Śrīvaiṣṇavism, Indian and Comparative Philosophy at my new blog

Śrīvaiṣṇavism and Viśiṣṭādvaita VedāntaThis post discusses the differences between Bhedābheda and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta.
This post discusses the position of Yāmuna within Vedānta.
You can read a short summary of the panel on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta at the last WSC here.
What happened at the beginnings of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta? You can read some answers here and here.
The manuscript basis of Vedānta Deśika's Seśvaramīmāṃsā are discussed here.
A summary on the debate about phonemes in Mīmāṃsā and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta can be read here.

Further Indian Philosophy
A basic bibliography on Jayanta can be read here.
This post offers an overview of Indian linguistics.
Again on Indian linguistics, this post discusses the Mahābhāṣya antecedents of Kumārila's discussion on the sentence.
Cogent evidence (arthāpatti) is discussed here.
Slightly away from my usual concerns, this post discusses substances for the Vātsīputrīyas.

Comparative Philosophy
Deontic logic is discussed here.
This post discusses the category of "West".
Should one study Indian, Chinese, etc. philosophy within the regular curriculum? Read some thoughts here.
Can a debate about ethics be universal if it focuses only on Western ethics? Discuss here. Accordingly, this post discusses the universality of ethics in connection with Hindu bioethics.

Methodology
This post discusses the role of imagination in our reconstructions.
Do you plan to work together? Read this post (and let me know what you think).
Do you also dislike TOC in alphabetic order? Read and comment on this post.

Long sellers: Quotations and Daya Krishna
This post is dedicated to Daya Krishna.
What to read on reuse? You can find some resources here.

Book reviews
This post introduces a series of posts discussing reviews of my book.
Andrew Ollett's review is discussed here.
Taisei Shida's one is discussed here.
For my comments on Hugo David's review, read here.

Interview
You can read here an interview with Shilpa Sumant.

You can find further short posts, Call for papers, quotes, etc., at my new blog.

“If you want to keep on with this work, you have to be proactive”—An interview with Chiara Barbati —Part 2

An interview about Central Asia, linguistics and how to have an academic career…

Let us organise more Saṃvādas! An Interview with Mrinal Kaul

I met Mrinal Kaul for the first time in December 2012, when he attended the Coffee Break Meeting on textual reuse in Indian Philosophical texts. Since then, I tried to have him collaborate to many of my projects, but always failed, since he is already very  busy with incredibly many others. You can read his blog here and find out something more about him on his Academia page. Once you have done this, add much more Sanskrit than you would believe, imagine a smiling, funny face and you will still have only a vague idea of him.
You can read the interview at my new blog, here.

Looking at space instead of just surfaces: an interview with Gerald Kozicz

This month, I interview an architect and historian of Buddhist art, who explains how taking into account space can throw new light on the symbolic language of many monuments: see my new blog here.

Read more books, in order not to be exploited: an interview with Camillo A. Formigatti

Camillo Formigatti works at the Cambridge Sanskrit Manuscript Project and is the author of many wonderful virtual catalogue sheets you can read directly online here. I met him only in 2009, while working at the first Coffee Break Conference, and now I wonder how I survived before without his acumen in the analysis of manuscripts as "things" and not (only) as carrier of a meaning

"Philosophy is the only thing alive''. An interview with Aleix Ruiz-Falqués (part 2)

