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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 April 2016
This is a review article of two recent books. The first is D. Venkat Rao's Cultures of Memory in South Asia: Orality, Literacy and the Problem of Inheritance; the second, Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee's The Nay Science: A History of German Indology. Rao's conviction is that Indology has failed in its mandate. He claims that Indology so far has produced only European representations of India and not what should have been the choicest self-images of India's past. If Rao begins with a hostile tone towards Indology and expresses his intention to do something with India's texts without either relying on or having recourse to anything that belongs to the Indologist's ragbag, Adluri and Bagchee set out to expose what they refer to as Indology's ‘pretension’ to scientific method and objectivity in their The Nay Science, an unprecedented polemical history of German Indology. I divide this review into two parts: a critical examination of The Nay Science’s critique of German Indology and its commitment to a methodological reform, and a distilled critical account of Cultures of Memory’s approach to Indian textual traditions and the problems of such an approach. Finally, after examining the important challenges facing Indology, I'll make a case for how the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre may help our understanding of the nature, dynamics, and the relevance of tradition in South Asia.
I would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of Modern Asian Studies, as well as Atul Mishra and Gautama Polanki for their invaluable advice and encouragement.
1 McGetchin, D, Indology, Indomania, Orientalism: Ancient India's Rebirth in Modern Germany, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, 2009Google Scholar; Marchand, S., German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009Google Scholar. These are two recent detailed historical accounts of the German Indology.
2 Pollock, S., ‘Future Philology: The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World’, Critical Enquiry, vol. 35, 4, 2009, pp. 931–961CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is strong defence of philology by a foremost Sanskritist of our times. For an Indological perspective on the need and use of philology, see Houben, J. E. M., ‘Philosophy and Philology, East and West, Need and Basis for a Global Approach’, Cracow Indological Studies: The Future of Indology, vol. 10, 2008, pp. 88–144Google Scholar. This piece offers a conciliatory perspective on the uses of philology with several recommendations about how philology can help build the future of Indology. Philology is by no means restricted to oriental languages alone. The classical Greek philology is indeed a much large an affair with an equally hoary history, and subsequently every period of the Western history had its own episodes of rich philological explorations. It very much behoves to be recalled here that Nietzsche was a product of philology in that his early work, The Birth of Tragedy, was a response to the philology of his times. For an excellent historical account of philology and its impact on practice and research in the Humanities, from classical antiquity to modern times, albeit limited to the Western world, see Turner, J., Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2014Google Scholar. For a comparatist's defence of philology as a practice of reading, preparing and editing texts, see Gumbrecht, H. U., The Power of Philology: Dynamics of Textual Scholarship, University of Illinois Press, Illinois, 2003Google Scholar. For a wide range of philological cultures from across the globe offering historical and critical perspectives—Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese, Indo-Persian, Japanese, Ottoman, and modern European, see World Philology. S. Pollock, B. A. Elman, and K. K. Chang (eds), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2015.
3 At a time when the study of literature was moving towards ‘theory’ in the seventies, and away from text oriented interpretive practices like close reading, Paul de Man prophetically observed that ‘the turn to theory occurred as a turn to philology, to an examination of the structure of language prior to the meaning (emphasis is mine) it produces’. See de Man, P., ‘The Return to Philology’ in his The Resistance to Theory, Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis, 1986, pp. 21–26Google Scholar.
4 Semantics is a discipline which studies the relationship between words and objects. Such relationships are relative to how languages are empirically and contextually used, and hence they are obtained in the meaning making efforts of individuals. If a linguistic expression means something to someone, it is not because its ‘meaning’ becomes available to him as one permanent structure of a Platonic realm of meanings. On the contrary, ‘meaning’ is how agents construe the correlations of words and expressions with things and processes in the world. Thus, meaning, i.e. semantics, is about this construal, which depends on a triadic relation between language, the users of language and the world. Thus, for a philologist to unpack the meaning of an expression would amount to constructing his way to the ‘construals’ of the agent who produces that language. For an excellent introduction to the linguistic and philosophical issues that arise here, although at times quite technical, from a semanticist's perspective, see Platts, M., Ways of Meaning: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1997Google Scholar.
