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David Shulman

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty Member

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Prof. David Shulman's research interests include Indian poetics, living traditions of Sanskrit theatre, the Renascence in South India in the 16-17 centuries, Carnatic classical music as well as Islam in South India. Bilingual in Hebrew and English, he has mastered Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, and reads Greek, Russian, French, German, Persian, Arabic and Malayalam. He has authored or co-authored more than 20 books on various subjects ranging from temple myths and temple poems to essays that cover a wide spectrum of the cultural history of South India. Prof. Shulman is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

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19 Papers
3 Books
7 Book Chapters
5 Talks and Lectures

Papers by David Shulman

Introductory Remarks to Mukund Lath, “Identity Through Necessary Change: Thinking about ‘Rāga-Bhāva,’ Concepts and Characters”

Journal of World Philosophies , 2018

2018 Introductory Remarks to Mukund Lath, “Identity Through Necessary Change: Thinking about ‘Rāg... more 2018 Introductory Remarks to Mukund Lath, “Identity Through Necessary Change: Thinking about ‘Rāga-Bhāva,’ Concepts and Characters” Journal of World Philosophies. Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Winter 2018): 1-5

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp/article/view/2166

Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī: What is it?

The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2013

Illumination, Imagination, Creativity: Rajasekhara, Kuntaka, and Jagannatha Pandita on pratibha

Journal of Indian Philosophy , 2008

Sanskrit poeticians make the visionary faculty of pratibhā a necessary part of the professional p... more Sanskrit poeticians make the visionary faculty of pratibhā a necessary part of the professional poet’s make-up. The term has a pre-history in Bhartṛhari’s linguistic metaphysics, where it is used to explain the unitary perception of meaning. This essay examines the relation between pratibhā and possible theories of the imagination, with a focus on three unusual theoreticians—Rājaśekhara, Kuntaka, and Jagannātha Paṇḍita. Rājaśekhara offers an analysis of pratibhā that is heavily interactive, requiring the discerning presence of the bhāvaka listener or critic; he also positions pratibhā in relation to Bildung (vyutpatti) and practice. For Kuntaka, pratibhā, never an ex nihilo creation by a poet, serves as the basis for the peculiar forms of intensified insight and experience that constitute poetry; these may also involve the creative scrambling and re-articulation of the object in terms of its systemic composition. At times, Kuntaka’s pratibhā comes close to a strong notion of imaginative process. But the full-fledged thematization of the imagination, and of pratibhā as its support and mechanism, is best seen in the seventeenth-century debates preserved for us by Jagannātha. A link is suggested between the discourse of poetic imagination in Jagannātha and similar themes that turn up in Indo-Persian poets such as Bedil.

Notes on Camatkāra

Language, Poetry and Ritual in Ancient India and Iran, 2010

The Marriage of Bhāvanā and King Best: A Sixteenth-Century South Indian Theory of Imagination

Diacritics, 2008

In sixteenth-century South India, the notion of the imagination was strongly thematized as perhap... more In sixteenth-century South India, the notion of the imagination was strongly thematized as perhaps the defining aspect of the human mind. We examine one striking example, an allegorical play called the Bhāvanā-puruṣottama (“The Marriage of Imagination and King Best”) by Ratnakheṭa Srinivasa Dīkṣita. Here we see a king searching frantically for his own imagination, the young woman Bhāvanā with whom he is in love, while she, for her part, is absorbed in the uneven and rather frustrating processes of imagining him. The two lovers could be said mutually to determine one another’s existence. On the other hand, imagination, for this poet, is not a matter of discovering something new but of perceiving something that is already there and, by perceiving it, enhancing or intensifying its presence and its activity. At the same time, the imagination focuses on singularities, however elusive: in this period, the general faculty of imagination has become a highly personal matter.

A Cloud Turned Goose: Sanskrit in the 'vernacular millennium'

The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2006

A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these... more A vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya) was produced over the last thousand years; most of these works reveal a vital and organic relation to the crystallising regional traditions of the subcontinent and to emerging vernacular literatures. Thus we have, for example, the Sanskrit literatures of Kerala, of Bengal-Orissa, of Andhra, and so on. These works, often addressed primarily to local audiences, have remained largely unknown and mostly undervalued, despite their intrinsic merits and enormous importance for the cultural history of India. We explore the particular forms of complex expressivity, including rich temporal and spatial modalities, apparent in such poems, focusing in particular on Vedānta Deśika’s Haṃsasandeśa, a fourteenth-century messenger-poem modelled after Kālidāsa’s Meghasandeśa. We hypothesise a principle: as localisation increases, what is lost in geographical range is made up for by increasing depth. Sanskrit poetry thus comes to play a critical, highly original role in the elaboration of regional cultural identities and the articulation of innovative cultural thematics; a re-conceptualised ecology of Sanskrit genres, including entirely new forms keyed to local experience, eventually appears in each of the regions. In short, rumours of the death of Sanskrit after 1000 A.D. are greatly exaggerated.

