Overview
The Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems Project investigates the structure
and social context of Sanskrit science and knowledge from 1550 to 1750.
The period witnessed a flowering of scholarship lasting until the coming
of colonialism, when a decline set in that ended the age-old power of Sanskrit
thought to shape Indian intellectual history. Ten scholars will inventory,
collect, and analyze this scholarship in selected disciplines from four
regional complexes (the disciplines include: language philosophy, logic-epistemology,
law, astral science, medicine). Social-historical data on the intellectuals
will be collected in a prosopographical archive. The outcome will be a
volume of essays, the first of its kind, on forms of knowledge in India
on the threshold of colonialism, examining at once the discourse of scholar-ship,
its social life, and regional character. The bio-bibliographical archive,
along with manuscripts of important unpublished works, will also be made
available on a website. The project will contribute to future comparative
histories of Indo-Persian and vernacular science of the period and, more
broadly, of early-modern Indian and European thought.
Published Articles
- Bronner, Yigal. 'Back to the Future: Appayya Diksita's
Kuvalayananda and the Rewriting of Sanskrit Poetics.'
Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, forthcoming.
- Bronner, Yigal. 'What
is New and What is Navya: Sanskrit Poetics on the Eve of Colonialism.'
Journal of Indian Philosophy 30(5), 2002, pp. 441-62.
- Ganeri, Jonardon. 'Traditions of truth: Gangesa on
svatah-pramanya.' Journal of Indian Philosophy , forthcoming.
- Ganeri, Jonardon. 'On the logic of public reason: Jaina
logic and the philosophical basis of pluralism.' History and Philosophy of Logic 23
(2002), pp. 267-281.
- Houben, Jan. 'The
Brahmin Intellectual: History, Ritual and "Time Out of Time".'
Journal of Indian Philosophy 30(5), 2002, pp. 463-79.
- Houben, Jan. '"Verschriftlung"
and the relation between the pramanas in the History of Samkhya.' Etudes
des Lettres 2001,3: La Rationalite in Asie/Rationality in Asia, edited by
Johannes Bronkhorst, pp. 165-94(*with minor additions*).
- Houben, Jan. '"Semantics"
in the Sanskrit Tradition on the Eve of Colonialism'(ms.).
- McCrea, Lawrence. 'Novelty
of Form and Novelty of Substance in Seventeenth Century Mimamsa.'
Journal of Indian Philosophy 30 (5), 2002, pp. 481-94.
- Minkowski, Christopher. 'Nilakantha's Instruments of
War: Modern, Vernacular, Barbarous.'Indian Economic and Social History Review,
forthcoming.
- Minkowski, Christopher. 'A Nineteenth Century Sanskrit
Treatise on the Revolution of the Earth: Govinda Deva's Bhumibhramana.' SCIAMUS,
forthcoming.
- Minkowski, Christopher. 'Nilakantha and His Historical
Context.' Orient (Moscow Academy of Sciences), forthcoming.
- Minkowski, Christopher. 'On Suryadasa and the
Invention of Bi-directional Poetry (vilomakavya).' Journal of the American Oriental
Society, forthcoming.
- Minkowski, Christopher. 'Nilakantha's Vedic Readings in
the Harivamsa Commentary.' In ed. Petteri Koskikallio, Proceedings of the Third Dubrovnik
Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puranas, forthcoming.
- Minkowski, Christopher. 'The Vedastuti and Vedic
Studies: Nilakantha on Bhagavata Purana X.87.' In eds. J.E.M. Houben and A. Griffiths,
Proceedings of the Third International Vedic Studies Workshop, forthcoming.
- Minkowski, Christopher. 'Meanings Numerous and
Numerical: Nilakantha and Magic Squares in the Rgveda.' Festschrift Elizarenkova,
forthcoming.
