{"title":"On Poetic Modes of Glorifying a Ruler and Retelling His Past: The Sāḷuvābhyudaya Narrative on Sāḷuva Narasiṃha the Ahobilanarasiṃha Incarnate","authors":"Ewa Dębicka-Borek","doi":"10.60018/acasva.buce9608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.buce9608","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses the poetic modes of recounting the past in a Sanskrit mahākāvya titled Sāḷuvābhyudaya, authored by Rājanātha Ḍiṇḍima ca. 1480 AD, to eulogise Sāḷuva Narasiṃha, the soon-to-be founder of the Sāḷuva dynasty of Vijayanagara. Focusing on the poem’s second canto, which is built on the theme of divine intervention culminating in the miraculous conception of the future, I argue that depiction of Sāḷuva Narasiṃha as the Ahobilanarasiṃha incarnate – a rather locally known form of Narasiṃha presiding over a Vaishnava religious centre in Ahobilam (currently Andhra Pradesh) – was aimed at enunciating his martial power and justifying his claims to the Vijayanagara throne, while simultaneously revealing the growing interests of Vijayanagara rulers in cooperating with temples and religious institutions.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71270932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pigeons and Doves in Classical Sanskrit Literature","authors":"A. Trynkowska","doi":"10.60018/acasva.iplz3507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.iplz3507","url":null,"abstract":"The main aim of the present study is to indicate the most salient elements of the image of pigeons and doves in Classical Sanskrit literature (kāvya). The author has identified three groups of such elements, which are dealt with in three separate sections of the paper: pigeons and doves are discussed as birds closely associated with humans, as well as symbols of love and sorrow. With the help of this information, in another section of the paper, selected kāvya stanzas featuring pigeons or doves are analysed in more detail.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71270838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Synonyme in der Mahāvyutpatti. Zum Verständnis der mit (ma) ’dom na gebildeten Einträge","authors":"J. Schneider","doi":"10.60018/acasva.umup2788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.umup2788","url":null,"abstract":"At the beginning of the 9th century, official guidelines for translating Indian texts into Tibetan were issued. A Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary, called Mahāvyutpatti, was also compiled at that time: Its approximately 9,500 entries had a lasting influence on Tibetan lexicography. For many Sanskrit words, the Mahāvyutpatti offers several possible translations (synonyms). This paper deals with entries which characterise synonyms by means of the terms 'dom na and ma 'dom na. The structure and function of these definitions are examined in detail, the text of the critical edition by Ishihama and Fukuda (published in 1989) is corrected if necessary. In fact, these definitions follow a general rule given in the Sgra-sbyor-bam-po-gnyis-pa: Literal translations should only be used if in the context ('dom na) synonyms are given that enable an easy understanding; if not (ma 'dom na), more common but less precise renderings should be chosen from the outset. The Tibetan equivalents marked with 'dom na are very often loan translations: As a rule, they render the traditional etymologies of the underlying Sanskrit words quite exactly. However, they are often difficult to understand, especially in Tibet, outside the Indian context from which they originated. Thus ma 'dom na and 'dom na are tags referring to the usage of the words in question. Except for minor irregularities these prescriptions are confirmed by findings from the 'Dul ba, the Tibetan version of the Vinaya. This shows that the rules in the Mahāvyutpatti are consistent with the older canonical literature. The (ma) 'dom na entries in the Mahāvyutpatti thus provide important clues to the historical development of the vocabulary of classical Tibetan.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ein sanskrit–uigurisches Fragment der Tridaṇḍamālā in Brāhmī-Schrift: Reedition des Texts TT VIII D","authors":"J. Hartmann, Dieter Maue","doi":"10.60018/acasva.rxxc2247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.rxxc2247","url":null,"abstract":"The subject of this article, a manuscript rediscovered during the First Prussian Turfan Expedition, was the first sample of the then unknown Uigur variety of the Brāhmī script, whose decipherment was greatly facilitated by its bi-linguality, with Sanskrit as the source language. Though a whole series of scholars have dealt intensively with the text, it has not been possible to assign it to a specific work. Recently, however, a parallel has been found in the Tridaṇḍamālā, a collection of ritual texts in forty chapters, each consisting of a sūtra framed by stanzas. The fragmentary Sanskrit-Uigur bilingual preserves part of chapter 5. Here, the text of both languages is edited, translated and commented on (§ 3), preceded by the history of research (§ 1) and a short introduction to the Tridaṇḍamālā (§ 2), followed by the graphematical profile of the manuscript (§ 4) and glossaries (§ 5).","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Do the Cārvākas/Lokāyatas Fit into Udayana’s Statement of Universal Worship? On Nyāya-kusumâñjali 17,3: loka-vyavahāra-siddha iti cārvākāḥ","authors":"S. Kania","doi":"10.60018/acasva.oxon6315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.oxon6315","url":null,"abstract":"In his influential work concerned with rational argumentation in defence of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika theism, the Nyāya-kusumâñjali, Udayana (10th–11th cent.) makes a puzzling claim that all seekers of puruṣârtha, theist or not, worship God, albeit under a different form or name. Included in the provided enumeration of different traditions of Indian thought is the irreligious school of the Cārvākas (also known as the Lokāyatas), declared by Udayana to be worshipping God as loka-vyavahāra-siddha (lit. ‘(the) established by common usage’). In this paper, I attempt to shed light on the meaning behind both loka-vyavahāra-siddha and the statement of universal worship as a whole. Specifically, I argue that Udayana imposes on non-theists and atheists the need to resort to (broadly understood) belief, and in the case of the Cārvākas/Lokāyatas this is manifested in their acceptance of everyday inference warranted by mere common usage. I reject the interpretations by Udayana’s commentators and by the modern scholar of Indian materialism, Ramkrishna Bhattacharya.