sanscrite cogitare, sanscrite loqui

Free will in Indian philosophy

2012-02-02T13:58:00.005+01:00

Free will is one of the most central topics of Western philosophy. In contrast, it is hard even to find an adequate synonym in Indian philosophy. Why? Possibly because:

1. Indian philosophy is not dominated by Theism as a philosophical position (there have been several theistic philosophies, but the core of Indian philosophy —Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya, Buddhism, Jainism…— does not need a personal God),
2. the theory of karman introduced determinism as a pre-condition, so that the only option left was some sort of compatibilism and everyone automatically adjusted.

Most Indian authors are in fact by default compatibilists. They assume automatically that we are determined by karman, but also that karman is not an inestricable chain. If it were one, no liberation would be possible without a Divine intervention. Predestination is, thus, admitted by some Theistic schools such as Madhva's one (and possibly presupposed by some verses of the Bhagavadgītā referring to eternal hell). However, predestination cannot be accepted by all the schools who stress the importance of one's path, such as Buddhism, nor be a philosophically viable option for the schools who do not recognise a personal (and, hence, arbitrary) God as fundamental to their system. If there is no God arbitrarily deciding to rescue the one and send to hell the other, what would be the rationale of predestination? A Materialist might answer that one just happens to be among the lucky ones or not, but materialism is, again, an extreme position within Indian philosophy.

On the topic of free will in Indian philosophy, see this post (and all other posts under the tag "free will").

Non-ontological approach in Mīmāṃsā

2012-02-01T09:50:00.005+01:00

What is prescriptive (normative) and what is just descriptive in the Brāhmaṇas and in Mīmāṃsā?

Elaborating on the identifications frequent in the Brāhmaṇas, Lars Göhler (Reflexion und Ritual in der Pūrvamīmāṃsā, 2011) writes:

Mylius (1976:146) writes that the [identifications in the Brāhmaṇas, E.F.] are based on the desire to systematise reality. The style and formulation of these identifications hint, however, also at a further purpose: The Brahmans did not just ascertain such identities, they conjured up them: in the identifications there is not only an ''is'', but also an ''ought''.

(Mylius (1976:146) schreibt, dass ihnen der Wunsch, die objektive Realität zu systematisieren, zugrunde lag. Stil und Formulierung dieser Identifikationen deuten aber noch auf eine weitere Absicht hin: die Brahmanen haben diese Identitäten nicht nur festgestellt, sie haben sie geschworen: In den Identifikationen findet sich nicht nur ein ''Sein'', sondern auch ein ''Sollen'', Göhler 2011: 20).

This harmonises with the caution against a default ontological interpretation pronounced by Göhler at the beginning of his book. Moreover, it throws some light on the prescriptive approach to the Veda which is typical of Mīmāṃsā. If one focuses on how the Brāhmaṇas and then the speculation on them do not merely describe reality, but rather prescribe how this should be, some of the striking peculiarities of Mīmāṃsā (and of Indian philosophy), such as the complex semantics of artha, meaning at the same time 'object' and 'purpose', become clearer. A little bit later, Göhler convincingly argues that also pramāṇa has in Mīmāṃsā a rather normative meaning (''Damit gehört Pramāṇa eher in die Nähe von Gültigkeitsbegriffen im Sinne von 'normativ gültig' oder 'handlungsverbindlich' '' (Göhler 2011: 36). Even MS 1.1.4, with its rejection of sense perception as instrument to know dharma is audaciously re-interpreted by Göhler from a non-descriptive perspective. The sūtra states that sense perception is animitta. This is usually understood as meaning that it is not the cause of the knowledge of dharma. By contrast, Göhler stresses the ritual background of nimitta and translates as follows: ''it does not promote (a ritual action creating something new)'' ("[…] sie veranlasst nicht (eine rituelle Tätigkeit, die etwas Neues schafft)'', Göhler 2011: 38).

In my opinion, the opposition between a descriptive and a prescriptive approach is a fundamental one when looking at Mīmāṃsā and possibly at Indian philosophy in general. A prescriptive meaning, further, cannot be interpreted through a direct-realist lens, insofar as it cannot directly correspond to an external state of affairs already existing at the moment the sentence referring to it is uttered. In other words, this is a further case of a non-ontological approach current in Indian philosophical texts (the topic has been recently discussed in this very interesting post by Jayarava).

What do readers think? Further evidences of non-ontological approaches?

Open Access in South Asian Studies

2012-01-30T10:58:00.003+01:00

Should we give up "traditional" journals? After all, why should the government pay me for doing researches my colleagues cannot afford to read because of the high prices of scientific journals?

Dominik Wujastyk keeps on stimulating the public of the Indology mailing list he founded with references to articles such as this one by George Monbiot. Here is a short quote:

Murdoch pays his journalists and editors, and his companies generate much of the content they use. But the academic publishers get their articles, their peer reviewing (vetting by other researchers) and even much of their editing for free. The material they publish was commissioned and funded not by them but by us, through government research grants and academic stipends. But to see it, we must pay again, and through the nose. […]
What we see here is pure rentier capitalism: monopolising a public resource then charging exorbitant fees to use it. Another term for it is economic parasitism. To obtain the knowledge for which we have already paid, we must surrender our feu to the lairds of learning.
It’s bad enough for academics, it’s worse for the laity.

Personally, I try to upload all my papers (as drafts) on academia.edu and I wrote far more blog posts than articles. However, I need articles on peer-reviewed journals in order to access public funding (the last FIRB programme in Italy expects from a young researcher to have at least 10 or 15 printed publications). Beside that, I am still inclined to think that publishers may do an important job (and one readers alone would not be able to do), insofar as they:

1. select articles (distinguishing bona fide scientific ones from ones which could attract readers but are not soundly founded),
2. check articles (emend typos, suggest appropriate fonts for "unusual" languages, etc.),
3. look for relevant peer-reviewers,
4. provide feed-back,
5. edit articles (although I must say that in my personal experience all the editorial comments I received came from non-paid guest editors or the like),
6. distribute articles.

This cannot be done for free and if it does not generate profit, it must be state-funded. Of course, one is left wondering why products by Brill or Springer are so much more expensive than excellent journals published elsewhere… But this only means that journals and books should cost less, not that they should not cost at all.
Would not readers (if left as the only judges) prefer articles on "The Buddha in your every day life" rather than on "Was the Brahmajāla Sutta post-Aśokan?"? Even granting that many articles of the latter type could disappear without anyone noticing it, don't you agree that text-based research is needed, although it might look not as fun as "applied Buddhism" (etc.)? Or can one imagine that scholarly trained readers will automatically select an open access platform where only "scientific" articles are published and ignore the others? If no one is paid to select them, would not readers just select them because of their authors, thus making it almost impossible for a young researcher to be read?

What do you think? Where do you publish?

Philosophical creativity

2012-01-27T14:46:00.001+01:00

Are contemporary philosophers just bound to write footnotes to Plato's works?

Arindam Chakrabarti is one of my personal favourite scholars of Indian philosophy. He masters Sanskrit and philosophy, both Western and Indian, at the same time. In a very recent essay he discusses the feasability of philosophical creativity. He recalls a conversation he had with a poet who told him that poetic creativity

is a constant battle against the staleness of words and thoughts. The battle is often lost by most poets por philosophers], but sometimes it is won with those very stale words and thoughts (A.C., New Stuff: On the Very Idea of Creativity in Philosophical Thinking 2011).

Personally, I tend to think that the battle can only be won throught those very stale words and thoughts. This is also the reason why I enjoy reading Sanskrit philosophical commentaries, especially post-classical ones, since their authors were well aware of the fact that a glorious tradition was already behind them.

(I am grateful to Daniel Raveh's 2011 book Exploring the Yogasūtra who made me discover Chakrabarti's text.)

On fields of Indian philosophy which need a creative thinking to come into existence, see this post (on applied Indian philosophy).

Usage of commentaries

2012-01-25T13:30:00.002+01:00

Should one use commentaries? Or are they just the lesser evil?

One of the positive traits of Kei Kataoka's last book (Kumārila on Truth, Omniscience and Killing. A Critical Edition of Mīmāṃsā-Ślokavārttika ad 1.1.2 (Codanāsūtra), Vienna 2011) is how much of its methodological approach is explicitly offered to the reader to ponder about. Kataoka discusses his choices and describes his criteria, at the risk of raising criticism. This is apparent in the case of the interpretation of Kumārila, since Kataoka strongly upholds the view that commentaries may be used only as a third and last resource (after Kumārila's own other texts and Kumārila's predecessors' ones) and that one should be cautious in using them and always make readers aware of the fact that one is doing it:

A scholar who reconstructs a temple, if he has no choice but to use later materials, ought to explicitly mark the items so that other scholars will not be left in ignorance and confusion. Reconstructing an original idea of the seventh century through an interpretation in the eleventh century, for example, is anachronistic if unconsciously done, however labor-saving it is and however aesthetically attractive is the result (Part 2, pp, 108-9).

I see Kataoka's point and I deeply appreciate the fact that he spells it out. However, I wonder whether an 11th c. paṇḍit is not often in a better position than a 21st century (Western) Sanskritist to understand a text. The paṇḍit has most likely an own agenda (but so does the Sanskritist, although s/he might not be aware of it —which is even more risky) and he might try to make the text say what he wants it to say, in order to justify a certain development within the school, for instance. Whatever the case, I am inclined to think that one should take commentaries seriously. One might disagree with them, but one has to show why they preferred a different interpretation (they wanted to make a Dvaita text into an Advaita one? there were no longer Buddhists around and hence they wanted to shift the polemics against another target?).

More in general, commentaries are more than welcome if what one is reconstructing is not the Ur-intention of a certain text, but rather the understanding of it by the tradition. In Kataoka's metaphor, not the 2nd c. b.C. temple, but the Middle Age church built over it.

How do you work with commentaries? Do you acknowledge you used them whenever your interpretations relies on them?

On acknowledging one's methodology, see this post. On this book by Kataoka, see this post (discussing his translation).

The inner power of rituals

2012-01-23T12:49:00.004+01:00

Why do rituals survive for centuries (or even millennia)? One reason could be that they are just rules without meaning (as suggested by Frits Staal) and that their formality is what preserves them notwithstanding the unavoidable changes in the mentality which initially "invented" (in its literal meaning) them.
A further postilla might be that they are rules without a fixed meaning. They do have a meaning, but this varies with time and according to the one who performs it (or, one might add, attends it).
From a study of Marion Rastelli, published in 2005 in Words and Deeds:

In their study on the Jaina pūjā, Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw have shown that ritual acts have no meaning that is intrinsic to them (Humphrey and Laidlay 1994: esp. 5, 35, 41). There is no immediate correlation between the external appearance of a ritual and the meaning that is attributed to it. From the observation of a ritual action one cannot infer the meaning being ascribed to it.

This remark could end many discussions on the interpretation of Vedic rituals (was the Soma-offering initially meant to propitiate rain? Is it a fertility rite? and so on). However, one might suggest that this view only regards rituals as they are observed and that it is indeed possible to speculate about their original meaning in history.
A further consequence of Humphrey and Laidlaw's point is as follows:

If the meanings attributed to a ritual and the intentions being pursued are independent from the outer form of a ritual, the meanings and the performer's intentions can change without transforming the ritual itself.
(Rastelli 2005, p. 115)

In other words, a worshipper of a personal God may perform the same ritual a monist is performing, although attributing to it a very different meaning. One might object, again, that phenomenologically there might be huge differences in the intentions of the performers, but that these differences can be understood historically and that it is not the case that any ritual means everything, but rather that every ritual has an history and, hence, a historical stratification of meanings, partly alternative to each other.

What do you think? And how close are Staal's and Humphrey and Laidlaw's theses?

Āgamas and "Aboriginals"

2012-01-20T12:14:00.008+01:00

Are the Āgamas the product of a non-Aryan and, hence, anti-Vedic influence in Indian culture? Are they just an evolution of the Aryan thought responding to new stimuli?

Personally, I tend to disagree with both sides of the argument. I do not think that arguments are bound to races ("Aryan" and "Dravidian" or "Aboriginal"). Ideas tend to travel faster than people and in this sense it makes (in my opinion) hardly any sense to speak of a "Dravidian" argument.

However, I could not resist writing about it after having read a statement about it by V. Varadachari in his Āgamas and South Indian Vaiṣṇavism. I do not know well Varadachari's work, but I tend to have a positive opinion of it. Anyway, here is the statement:

Suggestions have been made by some writers that the Āgamas are antivedic and should have arisen under the impact of the ways of life of the aborigines of India. It is to be observed here that borrowing, whether, linguistic, religious or cultural, is always from those who are spiritually and morally superior or politically dominant in power: minor impacts could have been there on the cultured class coming from the tribes but wholesale concept of the Āgama way of worship could not have emanated from the tribes: the Āgamas must therefore be treated as supplementary to the Vedas (vi-vii).

I understand Varadachari's agenda and his dissatisfaction with the opponents' argument. But I think he should have rather asked "What does anti-vedic mean?" instead of throwing himself into hot water. In fact, an opponent may easily reply that the non-Aryan aborigenals were the large majority of the population in South India and that they could hence easily influence the general culture through their religious beliefs and habits. A parallel could be that of a linguistic substratum. Hence, the conclusion might be true, but the second premiss (the non-Aryans were a minority) does not hold.

How to do editorial work on other people's papers

2012-01-17T11:39:00.005+01:00

How much freedom should an editor have? And how much freedom are you ready to grant her?

I enjoy working as an editor (for the Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici, for the Coffee Break Conference proceedings, for my own project on quotations, etc.) and my papers are always read by someone else (be it the peer-reviewer of a journal or the editor of a volume), who usually heavily edits them. Generally speaking, I enjoy engaging with a careful reader, who might also strongly disagree with me. It makes me aware of possible rejoinders, forces me to sharpen my points and to clarify my thought.
What I do not like that much, by contrast, is

1. when typographic things are discussed instead (just delete the extra space and don't bother me with that! Put the inverted commas as you prefer them, it has nothing to do with the content and you do not want each author to utter her opinion on it or you'll never end your volume).
2. when the editor wants to write the paper himself or herself. I am happy to add, emend, clarify, but I cannot be forced to add a distinct chapter on X in contemporary philosophy just because I happened to use the word X while discussing something else.

Point 1 is, I believe, annoying but trivial. It is linked with the fact that many editors do not remember that form and content are distinct.
Point 2, by contrast, is crucial, especially for South Asian scholars. We often share so little background with our editors, that we might have completely different ideas about what should be in our articles. I am quite convinced that it is legitimate to speak of "Philosophy" while referring to Kumārila, Dharmakīrti, etc. Do I really have to make this point clear every time I write an article? Even a reference in a fn. might be too much if the article does not focus on philosophical subjects and just happens to use the word "philosophical texts". The same applies to translations (I cannot explain in every article the rationale behind each of the technical translations I adopt). Shall one write a methodological article to be published on one's web site and constantly updated where issues such as "Why I believe that Mīmāṃsā needs to be studied" and "Why do I believe that 'inhering cause' is not a suitable translation for samavāyikāraṇa" are dealt with? Or should one try to write only for suitable editors (if it is ever possible)?

What do you do?

On a related topic (how to refute a paper), you might read this post.

15th World Sanskrit Conference —general considerations

2012-01-12T11:10:00.006+01:00

It was a great experience to be in India for this WSC. Beside the sheer fact of being in India, the following ones are, in my opinion, the plus points we could experience. I am listing them in increasing order of importance:

1. great theater performances every night.
2. many Indians (who are often not able to reach expensive locations in the West or in Japan) could come. Hence, the many facets of Sanskrit studies could interact a little bit more, or at least have a glimpse of what was going on "abroad" (i.e., in places different from one's own one, whatever this is).
3. we could listen to a lot of stimulating debates held in Sanskrit, held by some terrificly interesting paṇḍits.

The minus points are those intrinsic to each WSC, i.e., the extreme heterogeneity of the subjects involved (is the fact that they happen to involve Sanskrit really enough to discuss them in the same occasion?), the awful numbers of parallel sections (so that one could get only a snippet of what was really going on), the fact that the time allotted for each paper was comparatively short and that there were too many papers per day (12, with each one having max. 30' time, inclusive of discussion). Further, notwithstanding the excellent convenors, several uninteresting papers crept in. I tend to be encouraging when young researchers are too emotional to deliver a good speech, but I cannot understand how they made their way into an international conference without any previous experience. Would not it make better sense to start "training" in an undergraduate conference (such as the excellent IIGRS)?

Generally speaking, I would prefer less speakers and more time for discussion. After all, we all went a long way and we did it not just for some 3 to 10 minutes feedback at the end of our papers. One might object that one's paper is usually just the beginning of an on-going discussion which will find place during coffee-breaks etc. I agree. Yet, I wonder why not to include the coffee breaks into the conference, or, better, to just make the conference look like a relaxed coffee break discussion.

In case you attended, which were your favourite papers and why? What would you change?

All the posts of the first two weeks of January 2012 are dedicated to the WSC. You might check this one (on discussions in Sanskrit) and the following four on single papers: Lubin's, Cardona's, McAllister's, Iwasaki's.

World Sanskrit Conference 5 — paṇḍitapariṣat

2012-01-09T16:51:00.004+01:00

Today I tried to listen to as much Sanskrit as I could, imagining that this a chance I will not easily get back again in a close future. Unfortunately, I missed a lot, but fortunately no one really read his or her paper (I miss almost everything if people read in Sanskrit). Plus, the discussions were lively and relatively easier to follow.
One of the points of debate was the future of Sanskrit studies. Some speakers have been courageous enough as to say that one has to include new fields of study in the old tradition, which seems to me to be a brave statement. In fact, the faculty to add more topics and to make sense of them within one's own tradition testifies of how much alive the tradition is. An intriguing remark has been that the present one is not the first parivarta (turning point) in the history of Sanskrit śāstras. Bhartṛhari has been a parivarta after Pāṇini, Kātyāyana and Patañjali and the same could be said of so many innovative authors.
By contrast, one can easily see how much endangered is the Sanskrit heritage. It is easy to imagine that the relatively few people who are its representatives might be reluctant to undertake further studies about (seemingly) alien subjects and might prefer to focus on the preservation of such an important lore.
I am inclined to think that hybridization is the only way to survival, but I see their point.
What do you think?

For an instance of a field of Sanskrit tradition which grew up including more and more (namely the dharmaśāstra), see this post.

World Sanskrit Conference — 4 (dharmaśāstra)

2012-01-08T04:30:00.002+01:00

How did dharmaśāstras develop? What are their sources and the people they address?

Timothy Lubin's presentation showed how they are intimately connected with Gṛhyasūtras (whereas he deems Śrautasūtras to be part of a different world). Gṛhyasūtra authors, Lubin maintains, already introduced many concepts which later became crucial for Dharmasūtras. Among them, he focused on ācāras and on the way social duties are differentiated. It seems that the differentiation among Brāhmaṇas, Kṣatriya and Vaiśya was already current in the Gṛhyasūtras, with the first one as the default category, and the others defined through their differences with it.

ācāra seems to gain an increasing importance, with Dharmasūtra texts which show an increasing openness, accepting yathācāram 'according to custom' as a possible option. In a text mentioned by Lubin, after various options even yathākuladharmam 'according to one's family dharma' is presented as an option.

When it comes to their realm of competence, even women are mentioned as authorities. And, only in Dharmasūtras, even śūdras might have a certain authority in specific cases. Interestingly, the rules known from śūdras and women are not defined ācāras (a term which is only reserved to śiṣṭas).

Why this increasing openness? Possibly because, in comparison to Gṛhyasūtras, Dharmasūtras try to make more and more room for elements that do not fit in the śiṣṭa-defined world-view. Hence, they need specific sources for that. These sources might be the śiṣṭas, i.e., the Brahmins imbued with the Veda, so that they are reliable, their ācāra `custom', but also the behaviour of other groups, if one needs to rule a field where there is no śiṣṭa-rule at hand to apply.

DELENDA CARTHAGO: Japanese scholars read their papers, but at least distribute the written version, so that one can follow it. I tend to think that one should 1. avoid reading, 2. at least "recite" one's written text, 3. if none of the above is possible, at least distribute the written text.

World Sanskrit Conference—3 (George Cardona)

2012-01-07T18:42:00.003+01:00

Everyone must read Cardona's work on Pāṇini and one cannot go without him if one wants to understand something about Pāṇinian grammar. However, until now I was not an unconditioned estimator of his written work, since this is often very technical.

Yesterday, however, I had the real pleasure of listening to his talk at the WSC, which is was terrific. Not only he made his point very clearly, he is an amazing speaker, both in English and in the following debate in Sanskrit. The following is a short summary of the main argument:

In the case of anubhū- and of the other verbs-cum-preverbs, the aṅga for augment, reduplication, etc. is bhū-, not anubhū-. Hence, for grammatical purposes, dhātus (verbal roots) and upasargas (preverbs) are to be considered as separate padas (words). By contrast, from the semantic point of view they are to be considered as a single pada, since the meaning of anubhū- is different from that of anu+bhū-.

Semantically, anubhū- is a separate dhātu, grammatically, it is not. But how could the two stances coexist? Grammarians and lexicographers needed to achieve a compromise and in fact they achieved an interesting one: We treat the verb as if it had multiple meanings and upasargas as only dyotakas ('illuminator'). The rationale is that preverbs only help the listener to focus on one of the meanings the root already had in itself. Hence, it does not make sense to speak in absolute terms of whether something is X or Y. All depends on what is your aim!

