vācanārtha just means "for the purpose of reading out loud".  In contrast to paṭhanārtha "for the purpose of reading to one's self".

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk
,

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
,

University of Alberta, Canada
.

South Asia at the U of A:
 
sas.ualberta.ca



On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 at 06:37, Jacob Schmidt-Madsen via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Thanks to everybody who responded to my query on and off list. It has
been most helpful and much appreciated.

For those of you who might be interested, Rolf Heinrich Koch pointed me
to a footnote by Phyllis Granoff wherein she translates paṭhanārtha as
"private study" and vācanārtha as "public preaching" in the context of a
colophon to a Jaina manuscript.

Best,
Jacob

Madhav Deshpande skrev den 2018-09-11 19:42:
> I have seen these terms in the colophons of Atharvaveda manuscripts
> from the region of Gujarat.
>
> Madhav M. Deshpande
> Professor Emeritus
> Sanskrit and Linguistics
> University of Michigan
> [Residence: Campbell, California]
>
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 9:32 AM Tyler Williams via INDOLOGY
> <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
>
>> Dear Jacob,
>>
>> This is a common feature in colophons and is often found with
>> genitives to indicate for whom the manuscript was copied. Scholars
>> of Jainism would know better than I any particular connoted
>> performance contexts, but in general this can mean for both study
>> and recitation (at least in the case of non-Jain manuscripts).
>>
>> Best,
>> TWW
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On 11-Sep-2018, at 4:51 PM, Jacob Schmidt-Madsen via INDOLOGY
>> <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear colleagues,
>>>
>>> I have recently come across the expressions "paṭhanārtha" and
>> "vācanārtha" at the end of a few colophons in Jaina manuscripts
>> and drawings/diagrams. I assume that the expressions indicate that
>> the text/drawing in question was copied for purposes of study, and
>> would be interested to know if they are conventionally used in
>> colophons to indicate as much.
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>> Jacob
>>>
>>> Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
>>> PhD Fellow (Indology)
>>> University of Copenhagen
>>> Denmark
>>>
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