{"title":"Shani Omari and Method Samuel (eds.). Fasihi, Lugha na Utamaduni wa Kiswahili na Kiafrika. Kwa Heshimaya Prof. M. M. Mulokozi","authors":"F. Aiello","doi":"10.13135/1825-263X/2934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2934","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37635,"journal":{"name":"Kervan","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45807605","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}
The present paper is an analysis of the defense of the epistemological autonomy of verbal testimony (śabda), against its reduction to inference, as found in Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s Nyāyamanjarī. The article identifies the Vaiśeṣika, Buddhist and Sāṅkhya positions hinted at in the Nyāyamanjarī, and it analyses the reuse by Jayanta of the arguments conceived by the Mīmāṃsā philosopher Kumārila. Unlike for Mīmāṃsakas, according to Jayanta the relation between language and reality is established by convention, but in its day-to-day usage it is clear that an a priori connection is a necessary condition for linguistic communication, so that the distinction between a fixed connection and a conventional one weakens. The analysis of Jayanta leads to two general conclusions: 1. In ancient Nyāya as attested by Jayanta there is no distinction between non-committal understanding and committal knowledge from words. Consequently, 2. in ancient Nyāya as attested by Jayanta the language is primarily examined from an epistemological viewpoint, as the conveyer of true statements. There are no “neutral” statements, and false statements are in fact inappropriate uses of language.
{"title":"Bhaṭṭa Jayanta: Comprehension, Knowledge, and the Reduction of Testimony to Inference","authors":"Alessandro Graheli","doi":"10.13135/1825-263X/2270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2270","url":null,"abstract":"The present paper is an analysis of the defense of the epistemological autonomy of verbal testimony (śabda), against its reduction to inference, as found in Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s Nyāyamanjarī. The article identifies the Vaiśeṣika, Buddhist and Sāṅkhya positions hinted at in the Nyāyamanjarī, and it analyses the reuse by Jayanta of the arguments conceived by the Mīmāṃsā philosopher Kumārila. Unlike for Mīmāṃsakas, according to Jayanta the relation between language and reality is established by convention, but in its day-to-day usage it is clear that an a priori connection is a necessary condition for linguistic communication, so that the distinction between a fixed connection and a conventional one weakens. The analysis of Jayanta leads to two general conclusions: 1. In ancient Nyāya as attested by Jayanta there is no distinction between non-committal understanding and committal knowledge from words. Consequently, 2. in ancient Nyāya as attested by Jayanta the language is primarily examined from an epistemological viewpoint, as the conveyer of true statements. There are no “neutral” statements, and false statements are in fact inappropriate uses of language.","PeriodicalId":37635,"journal":{"name":"Kervan","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42237128","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}
In the ancient South Asian texts about ritual known as Saṃhitā s and Brāhmaṇa s, the wives of the king play an interesting role in terms of bodily actions and ritual rhetoric. Especially the so-called “chief wife” ( mahi ṣ ī ) is described as a central and liminal player who serves as a sexual counterpart of the king at the main solemn rituals, i.e. Aśvamedha and Rājasūya, involving the travel of a horse in unconquered lands and the royal consecration, respectively. In this essay I suggest that the construction of female sexuality is a crucial point to fix the boundaries around the notion of authority, not only that of the king, but also that of his practitioner, i.e. the brāhmaṇa or purohita . From this starting point I suggest also that the chief wife of the king may be reconsidered as one of the most strategic actor on a ritual and political stage. I will try to show that the mahiṣī ’s sexual function in the ritual exegesis had gained value, in connection with the attempt to deify the human primus inter pares of the political organisation, i.e. the king. More specifically, I will deal with the ritual language and codification concerning the mahiṣī ’s sexuality in order to illustrate the formulation of her body in the rituals prescribed in the Brāhmaṇas about solemn rites. I will discuss how the persuasive force of description and prescription about her bodily actions served as a means of persuasion in displaying the king’s power. Finally, I suggest rethinking the role of gender in royal rituals from the perspective of literary criticism.
