Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens

The mantra known as Gāyatrī or Sāvitrī (Ṛgveda III 62.10) is one of the most frequently recited texts of mankind. Over the course of time it has not only been personified as the mother of the Vedas – the oldest religious literature of South Asia –, but has even come to be venerated as a goddess. Today many consider it the most important, most efficacious, or holiest mantra of all. In "Gāyatrī: Mantra and Mother of the Vedas", Dominik A. Haas reconstructs the history of the Gāyatrī-Mantra for...

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...

This volume provides the first modern translation of the recently found original Sanskrit text of Dharmakīrti’s Hetubindu (ca. 600 CE), the first Indian work of pure logic. The concise definitions and explanations of the central terms are enriched by several extensive digressions, such as on the pervasion (vyāpti) in the proof of momentariness of entities, with his conceptions of causality, and on the nature of non-perception or negative cognition (anupalabdhi), as well as by the supplement of...

The final volume of the edition of correspondence of the Petersburg linguist Anton Schiefner comprises letters to 35 recipients, most of them in German, a few in Russian. The subjects are manifold: Indology, Tibetology, folklore, especially fairy tale and motif research, bibliography, library matters, the edition of the works of the anthropologist M. A. Castrén, the Kalevala and academic matters. Due to the large number of correspondents as well as the breadth of subjects the letters mirror...

“Views from Tibet” is a collection of T. Tillemans’s articles in three main subject areas: Tibetan Buddhist logic, the philosophy of the middle, and indigenous Tibetan writing analyzing the structure of the Tibetan language. The previously published articles have been updated and revised. The last chapter is new. Understanding Tibetan views presupposes a relatively sophisticated Indological understanding, and these papers therefore make frequent zigzags to Indian canonical texts, where possible...

The correspondence of the linguist Anton Schiefner covers the years 1843 to 1879 and deals with a great variety of subjects. The present volume offers an historical survey on the situation and development of Linguistics of that period, owing to the manifold activities and interests of the author (i.a. Classical Philology, Finno-Ugric languages, Slavic languages, Tibetan, Caucasian languages) and of his correspondents, scattered all over Europe, as well. The present volume is complemented by...

The proceedings volume of the Fifth International Dharmakirti Conference (Heidelberg, August 2014) is concerned with the logico-epistemological school of Buddhism ‒ a long-lasting tradition that pursued the analysis of knowledge, inference and proof within a Buddhist soteriological framework, based on the works of the Indian epistemologist and logician Dharmakirti (6th–7th c. CE). Having been shaped in the environment of medieval India, with its multiple mutually interacting and partly...

"Regenzeiten, Feuchtgebiete, Körpersäfte" analyses the role of water in early Indian medicine on the basis of its source texts. In three large sections, Angermeier discusses the medical relevance of nature and climate, the role of water in the human body and its dietary and medical use, offering multi-layered insights into the intellectual history of early Ayurveda. Since this healthcare system considers water not only in the strict medical sense, but also deals in detail with climatic and...

In the Apohavāda chapter of his Ślokavārttika, the seventh-century Hindu philosopher Kumārila undertakes an exhaustive critique of the distinctive Buddhist theory of meaning, the “theory of exclusion”, or Apohavāda. According to this theory, which was introduced by the sixth-century Buddhist thinker Dignāga, a word refers not to some positive entity such as a universal, but to an “exclusion”. It became one of the core teachings of the Buddhist epistemological tradition. The debate on it is...

This book by Hugo David investigates the beginnings, in the 10th century CE, of an autonomous reflection on language in the “non-dualist” trend of Brahmanical exegesis (Advaita-Vedānta) inaugurated in the 8th century by Śaṅkara. Its starting point is a detailed study of the most ancient text exclusively devoted to linguistic issues belonging to that tradition, which is translated here for the first time in a western language, and of its only known Sanskrit commentary. On this basis, an attempt...

The “Path” to attain liberation (“mārga”), a central notion of Buddhist praxis and thought, designates specific patterns of behaviour and methods of practice connected with transformative powers and soteriological goals. This volume shows the plurality and complexity of Buddhist views on the Path found in Buddhist doctrinal, narrative and philosophical literature, epigraphic sources and iconographic programmes from South Asia. Through new analyses—rather than general pictures—of different kinds...