rhetoric before and beyond the greeksby carol s. lipson; roberta a. binkley
TRANSCRIPT
Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks by Carol S. Lipson; Roberta A. BinkleyReview by: Victor H. MatthewsJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 125, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 2005), pp. 475-476Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064412 .
Accessed: 16/06/2014 17:11
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofthe American Oriental Society.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 195.78.108.51 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:11:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Brief Reviews
The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal, vol. 2:
Ethics and Epics. Edited by Jonardon Ganeri.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Pp. vii + 445. Rs. $75.
This is the second of a two-volume collection of
Bimal Krishna Matilal's papers edited by Jonardon
Ganeri. The first volume, Mind, Language and World,
was devoted to Matilal's considerable body of works
dealing with philosophy, logic, and epistemology. The
companion volume reviewed here, although called
Ethics and Epics, deals with a sundry list of topics and
can best be viewed as "miscellaneous," save for the fact
that all the essays contain material relating to ethics or
the epics. Within the compass of this brief review it is im
possible to present in any detail the twenty-nine papers included in this volume. They range from essays on R?
makrsna, to explorations of rationality and dharma, to
peace and inter-faith studies, to karma and salvation.
Matilal brings his usual acumen and insight into a wide
range of issues of interest not just to scholars but also to
the general public. Indeed, some of the essays in this
collection were originally published in "popular" publi cations such as the Bulletin of the Rama Krishna Mission
Institute of Calcutta and Our Heritage. Of the many interesting papers here, I found those
dealing with the elusive concept of dharma both pro found and offering refreshingly new insights: "Moral
Dilemmas: Insights from Indian Epics," "Elusiveness
and Ambiguity in Dharma-Ethics," "Dharma and
Rationality," and "Rationality, Dharma, and the Bra
mar?a Theory!' The following quotation from the essay "Elusiveness" ' shows that Matilal was a sensitive reader
of history and saw the problems inherent in essen
tializing Indian religious history before "Orientalism"
became a fashion and a fad. Referring to Weber's re
flections on caste and karma, Matilal observes:
There was one component, caste, that was avowedly anti-rational in virtually sanctioning inequalities, and another that was a commendable expression of
ethical rationalism, the karma component of dharma.
I believe the story or history of Hindu thought has
been the tension and reaction between these two
opposite tendencies. The seemingly tension-free
perpetuation of the hierarchical social ethos for mil
1. Unfortunately it is impossible to say when this
paper was written. Ganeri simply ignores the provenance of it, but it was probably composed sometime in the
1980s.
lennia is simply a myth. For almost the same set of
reasons, I believe the Indologist's frequent construc
tion of a 'neo-Hinduism', distinct and distinguished from 'traditional Hinduism' by the influx of Western
ideas and ideology ... is also to be taken with a
pinch of salt. The tradition was self-conscious. It has
been interpreting and re-interpreting itself over the
ages. It is hardly a new phenomenon. The myth is
tied up with the Indologist's romantic search for a
classical, pure form of Hinduism (or Buddhism as
the case may be), and is little better than a dream,
which even attracts some sinister fundamentalist
sects of India today, (pp. 39-40)
One unfortunate aspect of this volume is the lack of
an index providing the provenance of the articles col
lected. Their provenance is given at the beginning of
the previous volume, Mind, Language and World, but a
reader who happens to have only this volume would not
know where the essays were originally published. Even
in the first volume where this information is found,
eleven essays are ignored. Perhaps these were unpub lished works, but Ganeri does not address the issue at
all. For this one must fault both Ganeri and the editors
of Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
One must, however, be grateful to both Ganeri and
OUP for making available in two handsomely produced volumes significant papers of one of the most influential
and versatile scholars of India's past and present. Read
ing Matilal's essays is always an enriching experience.
Patrick Olivelle
University of Texas
Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks. Edited by Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley.
Albany: State University of New York Press,
2004. Pp. vi + 267. $62.50 (cloth); $20.95 (paper).
As the editors note, the study of ancient rhetoric is
generally dominated by Greek classical rhetoric. How
ever, feeling it necessary to demonstrate that Greek cul
ture is not the sole possessor of this innovation, they have provided a collection of studies that examine "other
rhetorics" as found in the literature of ancient Mesopo
tamia, Egypt, China, and Israel. In particular, their aim is
to develop "a better understanding of how different rhe
torical approaches functioned and were situated within
very different cultures" (p. 3). Among the themes found
Journal of the American Oriental Society 125.3 (2005) 475
This content downloaded from 195.78.108.51 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:11:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
476 Journal of the American Oriental Society 125.3 (2005)
in these essays is how to recover vestiges and charac
teristics of these ancient rhetorics, and the need for an
interdisciplinary approach?taking into account litera
ture from a number of eras and cultures within a par ticular region and how they contribute to the creation of
rhetorical style. One check on their research is the under
standing that copies of written texts do not always re
flect the rhetorics in actual use by a culture at the time
the manuscript was composed. The contents of the volume include three studies on
Mesopotamian rhetoric, two on Egyptian rhetoric, three
on Chinese rhetoric, one each on biblical rhetoric and
"alternative Greek rhetoric" (from Rhodes), and two
cross-cultural studies that deal with Near Eastern texts.
