On the fundamentals of Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy.

Contributed research papers presented at a National Seminar organized under the joint auspices of Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, Tirupati and Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi from 27th to 29th March 2004 at R.S. Vidyapeeth, Tirupati.

Global forest loss is highest in the tropical region, an area with high biological biodiversity. As some of these forests are part of indigenous forest management, it is important to pay attention to such management, its values and practices for better conservation. This paper focuses on sacred freshwater swamp forests of the Western Ghats, India, and with it a faith-based approach to nature conservation. Drawing on fieldwork and focus groups, we present the rituals and rules that structure the governance of (...) sacred swamps. We also discuss in depth the ecological, socio-cultural and economic valuation of these freshwater swamps by various local groups. In this way, we show overlaps and differences of valuation among different groups. In the context of a secular state with a diversity of faith groups and migration dynamics, we propose that faith-based governance of sacred swamps can benefit from the emphasis of faith-independent, 'accessible' ecological, socio-cultural and economic values to foster a dialogue around sacred swamps and their place for livelihoods and nature conservation. (shrink)

Central to Kuhn’s notion of incommensurability are the ideas of meaning variance and lexicon, and the impossibility of translation of terms across different theories. Such a notion of incommensurability is based on a particular understanding of what a scientific language is. In this paper we first attempt to understand this notion of scientific language in the context of incommensurability. We consider the consequences of the essential multisemiotic character of scientific theories and show how this leads to even a single theory (...) being potentially ‘internally incommensurable’. We then discuss Kuhn’s lexicon‐based approach to incommensurability and the problems associated with it. Finally we argue that this approach by Kuhn has interesting overlaps with the problem of meaning associated with multisemiosis, particularly the challenge of understanding the process of symbolization in scientific theories. (shrink)

This paper is in two parts. The first presents an analysis of the epistemology underlying the practice of classical Indian mathematical astronomy, as presented in three works of Nīlakaṇṭha Somayāji (1444–1545 CE). It is argued that the underlying concepts put great value on careful observation and skill in development of algorithms and use of computation. This is reflected in the technical terminology used to describe scientific method. The keywords in this enterprise include parīkṣā, anumāna, gaṇita, yukti, nyāya, siddhānta, tarka and (...) anveṣaṇa. The concepts that underlie these terms are analysed and compared with such ideas as theory, model, computation, positivism, empiricism etc. In a short second part, it is proposed that the primacy awarded to number and computation in classical Indian science led to an artificial language that did include equations but emphasized displays that facilitated calculation, as in the Bakshali manuscript (800 CE?). It is further argued that echoes of these concepts can be recognized in current science, where computation is once again playing a greater role triggered by spectacular developments in computer technology. (shrink)

Central to Kuhn's notion of incommensurability are the ideas of meaning variance and lexicon, and the impossibility of translation of terms across different theories. Such a notion of incommensurability is based on a particular understanding of what a scientific language is. In this paper we first attempt to understand this notion of scientific language in the context of incommensurability. We consider the consequences of the essential multisemiotic character of scientific theories and show how this leads to even a single theory (...) being potentially 'internally incommensurable'. We then discuss Kuhn's lexicon-based approach to incommensurability and the problems associated with it. Finally we argue that this approach by Kuhn has interesting overlaps with the problem of meaning associated with multisemiosis, particularly the challenge of understanding the process of symbolization in scientific theories. (shrink)

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This article describes how the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the higher education institutes in developing nations like India to relook at pedagogical approaches. Due to government imposing nationwide lockdown, higher educational institutes were quickly adopting to imbibe online learning medium. This research takes a qualitative thematic analytical approach to explore the facilitators and challenges to online learning from the perspectives of both learners and educators in higher education institutes. We have specifically explored the ethical and social concerns related to online (...) learning and the possible solution for the same. (shrink)

This article describes the aircraft image recognition system implemented using the phase correlation technique in Matlab environment. The phase correlation is computed by using the normalized cross-power spectrum between the database and the template test image. The main objective of this article is to develop methods for static analysis of aircraft images. An unknown fighter aircraft is recognized by comparing its static image with those from a database of images of aircraft. This work is a research initiative involving the use (...) of image processing techniques to detect three-dimensional aircraft object based on their 2D images, providing feedback information for strategic purposes. The phase correlation technique is found to give a better recognition result for the set of database and test images considered, compared with the invariant moments. The phase correlation method is also used in other areas such as image registration. Aircraft images used include those from AeroIndia 2011 held at Bangalore, India. (shrink)

This volume inquires into the relationship between philosophy, politics and capitalism by rethinking Kyoto School philosophy in relation to capitalist modernity.

