Sanskrit Śaiva Intellectuals in the Empire: Innovations, Textual Practices and Religious Interactions in the Late Vijayanagara Period

Project Information

SSIIE

Grant agreement ID: 702470

DOI

10.3030/702470

Project closed

EC signature date 22 July 2016

Start date 1 April 2017

End date 31 March 2019

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 195 454,80

EU contribution

€ 195 454,80

Coordinated by

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SSIIE (Sanskrit Śaiva Intellectuals in the Empire: Innovations, Textual Practices and Religious Interactions in the Late Vijayanagara Period)

Reporting period: 2017-04-01 to 2019-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project aimed at the reconstruction of Śaivism’s intellectual history during the late Vijayanagara period will center on the above-mentioned schools’ a) major doctrinal and philosophical positions, with a focus on their innovations; b) their mutual influences and interactions: social, intellectual, etc.; c) their scholars’ authorial intentions, textual practices and argumentative strategies; and d) their interactions with non-Śaiva religious groups and intellectuals. In addition to shedding new light on the well known religious diversity of the empire, this project will present a new picture of the Vijayanagara empire―one of the most historically significant courtly contexts in precolonial India―as a vital unit of the global intellectual culture of the Indian subcontinent during the late medieval/early modern period.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the period of the project, I was able to present my research in a number of conference venues:

"Beyond Polemics: The Śaiva Career of Appaya Dīkṣita." Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, October 25th 2018.
"Śākta and Pratyabhijñā Sources in Vīraśaiva Vedānta." World Sanskrit Conference 2018, Vancouver, July 12th 2018.
"The Vedānta of Vīraśaivas." Sanskrit Reading Room, SOAS (University of London), February 28th 2018.
"Reading from Sudarśanasūri's Śrutaprakāśikā." Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (Vienna), October 10th 2017.
"Reading from Vīraśaivasāroddhara with Somanātha's commentary." Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (Vienna), October 11th 2017. Co-authored with Dr Nina Mirnig.
"Debating the Unspeakable: Non-dualism, deconstructionism and the problem of time in medieval India." Delivered at Charles University (Prague), May 9th 2017; and at Universita di Napoli l"Orientale" (Italy), May 29th 2017.

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I have also published two research articles, written during the period covered by this project:

"On Appaya Dīkṣita’s Engagement with Vyāsatīrtha’s Tarkatāṇḍava,"Journal of Indological Studies 27 (2019).

"Śrīharṣa on the Indefinability of Time." In Space, Time and Limits of Understanding, edited by Shyam Iyengar and Giancarlo Ghirardi (Springer, Frontier Series, 2017). Co-authored with Prof. Krishnamurti Ramasubramanian (IIT Bombay, India).

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I have also a number of forthcoming publications for articles I have written during the period covered in this project:

The entry "Śivādvaita Vedānta" for the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion (accepted for publication in 2019).

"Navya-Nyāya in the Late Vijayanagara Period: Appaya Dīkṣita’s Revision of Gaṅgeśa’s īśvarānumāna," forthcoming in a special issue I co-edit with Dr. Hugo David, entitled “‘Navya-Nyāya in Interaction with Other Knowledge-systems.’’ To be submitted in February 2019 to the Journal of Indian Philosophy.

"Reuse and Adaptation of Appaya Dīkṣita's Śivārcanacandrikā in a Vīraśaiva Ritual Manual." In Editors of Sanskrit Texts: Materials for a History of Philology in South Asia, edited by Cristina Pecchia (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, Vienna, forthcoming 2019).

"On the Reception of Rāmānuja’s School in Śivādvaita Vedānta." In One God, One śāstra, edited by Marcus Schmücker and Elisa Freschi (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, forthcoming 2019).

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I have just completed the last chapter of my monograph, to be submitted to Oxford University Press by the end of the Summer.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Most of the results achieved during this project are included in my monograph which I will submit for publication by the end of the Summer 2019. This book is the first in-depth study of the Śaiva oeuvre of the celebrated Sanskrit polymath Appaya Dīkṣita (1520-1593). During nearly three decades, Appaya served at the court of Cinnabomma, an independent Śaiva ruler at Vellore in the Tamil country. Under his patronage, Appaya wrote several polemical treatises and controversial tracts claiming the superiority of Śiva over Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa, the deity worshipped by Vaiṣṇavas. His career under Cinnabomma culminated in the establishment of Śivādvaita Vedānta, a prominent school of philosophical theology which not only won Appaya a formidable reputation as a scholar but also established him as a legendary advocate of Śaiva religion in South India. This study sets in its historical context the Śivādvaita work of Appaya and its reception in early modern India. It offers new insights on Appaya's main source of exegesis, Śrīkaṇṭha's Brahmamīmāṃsābhāṣya, and identifies Appaya's key intellectual influences and opponents. It also examines the various hermeneutical strategies he deployed to make his massive theological project a success, and documents how his Śaiva work was critically received and reused in 17th- and 18th-century India. On conceptual and literary-historical grounds, the book demonstrates that Appaya's Śivādvaita project was mainly directed against Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, the dominant Vaiṣṇava school of theology in his time and place. By uncovering this history, the book sheds new light on the vibrant intellectual and politically charged milieu behind the emergence of the first ever Śaiva school of Vedānta. Finally, this study aims to provide a more nuanced portrait of Appaya Dīkṣita, the scholar and the religious figure. It presents him not only as a prolific and bold intellectual, but also as a social agent sensitive to the conflicts that set apart Śaivas and Vaiṣṇavas in the decaying Vijayanagara empire. In doing so, this book opens up new possibilities for our understanding of the complex relation between the world of Sanskrit literati and the wider socio-religious world in which they lived, wrote and debated in early modern India.

Jonathan Duquette