Dear List Members, 

As far as I know the book Variants and Variance in Classical Textual Cultures (Berlin/Boston 2024; ed. by Glenn W. Most), at once precious AND freely downloadable, has not yet been announced on the Indology List, although the contribution by Charles Hallisey

(Seeing Shadows in the Shade: The Narrative Quality of Textual Variants
and the History of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia)

and the one by Gérard Colas 

(“Variant”, variation and pāṭha in Sanskrit)

should be of some interest to many of us. 

Noteworthy observations by Colas concern the differences between "Western" and earlier Indian concepts of "reading" (reading aloud vs. reading silently and privately) and what this could mean for early manuscript collections "independently from the interest of Western philology": 

p. 41: 

"Therefore it remains to be seen how far a specific Indian “manuscript culture”

arose and developed independently from the interest of Western philology
in Indian manuscripts. The valuation of Indian manuscript collections under
modern Western influence modified the Indian situation and enhanced the importance
of preserving manuscripts as historical literary objects. In this context,
libraries preserved manuscripts even though they were not often consulted, not
to speak of those never consulted. The modern philological usage of Sanskrit
manuscripts transformed their function and value as primary objects of reference
in connection with the Western conception of silently reading the texts, the specific
role of this visual process, and the particular scholarly bias of historical investigation
for and about Sanskrit texts. Critical editions by non-traditional scholars
also inevitably idealize texts according to their limited knowledge."

p. 47: 

"Uttering aloud or enouncing the sentences of the manuscripts (pustakavācana) is mentioned as a particular art (kalā) among the sixty-four enumerated by the Kāmasūtra."

Regarding 

Gérard Colas, “L’écriture, visage de la parole: la tradition indienne”, in: Anne Zali and
Annie Berthier (eds.), L’Aventure des écritures, Paris, 125–131, 

Colas remarks now (on p. 44, note 32): 

"I would not readily subscribe today to my 1997 conjecture that the same erudites of that period (though they contributed to the elaboration of early Indian scripts) could have used writing for their own aide-memoire manuscripts."

Regarding Colas' remark on p. 42, 

     Renou observed that the use of Middle Indo-Aryan “appears in epigraphy 

     before Sanskrit: this is the great linguistic paradox of India.” 

I take the liberty of referring to a publication (2018) of mine, also freely downloadable: 

“Linguistic Paradox and Diglossia: on the emergence of Sanskrit and Sanskritic language in Ancient India.” De Gruyter Open Linguistics (Topical Issue on Historical Sociolinguistic Philology, ed. by Chiara Barbati and Christian Gastgeber.) OPLI – Vol. 4, issue 1: 1-18.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2018-0001