions to linguistics. I plan to pursue a PhD in
linguistics after obtaining my Master's degree and I hope I will be able to
do so at some respectable foreign university because that would help me
greatly to realise my dream of becoming a linguist. The prospects for
becoming a linguist are not that good here in Serbia and the conditions for
doing linguistic work are not entirely satisfactory, except perhaps if the
Serbian language is your area of expertise.

As regards my interests, I am particularly interested in synchronic and
diachronic syntax and semantics, not only of English, but also of other
languages, especially Sanskrit and Serbian at the moment. In addition, I
plan to learn German, at least some Ancient Greek and Latin and probably
Czech and Hindi as well. So, unlike most of today's budding linguists, I am
interested both in synchronic and in diachronic linguistics (including
Indo-European studies). I also like to learn about the history of
linguistics and the Indian linguistic tradition. However, apart from these
fields which are related to my professional ambitions, I am also interested
in ancient Indian religion, philosophy and culture, partly because of my
connection with the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. Until now, this has been
more of a hobby, but who knows, maybe I will also publish some articles
concerning these aspects of ancient Indian heritage, though it is more
likely that I will stick to its linguistic elements. In any case, it is
good to be familiar with the literature that can be used for obtaining data
for linguistic analyses.

To conclude this introduction, I should add that I attended an Intensive
Summer Course in Vedic and Classical Sanakrit at the University of
Ljubljana this summer and that I have written two papers dealing with
certain noteworthy features of Sanskrit: the first one is about the syntax
and semantics of Sanskrit relative-correlatives and the second one is about
semantic motivation of various Sanskrit compounds and derivatives denoting
common concepts. However, both papers have to be revised and the second
paper is the one for which I need your advice. Now, let me proceed to the
main part of this email.

Firstly, I would be very grateful to you if you could help me obtain scans
of M.H. Klaiman's 1984 book *Singing the Glory of Lord Krishna: The
Srikrsnakirtana* and the following articles from the *Purana* *Bulletin*,
which are to be found in some of the issues that are unfortunately not
available on the IGNCA website (https://ignca.gov.in/purana/):

Chatterji, Ashoke (1960). The Antiquity of the Patala-Khanda of the
Padma-Purana (part 2). Purana II, pp. 52-61.

Chatterji, Ashoke (1961). The Characteristic Features of the Uttara-khanda
of the Padma-Purana. Purana III, pp. 47-60.

Chatterji, Ashoke (1963). Some observations on the date of Bengal recension
of Uttara-khanda of the Padma-Purana. Purana V, pp. 122-126.

Gyani, S. D. (1960). The Date of the Puranas, part 2. Purana II, pp. 68-75.

As for the book, it would perhaps be easiest if I could obtain a scan from
the author herself, but I am not sure if she is still alive and even if she
is, I cannot find on the Internet any means of contacting her. However, I
found out that the University of Michigan had scanned the book, so some
Indologist who works there could probably easily access it and send it to
me, provided that he is willing to do so (which is not guaranteed by any
means). The reason why I would like to have a look at it is that I heard
that its attitude to the topic in question is quite different from that of
the Gita Govinda and similar works by Gaudiya Vaishnava acharyas such as
Rupa Gosvami.

As far as the articles are concerned, you can probably tell that I would
like to read them because the Patala- and Uttara-khandas contain some
important Vaishnava materials, so it is interesting to see what their
history was like. I have already read relevant portions of Chatterji's *Padma
Purana*—*A* *Study* and Ludo Rocher's book *The Puranas*, but I would like
to learn more.

This brings me to the last two questions in this part of the email and both
of them are related to the Padma Purana. When I read those parts of the
aforementioned two books, I was very surprised to learn that no one had
taken the trouble to publish the Bengal recension of the Padma Purana given
that it differs from the published editions in some significant respects,
e.g. its Uttara-khanda is considerably shorter and its Patala-khanda does
not include a series of chapters pertaining to Krishna but it does contain
the initial part of the story of Rama that is missing in the published
texts. Therefore, I would like to know if it is possible to find scans of
the Bengali manuscripts somewhere on the Internet or to obtain them through
someone who has access to them. The first possibility seems unlikely since
I was unable to find any such scans on the Internet Archive, in the
University of Cambridge and the University of Pennsylvania online
manuscript repositories or on the SAMHiTA (South Asian Manuscript Histories
and Textual Archive) website.

The second question is this: Do you know if there are any researchers who
plan to compile a critical edition of the Padma Purana in the future? I am
sure that doing so is no easy task considering the fact that the Padma
Purana is the second most voluminous Purana after the Skanda Purana (whose
critical edition is currently being compiled), but it would no doubt be
worth the effort.

Secondly, I have written an article in which I analyse the semantic
motivation of vivid Sanskrit compounds and derivatives signifying common
concepts, e.g. *jala-da* ("water giver", i.e. a cloud), *pāda-pa* ("foot
drinker", i.e. a tree), *pakṣin* ("wing-possessing", i.e. a bird), *netra*
("the instrument of leading", i.e. an eye) and the like. Regardless of the
fact that compounds such as *jalada* and *pādapa* are unlikely to have been
used outside of the literary context, it is still remarkable that Sanskrit
had such an abundance of synonyms denoting common concepts because even
though one could have coined similar words and extended the meaning of
existing words in other ancient languages such as Greek and Latin, that did
not happen as far as I can see. While I do not know what the situation is
like in non-Indo-European languages and their ancestors, I think that there
is no doubt that Sanskrit really stands out among Indo-European languages
in this respect. Therefore, I want to know if there are any previous
studies which address this striking difference or the fact that Sanskrit
boasts an abundance of synonyms. It is always better (and easier) to build
on previous research, provided that it exists, of course.

Looking forward to your reply,
Goran Perić
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