5 See Crapanzano, V., ‘Hermes’ Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description’ in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. (eds), University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986, p. 52Google Scholar. He writes: ‘An ethnographer . . . has to make sense of the foreign. Like Benjamin's translator, he aims at a solution to the problem of foreignness, and like the translator (a point missed by Benjamin) he must also communicate the very foreignness that his interpretations (the translator's translations) deny, at least in their claim to universality. He must render the foreign familiar and preserve its very foreignness at one and the same time. The translator accomplishes this through style, the ethnographer through the coupling of a presentation that asserts the foreign and an interpretation that makes it all familiar.’ Also see Clooney, F., ‘Understanding in Order to be Understood, Refusing to Understand in Order to Convert’, Expanding and Merging Horizons. Contributions to South Asian and Cross-Cultural Studies in Commemoration, Preisendanz, K. (ed.), Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, Vienna, 2007, pp. 51–61Google Scholar. Although it is about the missionary-scholar Roberto de Nobili, who committed himself to understanding Brahmanical learning to be able to convey his Christian message to Indians, it throws light on the sort of complexities of knowing and understanding that an ethnographic perspective entails.
6 See Bailey, G., ‘The fundamental problems of contemporary Indology’. Cracow Indological Studies: The Future of Indology, vol. 10, 2008, pp 48–61Google Scholar. Bailey addresses some very important questions relevant to the concerns I am raising here.’ Also see Milewska, I., ‘Indology—An Archaic Dinosaur or a Modern Field of Studies?’, Cracow Indological Studies: The Future of Indology, vol. 10, 2008, pp. 1–46Google Scholar; Mohanty, J. N., ‘On Interpreting Indian Philosophy: Some Problems and Concerns’ in Essays on Indian Philosophy: Traditional and Modern, Billimoria, P. (ed.), Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp. 207–219Google Scholar. Mohanty, a preeminent Husserl scholar who is historically well grounded in the Indian philosophical traditions, offers an important autobiographical perspective on Indology.
7 See Inden, R., Imagining India, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2000Google Scholar.
8 Hanneder, J., ‘Pretence and Prejudice’, Indologica Taurinensia, vol. 35, 2011, pp. 123–137Google Scholar.
9 Halbfass, W., India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding, SUNY press, New York, 1988Google Scholar. Halbfass makes a thorough and methodologically unified case to studying ancient Indian texts from the standpoint of the German hermeneutical tradition. For a slightly different philosophical case for approaching Indian texts which is deeply informed by the substantive differences of the Indian and the Western philosophical cultures, see Mohanty, J. N., ‘Are Indian and Western Philosophy Radically Different’ in Essays on Indian Philosophy: Traditional and Modern, Billimoria, P. (ed.), Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp. 313–330Google Scholar.
10 Rao, V., Cultures of Memory in South Asia: Orality, Literacy and the Problem of Inheritance, Springer, Heidelberg, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Adluri, V. and Bagchee, J., The Nay Science: A History of German Indology, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 There is a large body of historical and revisionist work on Indology which derives its inspiration from Edward Said's orientalist discourse. Although Indology primarily concerns India and its textual traditions, its main disciplinary goals and interests were scripted in Europe, within the context of its disciplinary matrix. This has made the ‘orientalist’ critique of Indology a fairly academically popular enterprise. NS is a latest entrant in the long list of entries. Also see Pollock, S., ‘Deep Orientalism: Notes on Sanskrit and Power beyond the Raj’ in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, Carol A. Breckenridge and van der Veer, Peter (eds), University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1993, pp. 76–133Google Scholar. Also see Adluri, V., ‘Pride and Prejudice: Orientalism and German Indology’, International Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 15, 3, 2011, pp. 253–292CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a skeptical evaluation of the claims of orientalism, see Halbfass, W., ‘Research and Reflection: Responses to my Respondents I’ in Beyond Orientalism: The Work of Wilhelm Halbfass and its Impact on Indian and Cross-Cultural Studies, Franco, Eli and Preisendanz, Karin (eds), Motilal Banarsidas, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 1–25Google Scholar. Halbfass’ India and Europe was published during the heat of orientalism, and generated a lot of debate whether the Gadamerian ‘fusion of horizons’ can address the challenges presented by power-knowledge nexus pervasive in all cross cultural encounters. Several prominent Indologists and other scholars from across the board responded to Halbfass’ proposals. See F. Dallmayr, ‘Exit from Orientalism: Comments on Wilhelm Halbfass’ in Franco and Preisendanz (eds), Beyond Orientialism, pp. 49–70. Also see Hanneder, ‘Pretence and Prejudice’; Grunendahl, R., ‘History in the Making: On Sheldon Pollock's “NS Ideology” and Vishva Adluri's “Pride and Prejudice”’, International Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 16, 2, 2012, pp. 189–257CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Sanskrit and Orientalism: Indology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, D. McGetchin (ed.), Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2004. This work is a wide ranging collection of articles addressing specific historical issues and topics.