In short, once again, we have to do with a functionalist approach against an ontological one (this last line is obviously mine).

DELENDA CARTHAGO: No one is forced to deliver a paper in a conference. Hence, if one decides to do it, why not preparing, so that one can avoid reading or at least recite one's written text?

World Sanskrit Conference — 2 (meaning in apoha)

2012-01-06T17:57:00.003+01:00

During the second day of the WSC, the philosophy panel has been paused and I had hence time to explore other panels. But before that, I had the pleasure to listen to the brilliant paper by Patrick McAllister. McAllister discusses whether, within the theory of apoha, we should understand śabdārtha as word-meaning, word-object or word-referent. McAllister proceeded in a critical and sound way (imo), since he started his investigation by discussing meaning, object and referent within Western philosophy of language, highlighting how translators must be aware of the terms they use, in order to avoid confusion. I could add that confusion already risks to rule this field of study, due to Frege's choice of calling the external object Bedeutung, lit. meaning. His English translators dissented with this provocative choice and used instead reference (or referent) to translate Frege's Bedeutung. At this point "meaning" was free again and it has been used to translate the other side of Frege's opposition, i.e., Sinn (which might be better translated as sense). In this way, Quine's "meaning" is not tantamount to Frege's Bedeutung, but rather to Frege's Sinn.

Accepting meaning in this second way, can apoha be said to refer to a meaning? No, maintains McAllister, since the śabdārtha in the apoha theory is just the referent. What about synonymity, then? One might in fact remember that Frege introduced Sinn in order to explain why "The morning star is the evening star" is more informative than "The morning star is the morning star". But synonymity can be explained by Dharmakīrti through the comparison with the case of two people affected by an eye-disease (timira), who thus both see a double moon. One tells the other about the double moon and the second understands and thinks he is now grasping the same double moon conveyed by the first one, although in fact they understand each other only because, by chance, they share the same mistake, but not because of a special characteristic of meaning (understood as a mental entity). The moon remains only the external one (and it is one only), there is no mental (double) moon words refer to.

Why do we hence tend to understand each other? Because our karman make us share the same mistakes? The answer was that we share similar kleśas, tastes, etc. and hence also "our" jñānasantānas share similar cognitions.

Delenda Carthago: Reading has really no excuses, especially monotonous reading. If one feels unsure, s/he should practice as long as she can know the paper by heart. Everything is better than this terrible habit of reading for oneself.

World Sanskrit Conference — 1 (author's intention)

2012-01-05T18:10:00.006+01:00

The 15th World Sanskrit Conference just started. Until now there have been only two parallel sections (I attended two panels: "Sanskrit and Science" and "Philosophy"). As often stated on this blog, I can't understand why many people read instead of talking. There is just no need to have further reasons to be boring.

By contrast, the present conference is made much more exciting by many interesting discussions. The paṇḍits participating to it, for instance, really had many appealing arguments to Iwasaki Yoichi's learned paper on the topic of tātpāryajñāna 'cognition of the intention'. Basically the problem under examination was that of polysemy. Nyāya authors solve it by recurring to the speaker's intention. One will know whether Rāma refers to Balarāma, Paraśurāma or Sītā's husband because the speaker meant only one of them. Now, Gaṅgeśa, while referring to Prābhākara theses, also speaks of tātpāryajñāna. How can this be, given that Prābhākaras are known to refute the tātpāryajñāna, since they claim that the Veda has no author? How could they solve the problem of polysemy in the Veda? Personally, I would say that there are many ways to solve this problem even without any author. But what does Gaṅgeśa mean by speaking of tātpāryajñāna while dealing with the Prābhākaras? The paper's author, Yoichi Iwasaki, proposed that tātpāryajñāna might have meant (pace the commentators) the text's intention. I have never read of tātpāryajñāna in the Prābhākara texts I can remember and I do not agree with the suggestion that it might have been in some lost texts. Could it mean the intention of the hearer? Given that the meaning is not arbitrary according to most Indian theories, the intention of the hearer cannot miss the meaning. It will be based, e.g., on context.

On reading in conferences, see this post. On an alternative idea of conferences, see this one and the corresponding wiki.

Are translations harmful?

2011-12-22T11:54:00.003+01:00

Filippo, in a recent comment (on this post) proposed a provocative view:

The more you resort to translations, the further you get from becoming even a good sanskritist. Translations retard progress in the mastery of both text and language.

Of course, he agrees that translations are useful for academic purposes ("it is impossible to be an academic indologist without using translations, since very few non-pandits are capable of reading in the original the breath of texts required for writing academic papers"). More important, he also admits that they are useful for one to acquire the broader context one always needs in order to read each text ("Even if your ultimate goal is the deepest possible relation with a text, you'll need translations to get you to the point where that becomes possible, and you can kick the ladder away behind you"). Still, the main point remains: if one uses translations, one is bound to be kept far away from the text.
I suppose that part of the problem lies in one's approach to research. Probably I am in favour of the usage of translations —just like I am in favour of each kind of tools (even electronic dictionaries, at least at the beginning)— since I am a gradualist and believe in slow progress. Filippo seems, by contrast, to be an "instantaneist". To put it metaphorically, I would teach one to swim through long sessions in the swimming pool, Filippo would throw one in the water, expecting that she will learn to swim if she must.
I imagine that he might object that the longer one remains close to a "substitute" of the original text, the more difficult it becomes to get rid of it and dare "jump" into the Sanskrit. This might be true, but it is true also of commentaries. Would he get rid of them, too? And what is then the limit between directness and arrogance?

As for a sub-point, namely the need for translations, I tend to think that they are often useful (just like Sanskrit or Hindi commentaries are) even for Sanskritists while dealing with texts outside their competence. Dharmakīrti seems to be one of these examples, but the same holds true for technical texts on Grammar, alaṅkāras, astronomy, etc.

What do readers think about it? What is your experience with translations? Did they ever bring you closer to the text?

The discussion started on this post. I dedicated far too many posts to translations, a list of the main ones can be found below this post.

Translations as auxiliaries

2011-12-15T17:40:00.002+01:00

What is the purpose of a translation?
It depends on whether one wants to produce independent text or one wants to help readers understand the original one. If one is translating a poem, one is very likely to prefer the first paradigm. An extreme, and hence interesting example of the second one is, by contrast, Kei Kataoka's translation of Kumārila, Ślokavārttika, codanā, (Kataoka 2011, Wien ÖAW). This translation includes each Sanskrit word in brackets within the translated text, which thus becomes an auxiliary to the Sanskrit one, rather than an independent text. Even dharma will figure in brackets, although it is translated as dharma. Hence, the reader may use the translation to follow step-by-step the translator's understanding of the text.

I discussed translations in many posts (this one is on my personal doubts while translating, this one, this one and this one are the purpose of translations, this one on English-specific problems, this one on a dychotomy between translations). The most interesting parts are, as often, the comments I received (see this post).

What do we have to impose on students?

2011-12-13T09:18:00.004+01:00

Do all students have to be philologists (as is often the case in Europe)? Do they all have to focus on a minor detail of the theory of perception, etc. (as seems to be the case in departments dominated by Analitic Philosophy)?

The departments I am more familiar with tend to think that textual criticism, linguistics and (much less often) a rigorous usage of philosophy are the climax of one's academic curriculum. By contrast, history of art (archaeology being an exception), often literature, sociology and religious studies are silently deemed to be apt for less clever students. This implicit assumption is perpetuated by the fact that, throughout the decades, clever students have been lead to study, e.g., linguistics, and are now clever instructors of linguistics, and so on with the other subjects.

Is this really the case? Is textual criticism, to name just one example, the main road to our understanding of texts? Is it so complex that one has to teach it at the beginning of a student's career, since later everyone would be unable to get enough time and energy to focus on it? More importantly, is it formative? In other words, are students trained in textual criticism (and so on) better students (or scholars), whatever they will later do? A very interesting lecture by Ernst Steinkellner on the day he received the Wittgenstein prize (see here, in German), proposed philology as a new way to embrace mutual understandings among cultures. Personally, I tend to teach philosophy hoping that students will become more aware of their implicit assumptions and hence, critical citizens. But I also suspect that each subject might be used as a bridge to oneself and the others, if only done with enough depth. If this is true, than insisting on just, say, philosophy, may have the disadvantage of creating students and scholars who are doing what they don't like, are suffering because of that and are very likely not to produce any interesting contribution, since they are just out of place.

What is your experience? Did you have to study stuff you disliked? Was it formative or just a waste of time?

I have been triggered to write this post by an interesting comment on a previous post, see here. On scholars who love what they work on, see this post.

Typology of students

2011-12-10T21:57:00.005+01:00

At the university in which I work, it is nowadays time for the final examinations of many BA and MA students. In Italy, these final examinations focus on the thesis written by each student. Apart from the tutors of the thesis, there are other examiners who have had until that moment nothing to do with the thesis and may also not know the student. Since I work in a department of Oriental Studies, the examiners may teach each of the subjects taught there (from history of Indian art to Muslim right, Chinese language and so on).
I tend to like (or at least not to dislike, which is already quite unusual among my colleagues) sitting among the examiners. This is also a way to have an overview of students I would have never known if it were not for this chance. Statistically, the number of students I meet is non-influential, still I tend to notice that bright students tend to choose to write their final thesis on linguistic topics, and (in a minor amount) on philosophical ones. Students who might be bright human beings but seem to have less to do with academic research (and who often tend to do something completely different after they complete their degree) rather pick up history of art, sometimes religious topics and sometimes topics having to do with "contemporary societies" in Asia. Literature may also be chosen. Of course, there are many exceptions and I do not mean to say anything about the students as complete human beings. One of them became, for instance, an excellent fictional writer, after having written her thesis on the history of Chinese art. Still, these students tend not to keep on studying with a PhD, etc.
Why so? Are bright students just attracted by bright teachers (whatever they teach) or do they prefer challenging, "difficult" subjects? The first choice is no answer, since one could ask further why and if there are more bright teachers teaching a certain subject. The second is also no answer, since I doubt that something is intrinsically difficult and am rather inclined to think that the degree of difficulty depends on the depth required by the teacher. Nonetheless, this degree is also influenced by the general requirements of the wider cultural milieu of one's colleagues and seniors. Hence, nowadays in many parts of the world natural sciences are believed to be more important than humanities and this triggers bright young people to pick up natural sciences.

Do you notice similar patterns in the university/ies you know better?

(We look much less smart than the professors in the photo, at the university of Siena.)

Some walks in the philosophical woods

2011-12-03T17:04:00.003+01:00

Michel Angot published something long unheard within the history of scholarship on Indian philosophy. In fact, after the time of G. Jhā, hardly someone attempted a complete translation of a master-piece of Indian philosophy such as the Nyāyabhāṣya. Hence, one cannot but congratulate the author for his braveness and for the very fact that he presents to the reader the translation of the complete system of Nyāya in its essential fundament, i.e., the Nyāyasūtra attributed to Gautama and its earliest extant commentary, the Nyāyabhāṣya attributed to Pakṣilasvāmin/Vātsyāyana. Translating it all has the double advantage of helping the reader in better understanding Nyāya and the translator himself in better evaluating the role of each part of Nyāya. No big effort is needed to remember instances where the emphasis on just one part of a system has lead scholars to misunderstand the relationship of this part with the rest and the general purpose of the system itself (Jayarava often enough underlines the case of the Buddhist "atheism", although deities such as Indra and Brahmā do play a role in the Pāli Canon).

Beside the translation, the book also includes a very long introductory study (242pp.), which deals not only with Nyāya, but also with very broad issues, such as the existence of philosophy in India. Further examples of topics are: whether there is an ''Indian" philosophy (pp.26-32, the final view is that ''Sanskrit philosophy'' would make mostly better sense), whether we can possibly use a Western language (and its terminology) to translate and understand Sanskrit texts (pp. 33–37), comparativism (pp.46-50), the real purpose of the Mānavadharmaśāstra (p. 59), the correct interpretation of the first gloss on Pāṇini's Grammar (p.66) and so on. Evaluating the book is, hence, extremely complex. If one were to ask me whether to buy Angot's book or not, my answer would be: it depends on you. If you want to take a ''walk in the wood" of Indian philosophy, this book is excellent. It offers one much food for thought, as if one were having dinner with a brilliant company. If, by contrast, you want to read a rigorous essay, you might find Angot's one disturbing. Part of it is not Angot's fault but the publishing house's one. The book almost lacks margins, so that one will not be able to add notes, arrows or the like. Furthermore, it lacks any index and does not have a complete table of contents, so that one can only dive in the dense, space-less but content-full introduction and read it all, with no reader-friendly help. Similarly, the book is flawed by far too many misprints, also to be charged to the publishing house…

What do you look for while reading a book?

I started discussing Angot's book in this post (on the role of doubt in Indian philosophy), then wrote this one (on philosophy in India), this one (on the purpose of translations), this one (on the concept of "possess" in Sanskrit) and this one (on the concept of duty).

Do we have NOT to like what we work on?

2011-12-01T10:38:00.000+01:00

Many people tend to think that being "scientific" means being detached. In order to write scholarly about a subject, one should not be involved in it. Is this really possible? Probably not, but even if it were, would it be desirable?

One clearly sees that Friedhelm Hardy (the scholar of Śrīvaiṣṇavism who died untimely in 2004) loves what he is working on. This might make him go too far (in my opinion) in defending Śrīvaiṣṇavism, for instance his treatment of the devadāsī issue seems to me to go too far in forgetting that the institution of devadāsī was itself declining (although he admits the decline at first):

[…] one further topic cannot be avoided: the music and dance professionally cultivated by the devadāsīs. […] Missionaries like the Abbé Dubois and some Westernized Indians, encountering a presumably declining stage in the development of the devadāsī institution, attacked it with a puritanical fanaticism which was equalled only by their complete ignorance of (or unwillingness to understand) its history and the motivation behind it. They succeeded only too well in their task: the abolition by law of the devadāsīs was regarded as a necessary reform of South Indian temple culture, but it also resulted in the total destruction of one major segment of that culture through which for one and a half millennia deep-rooted Southern religious sentiments had expressed themselves. The whole range of art that had surrounded the temple was eliminated, and even the whole issue of temple eroticism was prejudiced. […] Viṣṇu […] derives enjoyment from the art of the girls who are dedicated to him, just as he would enjoy the tulsī, kuṅkuma, camphor, etc. which are offered to him in the pūjā. And just as he returns these objects after the worship to the devotee, these girls are returned. Thus it seems possible to interpret [a man's] union with [a devadāsī] […] as a special type of prasādam.

(Hardy 1977, pp.138-140)

But I still tend to think that being too fond of one's subject is better than hating it (as is often the case). I remember my professor of Indian history, who was an excellent scholar but who really despised Indians, probably like some 19th c. British. He would say things such as "Although they have such an enormous amount of costs, the Indians were unable to build proper harbours until the British came".

Do you dare sharing your attitude towards what you study?
On Hardy, see my post "Do we have to write in a dry, unadorned style?", written on November the 23rd 2011.

Blog on Indian Philosophy?

2011-11-30T10:12:00.000+01:00

There are no common enterprises on Indian philosophy on the web and this is a pity. I tried several times to make this blog an open platform (by the way: if you are interested, just send me your contributions!), but always failed. I am not sure about the reason, but I have recently been discussing it with Prof. Manyul Im, who has been the creator of a great blog on Chinese Philosophy, which is now run by several scholars (Im included) and which has played —I believe— a great role in the dissemination of Chinese philosophy. Below is part of my answer to a recent post:

As for your questions, since I "discovered" your blog (which was still only Manyul Im's one) I have been hoping to find something like that on Indian philosophy. I think it is incredibly good and healthy to have a place to discuss. Among other things, it improves ideas and methodologies and it makes common strategies possible (and common strategies are more than needed, if we want non-Western philosophy to find some visibility also in the West) (plus, it is fun).
I also tried to suggest to some colleagues to open one. Unluckily enough, my proposal has not lead to anything concrete. This might be due to sociological reasons (one might speculate on the intrinsic differences between people working on China or on India…) or maybe only to the fact that it is quite difficult to initiate a new blog. Adding oneself to one which is already well-known and well-established is surely easier and more appealing. Hence, it might work. I would certainly be happy to contribute and to look for further contributors and I could start a preliminary inquire among friends, colleagues and readers.

What do you think? Would you be interested in such an enterprise?
As for previous essays, you might check this post (on Indological forums), this one (on Indological blogs) and this one (on a concrete essay of building a forum).

What is the scope of recognition as an instrument of knowledge?

2011-11-29T16:02:00.000+01:00

Is recognition (pratyabhijñā) reliable? It is part of direct perception (pratyakṣa)? Is it a distinct instrument of knowledge?

Many Indian authors use recognition as evidence in their arguments. They may say that the same thing can be touched and then seen and that we know through recognition that it is the same thing (Nyāya). Or, they might say that the fact that we recognise things through time is evidence of the fact that there is an "I" (Nyāya). Or, they claim that this "I" can recognise its nature as identical with Īśvara (Śaivas such as Utpaladeva). Recognition might also play a role within analogy (upamāna), when we recognise the gayal as being the animal about which we heard that it was similar to a cow.
Yet, Indian authors do not generally state that recognition is a distinct instrument of knowledge. Hence, to be reliable it should be included in another instrument of knowledge. The best candidate seems to be pratyakṣa, but Rāmānujācārya, for one, says that pratyakṣa is "purely born out of the sense-faculties" (saṃskārajamātra) and that "purely" is meant to exclude recognition, which, like memory (smṛti), depends also on recollection traces (saṃskāras) (TR I).
Recognition is itself different of memory, since it does not depend only on saṃskāras (so Śālikanātha, PrP).
Hence, how can recognition be reliable? Perhaps, because a part (aṃśa) of it is perceptual and hence reliable. In the standard formula of recognition, sa eva idam ("this is the one [I cognised before]''), the perceptual part is the idam ('this'). This does not seem to entail more than the sheer perception of something. However, since perception includes, according to Mīmāṃsakas and against Buddhists, also its qualifications, the idam-part may include its resemblence with the previous saḥ. Even if notion of the saḥ depends on saṃskāras, then, the sheer fact of similarity could be perceptually established.

Should Indian philosophy always be "useful" for contemporary Western philosophy?

2011-11-28T09:04:00.004+01:00

If one thinks in a philosophical way, one is very likely to take philosophy very seriously and to take its problems in serious consideration. One will then (innerly at least) take part to the discussions depicted in the texts one is reading and not just observe them in a detached way. One will try to understand what is exactly the word-meaning, or whether an enduring self exists, or whether there are universals, or substances, etc.
Hence, if one is conversant with a rather neglected area of philosophy (like Indian Philosophy), one might be inclined to add it to the discussion, hoping that some answers might be found through its contribution, that new questions will be asked, or that old ones will be seen from a different perspective.
However, this attitude entails a risk, as far as I can see, namely, that one sees Indian Philosophy only as ancillary to contemporary (mainstream, i.e., Western) philosophy. This is unfair and risky, insofar as one risks to loose grasp of the historical perspective of the arguments one is dealing with and, most importantly, to overlook important texts and ideas just because they do not correspond to today's fashionable topics. By contrast, philological work on ancient ideas may contribute to the ideodiversity and hence promote future discussions, exactly insofar as it is free from the dictatorship of today's trends and musts.

What do readers think? Am I exaggerating the risk?

This post has been stimulated by Peppe's comment (see here).

On the importance of an historical approach, see this post. On the purpose of West-India comparisons, see this post.

Writing about Indian philosophy for philosophers

2011-11-25T12:33:00.003+01:00

Do we want Indian philosophy to be a private area of study for Sanskritists? Or do we want to engage in wider dialogues with philosophers of different specialisations?

One of my long-term goals is to make Indian philosophy part of "Philosophy" tout court. That is, I hope that future text-books about philosophy will discuss causation including the satkārya- vs. asatkāryavāda debate; will discuss epistemology taking into account the pramāṇa approach, etc.
This is not something a single scholar will ever be able to achieve, hence I firmly believe in team-work. But even as a team, what could/should one do? One thing is to propose articles on Indian topics to philosophical audiences. Krishna Del Toso has just done it in a recent article submitted to the Open Journal of Philosophy. But a single article will not be enough. In order to raise interest among philosophers, one needs to feed them regularly with Indian stimuli. This is nothing Krishna (or any other) could do on his own.

Should not we co-ordinate our efforts so that each of "us" (whatever this means) has, e.g., an article every five or ten proposed to a philosophical journal?

Free will and desire

2011-11-24T09:58:00.000+01:00

Are we free only when we act independently of desire? Or can one speak of free will also in the case of acts determined by desire? In other words, is eating while hungry an instance of free will? Or is only the whimsical movement of one's arm with no exact reason a free act?

The second example is the one discussed by Lev Tolstoj in War and Peace and it is the standard example of free will. Maybe so standard, that it is almost purely speculative. At least according to several schools of Indian philosophy, desire is a fundamental part of the decision process. We do not go on moving our arms randomly, without any purpose. Our usual behaviour is much more finalized (, and hence belongs to the first category). In fact, the arm-case might be re-interpreted as just an instance of the "desire to prove that one has free will", with this desire having itself previous causes (one's education, etc.). Then, the question amounts to the problem of the link between desire and resolution. Are one's resolutions free, if they have desire at their basis? Or does free will only exist independently of/against desire? Indian schools such as Mīmāṃsā have naturally acknowledged the role of desire (and also Aristotle explains the human tendency to speculate as caused by a natural desire). The second option, by contrast, seems to be too much determined by the Western manichean approach to flesh vs. spirit.

