The topic of asymmetry between the semantic and the phono-morphological levels of language emerges very early in Indian technical and speculative reflections as it also does in pre-socratic Greek thought. A well established relation between words and the objects they denote seems to have been presupposed for each analysis of the signification long before its earliest statement. The present paper aims at shedding light on two different patterns of tackling the mentioned problem. The first approach sees asymmetry as an (...) exception to the regular correspondence between language and reality, whereas the second approach considers language in itself as a conceptualisation which does not faithfully represent reality. In the latter case, asymmetry is no longer an exception, but the rule. (shrink)

Introduction By the late fifth century BCE Panini had composed the Astadhyayi, consisting of nearly 4000 rules giving a precise and fairly complete ...

In this paper, I give examples of the similarities in thought which I have found in the works of philosophers and thinkers of ancient Greece and ancient India. Being a comparative philosopher, I have worked with both traditions for many years. In fact, the more I do research in both traditions, the more similarities I have found in various views or perspectives, beliefs and values.After briefly explaining some of the similarities, I argue that an ongoing exploration and comparison (...) of these two great traditions can help humans to understand the origins of knowledge, especially philosophical knowledge, and that because the study involves both Western and non-Western traditions, it will require comparative philosophers to undertake the study. Furthermore, since the study will involve research concerning the two cultures, anthropologists, linguists, and some historians will also be needed in this undertaking. (shrink)

An accessible and relevant introduction to the ancient Indian linguistic tradition, this book assesses the influence of Indian linguistic thought on Western linguistics. It is essential reading for scholars and students of theoretical and historical linguistics, as well as those interested in Indian languages, and Indian/South Asian Studies.

This collection of articles and review essays, including many hard to find pieces, comprises the most important and fundamental studies of Indian logic and linguistics ever undertaken. Frits Staal is concerned with four basic questions: Are there universals of logic that transcend culture and time? Are there universals of language and linguistics? What is the nature of Indian logic? And what is the nature of Indian linguistics? By addressing these questions, Staal demonstrates that, contrary (...) to the general assumption among Western philosophers, the classical philosophers of India were rationalists, attentive to arguments. They were in this respect unlike contemporary Western thinkers inspired by existentialism or hermeneutics, and like the ancient Chinese, Greeks, and many medieval European schoolmen, only--as Staal says--more so. Universals establishes that Asia's contributions are not only compatible with what has been produced in the West, but a necessary ingredient and an essential component of any future human science. (shrink)

This study focuses on the devices implemented in classical Indian texts on ritual and language in order to develop a structure of rules in an economic and systematic way. These devices presuppose a spatial approach to ritual and language, one which deals for instance with absences as substitutions within a pre-existing grid, and not as temporal disappearances. In this way, the study reveals a key feature of some among the most influential schools of Indian thought. The sources are (...) Kalpasūtra, Vyākaraṇa and Mīmāṃsā, three textual traditions which developed alongside each other, sharing - as the volume shows - common presuppositions and methodologies. The book will be of interest for Sanskritists, scholars of ritual exegesis and of the history of linguistics. - Cover. (shrink)

INDIAN AND WESTERN PHILOSOPHY- A Study in Contrasts By BETTY HEIMANN. Originally published in I937. Contents include: 1. INTRODUCTION 13 2. THEOLOGY 2Q 3. ONTOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY 46 4. ETHICS 63 5. LOGIC 79 6. AESTHETICS 98 7. HISTORY AND APPLIED SCIENCE Il6 8. THE APPARENT RAPPROCHEMENT BETWEEN WEST AND EAST 131 EPILOGUE 147 INDEX OF PROBLEMS TREATED 149. INDIAN AND WESTERN PHILOSOPHY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: ONE ceuvre dart est un coin de la creation vu d travers un (...) temperament, says Zola and we may be justified in applying this aphorism when we venture on a some what similar survey and attempt an artificial selection from World-Philosophy throughout the ages. My aim, however, is not to elaborate any finished outline of all the philosophical conceptions that have arisen in East and West up to the present day, but merely to indicate the essential and fundamental tendencies and principles. In tracing the sources of Western Philosophy to Plato and Aristotle, and still earlier to the pre-Socratics of ancient Greece, I became convinced that all translations are, to a greater or less degree, modes of interpretation. I studied the Classics, therefore, from the linguistic standpoint, and this procedure ultimately developed into a philosophical method intimately associated with the psychological aspects of Philology. In pursuing this task I discovered at the same time the specifically material basis of all Western thought. In other words in my regress from the history of modern Philosophy to the dawn of Greek speculation, or to repeat to the pre-Socratics, I found myself able to trace the main trends of Western Philosophy to the prior era of the Greek Sophists, whose outstanding role as the actual founders of Western thought is, in my opinion, too frequently underestimated. Their basic dogma which has held good in the West ever since was, Man is the Measure of all things. At this point an equally important feature must be emphasized for throughout this age of the Sophists there persists the profound contrast between the typically Western, and the equally distinctive Eastern, intellectual and spiritual atmospheres. In this connection, still further, I was deeply impressed by the far-reaching divergence of the Western anthropological tendency from the older cosmic out look upon Man as being part and parcel of the Universe And this radical antithesis is to be dis cerned in contemporary Greek drama. For Aeschylus, the Marathonomaches, creates all his immortal tragedies in the genuinely cosmic mood. Every in fraction of cosmic order, with no single exception, must generate its own inevitable reaction, and also its punishment, in order that the primal cosmic harmony may once more be restored... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Indian Philosophy: A Very Short IntroductionHeeraman TiwariIndian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. By Sue Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. 168.In recent years there has been a renewed interest in classical Indian philosophy; it cannot be a coincidence that at least three short books on the subject were written for the lay reader between the year 2000 and 2002, and all published by Oxford University (...) Press: one by the famous Indian philosopher J. N. Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, and another by a bright, young Indian philosopher Jonardon Ganeri, Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason. The third volume on the topic is the book under review, Sue Hamilton's Indian Philosophy, in Oxford University Press' "Very Short Introductions" series. While Mohanty and Ganeri are formidable Indian philosophers, Hamilton was originally trained as a scholar of Buddhist religion and developed an interest in the philosophical side of India much later in her career, when she began to give courses on Indian philosophy at Kings College, London.Hamilton opens her book by invoking India's past, which contains "a long, rich, and diverse tradition of philosophical thought," but hastens to remind us that the "role of philosophizing" in India is quite different from that of the West: India's is a philosophy of "personal destiny," "spiritual quest," and not a "professional intellectual pursuit." Hamilton echoes the Orientalists of the early twentieth century when she says that "what Westerners call religion and philosophy are combined in India": in other words, philosophy in India falls short of qualifying as an "academic discipline" (p. 1). Hamilton is probably right in pressing home the popular Western misconception [End Page 482] about Indian philosophy that it is nothing but a "mystical," "magical" tradition of the East, where some "poor" Indians masqueraded as philosophers by elucidating their theory of the universe in "stories about an elephant supporting the earth and a tortoise supporting the elephant."1 Although the renowned modern Indian philosopher B. K. Matilal has tried to remove such misconceptions in one of his pioneering works, the tradition still remains.2 Matilal was not only responding to the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke (who, incidentally, had not read any text on Indian philosophy but had only heard of the philosophy of ancient India) but was also commenting on the prejudices of some twentieth-century Western philosophers, in particular one sweeping generalization about "philosophy" by Anthony Flew.3Much water has flowed under the bridge since the time when such prejudices were warmly entertained, but the reluctance to pay due attention to rationality in Indian philosophy has not fully waned. It is a tribute to Indian philosophers like J. N. Mohanty and B. K. Matilal that Western philosophers have now begun to look at Indian philosophy beyond its "mystic" and "magical" charm.4 In her postscript (p. 139), Hamilton applauds those modern Indian scholars (read: Mohanty, Matilal, and Ganeri) who, owing to "the influence of Western ways of doing things," have tried, with the help of the Naiyāyikas and the Buddhists, to overcome Western misconceptions—for example, that Indian thought is "anything but rational"—by "promoting Indian philosophy strictly in the sense of logical argument," and thus, only in the specific sense of logic and linguistic analysis, has it come to be recognized as an "academic discipline." One must applaud Hamilton, too, for her excellent effort in covering such a large number of topics in just thirty-five thousand words!The narrative of the book throughout suggests an attempt to contrast Indian philosophy with that of the West, and more often than not Western philosophy becomes a yardstick to evaluate "the role of philosophizing" in India in its "original" and "traditional" sense, that is, "religious" and "soteriological." Hamilton does acknowledge that, as in India so in the post-Greek West, too—at least until Immanuel Kant came on the scene—philosophers, namely Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Hegel, mainly sought "to understand more about 'God's world'" (pp. 5-6). But the difference between the philosophy of the Christian West and that of India was that while the former tried to understand "God's world" through "rational means" the latter... (shrink)

Ancient allures the postmodern social subject trapped in the strangeness of time—the time after the end of history. For that time-beaten subject ancient is the unconscious of coherence, predictability, and certainty. Or perhaps that ancient is a glory fled. Whatsoever, ancient is generally sacralized—irrespective of the type of socialization that happened in the past—and journey to the ancient is often deemed to be a pilgrimage. When ideas of the ancient in their individuality and totality (...) inter alia become the natural intellectual resource for rebuilding postmodern societies, discriminative ingenuity becomes an essential faculty. Any uncritical reverence of the ancient becomes antithetical to modern social and political values, inviting the risk of reproducing inequities of the past. This article problematizes such uncritical dependence on the ancient using Ancient Indian Jurisprudence, which has been looked up on as a repository of moral and legal values, as a case in point. It meditates from the experiences and perspectives of an imaginary ‘teaching subject’ on the many pitfalls and possibilities of the ancient as it builds a framework of teaching and learning, and a representative scheme of evaluation for Ancient Indian Jurisprudence. (shrink)

Ancient Indian Coins. Osmund Bopearachchi and Wilfried Pieper., Brepols, Turnhout 1998. 289 pp. + 59 plates. €88. ISBN 2-503-50730-1 Uygur Buddhist Literature. Johan Elverskog., Brepols, Turnhout 1997. 154 pp. €43. ISBN 2-503-50544-9.