- Minkowski, Christopher. 'Competing Cosmologies in
Early Modern Indian Astronomy.' In eds. Charles Burnett, Jan Hogendijk, and Kim Plofker,
Ketuprakasa: studies in the history of the exact sciences in honor of David Pingree , (Leiden:
Brill, 2004) 349-85.
- Minkowski, Chritopher Z. 'Astr
onomers
and Their Reasons: Working Paper on Jyotihsastra.' Journal of Indian
Philosophy 30 (5), 2002, pp. 495-514.
- Minkowski, Christopher Z. 'The
Pandit as Public Intellectual: the Controversy of Virodha or
Inconsistency in the Astronomical Sciences.' In Axel Michaels (ed.), The
pandit. Proceedings of the conference in honour of Dr. K. P. Aithal.
Heidelberg: Sudasien Institute, 2001. pp. 79-96.
- Minkowski, Christopher Z. (forthcoming).
'Nilakantha
Caturdhara and the Genre of Mantrarahasyaprakasika.' In Y. Ikari (ed.),
Proceedings of the Second International Vedic Workshop. Kyoto.
- Pollock, Sheldon, ed. Theory and Method in Indian
Intellectual History (papers of the EPHE seminar, Paris, June 2004), Journal of Indian
Philosophy, forthcoming.
- Pollock, Sheldon, ed. Forms of Knowledge in Early
Modern South Asia. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East vol.
24.2 (2004).
- Pollock, Sheldon. 'The Bhattadinakara of
Dinakara Bhatta (1.3), a Seventeenth-century Treatise on Mimamsa. Edited for the first time,
with an Introduction.' Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, forthcoming.
- Pollock, Sheldon. 'Literary Culture and Manuscript
Culture in Precolonial India.' In Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash, Ian Willison, eds. History of the
Book and Literary Cultures. British Library, forthcoming.
- Pollock, Sheldon.>'Introduction.' In Forms of
Knowledge in Early Modern South Asia. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, vol. 24.2 (2004), pp. 19-21.
- Pollock, Sheldon. 'The Meaning of dharma
and the Relationship of the Two Mimamsas: Appayya Diksita’s
"Discourse on the Refutation of a Unified Knowledge-System of Purvamimamsa and
Uttaramimamsa".' In Patrick Olivelle, ed. Dharma (Journal of
Indian Philosophy 32.5, December 2004), pp. 769-811.
- Pollock, Sheldon.'The Languages of Science in
Early-Modern India.' In K. Preisendanz, ed. Halbfass Commemoration Volume Vienna:
Akademie der Wissenschaften, in press .
- Pollock, Sheldon. 'Introduction:
Working Papers on Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonialism.'
Journal of Indian Philosophy 30 (5), 2002, pp. 431-9.
- Pollock, Sheldon (2001a). 'New
intellectuals in seventeenth-century India.' In Nita Kumar (ed.), The
dilemma of the Indian intellectual, vol. 38.1 of Indian Economic and
Social History Review, special issue, pp. 3-31. New Delhi and London:
Sage.
- Pollock, Sheldon (2001b). 'The
death of Sanskrit.' Comparative Studies in History and Society,
43(2), 392-426.
- Pollock, Sheldon. 'Indian Knowledge Systems on
the Eve of Colonialism.'Intellectual History Newsletter 22 (2000):
1-16.
- Preisendanz, Karin.'Indische Philosophen in
vorkolonialer Zeit.' In Karin Preisendanz und Dietmar Rothermund, eds., Südasien in der
Neuzeit. 1500-2000.Wien: Edition Weltregionen 2003,
pp. 47-71.
- Wujastyk, Dominik. 'Change and Creativity in Early
Modern {Indian}Medical Thought.' Journal of Indian Philosophy forthcoming.
- Wujastyk, Dominik. 'An Argument with Medicine and a
Search for Manuscripts.' Friends of the Wellcome Library & Centre for the History of
Medicine: Newsletter Vol. 32, Spring 2004, pp. 6-9.
