receiving varied assessments at the hands of [closed]

Solution 1:

This sentence is quite confusing as to what receiving various assessments at the hands of different scholars modifies. "Traditional grammar" says that it should modify the closest reasonable noun, which would be nature or monument. (See Purdue Owl's webpage on this.) However, to me it reads like it should modify debate, which makes utter nonsense of the sentence. This seems to show that "traditional grammar" doesn't know what it's talking about. (This question as to what participles actually modify in English may be treated better in scholarly grammar books, like CGEL.) From the meaning, the participle is clearly intended to modify nature or monument.

If you want to use a participle but want it to modify a different word, one way to do it is reorder the elements of the sentence. Since I can't really tell what the participle is supposed to modify, this is a wild guess as to the intended meaning on my part:

The monument, receiving various assessments at the hands of different scholars, provoked heated debate over its nature.

Reordering the elements of a sentence can really disrupt the flow of a paragraph, and if it does in this case, I would encourage you to just use a relative clause.