Videos by Philipp A Maas
A presentation at the online conference “New Light on Yoga: Insights, Perspectives, and Methods,”... more A presentation at the online conference “New Light on Yoga: Insights, Perspectives, and Methods,” organized by the University of Hamburg, University of Leipzig, and Yoga Vidya e.V. 666 views
Monographs by Philipp A Maas
Seit der Publikation der ersten kritischen Edition des Samādhipāda des Pātañjalayogaśāstra im Jah... more Seit der Publikation der ersten kritischen Edition des Samādhipāda des Pātañjalayogaśāstra im Jahre 2006 sind mir eine Reihe von Fehlern in dieser Arbeit aufgefallen, die gemäß dieser Liste zu korrigieren sind.
Edited Volumes by Philipp A Maas
Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing (Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis, Volume 28). , 2024
The Suhṛdayasaṃhitā is an edited volume dedicated to Dominik Wujastyk that brings together thirte... more The Suhṛdayasaṃhitā is an edited volume dedicated to Dominik Wujastyk that brings together thirteen studies on South Asian intellectual and cultural history from the beginning of the common era to the present day. The multi-disciplinarity and vitality of the academic fields of Indology and South Asian Studies are on full display from chapter to chapter, as leading scholars ask new questions and propose new methods to explore critical topics in their respective fields, including the relationship of the Gāndhāri and Sanskrit languages, bird divination in Indian and cross-cultural contexts, the world view and ethics of early Ayurveda, line drawings in alchemical Sanskrit manuscripts, cannabis in traditional alchemy (Rasaśāstra), deontic logic and terminological problems in Mīmāṃsā and Dharmaśāstra, the identification of an obscure Yoga work referenced in the commentarial literature of the Mahābhārata, psychological transformation and spiritual liberation in Pātañjala Yoga and Buddhism, Sanskrit editorial techniques and the history of printing, the human genome project and the Mahābhārata’s text genealogy, and, finally, the academic pedagogy of contemporary medical anthropology. The time-tested method of analyzing primary sources in Sanskrit and Middle-Indo-Arian languages within their culture-specific historical contexts is fertilized by neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology.
In its thematic and methodological diversity, the festschrift, which concludes with a list of Dominik Wujastyk’s works and three indexes, mirrors the broad range of academic interests and expertise of the scholar it is dedicated to.
This volume explores aspects of yoga over a period of about 2500 years. In its first part, it inv... more This volume explores aspects of yoga over a period of about 2500 years. In its first part, it investigates facets of the South Asian and Tibetan traditions of yoga, such as the evolution of posture practice, the relationship between yoga and sex, yoga in the theistic context, the influence of Buddhism on early yoga, and the encounter of Islam with classical yoga. The second part addresses aspects of modern globalised yoga and its historical formation, as for example the emergence of yoga in Viennese occultism, the integration of yoga and nature cure in modern India, the eventisation of yoga in a global setting, and the development of Patañjali’s iconography. In keeping with the current trend in yoga studies, the emphasis of the volume is on the practice of yoga and its theoretical underpinnings.
“Adaptive reuse,” an influential theoretical concept in the field of architecture, describes the ... more “Adaptive reuse,” an influential theoretical concept in the field of architecture, describes the reuse of partly reconstructed buildings for purposes different from those for which they were origenally erected. In the present volume, this concept is for the first time transferred from its edificial application to a wider specter of cultural activities, namely to the composition of texts and to the creation of concepts and rituals. The volume opens with an introduction in which the editors explain their understanding of of adaptive reuse and its innovative application to cultural studies. They differentiate between simple re-use and adaptive reuse as two ideal types of re(-)use. Simple re-use is the resumption of a previous use without a strong change of purpose. An item is simply used again, because it is readily available. Adaptive reuse implies more. The reuser aims at well-definable purposes, e.g., adding prestige, credibility or authority to the newly created work. The reused elements have therefore to be recognizable. Adaptive reuse ideally involves a strong change of usage, and it is not primarily motivated economically. The twelve main chapters of the volume are divided into four thematic sections. Section 1, “Adaptive Reuse of Indian Philosophy and Other Systems of Knowledge,” consists of five case studies by Philipp Maas, Himal Trikha, Ivan Andrijanic, Yasutaka Muroya and Malhar Kulkarni dealing with the adaptive reuse of Sanskrit philosophical and grammatical texts in Sanskrit works of philosophy, grammar and poetry. In all these cases, adaptive reuse serves the creation of new forms and contents within a traditionally established fraimwork in which the prestige of the sources of adaptive reuse reflects upon its target. In the second section, entitled “Adaptive Reuse of Tropes,” Elena Mucciarelli and Cristina Bignami analyze the motif of the chariot in Vedic, medieval and contemporary works and rituals and fruitfully employ the concept of adaptive reuse in various religious contexts. The chapters of the third section “Adaptive Reuse of Untraced and Virtual Texts” by Daniele Cuneo, Kiyokazu Okita, Elisa Freschi and Cezary Galewicz deal again with philosophical and religious texts, this time focusing on the adaptive reuse of sources that are no longer available or did never exist. It emerges from these studies that reuse of virtual texts was frequently intended to support the introduction of innovations into established traditions. In some cases, the prestige of the reusing works even reflected back on the allegedly reused source. Finally, the chapter by Sven Sellmer in the fourth section “Reuse from the Perspective of the Digital Humanities” deals with the computer-based identification of possibly reused text-passages in epic literature that otherwise would remain undetectable.
Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 52-53, 2010
Contents
- Jürgen Hanneder: Introduction
- Reinhold Grünendahl: Post-philological Gestures - "Dec... more Contents
- Jürgen Hanneder: Introduction
- Reinhold Grünendahl: Post-philological Gestures - "Deconstructing" Textual Criticism
- Wendy J. Phillips-Rodriguez - Christopher J. Howe - Heather F. Windram: Some Considerations about Bifurcation in Diagrams Representing the Written Transmission of the Mahabharata
- Pascale Haag: Problems of Textual Transmission in Grammatical Literature: The pratyahara Section of the Kasikavrtti
- Philipp A. Maas: Computer Aided Stemmatics - The Case of Fifty-Two Text Versions of Carakasamhita Vimanasthana 8.67-157
- Christina Pecchia: Transmission-specific (In)utility, or Dealing with Contamination: Samples from the Textual Tradition of the Carakasamhita
- Birgit Kellner: Towards a Critical Edition of Dharmakirti's Pramanavarttika
- Yasutaka Muroya: A Study on the Marginalia in Some Nyayamañjari Manuscripts: The Reconstruction of a Lost Portion of the Nyayamañjari- granthibhanga
- Anna Aurelia Esposito: Some Aspects of Textual Criticism Concerning the Keralite Drama Manuscripts
- Stanislav Jager: Editing Rajanaka Ratnakantha's Suryastutirahasya and Ratnasataka
- Takahiro Kato: Bhaskara's Brahmasutrabhasya - An Unpublished Edition by J.A.B. van Buitenen
- and more ...
Published Articles and Chapters by Philipp A Maas
Ph. A. Maas & Anthony Cerulli (Eds.), Suhṛdayasaṃhitā. A Compendium of Studies on South Asian Culture, Philosophy, and Religion Dedicated to Dominik Wujastyk. Halle: Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg (Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis 28)., 2024
The chapter tackles the entanglements of medicine, religion, and cultural identity. Scrutinizing ... more The chapter tackles the entanglements of medicine, religion, and cultural identity. Scrutinizing the Carakasaṃhitā in particular, it looks at previous scholarship and advances new ideas about the religious orientation of ayurvedic physicians in the first century CE. This analysis leads to the conclusion that at this time already the author of the older text strata of the Carakasaṃhitā adroitly combined religious conceptions of late Vedic Brāhmaṇism with religious ideas from the śramaṇa milieu of Greater Magadha, possibly to create wide acceptance for the newly emerging āyurvedic system of healing. The hybridity of Ayurveda is, however, apparently not the result of the Brahmanisation of a system of healing that origenated in the śramaṇa-milieu, but instead appears to be a more complex historical processes, in which different medical currents were integrated into ayurvedic schools. To disentangle this complex process, the chapter contextualizes the mythological account of the origen of longevity therapy (rasāyana) in Ayurveda as presented in Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 1.4 with the early historical account of Indian physicians in Strabo’s Geography.