Aleix Ruiz-Falqués (his blog is here) studies (in Cambridge) Pāli Grammatical Literature written in Burma. He is an engaged scholar and one who is not shy to get involved in controversies about ideas. You can read the first part of this interview here. This time I will be asking him more general (and more provocative) questions.
EF: In some of your posts (see here and here), you seem to be quite sceptical about Anthropology as applied to Buddhism (i.e., you seem to share the textual-based approach you described in the first part of your interview). You also exhibited some scepticism concerning comparative philosophy and comparatism in general. How do you see interactions with people outside your field? Are they still possible, these premisses notwithstanding?
ARF: I'm ---more or less--- a philologist. Thus, I don't believe interdisciplinarity is something additional. It is part of the discipline, since you can't do philology without history, etc. The problem I have with other disciplines, sometimes, is that they try to answer philological questions without philology and I think that's not possible. One needs to read the texts.
For instance, I read some time ago about the idea of canon in Pāli. Some anthropologists have been disputing the fixed idea of canon meaning the Tipiṭaka as we know it. They claim that in some libraries in villages in Thailand you don't find the whole orthodox canon but just parts of it, and then other texts that are not usually called canonical (some call them apocryphal). Now, all this information is really interesting, but it has nothing to do with the idea of canon in Pāli scholarship in Pāli, and I don't know why some scholars are against accepting the fact that some ideas are fabricated by an élite and still that's how they are. What the villagers do is not important at all.
EF: In my opinion, we are just talking about different things. Whenever I give a talk I tend to say at the beginning that I am not talking about the Veda as it is, but only with its intellectual reflection within the works of an intellectual élite.
ARF: Moreover, against those who consider Philosophy dead I maintain the opposite: Philosophy is the only thing alive.
EF: I cannot but agree. Saying that philosophy is dead is just part of a philosophical discussion. But then: if you cannot avoid asking philosophical questions, whence your hostility to using philosophy in the case of Buddhist studies?
ARF: Because I don't think that there is "philosophy" but "philosophies" and they are mutually incompatible. Thus, I like "applying" the philosophy I consider correct and I dislike applying the philosophy I consider incorrect. I more or less follow the ideas of a Spanish philosopher called Gustavo Bueno, who says that Philosophy is a knowledge of second degree. Philosophy would be the critical analysis of previously received knowledge, preferably knowledge already systematized, but not necessarily so. There are many disciplines and sciences and the main job of philosophy is the critical analysis of what we know.

EF: Can't this critical analysis (insofar as it is critical) be a shared enterprise? Why does it need to have only, say, Burma as its precinct of application?
ARF: It could be a shared enterprise, and in fact I believe it can only be such. If you want to say that I seemed to imply that I don't need comparisons to study Burma, well, I know that's not true.
We all need to compare. My problem with comparative studies is different, it has to do with the logic behind it, the aims of this research and its results, which seem to me very dubious most of the time. For instance,  I talk to a friend about Buddhist monasticism and the friend says "Oh, yes, that happened in Europe as well..." and he gives me the Rule of Saint Benedict. Now, I think that's a perfectly good topic of research, but the sheer comparison, trying simply to point out similarities as if they meant something in themselves, this I think is pointless.
EF: Well, I would say that sheer comparison (A is found also in context B) is non interesting because it is plainly descriptive. In other words: everything descriptive is uninteresting. I am also terribly bored by articles about history of art if they say things like "this sculpture represents a naked woman holding an arch".
ARF: I totally agree! My favourite target is "Buddhism and Science" ("What Kant said was already realized by Lord Buddha"…).
EF: I know this questions scares many. Do you have an overall idea of what you want to achieve within your research area? Are there priorities in your work or do you let yourself be driven by your interests of the moment?
ARF: I think I know (but then I might change my mind), but yes, right now I have a crystal clear idea of what I would do. I would like to study Pāli literature written in Burma and Theravāda Buddhism in Burma, from a  historical perspective. There is far too much for one person, thus drop me a line if you are interested.
As far as I am concerned, I'll be happy if I could do these two things before I die:

1.  critical edition of Kaccāyanasuttaniddesa
2. A study of Ariyavaṃsa and his Abhidhamma commentary Maṇisāramañjūsā

EF: Did you obtain a scholarship to study in the UK? Has it been difficult? What did you do ''right'' (I am asking so that someone else might copy you)?
ARF: I knew from a friend that there were some scholarships offered by one of the most powerful financial institutions in Spain, which has a sort of Fund for social work, scholarships, etc. They give yearly 20 scholarships for Masters and PhDs. Thus, I applied for a scholarship to study abroad and I got it, probably because they wanted to be sure that the person they give the scholarship to is passionate about his/her topic. It is probably the most effective way to know that s/he will not give up. Thus, I was lucky.
EF:  You have been studying in Spain, India, UK and have been researching in Burma. What would you recommend to younger colleagues?
ARF: It depends on the case. In my case, to tell you the truth, I went to India because I didn't know how to manage in Europe. But then, the approach in Pune University was very much plunging into the texts, and in case of doubt, reading a Sanskrit commentary, forget about English secondary literature. And I really liked that! Therefore, I would recommend to know the methods of every place beforehand and choose the method which is more suitable to one's own temper and interests. I prefer reading the sources.

What would you recommend?
Interviews are posted each last Friday in a month. You can read the first one (to Michela Clemente) here and the first part of Aleix' interview here.

