The volume under review is the third in the Pu ṣpikā series intended to provide a platform for the research of the younger generation of Indologists (volumes 1 and 2 were reviewed in BSOAS 78/2, 2015, pp. 399–401). Although only eight articles are presented on this occasion, they are as thematically disparate as those in the previous volumes. As before, the purposes of review can best be served by signalling the main areas of interest addressed by each author. The first two articles address philosophical issues.
In “Is inference a cognitive or a linguistic process? A line of divergence between Jain and Buddhist classifications”, Marie-Hélène Gorisse analyses the differing Buddhist and Jain perspectives on inference, concluding that while Dharmakīrti treats inferential reasoning as part of the cognitive process, Digambara Jain philosophers such as Akalaṅka and Māṇikyanandi identify it as a specifically linguistic process. This valuable paper (unfortunately presented without a bibliography) establishes a clear area of differentiation between Buddhist and Jain logicians. It can be profitably read in conjunction with the same author's “Can the rise of Rohiṇī be inferred from the rise of Kṛttikā? A Buddhist–Jaina controversy”, in J. Soni, M. Pahlke and C. Cüppers (eds), Buddhist and Jaina Studies. Proceedings of the Conference in Lumbini, February 2013, Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute, 2014, pp. 341–66.
In “Between theism and atheism: a journey through Viśiṣṭādvaita and Mīmāṃsā”, Elisa Freschi investigates the interface between two Hindu philosophical schools, conventionally regarded as theistic and atheistic respectively, in order to demonstrate the inadequacy of rigidly compartmentalizing brahmanical intellectual and theological systems. By considering the particular case of Veṅkaṭanātha, the thirteenth–fourteenth-century synthesizer of Qualified Non-Dualistic Vedānta and Mīmāṃsā, Freschi argues that terms such as “divinity” and “god” require redefinition in the context of the relationship between these two schools. Accepting some sort of pure atheism as Mīmāmsā's invariable default position becomes problematic, while, as evidenced by Veṅkaṭanātha, Viśiṣṭādvaita could show itself to be hospitable to Mīmāṃsā tenets about the trans-empirical status of the Veda when framing its concepts about the nature of a personal god.
The subject matter of the remaining five papers follows a chronological trajectory from the Vedic period to the modern era. In “The pre-eminence of men in the vrātya-ideology”, Moreno Dore aims to throw light on the ascetic ideology of the Atharvaveda Śaunakīya, a vrātya text. This well-documented essay delineates a range of connections between the status of Prajāpati and the pre-eminence of the brahmacārin and the vrātya. In his conclusion Dore intriguingly juxtaposes Atharvaveda 15.1–3 and a Jain text, Ācārā ṅga 2.5, both of which describe the offering of a throne to, respectively, a vrātya and the Jina, as possibly relating to the common religious milieu within the region of Magadha from which, according to Bronkhorst's thesis, emerged the Jain and Buddhist traditions. However, Dore's chronology is vague and the implications of the relative lateness of book two of the Ācārāṅga Sūtra require further consideration. This article can be read as part of a larger project of whose published findings Dore is a co-editor. (See Tiziano Pontillo, Cristina Bignami, Moreno Dore and Elena Mucciarelli (eds), The Volatile World of Sovereignty: The Vrātya Problem and Kingship in South Asia, New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 2015.)
In “‘Tear down my Sādhana- and Havirdhāna-huts, stow away my Soma-vessels' – Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa 2,269ff.: A typical case of cursing in the Veda?”, Paul F. Schwerda engagingly analyses the mechanics of Vedic black magic to explicate a story from the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa dealing with a brahman curse and a kṣatriya counter-curse. Schwerda concludes, somewhat unsurprisingly, that the theme of the story serves to affirm the superior position of the brahman class over the kṣatriya class in that the latter's attempts to bring about ritual efficacy can never be based on genuine expertise and must inevitably prove fruitless.
In “A new reading of The Meghadūta”, A. Ruiz-Falqués analyses the poetic logic of Kālidāsa's celebrated sa ṃdeśakāvya, highlighting various aspects which he feels have been underappreciated. He concludes that the poem is a tragicomedy (this being, along with “jocular poem” and “farce”, Ruiz-Falqués' rendering of the designation kelikāvya used by the commentator Vallabhadeva to describe the Meghadūta) which involves despair (the insentient cloud can never actually deliver the message with which it has been entrusted), couched in an innovative metre (possibly of Kālidāsa's devising), the mandākrāntā, appropriate to a state of mental lassitude. Ruiz-Falqués argues with some justification that it is misleading to use the expression “nature” in its Western Romantic sense to refer to the scenarios depicted in the Meghadūta (although he is prepared to invoke the figure of Don Quixote, much beloved of European Romanticism, as an analogy for the madness of the poem's yak ṣa hero). However, not every reader will follow him when he interprets the descriptions of landscapes in the poem as hallucinatory.
In “Banārasīdās climbing the Jain Stages of Perfection” Jérôme Petit discusses the fourteen gu ṇasthāna, the stages of spiritual development, as found in the writings of Banārasīdās, the seventeenth-century Jain layman who was a prominent member of the Digambara revivalist Ādhyātmika movement. Petit provides a useful tabular overview of the Jain schematization of the operation of karma within the guṇasthānas and further locates the position of gradualism in early modern Digambara intellectual history. The paper includes a complete translation of Banārasīdās's Avasthāṣṭaka.
In “If people get to know me, I'll become cow-dung: Bhaba Pagla and the songs of the Bauls of Bengal”, Carola Erika Lorea studies the role of a celebrated modern songwriter and spiritual teacher from East Bengal. Bhaba Pagla's songs have become ubiquitous in the contemporary Baul performative landscape, but written references to them are scanty. After providing a biography of Bhaba Pagla and a survey of his songs, Lorea demonstrates the trans-religious nature of this singer-saint's identity as reflecting the fluidity of sahajiyā cults in Bengal.
In “Revisiting Sanskrit teaching in the light of modern language pedagogy”, Sven Wortmann and Ann-Kathrin Wolf offer some observations based on their experience of teaching basic Sanskrit. Their main recommendation, which is based on modern pedagogical methods used in other languages and is of genuine practical value, is that the Sanskrit instructor should employ a textbook containing continuous narrative texts, create audio-visual material based around it, and introduce three or more different types of exercise per lesson. Given the inevitable shortage of time for elementary Sanskrit classes, the aim should be for students to work independently as much as possible and thus reduce teacher-centred instruction.
As was the case with the first two volumes of Pu ṣpikā, this third volume undoubtedly makes a favourable impression. While few will approach every contribution with the same degree of enthusiasm, it would be a dull Indologist who did not derive some profit from consulting this collection of essays.