{"title":"Sexuality as a promotion of Power: How the Chief Wife becomes a Means of Persuasion in the Vedic Rhetoric on Kingship","authors":"M. Ferrara","doi":"10.13135/1825-263X/2257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2257","url":null,"abstract":"In the ancient South Asian texts about ritual known as Saṃhitā s and Brāhmaṇa s, the wives of the king play an interesting role in terms of bodily actions and ritual rhetoric. Especially the so-called “chief wife” ( mahi ṣ ī ) is described as a central and liminal player who serves as a sexual counterpart of the king at the main solemn rituals, i.e. Aśvamedha and Rājasūya, involving the travel of a horse in unconquered lands and the royal consecration, respectively. In this essay I suggest that the construction of female sexuality is a crucial point to fix the boundaries around the notion of authority, not only that of the king, but also that of his practitioner, i.e. the brāhmaṇa or purohita . From this starting point I suggest also that the chief wife of the king may be reconsidered as one of the most strategic actor on a ritual and political stage. I will try to show that the mahiṣī ’s sexual function in the ritual exegesis had gained value, in connection with the attempt to deify the human primus inter pares of the political organisation, i.e. the king. More specifically, I will deal with the ritual language and codification concerning the mahiṣī ’s sexuality in order to illustrate the formulation of her body in the rituals prescribed in the Brāhmaṇas about solemn rites. I will discuss how the persuasive force of description and prescription about her bodily actions served as a means of persuasion in displaying the king’s power. Finally, I suggest rethinking the role of gender in royal rituals from the perspective of literary criticism.","PeriodicalId":37635,"journal":{"name":"Kervan","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49445897","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}
This introduction summarises the steps which led the scholars grouped in the Coffee Break group to undertake the project and then accompanied them from the awareness of the need to deconstruct the idea of geographic boundaries and, consequently, of area studies such as “Indology” or “South Asian studies”, to the need to deconstruct disciplines such as “Philology” or “Literature” themselves, since they are also historically and culturally loaded and risk to tell one more about their subjects than about their alleged objects of study. This pars destruens is followed by a pars construens suggesting as an alternative a situated epistemology which refutes to essentialise the “Other” and, on a more practical level, by the constant implementation of team work.
{"title":"There is no “East”: Deconstructing the idea of Asia and rethinking the disciplines working on it","authors":"E. Freschi","doi":"10.13135/1825-263X/2252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2252","url":null,"abstract":"This introduction summarises the steps which led the scholars grouped in the Coffee Break group to undertake the project and then accompanied them from the awareness of the need to deconstruct the idea of geographic boundaries and, consequently, of area studies such as “Indology” or “South Asian studies”, to the need to deconstruct disciplines such as “Philology” or “Literature” themselves, since they are also historically and culturally loaded and risk to tell one more about their subjects than about their alleged objects of study. This pars destruens is followed by a pars construens suggesting as an alternative a situated epistemology which refutes to essentialise the “Other” and, on a more practical level, by the constant implementation of team work.","PeriodicalId":37635,"journal":{"name":"Kervan","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48789571","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}
This paper outlines some of the historical and epistemological themes of al-Risālat al-Kāmiliyya fī al-Sīrat al-Nabawiyya (‘the Epistle of Kāmil on the life-story of the Prophet’; henceforth, Risālat Kāmiliyya ) by Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288) in the context of discussions about testimony in Medieval Islamicate intellectual milieus. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one will offer a brief description of the place of testimony in Medieval epistemic discussions, with some comparative elements. The second part presents a short summary of Risālat Kāmiliyya ’s close precedent, Ibn Ṭufayl’s Risālat Ḥ ayy Ibn Yaqẓān , with some remarks on the role of testimony in its epistemology. In the third part, Risālat Kāmiliyya ’s original epistemic stance on testimony will be examined and discussed, with some proposals about its historical and philosophical significance.
