[Y-Indology] vratam, pratisru, sap vacanam

[Guest guest]

> I am told that there is not much scholarship on

> distinctions between types of statements and claims about futurity,

> prophecies, promises, vows, declarations, and so on. What studies do

> exist, preferably on usage in the epics, but anything would be a good

> beginning, if there's anything to begin with.

 

Dear Phillip,

 

Try these:

Brown, W. Norman (1972) ‘Duty as truth in ancient India’, Proceedings of the

American Philosophical Society 116, pp. 252-268. Reprinted in Brown (ed.

Rosane Rocher), India and Indology: selected articles, pp. 102-119. Delhi:

Motilal Banarsidass, 1978.

 

Burlingame, E. W. (1917) ‘The act of truth (saccakiriya): a Hindu spell and

its employment as a psychic motif in Hindu fiction’. Journal of the Royal

Asiatic Society, pp. 429-467.

 

Hopkins, Edward Washburn (1932) ‘The oath in Hindu epic literature’. Journal

of the American Oriental Society 52, pp. 316-337.

 

Kšlver, Bernhard (1995-1996) ‘From transcendent order to reality: early

developments in the Indian concept of truth’. Indologica Taurinensia 21-22,

pp. 197-214.

 

Mehendale, M. A. (2001) ‘Interpolations in the Mahabharata’. Annals of the

Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 82, pp. 193-212.

 

Ramankutty, P. V. (1999) Curse as a motif in the Mahabharata. Delhi: Nag.

 

Sšhnen-Thieme, Renate (1995) ‘On the concept and function of satya

(‘truth’)

in ancient Indian literature’. Cezary Galewicz et al. (eds), International

conference on Sanskrit and related studies, September 23-26, 1993:

proceedings (Cracow Indological Studies, vol. 1), pp. 235-244. Cracow:

Enigma.

 

Smith, William L. (1986) ‘Explaining the inexplicable: uses of the curse in

Rama literature’. Eivind Kahrs (ed.), Kalyanamitraraganam: essays in honour

of Nils Simonsson, pp. 261-276. Oslo: Norwegian University Press.

 

Smith, William L. (1995) ‘Changing bodies: the mechanics of the metamorphic

curse’. Acta Orientalia 56, pp. 125-143.

 

Thompson, George (1998) ‘On truth-acts in Vedic’. Indo-Iranian Journal 41,

pp. 125-153.

 

 

 

All the best, from Simon B.