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World Philology WORLD PHILOLOGY —-1 —0 —+1 514-57790_ch00_1P.indd i 6/20/14 5:56 PM -1— 0— +1— 514-57790_ch00_1P.indd ii 6/20/14 5:56 PM WORLD PHILOLOGY Edited by Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin Elman, and Ku- ming Kevin Chang Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland —-1 2014 —0 —+1 514-57790_ch00_1P.indd iii 6/20/14 5:56 PM Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data World philology / Edited by Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin Elman, and Ku- ming Kevin Chang. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 674- 05286- 4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Philology— History. I. Pollock, Sheldon I., editor of compilation. II. Elman, Benjamin A., 1946–, editor of compilation. III. Chang, Ku- ming Kevin, 1968–, editor of compilation. P61.W67 2014 400—dc23 2014009973 -1— 0— +1— 514-57790_ch00_1P.indd iv 6/20/14 5:56 PM Contents Foreword vii Fansen Wang A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s x i Introduction 1 Sheldon Pollock 1. From Book to Edition: Philology in Ancient Greece 25 Franco Montanari 2. The Bride of Mercury: Confessions of a ’Pataphilologist 45 James E. G. Zetzel 3. Striving for Meaning: A Short History of Rabbinic Omnisignifi cance 63 Yaakov Elman 4. Early Arabic Philologists: Poetry’s Friends or Foes? 92 Beatrice Gruendler 5. What Was Philology in Sanskrit? 114 Sheldon Pollock 6. Reconciling the Classics: Two Case Studies in Song- Yuan Exegetical Approaches 137 Michael Lackner —-1 —0 —+1 514-57790_ch00_1P.indd v 6/20/14 5:56 PM vi CONTENTS 7. Humanist Philologies: Texts, Antiquities, and Their Scholarly Transformations in the Early Modern West 154 Anthony Grafton 8. Mughal Philology and Rumi’s Mathnavī 178 Muzaffar Alam 9. The Rise of “Deep Reading” in Early Modern Ottoman Scholarly Culture 201 Khaled El- Rouayheb 10. Early Modern or Late Imperial? The Crisis of Classical Philology in Eighteenth- Century China 225 Benjamin Elman 11. The Politics of Philology in Japan: Ancient Texts, Language, and Japa nese Identity 245 Susan L. Burns 12. “Enthusiasm Dwells Only in Specialization”: Classical Philology and Disciplinarity in Nineteenth- Century Germany 264 Constanze Güthenke 13. The Intelligence of Philological Practice: On the Interpretation of Rilke’s Sonnet “O komm und geh” 285 Christoph König 14. Philology or Linguistics? Transcontinental Responses 311 Ku- ming Kevin Chang Notes 333 Bibliography 385 List of Contributors 437 Index 000 -1— 0— +1— 514-57790_ch00_1P.indd vi 6/20/14 5:56 PM Foreword FANSEN WANG There seems to be no better place than the Academia Sinica in Taiwan to host a conference on the global history of philology and support the publica- tion of a book on world philology. Its Institute of History and Philology, where I work, is one of the very few institutions in the world that unites his- tory and philology in its mission. Moreover, the institute was founded with an intentionally internationalist character, being the fi rst to apply Western philology and historical methods to Chinese material and then to contribute to global scholarship with its fi ndings. Its vision and orientation aim at a comparative history of important philological traditions around the world. The institute’s remarkable sense of scholarly internationalism was attested already by its founding director, Ssu-nien Fu (1896–1950). He proclaimed that his institute would work on “materials not bound by countries,” and would draw its methods “from unlimited regions, in order to . take part in the scholarly successes that have so far been accomplished in other countries.” The head of the historical section of the institute, Yinke Chen, had trained in history and philology at Harvard and Berlin. He applied his knowledge of Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mongolian, among other languages, to decipher Chinese historical texts that were rendered problematic by me- dieval transliterations of the names of foreign persons and places. Later devoted to Tang history, Chen articulated a view of the multiple ethnicities, languages, and religions of the medieval states and dynasties that made up China. His command of a great variety of historical languages, all acquired abroad, and his sensitivity to the multiethnic nature of Chinese history im- —-1 plicitly embodied the common sense of German classical philology, or Al- —0 tertumswissenschaft, and medieval Eu ro pe an history. —+1 514-57790_ch00_1P.indd vii 6/20/14 5:56 PM viii FOREWORD The enthusiasm for Western philology among the found ers of the institute was part of an international phenomenon that took place when non-Western civilizations were confronted with Western modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Edward Said made famous the importance of philology in the formation of Ernst Renan’s Orientalism and its impact on the colonial world. But countries that were never under the direct rule of Western powers, such