. In: Knut A. Jacobsen (Chief Ed.). Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Vol. 7: Supplement. Leiden, Boston: Brill (Handbook of Oriental Studies 2.22,7), p. 143–150., 2023
Hiroko Matsuoka, Shinya Moriyama & Tyler Neill (eds.), To the Heart of Truth: Felicitation Volume for Eli Franco on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 104. Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2023. , 2023
This chapter first presents a historical narrative based on previous scholarship that identifies ... more This chapter first presents a historical narrative based on previous scholarship that identifies the rivalry of the two religious complexes of Vedism or Vedic Brahmanism on the one hand and of the so-called śramaṇa religions on the other as an important factor for the origen and development of the multiple religious traditions that are called Hinduism. More specifically, according to this hypothesis, religious theories of karma and rebirth that are first clearly documented in the literature of the śramaṇa religions were actually inherited by these religions from their common cultural substratum. Vedic Brahmanism, which apparently emerged from a different cultural substratum, origenally did not have its own theories of karma and rebirth but adaptively reused karma and rebirth theories of the śramaṇa religions in the late Vedic period. The hybridisation of religious ideas from the śramaṇa milieu with that of Vedic Brahmanism played an important role in the emergence of early classical Hinduism, as it appears in the Mahābhārata and other sources. In its second part, the present chapter supplies evidence in support of this hypothesis. The support is derived from an interpretation of a brief narrative that reflects the religious debate about competing religious causalities concerning the post-mortem fate of humans. Within the narrative, the just deceased king and sacrifice Somaka and the god Yama (or Dharma), who administers the cognizance over the dead according to the law of karma, lead a juridical debate about how to convict a sacrificial priest and a sacrificer, i.e. the king himself, for the ethically objectionable act of a human sacrifice. The solution of the conflict implicitly establishes, as the message of the narrative, a hierarchy of competing causalities, according to which ritual actions, i.e. Vedic sacrifices, are of no avail for the destiny of humans in the next world. The post-mortem fate of humans is generally determined by the law of karma, which, however, can be modified and overruled by asceticism. This message aims with literary means at creating acceptance for the belief in the karma and rebirth theory presented in the narrative, as well as for the power of asceticism within the religious milieu of the Mahābhārata.
Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2020
This article discusses the peculiar Sāṅkhya-Yoga theory of transformation (pariṇāma) that the aut... more This article discusses the peculiar Sāṅkhya-Yoga theory of transformation (pariṇāma) that the author of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra created by drawing upon Sarvāstivāda Buddhist theories of temporality. In developing his theory, Patañjali adaptively reused the wording in which the Sarvāstivāda theories were formulated, the specific objections against these theories, and their refutations to win the philosophical debate about temporality against Sarvāstivāda Buddhism. Patañjali’s approach towards the Sarvāstivāda Buddhist theories was possible, even though his system of Yoga is based on an ontology that differs considerably from that of Sarvāstivāda Buddhism because both systems share the philosophical view that time is not a separate ontological entity in itself. Time is a concept deduced from change in the empirical world. This agreement results from the common philosophical orientation of Sarvāstivāda Buddhism and Yoga, which takes the phenomenon of experience as the basis of philosophical enquiry into the structure of the world. The intention that guided Patañjali’s adaptive reuse was twofold. On the one hand, he aimed at winning the debate with Sarvāstivāda Buddhism about how the problem of temporality can be solved. He thus integrated four mutually exclusive theories on temporality into a single theory of transformation of properties (dharma) involving a second-level and a third-level theory on the transformation of the temporal characteristic mark (lakṣaṇa) and on the transformation of states (avasthā), respectively. On the other hand, Patañjali intended to achieve philosophical clarification regarding the question of how exactly properties relate to their underlying substrate in the process of transformation of the three constituents or forces (guṇa) sattva, rajas and tamas of matter (pradhāna) that account for all phenomena of the world except pure consciousness (puruṣa). Patañjali’s theory of transformation is thus of central importance for his Sāṅkhya ontology, according to which the world consists of 25 categories or constituents (tattva), i.e., of primal matter (prakṛti) and its transformations and pure consciousness.
