Pelliot Chinois 2928.

A Khotanese Love Story by Mauro Maggi

Review by: Almuth Degener
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Jul., 1999), pp. 306-307
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and
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3
06 Review
of
Books
interpretation goes against
all we know of Zoroastrian rules connected with
menstruation,
and
therefore must be
rejected.
An alternative to it would be to take ta as
meaning
"until" and read the
passage:
"As
long
as a woman is not in menses
(lit.
"until a woman is/becomes in
menses),
she
may
perform
the Yasna with
zohr,
(if)
she is in
menses,
one should not allow her into the fire-chamber."
The editors
interpret
ta as a
conjunction, meaning
"that
is;
namely" (which
works
surprisingly
well in
other
sentences)
and
separate
the first clause from what follows: "A
woman,
of
course,
may
be in
menses." This leaves the
problem,
for the
following
sentences would have to mean: 'In that case,
she
(a-s) may perform
the Yasna with zohr." The circumvention of this
problem by interpreting
oh to
mean "thus"
referring
to a
ruling
that follows in this case strikes me as
unlikely;
in such
rulings,
oh
kunisn
usually
means "it
may
be so done."
This
problem
illustrates,
I
hope,
the
difficulty
of the work done
by
the
editors;
sound
philology
alone will not do for the
study
of a text of such
great complexity.
The careful combination of textual
philology
with contextual
information,
particularly
on subde
points
of observance and
doctrine,
has
produced
not
only
a
satisfactory reading
of a difficult
text,
but also an
insightful
work of reference for
the
study
of the
development
and
interpretations
of Zoroastrian rituals. I
hope
the
remaining
two
volumes will be
published
soon.
Albert de
Jong
Pelliot Chinois
2928.
A Khotanese love story. Translated
by
Mauro Maggi.
(Serie
Orientale
Roma,
vol.
LXXX). pp. 88,4
plates.
Rome,
Istituto Italiano
per
l'Africa e l'Oriente.
1997. 25,000
Lire.
Over the
past
ten
years,
there have
appeared
in the field of Khotanese
philology,
besides numerous
articles and studies on
single
words or on
grammatical problems,
several new text
editions, e.g.
G.
Canevascini's edition of the
Sanghatusutra (1993),
Duan
Qing's
edition of the
Aparimitayuhsutra
(1992),
and R. E. Emmerick's edition of the St
Petersburg
folios
(1995).
Mauro
Maggi's
edition and
translation of "Pelliot Chinois
2928"
is one of the finest works that has been
published.
Like the
other editions mentioned
above,
it is a Buddhist
text,
but unlike them we do not know of
any parallel
text in another
language. Maggi
calls it "Love
Story"
on account of its
content,
namely
the love
story
of a householder's
son and of a minister's
daughter.
It is not
quite
clear whether there is one
story,
or
two
stories,
the second one
being
a
story
cast within a framework of the first
story.
The decisive
point
is in verse
7. There,
a certain householder who
got
married and to whom
a son was born in verses
1?6
"spoke
to his wife. He said to her: 'Here now,
a son has been born ...'." What is not
quite
clear
is where the householder's
speech
ends. Is it in verse
8,
as
Maggi suggests?
Or is the Love
Story
(which really
starts
here)
in fact the
story
within,
put
into the householder's mouth? Since we have
only
a
fragmentary
text in Khotanese and no
parallel
text
elsewhere,
we cannot decide this
question;
however,
the words mara
maja
ksxra "here in our land" in verse
9
seem to
point
to a frame
story
construction. In
any
case,
the
story
is a
pleasure
to read in
Maggi's
edition and
translation,
much
more indeed than Buddhist doctrinal texts.
Maggi
offers some new
interpretations,
almost all of them
entirely convincing,
such as his
explanation
of
ysanausci-
as
"kinship"
and his
delightful interpretation
of the
hzpax piilona
as
"leopard"
<
*prdanika-, although
it is
impossible
to
prove.
Even if it is difficult
to follow
Maggi
in his
conclusions,
his
argumentation
is
always
well worth
reading.
For
example,
I
do not think his
interpretation
of vachauste
as "wished" is irrefutable. Vachauste could mean
something
like
"presented",
"asked
for",
"thought
of",
or even
something
else.
Still,
his refutation of earlier
interpretations
of this word is
entirely
reasonable and
certainly
correct and in itself means a
considerable
step
forward in Khotanese studies.