What do you think? What is the view of the schools you are more familiar with?

On the necessity of desire for an action to be undertaken in Mīmāṃsā, see here. For the Nyāya stance, see here. On free will, se here. On free will in Indian philosophy, see here. For a Western point of view on the topic discussed above, you might want to read this question raised on academia.edu (and its "answer" by Richard Price).

Do we have to write in a dry, unadorned style?

2011-11-23T10:28:00.004+01:00

I recently read Friedhelm Hardy's Ideology and Cultural Contexts of the Śrīvaiṣṇava Temple. The official reason for it is that I am working on Vedānta Deśika and I am hence indirectly interested on Śrīvaiṣṇavism in general. But there is an additional reason, which is the intrinsic pleasure I derive in reading Hardy (or Steven P. Hopkins). He is not just a scholar, but also a writer, and has not the scholar inhibition which usually prescribes me (and others) a dry style. In fact, he also translated many Śrī Vaiṣṇava poems in a lyric way, which does not only reflect their historical significance, but also their poetical value. Consider the following verses of the Periyatirumoli about Viṣṇu:

Was he a thief?
He came like a big black bull and said to my daughter:
"Come! Come!"
He took her by the hand which white bracelets adorned,
and they abandoned the mother who gave birth to her.

I do not read Tamil, but am inclined to think that Hardy is quite good in conveying the idea of the thief-God, who is at the same time seductive and threatening in His power.

I tend to implicitly assume that a dry style is more "scientific" than an imaginific one. This might be, but Hardy's style has the advantage of making more people reading him (I adore Oetke's articles, but often have to force me into reading them) and of giving one a side-glance into the style of the texts he deals with. Of course, at least in my case, the style has to be functional to what it conveys. Although I like Hardy, I am strongly ennoyed by imaginific styles which only make Advaita Vedānta (for example, but many imaginific writers deal with Vedānta or Buddhism) look confused and imprecise.

What do you enjoy reading? And do you write in the same style?

Free will

2011-11-22T09:21:00.004+01:00

Although free will is not my main field, I started thinking about it more and more in the last months, since I have been asked to write a contribution on free will in Mīmāṃsā within a volume dealing with free will in Indian philosophy. Of course, one of the most important questions is whether it makes sense to speak of "free will" in Indian philosophy. From the literal point of view, one's will can only be defined as "free" if there is the chance for it to be bound. Is this the case in India? There is something like that in some Śaiva schools, where it is said that God alone is completely free (īśvara and svatantra), whereas we are all like cattle (paśu), bound by three fetters. Further, one might suggest that karman might be thought to obstruct one's will, although in philosophical schools I never found a deterministic view of karman being explicitly endorsed (this happens, rather, in dramas, cf. the attitude of minor characters in the Śākuntalā). I am very much inclined to think that also Buddhism is not deterministic, cf. the fact that Dharmakīrti refutes the possibility of inferring a result from its causes, so that even a karmic cause cannot be said to invariably lead to a certain result.
Furthermore, the issue of free will strictly depends on how one understands action and in this sense Indian schools of thought have very interesting investigations to offer on the abode of action and most of all on the resolution to undertake an action.

What is instead missing, if I am not wrong, are several of the issues connected with free will in the Western traditions. Starting from the obvious lack of the original sin (apart from the theology of the ISKCON movement), the balance between God's omniscience and free will seems to be less of a problem. Possibly because God is rarely seen as directly interfering in worldly matters (He rather uses karman to do it), I am not aware of philosophical discussions about whether human beings alone are responsible of good and evil or God is corresponsible as well, insofar as He favours the first and lets the latter happen. One also does not find the kind of reflections one finds in Islamic thought, asking why God does not let future evil-doers die while they are still harmless children… Nor does one find the problem of the coexistence of God's goodness and free will. I tend to think that the Christian answer to this problem would be that free will is so precious, that God prefers people to be free rather than forcing them to be good. This might be due to the fact that God himself wants to be chosen freely and freely loved. But one might object that this desire of Him implies that there are also evil-doers, who might harm other people. How can one justify a desire, if this indirectly implies harming others?

On the issue of free will in Eastern theology and, hence, on many of the issues above mentioned, just read an interesting article by David Heith-Stade (you might also want to have a look at his interesting blog).

Gullability and stupid people

2011-11-21T21:11:00.000+01:00

I am passionate about the issue of Linguistic Communication (aka testimony) (you can see here my italian blog about it). Many authors tend to think that Liguistic Communication should not be admitted among the instruments of knowledge. But this leads to terrible consequences, since without it our everyday life would just turn out to be impossible. How could we systematically doubt whatever we are told? We know by being told even the most important things in our lives, such as our name and date of birth.
Hence, I tend to favour the Indian shcools such as Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā, which admit śabda (linguistic communication) among the means of knowledge (pramāṇas). I am also always interested in reading Western accounts about it. Recentlty, I read the ppt of a talk by Stephen Wright discussing gullability and rational behaviour. Stephen summarises the arguments by Burge about the fact that people are rational beings and that, hence, they lie if they have good reasons to do it and tell the truth if they have good reasons to do it. What happens if they have no good reasons for doing either? All else being equal, they would tell the truth. In fact, telling the truth is better for your reputation and it is better because next time people are more likely to believe you, even if you are lying. Hence, even if you are ready to become a liar, it is convenient for you not to lie whenever you have no good reasons for doing it.

I am happy with the conclusions of this argument (we are entitled to believe what people say as our default attitude), but I am not totally persuaded by its bases. If the entitlement is based on the theory that people behave rationally, then how to face the fact that stupidity is by definition more common than one could imagine and that, hence, there are many many people who behave in a non-rational way. How to answer this objection?

To elaborate: as for "stupidity" I refer to the distinction among human beings drawn by the historian Carlo M. Cipolla (who used to teach economic history at Berkeley) in his famous essay on stupidity. 'According to his graphics, one can distinguish for classes of human beings: those who do good to other people, despite the fact that they might be at the same time harm themselves are "disgraziati" (NAIVE, unwary people), those who do good to other people when this also mean doing good to themselves are INTELLIGENT people ("intelligenti" in the diagram), those who harm other people when this benefits them are CRIMINALS ("banditi") and those who harm other people and themselves at the same time are STUPID ("stupidi"). The last category is, maintains Cipolla, the most dangerous one, since it is unpredictable. One can imagine what the behaviour of a evil person will be (s/he will try to gain as much as possible out of each situation, not caring at all about other people). But who knows how a stupid one will act?
Last, Cipolla maintains that exactly because stupid peope are so "different", non-stupid ones tend to think stupid people do not exist and to interepret their choices as if they were rational. Hence, the real number of stupid people is always underestimated. By definition, every esteem is always an under-esteem.

As for the diagram: the X-axis represents oneself (on the left there is harming oneself, on the right benefitting oneself), the Y-axis represents other people (on the top there is benefitting them, on the bottom harming them).

Distinction between the ontological and the linguistic level

2011-11-20T14:36:00.000+01:00

The naive view, the one istinctively shared by people not trained in philosophy of language is that there is no gap between language and the reality it describes. Things are the way we talk about them. This approach presupposes, thus, a precise correspondence between linguistic entities and real ones, although it does not consciously postulate it. By contrast, the direct realism approach consciously claims that the world is the way we see it and might also maintain that it is also faithfully represented by language. The difference is the same as the one between naive people saying that "the sun has raised" and Ptolomeus claiming that the earth is the centre of the universe. It is no surprise that one finds everywhere people saying that "the sun rises" or "the sun sets", and this does not represent the degree of advancement of their cultural milieus. In order to understand how much advanced are the scientifc knowledges of a certain country, one should ask scientists rather than men of the street (who could answer that "the sun has just set" in the Middle Ages just like in the XXI c.). The same procedure applies in the case of ancient civilization. In order to understand whether it was aware of the mutual position of sun and earth, one cannot rely on its plays or novels. Hence, in order to judge about the Indian belief in a correspondence between language and reality, one cannot ask lay texts (which represent the naive, default, stance), but linguistic ones.

On the "principle of correspondence" as a guide-line throughout the entire Indian philosophy, one might wish to read Johannes Bronkhorst's Langage et réalité: Sur un épisode de la pensée indienne (summary available here).

What do readers think? Are linguistics and ontology distinguished in Indian philosophy? Or do Indian philosophers just conflate the two?

God and karman

2011-11-17T14:20:00.002+01:00

The Mīmāṃsā argument against God as the ruler of karman is (as it is often the case with Mīmāṃsā), an application of what we call Ockham's razor:

Can God alone rule the people's destiny? The standard Indian answer is that He needs karman as His tool. But if karman is anyway needed, why not getting rid of the extra element, i.e., god?

Similarly, if we anyway need the people's karman and/or material elements to create the world/keep it going, why adding on top of them also a god?

Of course, these arguments have nothing to do with God as the object of one's longing and passionate devotion.

FAQ for Indologists

2011-10-28T12:04:00.004+02:00

Long ago, D. Wujastyk opened a FAQ section on the website Indology.info:

http://faq.indology.info/wiki/Main_Page

His purpose was to have a more reliable platform than wikipedia for Indological subjects, which would however still work in a cooperative manner, just like wikipedia. Since I strongly believe in cooperation and think that being selfish is just stupid (not sharing what you know will just mean that most of it will die with you), I wonder why I took so long to contribute. Today, I finally wrote a page on (surprise, surprise) Mīmāṃsā.

Prehistory of debate in India

2011-10-24T11:38:00.002+02:00

What tradition(s) lies really at the roots of the Classical Indian Philosophy?

I recently read an article by R. Bhattacharya (AION 2007, just published!) and one by K. Preisendanz (Indian Journal of History of Science 2009) on the role of ancient Indian medicine and its place within Indian philosophy. K. Preisendanz accurately examines Vidyabhusana's view that the medical work Carakasaṃhitā is an earlier output of the same Ānvikṣikī tradition which later led to the composition of the Nyāyasūtra. She mostly focuses on the tradition of debate and offers many cogent evidences. Hence, can we safely assume that we owe Indian philosophy as it is to the Ānvīkṣikī tradition, as reflected in the Carakasaṃhitā?

Yes and no.
I have been working for years on the technical terminology of the Kalpasūtras and the way it is intertwined with the terminology of Mīmāṃsā and the one of Grammar. This work made me aware of how philosophical terms, such as prasaṅga, have a deep ritual background and can be better understood through it. Furthermore, the dialectical shape of most Indian philosophical texts has been fundamentally influenced by the succession of pūrvapakṣins and siddhānta as found in the ritual sūtras.
To sum up, the past is more complex than one might believe. There has been more than one root for what we now know as Indian philosophy and its dialectic attitude. Does not this just amount to say that the past was as complex and intertwined as the present?

On prasaṅga, see here, here and here (showing also the connection of Mīmāṃsā, Kalpasūtra and Grammar). On another example of such connections, see here (about the history of the classification of prescriptions).

How to deal with one's predecessors

2011-10-20T22:07:00.005+02:00

I recently read in an article by Pascale Hugon (referring to her 2008 book on Sa skya Paṇḍita) about the use of some Tibetan authors on Dharmakīrtian epistemology to divide their texts as follows: enumeration and discussion about previous authors' views (1), presentation of their own view (2), discussion of possible objections against it and reply (3). In this way, explains Hugon, if author X is re-using the text of author Y and agrees with it, he will just repeat the same scheme. If, by contrast, he is re-using the text of Z and disagrees with his final position, he will embed Z's view in (1).
This stroke me, since it reflects the structure of Rāmānujācārya's texts too. These also follow the scheme (1)-(2)-(3). And, they embed Pārthasārathi's final view at the end of (1), after having closely followed Pārthasārathi's text until that point.
Hence, I wonder whether this is only a coincidence or a (late) Indian scheme, imported into Tibet.

On Tibetan authors and the re-use of texts, see this post. On the re-use of texts in general, see this post and the ones linked to it.

Indian philosophy and the quest for a beginning

2011-10-18T21:11:00.003+02:00

The idea that the older the better is not epistemologically sound, unless one is ready to subscribe to the myth of a golden age, followed by decay. Nor can one postulate to be studying the beginning of something, I think. No matter how far we go, the history we will know will always remain the tip of the iceberg of the history of humankind.
Hence, I agree with many parts of the following statements (although not necessarily with their conclusions):

Early Western Indological studies were largely driven by the desire, typical of the Romantic Age, to learn about the 'beginnings' of things: the beginnings of religion, of philosophy, Sanskrit as one of the most ancient languages of the Indo-European family, etc. There is of course nothing wrong with such historical interests; but it is a bit odd that the classically oriented philologists rarely take an interest in the relevance of their studies for the present, and that many researchers who study contemporary culture are largely ignorant of the details of the historical roots of the culture (Robert Zydenbos, review of Mesquita's The concept of liberation while still alive in the Philosophy of Madhva, MIZ 1, pp.260-1).

This is the reason, maintains Zydenbos, why in "numerous Western universities" one finds a "very strong concentration" on

Buddhist studies or Advaita studies, which are of limited relevance for an understanding of Indian culture, if one considers that Buddhism virtually disappeared from India approximately a thousand years ago and Advaita never seems to have been popular with the masses (p.260).

This might be true, and I agree about the fact that it is a pity that scholars working on contemporary India often ignore its past. Nonetheless, personally I do not study Indian philosophy in order to better understand today's India.
And Buddhism is a sort of magnet that attracts students (and scholars), probably because it addresses them directly. Is not this also a way of being relevant?
What do you think? Why do you study what you study?

If you share my suspicions about the concept of "beginning", you might be interested in reading this post and this one (on IE reconstruction).

Shall we speak of "Oriental" philosophy?

2011-10-14T21:41:00.003+02:00

Does it make any sense to speak of "Oriental philosophies" or even of "Oriental philosophy"?

I tend to hate the label "Oriental", since this seems to convey little information and since this little information also happens to be wrong. It conveys little information because if one hears the word "Oriental", one will only know that the topic one is dealing with occurred outside (America, Sub-Saharian Africa and) Western Europe (with the boundaries of Western Europe being themselves uncertain). It might have happened in Turkey, Egypt or Indonesia.
It conveys wrong information, because it implicitly presupposes a uniformity between cultures which have little to do with each other (e.g., Mongolian "shamans" and Arabian classical poetry). Furthermore, it implicitly presuppose that whatever culture belongs to the "Orient" is more distant to the "Occident" than to any other "Oriental" culture. But this is not the case, and Arabic philosophy has been influenced by Aristotle and not by Lao Tse.
To sum up, "Orient" only works as the alter ego of the "Occident". As shown by Said, its use only informs us about what "Occidentals" think (and often it tells us a lot about what they like and dislike). In this sense, the "Orientals" are akin to the "Extraterrestrials" of science fiction. The latter are our projction (for instance, they are often technologically advanced, like we would like to be; but look ugly, because we are too vain to accept not to be the best looking living beings).

This being said, is there any residual use of the word "Orient"? Perhaps, insofar as it forces us to reconsider what is different than us. The word "Ancient" may work in a similar way. What is "Ancient" and what is "Oriental" is "not-us". If one does not stop at the stereotype and accepts taking a trip into the little-known, one might find out a lot about oneself and even happen to learn something about Sanskrit, Buddhism, Shinto, etc.

Do you ever speak of "Orient"?
On labels, see here (on my dissatisfaction with areal studies) and here (on "Indology").

Looking for help on early 20th c. Printing Houses in India/Updated

2011-10-11T09:59:00.006+02:00

While looking for the editio princeps of Vedānta Deśika's Seśvaramīmāṃsā, I could finally find a vague trace!
All printed editions (1940, 1971 and 1981) of the SM do not mention any manuscript source, either in the Premiss (altogether absent in the first two) or in the footnotes. The 1981 edition, though endowed with a nice Introduction, does not mention any source at all, be it manuscript or printed. Hence, I speculated that they all copied from an earlier edition and started looking for it. On-line catalogues and resources bear no evidence of any earlier edition, but I am sure this is no conclusive evidence, since this might have been published in a small typography, perhaps only for religious purposes.

Today, I finally found the following lines in Paṭṭābhirāma Śāstri's (Sanskrit) Preface to the 1981 edition (my translation):

Eighty years ago, in South India, in Kāñcipurī, a book called Seśvaramīmāṃsā has been published through the Printing House Sudarśana, once edited by the honourable Prativādibhayaṅkāra Anantācārya (p. iii).

As expected, I could not find any information about this edition. The Sudarśana Printing Press seems to have been active in Kañcipuram at the beginning of the 20th c. (several books published by it are listed by the Digital Library of India, all around 1900-1905). It might have published mostly Vaiṣṇava works, but I have not found any conclusive evidence about it. Do readers know better?

Do readers know where is it likely to find its books? In Chennai? In Kancipuram itself?

On the importance of studying historiography

2011-10-10T13:57:00.000+02:00

When I started studying philosophy, I used to dislike any historical approach. Investigating into, e.g., the history of the antecedents of Cusanus or Hegel seemed to me at least a boring distraction from their powerful theories or even a nuisance to their understanding —since through history they became less "out of the blue" and hence ended up looking less powerful. I liked even less historiographical accounts about the history of philosophy (e.g., how was Berkeley interpreted in the late XVIII c. Germany), which seemed to me an end in itself I did not want to have nothing to do with.
Now I know that what I ignore will influence me without me being aware of it, hence in a subtle and dangerous way. Therefore, I started studying philosophy as the history of its development. More recently, I am also becoming aware of the importance of the study of historiography. If one is not aware of historiographical trends and fashions, e.g., one might tend to think that one reads are historical (or textual or archaeological…) data, whereas the author of the study might have played a significant role in collecting them and sorting them out.
I have been led to think a lot about this topic since the last Coffee Break Conference, where Giovanni Ciotti dealt with it as for linguistics (explaining, e.g., how the history of linguistics may influence our understanding of what a "root" is, although this should be a "scientific" term) and Mark Schneider dedicated an enlightening round-table to Historiography.
More recently (for me), Srilata Raman, in the book I frequently referred to in the last week, is well aware of the risk of taking historiographical models as if they were harmless description of reality as it is. She points out, for instance, that the monkey/kitten simile is very recent (XIX c.) and that Tamil historiography on Srivaisnavism used history "as a vehicle for locating groups and people [in this case the Tamils] and giving them a past taht suits their present or encourages their sense of the future" (Michael Bentley, quoted in Raman 2007: 15).

Have you ever come across similar instances, where being or not being aware of some historiographical background has saved you from a major misinterpretation?

On the importance of studying history, see here.

On the historiography of bhakti

2011-10-07T09:43:00.005+02:00

Until now, I used to think that the interpretation of the monkey-way and the kitten-way as corresponding to Catholicism and Lutheranism was due to Rudolf Otto's 1917 essay. However, Srilata Raman book (Tamil cats and Sanskrit monkeys, 2007) shows how Otto's claim itself had been prepared by previous authors, looking for monotheism as the culmination of every religious development and hence aiminig at identifying bhakti with what was more similar to it in India. A key work in this stream, maintains Raman, is George Grierson's article on Bhakti-mārga for the 1910 Encyclopedia of Religions and Ethics, edited by M. Eliade.
Since scholars working on Indian religions were usually themselves not Catholics, Grierson's and Otto's claims in turn nourished (or, as Raman maintains, were nourished by) "a stream of thought arising in the wake of modern Tamil historiography, which emphasized that the theological dispute was one between the Sanskritic Northern School and the Tamil Southern School". (Raman, p.13).

Hence:

1. identification of Rāmānuja's bhakti as monotheism (hence, as the most valuable "religion" in India)
2. identification, within bhakti, of a Catholic and a Lutheran "church" (respectively, the Vaṭakalai and the Teṅkalai)
3. identification, by Tamil historians, of the best among these two (the Teṅkalai) with Tamil works and authors.

Did the British construe India as we know it?

2011-10-05T11:52:00.005+02:00

Within Śrī Vaiṣṇavism coexisted two different interpretations of the way one's soul should surrender to God, one upholding the "monkey-way" (Vaṭakalai) and the other one the "kitten-way" (Teṅkalai). In both cases, the cub (i.e., the human soul) can do nothing on its own and completely depends on its parent (God). But whereas the baby monkey will at least hold on its mother's back, the kitten will be brought by its mother who seizes it by the scruff of the neck.
These two currents have enjoyed a certain fame even among Western scholars, due to the book Rudolf Otto dedicated to Viṣṇuism in 1917. There, he compares its split into two currents to the Western schism in the Christian Church (Kirchentrennung) and described the Vaṭakalai as the Roman Catholic option, with a Pelagian stress on human beings as able to attain salvation through their efforts and the Teṅkalai as the Lutheran option. (For a critique of the reception of Otto's sketchy description, see Hardy's article on the JIPh 1979:280).
By and large, Tamil authors tend to favour the kitten way and Sanskrit authors the monkey way. Vedānta Deśika is traditionally considered as the champion of the monkey-way. Or, at least, this is what I thought until recently. Srilata Raman (2007) notes that

it is at a very late date that the theological differences between the two schools of Śrīvaiṣṇavism come to be listed and formalised […]. It was only as late as the nineteenth century, the period when formal litigation in British courts began, that both the Vaṭakalais and the Teṅkalais needed to profile themselves as distinct separate sects, with irreconcilable theological differences. The formalization of hitherto fluid theological opinions in turn would have further helped consolidate sectarian identity (Raman 2007: 9-10).

As in other cases (the practice of satī, perhaps, the supremacy of Advaita Vedānta, the idea that the Vedas are the basis of all current practices, the concept of "philosophy", etc.), one notices that the British are not just a recent intervention in South Asia. They are now part of South Asian history and one cannot avoid them in one's hermeneutical enterprise.

Are readers aware of further cases of a "pizza effect", that is categories influenced by the West and then superimposed to older ones in South Asia and treated as "indigeneous"?

On Vedānta Deśika (deemed to be the champion of the monkey way), see here.

Is it irrational to know that reason cannot reach everything?

2011-09-28T11:35:00.005+02:00

…or is not it perfectly rational to know the reason's limits?

Whenever I talk about my primary interest, i.e., epistemology in Mīmāṃsā, I have to face the objection that the Mīmāṃsā school is not philosophical, since it accepts inconditionally the authority of the Veda. Today, while reading the (excellent) book Reflexion und Ritual in der Pūrvamīmāṃsā, by Lars Göhler, I met a similar statement, explaining that the Mīmāṃsā introduced the dialectical method (the topic is mentioned, a doubt is raised, several objectors are allowed to speak, after objections and counter-objections, one achieves a final conclusion, which is then applied to the topic) into Indian philosophy (p. 123). Nonetheless (allerdings), writes Göhler, one should remember that the Mīmāṃsā accepted the authority of the Veda. Why "nonetheless"? Does the fact of accepting an authority de facto disqualify you as a philosopher? Does it mean that your dialectical method is not pure?
What would remain of Western philosophy if we were to apply the same criterion to it?
More importantly, Mīmāṃsā authors distinguish two domains: the domain of what is perceptible and that of what is beyond perception. In the former, the Veda has no authority. No one would believe that the sun stops moving just because the Veda might have said it. By contrast, as for the domain of what lies beyond perception, either we believe in some authority, or we are completely at loss. How to decide whether sacrificing rice grains or going to the Mass on Sunday is good or not? Sense perception (and all the other means, which ultimately rely on sense-data), just does not help.

Is not it rational, then, to accept that one needs an authority?

Why working on concrete individual authors?

2011-09-24T14:20:00.002+02:00

When one works on Sanskrit philosophy, one often swims in a sea of anonymous works and undatable manuscripts. The core of Sanskrit philosophy, indeed, is debatable as for date and/or authorship and/or geographic origin. However, there a few exceptions. I argue here that working on such exceptions offers some advantages.

For instance, Vedānta Deśika offers the non-common advantage to be a full-fledged individual. We know a lot about him, although mostly through almost hagiographical works. More than one hundred works of him have been preserved, and most of them seem to be genuinely attributed to him. Through comparing his devotional, theological and philosophical work, we can get an elaborated idea of his intellectual figure and of his contribution. Hence, Vedānta Deśika is one out of not many milestones in Indian philosophy. Reconstructing his thought is a difficult task, yet not an impossible one, insofar as it implies reconstructing the thought of a precise individual, through many possible sources, most of which authored by Vedānta Deśika himself.

Since I work mostly on Indian philosophy, I am mainly interested in reconstructing the philosophical profile of Vedānta Deśika. In order to do that, one cannot but rely also on his other works apart from the Seśvaramīmāṃsā (SM), but also on his predecessors' works, in order to evaluate Vedānta Deśika's contribution to the debate. In fact, Indian thinkers often tend not to emphasise their original contributions and rather to present them as if they were just (improved) interpretations of the foundational texts of their school.

In the case of the SM in particular, in order to reconstruct Vedānta Deśika's contribution, one will have to take into account the stand of the debate within Mīmāṃsā on the topics Vedānta Deśika deals with and then within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta on the same topics and on the usage of Mīmāṃsā in general. Two fundamental steps in this regard will be Rāmānuja's Vedārthasaṅgraha (11th c., where also Mīmāṃsā doctrines are discussed) and Yamunācārya's Āgamaprāmāṇya (10 th. c., discussing the authority of Pañcarātra scriptures).

Have you been working on authors having a determined personality? Did it help your general understanding of Sanskrit philosophy and cultural history?

On Vedānta Deśika, see here.

A database of scholars?

2011-09-22T12:05:00.005+02:00

As it is often the case, offer and demand do not meet in Sanskrit studies.
While considering where to write my PhD dissertation, I did not know about Jim Benson's work on Mīmāṃsā. When I spent some time with him last Spring, he said he had at that time no student to supervise —and would not have minded having one. Years after, I started thinking of a critical edition of Sucarita's commentary on Kumārila, until someone informed me that there was already someone else working on it. Now, I am working on Vedānta Deśika and cannot get really in touch with the many serious scholars working on him (if you google "vedānta deśika" you will get instead hundreds of devotional websites —which are fine, except that I am looking for something else).
Usually, this shortcomings due to lack of mutual contact and information can be avoided because the community of Sanskrit scholars is relatively small. But this is not always the case, especially if one works at its outskirts (geographically, culturally or linguistically). Nor can one just count on one's personal acquaintances.
Hence, how to fix the problem? I think that a nice solution would be to create a database of Sanskrit scholars, searchable through various keywords (such as "key interests"), unlike the rare "Who's who in Sanskrit Studies" by Klaus Karttunen. Prospective students would in this way find suitable tutors. Scholars would be able to know whether someone else is working on a topic they are also working on. They could in this way share information and avoid useless efforts (such as doing the same thing at the same time).

On offer and demand in Indology, see this post.

How to establish the validity of a "new" Sacred Text

2011-09-21T14:11:00.004+02:00

Vedānta Deśika is the major systematiser of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Before him, Yāmunācārya and Rāmānuja set the theological bases of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism, making a theological and philosophical school out of it. Vedānta Deśika has to rethink its position in the landscape of Sanskrit philosophy. Since Sanskrit works start by rule with an indication of their epistemological legitimacy, Vedānta Deśika had to face at first the problem of the legitimacy of the epistemological background of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and Śrī Vaiṣṇavism. This included the Vedas but most of all a collection of Sacred Texts called ''Pañcarātra" and which was commonly used by Śrī Vaiṣṇavas in their religious praxis.

From this point of view, Vedānta Deśika's situation parallels the one of other Sanskrit philosophers, such as Bhaṭṭa Jayanta and Abhinavagupta, who had to face a similar issue in trying to justify the Śaiva Sacred Texts. Basically, Sanskrit philosophy knows to way to justify the epistemological validity of an instance of Linguistic Communication (e.g., a Sacred Text). Either it is said to be apauruṣeya, 'independent of a human [author]', and, hence untouched by his/her defects, or it is guaranteed by an authoritative author, an āpta, 'reliable'. The Mīmāṃsā school strongly advocates the first view, whereas the Nyāya one the second. Within the second, it is quite easy to accommodate one's belief in God as the author of Sacred Texts. He is their reliable author, insofar as he is the most reliable speaker altogether. And in fact, the Nyāya school itself soon enough identifies the ''reliable speaker" of the Vedas as God himself. The authors who follow this attitude, like Bhaṭṭa Jayanta, will just have to prove that a certain Sacred Text has also been authored by God to include it within the Canon of the valid texts. By contrast, Vedānta Deśika chooses to adhere to the Mīmāṃsā paradigm, and thus has to face a far more complex issue, i.e., justifying the validity of the Veda as independent of a divine author, while at the same time preserving the supreme position of God. Further, he needs to justify the authority of the Pañcarātra, although these are not apauruṣeya. This leads him to an articulate epistemology of Linguistic Communication.

What happens to a religion when it faces the challenge of istitutionalisation? What happens when it tries to found the validity of its Sacred Texts within an already established framework?

On Vedānta Deśika, you can see this post.

What is the surest way to rationally found one's believes?

2011-09-20T13:11:00.002+02:00

Vedānta Deśika (XIII c.) was a polygraph. He wrote in different genres and in three different languages. However, the Seśvaramīmāṃsā (SM) occupies a specific position in his production, insofar as in it Vedānta Deśika explicitly faces the orthodox tradition of Mīmāṃsā. Thus, it represents at the same time Vedānta Deśika's essay of making Śrī Vaiṣṇavism compatible with the Vedic orthodoxy and of showing how Vedic orthodoxy would be useful and welcome for Śrī Vaiṣṇavas.

In his SM, Vedānta Deśika mainly focuses on orthodoxy, whereas problems concerning the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas' orthopraxy and the legitimacy of their rituals are dealt with in other works (see Rastelli 2006). Similarly, the emotional answer to the question about God's existence is dealt with in the copious devotional poems composed by Vedānta Deśika. Consequently, the SM represents an intellectual enterprise, one aiming at creating a synthesis between the two systems. How far can this synthesis reach? A main obstacle seems to be the Mīmāṃsā atheism, which would frontally oppose the very foundation of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism.
Vedānta Deśika will have to detect a difficult path within his interpretation of the foundational texts of Mīmāṃsā (Jaimini's Mīmāṃsāsūtra and Śabara's Śābarabhāṣya), one which allows him to say that the atheism as conceived by Mīmāṃsā authors was not a denial of the god devotees worship and at the same time to ground Śrī Vaiṣṇavism through rational argumentation independent of the pre-postulation of God's existence.

I have been blogging a lot about Vedānta Deśika, see for instance this post (on the epistemology of direct perception), this one (on that of dharma), this one (on linguistic communication), this one (on intellectual intuition).

How to refute a paper

2011-09-16T11:22:00.002+02:00

Is there a meaningful way to refute an article? I tend to think that it must be one through which the author can at least learn something.
For instance,

1. The refusal must be motivated. To say "it does not suit our journal" is not enough. The author should be given enough elements to judge and improve.
2. The review process must be as transparent as possible.
3. The reviewers must not be suspected of not being able to understand or to evaluate the article (i.e., they must know its topic well enough to be able to evaluate its value).
4. If possible, rather than refute, one might suggest improvements. Of course, this implies that the dead-line must allow extra time for substantial improvements. It is just sad to know that you are given no second chance, although the problems pointed out might have been remedied.
5. Particular caution might be needed in case of papers which cannot be "recycled". In other words, before asking for a paper in Montenegrin about a finety of ancient Indian phonetism, consider whether the author is really likely to produce something you will be able to publish.

By the way, I have just had an article refuted by a journal whose editor had asked me to write something for a special issue (on a topic connected to religions). This made me rethink about the general topic of refuting articles from a different standpoint:-))

In praise of variants

2011-09-15T10:47:00.003+02:00

Philology is a bourgeois, paternalist and hygienist discourse of the family, which cherishes filiation, condemns adultery, is afraid of contamination. A discourse of guilt (the variant is a deviant conduct), which founds a positive methodology (Bernard Cerquiglini).

This sounds like a funny and yet intriguing quote. I found it thanks to Reinhold Grünendahl's "Post-philological Gestures - "Deconstructing" Textual Criticism" (WZKS 52-53), which is in fact a praise of German textual criticism against Deconstructionism and any other attack coming from the side of Said's, Derrida's and Foucault's (alleged?) followers.
The intriguing side of the quote and that —at least in my case— it made me react by thinking that, in fact, I do not condemn at all variants. They are often the most important part of one's work. They tell one a lot about the fortune of a text (has it been understood? misunderstood? wilfully altered?), the milieus where it has been read, the kind of people who read it and their worldview. Besides, it might be the only way to get some insight into the original meaning of the text as conceived by its author.
Interestingly enough, the quote is found in a book which seems to share a similar point of view, since it is called Eloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1989, the quote is from pp.76-77).

On critical editions, textual criticism and variants, you might like these two posts (and their insightful comments).

Tips for a better speech, from the point of view of a listener

2011-09-14T14:29:00.000+02:00

What makes a speech a very good one —in South Asian studies? No reading, of course, good time-planning (vs. "I now have to skip to the conclusions…" while frantically looking for the right sheet) and being prepared by pronouncing it aloud, but what else?

During and after the last Coffee Break Conference, I collected some good advices from friends and colleagues:

1. If you are supposed to deliver a paper in a language which is not your mother-tongue, do not fill it words you would not normally use. The effort of remembering them (or, worse!, reading them) will make you nervous and unnatural. Just write your speech in a plain, colloquial way, using the same sort of language you would use for explaining it to a friend.
2. Focus on conveying an idea.
3. Examine your audience. Many papers have been enhanced just be the fact that the speakers had had enough time to adjust to the audience.
4. Less is more. Do not aim at re-shaping the history of South Asian studies, no one will follow you. Instead, convey one core point.

What would readers suggest? What sort of papers do you like more?

Boundaries and sacredness

2011-09-13T08:57:00.003+02:00

One of the characteristics of whatever is "sacred" or "religious" seems to be its being segregated from the corresponding normal behaviour (see M.S.'s point about it in this post). This might mean that walking, eating, cooking, etc., might all be secular as well as religious activities and that the difference lies first and foremost in their context. If the context sets a precise boundary, secluding them from normal experience, then they acquire a religious meaning. This is what would happen within a Vedic ritual, which encompasses all sorts of "normal" activities (such as the one listed above).
Does this apply to language as well? Indian grammarians seem to imply that the correct use of language bestows religious merit. But how does this happen? The topic has been dealt with recently by Paolo Visigalli and Marco Ferrante at the second CBF. I am sure I misunderstood most of their papers, but long summaries might be downloaded here. An intesting way to start the discussion is the first vārttika by Kātyāyana on Pāṇini. The vārttika says:

siddhe śabdārthasaṃbandhe lokato 'rthaprayukte śabdaprayoge śāstreṇa dharmaniyamaḥ yathā laukikavaidikeṣu.

In George Cardona's translation:

It is given from every day communication in the world that there is an established relation between words and meanings; it is also given that the use of a word is prompted by a given meaning in that one uses words in order to convey meanings. This being so, a restriction intended for merit (dharmaniyamaḥ) is established by the grammar, like in common and Vedic words.

The last point might imply that Grammar imposes a restriction into language and that only a so-restricted language may convey a meaning. Interestingly enough, the clause yathā laukikavaidikeṣu might mean that no language is intrinsically "sacred" (not even Vedic) and that, rather, sacredness depends on the way one adds special constraints to it. These constraints might be those of correctness, but perhaps also of a conscious usage (one which is made correct by Grammar and not just by the fact that one is a native speaker).
The main point seems to be that religious merit (dharma) has to do with a selection among equally possible options (niyama). Do readers know of other contexts of usage of the compound dharmaniyama?

I never blogged specifically on Indian Grammar, but if you look for "Grammar", you will find several posts dedicated to special issues (such as the minimal significant units according to Indian Grammarians, the interactions between Grammar, Mīmāṃsā and Ritual Sūtras, etc.).

Comments on a Coffee Break Conference

2011-09-12T13:13:00.005+02:00

A Coffee Break Conference is one meant to be nothing more than a coffee break conversation. No papers read, just discussion about topics, in an informal, yet passionate way, as it happens while sharing a meal during a boring conference.
I just came back from the Second Coffee Break Conference. As expected, it was great fun to feel free enough to share thoughts I would have normally kept for myself ("Do we really need a Gender approach?"), to ask questions I would not have normally been brave enough to ask ("What is the optimization theory in linguistics?"), to object, discuss, fight and disagree on really important points (such as the influence of one's implicit assumptions).
Hence, many thanks to the organizers and the participants!
Here are some of my favourites of the conference:

M.F. asking: "How far would you go to support your thesis? (Would you consciously omit data or alter them?)".
D.C. answering: "Until the third or forth very bad review of my work".
S.L. destroying our naive dreams by explaining us that "microfinance is just finance".
F.O. stressing the fact that the most honest thing to do is "to make our implicit assumptions explicit".
P.D.S. about "critical areal studies".
G.C.'s point that we should "be aware of the 'pizza effect', while working on South Asian texts with concept derived from the South Asian tradition, such as that of root".
M.S. point that "Sacredness is about segregation" and the way it relates to Kātyāyana's vārttika on dharmaniyama.

In case you managed to attend the conference, what are your favourites?
I plan to discuss some of the panels in the next posts. I posted here the program of the conference and discussed its rationale here.

Implicit paradigms

2011-09-06T11:56:00.008+02:00

Even if one claims one is not following any theory, one cannot help following one. Hence, it is much better to acknowledge it, unless one wants to be under the influence of an implicit (and hence, far more dangerous) paradigm.
This is what Mary Fulbrook (chapter 3 of her 20o2 book, see photo) says about implicit paradigms in history:

A-theoretical historians, if provoked sufficiently, may be brought to enunciate the view that Theory Is Not History and historians should get on with The Real Job of Doing History. Now for the bad news.
Even those who have no interest in theory are actually operating with implicit paradigms. In fact, the rest of this book is devoted to unpicking the various elements involved even in implicit paradigms. We have just introduced some of these elements, which, if unpacked a little more, include: the constitution and categorisation of "facts"; the selection of which "facts" to include and exclude; notions about the relationship among elements; the significance and weighting given to each element; the constitution of what might be called a Geschichtsbild, the historical picture of the whole, and the emplotment, the tale told about the combination of selected elements (sometimes called the metanarrative); and the general evaluation and emotive colouring given to the final product, the representation of history (including the use of language through which to write and represent selected aspects and interpretations of the past). […]
For example, how should one approch characterization and explanation of the English Civil War —or English Revolution, as Marxit historians (used to) like to call it? […]
[I]t is important to note the fact that any historical explanation entails choices about selection and explanation, whether or not it is considered by its proponents to be theoretical. And what satisfies one historian's curiosity (analysis of key meetings, the specific motives or actions of particular individuals) may seem just a matter of irritating or even trivial detail from the perspective of another historian. (pp.35-37)

(By the way, the present writer never doubted the fact that it WAS a Revolution. Apparently, my History teachers were also influenced by Marxist paradigms but, helas, did not make me aware of them.)

Let us then speak about methodology, all the more because it is something were genuine discussions are really possible (unlike in the case of minor details of one's work).

I already addressed this issue here and D. Wujastyk did it in his comment on this post.

Should we just write in English?

2011-08-21T13:12:00.000+02:00

English native speakers have the undoubtful advantage of having the chance to write in their own language while writing in a sort of lingua franca, understood by the whole Academia. But what about the rest of us?

Should we just write in English —since, after all, we address a public which is supposed to read English well enough?
Should we write in English while addressing an academic public and in our mother-tongue while addressing a more general one, one which could still need introductory works on, e.g., the Bhagavadgītā or the Yoga system?
Should we write in English our essays and in our mother-tongue our translations? (This seems to be the policy adopted in Vienna by E. Steinkellner, H. Krasser, their students and colleagues.)

In favour of the idea of writing in English speak many compelling reasons, one for all is the wider accessability of essays written in English. However, against it, I can find at least two interesting points:

1. It is hardly the case that one's English is good enough to master all nuances of the English language. Translating in English, hence, entails translating in a less-refined way.
2. We all work on Indian topics, because (among other things) we are convinced of the importance of keeping alive the lore of Indian thought, safeguarding its différence within the process of homologation of thought. Doing it through a single medium —does not this entail a contradiction?

Which languages do readers use while blogging/writing/translating? Which different readerships do you address? And, if you are an English Native Speaker, how do you feel about "our" use of English?

You might read here and here some interesting comments on translating from Sanskrit into English (especially if one has not English as one's native tongue).

Applied (Indian) Philosophy

2011-08-14T11:33:00.000+02:00

Out of the last weeks' news: 1. debate about the Danish terrorist Breivik: how could one defend one's society from hatred? 2. the number of people depending on pain-killers increases and pain-killers alone are often not enough to sedate pain. They would also need a psychological assistance.
From one point of view, it is way to easy to see that an increase in the general level of self-awareness, critical thought and intellectual resources in the society would be badly needed. As explained in the Kāmasūtra, even those who cannot read benefit of the general level of culture, because society as a whole so to say oozes with śāstra.
I am absolutely in favour of financing pharmaceutical research or computer sciences, but I wonder whether humanistic studies are really that useless. After all, does not society itself benefit of a general increase in its culture? Of course, scientific culture should also increase. But are we really sure that only the latter deserves funding? It should also be taken into account that humanistic studies are in comparison much cheaper. One does not needs labs, rats, expensive materials or the like. Why do not governments feel it is a good investment to have more people studying, e.g., Indian philosophy and resisting racism, or studying the Western philosophical bases of psychoanalysis and understanding how much of pain is culturally dependent?
But this leads me to a further question: how much do humanities scholars contribute to the misunderstanding of their disciplines as useless? Should we just stop caring about footnotes and bibliography and focus on the essential? Or is careful reading itself essential?

What do readers think? And what do they actively do?

Why using poetry to convey a theological or philosophical content?

2011-08-08T13:40:00.000+02:00

There seem to be three ways a thinker could use (also) poetry:

1. just as a formal device (e.g., for mnemotechnical purposes): Dharmakīrti, Kumārila, Bhartṛhari…
2. as a way to convey in a dramatic way a philosophical content: Jayanta's Āgamaḍambara, Utpaladeva's stotras… In this case, the full-fledged form of one's reasoning will still be found in one's philosophical works.
3. insofar as poetry and narrative allow one to integrate time within one discourse, to go beyond the logic of the principle of non contradiction, etc., : Vedānta Deśika, many Yogācāra and Mahāyāna Sūtras. In this case, one's narrative texts will be closer to one's ultimate purpose.