- Wujastyk, Dominik. 'The Evolution of Government
Policy on Ayurveda in the Twentieth Century.' In Pluralism and Paradigms in Modern and
Global Ayurveda, ed. Dagmar Benner and Fred Smith, SUNY Press (in preparation).
- Wujastyk, Dominik. Forward to Catalogue of Jyotisa
Manuscripts in the Wellcome Library. Sanskrit Astral and Mathematical Literature.
Wellcome Library & Centre for the History of Medicine, 2004.
- Wujastyk, Dominik. 'The Rogarogavada of Viresvara: A
Critical Edition and Translation.' Indian Journal of History of Science,
forthcoming.
- Wujastyk, Dominik. 'Medicine and Dharma.' Journal
of Indian Philosophy, forthcoming.
- Wujastyk, Dominik. 'Indian medicine on the eve of
Colonialism.' International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, Vol. 31 (July 2003), p.
21.
Panel at the Association for Asian Studies, Annual Meeting
Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems on the Eve of Colonialism
Chicago, March 2001
Organizer and Chair
Sheldon Pollock, University of Chicago s-pollock@uchicago.edu
Presenters
Madhav Deshpande, University of Michigan
mmdesh@umich.edu
Christopher Minkowski, Cornell University czm1@cornell.edu
Gary Tubb, Columbia University gat4@columbia.edu
Sheldon Pollock
Discussant
Robert Goldman, U. of California, Berkeley sseas@socrates.Berkeley.EDU
This panel explores problems concerning the conceptual structure
and social context of Sanskrit knowledge from roughly 1550 to 1750. This
period witnessed a flowering of scholarship that continued until the coming
of colonialism, when a precipitous decline set in that eroded the millennia-old
power of Sanskrit thought to shape Indian intellectual history. Little
research has been devoted to the scholarship, intellectuals, and sociality
of knowledge in this epoch. Accordingly, we understand little of what it
was about the Sanskrit knowledge then produced that made it so vulnerable
to colonial modernity. The seventeenth-century was a period of remarkable
innovation in many ways, innovation now sometimes anachronistically misinterpreted
as traditionalism. Minkowski shows how a commentator on the great Indian
epic deployed a new style of interpretation to read the entire Mahabharata
as a Vedic allegory, and seeks to find contextual grounds for this new
mode of reading. Tubb examines the remarkable confrontation with European
knowledge in the exact sciences at the Jaipur court in the early eighteenth-century,
when orthodox beliefs were consciously abandoned in the face of new paradigms.
Deshpande explores the role of Sanskrit studies in the polity of the Peshwas,
the successors of the Marathas, who attempted to arrest the erosion of
Sanskrit scholarship seen in many other parts of the subcontinent. Finally,
Pollock examines the languages of scholarship in early-modern South Asia,
and tries to understand why the process of vernacularization so powerfully
evidenced in the literary sphere was resisted in the domain of science.
"On the Success of Nilakantha's Commentary"
Christopher Minkowski
Cornell University
Nilakantha Caturdhara, who flourished in Banaras in the second
half of the 17th Century, produced the only commentary on the Mahabharata
that is widely used in Sanskrit studies today. Yet, when attention turns
to the content of his commentary Nilakantha is.often found by modern scholars
to be a disappointment or an annoyance, on account of his "fanciful interpretations,"
and his "Vedantic allegorizing." Why then has his commentary appeared regularly
with the Mahabharata since the early days of its publication? Is it safe
to suppose that Nilakantha represents the "traditional" understanding of
the text?
