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This project aims at a fully documented critical edition and an English translation of an important section of the Nyāyamañjarī (chapter 6, section 2), in which mainstream theories on sentence signification are discussed from the points of view of the Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā traditions.
The Nyāyamañjarī was composed in Kashmir in the second half of the ninth century CE by Bhaṭṭa Jayanta. It is an encyclopedic treatise of theses on ontological, epistemological and linguistic topics as developed in the classical period of Indian philosophy. Due to the accuracy of Jayanta’s presentation of rival theories, the Nyāyamañjarī is often used by historians of Indian philosophy to study classical Nyāya as well as other traditions. Moreover, the work has become a landmark in the historiography of Indian philosophy because its approximate date is confirmed by both internal and external evidence. The Nyāyamañjarī is therefore a crucial work in the study of the history of ideas and for the chronology of related works and their authors. Despite its relevance, however, only parts of the Nyāyamañjarī have been translated into English; the history of its textual transmission is in many respects unknown.
The new critical edition will be based on a comprehensive inventory of all known sources, a detailed description of the manuscripts, a genealogical study of the textual transmission, and a rich apparatus of the indirect transmission. The new edition will improve our knowledge of Jayanta's work significantly. The English translation will integrate the critical edition through a transparent exposition of the editorial choices. The translation will also include the first English rendering of the Nyāyamañjarīgranthibhaṅga, the only extant commentary on the Nyāyamañjarī. A detailed and interactive glossary of technical terms based on Jayanta's definitions and usages will be created in tandem with the translation. In both the Sanskrit text and the English translation, the structure of arguments and counterarguments will be made fully clear, since identifying the views of the schools involved in the debate is a necessary condition for the text’s correct interpretation. The results of the project will be relevant to philologists, historians of Sanskrit and general linguistics, historians of Indian philosophy (particularly the philosophy of language), and specialists working on Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā and Vyākaraṇa. The critically edited text and English translation will provide a solid foundation for thematic studies on the philosophical contents of this specific section of the Nyāyamañjarī, especially in relation to atomistic and holistic theories of the signification of sentences. The project will thus benefit contemporary philosophical and linguistic discourses related to these ideas, despite their historical, geographical and linguistic distance.