Proposals for the Study of Quotations in Indian Philosophical Texts

Abstract

The study of quotations is a largely unexplored field within Indian sastric literature. Yet, this study may have major implications for the critical constitution of a text, the evaluation of its role within the historical development of the ideas it represents and the understanding of Indian compositional habits. Moreover, it may call into question Western contemporary attitudes to texts as authored entities by showing how heavily this view depends on specific historical circumstances and has, hence, not always and everywhere been the rule. This article examines these issues in comparative context before focusing on a case study from the Tantrarahasya of the post thirteenth-century Prabhakara Mimamsaka, Ramanujacarya. In this article, I study all sorts of embedded texts, even if not acknowledged to be quotations as such. Hence, the study of quotations coincides with the study of how Indian authors composed their texts re-using previous texts as building blocks. I argue that quotations may also be a useful device for understanding an author’s compositional habits and his/her ‘originality’. This concept is in bad need of a definition applicable in Indian contexts. In fact, Indian classical authors may be judged rather flawed in terms of modern views of plagiarism and are all by and large non-original. Contemporary scholars often look in vain for monographs within Indian sastra literature and find only commentaries and commentaries on commentaries. But, looking at the way texts are built through quotations and use quotations as springboards, one eventually understands that an Indian author’s skill (and hence originality) can be recognized indeed in his/her apt arrangement of earlier texts.

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