Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonialism

[George Hart]

Might I humbly suggest that there is no such thing as a Sanskrit Knowledge
System, any more than there is an English Knowledge System or a Latin
Knowledge System.  Wouldn't it be more accurate to call it an Indic
Knowledge System or a South Asian Knowledge System?  There are tens (and
probably hundreds) of thousands of manuscripts on various aspects of
"knowledge" in many South Asian languages besides Sanskrit in the period
under consideration.  For the most part, these follow the same "system" as
the Sanskrit works.  George Hart

On 2/7/02 9:59 AM, "Lawrence Mccrea" <ljmccrea at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU> wrote:

>       I would like to draw the attention of all interested parties to the
> website for "Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonialism", a
> collaborative research project exploring the structure and social
> context of Sanskrit science and systematic knowledge from 1550 to 1750,
> a period which winessed a rich flowering of Sanskrit scholarship in many
> fields, yet ended in a radical diminution of Sanskrit's cultural power
> with the coming of colonialism.  The project, funded by the National
> Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation, is
> organized and directed by Professor Sheldon Pollock of the University of
> Chicago, and combines the researches of a dozen scholars from seven
> countries. The project website is at
> <http://dsal.uchicago.edu/sanskrit>.  The website contains the project
> proposal, information on and working papers by project participants, and
> will soon provide access to digital images of unpublished manuscripts
> gathered in the course of the project, and to the database of Sanskrit
> works and authors from the period which will be constructed as part of
> the project.
>
> Lawrence McCrea
> Lecturer, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations
> University of Chicago
>