Of particular interest here is the essay by William Hallo
on "The Birth of Rhetoric," which provides a foundation,
using Sumerian sources, for rhetoric in the ancient Near
East. After examining the peculiarities of working with
cuneiform literature, he focuses on the Gilgamesh Epic and its rhetorical devices. The two essays on ancient
Egypt take diverging trajectories, but each contributes
important insights to the discussion. Carol Lipson's ex
amination of Maat as the central philosophical concept in Egyptian culture demonstrates how genre and forms
of speech and textual expression are shaped by a value
system. Deborah Sweeney brings the insights of an
archaeologist into the mix and highlights the importance of examining everyday speech patterns in legal texts and
court documents.
The authors of the three essays on Chinese rhetoric
have the distinct advantage of intimate familiarity with
the language and thus are not dependent on translations.
George Xu's contribution, using a scale measuring moral
valuation of types of speech, highlights the irony im
plicit in Confucian thought that advocates silence while
accomplishing its goals through eloquent persuasion. Arabella Lyon's approach, while also examining Con
fucian rhetoric, is to caution against drawing too close a
parallel between Aristotelian rhetoric and Chinese
forms. Finally, Yameng Liu advocates a new paradigm for the study of Chinese rhetoric that separates it from
the traditional ties to philosophy and linguistics. In
stead, he suggests that Chinese rhetoric is a "discipline/
practice in its own right" and the various "discourse
communities actually shared much in their rhetorical
thinking and modes of rhetorical practice" (p. 161).
In his essay on Biblical rhetoric in the Pentateuch,
David Metzger, after discussing the Graf-Wellhausen
literary hypothesis, contends that the various editors
rhetorically represent the voices and agenda of compet
ing power groups, including the Aaronides, the Levitic
priesthood, the prophets, and the various factions asso
ciated with the monarchy. He suggests that gaps in the
text can be overcome by positing "which power group
would speak that way" (p. 18; my emphasis). Richard Enos provides in his essay an opportunity to
see, separate from the lens of Athenian rhetoric methods
and forms, an alternative Greek approach from the island
of Rhodes. In particular, he finds the flexible nature of
Rhodian rhetoric to be typical of a culture that must
deal with a wide variety of peoples, and that is to be ex
pected of an island set at a crossroads between Asia and
Europe. The originator of this rhetoric, Aeschines, was
trained in Athens, but transcended its influence by stress
ing the need to recognize cultural differences (language and value system) in order to maximize the effectiveness
of commercial speech. The two cross-cultural studies that complete this
volume attempt to draw on examples from entire re
gions (Watts includes Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syro
Palestine; Swearingen draws on women's songs and
lamentations in Homeric and Biblical texts). They each
demonstrate the importance attached to a study of rhe
torical patterns in any attempt to recreate the emic per
spective of the authors and their ancient audiences.
This is a valuable collection of studies and one that
should spark additional cross-cultural analyses of ancient
rhetoric in all its forms. It is also a testament to the rec
ognition that no one culture "owns" a particular literary
genre.
Victor H. Matthews
Missouri State University
Von Berlin nach Meroe: Erinnerungen an den ?gyp
tologen Fritz Hintze (1915-1993). Edited by Erika
Endesfelder. Asien- und Afrikastudien der
Humboldt-Universit?t, vol. 3. Wiesbaden: Harras
sowitz Verlag, 2003. Pp. 111. (paper)
Volume 3 of Asien- und Afrikastudien der Humboldt
Universit?t contains a number of papers presented during a colloquium that took place on 20 April 1995 to cele
brate, two years after his sudden death in an accident, the eightieth birthday of the German Egyptologist and
pioneer in the study of Meroitic language and culture in
the Sudan, Fritz Hintze. The event, therefore, gathered above all Hintze's colleagues and students who followed
and accompanied the honor?e on his scholarly path. The
variety of his academic interests is also reflected by the
various disciplines of the participants in the colloquium.
Unfortunately, the volume appeared only after a consid
erable delay, and not all those who took part in the col
loquium submitted their papers for publication. The subtitle of the volume is mirrored in the per
sonal character of some contributions (e.g., H. H?rz,
"Das Verh?ltnis Fritz Hintzes zur Philosophie?Erinner
ungen mit Anmerkungen"). Since there had already been
two Festschriften in honor of Hintze's scholarly achieve
ments (on the occasion of his sixtieth and seventy-fifth
birthdays: ?gypten und Kusch [Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1977]; Studia in honorem Fritz Hintze [Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1990]), these articles focus on
This content downloaded from 195.78.108.51 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:11:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions