Seminar Abstracts

[Kamal Adhikary]

Dear Colleagues:
	The Asian Studies at the University of Texas schedules Japan 
Seminar, 
China Seminar, South Asia Seminar in Fall and Spring Semesters.

Led by different faculty members, these three seminars exist to 
promote open discussion on different aspects of the culture, 
economy, politics, philosophy, religion, government policies, 
history, demography, environment, or other selected topics for 
Japan, China, and South Asia.

The seminars are open to all interested faculty members, students, 
and the general public. 

Available abstracts of all talks and lectures are posted on the Asian 
Studies Web page (http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/index.html) after each 
talk or lecture.  Below are some abstracts  from last semester's South Asia 
seminar sessions.  This semester I will be posting the abstracts as soon 
as they are available.  I hope they will be of interest to some of you. 


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			SEMINAR ABSTRACTS


		SOMNOLENT SUTRAS: SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY
 			IN SVETAMBARA  JAINISM

                                   BY

                             PAUL DUNDAS

                      DEPARTMENT OF SANSKRIT

                     UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

                                ABSTRACT

   (Note: a full version of this paper will be published in 
"Journal of Indian Philosophy")

Scholarly approaches to traditional Indian commentary have 
generally turned around its success or failure in mirroring the supposed 
intentions of the author of the root text from which it derives or, 
alternatively, have addressed the various hermeneutic strategies used
 by commentators. Little attention has been given to the 
alternative issue of the actual status of commentary with South Asian 
scriptural traditions as an institution, the extent to which
 it can be regarded as representing a text as well as  explaining it and 
to the fact that commentary has on occasion itself achieved canonicity.

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of how certain 
prominent Svetambara Jain intellectuals in the medieval period viewed the 
nature of scriptural commentary. Specifically, it focuses upon Svetambara 
Jainism's greatest exegete, Abhayadeva Suri  (eleventh century) and a 
later figure, Dharmasagara Upadhyaya (sixteenth century), its
greatest sectarian polemicist. A clear linkage between the  two can be 
seen in their mutual reiteration of the claim, based on etymological 
sleight of hand, by an earlier Jain scholar, Jinabhadra Ganin (sixth century)
 that a sutra without some sort of commentarial explication 
is equivalent to somebody who is asleep.


A broad contextualisation of the four main styles of traditional Jain 
scriptural exegesis (niryukti, curni, bhasya and vrtti) shows that it is 
strongly predicated  upon the acceptance of meaning as being superior to 
word. At the same time, scriptural exegesis also was regarded as a means 
of conferring merit upon those who studied or heard it and, as such, 
was associated by exegetes with that compassion which informs the Jain 
conception of true religiosity. Gradually, from about the seventh century 
or so, Jain commentary becomes a necessary component part of 
authoritative scripture, rather than a mere ancillary to it.

The hagiographies of the commentator Abhayadeva (in particular, the 
version of the thirteenth century Prabhavacandra in his Prabhavakacarita) 
exemplify a variety of themes: the connection of correct exegesis with 
bodily health, the necessity of access to a source of elevated authority 
(in this case, the tirthankara Simandhara) and the  increasing obscurity of
Ardhamagadhi Prakrit. That Abhayadeva himself was aware of the 
indispensable role of commentary can be seen in this approving citation 
in his commentary on the Sthananga Sutra of Jinabhadra's derivation of 
the term sutta from supta, asleep.

A consideration of Dharmasagara's exegetical manual, the  
Sutravyakhynavidhisataka, shows that this monk adopted a particularly 
radical attitude to canonical texts. For him, scripture on its own is 
valueless. Without the mediating aid of commentary which can only
be carried out by properly initiated ascetics, an exclusively sutra - 
derived standpoint will lead only to heresy.

In conclusion, it is shown that medieval views about the status of 
commentary still have relevance in recent times within the Jain ascetic 
and scholarly community in respect of the vexed topic of how scripture 
should be presented and edited.

**************
THE DIALECTICAL CONSTRUCTION OF HINDUISM: Uses of the Veda in
            Modern Discourse on "Hinduism" and Indian National Identity
			-------BRIAN K. SMITH

(BRIAN K. SMITH is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at 
the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Reflections 
on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 
1989), and of Classifying the Universe: The Ancient varna System and the 
Origins of Caste (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). His
articles have appeared in such academic journals as Religion, History of 
Religions,  Numen, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, The 
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Contributions to Indian 
Sociology, Indo-Iranian Journal, and Man. He is also co-producer of 
"Burning Bridges" an 18 minute sampler documentary on 
Hindu-Muslim relations in India.)

