Stephanie Majcher | The Australian National University (original) (raw)
Thesis Chapters by Stephanie Majcher
Becoming Sanskrit: A Study of Language and Person in the R̥gvedic Āraṇyakas, 2015
This work argues, firstly, that the parameters currently ascribed to Sanskrit – the justification... more This work argues, firstly, that the parameters currently ascribed to Sanskrit – the justifications of its specialised status, the focus on structure and style in definitions of genre, the treatment of revelation as static and non-subjective – are markedly narrower than those demonstrated in Vedic texts, and as such obscure the possibility of alternative phenomenological, language-based and non-elite explanations for Sanskrit’s ongoing appeal in South Asian religious culture. Secondly, it contends that understandings of language, ancient and modern alike, implicate deeply embedded conceptions of the relationship between language and the human subject, particularly as relates to the formation and refinement of personal identity – a matter which draws revelation and embodiment together in the provision of a living context for self-transformation. These two considerations will be explored through a close examination of the Ṛgvedic Āraṇyakas, since they provide an exemplary instance of the way that familiar approaches to Sanskrit must be adapted in accordance with the demands of texts if we are to retrieve their internal integrity and thereby reach a deeper understanding of what it means to become saṃskṛta.
We can't solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
In recent years, the topic of Sanskrit's cultural significance has become increasingly subject to... more In recent years, the topic of Sanskrit's cultural significance has become increasingly subject to discussion as its high visibility in the identity politics of the modern Indian nation has combined with a general questioning of philological methods to generate a demand for revised approaches to historiography and textual analysis. The resulting developments successfully demonstrate the potential of retrieving a wide diversity of previously unsought information from Sanskrit texts, utilising these findings to grapple with the identification of the language with closed models of cultural elitism, and thereby establish the foundation of a wider understanding of Sanskrit in historical context. What these developments do not address, however, is the matter of how the composition and reception of linguistic materials are influenced by culturally specific understandings of language that are not universally applicable across cultures, and may indeed be incompatible with those familiar to modern scholars and around which a number of leading hermeneutic approaches have been built. This work argues, firstly, that the parameters currently ascribed to Sanskrit – the justifications of its specialised status, the focus on structure and style in definitions of genre, the treatment of revelation as static and non-subjective – are markedly narrower than those demonstrated in Vedic texts, and as such obscure the possibility of alternative phenomenological, language-based and non-elite explanations for Sanskrit's ongoing appeal in South Asian religious culture. Secondly, it contends that understandings of language, ancient and modern alike, implicate deeply embedded conceptions of the relationship between language and the human subject, particularly as relates to the formation and refinement of personal identity – a matter which draws revelation and embodiment together in the provision of a living context for self-transformation. These two considerations will be explored through a close examination of the Ṛgvedic Āraṇyakas, since they provide an exemplary instance of the way that familiar approaches to Sanskrit must be adapted in accordance with the demands of texts if we are to retrieve their internal integrity and thereby reach a deeper understanding of what it means to become saṃskṛta.
Conference Presentations by Stephanie Majcher
51st Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2023
In recent years, digital humanities in South Asia has opened boldly unprecedented horizons in lit... more In recent years, digital humanities in South Asia has opened boldly unprecedented horizons in literary culture and participation. By responding to the links between language, identity, and exclusion, these initiatives challenge the way digital tools are developed and deployed, and work to create spaces in which the human cost of South Asia’s language politics is proactively addressed. Yet, while this affirmation of linguistic diversity involves a necessary pushback against Sanskrit’s history of silencing – its marginalisation of literatures and people – it also raises the question of how bringing digital tools and humanistic values to work in the study of Sanskrit texts could help to decentre the very epistemologies that leverage it as an instrument of exclusion and symbol of authority.
Through consideration of two key players in the field of modern Sanskrit language education and textual interpretation – Western universities and right-wing Hindu nationalism – this paper investigates the critical background to how post-Vedic conceptualisations of adhikāra, the exclusive and authority-granting right of access to the Veda, shape an historical narrative that obscures the Veda’s broader relevance to non-orthodox and non-Brahmanical heritage communities. It discusses the way that scholarly and political discourses reify Sanskrit in light of this narrative rather than motivating the close examination of Vedic texts based on internal epistemologies of language and experience that challenged and were controlled by later Brahmanical traditions. This paper then reflects on digitisations of Vedic material, comparing their narrowly intended audiences and limited accessibility to the needs of the multiplicity of stakeholders in this heritage. Finally, and with identification of significant precedents in South Asian digital humanities, this paper asks how cross-cultural, collaborative engagements with Vedic texts can shift power-balances and authority in this history’s narration and its telling in the future.
The Aitareya Āraṇyaka displays an interest in vāc that reaches beyond both its Ṛgvedic affiliatio... more The Aitareya Āraṇyaka displays an interest in vāc that reaches beyond both its Ṛgvedic affiliations and explicit concerns with ritual. While a preoccupation with language and recitation is a commonly-enough observed trait of mid-to late-Vedic texts, what the Aitareya Āraṇyaka harbours is an investment in the inner workings of language that arguably holds the text together, providing a cohesiveness that binds its teachings to their compositional structures.
This paper traces the truth-claims contained in Aitareya Āraṇyaka (AitĀ) 2.3.8, a passage in whic... more This paper traces the truth-claims contained in Aitareya Āraṇyaka (AitĀ) 2.3.8, a passage in which the assertion that vāc is co-extensive with brahman (cf. AitĀ 1.3.8) is demonstrated through relationships that connect multiple aspects of composition – from the immediately apparent level of verbal features to the silent structures that underpin grammatical figures. What results is a vibrant image of revelation in which 'textual' dynamics include, and thus define, the human subject. The many dimensions of this passage illustrate a particular, culturally inflected understanding of language and promotes an expanded conception of grammar as an active force at play within the world of the AitĀ – grammar itself informs soteriological expectations, and so brings cohesiveness to an otherwise highly diverse text. Adapting a typology developed by La Porta and Shulman (2007: 6), I argue that grammar is manifested as a subtle evolute of vāc and principally describes the creative activity of brahman. By allowing the existence of subtle connections to be perceived beneath the level of what is available to the senses, this conception of grammar both attests to the reality of bandhus and bears upon the inner workings of self-realization. The picture of vāc that emerges from this analysis raises the question of a correspondence between the formation of the AitĀ as text and the role of language in the models of personhood presented therein – as vāc extends as far as does brahman, the silent transformations of grammar reveal the truth of cosmological connections and personal identity alike. While this approach challenges a number of the assumptions at play in the criticism of the Āraṇyakas, this paper strives to elucidate the way that such details enrich modern methodologies by presenting a new context in which to understand the AitĀ as an instance of revelation.
Papers by Stephanie Majcher
Journal of Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, 2022
Scroll 14 (RS14) of the Robert Senior collection preserves a Gāndhārī extract from the Anavatapta... more Scroll 14 (RS14) of the Robert Senior collection preserves a Gāndhārī extract from the Anavatapta-gāthā (“Songs of Lake Anavatapta”), a compendium of karmic autobiographies spoken by the Buddha’s prominent disciples. Each autobiography presents a complex tapestry of karma, the results of its ripening (Skt. karmavipāka, P kammavipāka) through the speaker’s previous existences, and (in most cases) a crucial event leading the speaker to becoming a disciple of the Buddha Śākyamuni in his present life. The popularity of the Anavatapta-gāthā is indicated by the numerous versions available in Pali, Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit, including Central Asian fragments from Gilgit and Turfanas well as the two Gāndhārī manuscripts held in the Robert Senior and British Library collections. This Senior scroll records the recitation of Mahākāśyapa together with a prologue to the Anavatapta-gāthā. This journal article presents the first digital publication of Senior scroll 14 and includes a diplomatic edition, reconstruction, hybrid edition, translation, Sanskrit chāyā, a glossary, palaeographic report and images. A detailed study of Senior scroll 14 with annotated text edition and parallels was published in Salomon 2008, Gandhāran Buddhist Texts vol. 5.
Journal of Indian Philosophy
The Saṁhitā Upaniṣad [SU] is a little-known Vedic text that presents ‘typical’ Upaniṣadic teachin... more The Saṁhitā Upaniṣad [SU] is a little-known Vedic text that presents ‘typical’ Upaniṣadic teachings on the truth of identity alongside seemingly out-of-place descriptions of rites used to protect oneself against enemies and even against death. The difference between these contents is striking, but what it has to tell us about the SU’s main concerns is vulnerable to historical and text critical methods that rely on structure, style, and linguistic archaism to divide texts into discrete strata. What if the modern text critical practice of individually identifying and classifying textual contents obscures the use and meaning of the word saṁhitā in the SU? Is it possible that the SU’s diverse contents are intrinsically related? This article explores these questions through a close examination of a sequence of passages illustrating the contrast that has led previous scholars to see the SU as miscellaneous in character and lacking internal coherence. Through this examination, I identify a...
Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2022
The Saṁhitā Upaniṣad [SU] is a little-known Vedic text that presents 'typical' Upaniṣadic teachin... more The Saṁhitā Upaniṣad [SU] is a little-known Vedic text that presents 'typical' Upaniṣadic teachings on the truth of identity alongside seemingly out-of-place descriptions of rites used to protect oneself against enemies and even against death. The difference between these contents is striking, but what it has to tell us about the SU's main concerns is vulnerable to historical and text critical methods that rely on structure, style, and linguistic archaism to divide texts into discrete strata. What if the modern text critical practice of individually identifying and classifying textual contents obscures the use and meaning of the word saṁhitā in the SU? Is it possible that the SU's diverse contents are intrinsically related? This article explores these questions through a close examination of a sequence of passages illustrating the contrast that has led previous scholars to see the SU as miscellaneous in character and lacking internal coherence. Through this examination, I identify a wider context for saṁhitā in the specific relationship the SU depicts between the person (puruṣa) and speech (vāc). I argue that the SU's treatment of saṁhitā draws upon an understanding of recitation in the perspective of one's vulnerability and the dynamics involved in developments of personhood. These findings allow the SU to emerge as an intriguing and coherent text that merits closer examination and establishes a promising approach for the study of the R ̥ gvedic Āraṇyakas.
Journal of Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, 2020
This Gāndhārī version of the Buddha’s Discourse on Not-self (P Anattalakkhaṇa-sutta, Skt. *Anātma... more This Gāndhārī version of the Buddha’s Discourse on Not-self (P Anattalakkhaṇa-sutta, Skt. *Anātmalakṣaṇa-sūtra) is the second of six sūtras or discourses preserved on scroll 22 (RS 22) of the Robert Senior collection. The Gāndhārī title *Aṇatvalakṣaṇa Sutra has been reconstructed on the basis of the title given in the Pali parallels. This discourse records the second teaching given by the Buddha shortly after his awakening to the group of five monks at the Deer Park near Benares. The significance of this teaching and its exposition of the five aggregates (G kadha, P khandha, Skt. skandha) as having the nature of “not-self” (G aṇatva, P anatta, Skt. anātman) is indicated by the numerous versions available in Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, and now Gāndhārī. This digital journal article presents the first diplomatic publication of the Gāndhārī sutra including a diplomatic edition, reconstruction, hybrid edition, translation, Sanskrit chāyā, a glossary, palaeographic report and images. Details of the parallels and a preliminary study of the text were published in Allon 2020.
Becoming Sanskrit: A Study of Language and Person in the R̥gvedic Āraṇyakas, 2015
This work argues, firstly, that the parameters currently ascribed to Sanskrit – the justification... more This work argues, firstly, that the parameters currently ascribed to Sanskrit – the justifications of its specialised status, the focus on structure and style in definitions of genre, the treatment of revelation as static and non-subjective – are markedly narrower than those demonstrated in Vedic texts, and as such obscure the possibility of alternative phenomenological, language-based and non-elite explanations for Sanskrit’s ongoing appeal in South Asian religious culture. Secondly, it contends that understandings of language, ancient and modern alike, implicate deeply embedded conceptions of the relationship between language and the human subject, particularly as relates to the formation and refinement of personal identity – a matter which draws revelation and embodiment together in the provision of a living context for self-transformation. These two considerations will be explored through a close examination of the Ṛgvedic Āraṇyakas, since they provide an exemplary instance of the way that familiar approaches to Sanskrit must be adapted in accordance with the demands of texts if we are to retrieve their internal integrity and thereby reach a deeper understanding of what it means to become saṃskṛta.
We can't solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
In recent years, the topic of Sanskrit's cultural significance has become increasingly subject to... more In recent years, the topic of Sanskrit's cultural significance has become increasingly subject to discussion as its high visibility in the identity politics of the modern Indian nation has combined with a general questioning of philological methods to generate a demand for revised approaches to historiography and textual analysis. The resulting developments successfully demonstrate the potential of retrieving a wide diversity of previously unsought information from Sanskrit texts, utilising these findings to grapple with the identification of the language with closed models of cultural elitism, and thereby establish the foundation of a wider understanding of Sanskrit in historical context. What these developments do not address, however, is the matter of how the composition and reception of linguistic materials are influenced by culturally specific understandings of language that are not universally applicable across cultures, and may indeed be incompatible with those familiar to modern scholars and around which a number of leading hermeneutic approaches have been built. This work argues, firstly, that the parameters currently ascribed to Sanskrit – the justifications of its specialised status, the focus on structure and style in definitions of genre, the treatment of revelation as static and non-subjective – are markedly narrower than those demonstrated in Vedic texts, and as such obscure the possibility of alternative phenomenological, language-based and non-elite explanations for Sanskrit's ongoing appeal in South Asian religious culture. Secondly, it contends that understandings of language, ancient and modern alike, implicate deeply embedded conceptions of the relationship between language and the human subject, particularly as relates to the formation and refinement of personal identity – a matter which draws revelation and embodiment together in the provision of a living context for self-transformation. These two considerations will be explored through a close examination of the Ṛgvedic Āraṇyakas, since they provide an exemplary instance of the way that familiar approaches to Sanskrit must be adapted in accordance with the demands of texts if we are to retrieve their internal integrity and thereby reach a deeper understanding of what it means to become saṃskṛta.
