The 8th International VEDIC Workshop, September 18-22, 2023, Campus Condorcet, Paris-Aubervilliers, France

Colloque: VIIIe Atelier védique international, 18-22 septembre 2023, Campus Condorcet, Paris-Aubervilliers, et INHA, Paris, FRANCE — see also the PROGRAM and ABSTRACTS.

8th IVW Paris-Aubervilliers
8th IVW Paris-Aubervilliers, 18-22 septembre 2023

“The International Vedic Workshop is the most prominent conference of Indologists involved in the study of the Vedas all over the world.”

As in all earlier International Vedic Workshops, the research to be represented at the Eighth International Vedic Workshop shares not only a common subject area, viz. Vedic texts and the language and ritual reflected in these, but also an acceptance of the importance of the philological method in dealing with these texts, where possible supplemented with Vedic ‘fieldwork’. The proceedings of the first International Vedic Workshop, published in 1997, including the Introduction by Michael Witzel, are in this respect exemplary.

Both the PROGRAM and the ABSTRACTS of the 8th IVW Paris-Aubervilliers, 18-22 septembre 2023, are now available.

For more information on registration, registration fees, etc.:

johannes.houben (at) ephe.psl.eu

dintino (at) ehess.fr

bagnis.fabienne (at) gmail.com

Some information on previous International Vedic Workshops:

1st International Vedic Workshop: 1989, June, Harvard University, organized by Michael Witzel. Proceedings: Inside the Texts — Beyond the Texts, New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas, ed. by Michael Witzel, Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora 2. Cambridge, Mass.: Dept. of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University, 1997.

2nd International Vedic Workshop: 1999, October, Kyoto University, organized by Yasuke Ikari and Masato Fujii.

3rd International Vedic Workshop: 2002, 30 May – 2 June, Leiden University, organized by Henk Bodewitz, Alexander Lubotsky, Jan Houben and Arlo Griffiths. Proceedings: The Vedas: Texts, Language & Ritual. Proceedings of the Third International Vedic Workshop, Leiden 2002, ed. by A. Griffiths and J.E.M. Houben. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2004.

Programme: http://www.jyotistoma.nl/ThirdIVW/welcome.html

Photographic report: http://www.jyotistoma.nl/ThirdIVW/imagessite/index.html

4th International Vedic Workshop: 2007, Texas University, organized by P. Olivelle and J. Brereton. Proceedings: The Vedas in Indian Culture and History: Proceedings of the Fourth International Vedic Workshop, ed. by Joel P. Brereton. Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2016.

5th International Vedic Workshop: 2011, September, Bucharest, Centre for Eurasiatic and Afroasiatic Studies, organizing committee: Shrikant Bahulkar, Jan Houben, Julieta Rotaru, Michael Witzel. Proceedings: Vedic Śākhās : past, present, future. Proceedings of the Fifth International Vedic Workshop, ed. by J.E.M. Houben, J. Rotaru, M. Witzel, Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora 9. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 2016. New edition: 2022, Delhi: Dev Publishers.

6th International Vedic Workshop: 2014, January 7-10, Kozhikode, India, organized by Shrikant Bahulkar and Vinod Bhattathiripad. Proceedings: Living Traditions of Vedas, ed. by P. Vinod Bhattathiripad and Shrikant S. Bahulkar, New Delhi: New Bharatiya Book Corporation, 2019.

7th International Vedic Workshop: 2019, 19-24 August, Dubrovnik, organized by Mislav Jezic, Ivan Andrijanic, et al.

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8th International Vedic Workshop: Co-organizing institutions of the 8th International Vedic Workshop, Campus Condorcet, Paris-Aubervilliers, FRANCE, 18-22 September 2023:

Classical India — L’Inde Classique

“… the Indian civilization is one of the great achievements of humanity. Less old than Egypt or Mesopotamia, it plunges not less through its origins into pre-history and, while the former are dead since long, Indian civilization remains alive even today. This exceptional survival has not been without evolution and renewal, but it has brought to us, through a continuous tradition, an infinitely greater mass of ancient texts than what remains to us of the old Greek, Latin and Chinese literatures.”

From: L’Inde Classique, vol. I, Foreword by Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat.

Materials for the study of Classical India – through materials to L’Inde Classique vols. I and II by Louis Renou, Jean Filliozat et al., Paris 1949-1953. 