Maggi always
considers the
context,
?
maybe
a
commonplace operation
in other
philologies,
but worth
mentioning
in the field of Khotanese studies.
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Review
of
Books
307
As to the translation
itself,
I should
just
like to
point
out that
ha(n)dara-
does not
always
mean "other"
but,
like Sanskrit
anyatara-
"a
certain", e.g.
in verse 2 hada sa bisadarai "a certain householder" instead
of "one other householder".
But,
as mentioned
above,
this small booklet is an
outstanding
work. It is
of course furnished with a
glossary
and
very good
facsimiles.
Almuth Degener
Many
heads,
arms and eyes.
Origin,
meaning and form of multiplicity in Indian art.
By
Doris Meth Srinivasan.
(Studies
in Asian Art and
Archaeology 20). pp. xxi, 436,
illus.
Leiden,
E.J.
Brill, 1997. US$151.
"Why
are the
images
of Indian
gods provided
with
many
arms and heads?" This
pioneering
book,
the
impressive
result of
years
of
painstaking
textual,
religious
and art-historical
research,
provides
the
answer. In the author's
words,
this is a
"study
of what an
image
tells us about the
origin
and structure
of
divinity
in the cosmic
unfolding process;
it is not a
study
about the icon and its use in
worship by
god's
devotee ..."
(p. 14).
And what an
exhaustive,
magisterial study
it is! The aim of the author is to
investigate
the rise and
development
of what she
aptly
defines as the
"multiplicity
convention". The
analysis
focuses on north
India,
especially
on the area of
Mathura,
from ca. the second
century B.C.,
when this convention
began,
until the third
century
A.D. when it was
fully
established. In order to
put
her data into a
context,
the author also looks at
pre-
and
proto-historic
material,
as well as at later
pieces
of the
Gupta
and
post-Gupta
era.
The book is divided into two
parts,
each
consisting
of five sections:
"Meaning.
Textual Studies"
and "Form.
Iconographic
Studies." In the twelve
chapters constituting
the first
part
of the
work,
the
author reviews the
origin
and
development
of the
multiplicity
convention in the salient
literary
sources from the Vedic to the
post-epic
literature. A
perceptive analysis
of this vast amount of material
reveals that the
multiplicity
convention
appears consistendy
in this
corpus
of
literature,
beginning
from
the Vedic Rudra and the Vedic Purusa. The thesis of the author is that: "a
deity
associated with cosmic
creation is attributed
multiple bodily parts
and/or forms"
(p. 5).
The ideas of cosmic
parturition
and of
the
"Pregnant
Male" seem to be the notion
underlying
the convention of
multiplicity
in the
Rg
Veda
and in the Brahmanas.
Although
the
Upsanisads
do not focus on the idea of the omniform
"Pregnant
Male",
the
concept
is not
forgotten.
In the
epic period,
the situation becomes more
complex
in that
the
multiplicity imagery may
also be influenced
by
factors other than the Vedic
heritage.
Thus the
image
of the
"Pregnant
Male" reveals some Vaisnava and Saiva traits. The next
step
of the
enquiry
considers the
question
of how the
literary image
of a creator
god,
whose womb is
replete
with life
forms,
relates to the multi-limbed
images.
The answer is the
mukhalinga:
the heads
emanating
from
the
linga
are the first
stages
of a
process
which will be
completed only
when the
body/bodies
are
fully
revealed. The
author, however,
remarks that this
transition,
so clear in the Saiva
images,
is not
evident in the Vaisnava
ones
-
and the
problem
needs to be further
investigated.
Casting
her net
wider,
Srinivasan
argues
that the
multiplicity
of convention is not
only
confined to
the visualisation of deities such as:
Siva,
Vasudeva-Krsna and the Devi
-
at least in the
early stages
of
Indian art.
Indeed,
it is a characteristic of Hindu
mythology
in
which,
more often than
not,
a
cycle
of
myths pertaining
to one
god may
have
multiple
variations on the same core theme. This is in tune
with the
cyclic concept
of
time,
by
which a
deity performs
different feats in different
ages
and can
appear
under a
particular aspect,
suited to that
very age.
There are
many
theories which seek to
explain
the multiform convention.
According
to the
author,
there is a distinction to be made
between the
early
and later Hindu
images
endowed with
many
limbs. The former relate
mainly
to
theological knowledge
or veda: the latter to
Wa,
or divine
play. Pre-Gupta
Hindu
images
are
mainly
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