13 Hegel, G. W. F., On The Episode of the Mahābhārata Known by the Name Bhagavad-Gīta by Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Herring, Herbert (ed.), ICPR, Shimla, 1995Google Scholar; Herling, B., The German Gīta: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the Early German Reception of Indian Thought, Routledge, New York, 2009Google Scholar. Herring's, to my knowledge, is the only comprehensive historical account of the philosophical reception of Gīta in the late eighteenth century Germany.
14 Adluri and Bagchee, op. cit., p. 4.
15 Ibid., p. 5.
16 Adluri and Bagchee, op. cit., p. 6.
17 I borrow this phrase from W. V. Quine which in my view captures very well the dynamics of making sense between two culturally disparate classes of interlocutors. Quine writes perspicuously: ‘The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms concerning them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes, and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy.’ See Quine, W. V. O., Word and Object, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960, pp 272Google Scholar.
18 Adluri and Bagchee, op. cit., p. 109.
19 Ibid., p. 110.
20 Ibid., p. 214, note 244.
21 See McGrath, K., Jaya: Performance in Epic Mahābhārata. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2011Google Scholar. Also see McGrath, K., The Sanskrit Hero: Karna in Epic Mahābhārata. Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden, 2004Google Scholar.
22 Adluri and Bagchee, The Nay Science, p. 9.
23 See Sharpe, E. J., The Universal Gīta: Western Images of the Bhagavad Gīta. Duckworth, London, 1985Google Scholar.
24 Hanneder, ‘Pretence and Prejudice’, pp 123–137.
25 Rao, Cultures of Memory, p. 8.
26 Ibid., pp. 8–9.
27 Although Rao does not define ‘episteme’, for the ancient Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle, ‘epistêmê’ constitutes true and scientific knowledge. Knowledge is true and genuine because it is the knowledge of ultimately essential natures of objects obtained through logically necessary principles and truths. Thus, ‘episteme’ designates the foundational assumptions about the basis of knowledge. By claiming for ancient India a different ‘episteme’, Rao implies that the basic assumptions—the standards of truth and rationality of the Aristotelian conception of knowledge—do not apply to the knowing procedures of the ancient Indians. See Lear, J., Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 209–264CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Derrida, J., Of Grammatology, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1998, p. 280Google Scholar. Derrida writes: ‘. . . language cannot be truly born except by the disruption and fracture of that happy plenitude, in the very instant that this instantaneity is wrested from its fictive immediacy and put back into movement. It serves as an absolute reference point for him who wishes to measure and describe difference within discourse . . . All language will substitute itself for that living self-presence of the proper, which, as language, already supplanted things in themselves. Language adds itself to presence and supplants it, defers it within the indestructible desire to rejoin it.’ [Emphasis mine.]
29 See Frauwallner, E., History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, New Delhi, 1973Google Scholar, Chapter 2, ‘The Tradition’, pp. 19–23.
30 There are still many organizations, both public and privately funded, which house several lakhs of manuscripts in India which sometimes are more than a thousand years old. This itself is indicative of the robust culture of literacy in premodern India. See Pollock, S., ‘Literary Culture and Manuscript Culture in Precolonial India’ in History of the Book and Literary Cultures, Eliot, S., Nash, A. and Willison, I. (eds), British Library, London, 2006, pp. 77–94Google Scholar.
31 See the chapter on inscriptions and inscriptional discourse in Pollock, S., The Language of Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India, Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2006, pp. 115–161Google Scholar.