More precisely, the authors and general editors of vols. I and II are:
Louis Renou (1896-1966)
Jean Filliozat (1906-1982)

In addition, contributing authors in vol. I are :
Pierre Meile (1911-1963)
Anne-Marie Esnoul (1908-1996)
Liliane Silburn (1908-1993)

And contributing authors in vol. II :
Paul Demiéville (1894-1979)
Olivier Lacombe (1904-2001)
Pierre Meile (1911-1963)

As Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat point out in their Foreword, the authors and contributing authors are all students of Sylvain Lévi (1863-1935) or have followed his courses: “Belonging to different generations, the authors feel themselves to be the pupils of Sylvain Lévi and the tributaries of his thought.”

 

L’Inde Classique, Manuel des études indiennes, Tome premier. Reprint, Jean Maisonneuve, 11 rue Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1985.

This site provides materials for the study of Classical India, by providing tables of contents, indices, additions, supplements, occasional translations of brief, crucial passages, and further discussions and bibliographical references and updates to the chapters and sections of  L’Inde Classique — manuel des études indiennes, vols. I and II, by Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat et al., published in 1949-1953. References to ancient and modern scholars are both rare and succinct in these two volumes, as it was the plan to give extensive bibliographical references in a third volume, which, unfortunately, never appeared. As the author-editors wrote in their Foreword in the first Volume: 

“When it seemed necessary to refer to a particular opinion, either to accept it or to reject it, only the name of the author is given. Specialists will know which work is alluded to, and students will find useful details in the very rich bibliography which will be given at the end of the work.
The MANUAL will consist of three volumes of similar dimensions.”

Then current publications which are referred to in volumes I and II are only indicated through the name of the author: for instance, in paragraph 565 which deals with one of the Vedic texts, the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa, mention is made of “CALAND” which refers to The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa in the Kāṇviya recension edited for the first time (3 vols., Lahore, 1926-1939) by Willem Caland.  

Inde Classique volume 1 new edition

Inde Classique volume 2 new edition

Inde Classique volume 1 - Aquarian edition
L’Inde classique, vol. I, first (now antiquarian) edition 1949

Inde Classique volume 2 Aquarian edition

L’Inde classique, vol. II, first (now antiquarian) edition, 1953

When L’Inde classique, vol. I, appeared in 1949, it was, as a comprehensive manual for classical Indian studies or Indology, unprecedented and innovative. Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat mention in their Foreword as predecessors first of all the work of Christian Lassen, which they judge “epoch-making” (“qui a fait époque”), but still reflecting “in some of its parts the heroic times of Indian philology”: Indische Altertumskunde, which appeared in Bonn in four volumes between 1847 and 1861. They also mention the series “Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde, conceived on an infinitely larger plan than ours” which, however, had not yet fulfilled its original plan and was hence, sixty years after it started, still unfinished. Renou and Filliozat also note that the Grundriss “leaves aside, not without arbitrariness, the Dravidian facts.” To take these “Dravidian facts” into account throughout their work was one of their major innovations.

On the other hand, between the printing of the first pages of volume 1 in 1947 and the publication of the complete first volume in 1949, Renou and Filliozat are aware that the work is already outdated in some respects. Hence they write, in their “Additional Remarks” at the end of the volume:

Since the printing of the first sheets (the work was to appear in 1947, as the title page indicates), the important political change constituted by the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan today (1949) necessitates some alterations to the first chapter, Le Milieu Géographique:

p. 22 § 6. Instead of: At the present time, this country is named, officially … read: Under British rule, the name was …

Further below, after: Hind also means the whole, add: and was adopted as a national name by the Indian Union.

p. 42 § 50. Instead of: The English occupy India, read … occupied …”

Prakriyā-sarvasva, E-Concordance

The E-Concordance of Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa‘s Prakriyā-sarvasva and Pāṇinian grammars by Jan E.M. Houben et al. (ECPG 1.0 see below) is supplementary material to L’Inde classique section VIII.1.a 1519-1532 on the Sanskrit grammarians. This section written by Louis Renou which appeared in 1953 contains no reference to the Prakriyā-sarvasva by the brilliant and versatile author Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa of Melputtūr (17th century). However, Louis Renou was at that time already well aware of this grammar, since we read in the Preface to S. Venkitasubramonia Iyer’s Nārāyaṇabhaṭṭa’s Prakriyāsarvasva; a critical study, which apeared in Trivandrum at the University of Kerala in 1972, the following: “Then I conceived the idea of studying the entire work … which I was encouraged to pursue by the well known Indologist Prof. Louis Renou, when he visited Trivandrum in 1948.”