It is an achronism to expect Nilakantha to share our particular
type of historical consciousness of texts. And yet it is anachronism of
another kind to find in his commentary the expression of an "orthodox Hindu
consciousness." Nilakantha tells us that he proposes to read the Mahabharata
in a way that no previous commentator has done, in order to reveal its
hidden sense. Perhaps it is exactly this "mystical allegorizing" that distinguished
Nilakantha's work, found favor in his own day, and accounted for the wide
dissemination of his work. On this view, his commentary attained prominence
exactly for the features that Indologists have most deplored, features
that were his innovations by design, though they appear commonplace to
us today. Can we further suppose that the times in which Nilakantha lived
called this new commentary forth, and that the revelation of a previously
undiscovered inner sense formed the terms in which innovation was valued
in early-modern Banaras?
"Sanskrit Traditions during the Rule of the Peshwas:
Maintenance and Transition"
Madhav M. Deshpande
University of Michigan
The rule of the Peshwas, the Brahmin prime-ministers of Shivaji's
descendants, represents one of the most important example of pre-colonial
Indian governance. Its beginning in 1690s connects it with the older medieval
patterns, while its end at the hand of the British armies in 1818 marks
an important transition to colonialism. Since the British captured Pune,
the capital of the Peshwas, without destroying it, they came to possess
the entire official records of the Peshwas, and it is through these massive
collections of documents dealing with almost every dimension of official
and private life of the Peshwas, that one can reconstruct a detailed picture
of the period. The Sanskrit traditions of learning form an important part
of the life of this epoch, and the present paper offers glimpses of the
circumstances under which the Sanskrit traditions found themselves during
this period. The Peshwas not only supported the Sanskrit traditions through
official donations of large sums each year to thousands of Sanskrit scholars,
the Sanskrit traditions were at the very core of the Peshwa mentality and
their cultural and political framework. This is seen in the decisive role
played by these traditions in legal decision-making at the Peshwa court,
their military time-tables, and the perceived needs reflected in their
correspondence. At the same time, the Europeans are appearing on the scene
and their ways are beginning to make an impact. The present paper offers
insights into these transitions.
"Competing Systems of Knowledge in the Court of Jayasimha"
Gary Tubb
Columbia University
The court of Savai Jayasimha of Jaipur is a remarkable site
for studying the sociality of Sanskrit knowledge in early eighteenth-century
India. Although scholars working in the Persianate order typically drew
inspiration from sources different from those of Sanskrit, this was not
true in the exact sciences, in part because Persianate and Sanskrit scholars
both relied on shared Greek sources, in part because they worked side by
side. Jayasimha gave financial aid to at least a dozen Muslim scholars.
In the introduction to his great Zij-i- Muhammad Shahi, prepared for presentation
to the Mughal emperor, the king himself remarks on the history of Islamic
astronomical tables. Jayasimha's court also provides extensive examples
of direct engagement with European thought. Jayasimha writes of the discrepancy
between his own observations and his calculations based on the European
tables procured from Lisbon. This constitutes one instance in which we
know precisely why a Sanskrit knowledge system was replaced by a European
one: as Jayasimha patiently demonstrated to himself through a series of
practical experiments, the European system gave more accurate results.
Jayasimha was a man at the center of some vigorous disputes
on sources of knowledge, and one who, despite very strong sentimentally
orthodox leanings, ended up abandoning a traditional system because of
the greater empirical success of a new European one (in this case, Copernican
astronomy with heliocentric elliptical orbits)---a factor that may have
operated fairly widely in the larger demise of Sanskrit knowledge systems.
"The Languages of Science in Early-modern India"
Sheldon Pollock
University of Chicago
One of the key factors in the modernization of knowledge production
in seventeenth-century Europe was the transformation of the vernaculars
into languages of science (as for example in the work of Bacon, Descartes,
or Galileo). Although South Asia shared a comparable history of vernacularization
in the area of literary production, Sanskrit persisted as the exclusive
code for most areas of science, and scholarship more generally, outside
the Persianate cultural sphere. This paper examines the relationship between
language and knowledge during the period 1550-1750. It seeks first to delineate
the boundaries of this relationship in terms of disciplines and regions,
and then to lay out the presuppositions in Sanskrit language philosophy
that militated against the vernacularization of scientific discourse. A
useful orientation to the latter problem, which summarizes the dominant
position of Sanskrit intellectuals on the eve of colonialism, is.the work
of the great scholar Khandadeva on scriptural hermeneutics from mid-seventeenth-
century Banaras.
