Transmission and Tradition

The ten contributions to this collected volume are based on papers that were presented at the symposium “Transmission and Tradition – The Meaning and the Role of ‘Fragments’ in Indian Philosophy,” which was held at Shinshu University in Matsumoto, Japan, as an Austrian–Japanese cooperation. Drawing on the rich intertextuality of premodern Indian intellectual culture, the papers conduct in-depth investigations into philological and historical problems raised by textual ‘fragments’, by passages that record or represent works lost in their entirety. They also problematize the notion of the ‘fragment’ itself. Contributions range across various religio-philosophical traditions, including Buddhism, Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā, and also develop methodological guidelines for the systematic collection, assessment and presentation of fragments.