This article deals with detection and accommodation of sensor faults in longitudinal dynamics of an F8 aircraft model. Both the detection of the fault and reconfiguration of the failed sensor are done with the help of neural network-based models. Detection of a sensor fault is done with the help of knowledge-based neural network fault detection. Apart from KBNNFD, another neural network model is developed in this article for the reconfiguration of the failed sensor. A model-based approach of the neural network (...) is developed, which uses the radial basis function of the neural network. MBNN successfully does the task of providing analytical redundancy for the aircraft sensor. In this work, both detection and reconfiguration of a fault is done using neural networks. Hence, the control system becomes robust for handling sensor failures near steady state and reconfiguration is also faster. A generalized regression neural network, which is a type of radial basis network, is used for MBNN, which gives very efficient results for function approximation. An F8 aircraft model and C-Star controller, which improves its handling quality, are used for validation of the method involved. Models of F8 aircraft, C-Star controller, KBNNFD, and MBNN were developed using MATLAB/simulink. Successful implementation and simulation results are shown and discussed using Simulink. (shrink)

Devant les désordres du monde d’aujourd’hui, il existe au sein du confucianisme chinois un courant qui tente, dans les termes traditionnels du tianxia, « tous sous le ciel », d’esquisser les contours d’un nouvel ordre du monde et d’un horizon soutenable pour l’avenir. En le rapportant aux perspectives marxistes, cet article s’efforce de dégager ses motifs essentiels et de décrypter les termes du débat auquel il donne lieu. Quels enseignements parvient-il à dégager de cette philosophie millénaire? Est-il à comprendre comme (...) une alternative au marxisme? Ou bien serait-il capable de se repenser autour d’une critique de l’impérialisme? L’article interroge en ce sens un auteur contemporain significatif, Zhao Tingyang. (shrink)

Hegel's Eurocentrism has become something of an elephant in the room, too obvious to merit discussion. The secondary literature on Hegel often concedes that many of Hegel's comments about the Orient are misguided and uninformed, and then declares that such remarks are of no consequence to his philosophy. However, recently, some scholars have contended that Hegel's view of freedom is fundamentally connected to his negative vision of the Orient and Africa. For example, Alison Stone asserts that Hegel's idea of freedom (...) is premised on his Eurocentrism and colonialism. Drawing on Peter Sahota's essay on Hegel and Hinduism, she argues that Hegel's idea of freedom as liberation from nature tends to exclude non-Western conceptions of freedom. If Stone's contention is true, there would be no way to, as she puts it, save Hegel from himself. I argue that we can move some way towards rescuing Hegel by noting how scholars from modern Asia incorporated some of Hegel's ideas to struggle against Eurocentrism. This essay will read Hegel's comments on the Orient in light of his larger philosophy and then examine how Japanese scholars, specifically Okakura Tenshin (1863–1913) construct what could be called a Hegel-inspired defense of the concept of Asia or the Orient. I claim that if one understands the excesses of Western life to be linked to a vision of freedom based merely on self-interest and pleasure, when scholars and activists from Asia question Western culture, they actually follow Hegel's insights. Okakura, who studied Hegel in college, rethought Asia as overcoming the abstract individualist freedom of the West and replacing it a more holistic, and partially, Hegelian form of freedom. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that although the Confucian idea of 'minben' is not synonymous with democracy, some its tenets are conducive to the promotion of a regime in which citizens are politically and economically empowered. In particular, I focus on the way that Confucius, Mencius and Jia Yi stress that government should meet the basic needs of its people. Material well-being is an important precondition of democracy that is often overlooked in contemporary discussions of Chinese government, which usually focus (...) on negative rights or the authoritarian state. (shrink)

Introduction : Zhang Taiyan and Chinese modernity -- Zhang's critique of Kang Youwei : anti-Manchuism, the national essence, and revolution -- Buddhist epistemology and modern self-identity : Zhang Taiyan's "On establishing religion" -- Transfiguring modern temporality : Zhang Taiyan's critique of evolutionary history -- Daoist equalization against the universal principle : Zhang Taiyan's critique of late Qing political theory -- Conclusion : Zhang Taiyan, Lu Xun and Wang Hui : the politics of imagining a better future.

The various forms of accounting practice have a long history. However, the focus of historical accounting scholarship examining premodern times has tended to be the genesis of double-entry book-keeping techniques. In particular, very few scholars have examined influences on the adoption of management accounting techniques in the ancient periods of India’s long history. We respond to this lacuna by examining management accounting at an organizational level within an ancient and economically successful society, namely the Mauryan period. The aim is to (...) explore management accounting practices implicated in the enforcement of economic and ethical behavior in the daily lives of Mauryan organizational actors. Drawing on a translation of original records in the form of a collection of texts known as the Arthasastra, this paper explores the intended uses of management accounting and, in particular, controls to persuade organizational actors to adapt the values and norms of wealth generation within the boundaries of socially acceptable roles. Our contribution is to highlight the society-oriented role of management accounting within Mauryan organizations. (shrink)

