Sastrarambha: Inquiries into the Preamble in Sanskrit.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo
• Position: Book review

Sastrarambha: Inquiries into the Preamble in Sanskrit. Edited by WALTER SLAJE. Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 62. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ, 2008. Pp. xv + 255.

This volumes contains papers presented at a panel organized by Walter Slaje at the thirteenth World Sanskrit Conference held in Edinburgh in July 2006, which the organizers of the Conference consented to be published hors serie (p. viii). In addition to a preamble by the organizer and an introductory essay by Edwin Gerow, the volume contains ten articles contributed by European and American authors.

I admit that, when I first saw the title of the book, I assumed that sastrarambha was more or less synonymous with the mangalacarana, and I expected papers studying the mangala verses which Sanskrit authors prefix to their works before entering into the heart of the matter. In fact, the contributions to the volume take both terms, arambha and saastra, in a very broad sense.

Most papers are devoted to the arambha-s in single texts. In his essay on Mallavadin's doxographic Dvadasaranayacakra (as reconstructed from Simhasuri's commentary Nyayagamanusarini), Jan Houben takes arabh not in the sense of 'to begin', but as 'to take hold of': arambha is a key, "a kind of handle to grasp and to come to grips with the system each time under discussion" (p. 84). He pays special attention to the role played in these transitions by the grammarians. Philipp Andre Maas follows up on his two earlier studies of the textual transmission of the Patanjalayogasastra with a text-critical report on the astonishing variety of materials that appear in the many testimonia he has collected on the initial sutra: atha yoganusasanam. For one sloka: yas tyaktva ..., which is exhibited throughout the vulgate group, he is able to prove that it was added between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. Johannes Bronkhorst returns to Sankara's use of the terms sastrarambha and sastrapramukha, which he already dealt with at the twelfth World Sanskrit Conference, to conclude that the terms refer to the beginning of the Brahmasutra and commentary, "not some hypothetical Mimamsa that covered both Purva- and Uttara-Mimamsa" (p. 129). Marcus Schmucker examines how the beginning/undertaking--here the distinction between both terms is extremely porous--of the Vedantasastra, especially in Advaita (Sankara, Padmapada, Prakasatman, and Vimuktaman), is tied to the principle of avidya, and follows up with the criticism of...