Tamil Ilakkaṇam ('Grammar') and the Interplay between Syllabi, Corpora and Manuscripts (original) (raw)
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Introduction: On the Interplay between Syllabi, Texts and Manuscripts
Stefanie Brinkmann, Giovanni Ciotti, Stefano Valente and Eva Maria Wilden (eds) 2021 Education Materialised Reconstructing Teaching and Learning Contexts through Manuscripts, 2021
ekasmiñ jīva ekaṃ śāstram 'one discipline per life' (Sanskrit saying) 2 The term 'syllabus' is preferred to 'curriculum' here. The field of educational sociology has produced a large body of literature attempting to define the term 'curriculum', and despite the lack of any agreed definition, its scope is usually perceived as being broader than that of 'syllabus'. The general trend seems to be that of understanding a curriculum as a guided formative experience led by members of an institution (e.g. a school, a museum, but also more generally a community), which aims at transmitting not only specific contents (i.e. the syllabus), but specific values and qualities that students are meant to possess. For an introduction to the field of curriculum studies, see Kridel 2010. 3 The seven liberal arts are composed of the trivium, which includes grammar, logic and rhetoric, and the quadrivium, which includes arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. 4 See Tinney 1999 and Section 5.4 below. 5 See Raggetti in this volume and Section 5.4 (Case study 1) below. Raggetti's study offers a critical edition and a detailed analysis of the Ringkomposition found in manuscripts containing copies of the Ḏaḫīrat al-Iskandar ('Treasure of Alexander'). This paratext attributes the authorship