32 Rao, Cultures of Memory, p. 67.
33 See Janaway, C., Images of Excellence: Plato's Critique of the Arts, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Janaway offers an analytically sharp account of the dichotomy between art and philosophy in ancient Greece. See also Ferrari, G. R. F., ‘Plato on Poetry’ in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 1: Classical Criticism, Kennedy, G. A. (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 92–148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Rao, Cultures of Memory, p. 12.
35 Rājaśekhara, Kāvya Mīmāṃsā, C. D. Dalal and R. A. Sastry (eds), Oriental Institute, Baroda, 1934.
36 For a recent and thoroughly scholarly treatment of the complex Dharma śāstra jurisprudential tradition, see Davis, D. R. Jr., The Spirit of Hindu Law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Lingat, R., The Classical Law of India, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1973Google Scholar. Lingat's is an earlier classic treatment of the entire Dharma śāstra tradition in a compact format.
37 See Lariviere, R. W., ‘Dharma śāstra, Custom, “Real Law” and “Apocryphal” Smrtis’ in Dharma: Studies in its Semantic, Cultural and Religious History, Olivelle, Patrick (ed.), Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi, 2009, p. 190Google Scholar.
38 This point has been insightfully argued by Pollock, S., ‘The Revelation of Tradition: śruti, smṛti, and the Sanskrit Discourse of Power’ in Boundaries, Dynamics and Construction of Traditions in South Asia, Squarcini, Federico (ed.), Anthem Press, London, pp. 41–61Google Scholar.
39 Book X of Plato's Republic contains the first comprehensive and uncompromising attack on poetry in the Western tradition, setting up what seems to be an irreconcilable agonistic relation between philosophy and literature. See Belfiore, E., ‘Plato's Greatest Accusation against Poetry’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13, 1983, pp. 39–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Nehamas, A., ‘Plato on Imitation and Poetry in Republic X’ in his Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Aristotle, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1999, pp. 251–278Google Scholar. For Derrida's extended treatment of the challenge that literature poses to metaphysics, see Derrida, J., Acts of Literature, Attridge, Derek (ed.), Routledge, London, 1992, pp. 33–75Google Scholar; Derrida, J., Dissemination, The Athlone Press, London, 1981Google Scholar.
40 See Heidegger, M., Introduction to Metaphysics, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000, pp. 81–84Google Scholar.
41 See Mallarme, S., ‘Poeme: Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard’ in Collected Poems and Other Verse, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, pp. 139–160Google Scholar; For Derrida, see Derrida, Acts of Literature, p. 72 and pp. 110–126.
42 Gasche, R., The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 260Google Scholar.
43 Ibid., pp. 142–154.
44 Ibid., p. 261.
45 The six parts of the Vedas are grammar, lexicography, metrics, astronomy/astrology, and sacrificial methods (karma).
46 Rājaśekhara, Kāvya Mīmāṃsā, pp. 2–4.
47 Ibid., p. 2.
48 For an extended treatment of this issue, see Pollock, S., ‘The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory in Indian Intellectual History’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 105, 3, pp. 499–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Ibid., p. 5.
50 See Pollock, S., ‘What was Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka Saying? The Hermeneutical Transformation of Indian Aesthetics’ in Epic and Argument in Sanskrit Literary History, Pollock, S. (ed.), Manohar, New Delhi, 2010, pp. 143–184Google Scholar.
51 See Frauwallner, E., History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 2, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi, 2008Google Scholar. Frauwallner expressed despair that what he calls the reserves of ‘natural philosophy’ (when referring to the development of Vaiśeṣika in the post-Vedic and post-Buddhist periods) ‘degenerate into hollow scholastics’. The counterpoint for his comparison is that the Greek beginnings in the study of ontology have been better served in European intellectual history. He also blames it partly on the lack of systematic research into the subsequent developments of ontological thinking in Indian traditions. There is no doubt greater interest in Vaiśeṣika and Nyaya, especially due to B. K. Matilal and his disciples. For Frauwallner the ancient Vaiśeṣika epitomized the Indian counterpart of the ontological speculation in Greek philosophy in terms of its lack of emphasis on soteriology and a formidable interest in ‘pure striving for philosophical knowledge’. Also see Mehta, J. L., ‘Heidegger and Vedanta: Reflections on a Questionable Theme’ in Heidegger and Asian Thought, Parks, Graham (ed.), University of Hawai‘i Press, Manoa, 1990, pp. 15–45Google Scholar.