  
--Abstract 

The construction of modern representations of Indian religion and 
national and cultural identity was not, as Edward Said and others might 
have it, a one-way imposition of Orientalist discourse on Asian 
realities, but rather the product of a dialectical interaction
between the West and India. One possibility for a "research agenda for 
the next generation" is to carry out a post-Saidian task of analyzing 
Indic materials in such a way that a) acknowledges the inevitable and 
inescapable representational quality of all such scholarship
about India, but also b) takes seriously and integrates the Indian 
contributions to the formation of those representations. In this paper I 
attempt to illustrate the dialectical character of East-West discourse by 
concentrating on the place of the Veda and the ancient
Indian past in recent constructions of "Hinduism" and Indian National and 
cultural identity. While some have contended that both "Hinduism" and 
conceptions of "India" that rely heavily on appropriations and 
representations of the Indic past for their modern contours are
derivative products originating in the West and superimposed upon (and 
later assimilated by) South Asians, it is my contention that what we have 
here are very good examples of a give-and-take process in which both 
indigenous and foreign parities participated.



*******************

	RECOGNIZING THE DRAVIDIAN CONTRIBUTION TO INDIAN
           CIVILIZATION: AN AGENDA FOR THE FUTURE

               Andre F. Sjoberg
      Department of Asian Studies
       University of Texas at Austin

(Andre F. Sjoberg is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian 
Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications include 
"Who are the Dravidians?" in Andre F. Sjoberg (ed.), Symposium on 
Dravidian Civilization)


As the title of the paper suggests, my discussion focuses on the 
Dravidian component in Indian civilization, though time constraints make 
it necessarily brief. I am fully aware that this topic is a controversial 
one, though it seems less so today than when I first ventured
into it several decades ago. For one thing, there has been an ongoing 
re-examination and re-evaluation of Indian history, particularly with 
respect to the colonial period. Edward Said's Orientalism, published in 
1978, has had an unmistakable impact on scholarship pertaining to 
colonialism in India. More recent works, such as Breckenridge and van der
Veer's edited book Orientalism and the Postocolonial Predicament (1993), 
have dealt specifically with South Asia , as have a number of journal 
articles on orientalism.  However, so far as I can determine, there has 
been no systematic effort to investigate  the early period in Indian 
history--soon after Aryan conquest--from the perspective of  the 
conquered peoples: in other words, from a bottom-up rather than a 
top-down approach. Sheldon Pollock's phrase "indigenous 'orientalism'" 
(see his chapter in Breckenridge and  van der Veer, pp. 107-08) may be 
very apt here. 

A second factor in the shifting perspective on Indian cultural history is 
the increasing attention being directed to the non-Indo-European 
component in areas of Indo-European settlement other than India. The 
best-known major work is Martin Bernal's Black Athena (Vol. 1, 1987; Vol. 
2, 1991). That this detailed examination of non-Indo-European features
in Greek civilization--mainly, Egyptian and Semitic--would elicit 
hostitlity amon classicists is hardly surprising . Still, whatever one's 
assessment of Bernal's scholarship, which draws evidence from 
archaeology, linguistics, and cultural history, it is clear that he has
dramatically recast the framework for scholarly enterprise on classical 
Greece. He has also been increasingly gaining respect in some 
well-established intellectual circles (see the special issue of Isis 
(December 1992) on the origins of Greek science).

Although my efforts are minor compared to the almost monumental 
researching of Bernal, we are both seeking to counter what we see as an 
overly strong Europeanist bias in the traditional interpretations of the 
development of particular civilizations in areas of Indo-European 
settlement and culutral dominance. 

References:

(Austin and New York: Jenkins Publishing Co., 1971), 1-26; "The Dravidian 
Contribution to the Development of Indian Civilization; A Call for a 
Reassessment", "Comparative Civilizations Review," No. 23 (Fall, 1990), 
40-74; and "The Impact of Dravidian on
Indo-Aryan; An Overview," in Reconstruction Languages and cultures, Edgar 
C. Polom and Werner Winter, eds. (Berlin and New York; Mouton de Gruyter, 
1992), 507-29.

************

Jyotihshastra: Manuscripts, Science, and the  Transmission of Science 

			by David Pingree, Brown University

Since about 10% of the estimated tens of millions of Sanskrit manuscripts 
can be classified as belonging to jyotihshastra (astronomy, mathematics, 
astrology and divination) and these sciences permeate works on 
dharmashastra, prosody, architecture, medicine and music, the
study of jyotihshastra was and is essential to understanding Indian 
culture fully, and affords the modern scholar an extraordinary range of 
opportunities for original research. But, since many of its fundamental 
ideas were introduced into India from external cultures, and within India 
shaped to fit Indian social and intellectual patterns  and needs, and since
 the Indian developments were then transmitted to peoples throughout 
Eurasia, the study of jyotihshastra must be both intercultural and 
intracultural.

