When Lachmann’s Method Meets the Dharma of Śiva. Common Errors, Scribal Interventions, and the Transmission of the Śivadharma Corpus

The tradition of the so-called Śivadharma corpus is still largely unexplored. Scholars have so far identified a large number of manuscripts, including some very early specimens, but the relationships between them, as well as the possibility of classifying these manuscripts into groups and families, still need to be systematically assessed. However, recent critical studies of some texts of the corpus have sparked interest in the topic of their transmission. On the basis of two case studies selected from the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Umāmaheśvarasaṃvāda, this article aims at presenting some of the advantages and limits of applying the genealogical-reconstructive method to the study of the manuscripts of the Śivadharma corpus.* || This is an improved and enlarged version of a paper presented in the panel ‘The Transmission of Sanskrit Texts’, organized by Cristina Pecchia at the 16th World Sanskrit Conference (Bangkok, June 28–July 2, 2015). I deeply thank her for inviting me to participate in the panel, as well as for the suggestions she gave during the preparation of this article. I would also like to express my gratitude to the editors of this volume, Vincenzo Vergiani, Daniele Cuneo, and Camillo Formigatti, for giving me the opportunity to publish my paper in their book. Furthermore, I would like to use this opportunity to thank Peter Bisschop, for reading chapter 12 of the Śivadharmaśāstra with me in winter 2013, as well as my friends and colleagues at the University of Naples who helped me organize the World Philologies seminars in the spring terms of 2015 and 2016, and those who took active part in them, above all Antonio Manieri, Amneris Roselli, Serena Saccone, and Francesco Sferra. Parts of the findings expounded in the following pages have been discussed with them during those meetings, which have generally inspired the writing of this essay. Moreover, I am very grateful to Francesco Sferra for the additional comments he was willing to share with me before the submission of this article. Finally, I thank Kristen de Joseph for her help in revising the English text. Unauthenticated Download Date | 8/13/19 5:04 PM 506 | Florinda De Simini 1 The Dharma of Śiva and the method of Lachmann The ongoing critical edition of the works of the ‘Śivadharma Corpus’, as well as the reconstruction of their transmission history,1 have confronted scholars with the study of a complex yet hitherto little-examined textual and manuscript tradition. Amid the progress of the first, current projects on this topic, several factors have emerged that highlight not only the relevance of this research to the history of early and medieval Śaivism (not to mention the Indian religious landscape in general), but also its contribution to our knowledge of the dynamics regulating the composition and transmission of texts, both locally and to geographically and culturally distant areas. The study of the transmission of the Śivadharma corpus can thus offer important methodological insights on how to select and apply the rules of textual criticism to the critical editing of texts that are transmitted and used in different regional contexts — where they nourished the local cults of Śiva and the growth of Śaiva institutions — and whose manuscripts have regularly served not just as carriers of texts, but also as supports of worship.2 For the transmission of the Śivadharma corpus is based on an imposing and varied body of manuscripts, counting ca. 85 specimens (according to a rough estimate), which were produced continuously from an early period — the earliest manuscript, N , being palaeographically dateable to the 9th century — until the 20th century. Being particularly prominent in Nepal, this tradition is moreover strongly translocal, as it is attested in several different regions, such as (mainly) Kashmir, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu. This means that the texts were studied and transmitted in areas of different languages and manuscript traditions. Such consideration is not equally true of all the works, however, as the tradition presents a very clearcut bifurcation between the two earliest works, the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara — which were also studied and transmitted outside Nepal — and || 1 For a brief introduction, I refer the reader to De Simini and Mirnig 2017 below. In-depth considerations on specific aspects of the Śivadharma corpus, especially concerning the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, are found in Bisschop 2014 and forth., De Simini 2016a and 2016b. The scholars who are active in this field recently discussed the initial results and prospective outcomes of their research during the ‘Śivadharma Workshop. Manuscripts, Editions, Perspectives’ (Leiden University, 26–30 September 2016). 