Full Description
This study focuses on the devices implemented in Classical Indian texts on ritual and language in order to develop a structure of rules in an economic and systematic way. These devices presuppose a spatial approach to ritual and language, one which deals for instance with absences as substitutions within a pre-existing grid, and not as temporal disappearances. In this way, the study reveals a key feature of some among the most influential schools of Indian thought.
The sources are Kalpasūtra, Vyākaraṇa and Mīmāṃsā, three textual traditions which developed alongside each other, sharing - as the volume shows - common presuppositions and methodologies. The book will be of interest for Sanskritists, scholars of ritual exegesis and of the history of linguistics.
Contents
Contents: Scientific descriptive methods - Substitution patterns - Zero-theories - Extra-mathematical concept of placeholder - Conflict between different rules - Technical literatures in comparison: ritual and grammatical traditions - Space (vs. time) as conceptual background - tantra (simultaneous application) vs. prasaṅga (automatic involvement) - Automatic involvement and blocking of rules.
