Festschrift in honor of 60th birtha anniversary of Ganesh Umakant Thite, Sanskritist; comprises contributed articles on various aspects of Vedic literature, Hinduism and Indic philosophy.

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites (...) us to reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

Pali Literature, including the Canonical Literature in Prakrit and Sanskrit of all the Hinayana Schools. K. R. Norman. Vol.VII, fasc.2, of A History of Indian Literature ed. Jan Gonda. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1983. X + 210pp. DM 98.

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed (...) on a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

Collection of research papers on various aspects of Hindu philosophy, Puranas and Sanskrit literature.

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works (...) of Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

Lectures delivered and papers presented by the author at various seminars; most previously published.

Festschrift in honor of V.N. Jha, b. 1946, Indologist; comprises contributed papers on various aspects of Vedic literature and philosophy.

In the history of Sanskrit literary theory Bhaṭṭanāyaka occupies an influential yet mysterious position. Abhinavagupta clearly owes a great debt to him, but since Bhaṭṭanāyaka’s works themselves have been lost, it has proven difficult to understand exactly what that debt is. The common understanding is that Bhaṭṭanāyaka was a Mīmāṃsaka and that he applied the principles of Vedic hermeneutics to literature. But this actually doesn’t fit well with much of what Abhinavagupta tells us about Bhaṭṭanāyaka, and upon (...) closer inspection it becomes clear that in fact Abhinavagupta presents him as someone who was thoroughly interested in ideas drawn from non-dual Vedānta. This article reexamines the depictions of Bhaṭṭanāyaka in Abhinavagupta’s works and shows that while the evidence for a Mīmāṃsā connection is quite thin, the evidence for a similar connection to Vedānta is quite strong. Taking this connection seriously helps us develop a much clearer picture of Bhaṭṭanāyaka’s ideas, and it also helps us understand various details of Abhinavagupta’s response to Bhaṭṭanāyaka that would otherwise remain obscure. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: THE NAME MADHYAMAKA The Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism goes back to Nagarjuna, the great Indian Buddhist philosopher who is placed ...

This article tells an intellectual history of Mammaṭa Bhaṭṭa’s Kāvyaprakāśa in the Benares-Centered Network of Sanskrit Learning from c. 1600–1750 CE. The core narrative proposed herein is that the discourse on Sanskrit Poetics reaches a bifurcated state by the 1400s and 1500s: the Kāvyaprakāśa commentarial tradition constitutes a distinct domain, wherein commentators debate exclusively among themselves on lower-order issues. This period of normalcy is ruptured by Appayya Dīkṣita, who effectively destabilizes the discourse, overhauling the conventional wisdom via (...) his empiricist polemics and via the importation of a new doxographical methodology from Vedānta in his magnum opus on Sanskrit Poetics, the Citramīmāṃsā. Shortly thereafter, Jayarāma Nyāyapañcānana, the Benares-based Naiyāyika from the East, substantially defends Mammaṭa’s system of poetic ornaments against Appayya’s polemics within his Kāvyaprakāśa commentary, marking the beginning of the bifurcation’s erosion. The tension of how to resolve Appayya’s system with Mammaṭa’s dominates the literature for the ensuing century, and commentators such as Kamalākara Bhaṭṭa, Bhīmasena Dīkṣita, and Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa all champion defenses of the Kāvyaprakāśa’s authoritative and conservative system against Appayya. This tension culminates in the discourse’s last major treatise, the Alaṅkārakaustubha of Viśveśvara Paṇḍita, wherein Viśveśvara situates himself on a continuum with Jayarāma and defends the core contours of Mammaṭa’s system against Appayya and Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja. Viśveśvara systematically utilizes the most up-to-date frameworks and positions of Nyāya, entailing radical transformations for the core terminology, standards of debate, and philosophical underpinnings in Sanskrit Poetics. The article concludes by way of contextualizing Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja within this new narrative. (shrink)

Canonical texts -- Philosophy -- Literature and History.

