Yigal Bronner | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (original) (raw)

Papers by Yigal Bronner

Dandin's Magic Mirror, 2023

Who was Dandin, and why should we care about him? Here is the response of an anonymous Sanskrit v... more Who was Dandin, and why should we care about him? Here is the response of an anonymous Sanskrit verse that is not sparing with praise: When Valmiki was born, the word "poet" was coined. A er Vyasa, you could say it in the dual. And "poets" (in the plural) rst appeared along with Dandin. 1 Valmiki is the composer of the rst poem, the Rāmāyaṇa. e second, the Mahābhārata, is famously attributed to Vyasa. So primordial are these authors and their epic works that with them the word kavi ("poet") was originally uttered, rst only in the singular and then in the dual. But it was only with Dandin that the category became popular, as manifested linguistically by its use in the plural, and the rest is history. It was Dandin, this verse suggests, who opened the gates of poetry, so far associated with its exclusive pair of founding fathers. One could take this as a comment on the vast success of his Mirror of Literature, a book that introduced readers throughout Asia to the art of poesy.

Jāyagauḍa's Kannaḍakuvalayānanda, the name may suggest, is another run-of-the-mill regional adapt... more Jāyagauḍa's Kannaḍakuvalayānanda, the name may suggest, is another run-of-the-mill regional adaptation of Appayya Dīkṣita's bestseller textbook of Sanskrit poetics-The Joy of the Night Lily (Kuvalayānanda). However, a close reading of Jāyagauḍa's definitions and more importantly, his carefully curated examples, tells a different story. Jāyagauḍa's text is by no means a slavish translation, nor is his aim to present a brandnew, local theory of poetic figures. Rather, the Kannaḍakuvalayānanda places recent ṣaṭpadi poetry at the center-stage of poetics and creatively shifts the valence of understanding figures from abstract theory to writerly and readerly practice, beginning with Appayya Dīkṣita's own examples. The interaction of a "Sanskrit" poetic theory with a Kannada poetic memory here produces most unusual results. This experiment also draws our attention to a dazzlingly new (and as it turns out, very traditional) mode of doing literary criticism-in Sanskrit as well as in Kannada.

This paper revisits the longstanding tradition concerning the dual authorship of the Light on Lit... more This paper revisits the longstanding tradition concerning the dual authorship of the Light on Literature (Kāvyaprakāśa), the dominant treatise on Sanskrit poetics in the second millennium ce. The discussion focuses on one case study, a brief comment dismissing the ornament "cause" (hetu), found in the latter part of chapter 10 in the portion traditionally attributed to Mammaṭa's successor Allaṭa (aka Alaka). This passage is analyzed in the broader context of the Light's discussion of semantic capacities (chapter 2), suggestion (chapter 4), and other ornaments (chapter 10). The essay also looks at the way generations of commentators have dealt with this topic and the potential inconsistencies in its treatment in the Light. The paper thus throws light on the question of the work's overall integration, seamless or not so seamless, both in its genetic and receptive histories.

Jayadeva leaves no doubt as to his intended audience. In his opening verses (CĀ 1.1-3), in a sign... more Jayadeva leaves no doubt as to his intended audience. In his opening verses (CĀ 1.1-3), in a signature stanza ending every "ray"-chapter (e.g. 1.16), and in the

The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2006

A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these... more A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these works reveal a vital and organic relation to the crystallising regional traditions of the subcontinent and to emerging vernacular literatures. Thus we have, for example, the Sanskrit literatures of Kerala, of Bengal-Orissa, of Andhra, and so on. These works, often addressed primarily to local audiences, have remained largely unknown and mostly undervalued, despite their intrinsic merits and enormous importance for the cultural history of India. We explore the particular forms of complex expressivity, including rich temporal and spatial modalities, apparent in such poems, focusing in particular on Vedānta Deśika’s Haṃsasandeśa, a fourteenth-century messenger-poem modelled after Kālidāsa’s Meghasandeśa. We hypothesise a principle: as localisation increases, what is lost in geographical range is made up for by increasing depth. Sanskrit poetry thus comes to play a critical, highly original role in the elaboration of regional cultural identities and the articulation of innovative cultural thematics; a re-conceptualised ecology of Sanskrit genres, including entirely new forms keyed to local experience, eventually appears in each of the regions. In short, rumours of the death of Sanskrit after 1000 A.D. are greatly exaggerated.

