Early explorations of the issue of intertextuality in the Mānava Dharmaśāstra centered on the hypothesis first articulated by Max Müller in a letter to one Mr. Morley on July 29, 1849 that the extant śāstra was a versified version of a lost Mānava Dharmasūtra. This hypothesis was given strong support by George Bühler (1886, xviiif) in the introduction to his renowned translation of Manu, although it has been abandoned by and large in recent scholarship and vigorously refuted by Kane (1962-75, I: 143-49). The focus on this issue, however, has obscured the very real textual connection between Manu and one of the extant Dharmasūtras, the Gautama Dharmasūtra. It is this śāstric intertextuality that is the subject of this paper. It studies the textual and thematic dependence of the Mānava Dharmaśāstra on the Gautama Dharmasūtra amounting in several instances to the versification of the sūtras of Gautama. This analysis also throws some light on the process of composition undertaken by the author of Manu.

The textual parallels between Gautama and Manu are so close and so numerous that it is safe to conclude that the author of Manu used Gautama as one of his primary sources; the frequency of these parallels makes it unlikely that the authors of both texts were drawing from a common source. What is given below is not an exhaustive list of all the parallels between the two texts.

The Sūtra-pāṭh presents us with a fundamentally dualist (dvaita) system of thought. Cakradhar taught a radical distinction between individual souls and Parameśvar and preached a strict monotheism: in order to help jīvas attain salvation, Parameśvar manifests himself on earth as an avatār. In Mahānubhāv systematic, pluralistic doctrine —though it is not clear if this was also Cakradhar's point of view— there exist four separate and independent realities or substances (padārthas), thought to be beginningless (anādi) and eternal (ananta): a) Parameśvar, the One Supreme God beyond all deities, also called Dev, Īśvar, Para, or Śrī Prabhu; b) the many devatās, comprising the entire Hindū pantheon (with the exception of Kṛṣṇa and Dattātreya); c) the innumerable jīvas or individual souls; d) prapañca or the material world.

Despite the emphasis on the oneness of God, Parameśvar's nature is tripartite (Sītra-pāṭh 6.5): «being» or sat (= Brahman, said to be devoid of all properties); «consciousness» or cit (= Māyā, which has properties); and «joy» or ānanda (= Īśvar, which is both devoid of all properties as well as possessed of them). These immediately call to mind the three characteristics of the Vedāntic Brahman as sat-citānanda. Words are of course inadequate to express the mystery of the ‘three in one’, and Sūtra-pāṭh 11.12 states that «the tripartite (tri-aṃśa) one is nevertheless one in such a way that it cannot be divided».

Introduction

A rather undifferentiated account of late 19th and early 20th century Buddhist intellectual responses to British colonial rule and Christian presence on the island continues to inform scholarly and popular discourse on the history of Buddhism in Laṅkā, despite occasional efforts to push for refinement. Two descriptive-cum-analytical terms dominate representations of Buddhist intellectual activity at this time —‘Protestant Buddhism’ and ‘Buddhist Revival’— while a single individual—the Anagārika Dharmapāla—stands at the center of vision. The limited nature of our understanding of the intellectual culture characteristic of late 19th century and early 20th century Lankan Buddhists may be frustrating to some of us who seek a fuller historical understanding of the vitality and experimentation characteristic of that period. Further work in these areas is desirable even for narrowly scholarly historical reasons. In this essay, however, I wish to emphasize the contemporary political importance of expanding our understanding of late 19th century and early 20th century Buddhist intellectual culture. That is, this essay is a self-consciously ‘engaged’ reflection on the contemporary political dangers posed by our present account of late 19th and early 20th century Buddhist intellectual activity. I take inspiration from Gananath Obeyesekere's A Meditation on Conscience (1988), as well as his willingness to explore the connections between themes found in his own academic work and contemporary conditions on the island (1992, xix-xxi). In doing so, I draw upon two persistent lines of reflection in Obeyesekere's work which, in my view, point the way towards a more robust, and less dangerous, account of Buddhist intellectual activity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Background

Phnom Kulen, “the hill of the lychees” in Khmer, is a modern name given to a plateau situated north of Tonlé Sap Lake and the group of monumental complexes at Angkor, Siem Reap Province. The upper part of the plateau generally consists of thick forest and heritage sites. Phnom Kulen was also a big quarry providing shiny calcified sandstone for temple construction. This sandstone is not very hard, but it is homogenous and has a beautiful grain (Aymonier 1999, 224). According to evidence derived from a stele found at Sdok Kok Thom (in what is now eastern Thailand) dated AD 1052, Mahendraparvata, or “The Mountain of the great Indra” in Sanskrit, was the original name of this hill. The inscription states that on this plateau, King Jayavarman II was consecrated as cakravartin (“supreme overlord”) in 802 after his return from Java; the ceremony was intended to proclaim that Cambodia was now free from Java's suzerainty. Several theories have been put forward which suggest that the Kulen plateau played a decisive role in the foundation and rise of the Khmer empire of Angkor.