Panel at the Association for Asian Studies, Annual Meeting
Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems on the Eve of Colonialism II
Washington, April 2002
Organizer
Lawrence McCrea, University of Chicago ljmccrea@midway.uchicago.edu
Chair
Sheldon Pollock, University of Chicago s-pollock@uchicago.edu
Presenters
Yigal Bronner, Tel-Aviv University
ybronner@post.tau.ac.il
Jan E. M. Houben, Leiden University J.E.M.Houben@let.leidenuniv.nl
Lawrence McCrea, University of Chicago ljmccrea@midway.uchicago.edu
Christopher Minkowski, Cornell University
czm1@cornell.edu
This panel continues to present the ongoing work of the NEH
funded collaborative research project "Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the
Eve of Colonialism," exploring the objectives, methods, and institutional
dynamics of Sanskrit intellectual life in the period from roughly 1550
to 1750. This period saw a tremendous explosion of intellectual production
in a variety of disciplines, producing new genres, discursive modes, and
lines of affiliation and conflict both within and across disciplines. As
the project enters its data-gathering phase, the participants are able
to work toward a more historically nuanced and sociologically grounded
understanding of the practices of Sanskrit intellectuals in this period.
McCrea considers the guarded and selective deployment of the
precise formal techniques which characterize "New Logic" by the key figure
in 17th century "new" scriptural hermeneutics. Bronner explores the special
character of the dialectic between innovative and traditional currents
in the work of three major "new" poetic theorists. Minkowski's paper examines
the attempt of one 16th century astronomer to reconcile in a new way the
tension between empirical observation and scriptural accounts of cosmology,
and the controversy that ensued from this restructuring of exisiting astronomical
models. Houben's exploration of the role of Vedic ritual in the pre-colonial
period in relation to larger cultural practices, such as the continuing
vitality of Sanskrit, prompts a more general reconsideration of ritual
theory as such.
"Novelty of Form and Novelty of Substance in Seventeenth
Century Mimamsa"
Lawrence McCrea
University of Chicago
The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the
rise in several fields-- grammar, poetics, and scriptural hermeneutics
(Mimamsa)-- of intellectual movements styling themselves "new" (navya).
This idea of "newness" was certainly modelled on that of the already well-established
school of "New Logic" (Navya Nyaya) which had existed at least since the
thirteenth century, and was in part founded on the application in new areas
of the precise formal and definitional techniques devised by the new logicians.
Yet the relationship between these "new" movements and Navya
Nyaya was never one of simple imitation. This is perhaps nowhere more evident
than in the field of Mimamsa. Khandadeva, the scholar generally recognized
as the founder of "New Mimamsa", avoids the wholesale incorporation of
the formal tools of new logic found in other fields in this period. He
makes extensive use of them when arguing with the logicians themselves,
but only rarely and very selectively applies them in confronting the key
"internal" problems of Mimamsa in this period. Treating Khandadeva as a
case study, the paper will consider the impact of these formal techniques
in 17th century Sanskrit intellectual life. Does the rigorously formal
discourse of the new logicians in some sense force itself on the intellectuals
of this period? Can one respond to the arguments of the new logicians only
by in some measure adopting their terms, making it difficult to resist
assimilation to their formal discursive method?
"What is New and What is Navya: Sanskrit Poetics on
the Eve of Colonialism"
Yigal Bronner
Tel-Aviv University
Remarkable new trends characterize Sanskrit Poetics (alamkarasastra)
in the late pre-colonial era. Authors adopt a discursive pattern compatible
with that of the logicians, compose in new genres such as the hostile commentary
(khandana), show a fresh interest in the history of their tradition and
work across disciplines at a rate hitherto unknown. Yet the relationship
between such tendencies, rightly seen as the trademarks of a New (navya)
Poetics, and actual theoretical innovation is far from simple.