Throughout its history of almost a millennium and a half, Sanskrit kāvyaśāstra was resolutely obsessed with the task of unravelling the ontology kāvya. Literary theoreticians in Sanskrit, irrespective of their spatio-temporal locations, unanimously agreed upon the fact that kāvya was a special mode of expression characterized by the presence of certain unique linguistic elements. Nonetheless, this did not imply that kāvyaśāstra was an intellectual tradition unmarked by disagreements. The real point of contention among the practitioners of (...) class='Hi'>Sanskrit literary theory was the prioritization of certain formal elements as the ‘soul’ of literature. This strong sense of intellectual disagreement on the question of what constituted the soul of kāvya eventually paved the way for the emergence of new frameworks of criticism and extensive scrutiny of the existing categories, thus playing a vital role in keeping this tradition alive and new.But towards the turn of the 20th century, Sanskrit kāvyaśāstra tradition underwent an epistemic rupture primarily because of a change in the way the idea of literariness was understood. During this phase, the traditional Formalistic notions about literature underwent a radical transformation, and the style and language of literature eventually became similar to everyday speech. This trend played an important role in severing Sanskrit kāvyaśāstra’s natural tie with literature. Eventually, the vigour in which new treatises in Sanskrit literary poetics were produced also dwindled. This did not mean that the scholarship in Sanskrit poetics vanished. Scholars in Sanskrit poetics continued to flourish in India, but in a different form and shape. In other words, the focus of scholars in Sanskrit poetics slowly got shifted from the production of new treatises in Sanskrit poetics to the creation of the intellectual history of this field and the application of these theories to evaluate the literary merit of modern literary texts. Though these two approaches played a vital role in disseminating the knowledge about Sanskrit poetics in modern times, they were caught up in an ontological certitude. In other words, neither of these two directions attempted to study these theoretical positions from a standpoint other than that of literary theory. To borrow a Barthian terminology, these two approaches treated Sanskrit poetics as a ‘work,’ instead of a ‘Text.’ This paper aims to intervene in this lacuna of scholarship by proposing the Derridian idea of ‘play’ as a methodological framework to unearth the potentialities lying dormant in these theories and to move beyond the ontological certitude traditionally imposed on these theoretical positions. The new methodological praxis that I put forward in this paper is further exemplified through a non-canonical reading of Ānandavardhana’s avivakṣita-vācya-dhvani. (shrink)

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

Sanskrit research articles on Hindu philosophy and controbution of Assam to Sanskrit literature.

This article, divided into two parts, traces and discusses two pairs of analogies invoked in Sanskrit literature to articulate the paradox of God’s oneness and multiplicity vis-à-vis the souls and the manifest world, reflecting the philosophical positions of pariṇāmavāda and vivartavāda. These are, respectively, the analogies of fire in wood and dairy products in milk, and moon/sun in pools of water and space in pots. In Part I, having introduced prevalent ideas about the status of the supreme principle (...) vis-à-vis creation in Śaivism, Sāṅkhya, and Vedānta, I investigate instances of the first pair of analogies in multiple textual genres, and especially in Śaiva literature from South and Southeast Asia, to highlight the influence of pariṇāma-Vedānta on the Śaiva textual corpus. Arguing that the distribution of the two pairs of analogies may cast some light on the relationship between different strands of dualistic and non-dualistic scriptures, I propose that the first pair could be traced back to the “formative” period of Śaivism—that is, prior to the emergence of the fully dualistic Śaiva Saiddhāntika corpus known to us. (shrink)

This article, divided into two parts, traces and discusses two pairs of analogies invoked in Sanskrit literature to articulate the paradox of God’s oneness and multiplicity vis-à-vis the souls and the manifest world, reflecting the philosophical positions of pariṇāmavāda and vivartavāda. These are, respectively, the analogies of fire in wood and dairy products in milk, and moon/sun in pools of water and space in pots. Having introduced prevalent ideas about the status of the supreme principle vis-à-vis the souls (...) and creation in Śaivism, Sāṅkhya, and Vedānta, and having investigated instances of the first pair of analogies in multiple textual genres in Part I, here I turn to the discussion of the second set of analogies. Having proposed that the first set reflects the influence of pariṇāma-Vedānta on an early strand of the Śaiva textual corpus, I argue that the second set, attested prevalently in relatively late sources, betrays a Śaṅkarian origin, thereby suggesting a vivartavāda-Advaita Vedānta influence on the Śaiva corpus after the 9th or 10th century. (shrink)

The study of philosophical terms and doctrines in the Mahābhārata touches not only on important aspects of the contents, composition and the historical contexts of the epic, but also on the historiography of Indian philosophy. General ideas about the textual history of the epic and the distinction between “didactic” and “narrative” parts have influenced the study of epic philosophy no less than academic discussions about what is philosophy in India and how it developed. This results in different evaluations of (...) the place of philosophical texts in the epic and their relationship to the history of Indian philosophy. While some scholars have suggested that there is a “philosophy of the epic” its composers wished to propagate, others have argued that “philosophy” is included in the epic either in a “proto” form or in a variety of doctrines they deemed relevant. The article discusses these views and some of the heuristic assumptions on which they are based. It proposes to widen the scope of analysis by paying more attention to the interplay of narrative and didactic passages, the various ways in which philosophy is presented in the epic, and its connection to a larger spectrum of the reception of philosophy in textual genres and by audiences outside the expert circles of the philosophical schools. (shrink)

Contributed articles on Advaita, Hindu philosophy, Vedic and Sanskrit literature.

Contributed research papers on theoretical and practical aspect of Dharma in Vedic and classical Sanskrit literature.

Contributed articles on the concept of doctrines of Karma (action) in Indic philosophy with reference to Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sanskrit literature.

On various aspects of Hinduism, Hindu philosophy, and Sanskrit literature.

Contributed seminar papers on Purushārtha (four steps of Hindu spiritual life) in Vedic and Sanskrit literature.

Contributed essays on Vedanta philosophy and Sanskrit literature.

Festschrift in honor of Visvamūrti Śāstrī, born 1946, Sanskritist; comprises contributed articles on his life and works, Vedic and Sanskrit literature.