2 I refer the reader to De Simini 2016a for considerations on the ritual uses of manuscripts of the Śivadharma corpus (and, more generally, on the attestations of this practice in Sanskrit texts). Details on the manuscript tradition of the Śivadharma corpus, with special reference to the Nepalese materials, are given in De Simini 2016b, on which the following introductory lines are mostly based. Unauthenticated Download Date | 8/13/19 5:04 PM When Lachmann’s Method Meets the Dharma of Śiva | 507 the remaining six (seven if we also include those attested only in one manuscript), which have so far been found, with rare exceptions, exclusively in Nepal and, at least in the earliest phases of their transmission, only in multiple-text manuscripts (henceforth MTM) transmitting the entire corpus. Such manuscripts were thus most likely the contrivance of the communities inhabiting the Kathmandu Valley. A further element that is emerging as a key factor in achieving a historical understanding of the transmission of these works is the scope of their secondary tradition, which finds expression in numerous quotations and reuses. From this point of view, the Śivadharmottara in particular is proving to have enjoyed a high level of popularity, as attested by the multiple reuses, with or without attribution, that have been traced so far in the main areas where the text was transmitted.3 Moreover, the composition of Śivadharma works also entailed the reuse of other works, as shown by the many borrowings from the Niśvāsa that are evident in the Śivadharmasaṃgraha,4 or by the parallels between the Umāmaheśvarasaṃvāda, the Lalitavistara, and the Mahābhārata that are now emerging.5 Making sense of this vast array of primary sources, to which the preceding lines have just provided a brief and partial introduction, is the challenge faced by those who work on these texts, and who must necessarily do so with a philological approach. Such an approach, as firmly established by a long tradition of scholarship, requires — among other things — that a systematic recensio help clarify inasmuch as possible the genealogical links between the manuscripts, in order to select the appropriate specimens in preparing an edition. This genealogical-reconstructive technique, based on the method of identifying common ‘monogenetic’ errors — namely, the non-original readings that cannot be produced independently by different scribes6 — is what is typically designated by the widely debated but still rightly iconic expression ‘the method of Lachmann’.7 My use of this expression in || 3 On the reuses of the Śivadharmottara, see De Simini 2016a, especially Appendix 2, containing tables of parallels between the Śivadharmottara and the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas, the Devīpurāṇa, the Haracaritacintāmaṇi, and the Uttarakāmika. 4 See Kafle 2015. 5 On this topic, cf. below and De Simini and Mirnig 2017 in this volume. 6 The distinction between monogenetic and polygenetic errors — the latter of which are variants that do not really account for the genealogical relationships of the manuscripts, and are therefore to be disregarded in a reconstructive study — can be credited to Pasquali; see Trovato 2014, to which I refer the reader for a general introduction to genealogical textual criticism, with both a historical and a descriptive approach, as well as further bibliography on related subjects. 7 On this, see Timpanaro 2003, which gives an account of the debate regarding what constitutes this method, as well as the actual contribution of Karl Konrad Lachmann (1793–1851) and his contemporaries to the method. Unauthenticated Download Date | 8/13/19 5:04 PM 508 | Florinda De Simini the title and throughout the article is not meant to suggest that this is the most suitable approach in our case, but only to evoke the necessity of making the recensio phase the pillar of a philological study also in the case of the transmission of the Śivadharma corpus. This is crucial with respect to critically editing the texts, not least because it provides a fundamental tool for a more detailed reconstruction of the history of the tradition. In this essay, I will present two case studies, selected from different parts of the Śivadharma corpus, in which the presence of macroscopic inconsistencies — the ‘separative’ and ‘conjunctive’ errors of the European tradition of textual criticism — suggests the possibility of tracing families of manuscripts, and thus speculate on their genealogical links and transmission history. In the first case (2), the study of the last chapter of the Śivadharmaśāstra allows us to consider the parallels and discrepancies characterizing the different regional traditions in which the text has been transmitted, and to assess their contribution to the reconstruction of the work; on the other hand, the analysis of the final part of the Umāmaheśvarasaṃvāda (3) enables us to shift the focus to the Himalayan region, and to the work of composition and preservation that surrounded the Śivadharma corpus in the intellectual communities of medieval Nepal.