This essay is a first attempt to trace the evolution of biographical accounts of Appayya Dīkṡita ... more This essay is a first attempt to trace the evolution of biographical accounts of Appayya Dīkṡita from the sixteenth century onward, with special attention to their continuities and changes. It explores what these rich materials teach us about Appayya Dīkṡita and his times, and what lessons they offer about the changing historical sensibilities in South India during the transition to the colonial and postcolonial eras. I tentatively identify two important junctures in the development of these materials: one that took place in the first generation to be born after his death, when the idea of him as an avatar of Śiva was introduced, and another at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when many new stories about his encounters with his colleagues and students surfaced. The essay follows a set of themes and tensions that pertain to Appayya Dīkṡita's social and political affiliations, his sectarian agendas, and the geographic sphere of his activities. These themes and tensions are closely related and prove to be surprisingly resilient, despite the many changes that occurred during the five centuries of recollection that this essay sketches. This overall coherence, I argue, is integral to Appayya Dīkṡita's sociopolitical context and self-chosen identity.

This article is primarily concerned with asking how we can read Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī as histor... more This article is primarily concerned with asking how we can read Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī as historians, other than by mining it for facts and names or using it as a proof of some South Asian given. I conduct my investigation on a relatively small sample, a well-defined narrative sequence of about 100 verses from the fourth chapter, or 'wave', of the River of Kings (4.402-502), which narrates King Jayāpīḍa's first military campaign. I try to demonstrate that this section depicts a dramatic shift in Kashmir's investment in learning and the arts. Thus I argue that the Rājataraṅgiṇī, despite its unifying poetic and moralistic framework, is acutely attuned to changes in Kashmir's history, including this region's special cultural and intellectual history, a topic that is clearly dear to Kalhaṇa's heart.

This article is the first study of Appayya DakXita's Upakramapar@krama. Here he attacks Vy@satart... more This article is the first study of Appayya DakXita's Upakramapar@krama. Here he attacks Vy@satartha's new and provocative argument according to which the hermeneutic protocols of Vedic passages always assumed that the closing of a passage overrides its opening. Appayya offers a systematic refutation of Vy@satartha's examples in an effort to show that sequence matters and that, as was known at least since the time of Śabara, it is the opening that outweighs the closing and not the other way around. But, as the article shows, midway through the work the author presents a new and comprehensive theory that, he believes, underlies both Mam@:s@ and Ved@nta reading protocols, one in which sequence is completely immaterial. The article argues that the tension between these two voices is not entirely resolvable and is, moreover, emblematic of the author's intellectual legacy and of scholarly work in his period more generally.

A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these ... more A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these works reveal a vital and organic relation to the crystallising regional traditions of the subcontinent and to emerging vernacular literatures. Thus we have, for example, the Sanskrit literatures of Kerala, of Bengal-Orissa, of Andhra, and so on. These works, often addressed primarily to local audiences, have remained largely unknown and mostly undervalued, despite their intrinsic merits and enormous importance for the cultural history of India. We explore the particular forms of complex expressivity, including rich temporal and spatial modalities, apparent in such poems, focusing in particular on Vedânta Deikas Ham . sasandea, a fourteenth-century messenger-poem modelled after Klidsas Meghasandea. We hypothesise a principle: as localisation increases, what is lost in geographical range is made up for by increasing depth. Sanskrit poetry thus comes to play a critical, highly original role in the elaboration of regional cultural identities and the articulation of innovative cultural thematics; a re-conceptualised ecology of Sanskrit genres, including entirely new forms keyed to local experience, eventually appears in each of the regions. In short, rumours of the death of Sanskrit after 1000 A.D. are greatly exaggerated.