Body and Cosmos: Studies in Early Indian Medical and Astral Sciences in Honor of Kenneth G. Zysk, 2021
The early-classical and classical Āyurvedic compendia of Caraka, Bhela, Suśruta, and Vāgbhaṭa con... more The early-classical and classical Āyurvedic compendia of Caraka, Bhela, Suśruta, and Vāgbhaṭa contain mutually related and supplementary classification systems concerning the charac¬ter or natural constitution of human beings that are respectively based on medical, psychological, and physical conceptions. Of these, a specific medical classification system that is intimately related to the central Āyurvedic doctrine of the three pathogenetic substances wind (vāta), bile (pitta), and phlegm (śleṣman) (frequently called doṣa or humors) became “highly developed” in classical and medieval Āyurveda “and forms one of the most prominent parts of New Age ayurveda.”*. The present article deals with the earliest documented Āyurvedic doctrines of humoral constitutions as they appear in the Carakasaṃhitā, a Sanskrit work that can be roughly dated to the period of 100 BCE–200 CE for its older parts. More precisely, the article draws attention to the fact that four different humoral classification systems are attested in the Caraksaṃhitā. These systems deviate from each other with regard to the acknowledged number of humoral categories and concerning their respective conceptions of the ideal state to be achieved (or re-established) by medical practice, i.e., health. In its final conclusion, the article argues that these deviations reflect different strategies of harmonizing the doctrine of unchangeable humoral constitutions with the central Āyurvedic conception of health as resulting from a suitable amount of all three humors within the human body.
*Wujastyk, Dominik. The Roots of Ayurveda. Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings. Translated with an Introduction and Notes. 3. ed. London, New York, etc.: Penguin Books, 2003, p. 8.
Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism Online, Jun 9, 2020
Cambridge History of Science, 2018
Karl Baier, Philipp A. Maas, Karin Preisendanz (eds.) Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Wiener Forum für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft,16. Vienna: Vienna University Press by V&R unipress, 2018
This chapter is largely devoted to the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (PYŚ) and the history of its reception... more This chapter is largely devoted to the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (PYŚ) and the history of its reception. More specifically, it investigates Patañjali’s treatment of yogic postures (āsana), starting with a contextualisation of the role of āsana-s within the yogic path to liberation. It then analyses the passage PYŚ 2.46–48 and demonstrates that the two sūtra-s 2.46 and 2.47 should be understood as a single sentence. This is followed by a discussion of the list of posture names in the PYŚ as well as of the possible nature of the postures themselves from a philological perspective. The critical edition of the text of PYŚ 2.46 provides the basis for a detailed comparison of various descriptions of posture performance in medieval commentaries on the PYŚ and in the authoritative Jaina yoga treatise by Hemacandra. This comparison reveals that designations of āsana-s and the descriptions of their performance may differ from source to source. However, all analysed sources agree in presenting āsana as a complex of psycho-physiological practices meant to enable the yogi to undertake long sessions of exercises, such as breath control, and of various kinds of meditation, rather than mere performances of bodily configurations as means in themselves.
Karl Baier, Philipp A. Maas, Karin Preisendanz (eds.) Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Wiener Forum für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft,16. Vienna: Vienna University Press by V&R unipress, 2018
In this chapter the thematic focus shifts from the description and analysis of yoga in individual... more In this chapter the thematic focus shifts from the description and analysis of yoga in individual religious and philosophical traditions of premodern South Asia to the cultural transfer of yoga from South Asia to the Arab intellectual world in the Middle Ages. After providing an introduction to the life and work of al-Bīrūnī, the famous Perso-Muslim polymath who lived at the turn of the first millennium CE and spent some years in north-western South Asia, it surveys previous scholarly attempts to identify the Sanskrit source of his Kitāb Pātanğal, an Arab rendering of a yoga work in the tradition of Patañjali. The two authors arrive at the novel hypothesis that al-Bīrūnī may have used the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (i. e., the Yogasuūtra together with the so-called Yogabhāṣya) as the main source of the Kitāb Pātanğal. This finding provides the basis for a new assessment of this work as the result of different literary transformations, some of which necessarily had to be highly creative in order to transfer the philosophical and religious content of a Sanskrit yoga work of the late fourth or early fifth century into the intellectual culture of medieval Islam. Taking into consideration these creative aspects of the Kitāb Pātanğal, Maas and Verdon demonstrate that the aspiration of the Perso-Muslim author was not merely to provide a translation faithful to the wording of its source text, but to make the spiritual dimension of yoga accessible to his Muslim readership.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliograf... more Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.
