The Nay Science
The Nay Science

Author: Vishwa Adluri

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0199931356

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The Nay Science offers a new perspective on the problem of scientific method in the human sciences. Taking German Indological scholarship on the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita as their example, Adluri and Bagchee develop a critique of the modern valorization of method over truth in the humanities. The authors show how, from its origins in eighteenth-century Neo-Protestantism onwards, the critical method was used as a way of making theological claims against rival philosophical and/or religious traditions. Via discussions of German Romanticism, the pantheism controversy, scientific positivism, and empiricism, they show how theological concerns dominated German scholarship on the Indian texts. Indology functions as a test case for wider concerns: the rise of historicism, the displacement of philosophical concerns from thinking, and the belief in the ability of a technical method to produce truth. Based on the historical evidence of the first part of the book, Adluri and Bagchee make a case in the second part for going beyond both the critical pretensions of modern academic scholarship and the objections of its post-structuralist or post-Orientalist critics. By contrasting German Indology with Plato's concern for virtue and Gandhi's focus on praxis, the authors argue for a conception of the humanities as a dialogue between the ancients and moderns and between eastern and western cultures.

The Making of Western Indology
The Making of Western Indology

Author: Rosane Rocher

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-17

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1317579178

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Drawing on new sources, this book evaluates the importance of Henry Thomas Colebrooke, an East India Company civil servant who became the father of modern Indology. Written by renowned academics in the field of Indology, and drawing on new sources, this book shows how he embodies the significant passage from eighteenth century colonial expansion, to the professional, transnational ethos of nineteenth century intellectual life and scholarly enquiry.

Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism
Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism

Author: Douglas T. McGetchin

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 083864208X

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He has presented more than a dozen papers at academic conferences in North America, Europe, and South Asia, including Harvard University, Humboldt University, Heidelberg University's South Asia Institute, and the Max Mueller Bhavan in New Delhi, India.

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics
The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics

Author: Shyam Ranganathan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-11-17

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1472587758

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Featuring leading scholars from philosophy and religious studies, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics dispels the myth that Indian thinkers and philosophers were uninterested in ethics. This comprehensive research handbook traces Indian moral philosophy through classical, scholastic Indian philosophy, pan-Indian literature including the Epics, Ayurvedic medical ethics, as well as recent, traditionalist and Neo-Hindu contributions. Contrary to the usual myths about India (that Indians were too busy being religious to care about ethics), moral theory constitutes the paradigmatic differentia of formal Indian philosophy, and is reflected richly in popular literature. Many of the papers make this clear by an analytic explication that draws critical comparisons and contrasts between classical Indian moral philosophy and contemporary contributions to ethics. By critically addressing ethics as a sub-discipline of philosophy and acknowledging the mistaken marginalization of Indian moral philosophy, this handbook reveals how Indian contributions can illuminate contemporary philosophical research on ethics. Unlike previous approaches to Indian ethics, this volume is organized in accordance with major topics in moral philosophy. The volume contains an extended introduction, exploring topics in moral semantics, the philosophy of thought, (metaethical and normative) ethical theory, and the politics of scholarship, which serve to show how the diversity of Indian moral philosophy is a contribution to the discipline of ethics. With an overview of Indian moral theory, and a glossary, this is a valuable guide to understanding the past, present and future research directions of a central component of Indian philosophy.

Unifying Hinduism
Unifying Hinduism

Author: Andrew J. Nicholson

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-12-01

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0231149875

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Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.

South Asian Texts in History
South Asian Texts in History

Author: Yigal Bronner

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 9780924304637

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South Asian Texts in History charts the contours of a reenvisioned and revitalized field of Indology in the light of the groundbreaking research of Sheldon Pollock. One of the many exciting aspects of Pollock's work is its unprecedented combination of classical textual study with cutting edge theoretical and social scientific inquiry--a combination which this book sets out to emulate. Pollock has trained and inspired a new generation of scholars, many of whom have contributed to this volume. The essays are organized into five groups that reflect the major domains of Pollock's immense contributions to the field: the epic Ramayana, Sanskrit literature and literary theory, systematic thought in premodern South Asia, the birth of a new vernacular cultural order in the subcontinent during the second millennium CE, and India's early modernity. Most of the essays concentrate on materials in Sanskrit, but there are also considerable contributions to the history of Hindi, Tamil, and Persian literatures. The book presents for the first time an overview of the groundbreaking contributions of Sheldon Pollock to South Asia scholarship over the past three decades, while offering a set of critiques of key elements of his theories.

Apoha
Apoha

Author: Mark Siderits

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0231527381

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When we understand that something is a pot, is it because of one property that all pots share? This seems unlikely, but without this common essence, it is difficult to see how we could teach someone to use the word "pot" or to see something as a pot. The Buddhist apoha theory tries to resolve this dilemma, first, by rejecting properties such as "potness" and, then, by claiming that the element uniting all pots is their very difference from all non-pots. In other words, when we seek out a pot, we select an object that is not a non-pot, and we repeat this practice with all other items and expressions. Writing from the vantage points of history, philosophy, and cognitive science, the contributors to this volume clarify the nominalist apoha theory and explore the relationship between apoha and the scientific study of human cognition. They engage throughout in a lively debate over the theory's legitimacy. Classical Indian philosophers challenged the apoha theory's legitimacy, believing instead in the existence of enduring essences. Seeking to settle this controversy, essays explore whether apoha offers new and workable solutions to problems in the scientific study of human cognition. They show that the work of generations of Indian philosophers can add much toward the resolution of persistent conundrums in analytic philosophy and cognitive science.

Georg Bühler's Contribution to Indology
Georg Bühler's Contribution to Indology

Author: Amruta Matu

Publisher: Gorgias Press

Published: 2020-01-31

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9781463240493

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This work is a result of study for the doctoral degree of the Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India. The author is the Assistant Curator of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, where the manuscripts collected by Georg Bühler are deposited. Along with source materials available in India, she consulted those in Germany and Austria. This work deals with the life and pioneering work of Georg Bühler in the various fields of Indology. The book argues that Bühler's interactions with the 19th c. India influenced his approach as a researcher and in turn his methodology which then followed his self-developed path of Ethno-Indology.