In illustration of the sorts of problems that can be fruitfully 
addressed, I briefly refer to some projects that I and some of my 
students are currently involved in. On the intracultural side, I have 
been attempting to compile a Census of the Exact Sciences in  Sanskrit in 
which will be recorded all authors from India whose works touch upon 
jyotihshastram with full biographical and bibliographical information, 
including all known manuscripts of their works. After finishing the 
author series, I intend to compile the same material for the
individual texts, a large number of which are anonymous. Out of this will 
come not only the information one needs to select interesting texts to 
work on and to locate their manuscripts, printings if any, and studies, 
but also a wealth of information on scribes and collectors which will be 
the basis of studies of the transmission of texts within India.

Since the vast majority of Sanskrit manuscripts is not yet catalogued, I 
have also been working on catalogues of jyotisa manuscripts (and 
dharmashastra ones as well), and encouraging others to undertake this 
absolutely vital and fundamental task.

Since we have many problems in conceiving of how Indian students were 
taught science in sufficient depth that they could do original work, I 
and some students have been preparing critical editions of commentaries 
that seem to us to present remarkable insights into what went on in an 
Indian classroom on astronomy.

On the intercultural level, I have been working on the 
Paitamahasiddhanta, which introduced Greek spherical astronomy to India, 
and on its descendent, the Brahmasphtasiddhanta of Brahmagupta, which was 
a model for later Sanskrit siddhantas,  but which also was translated 
into Arabic and served to spread Indian astronomy  throughout Islam and 
Europe, both Eastern and Western, as well. Many other  important 
siddhantas and Baravas, to speak only of works on mathematical 
astronomy among the various types of jyotisa texts, remain completely 
unexplored.

Finally, in somewhat more detail, I describe an instance in the history 
of Indian astronomy for which we have masses of material, but which have 
never been examined before. This was the attempt made by some astronomers 
of the Sanskrit tradition in Northern India during the Mughal period to 
study Islamic adaptations of Ptolemy and to incorporate some
elements of this different science into their own, and the parallel 
attempt of some Muslim scientists to do the same thing with Sanskrit 
material. Among traditional jyotis these efforts were condemned as the 
abandonment of the teachings of gods and risis, just as those same
jyotis were in turn being attached as having betrayed the Puranas by 
accepting the theory of a spherical earth. The arguments presented by 
various participants in these controversies, which forced them to 
consider the real philosophical and cultural bases of their sciences, 
are briefly renewed; and it is shown that culture remained an 
unassailable barrier to the acceptance of the fundamental ideas of the 
alien science, though jyotisis quite readily learned to compute a la Muslim.


***********************

		Protestants and Orientalists

             Prof. Richard W. Lariviere
	Asian Studies, UT, Austin, Texas

This paper looks at criticisms of Sanskrit philology I want to look at 
criticisms of what we are doing when we engage in the enterprise of 
studying ancient Indian literature. Specifically, I want to look at the 
challenges and criticisms that have been leveled against philologists who 
have chosen to study India. I want to look at three important types of
criticism. I will use a sort of short-hand means of referring to these 
three types of criticism:  I will call these criticisms the Orientalist 
criticism, the Essentialist criticism, and the Distortionist criticism. 

The first criticism I will call the Orientalist criticism. Ithas its 
origin in the landmark work of Edward Said in his book Orientalism,but 
that book has spawned an entire mini-industry all its own. I want totalk 
about the charge that Europeans (and I include Americans under
thisrubric) have in some sense "created" the India that they study. That 
this"created India" has no basis in reality, and has been created to 
serve aconstellation of interests all of which benefit Europeans and are 
inimicalto the Indians, themselves.

The second criticism I will call the Essentialist criticism. It is 
articulated, for example, by Ronald Inden in his book Imagining India. It 
is the one that says that what we have done with our knowledge of ancient 
India is create "essences" of India and Indian society. In doing so, we 
have again denied the reality of what India was and is, and created a
manageable but grossly distorted view of India. In creating these 
essences we have also denied Indians agency in their own history. We have 
denied them the ability to shape their own destiny.

The third criticism that I want to address is what I call the 
Distortionist criticism. This is  the charge that ideas found in Indian 
culture are taken out of their context and used for  nefarious purposes 
elsewhere. This criticism has been brought by Sheldon Pollock in 
an article entitle "Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond 
the Raj."

My point is that each of these criticisms can be met effectively if we 
return to the philological techniques and values that have been exhibited 
with such consistency  in the study of Greek and Latin classics, and that 
were once an important part of  Sanskrit philology, but seem, in recent 
years, to have fallen out of favor.


				*****************


I do not like to use up your mail box-space  all at once.  I will post the 
rest of the abstracts day after tomorrow. 

Thanks.

kamal

 _______________ 
Kamal R. Adhikary, Ph.D. Internet Coordinator, Asian Studies
UT, Austin, Texas 78712
Tel:512-475-6034
Email:kamal at asnic.utexas.edu