Regarding the nature and importance of the Prakriyā-sarvasva we can now also refer to:

J.E.M. Houben “Pāṇinian grammar of living Sanskrit: features and principles of the Prakriyā-Sarvasva of Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa of Melputtūr,” Bulletin d’Etudes Indienns (BEI) vol. 32 (2015), pp. 149-170.

E-Concordance Pāṇinian grammars: ECPG.01

The concordance allows students and specialists of Pāṇinian grammars to find back the place of a rule or sūtra in the eight books of grammatical rules of Pāṇini, the Aṣṭādhyāyī (AA), in one of the two rearranged grammars (and vice-versa): the well-known and widely studied Siddhānta-kaumudī (SK) and the largely and unduly neglected Prakriyā-sarvasva (PS). The place of a rule or sūtra in each of these three grammars is highly significant, as it provides information on the interpretation and function of a certain rule in the entire grammar. Especially the Prakriyā-sarvasva provides very clear headings for 20 major groups of rules, as announced in the introductory verses 6-7 :

iha sañjñā paribhāṣā   sandhiḥ krt taddhitāḥ samāsāś ca /

strīpratyayāḥ subarthāḥ   supāṁ vidhiś cātmane-pada-vibhāgaḥ //

tiṅ api ca lārthaviśeṣāḥ   sananta-yaṅ-yaṅlukaś ca subdhātuḥ /

nyāyo dhātur uṇādiś   chāndasam iti santu viṁśatiḥ khaṇḍāḥ //  

“There must be twenty sections (khaṇḍāḥ) in this (work) :

I. sañjñā-(khaṇḍaḥ) – (section on) technical terms 

II.  pari-bhāṣā- – metarules

III. sandhi- (or saṁhitā-)  – phonetic modifications where morphemes and words meet

IV. krt- – primary suffixes

V. taddhita- – secondary suffixes

VI. samāsa- – compounds

VII. strī-pratyaya-    – feminine suffixes

VIII. sub-artha-  – the meaning of nominal endings  

IX. sub-vidhi- – rules for nominal endings

X. ātmanepada-parasmaipada-vibhāga- – distinction between active and medium

XI. tiṅ- – verbal endings (according to ten present-classes & according to ten la-kāras of times and modes)

XII. lārtha-viśeṣa-  – particularities in the meaning of the la-kāras

XIII. san-anta-  – desideratives

XIV. yaṅ-  – intensives

XV. yaṅ-luk- – intensives without -ya-

XVI. sub-dhātu- – denominatives

XVII. nyāya-  – rules and general principles in the derivation of forms

XVIII. dhātu-  – verbal stems: “roots”

XIX. uṇādi-  – suffixes for the formation of nominal stems (apart from krt and taddhita suffixes, etc.)

XX. chāndasa- – rules for the accents and for the vedic language.”

Acknowledgements and credits: The contents of the ECPG is based on work done within the framework of “ANR 11 BSH2 003 03, intitulé PP 16-17 : Pāṇini et les Pāṇinéens des XVIe-XVIIe siècles” (Profs. François Grimal and Jan E.M. Houben, EFEO, IFP, EPHE-PSL), by Dr. Viswanatha Gupta under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Jan E.M. Houben.

The transformation of the material into an e-concordance is the result of the project “E-Concordance grammaires pāṇinéennes (ECGP) : Prakriyā-sarvasva (PS) – Siddhānta-kaumudī (SK) – Aṣṭādhyāyī (AA) selon la Kāśikā”, Action Ponctuelle, 2018 (approved 18 October 2017) by Dr. Anil Kumar, under the guidance of Prof. Dr. J.E.M. Houben (EPHE-PSL, Paris) and Prof. Dr. Amba Kulkarni (Department of Sanskrit Studies, Hyderabad University, India).

The featured picture shows Narayana Bhatta of Melputtur as represented in a statue near Melputtur, Kerala. Note the Nambudiri purvashikha. Picture by J.E.M. Houben, 2012.  

Narayana Bhatta statue (photo J.E.M. Houben) against background of Kerala Valley shutterstock__1159392904
Narayana Bhatta of Melputtur, statue in sanctuary, near Tirur; photo J.E.M. Houben

Brief Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS (brief) – TABLE DES MATIERES (brève) Louis RENOU et Jean FILLIOZAT, L’Inde classique: Manuel des études indiennes. (Classisal India: Handbook of Indian Studies.) Tomes I et II, Adrien Maisonneuve/Ecole française d’extrême-orient, Tome I: Paris, 1947-1949, 1985 (réimpression). Tome II: Paris/Hanoi 1953, 2000 (réimpression). Brief Table of Contents…

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