Indian Linguistic Studies: Festschrift in Honor of George Cardona.

• Author: Hock, Hans Henrich
• Position: Book review

Indian Linguistic Studies: Festschrift in Honor of George Cardona. Edited by MADHAV M. DESHPANDE and PETER E. HOOK. Delhi: MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 2002. Pp. xxv + 384. Rs. 695.

Apparently planned as a Sastipurti festschrift--an auspicious act in the Indian tradition--this tribute to George Cardona's wide-ranging Sanskrit and general Indological scholarship came out just after his 65th birthday, an auspicious date in Western traditions. Edited by two of his former students, the volume features an impressive range of contributions, plus an editors' preface and a list of Cardona's publications, which, fortunately, includes his important early work in Indo-European linguistics.

Cardona's strong and highly productive and challenging focus on Sanskrit grammatical traditions is reflected in the fact that three of the six major sections are devoted to this topic. The remaining three sections are devoted to lexical studies, cultural studies, and modern Indian languages.

Section I, on Sanskrit grammatical theory, contains papers on post-Paninian discussions of grammatical terms and concepts. Topics include the issue of samjnas and paribhasas (James Benson); sthanasambandha or the relationship between the input and output of rules (E. G. Kahrs); later interpretations of the sutra iko yan aci (Robert A. Hueckstedt); and an article in Sanskrit on a karika of the Vakyapadiya (V. B. Bhagwat). Of special interest to a general audience is Saroja Bhate's contribution on "Exegetics of Sanskrit Grammar," which culminates in the finding that there has been a "shift of emphasis from practice to theory." Early commentators (Patanjali and Katyayana) were concerned with realistic issues of Sanskrit linguistic structure; as Sanskrit was "losing ground as a language of communication," interpretation increasingly dealt with theory-internal concerns, focusing on "speculative" or "imaginary" linguistic issues. Bhate's conclusion is, of course, not entirely novel; witness above all Whitney's highly negative stance on the Sanskrit grammatical tradition. However, as demonstrated by the other contributors to this section (and by Bhate herself), there are enough elements in the later commentatorial literature that can help in the interpretation and intellectual appreciation of the Paninian tradition, even if they may not lead to a deeper understanding of the linguistic structure of Sanskrit.

Section II is devoted to Karaka studies, featuring a reconsideration of P. 1.4.1-2 (S...