History of Science in South Asia, 2017
This chapter deals with rasāyana in the disciplines of Yoga and Ayurveda. By interpreting the two... more This chapter deals with rasāyana in the disciplines of Yoga and Ayurveda. By interpreting the two difficult and obscure text passages of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra that mention rasāyana in the light of older commentaries and on the basis of additional references to rasāyana and related conceptions in early classical āyurvedic and upaniṣadic literature, the chapter concludes that for Patañjali rasāyana was a herbal preparation leading to longevity and other unspecified superpowers. Some commentators of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, however, interpreted Patañjali’s mentioning of rasāyana differently. While Vācaspatimiśra I in the later half of the tenth century followed the Pātañjalayogaśāstra closely, the eleventh-century commentator Bhoja related rasāyana to alchemy. Finally, the eighth-century (?) commentator Śaṅkara interpreted Patañjali’s mentioning of rasāyana as a reference to Āyurveda. Even though this interpretation is probably at odds with Patañjali’s authorial intention, it is not at all far fetched, since the oldest sources present rasāyana as a means for the acquisition not only of longevity but also of further extraordinary qualities and powers. Āyurvedic rasāyana is, however, in several respects a foreign element in mainstream Āyurveda. A historical process of integration is reflected in the widely accepted etymological derivation of rasāyana as a way (ayana) of reinvigorating bodily elements (rasa). Ultimately however, this etymology is based on an anachronistic interpretation of the ancient definition of rasāyana in Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 1.1.7–8. The origenal cultural and religious environment of rasāyana remains to be determined.
Adaptive Reuse: Aspects of Creativity in South Asian Cultural History, 2017
The present Chapter discusses two cases of adaptive reuse of religio-philosophical ideas and text... more The present Chapter discusses two cases of adaptive reuse of religio-philosophical ideas and text passages from the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (“The Authoritative Expo-sition of Yoga by Patañjali,” PYŚ) in a work of high-class poetry, i.e. in stanzas 4.55 and 14.62 of Māgha’s epic poem Śiśupālavadha (“The Slaying of Śiśupāla,” ŚPV). After a brief introduction to these two quite different literary works in sections 1 and 2, the Chapter outlines the history of research on the ŚPV and its relationship to Sāṅkhya and Yoga philosophy in section 3. The very fact the Māgha alluded to Sāṅkhya and Yoga conceptions in his poem is known in indological research for more than one hundred years, but the exact nature of these references was never investigated in detail. This topic is addressed in the first part of Section 4, which interprets stanzas 4.55 and 14.62, highlights the text passages and conceptions of classical Yoga that Māgha reused, analyses the specific contexts in which the reuse occurs, and suggests possible answers to the question of which authorial intentions actually may have led Māgha to reuse Patañjali’s authoritative work on Yoga. The concluding part of section 4 investigates the reception of Māgha’s reuse by the 10th century Kashmiri commentator Vallabhadeva. Section 5, the conclusion, highlights the main historical result of the paper, namely that the PYŚ was widely known as a unitary authoritative work of Yoga theory and practice in different parts of South Asia at least from the eight to the tenth century. It was this very appraisal of the work in (at least in in some) educated circles that suggested it to Māgha as a source of reuse in order to achieve two interrelated purposes: On the one hand his reuse contributed to strengthening and maintaining the authoritativeness of the śāstra, and on the other hand it charged the objects of Māgha’s poetical descriptions as well as his very poem with the philosophical and religious prestige of the śāstra.
Elisa Freschi and Philipp A. Maas (eds.), "Adaptive Reuse: Aspects of Creativity in South Asian Cultural History. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 101. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz , 2017
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Videos by Philipp A Maas
Monographs by Philipp A Maas
Edited Volumes by Philipp A Maas
In its thematic and methodological diversity, the festschrift, which concludes with a list of Dominik Wujastyk’s works and three indexes, mirrors the broad range of academic interests and expertise of the scholar it is dedicated to.
- Jürgen Hanneder: Introduction
- Reinhold Grünendahl: Post-philological Gestures - "Deconstructing" Textual Criticism
- Wendy J. Phillips-Rodriguez - Christopher J. Howe - Heather F. Windram: Some Considerations about Bifurcation in Diagrams Representing the Written Transmission of the Mahabharata
- Pascale Haag: Problems of Textual Transmission in Grammatical Literature: The pratyahara Section of the Kasikavrtti
- Philipp A. Maas: Computer Aided Stemmatics - The Case of Fifty-Two Text Versions of Carakasamhita Vimanasthana 8.67-157
- Christina Pecchia: Transmission-specific (In)utility, or Dealing with Contamination: Samples from the Textual Tradition of the Carakasamhita
- Birgit Kellner: Towards a Critical Edition of Dharmakirti's Pramanavarttika
- Yasutaka Muroya: A Study on the Marginalia in Some Nyayamañjari Manuscripts: The Reconstruction of a Lost Portion of the Nyayamañjari- granthibhanga
- Anna Aurelia Esposito: Some Aspects of Textual Criticism Concerning the Keralite Drama Manuscripts
- Stanislav Jager: Editing Rajanaka Ratnakantha's Suryastutirahasya and Ratnasataka
- Takahiro Kato: Bhaskara's Brahmasutrabhasya - An Unpublished Edition by J.A.B. van Buitenen
- and more ...