52 See Halbfass, W., On Being and What There is: Classical Vaiśeṣika and the History of Indian Ontology, Satguru Publications, New Delhi, 1992Google Scholar. This work is one of the few studies in Indian ontological traditions which offers plenty of evidence against Rao's claim that Indian traditions escape metaphysics.
53 In view of the disciplinary colonization of different research domains, such as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and so on, most studies address specific research areas and questions. Therefore, there are fewer detailed studies, aside from general introductory works, that cover the historically and geographically diverse intellectual currents of the sub-continent under a single framework. Still, Surendranath Dasgupta's multi-volume history of Indian philosophy is one of the best and comprehensive sources of information that covers all schools of thought. For a short and synthetic treatment of various philosophical perspectives, which is sensitive to the conceptual diversity of different schools of thought and practice across the spectrum, see Mohanty, J. N., Classical Indian Philosophy, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000Google Scholar. Also see The Hindu World, Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby (eds), Routledge, London, 2004. This is an impressive work organized in the format of various articles covering most of the historical and thematic aspects of the Hindu order, broadly construed. Finally, Pollock, The Language of Gods, is a work which takes Sanskrit as its framework to provide an intellectual history of the rise and fall of a whole range of intellectual cultures connected with Sanskrit. One salient feature of this approach is that it is able to transcend the usual disciplinary divisions and gives a large perspective on South Asian history of the last two millennia.
54 See Nandy, A., ‘History's Forgotten Doubles’, History and Theory, vol. 34, May 1995, pp. 44–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Pollock, S., ‘Pretextures of Time’, History and Theory, vol. 46, October 2007, pp. 366–383CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
55 See Bourdieu, P., The Logic of Practice, Polity Press, Boston, 1992, pp. 54–55Google Scholar. Bourdieu writes further: ‘This system of dispositions—a present past that tends to perpetuate itself into the future by reactivation in similarly structured practices, an internal law through which the law of external necessities, irreducible to immediate constraints, is constantly exerted—is the principle of the continuity and regularity which objectivism sees in social practices without being able to account for it.’ For a philosophically well-informed account of habitus, see Bouveresse, J., ‘Rules, Dispositions and the Habitus’ in Bourdieu: A Critical Reader, Shusterman, R. (ed.), Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1999, pp. 45–63Google Scholar.
56 See Bourdieu, P., In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990, p. 73Google Scholar.
57 Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, p. 56.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid., p. 54.
60 See Taylor, C., A Secular Age, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2007Google Scholar.
61 For an Indolgists’ outsider's view on the role of soteriology in Indian traditions, see Halbfass, India and Europe, pp. 263–286.
62 Caturvidha puruṣārthās are the four goals of life designated by the Hindu tradition: dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa. Dharma, narrowly construed, refers to a sociocosmic understanding of order; kāma and artha are concerned with what individuals want to pursue in this world as objects of desire and satisfaction; mokṣa is liberation from the world. While the former three are of this world, the latter is not of this world. Together the four goals are absolute benchmarks, set in terms of highest abstraction, for what is humanly achievable for all agents. Therefore, together they encompass a teleological scheme of ultimate values. See Biardeau, M., Hinduism: The Anthropology of a Civilization, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 41–68Google Scholar. Also see Malamoud, C., ‘On the Rhetoric and Semantics of Puruṣārthā’ in Way of Life: King, Householder, Renouncer, Essays in Honour of Louis Dumont, Madan, T. N. (ed.), Vikas, New Delhi, 1982, pp. 33–54Google Scholar.
63 The seventeenth-century Advaitin, Madhusudana Sarasvati, in a short work called Prasthānabheda, conceived as a commentary on the seventh stanza of Śivamahimna stotra, writes: ‘vedabāhyatvatteshām mlechhādiprasthānavat paramparyāpi purushārthanupayogitvād upekshaniyatvaeva (The systems of thought which are outside the Vedic fold, like those of the mlecchas, have no use for the puruṣārtha scheme of values)’. See Sarasvati, Madhusudana, Prasthānabheda, Sri Vani Vilas Press, Srirangam, 1912, p. 2Google Scholar.