51st Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2023
In recent years, digital humanities in South Asia has opened boldly unprecedented horizons in lit... more In recent years, digital humanities in South Asia has opened boldly unprecedented horizons in literary culture and participation. By responding to the links between language, identity, and exclusion, these initiatives challenge the way digital tools are developed and deployed, and work to create spaces in which the human cost of South Asia’s language politics is proactively addressed. Yet, while this affirmation of linguistic diversity involves a necessary pushback against Sanskrit’s history of silencing – its marginalisation of literatures and people – it also raises the question of how bringing digital tools and humanistic values to work in the study of Sanskrit texts could help to decentre the very epistemologies that leverage it as an instrument of exclusion and symbol of authority.
Through consideration of two key players in the field of modern Sanskrit language education and textual interpretation – Western universities and right-wing Hindu nationalism – this paper investigates the critical background to how post-Vedic conceptualisations of adhikāra, the exclusive and authority-granting right of access to the Veda, shape an historical narrative that obscures the Veda’s broader relevance to non-orthodox and non-Brahmanical heritage communities. It discusses the way that scholarly and political discourses reify Sanskrit in light of this narrative rather than motivating the close examination of Vedic texts based on internal epistemologies of language and experience that challenged and were controlled by later Brahmanical traditions. This paper then reflects on digitisations of Vedic material, comparing their narrowly intended audiences and limited accessibility to the needs of the multiplicity of stakeholders in this heritage. Finally, and with identification of significant precedents in South Asian digital humanities, this paper asks how cross-cultural, collaborative engagements with Vedic texts can shift power-balances and authority in this history’s narration and its telling in the future.
The Aitareya Āraṇyaka displays an interest in vāc that reaches beyond both its Ṛgvedic affiliatio... more The Aitareya Āraṇyaka displays an interest in vāc that reaches beyond both its Ṛgvedic affiliations and explicit concerns with ritual. While a preoccupation with language and recitation is a commonly-enough observed trait of mid-to late-Vedic texts, what the Aitareya Āraṇyaka harbours is an investment in the inner workings of language that arguably holds the text together, providing a cohesiveness that binds its teachings to their compositional structures.
This paper traces the truth-claims contained in Aitareya Āraṇyaka (AitĀ) 2.3.8, a passage in whic... more This paper traces the truth-claims contained in Aitareya Āraṇyaka (AitĀ) 2.3.8, a passage in which the assertion that vāc is co-extensive with brahman (cf. AitĀ 1.3.8) is demonstrated through relationships that connect multiple aspects of composition – from the immediately apparent level of verbal features to the silent structures that underpin grammatical figures. What results is a vibrant image of revelation in which 'textual' dynamics include, and thus define, the human subject. The many dimensions of this passage illustrate a particular, culturally inflected understanding of language and promotes an expanded conception of grammar as an active force at play within the world of the AitĀ – grammar itself informs soteriological expectations, and so brings cohesiveness to an otherwise highly diverse text. Adapting a typology developed by La Porta and Shulman (2007: 6), I argue that grammar is manifested as a subtle evolute of vāc and principally describes the creative activity of brahman. By allowing the existence of subtle connections to be perceived beneath the level of what is available to the senses, this conception of grammar both attests to the reality of bandhus and bears upon the inner workings of self-realization. The picture of vāc that emerges from this analysis raises the question of a correspondence between the formation of the AitĀ as text and the role of language in the models of personhood presented therein – as vāc extends as far as does brahman, the silent transformations of grammar reveal the truth of cosmological connections and personal identity alike. While this approach challenges a number of the assumptions at play in the criticism of the Āraṇyakas, this paper strives to elucidate the way that such details enrich modern methodologies by presenting a new context in which to understand the AitĀ as an instance of revelation.