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71270574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New Manuscript Evidence for Suprabhātastava by Śrīharṣadeva: The Drepung Texts Critically Examined","authors":"Z. Liu","doi":"10.60018/acasva.cscy7993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.cscy7993","url":null,"abstract":"The Suprabhātastava is one of the two hymns ascribed to King Śrīharṣadeva (c. 590–647 CE), who ruled over Kannauj. There are five modern editions of this text, which roughly follow eight extant Sanskrit manuscripts and a Tibetan translation. Recently, scholars discovered two unknown Sanskrit manuscripts of the text in Drepung Monastery. One of them has unique contents and readings. For this reason, the present article compares the said manuscript with other extant versions. In this respect, the article demonstrates that the newly discovered manuscripts belong to a different transmission lineage. Moreover, the article discusses the authorship and genre of the Suprabhātastava.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71270601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cliché-ridden Online Danmei Fiction? A Case Study of Tianguan ci fu","authors":"Aiqing Wang","doi":"10.60018/acasva.iray5065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.iray5065","url":null,"abstract":"Popular literature online is often misconstrued as being cliché-ridden and formulaic, and has thus not attained as much critical attention as ‘serious’ literature. I propound that popular literature published in China’s cyberspace deserves more attention and hermeneutic scrutiny, and I place an emphasis on danmei (耽美) fiction that features male-male romantic and/or erotic relationships and is predominantly published on a female-oriented website called Jinjiang Literature City. In this research, I investigate an online danmei novel entitled Tianguan ci fu (天官赐福) that concerns a homosexual romance against a background of ‘immortality cultivation’ (xiuxian 修仙 or xiuzhen 修真), which had been maintaining the highest ranking on readers’ voting list since its release on Jinjiang Literature City in 2017. I postulate that Tianguan ci fu does not deploy clichéd plots pertaining to quasi-heterosexual relationships, which frequently occur in danmei fiction. Apart from conveying the theme of love, the narrative concerns the complexity of human nature via an array of characters possessing multifaceted personality traits. More significantly, with a setting of mortal and immortal realms, the narrative entails religious ideologies, especially the indigenous Daoist ascension, mortality-immorality polarity and yin-yang integration. Furthermore, ethic-religious Confucian precepts such as benevolence and filial piety are also demonstrated, along with the Sinicised Buddhist creeds of reincarnation and retribution, which embodies the amalgamation of (sub)religions as a preponderant ideal of ‘the unity of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism’ (san jiao he yi 三教合一). Therefore, analysing this exemplary online novel can shed light on (a)theistic attitudes adopted by creators and consumers of Internet danmei literature.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71270881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Notes on a Lost Book: Philological Questions and Symbols of the Sui-jŏn","authors":"M. Riotto","doi":"10.60018/acasva.thkp8274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.thkp8274","url":null,"abstract":"This article deals with Sui-jŏn, an almost unknown work not only in the West but also scarcely studied in Korea itself. Written most likely between the 10th and 12th centuries, on the basis of older, unidentifiable sources, the Sui-jŏn appears to have been primarily a collection of fantastic tales. Today it is largely lost, but its partial reconstruction is possible through various fragments reported in later works. Precisely on the basis of these fragments, in the first part this article attempts to reconstruct, as far as possible, what must have been the nature of the book, its author, its genesis, its dating. In the second part, the symbology of some natural elements that appear in the fragments of the work is spoken of. It is a symbolism that belongs, in similar forms, to many cultures of the world, but which in the case of Korea becomes, in its presentation, a real milestone, being present in the oldest Korean work of its kind that came down to us, although partially.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Indian Regional nāga Cults and Individual nāga Stories in Chinese Buddhist Travelogues","authors":"Max Deeg","doi":"10.60018/acasva.tmrw6380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.tmrw6380","url":null,"abstract":"This paper attempts to link the archaeological and epigraphic evidence of nāga veneration in South Asia (Mathurā, Ajaṇṭā) with the textual sources about nāgas and their veneration from the Chinese Buddhist travelogues (Faxian, Xuanzang). As a specific case study, the information about the nāga Dadhikarṇa attested in Mathurā is compared with Faxian’s description of the cult of the nāga ‘White-Ear’ in Sāṅkāśya and other texts referring to rituals or festivals dedicated to nāgas.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Elements of Animate and Inanimate Nature in the Practice of Avadhāna","authors":"Hermina Cielas","doi":"10.60018/acasva.vphu4918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.60018/acasva.vphu4918","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on the practice of avadhāna, which is based on highly developed cognitive skills (ability to concentrate, memory) and showcasing of manifold strengths and knowledge during partially improvised spectacles. Various challenges to be met involve the elements of animate and inanimate nature. The main purpose of the article is to investigate the occurrence of these components and their role in the avadhāna, as well as to examine the possible sources of specialised knowledge in equinology (aśvaśāstra), elephant lore (gajaśāstra) and visual poetry (citrakāvya) required from the avadhāna performers.","PeriodicalId":33918,"journal":{"name":"Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71271237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}