The literary commentary in Sanskrit as metalinguistic communication
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Deven M. Patel
Abstract
Although discernible, if only impressionistically, to most who have read commentaries along with Sanskrit kāvya, links between features of everyday communication and the commentarial format merit an explicit highlighting, especially with respect to their mutual utilization of metalanguage to effectively convey intended messages on a semantic and pragmatic level. Traditional and modern scholars who have reflected upon and practiced interpretation, particularly scriptural hermeneutics and grammatical analysis, have brought wide attention to the varied metalinguistic devices and cultural pragmatics that go into shaping a commentarial tradition of cherished foundational works on Veda, buddhavacana, Jain sūtra, vyākaraṇa, and any number of traditions of philosophical śāstra. This paper builds on some of this reflection to specifically address metalinguistic features that characterize the kāvya commentary in Sanskrit. Among these features include discursive processes to underscore complex semantic sense in poetry as well as to reproduce or reveal pragmatic interactive contexts within which kāvya is read.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Gracefully twisting the neck: literary commentaries as a (meta)genre of scholarly discourse
- Vṛddhekṣvākuvratam. The commentators’ interpretations of the passages describing the renunciation of kings in the Raghuvaṃśa
- Jonarāja as commentator: specialized literature, philological effort, and poetic interpretation
- The application of Mīmāṁsā interpretive concepts in commentaries on plays
- Plumbing the depths: reading Bhavabhūti in seventeenth-century Kerala
- The literary commentary in Sanskrit as metalinguistic communication
- Rezensionen – Comptes Rendus – Book Reviews
- François Lachaud et Martin Nogueira Ramos: D’un empire l’autre. Premières rencontres entre la France et le Japon au XIX e siècle
- Shi, Lihong: Choosing Daughters: Family Change in Rural China
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Gracefully twisting the neck: literary commentaries as a (meta)genre of scholarly discourse
- Vṛddhekṣvākuvratam. The commentators’ interpretations of the passages describing the renunciation of kings in the Raghuvaṃśa
- Jonarāja as commentator: specialized literature, philological effort, and poetic interpretation
- The application of Mīmāṁsā interpretive concepts in commentaries on plays
- Plumbing the depths: reading Bhavabhūti in seventeenth-century Kerala
- The literary commentary in Sanskrit as metalinguistic communication
- Rezensionen – Comptes Rendus – Book Reviews
- François Lachaud et Martin Nogueira Ramos: D’un empire l’autre. Premières rencontres entre la France et le Japon au XIX e siècle
- Shi, Lihong: Choosing Daughters: Family Change in Rural China
