Centre for the Study of Indian Science (CSIS)

A National Game in the Making: Translation and Commentary of Mānasollāsa 5.16 on Phañjikākrīḍā

Jacob Schmidt-Madsen. Postdoc, Indology, CCRS

The game of caupaṛ, often referred to as the national game of India, can at present be traced back to late 15th- and early 16th-century Sufi romances and devotional (bhakti) hymns where it appears as a metaphor for the cosmos and the karmic operations within it. The later use of caupaṛ as a ritual object in the Śrīnāthjī temple in Nathdwara and in marriage ceremonies before consummation resonates with a passage in the 12th-century Mānasollāsa describing a similar game called phañjikā. The passage, translated and commented on in the present project, explains that the gameboard should be drawn up as a maṇḍala, and that the king should play it with young girls and boys from his harem in order to reveal their romantic interests. The passage opens up the largely unexplored area of the relation between various forms of mystical diagrams and grid-based games, allowing us to transcend the discussion of ludic versus non-ludic, and begin formulating questions about the shared practices of ritual and games with regard to the drawing up of grids, the manipulation of movable components, the formulation of operational rules, and the identification of possible outcomes.

Ritual and Gambling: Translation and Commentary of Mānasollāsa 5.14 on Varāṭikākrīḍā

Jacob Schmidt-Madsen. Postdoc, Indology, CCRS

The earliest literary reference to games in South Asia is found in the Ṛgvedic dice-hymn (akṣasūkta, 10.34) which describes a gambling game played with vibhītaka nuts. A variant of the same game was played during the Vedic coronation ceremony (rājasūya) described in later ritual manuals. The relation between the two games has been discussed at length in previous studies, but the survival of yet other variants into the medieval and modern periods appears to have gone unnoticed. The present project translates and comments on a passage from the 12th-century Mānasollāsa describing three cowrie-based gambling games (varāṭikākrīḍā) reminiscent of the Vedic dice game. It compares the description to a modern day cowrie-based game known as sulahal in Pakistan, sorhī in Bengal, and kauḍā in Nepal. While the medieval and modern day versions of the game appear to have lost any explicit ritual trappings, remnants can still be found in certain aspects, adding to our understanding of the overlapping properties between ritual, divination, and gambling.

Art, Science, Play: The Board Games of Kṛṣṇarāja Oḍeyar III (1794-1868)

Jacob Schmidt-Madsen. Postdoc, Indology, CCRS

Despite his long reign of almost 70 years, few people are aware that Kṛṣṇarāja Oḍeyar III of Mysuru (r. 1799-1868) was an avid designer of games and puzzles. Installed on the throne by the British at age five, and later put under administration for alleged misrule, he enjoyed little real power. Instead he devoted his time to the pursuit of his interest in religion, philosophy, music, astronomy, mathematics, and many other subjects. His greatest passion, however, was games and puzzles and the ways in which they could be used to express knowledge and knowledge systems. He wrote several as yet unpublished treatises on games, and invented numerous games and puzzles which were produced at his court in various materials, such as paper, cloth, wood, glass, and copper. He gifted many of his inventions to friends and visitors both inside and outside India, and previous research has helped establish the location of several exemplars in museums, research institutions, and private collections. The present project focuses specifically on the board games of Kṛṣṇarāja, and uses the accompanying manuscripts to investigate their use as vehicles of religious and scientific knowledge.

Early Modern Exchanges in Sanskrit Astral Sciences (EMESAS)

Anuj Misra. Marie Curie Fellow, Indology, CCRS

During the period of Mughal rule (1500 to 1800 CE) in early modern India, traditional Sanskrit astronomers actively engaged with Islamicate (Arabic and Persian) astronomy for the very first time. The EMESAS project studies the canonical works (siddhāntas) of three Sanskrit astronomers from the early 17th century: Nityānanda, Munīśvara, and Kamalākara. The aim of this study is to find and analyse ‘knowledge elements’ found in their texts that are of Islamicate origin, e.g., computational

methods, geometrical arguments, astronomical models, diagrammatic proofs, etc. In doing so, the EMESAS project contextualises the process of transmission, reception, assimilation, and adaptation of Islamicate ideas in medieval Sanskrit astronomy.