Eleven villages now stand on the plateau, Anlong Thom being the biggest. Most of the inhabitants belong to an aboriginal group called Samrê, but they are reluctant to admit this and have adopted Cambodian language. The enclosures of their dwellings, generally simple huts, are made with large sheets of tree bark.

This paper is a prologue to some ethnographic work I'd like to do about how people actually practice ethics, including the subset of ethics now called ‘rights’ or ‘human rights’, in Sri Lanka and the United States. My rather humble aim, here, is simply to make a researchable guess about one way people in both countries sometimes use ‘human rights’ (among other ethical systems) to navigate, survive, make sense of and justify daily life. Human rights rhetoric, of course, is obviously now a global discourse (or perhaps, as Aihwa Ong in a recent paper puts it, a ‘global assemblage’ (2006)); but, as many (including Ong) have also pointed out, any surface rhetorical unity clearly hides a multitude of cultural practices —and not just between societies, but also within them. Moreover, although there has been a tendency in some of the writing about human rights to see a tension between ‘western’ and ‘nonwestern’ (or even ‘Asian’) understandings of human rights, my suspicion is that people and governments in most social and spacial locations —including Tamil Sri Lankans and Americans— are often guided in their uses of ‘human rights’ (insofar as they use a discourse of this flavor at all) not by an abstract, Enlightenment-style universalism but by a kind of ‘practical rationality’ or ‘strategic means-end’ reasoning. A form of enacted ‘reasoning’, that is, at once existentially bound up in the sometimes cruel machinations of surviving and succeeding in daily life but also, as a form of strategic thought, occasionally transcendent above the unreflective and habitus-like conceptual fog of its various mundane contexts.

Introduction

I first became involved with Singapore's heritage in January 1984. At that time I was a Ford Foundation–sponsored project specialist in archaeology assigned to Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, central Java, Indonesia. I was invited by the Singapore National Museum to conduct a short test excavation at a site which it was suspected might still preserve artifacts representing the precolonial occupation of this island. The project succeeded in uncovering evidence of an important trading settlement dating back to the fourteenth century (Miksic 1985, 2006; Miksic and Low 2004).

In 1987 I was invited back to Singapore to teach ancient Southeast Asian history at the National University of Singapore and to provide consultancy services to the Parks and Recreation Department which was in charge of developing the historical and archaeological resources of the park in which the archaeological site was discovered in 1984. Since 1987, I have been involved in projects which have grown out of the Singapore government's desire to develop Fort Canning Hill into a historical park. My duties have largely revolved around various research projects aimed at accumulating and organizing evidence which could be put to use in various forms of outdoor displays. My intention in this chapter is to show how research and development planning at Fort Canning have related to each other.

Archaeology is a small part of the larger sphere of conservation activity in Singapore.

Ānandatīrtha (1238–1317 CE), also known as Madhva and Pūrṇaprajña, was the founder of the Madhvaite sect of Vaiṣṇavism and the principal advocate of the dualistic system of Vedānta. After Rāmānuja, Ānandatīrtha was probably the most influential religious reformer and thinker of medieval India.

The Granthamālikāstotra lists thirty-seven works authored by Ānandatīrtha. They are collectively known as Sarvamūla. Although other works are ascribed to him, only these thirty-seven are generally considered authentic. The last work in the list of the Granthamālikāstotra is entitled Saṃnyāsapaddhati (henceforth S). The Yatipraṇavakalpa and S are the only works of Ānandatīrtha that deal exclusively with the topic of renunciation. In the last verse of S the author is identified as Pūrṇaprajña.

Three editions of the Sarvamūla have been published. Two of these omit S and contain only thirty-six works. S is published in the Bangalore edition as a work outside the Sarvamūla, though the editors appear to recognize it as a genuine work of Ānandatīrtha. The Bangalore edition of S is based on a manuscript dated śake 1810 (=1888 ce), although the editors have made some corrections. In my edition, the Bangalore text is referred to by the siglum Bg.

I have been able to locate only one additional manuscript of S. it is found in the library of the Oriental Institute, Baroda, and is referred to in my edition by the siglum Bd. The following is the description of this manuscript:

A verse in the editio princeps of the SDS, Ch. 1 runs as follows:

If the śrāddha produces gratification to beings who are dead. Then here too, in the case of travellers when they start, it is needless to give provisions for the journey.

Iśwarachandra Vidyāsāgara, the first editor of the SDS, could procure only five MSS for collation. Apparently all the five contained the same reading. Two large Sanskrit dictionaries, the Śabdakalpadruma and the Vācaspatyam, quote this reading along with other verses from the SDS. Subsequent editions (reprints) of the SDS published by Tārānātha Tarkavācaspati (1871), Jīvānanda Vidyāsāgara (1889) and Maheśacandra Pāl (1894) adopted the same reading.