64 A Vedic ritualist typically is someone who is an exponent of Vedic ritual-based texts and a performer of ritual activities associated with those texts. The most crucial aspect of his vocation is that he is bound by a peculiar metaphysics of obligation in ritual contexts which is incongruent with what is recognized as general registers of diurnal behaviour in day-to day-conduct. A ritualist is bound by an obligation (vidhi) to perform and obey without seeking any reason for why he does it. The paramount concern of ritual texts is to prescribe a sort of coherent order upon speech, actions, and the objects which are worked upon, while performing a ritual. The normative content of what one does simply resides in what one is prescribed to do. The meaning of ritual here is found in the perfect unison of speech and action brought about by the performer's well-aligned inner nature towards the incredibly numerous rules and meta-rules. Interestingly, each ritual cycle forms a system within itself, with a set grammar that will decide the behaviour of its constituent elements, which includes the performer himself. Therefore it is a closed system, and makes no exception for anything that is alien to it, thus making one instance of performance unexceptionally homomorphic to any other. See Malamoud, C., Cooking the World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient Thought, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1996, pp. 1–7Google Scholar.
65 Raghavan, V.. ‘The History of Lakshana’ in his Studies on Some Concepts of the Alaṃkāra śāstra, The Adyar Library and Research Centre, Chennai, 2009, pp. 1–52Google Scholar.
66 Pollock, S., ‘The Social Aestheic and Sanskrit Literary Theory’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 29, 2001, pp. 197–229CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see, Krishnamoorthy, K., Essays in Sanskrit Criticism, Karnatak University, Dharwar, 1974Google Scholar. Although dated, this volume contains informative articles on several key issues in Sanskrit literary theory, such as rasābhāsa, dosa, svabhavokti, and dhvani, which have an important bearing on the subject of kāvya’s relationship with the moral discourse.
67 Pañcatantra is one among the most studied works of ancient India. It has a complex narrative structure. There is one big story in which several stories are embedded. If the central plot is a big circle, there are several circles within it, and several within those smaller circles. Although the multiple plots and subplots appear to have been loosely organized, they are very well motivated toward each other. Contrary to the dominant scholarly perception, it is arguable that Pañcatantra has a tight structure.
68 Weber, M., Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, p. 366Google Scholar.
69 Rao, Cultures of Memory, p. 204.
70 Ibid., p. 216.
71 Rao, Cultures of Memory, p. 246.
72 Rao, Cultures of Memory, p. 27.
73 Minkowski, C., ‘Advaita Vedanta in Early Modern History’ in Religious Cultures in Early Modern India: New Perspectives, O'Hanlon, Rosalind and Washbrook, David (eds), Routledge, London, 2011, pp. 105–143Google Scholar.
74 Mehta, ‘Heidegger and Vedanta’, p. 25.
75 Ibid., p. 25.
76 Tugendhat, E., Traditional and Analytic Philosophy: Lectures on the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982, pp. 21–34Google Scholar.
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79 Rao, Cultures of Memory, p. 42.
80 Halbfass, W., ‘Man and Self in Traditional Indian Thought’ in his Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought, Satguru Publications, New Delhi, 1992, pp. 265–289Google Scholar. Halbfass's approach can be seen as a cautious attempt in the direction of unearthing the logos of the Sanskrit tradition.
81 For a philosophical assessment of the relation between the evolution of the Humanities in the last 200 years and its disciplinary character, see R. Geuss, ‘Origins, Goals and Disciplines’ in his A World Without Why, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2014, pp. 1–21; C. Geertz, ‘Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought’ in his Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, Basic Books, New York, 2008, pp. 19–35. Geertz throws much-needed light on what it entails for disciplines to share each other's territory. For a systems theory perspective on disciplines, see Wellbery, D., ‘The General Enters the Library: A Note on Disciplines and Complexity’, Critical Enquiry, vol. 35, 4, 2009, pp. 982–994CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Post, R.. ‘Debating Disciplinarity’, Critical Enquiry, vol. 35, 4, 2009, pp. 749–770CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abbot, A., Chaos of Disciplines, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 2001Google Scholar.