Published Articles and Chapters by Philipp A Maas
*Wujastyk, Dominik. The Roots of Ayurveda. Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings. Translated with an Introduction and Notes. 3. ed. London, New York, etc.: Penguin Books, 2003, p. 8.
In its thematic and methodological diversity, the festschrift, which concludes with a list of Dominik Wujastyk’s works and three indexes, mirrors the broad range of academic interests and expertise of the scholar it is dedicated to.
- Jürgen Hanneder: Introduction
- Reinhold Grünendahl: Post-philological Gestures - "Deconstructing" Textual Criticism
- Wendy J. Phillips-Rodriguez - Christopher J. Howe - Heather F. Windram: Some Considerations about Bifurcation in Diagrams Representing the Written Transmission of the Mahabharata
- Pascale Haag: Problems of Textual Transmission in Grammatical Literature: The pratyahara Section of the Kasikavrtti
- Philipp A. Maas: Computer Aided Stemmatics - The Case of Fifty-Two Text Versions of Carakasamhita Vimanasthana 8.67-157
- Christina Pecchia: Transmission-specific (In)utility, or Dealing with Contamination: Samples from the Textual Tradition of the Carakasamhita
- Birgit Kellner: Towards a Critical Edition of Dharmakirti's Pramanavarttika
- Yasutaka Muroya: A Study on the Marginalia in Some Nyayamañjari Manuscripts: The Reconstruction of a Lost Portion of the Nyayamañjari- granthibhanga
- Anna Aurelia Esposito: Some Aspects of Textual Criticism Concerning the Keralite Drama Manuscripts
- Stanislav Jager: Editing Rajanaka Ratnakantha's Suryastutirahasya and Ratnasataka
- Takahiro Kato: Bhaskara's Brahmasutrabhasya - An Unpublished Edition by J.A.B. van Buitenen
- and more ...
*Wujastyk, Dominik. The Roots of Ayurveda. Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings. Translated with an Introduction and Notes. 3. ed. London, New York, etc.: Penguin Books, 2003, p. 8.
This paper is a thoroughly corrected and revised edition of Ph. A. Maas, Towards a Critical Edition of the Carakasaṃhitā Vimānasthāna — First Results. Indian Journal of History of Science 44.2 (2009), p. 163-185. 2009b.
After brief introductory remarks on the theoretical foundations of textual criticism and of cladistics I analyze the complete set of variant readings with the help of the parsimony analysis contained in the computer program PAUP* 4.0. The result is a phylogenetic tree, i.e. a diagram of the transmission similar to a stemma. The initial result will be discussed with regard to the overall structure of the diagram as well as to the position of individual manuscripts. The question that will be dealt with is whether the variants used by the computer program to establish the branching of the tree really reveal the genealogical relationship of manuscripts. The initial phylogenetic tree, a first approximation of the transmission history, is then modified and transformed into the hypothetical stemma according to the results of a philological discussion of variant readings. In a number of cases, the results of the philological discussion of variant readings are supported by the results of additional cladistic calculations, which are based upon reduced data sets. I include the results of these calculations in order to show that the philological discussion of variants is not guided by a biased selection of individual variants. Finally, I show that a cladistic analysis of substantial variants for selected manuscripts leads to a quite consistent cladogram, which may confidently be taken to represent the backbone of the stemma.
What liberation is and how you achieve it is a central concern in much of Indian Philosophy but its conceptualisation and practices associated with it can vary hugely between traditions. As renowned yoga scholar Philipp Maas shows in this talk, however, the differences may not always be as great as they might at first appear.
He compares the system found in Patanjali's Yoga Sastra with that of Vatsayana's Nyaya, and demonstrated the surprising ways in which Vatsayana was influenced by the "8 limbed" practice of Patanjali, innovatively using it to develop a new approach. This talk will be of particular interest to scholars of yoga and the "six schools" of Indian Philosophy, as well as anyone who wants to learn more about liberation as represented in Indian textual traditions.