Do readers see further cases?

On Philosophy and Poetry and o Vedānta Deśika, see (among many other posts), here (please note also Vidya's comment). On Jayanta, see here. On Utpaladeva, see here. On a Mahāyāna Sūtra and its philosophical significance, see here.

Coffee Break Conference — 2

2011-08-06T15:16:00.005+02:00

As last year, we organized a new edition of the Coffee Break Conference. The title means that the whole conference aims to be relaxed and stimulating, like the discussions taking place during the coffee breaks (and never during the actual conferences).
For further details on the concept, please check our web-site, http://asiatica.wikispaces.com/

The Study of South Asia: between Antiquity and Modernity: Parallels and Comparisons.

The Coffee Break Conference — 2

(8-10 September 2011)

Where: Institute of Oriental Studies, Caserma Sani, via Principe Amedeo 182b (Underground “Vittorio"), Rome

1.1 Language as a Way of Salvation

Thursday the 8th, 8.30-13 sine tempore

chair: Marco Ferrante

• 8.30-8.35, Camillo Formigatti and Elena Mucciarelli, General Introduction.

• 8.35-8.40, Marco Ferrante, Introduction to the Panel.

• 8.40-9.20, Paolo Visigalli (University of Cambridge), How can I get a cow just by saying “cow"? an exploration into the power of language in ancient India.

• 9.20-10, Enrico Giulia, The Japanese Polyglots of Salvation: Miwa-ryū and its multilinguistic approach.

• 10-10.40, Marco Ferrante, Language, Salvation and their Relation: the soteriological goal according to the ancient Indian grammarians.

• 10.40-11, coffee break

• 11-11.40, Marco Lauri, Three ways to happiness. Arabic language and its paths to salvation.

• 11.40-12.20, Priya Darshini Swamy (University of Leiden), One Language is Not Enough: The Use of Sanskrit Among Hindus in Amsterdam.

• 12.20-13, Roberta Amato (Archivio di Stato di Venezia), Language as a sign of the times in Timor-Leste. The perception of the Portuguese language as salvation between politics and religious belief.

13-14.15: Lunch

1.2 The Development Question in South Asia: Policies and Processes

Thursday the 8th pomeriggio 14.15-17.20

chair: Matilde Adduci

• 14.15-14.20, Paola Cagna, Introduction to the Panel.

• 14.20-15, Daniela Bevilacqua, Divine Enterprise, the intime relationship between new Hindu religious organisations, Hindu nationalism and power élites.

• 15-15.40, Paola Cagna, The Self-Help groups movement between poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment: a case study from South India.

• 15.40-16, coffee break

• 16-16.40, Valentina Prosperi, Casual migrant workers in the construction industry in India. Gender dimension.

• 16.40-17.20, Simona Lanzoni, Women, empowerment and microcredit.

17.20-17.30: coffee break

1.3 Round-table on History and Historiography

Universalist theories in past, present and research. Or: How autopoietic was primitive communism?

Thursday the 8th, 17.30-19.30

chair: Mark Schneider (University of Hamburg)

2.1 “Indigenous" grammars

Friday the 9th 8.30-13

chair: Giovanni Ciotti (University of Cambridge)

• 8.30-8.35, Giovanni Ciotti Introduction to the Panel.

• 8.35-9.25, Philomen Probert (University of Oxford), Underlying forms and derivations in ancient Greek theory of prosody.

• 9.20-10.15, Maria Piera Candotti (University of Lausanne) and Tiziana Pontillo (University of Cagliari), Linguistic layers and their role in structuring Pāṇini's grammar.

• 10.15-10.30, coffee break

• 10.30-11.20, Christian Pallone, Japanese grammatical traditions.

• 11.20-12.10, Stefano Seminara (Pontificio Istituto Biblico, Rome), Sumerian grammatical traditions.

• 12.10-13, Carlo Vessella, Greek grammatical traditions.

13-14.15: Lunch

• 14.15-15, Artemij Keidan, The Syntax of the simple sentence.

2.2 Round table on Borrowing representational devices across language speculation

What happens when representational devices developed by a tradition to describe a language A are employed to describe a language B?

Friday the 9th 15-17

chair: Giovanni Ciotti

• 15-15.30, Introductory speech, Luca Alfieri, A Contribution to the History of the Concept of Root.

• 15.30-17, Open Discussion

17-17.15, coffee break

2.3 Narratives in South Asian philosophical texts

Friday the 9th 17.15-19.30

chair: Daniele Cuneo

• 17.15-17.20, Daniele Cuneo, Introduction to the Panel.

• 17.20-18.10, Robert Leach (University of Edinburgh), Textual Deference: Philosophy in the Spandapradīpikā.

• 18.10-19, Kate Wharton (Research Assistant to the Revd Canon Guy Wilkinson), The Teacher as Mother of Midwife? A Comparison of Brahmanical and Socratic Methods of Education.

• 19-19.30, Open Discussion

3.1 The relevance of texts for the study of art

Saturday the 10th 8.30-11.20 chair: Elisa Ganser

• 8.30-8.35, Elisa Ganser, Introduction to the Panel.

• 8.35-9.25, Ciro Lo Muzio, Written sources versus material record: some views on a thorny issue.

• 9.25-10.15, Felix Otter (University of Heidelberg), Vastuvidyā between text and practice: Some considerations.

• 10.15-10.30, coffee break

• 10.30-11.20, Anna Tosato (University of Mysore), The Use of Traditional Texts in the Interpretation of Dance Sculptures (Nāṭyaśāstra-s, Śilpaśāstra-s and Vāstusūtra Upaniṣad).

11.20-11.35, coffee break

3.2 Round Table on Present Results and Further Goals

Saturday the 10th, 11.35-12.35

chair: Elena Mucciarelli and Cristina Bignami

For further info, abstracts and additional bibliography:

http://asiatica.wikispaces.com

If you feel the project appealing, please consider donating here.

Nothing is self-evident

2011-08-01T11:23:00.000+02:00

There are some stylistic devices I just cannot stand. One of them is to label something as "self-evident" or obvious. If something is that easy to demonstrate, take the time to do it —it will not take long. If you do not do it, it is likely that you just would not know how, and in this case stating that no demonstration is needed does not strengthen your argument. Unless, of course, one aims at creating an interesting delusion rather than convincing someone in an epistemologically sound way.
Further, if one is genuinely convinced that a given statement is self-evident, she might herself be under a similar delusion. Everyone used to believe that the earth was flat and that this was "self-evident". To assume an unreflected statement as self-evident is not appealing to common sense, it is just using a faulty method.
It all becomes even more ironical if what is said to be obvious is, in fact, a controversial issue!

Do readers have words which just drive them crazy?

On the risks of denying a methodology, see here.

Philosophy and Poetry

2011-07-25T09:30:00.003+02:00

What happens if a philosopher writes in verses? In many cases, hardly anything at all. Kumārila's Ślokavārttika (in verses) is as conceptual and dense as his Tantravārttika (mostly in prose). And the same applies, as far as I can judge, to Bhartṛhari, Dignāga, Dharmakīrti and several others.
Yet there are different cases, of authors who are able to use verses for their own sake. I think of Vedānta Deśika, who is a great poet exactly insofar as he does not use verses only as a metrical form. Rather, he expresses in poetry the paradoxical nature of God's relation to human beings, a nature which he also tries to analytically describe in his prose.
It might be that poetry is especially good for a certain kind of topics, the ones which cannot be just explained away by logic. And these constitute the bulk of what really matters to human beings, once logic and epistemology have paved the way for it.
I am particularly fascinated by the way poetry or narrative structures in general might be used to convey an additional philosophical meaning beyond the one which is analytically explainable. I think of cases such as the Buddhis Canon, the Upaniṣads, the Yogācāra Sūtras, etc. etc.
How do readers feel about such texts? Does their narrative structure act upon them, enhancing their intellectual understanding?

On Vedānta Deśika, see (among other posts) here (on Veda and Upaniṣads) here (on the epistemology of Sacred Texts), here (on dharma and direct perception), here (on sense perception), here (on pleasure and pain).

Human resources matter…and still they are neglected

2011-07-21T14:18:00.006+02:00

I am convinced that we* tend to underestimate the importance of human resources while trying to achieve a certain goal. We might consider someone's expertise, but we never take into account his or her nature and temperament. In this way, many ambitious projects never achieve their goals because of disagreements among the project participants or between the project leaders and his or her co-workers, or just because the ones who work in them could not program their time good enough.

What could be the solution?

1. To work in a team, so that one's weak points might be compensated by someone else.
2. To reflect about one's methodology and not just about the content of what is about to do.
3. (old-fashioned as it sounds) To know oneself, in order to avoid the risk of overestimating one's speed, underestimating one's bad temper, etc.

*"we" =pick up one or more of the following: South Asian scholars, scholars of Indology, scholars of Linguistics, History or of Philosophy.

Did readers find more interesting ways to deal with HR within a project regarding Indology (or any other field of the Humanities)?

On the need to coordinate offer and demand in Indology, see this post. On the need to think about methodology, see this post. On team-working, see here, here (team work in Indian philosophy), here (on delegating) and here (about how could South Asian studies be improved through team work). On the difficult survival with colleagues, see here. On choosing one's ideal colleague, see here.

Can one believe without faith?

2011-07-20T11:45:00.004+02:00

In several Indian texts, the fact that the ṛṣis have seen dharma and, hence, authored the Veda has been "proven" on the strength of statements of the Veda itself. This sounds obviously flawed to a contemporary audience: the authority of a text (even this of the Veda) depends on its author, hence one cannot rely on a text's statement until one has independently established its author's authority. In other words, the text itself has not an independent epistemological power to establish the characteristics of the one who authored it.

Similarly, Ernst Steinkellner and Masatoshi Nagatomi (and Tilmann Vetter before them, see Vetter 1964) argued that there is a similar circularity at the foundation of the validity of Buddhist thought:

the path taught by the Buddha is valid ––» because it is established by instruments of knowledge ––» the validity of these instruments has been established by the Buddha

Hence, the very instruments which should prove the Buddha's authority are only justified through His authority:

The testing of the validity of the Buddha's words requires a tool which was for Dignāga and and Dharmakīrti the pramāṇa, the valid means of cognition. Such a tool, at least in principle, may be expected to be one which is universally acceptable to all and free from dogmatic premises and presuppositions. Both Dignāga and Dharmakīrti struggle to achieve that end by polemically refuting the number and definitions of pramāṇas of the non-Buddhist schools which were contradictory to their own. We must note, however, that the final authority by which they claimed the validity of their pramāṇa system was none other than the Buddha's words which they accepted as authentic by faith (Nagatomi 1980, 245-6).

The issue is more than controversial among Buddhologists and Eli Franco and Tom Tillemans strongly disagree with this view. See for instance Franco 1999 and Tillemans 1999.
Whatever the case, a naif Western reader may overestimate these cases, forgetting to look at comparable instances in Western thought. For instance, let me point out common statements in Christian sermons, such as "God is love, as stated in the second letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians". In fact, that God is love is presupposed by the existence of his Revelation. Hence, the Revelation itself cannot independently prove it.

The above discussion is not meant in order to censure religious thought. In fact, circularity is not a flaw for a believer —who already trusts the Sacred Texts and is hence not disturbed by an appeal to their authority. One can imagine that an emotive commitment is used in order to found an epistemological one, so that one cannot strictly speak of circularity. Moreover, it might be suggested that religious thought cannot avoid such a commitment and is, hence, inextricably linked with a decision which cannot be a priori explained through epistemology (which can, however, a posteriori justify it).

On this topic, you might look at this post by Jayarava. On Dharmakīrti's agenda in regard to faith (as seen by V. Eltschinger), see this post. On the problem of the boundaries of religious thought (and of philosophy, by the way), see this post.

Intellectual biography

2011-07-15T14:52:00.001+02:00

I have been forced to reflect on my intellectual biography while working on an application for a scholarhip. Here is what I wrote:

After completing my MA on Śaiva Siddhānta (an annotated translation and study of Sadyojyotis' Mokṣakārikā together with Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha's commentary thereon, dealing primarily with arguments aiming at establishing God's existence), I prosecuted my studies of Indian Philosophy and of Philosophy in general. This lead me to a second degree in Western Philosophy, whose final thesis was on Testimony in a 17th c. work, the Logique elaborated in Port Royal by D. Arnauld and P. Nicole. I continued working on Linguistic Communication as a means of knowledge ever since, primarily in the field of Indian Philosophy, but with constant references to philosophy in general.

My studies on Linguistic Communication (śabdapramāṇa) evolved in various directions, i.e., in broad investigations on the nature and evolution of this means of knowledge in all schools of Indian philosophy and particularly in Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya, in linguistic studies on language as conceived in Indian thought, especially in Mīmāṃsā, in epistemological, theological and hermeneutic matters related to this instrument of knowledge.

In order to understand the background of the Mīmāṃsā perspective on language and on Language as instrument of knowledge, I also worked more in-depth on this philosophical school in general. I started reading and translating the whole Tantrarahasya, a primer written by Rāmānujācārya on Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā. A book on this text containing a long introductory study, a critical edition and an annotated translation, together with indexes and glossary, is currently under review for Brill.

I then read extensive portions of Rāmānujācārya's direct sources, i.e., Pārthasārathi Miśra's Śāstradīpikā and Śālikanātha Miśra's Prakaraṇapañcikā, of the other available work by Rāmānujācārya (his Nāyakaratna commentary on Pārthasārathi Miśra's Nyāyaratnamālā) and of Rāmānujācārya's indirect sources (in decreasing order of completeness: Kumārila's Ślokavārttika together with Pārthasārathi Miśra's, Sucarita Miśra's and Uṃveka Bhaṭṭa's commentaries; Maṇḍana Miśra's Vidhiviveka together with Vācaspati Miśra's Nyāyakaṇikā thereon; Maṇḍana Miśra's Bhāvanāviveka; Kumārila's Tantravārttika with Someśvara's commentary, Prābhākara Miśra's Bṛhatī with Śālikanātha's Ṛjuvimalā thereon, Kumārila's Ṭupṭīkā). Within Mīmāṃsā, I worked primarily on Language as an instrument of knowledge, on linguistic theories about sentence-meaning and about exhortation, on the hermeneutics of Vedic injunctions, on absence as an instrument of knowledge, on error and on the phenomenological role of the subject in epistemology and hermeneutics. In all these cases, I have been aiming at bridging Indian philosophy and Western one, by using a terminology which could be appropriate to both cases and by trying to address Indian texts as philosophical texts, demanding to be understood in a philosophical way.

While working on Mīmāmsā as a school of philosophy, I noticed how stratified some of its key concepts are and hence started investigating into their history. I therefore dedicated a study to the evolution of vidhi and of its classifications and sub-types in Classical and Post Classical Mīmāṃsā and one to the evolution of prasaṅga and tantra in Jaimini, Śabara, and Later Mīmāṃsā, along with their parallel history within Grammar and Śrauta Sūtras. Both studies proved how Grammar, Mīmāṃsā and Kalpasūtra texts (with particular reference to Śrautasūtras and Dharmasūtras) share a common prehistory, as appears evidently in their shared terminology and methodological approaches.

Working on linguistic theories also lead me outside Mīmāṃsā proper, so that I read and translated parts of Bhaṭṭa Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī (henceforth NM), especially of the books 3, 5 and 6 (all dedicated to language). I am currently translating the first part of NM 5, on exhortation and I am working on the translation of the second part of NM 6, on sentence-meaning, with Alessandro Graheli (University of Vienna). In this connection, together with some colleagues, I am about to submit for financing a research project focusing on the critical edition, translation and study of the fifth book of the Nyāyamañjarī. The project has already been presented to the “Open Pages in South Asian Studies” seminar held in Moscow, April 2011 and will be presented also at the World Sanskrit Conference to be hold in Delhi, January 2012.

Due to my interest for how the history of philosophy influences one's common-sense, I have also been working on theories about “nature” in Indian thought and how they differ from coeval and contemporary theories in the Western world.

Among my future projects are also a translation of the first pāda of Prabhākara's commentary on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra. Prābhākara's text is poorly transmitted and edited and is in itself extremely terse, yet it is a fundamental text of Indian philosophy, so that I plan to work on it as soon as my expertise in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā (acquired through Rāmānujācārya's and Śālikanātha's texts) is firm enough. Symmetrically, I plan to enlarge my field of investigation also by taking into account the later development of Mīmāṃsā in South India, when Mīmāṃsā and especially Prābhākara tenets have been embedded in Vaiṣṇava schools. In this connection I started translating Vedānta Deśika's Seśvaramīmāṃsā with Dr. Marion Rastelli (Austrian Academy of Sciences). Vedānta Deśika is one of the main theologians of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school and I hope to be able to better understand the link between belief in God and belief in the authority of Sacred Texts (deemed to be independent of their author) in post Classical Mīmāṃsā.

I do not think that critical editions of texts are an end in themselves, but I am firmly convinced that one's understanding of a text may be very much improved if it is soundly grounded. Hence, I improved the existing edition of Rāmānujācārya's Tantrarahasya by reading the only extant manuscript (in Telegu script) and I consulted manuscripts (in Malayalam, Śāradā and Devanagarī script) whenever I have been working on the Nyāyamañjarī.

Apart from the horrible experience of having to write it down, how would your intellectual biography sound like? Have you ever tried to detect its Leit-motives?

Contemporary Indian Aesthetics

2011-07-14T18:31:00.000+02:00

It is a pity that contemporary Indian philosophy is usually neglected. Contemporary Indian aesthetics is no exception, although it would have a lot to offer to the general discours on aesthetics, given the fact that it can benefit of the high level of reflection achieved in Classical Indian aesthetics.
I recently read Chaudury's Aesthetics Metaphysics. The author is acquainted with both Indian and Western aesthetic thought and claims, among other things, that there is a radical difference between the two:

Indian aesthetics has been in the main unaffected by any intellectual metaphysics. Aesthetic contemplation has been at the outset regarded as distinct from theoretic understanding and beauty distinct from intellectual truth. While Plato and the Scholastics hold artistic activity to be a feast of reason, the Indian aestheticians take it as a feast of feeling. (p. 192)

I am not sure I fully agree, but I certainly subscribe to the claim that Indian epistemology can accommodate within itself different sorts of "truths", and thus does not need to make the object it studies conform to a single (logical) standard.

Do you agree on this interpretation of Indian and Western aesthetics? If so, why was it so?

On the problem of the truth-value of whatever is not a description of a state of affairs, see here.

Sense perception cannot grasp dharma

2011-07-13T11:41:00.002+02:00

satsamprayoge puruṣasyendriyāṇāṃ buddhijanma tat pratyakṣaṃ animittaṃ vidyamānopalambhanatvāt.
Once there is a connection with an existing thing of a person's sense-faculties, the arousal of a notion is sense-perception. It is not a condition [for knowing dharma] because it seizes [only] present things

MS (Mīmāṃsāsūtra) 1.1.4 is not an epistemological sūtra dealing primarily with the definition of sense perception. Rather, it aims at excluding sense-perception as a possible instrument to know dharma.

According to Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, who is probably the most influential author of the Classical Mīmāṃsā and who founded the so-called Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, MS 1.1.4 aims at excluding also direct (and non sensory) perception, i.e. yogipratyakṣa (on this sūtra in Kumārila's interpretation, see John Taber, Kumārila on perception, 2005). This is a sort of direct apprehension of an object, non-mediated by inference, etc., nor by the sense-faculties, and which could hence compared to Kant's intellectual intuition. It occupies only a marginal position in pre-Classical Indian philosophy, where it is attributed only to marginal categories (such as yogins and ṛṣis), whereas Classical authors tend to stress its role as an alternative to Sacred Texts as instruments of knowledge or as an integration of them.

In fact, if intellectual intuition is possible, direct perception is no longer limited to sense faculties and can also grasp super sensuous objects like dharma. If this is the case, one can justify, e.g., the Buddha's grasp of the four noble truths and one no longer depends on Sacred Texts as one's only source about dharma.

Can one admit intellectual intuition among the sources of dharma, without endangering the uniqueness of the Veda?

I dedicated several posts to yogipratyakṣa, see for instance here (on its object), here (on its risks), here (on the opposition Veda-sensory perception or yogipratyakṣa-sensory perception) and here (on Vedānta Deśika about it).

Unifying Hinduism: when did it start?

2011-07-12T11:17:00.003+02:00

Very recently (winter 2010), Unifying Hinduism: philosophy and identity in Indian intellectual history, a book by Andrew Nicholson raised interesting discussions on the “birth” of Hinduism. Nicholson locates it with interesting arguments in the Vijayanagara empire, but the results of any historical enterprise, may always be reframed within an earlier frame of references.
Jayanta Bhaṭṭa's attempt to admit the Atharvaveda among the Vedas and other Sacred Texts different than the Veda among the Texts enjoying an epistemological value (in the Āgamaprāmāṇya section of the Nyāyamañjarī) can be viewed as exactly part of the process which lead to the diffusion of a pan-Indian acceptance of similar texts and values.

Which enterprises would you classify as paving the way to "Hinduism"?

On Nicholson's book see also this post and this other blog (interview to Nicholson about his book, with comments). To Jayanta I dedicated many posts, see for instance here.

What happened between Śālikanātha and Rāmānujācārya?