This is partly the result of features that set poetics aside
from other new schools of the day. Alamkarasastra never possessed a core-text
to provide it with universally accepted foundations and, at the same time,
it had to come to terms with an ever evolving textual tradition-- poetry.
The discipline was thus highly susceptible to radical innovations, yet
it also strove to preserve or even manufacture a tradition for itself.
Both these tendencies became manifest through the highly novel idiom of
the period, sometimes even within the works of a single author.
The paper sets out to explore this paradox of the New Poetics
by briefly examining the lives and works of three of its key figures: The
South-Indian polymath Appayya Diksita (c. 1550), who in many ways founded
the movement, winning immense reputation but also many rivals; Benares's
Jagannatha Panditaraja (c. 1625), Appayya's most vehement opponent and
a poet and scholar in his own right, and the Almora based Visvesvara (c.
1730), a highly innovative traditionalist and a critic of both.
"Turtles All the Way Down? Tradition and Experiment
in Cosmological Reasoning"
Christopher Minkowski
Cornell University
In 1503 the astronomer Jnanaraja completed the Siddhantasundara,
the first general treatise on astronomy to appear in Sanskrit in three
and a half centuries. In one chapter of the work, Jnanaraja re-opened a
cosmological problem: how to reconcile the spherical, geocentric model
of the astronomers with the flat-earth cosmology of the sacred literature,
the Puranas. Jnanaraja sought to reconsider the position of accommodation
reached by earlier astronomers, especially Bhaskara (11th Ct.). Jnanaraja
argued against Bhaskara concerning the support of the earth, its power
to attract objects, and the 'down-ness of down.' These proposals and others
touched off a new round of cosmological debate in Sanskrit that continued
into the 18th Century.
The history of Jnanaraja's ideas opens into a larger historical
problem - how to place the Siddhantic astronomers in the wider intellectual
history of Sanskrit authors. A way into the problem lies in asking an underlying
question - in what would a satisfying "reconciliation" of Puranas and Siddhantas
consist? One finds a growing interest among the astronomers of this period
in integrating the method of astronomy with the Pramana system of proof
that was developed in the principal sastras, especially logic. In discussing
cosmology, astronomers were willing to put into play their three forms
of gaining certainty and their mutual relations: evidence from observed
phenomena, mathematical calculation, and textual authority.
"Ritual as Medium in Pre-colonial South Asia"
Jan E. M. Houben
University of Leiden
The strong presence of ritual, especially Vedic ritual, could
be part of the explanation of a number of remarkable features of the South
Asian cultural area, to begin with the persistence over millennia of Sanskrit
as widely used cultured language. For a better understanding of the capacities
and limitations of ritual as medium next to a number of other media, the
pre-colonial period is of special interest, as (a) relatively detailed
sources - though so far insufficiently explored and studied - are available,
(b) developments in India were still largely having their own momentum,
with only limited influence from Europe, and (c) an important alternative
medium which would become of major significance in transforming South Asian
culture both at the hands of colonizers (the British) and colonized (e.g.
in Bengal, Maharashtra), viz. the printing press (technologically advanced
form of writing with quite special features), was still largely marginal
in South Asia.
In order to come to grips with "Ritual as Medium" a suitable
theoretical model is to be developed. Staal's theory of "meaningless ritual"
is the most recent attempt at rigorous theorizing of the oldest ritual
system of which we have elaborate sources, viz. Vedic ritual. At first
sight it seems unsuitable as theoretical basis for dealing with Ritual
as Medium. Nevertheless, it provides a startingpoint from which a useful
theory may be developed when some recent contributions by other scholars
on ritual are taken into account. The theory will be illustrated with references
to a few cases in pre-colonial South Asia.