本文概述了Ibn al-NafīS（公元1288年）在中世纪伊斯兰知识环境中讨论证词的背景下，提出的al-Risālat al-Kāmiliyya fīal-Sīrat al-Nabawiya（“Kāmill关于先知生平的书信”；此后，Risâlat KāMilliyya）的一些历史和认识论主题。本文分为三个部分。第一部分将简要描述证言在中世纪认识论讨论中的地位，并加入一些比较元素。第二部分简要总结了李的近世先例伊本Ṭufayl的RisālatḤ ayy Ibn Yaqẓān，并对证言在其认识论中的作用作了一些评论。在第三部分中，将考察和讨论Risālat Kāmiliyya对证言的原始认识立场，并对其历史意义和哲学意义提出一些建议。
{"title":"Testimony and the epistemic problem of society in al-Risālat al-Kāmiliyya fī al-Sīrat al-Nabawiyya","authors":"Marco Lauri","doi":"10.13135/1825-263X/2254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2254","url":null,"abstract":"This paper outlines some of the historical and epistemological themes of al-Risālat al-Kāmiliyya fī al-Sīrat al-Nabawiyya (‘the Epistle of Kāmil on the life-story of the Prophet’; henceforth, Risālat Kāmiliyya ) by Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288) in the context of discussions about testimony in Medieval Islamicate intellectual milieus. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one will offer a brief description of the place of testimony in Medieval epistemic discussions, with some comparative elements. The second part presents a short summary of Risālat Kāmiliyya ’s close precedent, Ibn Ṭufayl’s Risālat Ḥ ayy Ibn Yaqẓān , with some remarks on the role of testimony in its epistemology. In the third part, Risālat Kāmiliyya ’s original epistemic stance on testimony will be examined and discussed, with some proposals about its historical and philosophical significance.","PeriodicalId":37635,"journal":{"name":"Kervan","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49558155","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}
The article presents the social background, which helped Bollywood film industry to develop the so-called “item numbers”, replace them by “dream sequences”, and come back to the “item number” formula again. The songs performed by the film vamp or the character, who takes no part in the story, the musical interludes, which replaced the first way to show on the screen all elements which are theoretically banned, and the guest appearances of film stars on the screen are a very clever ways to fight all the prohibitions imposed by Indian censors. Censors found that film censorship was necessary, because the film as a medium is much more popular than literature or theater, and therefore has an impact on all people. Indeed, the viewers perceive the screen story as the world around them, so it becomes easy for them to accept the screen reality and move it to everyday life. That’s why the movie, despite the fact that even the very process of its creation is much more conventional than, for example, the theater performance, seems to be much more “real” to the audience than any story shown on the stage. Therefore, despite the fact that one of the most dangerous elements on which Indian censorship seems to be extremely sensitive is eroticism, this is also the most desired part of cinema. Moreover, filmmakers, who are tightly constrained, need at the same time to provide pleasure to the audience to get the invested money back, so they invented various tricks by which they manage to bypass censorship. The most widely used ways to trick the censors are movie songs, so often underestimated, especially in the West, which however are not, as some would like to see them, only an unnecessary addition. Bollywood films are often called musicals, but the examples show that all the songs, not only item numbers and dream sequences , play quite a different role in Indian movies than in the classic Hollywood musicals. There is a very deep logic lying behind film production, and popular Indian cinema uses its songs to show everything that is impossible to show in the story. Filmmakers know very well that songs are the element of fantasy, which when used in a story about everyday life, can show things that are impossible in natural experience.
{"title":"Item Girls and Objects of Dreams: Why Indian Censors Agree to Bold Scenes in Bollywood Films","authors":"Tatiana Szurlej","doi":"10.13135/1825-263X/2259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2259","url":null,"abstract":"The article presents the social background, which helped Bollywood film industry to develop the so-called “item numbers”, replace them by “dream sequences”, and come back to the “item number” formula again. The songs performed by the film vamp or the character, who takes no part in the story, the musical interludes, which replaced the first way to show on the screen all elements which are theoretically banned, and the guest appearances of film stars on the screen are a very clever ways to fight all the prohibitions imposed by Indian censors. Censors found that film censorship was necessary, because the film as a medium is much more popular than literature or theater, and therefore has an impact on all people. Indeed, the viewers perceive the screen story as the world around them, so it becomes easy for them to accept the screen reality and move it to everyday life. That’s why the movie, despite the fact that even the very process of its creation is much more conventional than, for example, the theater performance, seems to be much more “real” to the audience than any story shown on the stage. Therefore, despite the fact that one of the most dangerous elements on which Indian censorship seems to be extremely sensitive is eroticism, this is also the most desired part of cinema. Moreover, filmmakers, who are tightly constrained, need at the same time to provide pleasure to the audience to get the invested money back, so they invented various tricks by which they manage to bypass censorship. The most widely used ways to trick the censors are movie songs, so often underestimated, especially in the West, which however are not, as some would like to see them, only an unnecessary addition. Bollywood films are often called musicals, but the examples show that all the songs, not only item numbers and dream sequences , play quite a different role in Indian movies than in the classic Hollywood musicals. There is a very deep logic lying behind film production, and popular Indian cinema uses its songs to show everything that is impossible to show in the story. Filmmakers know very well that songs are the element of fantasy, which when used in a story about everyday life, can show things that are impossible in natural experience.","PeriodicalId":37635,"journal":{"name":"Kervan","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46331019","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}
The grammarian and philosopher Bhartṛhari (5 th . c. CE) developed a philosophy that is essentially characterized by the prominent role language has in structuring humans’ efforts to cope with reality. Within this broader picture, he adopted an epistemological standpoint that was somehow at odds with the standard view of other South Asian thinkers, usually founded on a careful and systematic distinction of the means able to lead to a reliable cognitive event (technically called pramāṇa s). Bhartṛhari claimed that such an interpretation is rather artificial, and that a cognition is actually a multifaceted process, whose single components are almost always hard to pinpoint. His main theoretical contribution consists of affirming that such a multifaceted cognitive act is informed and shaped by language. The article deals with Bhartṛhari’s epistemology by discussing the author’s opinion on the nature of testimony. Furthermore, it addresses the question whether pure inference should always be regarded as an accurate way of acquiring knowledge.