Hari Nārāyaṇa Āpṭe brought out a new edition of the SDS in 1906. It supplied the last chapter not found in the MSS available to Iśwarachandra Vidyāsāgara. However, as regards the verse under discussion (v. 4 of the last section), Āpṭe's edition does not differ in any respect from the editio princeps.

It is in Vāsudeva Shāstrī Abhyaṅkar's edition of the SDS (1924) that two additional lines are first found. The second line of the earlier reading (4 cd) becomes the first line of the next verse (5 ab) and two new lines, 4 cd and 5 cd are added.

This collection of essays is meant to explore the various forms that the theme and the notion of ‘tradition’ took within the South Asian context, during ancient and pre-colonial periods.

Designed by the editor to cover a significant selection of the specialized fields of knowledge that shaped classical South Asian cultural history, the aim of this volume is to offer a stimulating anthology of papers on the different and complex processes employed during the ‘invention’, construction, preservation and renewal of a given intellectual tradition.

In this regard, the contributors have expertly analysed a large variety of aspects, namely the transmission of traditional canons —both textual and practical—, the dynamisms and the strategies chosen for the renewal of a tradition, its internal and external dialectics, the procedures of its legitimation, the theoretical and pragmatic mechanisms of its survival, the criticisms of traditional knowledge systems, etc. Attention has also been paid to problems related to the primacy exercised by highly specialized traditional experts, to monopolies in the transmission of knowledge, to its means of cultural and political justification, and to the connections between a specific traditional field of knowledge and the surrounding social arena.

Hence the following essays, thematically arranged according to a sixfold partion (see, supra, the table of contents), are dense and rich in scholarship and I hope they will notably contribute to the contemporary Indological understanding of the crucial institute of ‘tradition’.

1. Let's say you are a novelist or a poet, composing a rather long text inhabited by characters of your own invention. At some point you get stuck; there seems to be no way to extricate the heroine, Z, from the extraordinary tangle of circumstance and inner conflict that she has gotten herself into —no, sorry, that you have imagined for her. (That's the problem with these characters, as any novelist can attest: they very rapidly acquire a surprising autonomy and a certain irreducible integrity vis-à-vis their creator.) Eventually you decide that, for the sake of the novel, maybe even for Z's own sake, the best thing is simply to ‘kill her off’. No one, in our literary ecology, would doubt your sovereign ability to do just that. After all, Z is only imaginary.

So you concoct a death scene, maybe even a funeral, and everyone inside the novel along with the readers theoretically outside it, to say nothing of the author, has somehow to come to terms with the sad loss of Z. Even I, in the second paragraph of this paper, can't help feeling a slight twinge, though I hardly knew her.

But what if Z were suddenly to turn up on the street, or in your study, and demand attention, protesting loudly that she is still very much alive?

Introduction

Israel, it is commonly thought, is an emblematic case of conflation of state and religion seen, and now even designated by law, as a Jewish and democratic state. It might therefore be totally inadequate to question the state-religion relationship in Israel within the framework of the secularization thesis. Yet, although Israel is not a typical Western democracy built upon the separation of church and state, its modernistic features as well as its democratic procedures are required by the state to adhere to the principle of separation, even if at the end the state renounces its relevance to the Israeli context. An apt example to this duality is the relation of the state to religions other than Judaism. As amply shown by Karayanni (2006), the very definition of the state as Jewish entails relegating all religious affairs of non-Jewish communities to the private realm, presumably a de facto separation of state and church. Still, defining this situation in terms of separation is rather misleading. Not only is the conception of state-church relations embedded in a Christian world history (Asad, 1993; Haynes, 2009: 1051), it is also the case that in Israel the idea of an established rabbinate as the institution analogous to church has come to existence based on the ideas of nationhood and statehood.

Introduction

It is well known that many ascetic sects of ancient India prescribed that their members go naked. Jaina and Ājīvaka sects are possibly the two most important and widespread of such sects. Although both the Buddhist and Brahmanical traditions generally proscribe nudity among ascetics, it is evident that nudity was not uncommon among Brahmanical renoucers and that it was accepted as legitimate by at least some authorities. Āpastamba, for example, says: “Some declare that he shall go naked” (ĀpDh 2.21.12). The Brahmanical rite of renunciation indicates that this was an old and established practice. As the concluding act of that rite the new renouncer takes off all his clothes and, naked, walks toward the north or the northeast. He is, however, recalled by the teacher, who invites him to wear his clothes and to take the insignia of a renouncer, such as staff, begging-bowl and water-pot. In all likelihood the rite of disrobing is a ritual remnant of an earlier custom of total nudity on the part of a renouncer.

With the evolution of Brāhmanical renunciation, renouncers were classified into four types: Kuṭīcaka, Bahūdaka, Haṃsa and Paramahaṃsa. It is assumed that as one moves up this hierarchy one becomes progressively more free from rules and abandons practices obligatory at the lower levels. Thus the gradual abandonment of a renouncer's insignia becomes the hallmark of the higher types of renouncers, especially of Paramahaṃsas.