Recognizing newness is a difficult task in any intellectual history, and different cultures have ... more Recognizing newness is a difficult task in any intellectual history, and different cultures have gauged and evaluated novelty in different ways. In this paper we ponder the status of innovation in the context of the somewhat unusual history of one Sanskrit knowledge system, that of poetics, and try to define what in the methodology, views, style, and self-awareness of Sanskrit literary theorists in the early modern period was new. The paper focuses primarily on one thinker, Jagannā tha Pan : d : itarā ja, the most famous and influential author on poetics in the seventeenth century, and his relationship with his important sixteenth-century predecessor, Appayya Dīks : ita. We discuss Jagannā tha's complex system of labeling of ideas as ''new'' and ''old,'' the new essay style that he used to chart the evolution of ideas in his tradition, his notion of himself as an independent thinker capable of improving the system created by his predecessors in order to protect its essential assets, and the reasons his critique of Appayya was so harsh. For both scholars what emerges as new is not so much their opinions on particular topics as the new ways in which they position themselves in relation to their system.

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1998

Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies-university of London, 2008

The last active period in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics, although associated with scholars wh... more The last active period in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics, although associated with scholars who for the first time explicitly identified themselves as new, has generally been castigated in modern histories as repetitious and devoid of thoughtfulness. This paper presents a case study dealing with competing analyses of a single short poem by two of the major theorists of this period, Appayya Dõ Åks Ç ita (sixteenth century) and Jaganna Åtha Pan Ç d Ç itara Åja (seventeenth century). Their arguments on this one famous poem touch in new ways on the central questions of what the role of poetics had become within the Sanskrit world and the way in which it should operate in relation to other systems of knowledge and literary cultures.

Dandin's Magic Mirror, 2023

Who was Dandin, and why should we care about him? Here is the response of an anonymous Sanskrit v... more Who was Dandin, and why should we care about him? Here is the response of an anonymous Sanskrit verse that is not sparing with praise: When Valmiki was born, the word "poet" was coined. A er Vyasa, you could say it in the dual. And "poets" (in the plural) rst appeared along with Dandin. 1 Valmiki is the composer of the rst poem, the Rāmāyaṇa. e second, the Mahābhārata, is famously attributed to Vyasa. So primordial are these authors and their epic works that with them the word kavi ("poet") was originally uttered, rst only in the singular and then in the dual. But it was only with Dandin that the category became popular, as manifested linguistically by its use in the plural, and the rest is history. It was Dandin, this verse suggests, who opened the gates of poetry, so far associated with its exclusive pair of founding fathers. One could take this as a comment on the vast success of his Mirror of Literature, a book that introduced readers throughout Asia to the art of poesy.

Jāyagauḍa's Kannaḍakuvalayānanda, the name may suggest, is another run-of-the-mill regional adapt... more Jāyagauḍa's Kannaḍakuvalayānanda, the name may suggest, is another run-of-the-mill regional adaptation of Appayya Dīkṣita's bestseller textbook of Sanskrit poetics-The Joy of the Night Lily (Kuvalayānanda). However, a close reading of Jāyagauḍa's definitions and more importantly, his carefully curated examples, tells a different story. Jāyagauḍa's text is by no means a slavish translation, nor is his aim to present a brandnew, local theory of poetic figures. Rather, the Kannaḍakuvalayānanda places recent ṣaṭpadi poetry at the center-stage of poetics and creatively shifts the valence of understanding figures from abstract theory to writerly and readerly practice, beginning with Appayya Dīkṣita's own examples. The interaction of a "Sanskrit" poetic theory with a Kannada poetic memory here produces most unusual results. This experiment also draws our attention to a dazzlingly new (and as it turns out, very traditional) mode of doing literary criticism-in Sanskrit as well as in Kannada.

