Description of शब्दानुगमः: Indian linguistic studies in honor of George Cardona. Volume 2: Historical linguistics, Vedic, etc.

This is the second of two volumes of studies in honor of Professor George Cardona, one of the worlds leading scholars of Indo-European and the preeminent authority on Pāṇinian grammar and the linguistic traditions of India. Professor Cardona's contributions have been admired by colleagues worldwide as well as in his own department. In his 45 years of teaching at the University of Pennsylvania until his official retirement in 2005, and in his continued teaching and lecturing since then, Professor Cardona has influenced two generations of students, many of whom have become leading experts in linguistics and Indology in their own right. Twenty-one of these learned scholars have contributed twenty studies to this volume. These studies cover topics ranging from archaeology and historical phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics to philosophy, poetics, and critical editing. Eighteen papers by nineteen additional learned scholars comprise volume one on topics in Pāṇinian grammar, other Indian linguistic traditions, issues in Sanskrit morphology and syntax, and theories of verbal cognition.

This second volume includes several papers that deal with issues critical to the understanding of the evolution of Sanskrit and Indian culture. One such critical issue concerns the origin of Sanskrit, the location of its predecessors, and the migration of Indo-Aryan into the Indian sub-continent. Several papers deal with topics concerning Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Vedic, Middle Indic and Modern Indic historical linguistics. Several others cast light on crucial issues in the interpretation of Vedic texts. A couple of pivotal papers restore confidence in the traditional interpretation of Vedic texts denigrated by the misapplication of modern philological techniques: one of these restores greater reliability to the Anukramaṇī as a source of the identification of the authorship of R̥gvedic hymns on the basis of their distinctive linguistic features; the other revalidates the traditionally understood sense of the mahāvākya “tat tvam asi.” Other papers deal with epic and classical Sanskrit and Homeric Greek poetics; Mīmāṁsā and Nyāya philosophy; and issues in the critical editing of Buddhist Sanskrit works.

The volume is equipped with a detailed table of contents, an index of passages cited in Vedic and classical texts, and an index of authors. The book is produced with the highest quality binding and linen-wrapped hard cover with a beautiful dust jacket.