Fragments of Indian Philosophy II

The project is based on the results of the earlier FWF-funded research project (P24160, 2012- 2014) that collected and analyzed fragments of textual material connected with Indian philosophy in the classical and early medieval period. The project is built around a relational database that has been developed for electronically editing, storing, and publishing fragmentary texts via the web platform. Orthodox Indian philosophical traditions are mainly represented by commentaries on the schools founding texts. In addition to their transmitted commentaries, it is most likely that there existed within the various philosophical traditions a considerable corpus of works written during the first millennium that has not survived. Basic ideas often seem to be related to authors whose works are lost. This assumption is substantiated by the fact that such ideas are often referred to in the works of authors of opposing schools and systems. The extant fragments of lost works have not been systematically studied in their entirety, nor have fragments from individual periods bearing specific content been examined with regard to their historical relationships or mutual dependence in terms of intertextuality. One of the main aims of the proposed project is to collect and analyze quotations and paraphrases from and allusions to lost texts of the Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, and Lokayata traditions, as well as prosopographical information about their authors and works, in the philosophical Sanskrit works of the Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jaina traditions. Fragments that have already been identified and discussed in secondary literature will also be collected and investigated. A further important aim is the online publication of the edited and annotated fragments and related information for use by the larger scholarly community. The corpus of the fragments prepared by the project will provide a solid basis for philological and historical studies on the development of Indian intellectual reflection. The dynamically developing database will further serve as the basis for a presentation of contextualized and intertextual relationships.

The main aim of the project was to collect and analyze (1) quotations and paraphrases/reports from and (2) allusions to lost texts from various Indian philosophical traditions, as well as to collect (3) prosopographical information related to their authors in the philosophical Sanskrit works of the Brahmanical traditions as well as in Buddhist and Jaina sources. The more specific goal of the project was to undertake a systematic search for text fragments of the natural philosophical traditions of Sankhya, Vaisheshika, Nyaya, Mimamsa, and the materialistic Lokayata. By critically investigating fragments of texts from these various intellectual traditions, it is possible to clarify questions regarding relations and interactions between them, both within and outside the respective schools. Until now examinations in the international scholarly community of such questions have been inadequate. It is also likely that the collected fragmentary material of these lost works will shed light on open questions concerning chronology, another desideratum for many works of these traditions. The collected material of fragments is published in a database that has been designed and developed to store, process and publish the fragments after they have been identified and analyzed. With a broad range of search functions, the database includes newly identified fragmentary text material as well as fragments that have already been identified, examined and dealt with by previous scholars. The modes for documenting the fragments that have been meticulously worked out during the project allow for a variety of possibilities for presentation of the fragments and their related material to the international scholarly community and visitors to the project website. This taxonomy of fragments helps constitute a completely new and innovative approach to the study of fragments of Indian philosophy. The database (http://nyaya.oeaw.ac.at/cgi-bin/wr/dlistaut.pl)consists of three main platforms, namely, (1) the editorial platform, (2) the publication platform New Browse DB displaying all available information on the fragments, as well as the publication platform Short Browse DB for an abridged version of fragment information, displays only the name of the author, the fragments text and its source, and (3) the systematic search (accessed via Search in fragments). Owing to the fact that the database is still undergoing further development, direct access to the editorial platform is restricted to scholarly colleagues who are given login accounts. At present the entire collection of fragments, paraphrases, allusions, and prosopographical information in the database consists of 608 entries, of which 450 fragments, both long and short versions, have been published, 103 author names, 17 school names, 49 work titles, 366 translations of fragments, 290 variant readings in the editions (colour-coded for ease of comparison), 359 keywords, 1,535 keyword-fragment relations, 649 author-fragment relations, and 16,890 primary and secondary source bibliographical entries.