Why should a Buddhist study Pāli grammar? An interview with Aleix Ruiz-Falqués (part 1)

I virtually met Aleix many years ago, through his first blog (Fulla de Palma) and we soon became pen-friends until we met in person during a visit of mine in Cambridge, where he is studying for his PhD. He has since taken part to the Coffee Break Project (see here for his presentation at the next CBC in a few days) and to my volume on textual re-use. Thus, beside his achievements in both Pāli and Sanskrit I can add that I strongly recommend working with him (in case you are wondering, though being a non-conformist thinker and writer, Aleix is not an artist —he even let me edit the interview without correcting its final draft).

EF: What is your current project?ARF: I'm writing my PhD thesis in Cambridge, studying Pali grammars or grammatical commentaries written in Burma, ca. 11th-15th centuries AD.

EF: Then, let me ask you a question which goes way beyond political-correctness: Don't you ever get bored with your authors?
ARF: Yes and no, and I think the reason is the same. Yes, it's quite boring, because they say almost the same things, but no, because they say ALMOST, but not exactly, the same thing and I wonder why, and here's the gap I'm trying to fill, so to say.

EF: Do you mean that you try to understand the rationale beyond the small differences?ARF: More or less. I'm trying to understand, in the first place, why would they care writing these works, in the second why would they care about minor points that seem actually meaningless and finally there is another aspect, which is crucial, namely, 80% (approx.) of the Pali authors in medieval Burma were grammarians. They wrote, at least, one grammatical work.
Thus, grammar seems to be very important in Burmese Pali literature. The mainstream theory tries to explain it saying that the Burmese people were not familiar with Pali, that is was a foreign language, etc. But I'm not sure…

EF: If this were the case: why would they bother about grammar? Grammar is not for the purpose of learning the language, but for speculating about it. I would say that Grammar : language = Mīmāṃsā : ritual. You do not need to reflect about the ritual in order to be able to perform it, just like you do not need to reflect about language in order to understand it… not to mention in order to speak it.
So, what is your theory about the pre-eminence of Grammar in Burma?ARF: well, it goes in the lines of what you said about Mīmāṃsā, but there is an important historical aspect that I am also trying to understand better. My thesis, in short, is that grammar was what Theravādins call pariyatti. Let me put it in other words, in post-canonical Pāli we have handbooks for different disciplines: handbooks that summarize the Abhidhamma, handbooks that summarize the Vinaya, meditation manuals…I think that grammatical handbooks are the equivalent for the Sutta literature, that is, they are the exegetical tools in order to study the Suttantas or discourses of the Buddha.

EF: Thus, they were not for the purpose of learning Pali, but for the purpose of understanding the Buddha's word?ARF: I think I would go beyond that. I would say that they focused on grammar because Pali, as a language, is the substance of the Tipiṭaka, so to say. And as I said before there is a historical context that matters a lot because Theravāda Buddhism was not the only religion in Burma, even though people think Burma has been always like today.
In the 12-13th centuries, for instance, there were competing Mahāyāna sects, other sects within Hināyāna, Vaiṣṇavism and Animism etc.

EF: Are you saying that the focus on Pāli was a sort of lakṣaṇa (distinctive mark) for Theravāda and that the role of Grammar has to be understood accordingly?ARF: Exactly, they gave preeminence to pariyatti, that is, textual-based religion (this is something I'm studying now, as part of my PhD). And it's funny how the story (or history) repeats itself today.  I was recently in Burma/Myanmar and discussed this topic with a monk, who told me that recently the Myanmar government passed a bill forcing preacher-monks to hold, at least, the Dhammacariya degree (i.e., a BA in Theravada studies).

EF: That is, you are not allowed to be an illiterate monk?ARF: More or less. The point is that, seemingly, there were some preachers who were preaching "their own ideas in Burmese". Usually, the preacher says some canonical words in Pāli and then gives an explanation in Burmese, but these monks did not know Pāli. This happened nowadays, but if we trust the chronicles (which is not very advisable sometimes) a similar thing happened in the 12th century with some forms of tantrism.

EF: Do you mean that the emphasis on Pali is a way to rule out heterodoxies?ARF: Exactly. The knowledge of Pāli is an objective parameter and can serve as a sort of touchstone to distinguish real from fake.

EF: This leads me to a second point: some Sanskritists tend to see (although they would not admit it openly) Pāli as a low-level Sanskrit and Pāli texts as a lower order śāstra. Given that you read both Sanskrit and Pāli, when you read Pāli Grammarians do you feel they are "as sophisticated as" Sanskrit ones or just "different" (due to their different concerns)?ARF: They are as sofisticated as Sanskrit grammarians, if only because they copy them…

EF: For instance, while I was reading your paper on the gender of go at a certain point I found myself thinking "They are complicating a simple issue… if only they could resort to the Skt solution…".ARF: Oh, yes, but let me explain that the main point of that paper was precisely that Pāli grammarians see Pāli as a corpus of sacred scriptures and they have no other authority to decide about them than the text. Thus, the text itself is its own grammatical authority. It is paradoxical.