In this article, the Gayatri mantra, one of the most sacred chants to be found in Hindu lore, will be analysed as a blend, where an entire philosophy is compressed into these few syllables, which will be expounded upon here in more detail. Drawing upon insights from conceptual blending theory, this sacred mantra will be unpacked and explored, and it will be shown here that this ancient Rigvedic hymn is actually a nucleic compression which once tapped into leads the (...) practitioner to new insights and higher levels of spiritual awareness as the inner meaning unfolds. Practising Hindus around the world revere and recite this mantra with the utmost reverence, and this is true of the Indian diaspora in South Africa as well. Aside from presenting this hymn through the lens of blending theory, the aim is to demonstrate and explain why exactly this mantra is chanted with such reverence and given precedence over the many other mantras found throughout the Vedic texts. (shrink)

The article is the first exploration of Mārganāṭyam, a new tradition in the performing arts of modern India, created from the beginning of the XXI century by an outstanding researcher of musical, theatrical and dance culture, Kalamandalam Piyal Bhattacharya and his students. It is based on the many years of the author’s personal observations, interaction, interviews and discussions with the participants of “Chidakash Kalalay. Centre of Art and Divinity”, an artistic community based on the direct transfer of knowledge and skills (...) from teacher to students, which has developed around Piyal. The features of the method of reconstruction of the ancient Indian theater, the flexible application of the legacy of the past in modern conditions are under study. Particular attention is paid to the artistic interpretation and comprehension of the Indian philosophical heritage, and above all the concepts and worldview of Nyaya and Vedanta systems, transferring them to the space of scenic images. The presented material demonstrates that an integrated approach to the artistic heritage, a metatheater, combined with individual pedagogical unfold of the personality of the artists, creates the possibility of recreating the long-vanished tradition and complex philosophical issues in a way that is well understood today, relevant and reflects the essential needs of modern creators and viewers of the Indian theater at large. (shrink)

A drink called surā is the alcoholic drink mentioned in our oldest Indian text, the Ṛg Veda, and people continued to make a drink called surā for millennia. This article uses the methodology of the comparative study of fermentation methods in order to make sense of the earliest descriptions of surā brewing processes. Surā was brewed in a semi-solid state, using malts for saccharification, perhaps also with a complex microbial ferment starter as one sees elsewhere in Asia today. Surā (...) was not distilled. Understanding this has philological value: if surā was brewed with this process, we can better understand certain words associated with surā in Vedic texts, e.g., the drink called parisrut, certain material objects, and certain processes. Although brewing instructions are varied and may reflect several modes of brewing, and although the process in surviving descriptions may have been ritually inflected to highlight resemblances with soma pressing, I argue we can still get a sense of the basic method of brewing. These are some of the earliest detailed descriptions of brewing a grain drink that, con- sidered in the long term, has similarities with both Mesopotamian brewing and East Asian methods. (shrink)

B.K.Matilal, and earlier J.F.Staal, have suggested a reading of the `Nyaya five limb schema' (also sometimes referred to as the Indian Schema or Hindu Syllogism) from Gotama's Nyaya-Sutra in terms of a binary occurrence relation. In this paper we provide a rational justification of a version of this reading as Analogical Reasoning within the framework of Polyadic Pure Inductive Logic.

Proceedings of the seminar organized by Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, University of Pune in 2007.

It remains only to remark that, what I, the survivor through, get called is in some measure a matter of semantical preference. And Sanskrit terms that might, sometimes, be rendered “consciousness” in English — like ‘citta’, or ‘caitanya’, or ‘cetana’, for instance — could serve, and do, solong as one stays mindful of the facts — that they are terms for what I am, surviving through my being conscious, and my not being so, and not merely for what I am, (...) when conscious.What seems to me of deep significance, though, is that other terms — like ‘ātman’, ‘puru $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{s}$$ a’, ‘sāk $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{s}$$ in’, and even ‘'jīvātman’ — far more often get used for what I'm talking of here; and that none of these obviously, or, indeed, ever need mean ‘consciousness’.6. (shrink)

Contributed articles on eighteen Indic philosophers and grammarians flourishing between 400 B.C. to 1600 A.D.