This paper revisits the longstanding tradition concerning the dual authorship of the Light on Lit... more This paper revisits the longstanding tradition concerning the dual authorship of the Light on Literature (Kāvyaprakāśa), the dominant treatise on Sanskrit poetics in the second millennium ce. The discussion focuses on one case study, a brief comment dismissing the ornament "cause" (hetu), found in the latter part of chapter 10 in the portion traditionally attributed to Mammaṭa's successor Allaṭa (aka Alaka). This passage is analyzed in the broader context of the Light's discussion of semantic capacities (chapter 2), suggestion (chapter 4), and other ornaments (chapter 10). The essay also looks at the way generations of commentators have dealt with this topic and the potential inconsistencies in its treatment in the Light. The paper thus throws light on the question of the work's overall integration, seamless or not so seamless, both in its genetic and receptive histories.

Jayadeva leaves no doubt as to his intended audience. In his opening verses (CĀ 1.1-3), in a sign... more Jayadeva leaves no doubt as to his intended audience. In his opening verses (CĀ 1.1-3), in a signature stanza ending every "ray"-chapter (e.g. 1.16), and in the

The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2006

A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these... more A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these works reveal a vital and organic relation to the crystallising regional traditions of the subcontinent and to emerging vernacular literatures. Thus we have, for example, the Sanskrit literatures of Kerala, of Bengal-Orissa, of Andhra, and so on. These works, often addressed primarily to local audiences, have remained largely unknown and mostly undervalued, despite their intrinsic merits and enormous importance for the cultural history of India. We explore the particular forms of complex expressivity, including rich temporal and spatial modalities, apparent in such poems, focusing in particular on Vedānta Deśika’s Haṃsasandeśa, a fourteenth-century messenger-poem modelled after Kālidāsa’s Meghasandeśa. We hypothesise a principle: as localisation increases, what is lost in geographical range is made up for by increasing depth. Sanskrit poetry thus comes to play a critical, highly original role in the elaboration of regional cultural identities and the articulation of innovative cultural thematics; a re-conceptualised ecology of Sanskrit genres, including entirely new forms keyed to local experience, eventually appears in each of the regions. In short, rumours of the death of Sanskrit after 1000 A.D. are greatly exaggerated.

This essay is a first attempt to trace the evolution of biographical accounts of Appayya Dīkṡita ... more This essay is a first attempt to trace the evolution of biographical accounts of Appayya Dīkṡita from the sixteenth century onward, with special attention to their continuities and changes. It explores what these rich materials teach us about Appayya Dīkṡita and his times, and what lessons they offer about the changing historical sensibilities in South India during the transition to the colonial and postcolonial eras. I tentatively identify two important junctures in the development of these materials: one that took place in the first generation to be born after his death, when the idea of him as an avatar of Śiva was introduced, and another at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when many new stories about his encounters with his colleagues and students surfaced. The essay follows a set of themes and tensions that pertain to Appayya Dīkṡita's social and political affiliations, his sectarian agendas, and the geographic sphere of his activities. These themes and tensions are closely related and prove to be surprisingly resilient, despite the many changes that occurred during the five centuries of recollection that this essay sketches. This overall coherence, I argue, is integral to Appayya Dīkṡita's sociopolitical context and self-chosen identity.

This article is primarily concerned with asking how we can read Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī as histor... more This article is primarily concerned with asking how we can read Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī as historians, other than by mining it for facts and names or using it as a proof of some South Asian given. I conduct my investigation on a relatively small sample, a well-defined narrative sequence of about 100 verses from the fourth chapter, or 'wave', of the River of Kings (4.402-502), which narrates King Jayāpīḍa's first military campaign. I try to demonstrate that this section depicts a dramatic shift in Kashmir's investment in learning and the arts. Thus I argue that the Rājataraṅgiṇī, despite its unifying poetic and moralistic framework, is acutely attuned to changes in Kashmir's history, including this region's special cultural and intellectual history, a topic that is clearly dear to Kalhaṇa's heart.

