German Indology (Addendum)

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Roland Steiner wrote:

> The "list" (which is not a book) is actually Prof. Schlingloff's 
> private list of names. He decided to circulate the pages simply stapled 
> together out of sheer collegiality. 

My version is a small, ring-bound booklet. I can't remember where I got
it, which is a pity.  But someone gave it to me, sure, and certainly in a
spirit of goodwill and helpfulness (and before 1996, I thought).  I'm sure
the same spirit infused the efforts of Prof. Schlingloff, who has always
been very kind, helpful, and generous to me.  Nevertheless, I was still
startled by it when I read it and understood what it purported to be. 

> Please do not confuse the "list" with any official publication about the
> greatness of "German Indology". 

It's not the greatness of "German Indology" which I dispute, but the value
or, ultimately, the meaningfulness of the concept.  "No man is an island,
entire of itself ... I am involved in Mankind", and no person could
contribute meaningfully to indology without studying works in many
languages, and hoping to be read by people from several countries. I know
none of us would dispute that. 

But I think I go further, and would try hard to set aside all notions of
nationality, or even mother-tongue competence, in matters of scholarship.
So I would also find a collection of general indological articles under
the title "English Indology", "American Indology", or "Sinhalese
Indology", etc., as surprising as I do the book called "German Indology" 
published by the Max Muller Bhavan some years ago.  I suppose that
"Sudanese Indology"  might work because it would be especially interesting
to know that the subject was studied at all in Khartoum or Juba.  But this
"minority"  argument surely doesn't apply to Germany, which has absolutely
no need to underline the substance and quality of its long history of
contributions to indology. 

Many indologists outside Germany speak German perfectly well, yet are not
listed in the booklet, so the argument about being able to look up
referees doesn't wholly succeed. I don't think the booklet is quite as
neutral and purely practical as you argue, though I certainly do not
believe that there is any sinister intention or plot behind it.  What I do
feel, however, is that there is an unexamined spirit that emerges from the
organizing principle of the booklet which jars to readers from outside the
circle of "German" indologists as defined by the booklet. 

Clearly there exist different views on the matter of this booklet.  I
found it disquieting, and I could not imagine this booklet "working" if
transferred to a British context. 

One thing did occur to me in this context: I am a native speaker of
English, which has emerged this century as a world language, and I am very
ready to believe that there are sensitivities that I am not cued to that
might arise out of being a native speaker of German, Italian, French, or
even Hindi, i.e., that might lead me to wish to compile a list of the type
we are discussing.  But the argument from pure utility seems weak to me. 

> Hopefully your remarks will not jeopardize the otherwise collegial and
> friendly climate of the international community of Indologists.

I similarly hope that your defence of the "German Indology" booklet will
not jeapordize the collegial and friendly climate of our community. 

I exclude the word "otherwise" advisedly in the previous sentence.  Since
email can be such an emotionally dead medium, let me say explicitly that I
am neither angry, nor deeply offended; I'm writing all this in a spirit of
curiosity and mild but friendly criticism, and I really don't wish anyone
to get worked up about this.

Incidentally, there are many other things in this world that startle me in
different ways including, for example, the photographs of The Author which
often appear in Indian publications, the kindness of strangers (especially
in India), people who know I'm a Sanskritist and yet ask me if I can read
Devanagari, and so on, etc., etc.

When I say 
  "All the best,"
I mean it.  :-)
Dominik





> From pwyzlic at pwyz.rhein.de 21 1997 Feb +0100 17:09:04
Date: 21 Feb 1997 17:09:04 +0100
Subject: Problem with Majjhima.zip (was: Update 2 to Pali Canon online)
From: Peter Wyzlic <pwyzlic at pwyz.rhein.de>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

"L.S. Cousins" <mhcrxlc at dir.mcc.ac.uk> writes:

> As before the files are available from the JBE websites:
>=20
> >http://www.gold.ac.uk/jbe/jbe.html
> >http://www.cac.psu.edu/jbe/jbe.html
>=20
> Or, they can be obtained by FTP:
>=20
> ftp://ftp.cac.psu.edu/jbe/Pali
> ftp://scorpio.gold.ac.uk/jbe/Pali
=20
I have tried twice to download the file MAJJHIMA.ZIP from
scorpio.gold.ac.uk, but both times the compressed file I have got seems
to be corrupted. With (Unix) unzip I get the error message:

----------------------------------------------------
pwyzlic at pwyz:/home/pwyzlic > unzip -t MAJJHIMA.ZIP=20
Archive:  MAJJHIMA.ZIP
    testing: majjhima.doc           =20
  error:  invalid compressed data to inflate
At least one error was detected in MAJJHIMA.ZIP.
-----------------------------------------------------

pkunzip under DOS is not better:
-------------------------------------------------------
PKUNZIP (R)    FAST!    Extract Utility    Version 2.04g  02-01-93
Copr. 1989-1993 PKWARE Inc. All Rights Reserved. Shareware Version
PKUNZIP Reg. U.S. Pat. and Tm. Off.

=FE 80486 CPU detected.
=FE EMS version 4.00 detected.
=FE XMS version 3.00 detected.
=FE DPMI version 0.90 detected.

Searching ZIP: MAJJHIMA.ZIP
Testing: majjhima.doc  PKUNZIP: (W15) Warning! file fails CRC check

PKUNZIP: (W26) Warning! MAJJHIMA.ZIP has errors!
-----------------------------------------------------------

As last resort I have used Winzip from within Windows95. But all in
vain. Maybe this is a transmission problem (but I have downloaded the
file with different clients [lynx, ncftp] from different machines). So
I can't figure out if the problem is on my side or if the file on the
server is bad.

My question to you: Is there anybody out there who succeeded in
uncompressing this file?

\bye
Peter Wyzlic

--=20
Peter Wyzlic                                          pwyzlic at pwyz.rhein.=
de