De Simini (2016), Of Gods and Books: Manuscript Cultures of Premodern India

De Simini, Florinda. 2016. Of Gods and Books. Ritual and Knowledge Transmission in the Manuscript Cultures of Premodern India. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. xi+477 pp. ISBN 978-3-11-047881-5. EPub / Open Access PDF.

Official site: http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472498

ToC
Manuscripts, Ritual, and the State in Indian Sources … 1
1.1 Indian Manuscripts in Art and Ritual: The Case of Buddhism … 2
1.2 Rituals of Power and Knowledge in Brahmanism … 23
1.3 The ‘Books of Śiva’ … 46

2 The Task of Writing and the Art of Giving … 83
2.1 The Gift of Knowledge … 83
2.1.1 The Introductory Procedures … 84
2.1.2 The Manuscripts … 86
2.1.3 The Thrones of Worship … 92
2.1.4 The Scribes … 96
2.1.5 The Copying … 102
2.1.6 The Donation … 114
2.2 The Corrections … 128
2.3 The Abode of Knowledge … 140
2.4 On Ritual Readings and Teachers’ Salaries: The Gift of Knowledge and its Social Roots … 156
2.5 The Books of Knowledge … 197

3 Manuscripts, Ritual and the Medieval Literature on Dharma … 227
3.1 Something New, Something Old, Something Borrowed: Law-Digests on the Gift of Manuscripts … 247
3.2 ‘Vedam non sunt libri’, or: How to Give What You Cannot Have … 290
4 The Throne of Knowledge: Aspects of the Cult of the Book in Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava Tantric Traditions … 317
4.1 The Cult of the Book in the Context of Obligatory and Occasional Rites … 331
4.2 The Installation of the Throne of Knowledge … 339
4.3 On the Threshold of Modernity: Ritual and Manuscripts in the Sixteenth-Century South India … 352

5 Appendix 1: The ‘Chapter on the Gift of Knowledge’ (Vidyādānādhyāya), being the second chapter of the Śivadharmottara … 373
5.1 English Translation … 374
5.2 Sanskrit Text … 392

6 Appendix 2: Tables of Textual Parallels with Chapters 1, 2 and 12 of the Śivadharmottara … 407
7 Table A: Structure of the Chapters on the Gift of Knowledge in the Sanskrit Law-Digests … 435

References … 443
Indices … 471