The Nay Science

The Nay Science
Author: Vishwa Adluri
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199931356

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.

Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies

Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies
Author: Rachel Dwyer
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2016-03-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1479848697

Modern Indian studies have recently become a site for new, creative, and thought-provoking debates extending over a broad canvas of crucial issues. As a result of socio-political transformations, certain concepts—such as ahimsa, caste, darshan, and race—have taken on different meanings. Bringing together ideas, issues, and debates salient to modern Indian studies, this volume charts the social, cultural, political, and economic processes at work in the Indian subcontinent. Authored by internationally recognized experts, this volume comprises over one hundred individual entries on concepts central to their respective fields of specialization, highlighting crucial issues and debates in a lucid and concise manner. Each concept is accompanied by a critical analysis of its trajectory and a succinct discussion of its significance in the academic arena as well as in the public sphere. Enhancing the shared framework of understanding about the Indian subcontinent, Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies will provide the reader with insights into vital debates about the region, underscoring the compelling issues emanating from colonialism and postcolonialism.

Indian Thought and Western Theism

Indian Thought and Western Theism
Author: Martin Ganeri
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2015-02-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317551672

The encounter between the West and India in the modern period has also been an encounter between Western modernity and the traditions of classical Indian thought. This book is the study of one aspect this encounter, that between Western scholasticism and one classical Indian tradition of religious thought and practice: the Vedānta. In the modern period there have been many attempts to relate Western theistic traditions to classical Indian accounts of ultimate reality and the world. Parallels have usually been drawn with modern forms of Western philosophy or modern trends in theism. Modern Indological studies have continued to make substantial use of Western terms and concepts to describe and analyse Indian thought. A much-neglected area of study has been the relationship between Western scholastic theology and classical Indian thought. This book challenges existing parallels with modern philosophy of religion and forms of theism. It argues instead that there is an affinity between scholasticism and classical Indian traditions. It considers the thought of Rāmānuja (traditional dates 1017-1137 CE), who developed an influential theist and realist form of Vedānta, and considers how this relates to that of the most influential of Western scholastics, Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274 CE). Within what remain very different traditions we can see similar methods of enquiry, as well as common questions and concerns in their accounts of ultimate reality and of the world. Arguing that there is indeed an affinity between the Western scholastic tradition and that of classical Indian thought, and suggesting a reversal of the tendencies of earlier interpretations, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian religion, Hinduism and Indian philosophy.

Studies in Indian Archaeology

Studies in Indian Archaeology
Author: Hasmukhlal Dhirajlal Sankalia
Publisher: Popular Prakashan
Total Pages: 314
Release: 1985
Genre: Excavations (Archaeology)
ISBN: 9780861320882

Unifying Hinduism

Unifying Hinduism
Author: Andrew J. Nicholson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2013-12-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231149875

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.

Indian Epigraphy

Indian Epigraphy
Author: Richard Salomon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 1998-12-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0195356667

This book provides a general survey of all the inscriptional material in the Sanskrit, Prakrit, and modern Indo-Aryan languages, including donative, dedicatory, panegyric, ritual, and literary texts carved on stone, metal, and other materials. This material comprises many thousands of documents dating from a range of more than two millennia, found in India and the neighboring nations of South Asia, as well as in many parts of Southeast, central, and East Asia. The inscriptions are written, for the most part, in the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts and their many varieties and derivatives. Inscriptional materials are of particular importance for the study of the Indian world, constituting the most detailed and accurate historical and chronological data for nearly all aspects of traditional Indian culture in ancient and medieval times. Richard Salomon surveys the entire corpus of Indo-Aryan inscriptions in terms of their contents, languages, scripts, and historical and cultural significance. He presents this material in such a way as to make it useful not only to Indologists but also non-specialists, including persons working in other aspects of Indian or South Asian studies, as well as scholars of epigraphy and ancient history and culture in other regions of the world.

India and Indology

India and Indology
Author: William Norman Brown
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
Total Pages: 410
Release: 1978
Genre: History
ISBN:

Indological Studies

Indological Studies
Author: Sachindra Kumar Maity
Publisher:
Total Pages: 222
Release: 1987
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

A galaxy of renowned scholars and orientologists from India and abroad have contributed twenty-seven learned papers for this volume as a token of the high esteem in which they held the great Indologist and savant, Professor D. C. Sircar. These papers traverse a large variety of subjects in the different sub-fields of Indology. While the essay by A. L. Basham enhances our understanding of Asoka, Romila Thapar’s paper is a useful addition to our knowledge of the Mauryan period. J.S.M. Derrett’s piece on a quotation from the Dhammapada gives an interesting analysis. John C. Huntington’s study of a section of an early portable shrine from Gandhara is fascinating. The evidence produced by H. D. Sankalia after his recent excavation at Pune he pushed back Indian Civilization to the Old Stone Age. R. C. Gaur’s pper gives a scintillating account of Mathura-Govardhana region in its historical perspective. Arabinda Ghosh gives a bird’s eyeview of the architectural and artistic heritage of India. S. K. Maity who had life-long association with his teacher has painstakingly compiled an exhaustive bibliography of Professor D. C. Sircar’s published books, research papers and articles on epigraphy and palaeography.