Appeal to Techies!

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, Bhadraiah Mallampalli wrote:

> The word Indology looks like a generic word, but this specific list has a
> linguistic orientation.  Research and documentation of Indological works is
> its main strength. Please do not expect this list to solve world hunger.

Yes, I think this is a large part of the problem.  People who are not
professional cultural historians of India are genuinely unaware that the
word "indology" is a technical term for a particular professional field.
They join the list expecting some general discussion about India, and are
then surprised by all us prickly academics who have been subscribing to
indological journals, reading and writing indological books, going to
indological conferences, and so forth for decades.

I welcome Bhadraiah's "Applied indology" initiative, and I sincerely hope
that it may help people to find a forum where their views are appreciated
and their contribution valued. I'll add a link to the INDOLOGY website.

My family is full of people who enjoy so-called extreme sports: scuba,
snow-boarding, rock climbing, and so forth.  In this vein, I had been
toying with the idea of changing this forum's name to "Extreme Indology".
:-)  The idea is that it's a list for people who take indology ALL THE
WAY!  Who do it day and night, year after year, who actually get
sponsorship, wear an institutional T-shirt, go head-to-head at
professional meetings, and so on.  :-)

--
Dominik Wujastyk
Founder, INDOLOGY list.