82 Rao, Cultures of Memory, p. 6.
83 See Bronkhorst, J., ‘Traditional and Modern Sanskrit Scholarship: How Do They Relate to Each Other?’ in The Pandit: Traditional Scholarship in India, Michaels, A. (ed.), Manohar, New Delhi, 2001Google Scholar. Although Bronkhorst provides some important observations in this regard, he is far from recognizing the real problem.
84 See F. Squarcini, ‘India and Europe: At the Dawn of a New Hermeneutic Era’ in Preisendanz (ed.), Expanding and Merging Horizons, pp. 3–21.
85 Halbfass, India and Europe, p. 164. Also see, Mehta, J. L., India and the West: The Problem of Understanding, Scholars Press, Chicago, 1985Google Scholar. Mehta provides a thorough and philosophically rigorous hermeneutic attempt at what a dialogue between India and the West entails, both in terms of problems and prospects. Mehta was a well-regarded Heidegger scholar as well as being deeply versed in the traditions of Vedanta.
86 Ibid.
87 Halbfass, India and Europe, p. 277.
88 I owe my point on the one-sidedness of enquiry to A. MacIntyre, ‘On Not Having the Last Word: Thoughts on Our Debts to Gadamer’ in Gadamer's Century, Jeff Malpas, Ulrich Arnswald and Jens Kertscher (eds), MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 157–172.
89 See Gadamer, H. G., Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1980Google Scholar; Gadamer, H. G., The Beginnings of Philosophy, Continuum, London, 1998Google Scholar.
90 Bronkhorst, ‘Traditional and Modern Sanskrit Scholarship’, pp. 179–180.
91 See Gadamer, H. G., Truth and Method, Continuum, London, 2004, pp. 277–290Google Scholar.
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93 See MacIntyre's, A.After Virtue, Bloomsbury, London, 2013Google Scholar; Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 1988; Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 1991. These are the three important works in which MacIntyre develops his view of tradition over a period of roughly two decades. Also see Porter, J., ‘Tradition in the Recent Work of Alasdair MacIntyre’ in Alasdair MacIntyre, Murphy, M. C. (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 38–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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95 Squarcini, (ed.), Boundaries, pp. 16–20. Also see Rudolph, L. I. and Rudolph, S. H., The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1967Google Scholar.
96 MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 172–191.
97 MacIntyre, Whose Justice, Which Rationality, p. 327.
98 Ibid., p. 6.
99 Ibid., pp. 349–369.
100 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, pp. 79–80.
101 Ibid.
102 See MacIntyre, A., ‘Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science’ in his The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 3–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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104 Malamoud, Cooking the World, p. 5.
105 See Hiltebeitel, A., Dharma: Its Early History in Law, Religion and Narrative, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
106 Halbfass, On Being and What There Is, pp. 38.
107 MacIntyre, ‘Epistemological Crises’, p. 5.
108 Pollock, S., ‘The Meaning of Dharma and the Relationship of the Two Mīmāṃsās: Appayya Dikshita's “Discourse on the Refutation of a Unified Knowledge System of Pūrvamīmāṃsā and Uttaramīmāṃsā”’ in Dharma: Studies in its Semantic, Cultural and Religious Histories, Olivelle, P. (ed.), New Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 2009, pp. 347–389Google Scholar. This is a varied collection of articles on dharma from a range of perspectives, covering almost all the concerned South Asian intellectual traditions.
109 Olivelle (ed.), Dharma.
110 Blumenberg, H., The Legitimacy of the Modern World, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981, p. 65Google Scholar. Blumenberg's is an unrivalled work of scholarship and understanding, in terms of insight, perspective, and vigour, on how modernity acquires its ‘legitimacy’. It argues against a range of proponents of the ‘secularization’ theses. His argument is that modernity is not about ‘the transposition of authentically Christian convictions into secularized alienation from their origin, but rather . . . the reoccupation of answer positions that had become vacant’ in the aftermath of events that consolidated the hold of modernity in Western Europe.