Slokasarasamgraha: The critical edition, annotated translation and contextualisation of an unpublished Sanskrit anthology

• Applicant: Dr. Ayako Nakamura
• Subject Area: Asian Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262993381

The aim of the project is to contribute to the development of the anthology (samgraha) genre of literature, which, although very important, has not yet been explored in Sanskrit literature. The source for this work is the previously unpublished anthology of single stanzas (muktaka) called Slokasarasamgraha, of which two manuscripts are preserved in the Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project (NGMCP). The text, of which the compiler and date of origin are unknown, contains nearly 700 verses, and is divided into 60 sections. Among these verses, a number occur, with certain variations, in other anthologies, such as Vidyakaras Subhasitaratnakosa, or Sridharadasas Saduktikarnamrta. However, also contained therein are numerous unknown poems, which, through the edition and translation work in the proposed project will become available to a wider audience for the first time. The project is primarily based on the text-critical work on the Slokasarasamgraha, whereby the individual stanzas are carefully compared with all other relevant texts in available manuscripts and editions, and analysed on the basis of content (motif and theme), linguistic interpretation (metrical details, alliteration etc.) and poetic convention. Furthermore, the project tries to arrange the results of their philological analysis into a comprehensive literary-historical framework. In the process, the particular aim of this contextualisation of the Slokasarasamgraha is an analysis of the structure of the entire text and the connections between the individual stanzas. Any discovery of deliberate sequences, insertions, or potential omissions, which might indicate the specific aims of the compiler, as well as particular effects, such as mnemonics, will provide a new and unique contribution to the investigation of the anthology genre within Sanskrit literature, and thereby serve as a key to the question of how an anthology is embedded in the context of real life.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants