Lineage, learning, and authority: reconstructing the Śeṣa family in early modern Benares

This paper reframes the identity and historical positioning of the Śeṣa lineage within the socio-political and intellectual milieu of early modern Benares. Focusing on the celebrated grammarian Śeṣakṛṣṇa, who migrated from Mahārāṣṭra to Benares in a movement emblematic of wider patterns of scholarly mobility in early modern North India, it re-examines the long-standing scholarly debate concerning his relationship to Rāmacandra, the author of the pioneering Prakriyākaumudī, which reorganised the Pāṇinian rules of Sanskrit grammar. Drawing on original Sanskrit sources and recent scholarly approaches to the identity of the Śeṣa clan, the study reassesses the extant textual, genealogical, and historical evidence while reconstructing Śeṣakṛṣṇa’s immediate familial networks to clarify his chronological placement and social standing within Benares’s learned circles. By integrating intellectual history with social and institutional contexts, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of lineage, authorship, and scholarly authority in early modern Sanskrit intellectual culture.