EF: I would not say it is a paradox: it is the same when we reconstruct the grammar of a dead language, and of a spoken one, if the speakers themselves become the authorities.ARF: Not so. If you are using modern linguistics, you could resort to comparisons, but Pāli grammarians did not compare, for instance, Pāli with Ardhamāgadhī.

EF: I see. There is no external authority in the case of Pāli Grammar.ARF: Exactly. And there are some interesting discussions about the way the Buddha talked. There are two axioms or premises that we need to take into account here. Premise No. one: the Tipiṭaka is the word of the Buddha, meaning, more or less, that he said all what is said there. Premise No. two: Pali, i.e. Māgadhī, is the root language of all beings. So if you have a baby and don't teach her to talk, she will naturally start to talk Pāli.
Indeed Vimalabuddhi, a 10th c. Pāli grammarian, says in a very interesting passage that Pāli was there before the Buddha appeared in the world, and he says something strange, namely (I'm quoting from memory) "this happens in every Buddha-field". Thus, Pāli is much more than just the language in which the Buddha uttered the texts of the Tipiṭaka. It is like a primordial language.


EF: I see. Similar to what is said about Sanskrit (cf. the Paspaśā's discussion about apaśabdas, being able to communicate a meaning only because one infers the Sanskrit form out of them), but with this additional historical perspective.
ARF: Yes. And who knows what Vimalabuddhi in the 10th century or Aggavamsa in the 12th century would have thought of ancient Magadha. It was for them like talking about the beginning of the world…And I think that this explains, in a way, the counting of years from the Buddha's parinirvāṇa. As if the world, our world, begins at that point.
But there are some additional elements to be taken into account in this reconstruction. First: in the Pāli texts we have records or mentions of other dialects in northern India. Second: Aggavamsa says that the bodhisatta, through hundreds of thousands existences learnt Pāli. Thus, Pāli was there during all these years. So, why would it disappear after the Buddha? (Since, at least, it had disappeared in the 12th century AD).



EF: But did they think that it had disappeared? Did not they think that it was still a reality (given that you write that they wrote in Pāli and that it was a sort of lingua franca for the Theravāda world)?ARF: I don't recall reading about this topic in grammars, it might be dealt with in Buddhaghosa's accounts of the history of the teaching, I cannot say now. But there is the certainty that Pāli is a language of the past. It is not the language of Sri Lanka, nor the language of Burma and I don't know if they still identified Pali with a northern Indian dialect.
I  recently read an article suggesting that Aggavamsa, the author of the Pāli grammar Saddaniti, visited Bodhgaya. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to him to write a travelogue.

Enjoyed this interview? Then be ready to read the next part on my new blog, where I will discuss with Aleix of philosophy and South Asian studies. You can read another interview here.  
And you can suggest further questions for the next interviews by commenting here.

How to be an excellent Tibetologist and land in a Marie Curie Fellowship: an Interview with Michela Clemente

I met Michela Clemente because we both studied at the faculty of Oriental Studies at "La Sapienza" in Rome and most of all because we studied together Tibetan at the IsIAO. She wrote her MA thesis on a 17th century religious master, Kun spangs pa Chos kyi rin chen, by translating his life-story, which was an uncommon type of biography and, to her knowledge, the only preserved copy of this text. The inner typology is so far the less-studied and least known among Tibetan biographies. She is thus the first scholar who translated a Tibetan “inner biography” into a European language (for further details on this genre of biographies and on Michela’s work in particular, see Clemente 2008).
Then, she wrote her PhD thesis on lHa btsun Rin chen rnam rgyal (1473-1557) a master who had a leading role in Tibetan printing history. Beside her interest for the contents of the works she has been dealing with, and for the genre of biographies in general, she has also been researching on their form, i.e., on Tibetan xylographies. These are woodblock prints and have been used since the beginning of the 15th Century in Tibet. Against in the case of modern printing with movable characters, the whole page was engraved in wood and then used as a stamp. Michela has been outlining some key elements for a philology of Tibetan xylographies (printing school, colophons, etc.). You can find, e.g., an abstract of her contribution on this topic to the first Coffee Break Conference here; the full article has been published on RSO 2011. She is now in Cambridge with a Marie Curie fellowship.