2011-07-08T14:50:00.004+02:00

As discussed in two previous posts (here and here) Śālikanātha Miśra (IX c.?) dedicates several pages to the ontology of the ātman. These pages appear neither innovative nor particularly original, yet Śālikanātha must have deemed the topic important enough to include it in his Prakaraṇapañcikā. By contrast, Rāmānujācārya (after the XIII c.) hardly if ever uses the term ātman and does not discuss at all any ontological argument about it. That the topic of the subject interests him is, however, proved by the many pages about its hermeneutical and epistemological phenomenology.

Why does Śālikanātha feel the need to add ontological arguments, probably borrowed from the Nyāya school? And why does not Rāmānujācārya feel the same need? What happened between the two?

The following answer is more than tentative and it is based mostly on the method of investigating into the history of ideas (Ideengeschichte). It is easy to see that one of Śālikanātha's principal opponents, namely the Buddhist Pramāṇavādin, is altogether absent in Rāmānujācārya's work. In fact, Rāmānujācārya was active in South India and at a time (after the XIII c.) when Buddhism was no longer a philosophical concurrent. Consequently, Śālikanātha might have felt the need to defend the ātman also from an ontological point of view, in order to resist to the Buddhist anātmavāda, whereas Rāmānujācārya was active at a time in which the existence of an ātman was common sense among philosophers. Consequently, he could rather focus on its epistemological and hermeneutic phenomenology.

Vincent Eltschinger has attempted (in his book Penser l'Autorité des Ecritures) a similar solution of the different approaches to the Buddha's word in Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Do you deem it legitimate to use extra-philosophical arguments to interpret a philosopher's thought?

On Śālikanātha on the ātman, see here and here. I dedicated several posts to V. Eltschinger's book. See for instance, here (first post on the book), here (discussing why we need Sacred Texts) and here (discussing an expert's different fields of expertise).

Ontology and phenomenology of the ātman

2011-07-07T11:00:00.006+02:00

A bright colleague of mine (Daniele Cuneo) pointed out that Śālikanātha's passage in yesterday's post might as well be interpreted as purely ontological. The point could be that the subject is fix and that it only seems manyfold in its epistemological role.
In fact, the emphasis on the subject as knower might be interpreted as just instrumental to the ontological foundation of the ātman. That this is not the case is at least suggested by the history of the Mīmāṃsā reflection on this subject, which originates from Vedic hermeneutic concerns and not from ontological ones. Historically, it is more probably the case that ontological arguments have been added in order to firmly ground the subject's phenomenological role in epistemology and ritual hermeneutics.
How comes, then, that the ontological approach is added to the phenomenological one? Hypothetically, one might propose that Śālikanātha adds to the standard Prābhākara argumentation, based on the Veda and, therefore, on the phenomenology of the subject and on its role in epistemology, a further line of argumentation, based on ontology and inspired by the arguments of its opposers, mainly Naiyāyika authors. Consider the following sequence of arguments (with no interruption in between) and note the shift to the usage of ātman in the ontological section:

(Vedic-based argument:) In regard to someone who [performs] no action, agency and experience would be [merely] hypothetical. [But] an agent and an experiencer, presupposed by the [Vedic] sentence about the one having the sacrifice's weapons [which refers to the ātman as the sacrificer and as the one who will enjoy heavenly bliss],¹ must be determined, hence the mention of recognition has been put forth.

(Nyāya-influenced argument:) And when this self has been recognised, then the self [endowed with] consciousness is its characteristic. Nor does it arise at a certain point from it (self) alone. For an effect whose [single] cause is always proximate would not arise [only] from time to time. […] Therefore this self, which is the inherent cause [of consciousness], requires a [further] cause, one that is inherent to it.²

1 “This sacrificer who has the sacrifice's weapons (the sacrifice's substances and tools), will go to the heavenly world quickly” (sa eṣa yajñāyudhī yajamāno 'ñjasā svargaṃ lokaṃ yāti). The sentence is discussed by Śabara, ŚBh ad MS 1.1.5. I could not locate a Vedic source for it.

2 According to the Nyāya school, there are three sorts of causes: 1. the samavāyikāraṇa 'inherent cause', such as the two halves of a pot, which inhere in the effect (the pot); 2. the asamavāyikāraṇa 'cause which does not inhere [in the effect, but rather inheres in the inherent cause], such as the colour of the two halves, which inheres in them, but not directly in the pot; 3. the nimittakāraṇa 'necessary condition', such as the potter.

Why does Śālikanātha feel the need to add ontological arguments? (My tentative answer will follow shortly, but I would be glad to read your opinion about it).

On more insights about the subject (this time in the Mānavadharmaśāstra) by Daniele Cuneo, see here.

Ontological or epistemological arguments for the subject?

2011-07-06T09:57:00.004+02:00

Rāmānujācārya definitely favours a non-ontological approach to the problem of the subject. For him, the subject is what one becomes due to hearing and obeying to Vedic prescriptions.
What about his more systematic predecessor, Śālikanātha?

Since its very beginning, the chapter he dedicates to this topic (the Tattvāloka within his Prakaraṇapañcikā) seems to look for a balance between the two opposite tendencies. In its second verse, the first two padas are rather ontologically oriented, whereas the last two stress the role of the subject as the agent of cognitions we can experience in every day life:

The self, distinguished from intellect, sense faculties and from the body, is an all-pervasive substance |

different according to each field (of experience) [i.e., according to each empirical individual] , it shines forth in the act of understanding of the objects ||

(buddhīndriyaśarīrebhyo bhinna ātmā vibhur dhruvaḥ | nānābhūtaḥ pratikṣetram arthavittiṣu bhāsate || 2 ||)

Moreover, the subject is repeatedly identified as the knower (jñātṛ) and its necessity is demonstrated through epistemological arguments (such as the need for a reunification of different sense-cognitions and the possibility of memory).

How can the two approaches coexist?

On Rāmānujācārya's approach, see here. For further post on the topic of subjectivity, check the label "subject".

Where is the subject during errors?

2011-07-05T13:56:00.000+02:00

The Prābhākara view distinguishes three elements within a cognition: the act of cognition, the object cognised and its cogniser. It also claims that they are inseparably known through every single cognitive act, insofar as no cognition of an object is possible without a cognising subject and without a cognitive act itself. Nor is one only aware of the sheer cognised object, without any frame. One knows a known object. This also means that, in the Prābhākara view, a cognition is a piece of knowledge only insofar as it is self-aware. It is not, as in Sāṅkhya and Nyāya, a mechanical act to which the conscious subject adds awareness. In order to be a knowledge, it must be intrinsically conscious.

What about acts of cognition which are not self-aware? A cognitive act which were not self-aware could not be a case of knowledge, because it would necessarily lack the important component of presentness. But are such cases conceptually possible? An interesting example is discussed by Rāmānujācārya in the epistemological chapter of TR (TR I). Rāmānujācārya mentions the case of the memory of silver which arises in one's mind while seeing a piece of mother-of-pearl on the beach. One sees mother-of-pearl and automatically remembers silver. This is said to be only an incomplete cognition and cannot be a piece of knowledge. Now, one could ask, who is the agent in the case of such cognitions? And how comes that s/he seems not to be included in such cognitive acts, since s/he is said to be necessarily included in acts of knowledge? Do they just arise due to saṃskāras and, hence, automatically or is a knower nonetheless present?

In fact, in the case of a conscious recollection of silver, one would simultaneously be aware of oneself and of the act of recollection. By contrast, the recollection of silver evoked by a lustrous piece of mother-of-pearl seems to be necessarily unconscious, since if it were conscious, one would be able to distinguish it as a separate piece of cognition and one would not conflate the remembered silver with the apprehended lustrous thing. Does not its “incompleteness” exactly refer to the fact that it lacks the element of a knower and of an act of cognition?

If this interpretation is correct, such cognitions would arise independently of a subject, which would else necessarily be included in the knowledge act. They arise due to saṃskāras and are, hence, not acts of knowledge performed by an agent, but only results of the saṃskāras' function. Hence, they can occur independently of an agent.

Do readers have a different understanding of the way saṃskāras function? And of the Nyāya or Sāṅkhya epistemologies?

On mother-of-pearl mistaken as silver, see also this post.

Religious experiences and the need for boundaries

2011-07-04T11:03:00.003+02:00

What is essential to a religious experience? Within a theistic perspective, one's encounter with God. If this happens, everything else is unessential and becomes ipso facto superfluous. If one has experienced an encounter with God, one will probably see how fasting, cutting one's hair, refraining from drinking wine, etc., are all as far from the experience one has had, as their opposites.
Why then do we need churches and religious institutions? Why "religions"? I can see at least two kinds of reasons:

1. encountering God is not something you can foresee. It might depend also on you, but must depend primarily on Her/Him. While waiting for that to happen, you might try to get prepared through a certain discipline. The discipline will forge you and make the encounter possible. It creates, so to say, the empty space within yourself where the epiphany might take place.
2. you might think you did encounter God just because you had an intense experience. For instance, I am inclined to think that this happens to many people who fall in love with TV personalities, no matter whether rock stars or "reverends". Religious institutions should guard you from the risk of confounding God with what is just emotionally intense. They should deny all your claims, unless they fit into their narrow path of well-established ways of encountering God. If your encounter is sincere, they explicitly claim, it will fit within it. Maybe, many of their authorities also secretly think that if you really had a genuine experience of God and this did not fit into the standards, you will receive from Her/Him enough strength to explain to the Church/to your spiritual master that it has to change its/his/her standards. These have to exist, hence, to test the genuinity of your faith.

I might be wrong, but I understand Mīmāṃsā as fulfilling these two tasks. Paradoxically, the Mīmāṃsā school is engaged with Sacred Texts, but seems to have no sympathy at all for religious experiences. Why so? If the above is correct, because of 2.
And what would be the purpose of executing difficult rituals in an exact way —imagining that you no longer believe in Vedic Deities, but in a personal God? 1.

How do readers conceive the role of religious institutions in India? I am not speaking about their political role, but only of the theological rationale of their existence.

pada: word or morpheme?

2011-06-29T23:37:00.000+02:00

I think that pada might mean either `word' or `morpheme', if the latter can be conceived of as having an independent meaning, like in the case of the optative verbal ending.
For the historical background of this double meaning, see the following quote:

For Yāska the Vedic Saṃhitās are made of padas. It is not clear whether this refers to verse-quarters, words or whole verses. Pāṇini restricts the meaning of pada to `word' or word-component. pada may mean here `verb', but also `substantive' or `prefix'.

(``Für Yāska sind die vedischen Saṁhitās aus padas gemacht. Ob es sich hier um Vers-viertel, Worte oder ganze Verse handelt, ist nicht klar. Pāṇini (1.4.14) engt die Bedeutung von pada auf `Wort' oder auch Bestandteile von Worten ein. Pada kann hier sowohl Verb als auch Substantiv, aber auch Präfix bedeuten". (Lars Göhler 2011, p.69).

Transcriptions from Devanagari (etc.) into Roman alphabet

2011-06-28T16:32:00.002+02:00

Apart from whimsical transcriptions linked to the prehistory of Sanskrit studies or to their periphery, Sanskrit is usually transcribed in a standard way, e.g.:

pramāṇato 'rthapratipattau pravṛttisāmarthyād arthavat pramāṇam || NS 1.1.1 ||

Interestingly enough, however, transcriptions still widely differ as for the word-boundaries. Personally, I tend to separate as much as possible, since this procedure seems to me reader-friendlier. Other authors, prefer instead to reproduce in the Roman alphabet the scriptum continuum typical of Devanagari and other Indian alphabets. For instance,

What are the advantages of this usage? I can easily imagine some textual-critical advantages:

1. it makes readers aware of the text as it looked like in the manuscript,
2. it avoids influencing readers with the editor's understanding of the text.

However, apart from the case of diplomatic editions, the influence of the editor is explicit, especially so in studies. And why should one make life more difficult to readers?
In many cases, for instance when a neutrum term could be considered as part of a compound or as a nominative/accusative, the difference might be significant. For instance:

arthe 'nupalabdhe tatpramāṇam bādārāyanasya anapekṣatvāt

is quite different than:

arthe 'nupalabdhe tat pramāṇam bādārāyanasya anapekṣatvāt (end of MS 1.1.5)

What do readers think? Are there further reasons for the scriptum continuum also in Roman transcriptions I am missing?

Cicero pro domo sua

2011-06-24T09:12:00.000+02:00

I felt personally addressed by an intriguing post by Vidya (here) which asks how could one with little or no knowledge of rituals be able to understand Mīmāṃsā texts.
The post is highly recommendable and raises many interesting points.
Personally, although I have been reading Mīmāṃsā texts for …(too many) years now, not only I lack a lot of the knowledge I should have, but also I am not in the position to acquire it, being a mleccha woman.

Let me first be apologetic: the same problem does not only apply to tantric āgamas (as admitted by Vidya), but also to texts dealing with Medicine, Yoga, Architecture. meditation techniques and any other technical subject (one is reminded of endless discussions about whether a non-Buddhist might understand Buddhist texts). Further, I would say that sharing the authors' worldview (which seems to be Vidya's main point) is fundamental also for philosophical texts. One cannot think of editing or translating Kumārila or Jayanta just through a bunch of manuscripts and one's acquaintance with Sanskrit. One should (I believe) be ready to engage in a philosophical dialogue with them.
This leads me to a further point: Mīmāṃsā authors are not yajñikas (as established by Daya Krishna in his well-known The Mīmāṃsaka and the Yajñika). They do not (or not merely) aim at performing ritual in a correct way, they aim at conceiving the ritual in a correct way. This is evident in thousands of cases where the end-result does not change and yet authors argue at length about which principle should be applied (e.g. MS 12.1.10-11). To disregard this fundamental difference, I believe, is to do violence to the deep philosophical significance of Mīmāṃsā.
Last, a word of caution: Vidya seems to imply that a contemporary yajñika might be in a better position to understand a Mīmāṃsā text. This might be true. Among my favourite Mīmāṃsā scholars are several Indian paṇḍits, such as G. Jhā, P.K. Sen and K. Pandurangi, whom I immensly admire. But knowing how something is done today does not automatically entail knowing how it was made at the time of Śabara. I dedicated several posts in the last months to the history of the terms tantra and prasaṅga and hope to have been able to show how their meaning changed throughout centuries. In short: being aware of philosophy and of philosophy in history seems to me the fundamental precondition for understanding Mīmāṃsā philosophical texts.
Yet, Vidya is right. I argued elsewhere that it is ironic that examples, meant to be clarifications, are often the hardest part of a Mīmāṃsā passage. What should one do? First, work in a team with people who are more acquainted with rituals or with ritual manuals (paddhati). Second, think along the Mīmāṃsā way. "Think ritually", as F.X. Clooney would put it. This implies some revolutions, for instance, thinking in a spatial way rather than in a temporal one.

What is the readers experience in fields where they are outsiders?

On team-work, see here. On thinking spatially, see here (in Śrautasūtras), here (in Śrautasūtras and early Mīmāṃsā), here (in general) and here (on absence as a spatial and not temporal category). On the use of history, see here. With God's help, I will be speaking about how to critically editing a philosophical text during the next WSC.

If something is already in use, you do not need to further justify its use

2011-06-23T10:59:00.005+02:00

I am always fascinated by the pragmatic logic of the Mīmāṃsā school (and often of every speculation about ritual). The one hinted at in the title is one of these cases: if something is already in use, it goes without saying that it is correct to use it, and one only needs an epistemic foundation for something one starts using.
prasaṅga occurs three times in MS, all very close to each other, in MS 12.1.10-11 and 15. The context is that of the archetype sacrifice-ectype sacrifice (prakṛti/vikṛti) relationship and of the way elements are analogically translated from the former to the latter.

The first of these three sūtras is traditionally read as a PP, possibly depending on the vā found in the subsequent one:

pātreṣu ca prasaṅgaḥ syād dhomārthatvāt. (10)
nyāyyāni vā prayuktatvād aprayukte prasaṅgaḥ syāt. (11)

A provisional translation could sound like:

[PP:] And, as regards the vessels, [their function] might be automatically entailed (in a subsequent rite), since they are for the sake of the oblation.

[S:] Better: since [they] are [already] in use, they are regularly [to be employed]. The automatic entailment applies [only] in regard to something which is not already in use.

If the attribution to a PP is right, the objector argues that, in regard to the vessels, one might "apply" (i.e., analogically translate) them from the prakṛti, since both vikṛti and prakṛti have a common purpose, i.e., the oblation. The PP is here implementing the instrument of knowledge for deciding what has to be analogically extended called artha, that is, inferring the proper element to be translated from its purpose (rather than out of a specific mention in the text, etc., see MNP 199, 201). The S replies that the vessels are regularly to be employed, since they are in use. This does not seem to confute the preceding sūtra. It accepts the employment of the vessels, but not out of their translation from the prakṛti, rather out of their being already in use. Further conditions (in the present case, prasaṅga) apply only if there is not already something in use.

In other words, the principle of automatic entailment only applies if something is not already in use (and hence does not need any entailment). I am understanding prasaṅga in sūtra 11 as a principle and not a concrete act of entailment because one would not have a reason to repeat that the concrete entailment does not occur.

Do readers know of similar common-sense principles in texts which do not deal with ritual?

On prasaṅga in the Śrautasūtras, see here. On prasaṅga in Mīmāṃsā, see here.

Zero in Indian philosophy

2011-06-20T14:41:00.002+02:00

Grammarians and linguists are familiar with the idea of a function of the ‘absence’ of morphemes which is currently called “zero”. Western linguists beginning with de Saussure's work of 1879 have often postulated the existence of the so-called zero-morphemes where the actual perceptible linguistic form does not match its relevant semantic and syntactic content (see T. Pontillo 2002, p.559ff.). They resorted to this device on the basis of a significant opposition pointed out between comparable morphological structures.
As focused by Al-George (Al-George 1967, p.121), on the other hand, the Indian linguistic zero is not a mere device, adopted for a descriptive purpose. It rather seems to represent “the consequence of a definite philosophy of form”, namely “the category which exists though not embodied in a concrete form, suspended as a pure virtuality at the border between existence and non-existence”.

A more general problem is: How can an absent element perform a function notwithstanding its absence? How comes that an effect can be grasped in absence of its cause?

On the latter problem, see here (on tantra and prasaṅga as a possible answer).

Are there general rules in Vedic rituals? No, just material entailments

2011-06-16T15:18:00.004+02:00

prasaṅga is not frequent in the Śrautasūtras and I failed to find a definition of it. Hence, one has to reconstruct its meaning indirectly, through its usage in the ŚrSū, through its usage in Grammar and Mīmāṃsā and possibly also through its etymological meaning. Every translation is therefore intrinsically tentative.

In its only occurrence in the Aśvalāyana Śrautasūtra (AśvŚrSū 1.1.22) it is opposed to apavāda (certainly meaning "exception"):

prasaṅgād apavādo balīyaḥ

Mylius translates:

Eine Ausnahme (-Regel) ist gewichtiger als eine allgemeine Regel (Mylius 1994: 29a)

That is, "An exceptional [rule] is more forceful than a general rule".

But the meaning seems, more precisely, to be "default occurrence". The prasaṅga is what one expects to happen, what follows by default from the previous discussion. Only secondarily, it defines the "general" rule. Hence,

An exception is stronger than what is automatically entailed.

On prasaṅga, see here. On the problem of reconstructing the meaning of a term, when the technical context is lost, see here.

Tantra and prasaṅga in a Catholic Mass

2011-06-14T10:57:00.004+02:00

During a Mass, the hosts are not severally consecrated. Their consecration is valid once for all. Using the terminology of the Indian ritualistics, one could say that it happens once for all, through tantra. Each host is part of the same rite and hence shares all the benefits of any act performed within the rite.

By contrast, imagine the case of two different rituals, like the Sunday Mass and the special Mass celebrated on the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Both Masses have to be attended compulsory by Catholic believers, but one can attend any of the Masses celebrated on that day or on the evening before. In other words, one is allowed to attend either one of the Sunday Masses celebrated during the whole Sunday or the "Sunday Mass" celebrated on Saturday evening. What happens if the day of the Assumption occurs on a Saturday (as it happens every seven years)? Is one allowed to go to the Saturday evening Mass and fulfil through the same act both duties? If yes, one could say that the function of the Mass celebrated on the Saturday evening as a "Sunday Mass" helps one fulfilling both duties. It fulfills directly the duty to attend the Sunday Mass and indirectly the duty to attend the Mass on the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. This kind of double effect which was not intended could be called prasaṅga.
However, I am inclined to think that a Catholic believer should go to the Mass twice, once on the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (in the present example, on the Saturday) and once on the Sunday (or on the Saturday evening), because the liturgy has a specific prescription about the fact that one has to attend the first and the second one. And, when there is a specific restriction, prasaṅga cannot apply (prasaṅgād apavādo balīyaḥ or prasaṅgo na, niyamaśabdāt).

On tantra, see here. On prasaṅga, see here.

Text, warp and woof

2011-06-08T21:16:00.004+02:00

Due to the textile origin of the term tantra (from tan- 'to weave'), one might suggest the idea that it denoted at first the "texture" (note the same metaphor at work in "text") of a ritual, upon which successive rites could have been applied exactly as different kinds of weaving could be woven on the same rough warp.
Jan Gonda analogously emphasises the textile imagery on which this ritual terminology is based, by mentioning «the distinction between the ‘warp’ (tantra) and the ‘woof’ (āvāpa) of a sacrificial rite, that is of the framework, standing model, or those components which has in common with other rites and those that vary from ritual to ritual and are therefore the special characteristic features» (Gonda 1977:510).
Unfortunately, a lexica mention 'woof' as a possible meaning of āvāpa and the etymology supports it, I do not know of any attestation of āvāpa bearing this meaning if not in the context of a contrast to tantra.