as Japan, also welcomed the methods of Western philology. As Susan L. Burns and Ku- ming Kevin Chang point out in this volume, the fi rst Japa- nese students to study philology in Eu rope, and indeed the fi rst two Japa- nese holders of the chair in philology at the University of Tokyo, Kazutoshi Ueda (1867– 1937) and Yaichi Haga (1867– 1926), took on the tasks of con- structing the national language and literature of Japan, and of surveying lo- cal languages and compiling dictionaries, with the philological methods they had learned abroad. Japan’s national language movement soon inspired Chinese intellectuals to create a unifi ed Chinese language, especially after the foundation of the Chinese Republic in 1912. If this interest in the con- struction of a modern national language arrived in China secondhandedly through Japan, Fu and Chen at the institute were eager to apply their fi rst- hand knowledge of Eu ro pe an philology to the renewal of Chinese learning. The effort to study local languages and to compile dictionaries was also re- produced by Ueda’s student Naoyoshi Ogawa (1869– 1947) in Taiwan, then a Japa nese colony but the Academia Sinica’s new home after 1949. These cases in Japan, in China, and at Fu and Chen’s institute all testify to the for- midable impact of philology on non- Western scholarship. Philology, traditional and new, could also, contrarily, serve as a bulwark of traditionalism and nationalism. Japa nese nativists supported their cul- tural essentialism with traditional philology in the eigh teenth and nineteenth centuries, and, even more strikingly, the Western- trained Haga argued that modern Japanese literature could be established without relying on imita- tion of the West. Though internationally minded, Fu and Chen were also motivated by a strong nationalism that resulted from the humiliation of their country by Western powers and Japan, though they differed from conserva- tive intellectuals who resorted to the ideology of national essence (guocui). Even today there are philologists in different societies who assert the superi- ority of their own language and its traditional scholarship. Both modern and traditional philology, like other disciplines, run the risk of becoming “sterile, ineffectual, and hopelessly irrelevant to life,” the -1— kind of scholarship Said criticized in one of his last essays (“The Return to 0— Philology”). From the 1880s on there had been criticism in Germany, the +1— 514-57790_ch00_1P.indd viii 6/20/14 5:56 PM FOREWORD ix center of Eu ro pe an philological scholarship, of the kind of philological work that (according to Fritz Ringer) was characterized by “technical prac- tice” and “endless facts” without “theories” and “ideas.” Similar problems can be found in philological work in Taiwan based on the conviction that good philology and history must reject interpretation in order to be scientifi c and objective, which was further based on the assumption that historical “facts,” when adequately arranged, speak the truth by themselves. This assumption was advanced most strongly by, ironically, none other than Fu. His follow- ers continued Fu’s scientistic or “positivist” credo, to the extent that they lost sight of the theoretical depth and cultural wealth of the Eu ro pe an phi- lology that he advocated. Fu himself never believed that language or litera- ture could exist in linguistic isolation or in a theoretical vacuum; he also offered many theoretical interpretations, even speculations, about the ma- terial he worked on. Attention to facts alone cannot suffi ce, and indeed, it can impoverish humanist research. For non- Western countries, is modern philology worth celebrating? Wouldn’t accepting philology amount to succumbing to Orientalism? Not necessarily. The best antidote to the perils of traditionalism, sterile philol- ogy, or even Orientalism seems to be what this book embodies: that is, phi- lology’s commitment to historical refl exivity, nonprovinciality, and method- ological and conceptual pluralism. They are also the qualities that Sheldon Pollock argues the new philology of the twenty- fi rst century needs. Indeed, even the author of Orientalism suggests that there are ways to overcome the limitations of Orientalism, nationalism, traditionalism, and the fi xation on words and facts. In Said’s terms, a philology-based humanism supports the search for knowledge, justice, and even liberation. The publication of this book is especially welcome at a time when the Academia Sinica and philology as a discipline are working to give this science a new life. The Academia Sinica has become a very different institution since its relocation to Taiwan in 1949, thanks to po liti cal and intellectual developments after World War II. The institution is more diverse, incorporating many more disciplines in the social and natural sci- ences. It is also more international in terms of the training and the aca- demic activities of its faculty.
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