Journal of Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, 2022
Scroll 14 (RS14) of the Robert Senior collection preserves a Gāndhārī extract from the Anavatapta... more Scroll 14 (RS14) of the Robert Senior collection preserves a Gāndhārī extract from the Anavatapta-gāthā (“Songs of Lake Anavatapta”), a compendium of karmic autobiographies spoken by the Buddha’s prominent disciples. Each autobiography presents a complex tapestry of karma, the results of its ripening (Skt. karmavipāka, P kammavipāka) through the speaker’s previous existences, and (in most cases) a crucial event leading the speaker to becoming a disciple of the Buddha Śākyamuni in his present life. The popularity of the Anavatapta-gāthā is indicated by the numerous versions available in Pali, Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit, including Central Asian fragments from Gilgit and Turfanas well as the two Gāndhārī manuscripts held in the Robert Senior and British Library collections. This Senior scroll records the recitation of Mahākāśyapa together with a prologue to the Anavatapta-gāthā. This journal article presents the first digital publication of Senior scroll 14 and includes a diplomatic edition, reconstruction, hybrid edition, translation, Sanskrit chāyā, a glossary, palaeographic report and images. A detailed study of Senior scroll 14 with annotated text edition and parallels was published in Salomon 2008, Gandhāran Buddhist Texts vol. 5.
Journal of Indian Philosophy
The Saṁhitā Upaniṣad [SU] is a little-known Vedic text that presents ‘typical’ Upaniṣadic teachin... more The Saṁhitā Upaniṣad [SU] is a little-known Vedic text that presents ‘typical’ Upaniṣadic teachings on the truth of identity alongside seemingly out-of-place descriptions of rites used to protect oneself against enemies and even against death. The difference between these contents is striking, but what it has to tell us about the SU’s main concerns is vulnerable to historical and text critical methods that rely on structure, style, and linguistic archaism to divide texts into discrete strata. What if the modern text critical practice of individually identifying and classifying textual contents obscures the use and meaning of the word saṁhitā in the SU? Is it possible that the SU’s diverse contents are intrinsically related? This article explores these questions through a close examination of a sequence of passages illustrating the contrast that has led previous scholars to see the SU as miscellaneous in character and lacking internal coherence. Through this examination, I identify a...
Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2022
The Saṁhitā Upaniṣad [SU] is a little-known Vedic text that presents 'typical' Upaniṣadic teachin... more The Saṁhitā Upaniṣad [SU] is a little-known Vedic text that presents 'typical' Upaniṣadic teachings on the truth of identity alongside seemingly out-of-place descriptions of rites used to protect oneself against enemies and even against death. The difference between these contents is striking, but what it has to tell us about the SU's main concerns is vulnerable to historical and text critical methods that rely on structure, style, and linguistic archaism to divide texts into discrete strata. What if the modern text critical practice of individually identifying and classifying textual contents obscures the use and meaning of the word saṁhitā in the SU? Is it possible that the SU's diverse contents are intrinsically related? This article explores these questions through a close examination of a sequence of passages illustrating the contrast that has led previous scholars to see the SU as miscellaneous in character and lacking internal coherence. Through this examination, I identify a wider context for saṁhitā in the specific relationship the SU depicts between the person (puruṣa) and speech (vāc). I argue that the SU's treatment of saṁhitā draws upon an understanding of recitation in the perspective of one's vulnerability and the dynamics involved in developments of personhood. These findings allow the SU to emerge as an intriguing and coherent text that merits closer examination and establishes a promising approach for the study of the R ̥ gvedic Āraṇyakas.
Journal of Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, 2020
This Gāndhārī version of the Buddha’s Discourse on Not-self (P Anattalakkhaṇa-sutta, Skt. *Anātma... more This Gāndhārī version of the Buddha’s Discourse on Not-self (P Anattalakkhaṇa-sutta, Skt. *Anātmalakṣaṇa-sūtra) is the second of six sūtras or discourses preserved on scroll 22 (RS 22) of the Robert Senior collection. The Gāndhārī title *Aṇatvalakṣaṇa Sutra has been reconstructed on the basis of the title given in the Pali parallels. This discourse records the second teaching given by the Buddha shortly after his awakening to the group of five monks at the Deer Park near Benares. The significance of this teaching and its exposition of the five aggregates (G kadha, P khandha, Skt. skandha) as having the nature of “not-self” (G aṇatva, P anatta, Skt. anātman) is indicated by the numerous versions available in Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, and now Gāndhārī. This digital journal article presents the first diplomatic publication of the Gāndhārī sutra including a diplomatic edition, reconstruction, hybrid edition, translation, Sanskrit chāyā, a glossary, palaeographic report and images. Details of the parallels and a preliminary study of the text were published in Allon 2020.