Indology list ,Hinduja

[Peter Gaeffke]

Mr. Achar writes:
> 
> With the intellectual freedom they enjoy, it is up to the unbiased scholars to
> reexamine many wrong statements which have been made against Hinduism.
> 
> With the best regards,perhaps not qualified to be a member of the list,
 
It would be a great loss to those interested in South Asia when for what 
reasons ever contributors to the List such as Mr. Achar would be removed. He 
has brought up one of the central problems which plague recent Western 
scholarship on India:

There exist now two camps. One which thinks that Orientalists were 
intellectual imperialists and whatever they did and produced was designed 
to keep South Asia in constant  servitude and intellectual inferiority. 
These are ideas taken out of the grab bag of Edward Said who got his cues 
from Michael Foucoult, etc., etc.

The other camp follows a vision that a serious attempt to discover the
truth was made since the methods of classical philology and indo-european
linguistics were applied in the study of the Veda and from there in the
larger field of classical indology. However, this discovery of the truth
and the truth itself are complicated and sometimes excruciating processes. 
Nevertheless, useful contributions to a field which has advanced since
enormously, has been made by the scholars of the 19th century. Mistaken
judgments and egregious assumptions were and will be always with us 
(the list offers examples in abundance)

As to Max Mueller, the really interesting question is: Why would an 
intelligent human being in his right mind devote nearly most of his 
working life to the study of a text which he himself calls "childish in 
the extreme," "tedious,""common place," etc. 

One can say, of course, he did this to please the British imperialists 
and his friends, the royal family and this would cast a serious blame on 
his character.. 

But why then was he called Mokshamula in India and why took Vivekananda
the great trouble to Visit him in Oxford?. 

I would say Mueller provided the Indian with the first printed edition of 
the Rgveda but he did not understand the text as we do today. He could 
not use Hermann Grassmannn,s Woerterbuch zum Rigveda, nor was the 
translation of Karl Friedrich Geldner known to him to name only the 
starting point of a serious study of the text. But his edition elicited 
Theodor Aufrecht's Rgveda which for being printed in Latin characters never 
achieved the fame of Max Mueller's edition. However, Aufrecht's book 
meant a remarkable advancement  of the field.

As to Mr. Achar's defense of Hinduism as basis for his scholarship, I 
would like to remind him of the words of a historian who already 2000 
years ago started his history with the promise that he would present 
his material "sine ira et studio" (Tacitus, Annales,1.1)

Though it is not "ira" (krodha) which speaks out of Mr. Achar's words, but 
it is definitely "studium" (partisanship) which easily clouds the view of 
the whole picture and ultimately makes the attainment of something like the 
truth impossible. .  

Peter Gaeffke