{"title":"Bhartṛhari and verbal testimony: a ‘hyper-antireductionist’ approach?","authors":"M. Ferrante","doi":"10.13135/1825-263X/2249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2249","url":null,"abstract":"The grammarian and philosopher Bhartṛhari (5 th . c. CE) developed a philosophy that is essentially characterized by the prominent role language has in structuring humans’ efforts to cope with reality. Within this broader picture, he adopted an epistemological standpoint that was somehow at odds with the standard view of other South Asian thinkers, usually founded on a careful and systematic distinction of the means able to lead to a reliable cognitive event (technically called pramāṇa s). Bhartṛhari claimed that such an interpretation is rather artificial, and that a cognition is actually a multifaceted process, whose single components are almost always hard to pinpoint. His main theoretical contribution consists of affirming that such a multifaceted cognitive act is informed and shaped by language. The article deals with Bhartṛhari’s epistemology by discussing the author’s opinion on the nature of testimony. Furthermore, it addresses the question whether pure inference should always be regarded as an accurate way of acquiring knowledge.","PeriodicalId":37635,"journal":{"name":"Kervan","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49302623","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}
The Tamil intellectual universe, like so many others, underwent a profound change in the course of the 19th century, the period when print, although not unknown before, became available for the first time on a large scale, which allowed the publication and dissemination of a variety of text corpora from the Tamil poetic and religious traditions. This process has been described in recent years, for its material and political impact, from a number of sides, be it manuscript studies, print studies and literary or general social history. An understudied aspect seems to be the sources of continuity in this transformation, and an important part of these is a type of free-floating stanza, most often a four-liner in the Veṇpā metre, transmitted in the paratextual margins of texts, orally handed down from teacher to student and figuring large in prefaces and introductions to the early prints. It is these little verses of mostly indeterminable date and origin which helped to shape the form today’s corpora and canonic works are printed in. They have to be understood, on the one hand, as a way precarious knowledge was preserved in periods of instability and perishable media, and on the other hand as specimens of a literary genre by itself. Moreover, there are reasons to believe that they were deemed important enough to supply them in cases where transmission failed.
{"title":"Making Order in the Vaults of Memory: Tamil Satellite Stanzas on the Transmission of Texts","authors":"Eva Wilden","doi":"10.13135/1825-263X/2265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2265","url":null,"abstract":"The Tamil intellectual universe, like so many others, underwent a profound change in the course of the 19th century, the period when print, although not unknown before, became available for the first time on a large scale, which allowed the publication and dissemination of a variety of text corpora from the Tamil poetic and religious traditions. This process has been described in recent years, for its material and political impact, from a number of sides, be it manuscript studies, print studies and literary or general social history. An understudied aspect seems to be the sources of continuity in this transformation, and an important part of these is a type of free-floating stanza, most often a four-liner in the Veṇpā metre, transmitted in the paratextual margins of texts, orally handed down from teacher to student and figuring large in prefaces and introductions to the early prints. It is these little verses of mostly indeterminable date and origin which helped to shape the form today’s corpora and canonic works are printed in. They have to be understood, on the one hand, as a way precarious knowledge was preserved in periods of instability and perishable media, and on the other hand as specimens of a literary genre by itself. Moreover, there are reasons to believe that they were deemed important enough to supply them in cases where transmission failed.","PeriodicalId":37635,"journal":{"name":"Kervan","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44082902","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}
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