Modes of philology in medieval South India / by Whitney Cox.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Introduction: Towards a History of Indic Philology -- Textual Pasts and Futures -- Bearing the Nāṭyaveda: Śāradātanaya's Bhāvaprakāśana -- Veṅkaṭanātha and the Limits of Philological Argument -- Flowers of Language: Maheśvarānanda's Mahārthamañjarī -- Conclusions: Philology as Politics, Philology as Science -- Bibliography -- Index.

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Philology was everywhere and nowhere in classical South Asia. While its civilizations possessed remarkably sophisticated tools and methods of textual analysis, interpretation, and transmission, they lacked any sense of a common disciplinary or intellectual project uniting these; indeed they lacked a word for 'philology' altogether. Arguing that such pseudepigraphical genres as the Sanskrit purāṇas and tantras incorporated modes of philological reading and writing, Cox demonstrates the ways in which the production of these works in turn motivated the invention of new kinds of śāstric scholarship. Combining close textual analysis with wider theoretical concerns, Cox traces this philological transformation in the works of the dramaturgist Śāradātanaya, the celebrated Vaiṣṇava poet-theologian Veṅkaṭanātha, and the maverick Śaiva mystic Maheśvarānanda.