David Shulman Is There an Indian Connection to Sefer yesirah? Was the linguistic theology of Sefer yesirah (SY) influenced by theories of language formalized in northwest India in the last centuries before the Common Era? Yehuda Liebes advances such a hypothesis, cautiously worded and graced by question marks, at several points in his magisterial study of SY. He even includes, among the factors influencing his suggestion, the idea that the text may have been composed in northern Mesopotamia and the possible existence there of channels of cultural transmission from India (with Greek mediation): "This eastern region was a logical place for a meeting with Indian thought, such as that which influenced SY."1 We know, in fact, of such channels in a later period (early Islamic Baghdad), when Sanskrit grammatical and poetic materials began to filter into Arabic.2 But it is also well known that Hellenistic Alexandria, among other centers, had some familiarity with certain Indian philosophical notions, which are reported (second- or third-hand) in sources from the first and second 1 2 Y. Liebes, Tarai ha-yesirah sel Seferyesirah (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2000), p. 239. See I. Yu. Krachkovsky, "Fragment indiiskoi retoriki ? arabskoi peredache," Izbraniye sochineniya (Moscow, 1956), 2: 309-316. Aleph 2 (2002)191 centuries CE.3 It is at least possible that Indian ideas circulated in adapted forms in northern Mesopotamia, too, during this period. I can express no opinion about the date of SY or the meaning of its metaphysical system. Whatever little I know about the text comes directly from Liebes himself or from Moshe Idei, with whom I taught a course, some years ago, on linguistic mysticism. But I may be able to point to certain elements in Sanskrit linguistic thought that run parallel to passages in SYand could conceivably indicate a historical connection. At the same time, there are critical distinctions to be made. The mere existence of strong resemblances is not, in itself, an argument for direct influence. I focus on four related issues: (1) the primary metaphysical frame of creation as a linguistic act or process; (2) the specific question of scientific phonetic analysis and its traces in SY; (3) problems relating to semanticity and to the powers and function of individual phonemes; (4) and a more general observation on the notion of belimah and its derivatives in relation to Saiva themes. 1. That creation is a matter of sound and vibration and hence of language, broadly conceived, is axiomatic already in the Rg Veda (e.g., hymn 10.70). Three-quarters of language is hidden and potentially generative of reality; only the final quarter is manifest in human speech (1.164.45). Throughout the first millennium BCE, we find elaborations of the basic idea of creation as an intra-linguistic process, with precise cosmological and epistemic correlations, along with the beginnings of scientific linguistics. The latter includes a highly developed phonology (siksä), etymology (nirukta), morphology and syntax (vyakarana), and metrics (chandas). Päninian grammar, one of the great achievements of ancient India, offers a comprehensive and sophisticated empirical analysis of Sanskrit as spoken in approximately the fifth century BCE (also of the Vedic dialect); but this rich analytical corpus eventually culminated in a linguistic metaphysics in which subtle, inaudible sounds emerge from a divine substratum as audible words (pada), which, in 192 David Shulman turn, generate the external "objects" (padârtha) that these words "mean." Language, in short, is primarily neither representational nor symbolic. It is the very fabric of reality and, as such, the deepest level of godhead (iabda-brahman) unfolding as cosmos and as self or mind. This metaphysical aspect of the tradition reaches its height in Bhartrhari, in the mid-fifth century CE, but Bhartrhari clearly drew upon much earlier speculative materials. In any case, the grammarians themselves claim that they stumbled upon God while sifting through the arid matters of grammar, like someone who happens upon a diamond while searching through a stack of husks. A vast extension of this vision of the cosmos as vibrating with linguistic energies embodied in the phonemes, motivated by God's inner reflection (vimarsa) upon his own luminous existence, eventually crystallized in the northern Saiva systems...
Read full abstract
Jan 1, 2007
Michael S Vitevitch 
Open Access