How much does this pre-history influence the later history of tantra as "Sacred Text"?

On tantra, see here.

The sentence-meaning? What is added over the word-meaning

2011-06-07T22:06:00.002+02:00

One can understand what is the sentence-meaning if one compares it with the meaning of the word-meanings composing the sentence. Is it their sheer sum? Something completely different? Jayanta proposes that it is the additional element over the meanings of the words taken singularly.
Jayanta Bhaṭṭa's Nyāyamañjarī, 5:

Nor is it the case that there is no sentence-meaning separated from word-meanings. That, to begin with, you (the PP) should explain, if you are asked to: "Is there a cognition similar to the word cow, etc., arising from "Bring the white cow!" or are the two cognitions different? In this regard, we should start by saying (tāvat) the sameness of the two runs against direct experience. In the case of a difference of the two cognitions, by contrast, also a difference in their contents is forcibly (balāt) produced (upanata), since if there were no difference in content one would not grasp a difference in the cognitions. And that content which is separated from them (content of the words) is the sentence-meaning. In this way, it should be construed also in case only a word signifying a quality or an action has been pronounced (i.e., even in the case of sentences made of one word only, there is something additional over the sheer meaning of the word).
Therefore it has been said that the sentence-meaning is that in which there is something additional.

(na ca padārthavyatirikto nāsti vākyārthaḥ | idaṃ tāvad bhavān pṛṣṭo vyācaṣṭāṃ | kiṃ gaur iti padādyādṛśī pratipattis tādṛśyeva gauḥ śukla ānīyatām iti vākyād uta bhinne ete pratipattī iti |
tatra tulyatvaṃ tāvat pratipattyor anubhavaviruddham | vailakṣaṇye tu pratītyor viṣayavailoakṣaṇyam api balād upanatam asati viṣayabhede pratītibhedānupapatteḥ | taś ca tad atirikto viṣayḥ sa vākyārthaḥ | evaṃ kevalaguṇakriyāpadoccāraṇe ’pi yojanīyam | tad uktaṃ yatrādhikyaṃ sa vākyārtha iti | )

For further references to posts dedicated to Jayanta and to his linguistic theories, see here.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?

2011-06-06T12:41:00.007+02:00

A typical fallacy in the doctrine of causality is to confound between what follows (post hoc) and what is caused by something (propter hoc). Extreme examples of this fallacy might be those leading to superstitions:

I had an accident after having seen a black cat, hence the black cat is the cause of my accident.

But there are many examples and David Hume even claimed that our notion of cause is ultimately grounded in such subtle cases: I see a seed and later a plant, hence I understand that the seed is the cause of a plant. But what I actually saw is only that the plant appeared after the seed.
I am inclined to think that nimitta in Mīmāmṣā is an (indirect) answer to this risk of fallacy. It refers to what must be there before the happening of something, but does not claim to be its cause. In other words, it designates the essential condition for something to occur. A nimitta is necessary for X to occur, but neither is X mechanically linked to it, nor nimitta to X.
In fact, nimitta in Mīmāṃsā primarily denotes the condition for the performance of a naimittika ritual. A typical example of such rituals is the jātakarman, to be performed after the birth of one's son. The birth of one's son is the nimitta for the ritual? Is it also its cause? Not really, since many of us had sons and have not performed any ritual.
Similarly, Mīmāṃsā author speak of nimitta in order to denote what must precede X for X to happen, but is not its cause.
Interestingly, nimitta is, instead, listed in Nyāyavaiśeṣika among the causes (kāraṇa), as the necessary cause in which the result does not inhere, e.g., the potter in the case of the pot.

Did Nyāyavaiśeṣika authors borrow it from its ritual usage?
And, more generally, did Indian authors distinguish between post hoc (after that) and propter hoc (because of that)?

prasaṅga: a term with a long history

2011-06-03T13:54:00.005+02:00

Readers of śāstric Sanskrit will know prasaṅga most of all as the "unwanted consequence". Something that follows automatically. Investigating in its past may shed some light also on this meaning.

prasaṅga is not extremely frequent in the Śrautasūtras and I failed to find a definition of it. Hence, one has to reconstruct its meaning indirectly, through its usage in the Śrautasūtras, through its usage in Grammar and Mīmāṃsā and possibly also through its etymological meaning. Every translation is therefore intrinsically tentative.
The following is my (provisional) hypothesis:

In the Śrautasūtras, prasaṅga might denote:

1. temporary and incidental association of two elements or rites
2. chance, i.e., occasion, for an extended application caused by this temporary association

This latter meaning will produce the later, Mīmāṃsaka one, which seems foreshadowed in some Śrautasūtra usages:

3.what happens automatically, through a transport from one rite to another, unless there is an opposite prescription, in similar cases and if need arises

It is worth stressing that the transport does not depend on a centralised instance (as it occurs in the case of tantra). It rather depends on a marginal contact, resulting in a temporary association which is based on a specific need. A tantra-like travel would be that of a whole school sharing the same ship or train, especially booked. A prasaṅga-like one would be the relation between a hitchhiker and the car-driver who gives him a lift. Their association is temporary and based on the former need for an element already in use by the latter.

On tantra and prasaṅga, see here and here. On the methodological problem of reconstructing the meaning of a word, see here.

Academic survival

2011-06-01T15:44:00.005+02:00

As readers might have noticed, in the recent times I have been focusing on the problems of Academia. Why? Should not one just focus on one's work? Of course, focusing on one's work is one's biggest contribution. But, globally seen, one can hardly avoid considering the enormous amount of time and energies wasted just because of rivalries and all sorts of purpose-less figthing. In other words, universities and other research centers could achieve much more, if only their team were not busy with internal quarrels. Hence, I think that it makes sense to try to ameliorate the status quo.

I just read in a non-academic blog (the well-known blog by Seth Godin) about an interesting paradox, i.e., people usually do not want to be reminded of what they can do, but chose not to do, although they do not mind day-dreaming about what they could do (if only they could afford it, if only…). They read about cars they will never buy, but are irritated by reading about the TV they could have bought, but chose not to.

This might happen also in the Academia. Colleagues who are too old to travel abroad to conferences, might be positive about more mobility within the department. But colleagues who have chosen not to travel to conferences (e.g., because they are too shy to present their ideas to a wider audience) might be seriously against it. Because the very fact that someone else does it, forces them to reconsider their options. And this is painful.

My proposed solution: belittle yourself. Say that the option you are fighting for is almost insignificant. Make it appear non-appealing, so that the colleagues who have chosen against it, but are afraid to regret their choice are not brought that far.
Do readers have better solutions? And what do they think about the general problem? Did I describe it correctly?

On team work, see here and here. On the risks of criticising the academic establishment (and the need of criticisms), see here.

Addendum on reviews

2011-05-31T10:16:00.000+02:00

After the two posts (see here and here) I dedicated to reviews, it came to my mind that I had recently read some quite frank reviews of books.
One of them is by Amod Lele and analyses the hidden claims in Donald S. Lopez, Jr.,'s Buddhism and Science. A Guide for the Perplexed. I would not subscribe to what seems to me the key claim of the review, that is, that —pace Lopez— Buddhism and Science are compatible and must be so. However, the review is well-argumented and, though not agressive, it is not timid. Here is the link to the review. Readers might be interested to have a look also at the comments to the post, since they highlight the risks implied in the hard work of writing "true" reviews.
The other frank review I recently read has been written by Jayarava and is about Vishvapani Blomfield's Gautama Buddha. I have suggested to the reviewer that some of his criticisms might be off-mark, since they regard the reviewer's interests and not the author's and the readers' ones. But, again, the review is honest, frankly put and accurate until the details.

Interestingly, both reviews have been published on blogs. Moreover, they have been published by authors who do not seem to aim at an academic position.
Does it mean that, once again, the Academia depends for its needs on external volunteers? In fact, reviews are not accessory to the quality of the scientific production. If I were Lopez or Blomfield, I would be grateful to my reviewer and would strive for further suggestions to improve my work (but I might a bit extreme in that…).

Here and here are the two posts on reviews. As for the general problem of the amount of external support the Reserach needs in order to survive, see here.

Where could "real" reviews be published?

2011-05-30T16:06:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I have been discussing with a colleague about the need of "real" reviews, reviews which could influence in a positive way the studies in a certain discipline, because they would point out the actual flaws of a book or a project. Reviews are usually not written in this way since one does want to review in a positive way books written by people of one's "school", people one feels indebted with and people whose favour one wants to acquire (and vice versa). Could blind reviews be the solution? Perhaps, but why should one engage in writing them, if one could not even gain the glory of having them published with one's name on them?
Hence, my colleague suggested the following solution: an ad hoc journal, which should specialise in reviewing in a sincere way the most important books, so that one could anyway be proud of being reviewed in it. Since the journal would programmatically review honestly all sorts of author, the risk of vindicts should be lessened.
I would add that the beginning might be the most difficult point of the project. Perhaps it would be easier to have well-known scholars writing the first "harsh" reviews?

What do you think? Could it work?

On the topic of reviews, see here.

What is the purpose of reviews?

2011-05-28T12:22:00.005+02:00

Since one of my methodological commandments is to "read more", I also wrote several book-reviews. Writing helps me think in a clearer way and encourages me in reading more.
However, I cannot overlook the fact that I have received many review-offers also because most of the well-known Sanskrit scholars are too busy to write just a simple review. Hence, their younger colleagues and students are asked to write on their behalf. Younger scholars, however, might tend to be more indulgent, since they might be afraid of attacking a senior colleague. Or, they might tend to be less indulgent with scholars belonging to a different "school" but not with the ones belonging to their own one.
This is human and might also have some positive effects. If only one first considers this preliminary question: What is the use of reviews?
In my opinion, reviews are written for the sake of readers and authors and one of the reasons why contemporary Indological studies are in need of improvement is that their weak points are not consistently pointed out by acute reviewers. I understand that one might not want to ruin one's academic career from the very beginning, but one can surely find a way to both avoid being too harsh and make one's point in a persuasive way.
If they just praise their objects, reviews may loose their social and ethical significance. Hence, I suggest that one should avoid personal criticisms and have as many interesting remarks as possible, so that the bare data could speak. In this way, reviews may also become interesting in their own right and not just a sub-genre.
Good luck with your reviews!

What strategies do you adopt?
As for my commandment of reading more, read here. As for my other methodological commandments, see here.

Exclusion as the meaning of a sentence

2011-05-26T21:30:00.002+02:00

Buddhist Pramāṇavādins maintain that a word, such as "cow" does not denote an external referent, but the exclusion of whatever is not a non-cow. But can this thesis also explain how are sentence-meanings conveyed? Kumārila claims that they can, because exclusion, if applied to sentence-meanings, contradicts one of the very basic tenets of the Buddhist thought, i.e., instantaneity.
Discussing the sentence "the cow is white", Kumārila writes (ŚV vākyādhikaraṇa 20cd-21ab):

If the notion of a cow would continue to exist at the moment of the arousal of the notion of white |
then, it would be excluded from the other [notions] or joined with this (notion of "white") [but it cannot continue to exist, due to momentariness] ||
(yadi dhriyeta gobuddhiḥ śuklabuddhijanikṣaṇe || 20 || tato 'nyābhyo nivarteta saṃsṛjeta tathānayā |)

Pārthasārathi Miśra's commentary is even clearer:

In the sentence "the cow is white" the notion born out of the word "cow" extends to all cows, white, black, etc. If the arousal of the notion "white", produced by the word white would last long enough, then it could be connected to the notion "cow" and it could be excluded from the other notions of the individual black etc. But it does not last, because it is instantaneous.
(gauḥ śuklaḥ ity atra gośabdajanitā buddhiḥ sarvagavīṣu śuklakṛṣṇādiṣu prasṛtā yadi śuklaśabdajanitaśuklabuddhijananaṃ yāvad dhriyeta tatas tayā saṃsṛjyeta anyābhyo vā kṛṣṇādivyaktibuddhibhyo vyavacchidyeta na tu sā dhriyate kṣaṇikatvād iti.)

In other words, apoha might work for single words, but in the case of a sentence, one should imagine that "the cow is white" means the exclusion of whatever non-non-cow is not non-white. But how can the notion of a non non-cow last long enough to exclude whatever is not non-white?

Struggling with one's preliminary understanding

2011-05-24T12:29:00.004+02:00

One of the dilemmas of every philosophical paper is that it has to presuppose a general understanding of the terms it wants to investigate upon. This preliminary understanding is the conditio sine qua non that enables one's investigation but at the same time it hampers it because it is pre-critical and because its users might not be aware of its philosophical burden. So, one might want to describe the phenomenological approach to the ethical aspect of the sacrificer in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā and provisionally call the latter a "soul". In this way, each reader will project onto it lots of other thoughts (of Jewish or Christian origin, of Aristotelian or Cartesian influence…) and reify into an ontological category what was meant to be an ethical one. Even more risky is the fact that s/he will do it without being aware of it, just because of the intrinsic power of the word one has chosen.

However, one cannot define each word if not through other words. Hence, one will never be able to speak a natural language whose terms are not at all carrying the burden of their history. What to do? First, I suggest, one should be aware of the history of the terms one is using, in order not to be mislead in the same way as the naive reader described above. Second, one might choose to add a word of caution for the readers in case of particularly significant terms. The following is what I would say in the case of the Prābhākara "soul":

In the present case, terms such as “subject” will be defined in a closer way in due course and it will be eventually shown that the Prābhākara understanding of them might at times be strikingly different than the one common in contemporary Western thought. For the time being, suffice it to say that “subject” and any other term referring to it (such as “psychic”) are used just for lack of any better option and that they are to be intended in a very neutral sense, as referring to the “agent” (once again, an ambiguous term) of actions, acts of will and acts of cognition.

What do you do in your philosophical translation and essays?

On the importance of an historical approach, see here. On the Prābhākara concept of "subject", see here.

In an ideal world

2011-05-19T21:49:00.005+02:00

In an ideal world, the State would finance public education and research,
which means that everyone would finance, by paying taxes, public education and research.
In an ideal world, even the ones who will never attend a class,
even the ones whose children will work as farmers and will never go to university,
would be happy to finance public education and research,
because they would know that one day they might need a doctor —and that they would be glad they paid her perfect training—
because they know that their children will need a qualified teacher everyday,
because they know that more often than not educated people are also likely to be better politicians, administrators, citizens.
To sum up, in an ideal world everyone would be happy to pay taxes for financing public education and research, since even other people's education and research would enhance one's own well-being.

But,
since the State (every State, it seems, more or less) wants to save money, especially as for public education and research
and since people rather seem to wish to pay less taxes,
should not WE be responsible for public education and research? If WE do not engage in the front line, do not we risk to end up with private (and expensive —check the comments here) universities on the one hand and nothing at all on the other?

If you think I am right, please consider donating here.

How does an order act over us?

2011-05-18T11:59:00.004+02:00

Do orders convey the idea that "it is good to do X"? Or do they radically differ from descriptive sentences such as the above one? In Indian philosophy, Maṇḍana proposed the former and the other Mīmāṃsā authors the latter. They maintained that an order conveys two things, on the one hand the action and on the other the order to perform it. But Prābhākara thinkers claimed that two contents would be two much to be conveyed by the only element which is distinctive in an exhortative sentence, i.e., the verbal ending. Hence they believed that only the order to perform is conveyed.
In his Nyāyamañjarī, Jayanta discusses various Prābhākara views about the way orders function. According to the first group, the prescription (i.e., order) itself has to be performed. There is hence no need for something else (namely, the action) to be conveyed by the same verbal ending. The order requires an object to be performed, but that object is the order itself. Hence, if I am not wrong. "cook!" would only require the execution of the order. That the order regards the action of cooking is something one understands out of one's background and contextual knowledge. The idea of a single level works nicely for sentences which only have a linguistic dimension, such as "I baptize you…":

Also in its (the prescription's) regard, there are two different opinions. Some admit that language consists of impulsion. Only the prescription has to be performed, because it is understood in this way through the verbal endings of optative etc., because no other duty is understood, and because of the extreme feebleness of the thesis according to which the duty is the sheer meaning of the verbal theme.
Hence, [the prescription] has to be done.

The mainstream Prābhākaras, on the other hand, claim that the prescription is understood by each of its listeners as something to be done. And this "to be done" cannot but consist in an action:

Others, by contrast, resort (saṃśrī-) [to the view] that the [injunction] induces [people] to undertake actions, since the injunction (niyoga) is apprehended (pratī-) as something to be done. The duty, once understood, enjoins [each] person to its own realisation. In fact, once he has understood "this has to be done by me", a person undertakes an action for the sake of its realisation.

For further references to posts dedicated to Jayanta and to his linguistic theories, see here. On duty in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā, see here and here. On how Sacred texts can convey their orders according to the Prābhākaras, see here.

Naming authorities and relative chronology

2011-05-17T12:42:00.002+02:00

One of my long-term projects (about which, see here) is the study of the re-usal of previous textual materials in Indian philosophical texts. And one of the striking aspects of the usage of quotations is that their authors are hardly ever identified. After a certain point, it seems to go against a common etiquette to name one's teachers other than with honorific titles. Teachers of one's own or other schools are identified through their works (i.e. vārttikakāra, sūtrakāra), through titles (ācārya) or through indefinite expressions (kecit, apare, anye…).
Consider now the following argument referring to the early history of Sanskrit culture. It seems to imply that the shift from names to indefinite references corresponded to the shift from a living tradition of teachers one was acquainted with to the textual tradition of codified works. Then, it might have become part of the etiquette.

Among the arguments adduced to prove the antiquity of the Śrautasūtras of Baudhāyana and Lāṭyāyana has been a peculiarity which they have in common with the brāhmaṇas, viz. the practice of mentioning —as authoritative or as rejectable— the statements made and the rites or customs observed by individual teachers and in doing so the tendency to distinguish these authorities by their names. The later sūtrakāras as a rule abandone this practice: they usually referred to existing 'literature' or other authorities without mentioning their names. Instead, they preferred the anonymous "some" (eke). (Gonda, The Ritual Sūtras, 1977: 483).

In a footnote to the last statement, Gonda adds that the Lāṭyāyana Śrautasūtra "refers ca. 470 times to ācāryāḥ or eke".

Quotations and re-usal of previous textual materials are one of my favourite subjects. On why we need to study them, see here. On how to mark quotations, see here. On the typology of reusal, see here. On the differences between "Indian" and "Western" culture of quotations, see here. On quotations and originality, see here.

What does "externalism" mean?

2011-05-16T16:48:00.002+02:00

Sanskritists and Indologists have not yet developed an unambiguous philosophical terminology and are often unaware of technical usages common in (Western) philosophy. One is of course free to call things as one wishes, but this lack of a common terminology tends to strengthen the tendency (already strong enough) of not including Indian thought within Philosophy. Philosophers would, I believe, feel more compelled to admit, e.g., Prabhākara's theories within a textbook on sense-perception if only Sanskrit scholars would show the significance of his theory of sense-perception in terms acceptable and understandable by Western readers. This is what has happened with Chinese theories of "virtue ethics".

A similar risk has been recently outlined in the Preface to the issue of the Journal of Indian Philosophy dedicated to the proceedings of the Philosophy Section of the 14th World Sanskrit Conference and written by Shoryu Katsura Mark Siderits and Kiyotaka Yoshimizu (available on-line, DOI 10.1007/s10781-011-9131-2). The usage of "externalism" for the Pratyabhijñā belief in the existence of an external object (bāhyavāda) leads to mutual misunderstandings and to the insulation of Indian philosophy —suggest the authors.

What can be done? Writing books which deal with Indian philosophy but within a sound philosophical background and sharing a common terminology with their sister Western disciplines.
What do readers think? Should one forget about the dialogue and just care about using terms which can be understood by our fellow Sanskritists or by philosophers who are well aware of the Indian scenario?

There cannot be any unitary sentence-meaning

2011-05-15T13:29:00.001+02:00

Within the section on the sentence-meaning of his Nyāyamañjarī (NM 5, Mysore pp. 69-onwards), Jayanta lets an opponent of sentence-holism speak. He denies the existence of a sentence-referent in the external world AND in one's cognition of it.

About that (i.e., the sentence meaning), some, to begin with, say: A sentence meaning which is ultimately real does not exist externally. It would be either separated from the word-meanings or unseparated from them. It is not separated, because no difference is seized (between the word-meanings and the sentence-meaning, which only seems to be a collection of them). In the group of words ``Bring the white cow!" the sentence meaning is only the meaning of a word denoting a quality, one denoting a substance and one denoting an action, either [taken] together or one by one. Not one by one, because the sentence meaning is not understood in this way.