This article is the first study of Appayya DakXita's Upakramapar@krama. Here he attacks Vy@satart... more This article is the first study of Appayya DakXita's Upakramapar@krama. Here he attacks Vy@satartha's new and provocative argument according to which the hermeneutic protocols of Vedic passages always assumed that the closing of a passage overrides its opening. Appayya offers a systematic refutation of Vy@satartha's examples in an effort to show that sequence matters and that, as was known at least since the time of Śabara, it is the opening that outweighs the closing and not the other way around. But, as the article shows, midway through the work the author presents a new and comprehensive theory that, he believes, underlies both Mam@:s@ and Ved@nta reading protocols, one in which sequence is completely immaterial. The article argues that the tension between these two voices is not entirely resolvable and is, moreover, emblematic of the author's intellectual legacy and of scholarly work in his period more generally.

A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these ... more A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these works reveal a vital and organic relation to the crystallising regional traditions of the subcontinent and to emerging vernacular literatures. Thus we have, for example, the Sanskrit literatures of Kerala, of Bengal-Orissa, of Andhra, and so on. These works, often addressed primarily to local audiences, have remained largely unknown and mostly undervalued, despite their intrinsic merits and enormous importance for the cultural history of India. We explore the particular forms of complex expressivity, including rich temporal and spatial modalities, apparent in such poems, focusing in particular on Vedânta Deikas Ham . sasandea, a fourteenth-century messenger-poem modelled after Klidsas Meghasandea. We hypothesise a principle: as localisation increases, what is lost in geographical range is made up for by increasing depth. Sanskrit poetry thus comes to play a critical, highly original role in the elaboration of regional cultural identities and the articulation of innovative cultural thematics; a re-conceptualised ecology of Sanskrit genres, including entirely new forms keyed to local experience, eventually appears in each of the regions. In short, rumours of the death of Sanskrit after 1000 A.D. are greatly exaggerated.

Recognizing newness is a difficult task in any intellectual history, and different cultures have ... more Recognizing newness is a difficult task in any intellectual history, and different cultures have gauged and evaluated novelty in different ways. In this paper we ponder the status of innovation in the context of the somewhat unusual history of one Sanskrit knowledge system, that of poetics, and try to define what in the methodology, views, style, and self-awareness of Sanskrit literary theorists in the early modern period was new. The paper focuses primarily on one thinker, Jagannā tha Pan : d : itarā ja, the most famous and influential author on poetics in the seventeenth century, and his relationship with his important sixteenth-century predecessor, Appayya Dīks : ita. We discuss Jagannā tha's complex system of labeling of ideas as ''new'' and ''old,'' the new essay style that he used to chart the evolution of ideas in his tradition, his notion of himself as an independent thinker capable of improving the system created by his predecessors in order to protect its essential assets, and the reasons his critique of Appayya was so harsh. For both scholars what emerges as new is not so much their opinions on particular topics as the new ways in which they position themselves in relation to their system.

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1998

Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies-university of London, 2008

The last active period in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics, although associated with scholars wh... more The last active period in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics, although associated with scholars who for the first time explicitly identified themselves as new, has generally been castigated in modern histories as repetitious and devoid of thoughtfulness. This paper presents a case study dealing with competing analyses of a single short poem by two of the major theorists of this period, Appayya Dõ Åks Ç ita (sixteenth century) and Jaganna Åtha Pan Ç d Ç itara Åja (seventeenth century). Their arguments on this one famous poem touch in new ways on the central questions of what the role of poetics had become within the Sanskrit world and the way in which it should operate in relation to other systems of knowledge and literary cultures.