EF: What is your current project about?

MC: My current project is about Tibetan printings. It is entitled Tibetan Book Evolution and Technology. This is correlated to an international project entitled Transforming Technologies and Buddhist Book Culture: the Introduction of Printing and Digital Text Reproduction in Tibetan Societies, organized by the University of Cambridge (MIASU) in collaboration with the British Library and funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), which started in 2010 and in which I am involved. My project will study extant early Tibetan prints from the South Western area, where the first printing houses of Tibet were set up, in order to understand the introduction of xylography as a complex process involving technical, economic, political and religious factors. The project will focus on the 15th–early 16th century xylographs from various libraries in the UK (Cambridge University Library, Bodleian Library, British Library, Liverpool Library) as well as other prints from the National Archives of Kathmandu, numerous libraries in Tibet and from the Tucci Tibetan Collection of the IsIAO Library in Rome. By focusing on the study of these early prints a great deal of codicological information will be produced. This will be used to supplement the historical information from the texts and provide the starting point for a new method of identification of early prints based on book features. I will examine the texts according to codicological standards and in co-operation with experts from different disciplines thus obtaining the fullest understanding of all aspects of the texts through:

1. 1) materials analysis [paper, ink, pigments];
2. 2) the style of the edition [front page, layout, ductus, orthographic peculiarities, woodcut representations];
3. 3) book cover typology (if present); 
4. 4) the study of the colophon.

EF: Do you interact with colleagues working on similar topics but with South Asian and/or Western materials?

MC: I am interacting with colleagues at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in Cambridge, who are working on a AHRC project which focuses on Sanskrit Manuscripts preserved at the Cambridge University Library. Within the AHRC project on Tibetan book, we are also organizing a workshop on printing as an agent of change in Tibet and beyond, which will involve experts of Japanese, Chinese and Indian prints as well.

EF: Which topics do you envision as the more urgent priorities in your field of study? What would you recommend as a topic for, e.g., a young graduate student looking for a theme for his/her PhD thesis?

MC: Tibetan culture is plenty of topics to deepen and I can’t say which one has the highest priority. Furthermore, I think that each young student should choose something fascinating to him/her. Passion is what leads a scholar to continue his studies despite difficulties. It is not easy to carry on research, especially in Italy, and especially in this field. There are numerous texts that have not been translated yet and that are now available. There are collaborative projects that are investigating different facets of Tibetan culture. If students who are interested in Tibetan culture would like to contact me, they can write me at this address.

EF: You managed to get a prestigious scholarship. Apart from your expertise on this field, what was the key of this success? What would you recommend to colleagues and readers?

MC: It is necessary to find the right institution which will host you. It must have an experienced and well-trained staff. The credibility of the institution is extremely relevant. The presentation of the project is also really important. The topic of the project must be comprehensible for anybody and it should be presented in a fascinating way. Do not write the application as a scientific article. Try to write as simple as possible. Do not use Tibetan or Sanskrit terms. People that evaluate these applications are researchers of all disciplines and also managers, publicists, and so on. Graphs and charts are appreciated as well as pictures. Take into consideration outreach activities for a wider audience. It is important that the project is useful not only to deepen one or more aspects of your field, but also for the community. Before submitting the application, ask someone who is not a specialist in your field to read it. If it is comprehensible to him/her, then you can submit it. You also need someone who help you with the preparation of the application. Many faculties have people who do this as part of their job. Your curriculum is another important part of the application, especially publications. If you manage to create a collaborative project, it would be something particularly interesting. Try to start the preparation of the application some months before the deadline or you will be forced to do it as a full-time job! Good luck!

EF: More in general, what would you recommend to prospective scholars/younger colleagues?

MC: I would recommend graduate students to publish as soon as possible and as much as possible, to participate in conferences, workshops etc, to interact with colleagues and scholars across the world, to collaborate to any kind of initiative or project of universities, cultural associations and institutions. 

How can one…get a post-Doc position/decide in which area to specialise/publish enough etc.?

from tinizini.com

Beginning with next week and usually on the last Friday each month, I will post interviews of young colleagues asking them about the "secret" of their success, hoping that this will help filling the gap between students and ex-students and full professors who seem beyond reach.
I will ask questions such as "What did you do right to land in your actual position?" and "What would you recommend to younger colleagues?", but also "What do you
think needs to be researched in your area of specialization?" and "What are your research strategies?".

What would you like to know? Suggestions for questions are welcome!