{"title":"Commenting by Weaving Together Texts: Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā and the Sanskrit Philosophical Commentaries","authors":"E. Freschi","doi":"10.1163/24519197-12340056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-12340056","url":null,"abstract":"What makes a text a “commentary”? The question is naive enough to allow a complicated answer. In Sanskrit there is not a single word for “commentary”. The present study focuses on an exemplary case study, that of Veṅkaṭanātha’s commentary on the Seśvaramīmāṃsā, and concludes that Sanskrit philosophical commentaries share certain characteristics: 1. several given texts are their main interlocutors/they are mainly about a set of particular texts; 2. they belong to a genre in its own right and are not a minor specialisation for authors at the beginnings of their careers; 3. they are characterised by a varied but strong degree of textual reuse; 4. they are characterised by a shared interlanguage that their authors must have assumed was well known to their audiences; 5. they allow for a significant degree of innovation. The use of the plural in point No. 1 is discussed extensively within the paper.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24519197-12340056","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45204167","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":"Visual and Verbal Commentaries in Renaissance Astronomy: Erasmus Reinhold’s Treatment of Classical Sources on Astronomy","authors":"P. Omodeo, I. Tupikova","doi":"10.1163/24519197-12340047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-12340047","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Immediately following the publication of Copernicus’s major work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Nuremberg, 1543), the renowned Renaissance astronomer Erasmus Reinhold of Saalfeld (1511–1553) issued a Greek-and-Latin edition of the first book of Ptolemy’s Almagest with commentaries. It was entitled Ptolemaei Mathematicae constructionis liber primus (Wittenberg, in 1549). Employing images and textual commentaries, Reinhold aimed to make Ptolemy’s work accessible to his students at the University of Wittenberg. The commentary strengthened fundamental cosmological arguments presented in the first book of the Almagest, especially the central position of the Earth in the cosmos and its immobility. The Reinhold edition documents Renaissance commentary practices and their dynamic and transformative character. It is argued that the publication of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory motivated astronomy professors such as Reinhold to reassess Ptolemy’s cosmological arguments and analyze them with renewed interest.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24519197-12340047","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45001665","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":"Crossing Interpretive Boundaries in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul: Aḥmed Sūdī on the Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ of Shiraz","authors":"Murat İnan","doi":"10.1163/24519197-12340045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-12340045","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article discusses an Ottoman commentary by Aḥmed Sūdī (d. ca. 1600) on the Dīvān (poetry collection) of Ḥāfiẓ of Shiraz (d. ca. 1390), a Persian literary masterpiece that enjoyed wide readership in the Ottoman world for centuries. In the first part of the article, I introduce Sūdī’s life and works and delineate the structure of his commentary, noting how that structure is underpinned by his philological approach to commentary writing. In the second part, I focus on Sūdī’s interpretation of the opening verse of the Dīvān and compare it with that of his predecessors to highlight and contextualize Sūdī’s commentarial approach. I conclude by illustrating how his grammatical-lexicographical analysis aimed to liberate the celebrated Dīvān from the dominant tradition of allegorical interpretation.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24519197-12340045","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42807195","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":"Translations as Linguistic Commentaries? On the Interpretative Dimension of Early Bible Translations into Judaeo-Arabic","authors":"Ronny Vollandt","doi":"10.1163/24519197-12340048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-12340048","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Arabic translations of the Scriptures were an early vehicle for satisfying the need for versions that the masses, as well as the more educated strata, could understand, and for adapting the biblical text to a new world at a time of profound political and cultural change. Most of the languages that had been in general use prior to this time had been supplanted by Arabic. For the majority of communities that were now under Muslim rule, the languages of religious learning became a scholastic medium that had to be acquired and preserved through instruction. This led to a multiglossic culture, in which Arabic was the daily vernacular, used alongside central religious texts in Hebrew and Aramaic (or Syriac, Greek, and Coptic for Christian communities). In this contribution I seek to demonstrate how early Jewish translations of the Bible into Arabic promoted continuing and close study of Hebrew, rather than the reverse.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24519197-12340048","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44816339","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":"On Texts and Disciplines: How the Prātiśākhyas are Categorised by Their Commentaries","authors":"Giovanni Ciotti","doi":"10.1163/24519197-12340046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-12340046","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article explores the relationship between texts and the scholarly categories to which they are attributed. In particular, it focuses on the Prātiśākhyas—grammars of the linguistic features characterising Vedic recitation—and on the position they occupy within the domains of Sanskritic scholarship according to the different views expressed by their commentaries. In fact, the Prātiśākhyas are variously presented as corresponding to specific canonical or non-canonical disciplines, or as piecing together parts of many disciplines. Because of the inherent stylistic difference between the Prātiśākhyas and their commentaries, Vedic scholars found in the latter ones the (textual) space where they could express their opinions regarding the scholarly frame of reference to which the Prātiśākhyas were said to belong.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24519197-12340046","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49200274","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}