Critical Edition and Translation of the Gārgīyajyotiṣa, Aṅga 42: Sarvabhūtaruta, ‘The Sounds of All Creatures’

Kenneth Gregory Zysk. Professor Emeritus, Indology, CCRS

This project focuses on an unique collection of verses in different metres located in the omen section of the oldest assembly of Jyotiṣa knowledge in ancient India, dating from around the beginning of the Common Era. The verses are composed in prognostic style of omen literature and provide predictions based on the sounds of animals for a man who begins or continues on a journey. Most of the animals are birds, making the collection one of the earliest works on augury. Other terrestrial animals, including humans, are also found, bringing the total number of verses to around 100.  The title of this system of knowledge is first mentioned in the Sanskrit literature of Mahāyāna Buddhism, where it is found in the story of the famous physician Jīvaka Kumārabhṛta. So far, I have not been able to find a parallel work in Indic or non-Indic literature from antiquity.

Literary Evidence for Social and Intellectual Exchanges in Ancient India

Kenneth Gregory Zysk. Professor Emeritus, Indology, CCRS

This project has ready produced a series of papers that look at examples of the exchange of knowledge between India and both Mesopotamia and ancient Greece. Mesopotamia and ancient Greece shared ideas and even omens concerning the marks on the human body (physiognomy) with ancient India. In the science of medicine, the Āyurvedic doctrine of the three doṣas or defilements was inspired by ancient Greek nosology that become known as the four humours. Ancient Greece provided inspiration for aspects of Indian theatre and the basis for a social and literary tradition involving a gathering of men that came to be known as Symposion in Greece and Greece-dominated regions, and as Goṣṭhī in India. The work is ongoing, but the overarching theme is the ways in which Indian intellectuals adapted foreign ideas and customs.

Sanskrit Medical Scholasticism: Jajjaṭa’s Nirantarapadavyākhyā and Other Commentaries on the Carakasaṃhitā, Cikitsāsthāna 2.1

Kenneth Gregory Zysk. Professor Emeritus, Indology, CCRS

This project is on-going and looks critically at the scholastic literature attached to the Sanskrit medical tradition, known as Āyurveda. It includes a critical edition of Jajjaṭa’s text, which is the earliest extant treatise, found in one manuscript, transcribed from a now lost palm leaf manuscript from Kerala. The study provides translations of all four commentaries, two old (Jajjaṭa, Cakrapaṇidatta) and two modern (Gaṅgādhara and Yogīndranāth Sen), and examines them in a historical context.

Jñānarāja

Toke Lindegaard Knudsen (affiliate researcher). Associate Professor, SUNY Oneonta, New York State.

This project focuses on a paradigm shift in Indian astronomy. It continues from the researcher’s recently published study of Indian astronomy and explores the shifts in cosmological thinking among the Indian astronomers. Like their mediaeval Western colleagues from Galileo (1564-1642) onward, Indian sciences were face with a dilemma of how to reconcile the cosmos as understood from the perspectives of religion and science. Around 1500 CE, the astronomer Jñānarāja began a programme to find a solution for the different representations of the cosmos in India: one offered by the Indian astral sciences and the other by the group of Hindu religious texts. By reinterpreting passages from the sacred texts and rejecting or modifying tenets from the astronomical tradition, Jñānarāja forwarded an argument that the two cosmologies were harmonious. From where and how did Jñānarāja come to his conclusion will be examined from a group of astronomical texts in Sanskrit from 1200-1500 CE. Since the same problem occurred at about the same time in both mediaeval western science and Indian science, this project will explore the two approaches for solving the problem and the possible cross-fertilisations that may have led to shifts in thinking in both places.