Notes on Tillaikkalampakam

South Indian Horizons - Francois Gros Felicitation Volume, 2005

First Grammarian, First Poet. A South Indian Vision of Cultural Origins

Indian Economic and Social History Review , 2001

In south India, beginning means grammar. First there is grammar-something given, not discovered-t... more In south India, beginning means grammar. First there is grammar-something given, not discovered-then empirical language, then poetry, then a culturally familiar world with its gods, human beings, landscapes, sciences, politics, and all the rest of intelligible reality. Poetry may, however, belong to the earliest stage, as an alternative form or face of grammar. With this one variation, the sequence as a whole is largely unalterable; language is not a product of culture but, at the very least, a divine existent or pre-existent that, according to one prevalent metaphysical view, eventually evolves into objects.' This godly being that is formed of sounds, audible or supra-aural, is structured by trans-empirical rules either entrusted by God to the first grammarian or promulgated by the latter in an authoritative and enduring manner. On the very first day that the language of the Tamil country emerged (apparently from some potential space in which this language already existed as rule-bound possibility), its grammar, named after the maverick Vedic sage Agastya, also emerged (centamil nilattis m6li tonrwi kälattufa!1 tonriya nul akattiyam).2 Tautologically, without grammar (authorised by a primordial seer) one cannot speak; and without speech, there is no world.

Embracing The Subject: Harsa's Play Within A Play

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1997

The Prospects of Memory

Journal of Indian Philosophy , 1998

On being human in the sanskrit epic: The riddle of Nala

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1994

Toward a Historical Poetics of the Sanskrit Epics

International Folklore Review, 1991

The Scent of Memory in Hindu South India

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics , 1987

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Terror of Symbols and Symbols of Terror: Notes on the Myth of Śiva as Sthāṇu

History of Religions, 1986

On South Indian Bandits and Kings

Indian Economic and Social History Review, 1980

Where are the Robin Hoods of Southern India? This is the question which presents itself to the Ta... more Where are the Robin Hoods of Southern India? This is the question which presents itself to the Tamilist reading through E.J. Hobsbawm's excellent study of bandits' Hobsbawm himself notes the difficulty in fitting India's bandits into his typology of noble robbers (the Robin Hoods), haiduks (the bands of primitive guerilla fighters), and the pathologically cruel &dquo;avengers. 112 Hobsbawm is concerned with what he calls &dquo;social banditry&dquo;-the peasant heroes regarded by their rural hinterland as champions, and by the state as outlaws and criminals-and he suggests that social banditry was inhibited in India &dquo;by the tendency of robbers, like all other sections of society, to form self-con-10 Hardy, op. cit., p. 148. 11 Louis Dumont, Une sous-caste de I' Inde du sud : organisation saciale et religion des Prama-

The Green Goddess of Tirumullaivāyil

East and West, 1980

Divine Order and Divine Evil in the Tamil Tale of Rama

The Journal of Asian Studies, 1979

Murukan, the mango and Ekāmbareśvara-Śiva: Fragments of a Tamil creation myth?

Indo-Iranian Journal, 1979

Every important South Indian temple contains within its walls a sacred tree (sthalavr.ks.a). The ... more Every important South Indian temple contains within its walls a sacred tree (sthalavr.ks.a). The tree constitutes one element in a conventional set, which also includes water in some form (a river, a temple tank, the sea) and an image or symbol of the deity, usually fashioned from stone. Analogous to, and sometimes equated with, the image (and the god) is the mountain found near some shrines, t Together these elements create a microcosm -an 'ideal landscape' of water, rock and tree;enclosed by the temple walls. The walls serve both to isolate the idealized cosmos from the surrounding realm of disorder and to contain within strict limits the potentially dangerous power which is felt to inhere in the sacred site. Tile concept of imposing limits upon powerful forces is basic to the temple cult; for the micro. costa, to be complete, must contain representatives of the primeval chaos out of which the known universe has emerged. Both tree and water belong in part to Chaos. In the classical puran.ic cosmogonies, creation takes place against the background of the pralaya, the cosmic flood: Visn.u rests upon the great serpent Adis'es.a, who floats upon the waters into which the universe has dissolved. The lotus which rises from Visnu's navel and upon which sits Brahmfi, the demiurge of creation, becomes the earth rising up from the waters. 3 In some myths land can emerge only after a form of sacrifice: thus from the fat (medas) of Madhu and Kait.abha, slain by Visn. u, the earth (merlin f) solidifies in the midst of the waters. 4 In Tamil templemyths, the entire process of creation takes place at the shrine, which inevitably sees itself as the center or navel of the universe, the one point of land which is never conquered by the flood: it is at this site that Brahm~ s or Siva 6 burns away the floodwaters and produces the world, while the waters of the primeval deluge are retained within the shrine in the reduced form of the temple tank or lake -a symbol of chaos subdued. 7 And just as below the lotus-world of Brahma there remain the Serpent and the dark water, so the shrine is connected to the nether world, Patglaan area of death and disorder, but also oftfidden sources of fertility and power. Almost invariably, the waters of the temple-tank or river are thought to well up from this subterranean region. 8

The Tamil Flood-Myths and the Caṅkam Legend

Journal of Tamil Studies, 1978

Books by David Shulman

Muttusvāmi Dīkṣitar and the Invention of Modern Carnatic Music: The Abhayāmbā Vibhakti-kṛtis

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