This is a review-essay on William Haver’s recent translation of three essays by Nishida Kitarō in a volume entitledOntologies of Production. Nishida is one of the founders of the famous Kyoto School of philosophy and, while his philosophy is not really Marxist, Haver attempts to bring Nishida into dialogue with Marx in his Introduction and through his selection of essays to translate. I attempt to situate Haver’s translation in a brief discussion of a recent debate on how to write modern (...) Japanese intellectual history and, through this examination, I suggest a framework for analysing modern intellectual history drawing on the work of Harry Harootunian, Moishe Postone and Jacques Bidet. In short, this framework attempts to relate the production of ideas to the temporal dynamic associated with capital, the commodity-form and other related mediations that make up the modern global capitalist system. Then I turn to Haver’s Introduction and translations and both explain some of the key concepts of Nishida and show how, using the framework that I outlined, Nishida’s work can be conceived of as failing to understand its own conditions of possibility in the multiple mediations of capitalism. For this reason, Nishida’s work, like many other romantic critiques of capitalism, criticises the abstractions of modernity at an abstract level, failing to account for the mediations of capitalism such as class and the commodity. (shrink)

The essays in this volume edited by Axel Schneider and Thomas Fröhlich deal with a crucial topic, namely discourses around the concept of progress in China. Although numerous authors, including Prasenjit Duara, Luke Kwong and others,1 have dealt with this issue, this volume goes further by examining the details of the interpretation of ideas of progress and showing that the incorporation of linear time in China was far from linear.The book is divided into an Introduction, three parts, and nine chapters. (...) The first part, "Initial Conceptual Encounters," consists of two chapters, Kai Vogelsang's "The Chinese Concept of Progress" and Takahiro Nakajima's "The Progress of Civilization and Confucianism in Modern East... (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of texts and using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume shows how Chinese and Japanese intellectuals mobilized the past to create a better future. It is especially significant today given a world where, amidst tensions within Asia and the rise of China, East Asian intellectuals and governments constantly find new political meanings in their traditions. The essays illuminate how throughout Chinese and Japanese history, thinkers constantly weaved together nationalism, internationalism and a politics of time. This volume (...) explores a broad range of subjects such as premodern and early modern attempts to conjure a politics of Confucianism, twentieth century Japanese Marxist interpretations of Buddhism and Japanese and Chinese endeavors to imagine a new world order. In sum, this book shows us why understanding East Asian pasts are essential to making sense of ideological trends in contemporary China and Japan. For example, without understanding Confucianism and how modern intellectuals in China grappled with this body of thought, we would be unable to make sense of the Chinese government's current promotion of the Chinese classics. This book will interest students and scholars of political science, history and Asian Studies, sociology and philosophy. (shrink)

Of late, there has been a deep interest in the subject of cultures and group behaviours with large numbers of nations engaging in international trade and other kinds of interactions. While a large body of knowledge in this area is available about other nations, it is only recently that interest in the study of Indian ethos has received attention. This paper is one such attempt to identify the distinctive features of leadership in the Indian ethos and contrast it with the (...) delineation of leadership in the Western ethos. It is suggested that while there are several similarities, the spiritual orientation and non-desire motivated action distinguish leader ship in the Indian ethos from that in the Western ethos. (shrink)

Pt. 1. Book of nirvāṇa -- pt. 2. Book of nirvāṇa.

The papers collected in this volume, although dealing with several different themes, congeal around a debate about the ways and extent of the dominance of linear time and progressive history and the concomitant delineation of the nation in Chinese and Japanese historiography.

The concept of avidyā or ignorance is central to the Advaita Vedāntic position of Śȧnkara. The post-Śaṅkara Advaitins wrote sub-commentaries on the original texts of Śaṅkara with the intention of strengthening his views. Over the passage of time the views of these sub-commentators of Śaṅkara came to be regarded as representing the doctrine of Advaita particularly with regard to the concept of avidyā. Swami Satchidanandendra Saraswati, a scholar-monk of Holenarsipur, challenged the accepted tradition through the publication of his work Mūlāvidyānirāsaḥ, (...) particularly with regard to the avidyādoctrine. It was his contention that the post-Śaṅkara commentators brought their own innovations particularly on the nature of avidyā. This was the idea of mūlāvidyā or ‘root ignorance’, a positive entity which is the material cause of the phenomenal world. Saraswati argues that such an idea of mūlāvidyā is not to be found in the bhāṣyas (commentaries) of Śaṅkara and is foisted upon Śaṅkara. This paper attempts to show that although Śaṅkara may not have explicitly favoured such a view of mūlāvidyā, his lack of clarity on the nature of avidyā left enough scope for the post-Śaṅkara commentators to take such a position on avidyā. (shrink)