There is no togetherness of them. For this would exist either ontologically or cognitively. No togetherness of the endless group of words can exist ontologically. Hence, no sentence-meaning determined by [the words featuring in a specific sentence] could be understood. Cognitively, by contrast, the togetherness is not possible (ghaṭ-), because at the time of the cognition of one word-meaning it is impossible to cognize another word-meaning, since cognitions do not [occur] at the same time.
And the phonemes are the tools for the apprehension of the word-meaning. [And] they also do not occur at the same time. How could the togetherness be made within a cognition?

atraike tāvad āhuḥ | vākyārtho nāma pāramārthiko bahir nāsty eva | sa hi padārthebhyo vyatirikto vā syād avyatirikto vā | na vyatiriktaḥ bhedānupalambhāt | gauḥ śuklā ānīyatām ity atra padagrāme jātiguṇakriyādipadārtha eva vākyārthaḥ pratyekaṃ vā syāt sāmastyena vā | na pratyekaṃ tathānavagamān na hi gaur iti padārtha eva vākyārtho bhavati |

sāmastyaṃ tu na teṣām asti tad dhi sattayā bhavet pratītyā vā | sattayā na sāmastyam aśeṣapadārtharāśer astīti na niyataḥ kaścana vākyārtho ’vadhāryate | pratītyā tu sāmastyam aghaṭamānam ayugapadbhāvitvena jñānānām ekapadārthapratītisamaye padārthāntarapratītyasambhavāt | padārthapratītiypāyāś ca varṇās te ’pi na yugapadbhāvinaḥ kutaḥ pratītikṛtaṃ sāmsastyam |

I am not completely sure I understood his point as far as the impossibility of the ontological existence of a group of words together. The author quoted by Jayanta seems to imply that we cannot imagine that each group of words has a separate ontological existence, since there if we were to admit the ontological existence of a group of words together, this should include all possible words, and one could, hence, no longer be able to determine the meaning corresponding to the sentence one is examining. But why could not separate sentence-meaning ontologically exist? It is surely anti-economical to imagine a world made of such complex objects, but I cannot understand why the option is not even discussed.
Do readers see better than I do?

On Jayanta, see this post. On the ontological status of word-meanings, see here.

Methodology of critical editions

2011-05-14T15:49:00.004+02:00

An anonymous, yet intriguing reader made me reflect in general about the methodology of critical editions. Let me first point out that I am not an expert and that this post mainly aims at raising a discussion (or at least some thoughts in its readers).

The first point is, in my opinion, having clear the purpose of what one is doing. Does one want to reconstruct the author's text? The one commented upon by its main commentator? The one copied by a well-known intellectual?… The question amounts to a basic dichomoty:

1. Reconstruction of the Ur-text (with Urtext understood lato sensu, as every possible stage of the text, provided that it is linked to a precise person, time and place).
2. Reconstruction of the Tradition.

In the second case, it will make sense to list as many variants as possible, virtually also all variants. They will help one to throw light on, e.g., the fortune of the text, the kind of copysts who copied it, their geographical and social origin, etc.
In the first case, by contrast, I would suggest not to list variants which do not make sense and/or which are due to obvious misreadings.
For instance, in the first case I would not list variants such as sakti instead of śakti, kamma instead of karma, or even na instead of sa if the context is clear and they are very similar in the manuscript. In the second case, it would be interesting to note that the text had been copied in a region where palatal ś were pronounced as s, by copysts who were not extremely accurate in reproducing consonant clusters and possibly in a telegu (or similar) script.

If, as often the case, one wants to do both, one runs the risk of producing a critical apparatus so full of variants, that it will be neglected altogether by readers, etc. Hence, I would add a couple of additional suggestions:
—If the text has never been published before, I would avoid producing an unreadable edition, i.e., one in which there is only one (or 2, 3, 4) line(s) per page and the rest of the page is occupied by variants.
—Many, possibly most, insignificant variants could be included in the manuscript's description. One could explain there that the copyst of X tends to duplicate t-s or tends to confuse voiced and unvoiced stops, etc.
—If the number of insignificant variants is enormous, but the manuscript(s) one is working on is very important for the reconstruction of, e.g., the cultural history of a certain area, one could consider producing a separate diplomatic edition.
—I would always produce a translation of the text I have edited, so that readers can better see the rationale of my editiorial choices.
As for conjectural emendations, as already explained, I tend to think that the received text is "innocent until proven guilty". I would not emend it if it makes sense as it is and would anyway emend it as little as possible. Obviously enough, the degree of emendations strictly depends on the kind of manuscripts one is working with. But also on the purpose one has (virtually no conjectures, if one wants to reconstruct the tradition over the text).

If you want to read the post which lead to this one, with the interesting comments of an anonymouys reader, click here.

"Artha" and "meaning"

2011-05-11T22:03:00.002+02:00

All linguists have struggled with the problem of signification. What is meant by a word? An external object? A mental one?
All philosophers of language have struggled with Frege. Does he mean to say that the "meaning" (Bedeutung) is nothing but the entity meant through a word? Or does Bedeutung include also cases such as "Ulysses" for those who believe in his existence?
All Sanskrit scholars have struggled with the translation of artha. Is it the intra-linguistic "sense" of a word? Is it the external referent? Or an half-way "meaning"?
In his review of Eivind Kahrs' Indian Semantic Analysis, Peter Scharf seems quite sure that artha signifies a cognition:

This enduring mental cognition brought about by the utterance of the speech form is truly the object bearing the word-meaning relation to the speech form and may be translated […] by […] "meaning" (JAOS 2001:120).

Some lines before, he had explained that:

Cognition brought about by a speech form (verbal cognition śābdabodha) is of a certain type (ākāra) which generally corresponds to an object which exists independently of the cognizer but need not, for instance, in the case of words for imaginary objects.

Hence, artha is a sort of cognition (pratyaya), caused by a linguistic element and usally corresponding to an external object. The latter is also called artha, according to Scharf (if I am interpreting him correctly —if not, let me suggest that he could have expressed his point more clearly):

In these contexts meaning is denotation: the causing of cognition (buddhi, pratyaya) of an object (artha). The object is either an abstract generic property (jāti, ākṛti), an individual object (vyakti, dravya), or in certain limited contexts […] a shate (ākṛti).

What does "denotation" mean in this context? It might be a translation of Bedeutung, since Scharf concludes as referred to in the first quote. He then adds that the mental aspect of meaning is not something to be avoided or get rid off, since Indian authors did not even try to explain what is denoted by a word by refererring to external objects alone:

Since the Indian linguists were not hung up on behaviorism, they did not recognizing mental phenomena, were not preoccupied in defining meaning in purely extensional terms, and so did not share the confusion prevalent in contemporary Western philosophy of language […].

This seems to partially contradict J. Bronkhorst's claim that Indian authors did not differentiate between exernal reality and its linguistic expression. It also contradicts K. Potter's idea that Indian authors anticipated the "linguistic turn" of Analytic Philosophy. They rather —so Scharf— did not care to eliminate the mental aspect of language and, hence, did not focus on the link between this and "external reality". There is normally a link, but it is not part of the signification-relation.

Of course, Scharf would not deny that artha has also an ontological meaning (as in the list of padārthas) and an epistemological status (as that which is caused to be known, pratīta). Not to speak of its prescriptive aspect in Mīmāṃsā. How much interconnected are these aspects? Could not the linguistic artha be nothing but the epistemological one? And how "solid" is the ontological artha? The term padārtha still suggests a rather epistemological focus…

Conjectural emendation

2011-05-10T17:08:00.004+02:00

This link leads to the fascinating review by T. Lubin) of D. Goodall's edition of the Parākhya Tantra. The review discusses most notably Goodall's use of conjectural emendations. This is a hot topic, since finding a balance in emendations means struggling to find a balance between not violating the text and saving its meaning.

What do readers do and think?

For further thoughts on the methodology of critical editions, see this post.

What is the use of studying history?

2011-05-09T11:57:00.003+02:00

When I was eleven, our teacher initiated an interesting discussion in our class, that is, "Why do we study history?". Many answered that we study it out of curiosity alone, but the teacher was only satisfied when someone suggested that "we study history in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes". A few years later, when I was sixteen, another teacher (finally) explained us that the idea that history could be a "teacher of life" (historia magistra vitae) just does not work. Mistakes present themselves each time in a different form and there is no way one can learn from the past how to avoid future ones.
However, history is not (in my opinion) just an interesting part of fiction. Knowing the past of mankind makes one aware of its depth. One becomes, through that, less sensitive to naive sensationalism. One knows that it does not make sense to claim that "X is the first… ever", that "Y is the best … ever", or that "Z is the worst possible…" because we only know a small fraction of hundreds of thousands of years of history. In other words, one acquires through the study of history, a mild skepticism towards every form of foundamentalism. One knows that there will never be a "final war against…" but that one can be convinced to take action against evils also without such a misleading sensationalism. At the same time, learning to look at the depth of the past makes one more aware of what takes more than one lifetime to happen. One is, for instance, more likely to be scared by the disappearance of rain-forests (although there will be enough Amazonia to visit until the end of one's life), by the decrease of the global amount of drinkable water, by the increase of desert areas all over the earth.
To sum up, one becomes at the same time less aware of every day's alleged "tragedies" or "events" and more aware of long-term real events.

Does this happen also to those among the readers who have been studying history? Also to the ones who studied it in the US or UK, where the approach seems (to me) to be rather thematic and less focused n the whole sum of millennia?

On the importance of history, see this post (on local and global history) and this one (on history as methodology). For the omnipervasive presence of history, see this post.

How to fix the meaning of a technical term, whose prehistory is unknown?

2011-05-08T11:35:00.000+02:00

Ritual terminology has been fundamental in influencing the later development of philosophical terms in India. Several ritual terms have a textual origin (e.g., tantra 'warp', tati, from the root tan-, `to expand') and most of them are transparent (i.e., they can be analysed as derived from a certain root and a certain suffix). However, one has often the problem that such analyses are later than the terms themselves. Moreover, all these terms have frequently a pre-history we are not aware of, which might have influenced their historical meaning in an unpredictable way. Consider the case of tati and the following explanation in Gonda 1977, 510:

[…] pūrvā tatiḥ and uttarā tatiḥ "the antecedent and the subsequent series of ceremonies". The standard (ritual) is pūrva tatiḥ, and what one arranges (modifies) is uttarā tatiḥ; (for instance,) the establishment of the ritual fires is pūrvā tatiḥ, the re-establishment uttarā tatiḥ; of the vegetarian sacrifices (iṣṭi) the full and new moon sacrifices are the pūrvā tatiḥ, all the optional rites (kāmyā iṣṭayaḥ) the uttarā tatiḥ.

This seems to frame the uttara tati/pūrva tati distinction within the prakṛti/vikṛti one.

Further posts on Ritual Sūtras and on their world view: this one on the spatial arrangement of sacrifices; this one on tantra.

Which sources for Indian philosophy?

2011-05-07T10:44:00.001+02:00

In our investigations of Indian philosophy, we can count on four kinds of sources:

1. Indian philosophical texts: this is the soundest and most direct way. However, life is short and the texts to be read are many. Hence, what shoud one read? And what should one start with? If one only counts on what one knows, one ends up overestimating the importance of the authors one happened to read first…
2. Indian doxographies: these are still insider sources and can give us a good sense of what was going on in the Indian philosophical debate. However, their authors had an own agenda (for instance, showing the superiority of Advaita Vedānta) and did not necessarily aim at an "objective" depiction of their opponents' views.
3. "Western" textbooks: these are outsiders, both from the temporal and the cultural point of view, even if they have been written by Indian philosophers, such as S. Radhakrishnan and M. Hiriyanna. According to the case, they might be very useful, but conditioned by their authors' agenda (e.g., Radhakrishnan) or by their being outsiders.
4. Debates represented in the Indian philosophical texts themselves: these can give us a lively picture of what was really important in the Indian philosophical stage, but some authors might be very inaccurate in reproducing their opponents' views, hence, choosing the right source is still a key-issue.

In my experience, I would highly recommend the study of Jayanta Bhaṭṭa's philosophical masterpiece, the Nyāyamañjarī. I will dedicate to its linguistic chapters some future posts.

Jayanta is one of my favourite authors and I posted a lot about him. You might wish to see this post (fortune of the NM), this one (exhortative function of language as explained in the NM), this one (another work by Jayanta), this one (Indian linguistics in the NM) and this one (on cognition and action).

Identifying opponents

2011-05-06T22:23:00.001+02:00

If you work on philosophical texts in Sanskrit, you will constantly have to face the problem of how to distinguish between opponents and upholders of views shared by the author. Often we can count on elements such as "it must be said" (ucyate), marking the beginning of a reply to a view one does not share, or nanu, iti cet, identifying opponents.
But what if they are all lacking? For the time being, I have not been able to identify any hierarchy between the pronouns used to introduce discussants, such as kecit, apare, anye. Today, thanks to a friend (M.Ferrante), I could read a page of Ashok Aklujkar's unpublished dissertation The Philosophy of Bharatṛhari's Trikāṇdī (Cambridge, Mass.,1970), where Aklujar writes that in Bhartṛhari (§0.7):

In the statements of those views which he can be said to accept on some level or another, either fully or in part, the word apara "someone else" is of common occurrence. It seems to have the same connotation for him which the word para has for Nāgeśa. As Helārāja [in his commentary to Bhartṛhari] puts it "The word apara is a reference to scholars who hold the same view". On the other hand, the view stated with kecit, kaiścit, or keṣāñcit "certain persons," more often than not, turn out to be either unacceptable to Bhartṛhari or acceptable only with qualifications, as Helārāja often observes.

Aklujkar himself says that this is an "interesting peculiarity" of Bhartṛhari, and adds some caution:

In this connection, I must emphasize that I have not been able to find out the exact conditions under which apara and kim+cit posses the described connotations, and that I do not ascribe a view to Bhartṛhari merely because the word apara figures in its statements. I also wish to draw attention to the fact that the other two words, eka "one" and anya "another," which Bhartṛhari uses in starting various views do not seem to possess any comparable connotations.

Did readers notice similar hierarchical patterns in Indian authors?

On Sanskrit syntax and objections, see here.

Where is the boundary between Brāhmaṇas and Śrauta Sūtras?

2011-05-05T11:05:00.001+02:00

While reading the Vedic Saṃhitās, the Brāhmaṇas and the Śrauta Sūtras, I (probably not alone) have the feeling of shifting from one genre to the other, from one way of thinking to the other, with hardly any connection, apart from that of the common topic, i.e., ritual.
The shift could be explained historically, but I am inclined to suspect of our tendency to organize differences along a chronological grid. I would prefer to adopt along with it also a genre-distinction. It is possible that the genres evolved one after the other, so that their beginning is chronologically identifiable, although texts belonging to all genres have then been composed at the same time.
Can one still detect the transition from one genre to the other? Consider the following quote from Jan Gonda, The ritual sūtras, 1977: 515-6:

Especially the last chapters (praśna) of the [Baudhāyana] Śrautasūtra […] are something between a brāhmaṇa and a sūtra because the motivation of the prescripts is so often added. Among the explanations are many myths, part of them unknown from other sources. […] It is in perfect harmony with the character of this work that its author has not aimed at the well-known brevity and conciseness of the sūtra style. On the contrary, cases of repetition (also of longer passages), prolixity and diffuseness are far from rare. The several rites are dealt with independently. Verbs are often repeated, implications avoided; the phrases are as a rule long and the syntax is free.
Another remarkable feature is the structure of the work […]. Whereas the different opinions of other authorities are in the other sūtras subjoined to the several views of the author and consequently dispersed over the text the compiler of the Baudhāyana-Sūtra has brought all this controversial matter together in the four chapters XX-XXIII, the so-called dvaidha-sūtra ("on variant or different opinions").

I think that this specific place for all controversial topics may derive from the Brāhmaṇa structure, where controversies where altogether absent, influenced by the dialectical style of the Kalpa Sūtras, which demands that one deals with controversial points. In fact, Gonda himself follows (p.516):

After this part of the book there follows, closely connected with the dvaidhasūtra, the so-called karmāntasūtra (XXIV-XXVI) which countains pariśiṣṭas (i.e. paraliomena, topics that were not sufficiently explained in the preceding chapters). Caland had good reasons for supposing that the dvaidha- as well as the karmāntasūtra are additions of material that, through dating back to the same period as the main text, was drawn up somewhat later, perhaps by a pupil.

What does "South Asian Studies" mean?

2011-05-04T10:12:00.002+02:00

Is "South Asian studies" only the politically correct version of what was previously known as "Indology", i.e., the study of Classical India?
One might think so, if one considers the names of several journals (such as the WZKS, literally "Vienna's Journal for the knowledge of South", or the Italian RiSS), research groups, etc. At most, the geographic label makes it possible to accept also contemporary studies about South Asia. But this is only true in contexts where Classical India is still the prevalent paradigm.
In the US, by contrast, the stress of the last decades on "Areal Studies" means that "South Asian studies" tends to mean just "the study of whatever counts and happenS in South Asia". You can see some evidence in favour of this view in the comments to this post, and I have now a further point to discuss.
As already mentioned, I just come back from Moscow, where I took part to a workshop called "Open Pages in South Asian Studies". In harmony with the first meaning of "South Asian studies" discussed above, there were several participants dealing just with Classical India, who all delivered their speeches in the first day. The second day was meant to be dedicated to Contemporary South Asia. Interestingly, speakers of the first group (including myself), expected a prosecution of the first day's trends, with papers dealing with Philosophy, Religion, History of Art, Linguistics, etc. This has been the case as regards Prof. Alexandra Safronova's speech on Theravāda Buddhism in Śrī Laṅkā. After that, we heard very interesting papers focusing on sociological and political topics, with no link at all with the cultural heritage of India (now meant in a cultural and not geographical sense).
Speakers of the first group enjoyed them, but I wonder whether the interest is bi-directional or not. Are scholars of (contemporary) South Asian studies interested in the background of what they study? Or do they prefer to read more about their topics (sociology, anthropology, politics, economics…)?

On this topic, see this post.

Castes and age-sex groups

2011-05-03T09:00:00.004+02:00

What is at the origin of the varṇa system? Can we learn something about it through Indo-European comparisons? And how was the Indo-European society organised? How can we know something about the anthropological aspect of a lost society? Is it legitimate to use for this sake indirect reflexes in its successors? Or are not we always selecting the aspects we want to focus on?

I just came back from Moscow, where I took part to the interesting workshop "Open Pages in South Asian studies", hosted by the newly funded Centre for South Asian Studies of the University for Humanities and especially by Prof. Aleksandr Aleksandrovič Stoljarov (alias Alexander Stolyarov).
One of the papers, by Sergej Kullanda, focused on Aryan Prehistory and the Culture of Hindustan. The latter term might be misleading, but Kullanda used it in a merely geographical way, and his purpose was to reconstruct something about Indo-Iranians through their Indo-European background and viceversa. Kullanda has then been kind enough to give me an article of him (Kullanda 2002) about the so-called kinship terms (such as the antecedents of "mother", "father", "brother", "daughter") in Proto-Indo European (PIE). His main point, in both the speech and the article is that we can imagine a PIE society as organized according to age-sex groups instead of genealogical groups and/or castes. Consequently terms erroneously interpreted as expressing kinship are, instead, to be interpreted as referring to age-sex groups, with the terms later identified with the meaning "mother" originally referring to a mature woman, etc.
Accordingly, Kullanda imagines the PIE distinguishing between young/mature and women/men.
Within the Indian world, varṇas could also, Kullanda continues, be interpreted as age-sex groups, with warriors corresponding to the youngest ones, vaiśyas to mature people and Brahmans to senior ones. There is a widespread consensus that varṇas were not originally fix and inherited in Vedic times. Kullanda's hypothesis, however, changes the viewpoint insofar as it links it to age, instaead as linking it to professional skills.
Kullanda did not make the following point explicit, but in order for the society to survive, the "mature" age should last much longer than the other two, for vaiśyas are much more needed than warriors, at least in peace time.
Herodotus records a Scythian story saying that the first son of the Scythian progenitor became a priest, the second an agriculture and the third (i.e., the youngest) a warrior. Dumézil also states that the second part of life is linked to the middle class and the latter with the priestly class. But, apart from IE parallels, Kullanda has some internal (i.e., Vedic) evidence in favour of his theory, insofar as Indra and the Maruts seem to be the prototypical warriors, and they are said to be "young". Further, a passage of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa links, according to Kullanda, the first part of life with Indra, the second with Savitṛ and the third with Varuṇa. I am not completely convinced by this point, since the context is the ritual usage for some plates (kalāpa) and the passage says that with the first one the sacrificer acquires a first lot of life and so on, while at the same time linking them to the Deities mentioned above. Hence, the link between Deities and parts of life is indirect. This does not necessarily means that Kullanda is wrong, since his 2002 article makes clear that the age-sex organisation is very ancient between IE population. Hence, no wonder if only relics of it are present in the much later texts we know of.

Of course, one might object that many Deities in many contexts are said to be young and that being a warrior necessarily entails being strong (and, hence, not old)… The fact of seeing youth as a value seems to be very much present among various traditions and is by no means a IE specificity. Consequently, the present writer would suggest to Kullanda to add to his evidences a table of absences: which Deities are never qualified as "young"? Are they linked to the vaiśyas or to the Brahmans?

On PIE, see this post. Image: a later image of a Marut from Cambodge (musée Guimet, Paris).

Is there an alternative to state-funded research?

2011-05-02T22:28:00.004+02:00

Entrepreneurial work is less likely to be possible in the case of humanities and philosophy. Still, apart from earnings, it is challenging to work and/or compete outside one's confort zone (which is likely to be the Academia). Since private citizens are often happy to read and visit exhibitions and are often unhappy with just their jobs and careers, would it be possible to make private-funded research possible also in these fields?

On this topic, see also this post.
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