From mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU  Fri Dec  1 11:28:18 2006
From: mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU (Matthew Kapstein)
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 06 05:28:18 -0600
Subject: Alla.h-Upani.sad
In-Reply-To: <20061130T134803Z_AE4F00170000@loc.gov>
Message-ID: <161227078808.23782.9607485232810632913.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Some years ago a brief work was published in
Jaipur in Hindi, entitled _Islaamii Tantra_.
I don't have immediate access to my copy,
so I can't describe it in detail just now,
but it may be of some interest in this
context, at least as a curiosity.
While I tend to think that the Alla.h-U in
itself does not offer sufficient material
for an MA paper, it might be possible
to construct an adequate context around it.

Matthew Kapstein




From rsalomon at U.WASHINGTON.EDU  Fri Dec  1 19:57:09 2006
From: rsalomon at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Richard Salomon)
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 06 11:57:09 -0800
Subject: Alla.h-Upani.sad
Message-ID: <161227078810.23782.5417462246270550520.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Ali Asani at Harvard probably knows about all of this stuff. I don't know 
whether he's on this list; perhaps not.

Richard Salomon


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew Kapstein" <mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU>
To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk>
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 3:28 AM
Subject: Re: Alla.h-Upani.sad


> Some years ago a brief work was published in
> Jaipur in Hindi, entitled _Islaamii Tantra_.
> I don't have immediate access to my copy,
> so I can't describe it in detail just now,
> but it may be of some interest in this
> context, at least as a curiosity.
> While I tend to think that the Alla.h-U in
> itself does not offer sufficient material
> for an MA paper, it might be possible
> to construct an adequate context around it.
>
> Matthew Kapstein
> 




From athr at LOC.GOV  Fri Dec  1 19:56:43 2006
From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher)
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 06 14:56:43 -0500
Subject: Alla.h-Upani.sad
Message-ID: <161227078812.23782.15295866846950313407.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Here's another work of this title:

LC Control No.:       00288818 
Type of Material:  Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Personal Name:     Ali?, Asaghara.
Main Title:        Isla?mi? Tantra s?a?stra : Fa?rasi? aksharom? ke
                      mantra-tantra, ha?zira?ta bi?sa? pandraha ke yantra,
                      roji? da?yaka, bhuta-preta?di niva?raka, mohana
                      vas?ikaran?a a?di tantra-mantrom? ka? vis?esha
                      sankalana / Asaghara Ali? ; sampa?daka
                      Ra?jes?a Di?kshita.
Edition Information:
                   5. sam?skaran?a.
Published/Created: A?gara? : Di?pa Pablikes?ana, 1995.
Description:       215 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Summary:           Islamic Tantrism.
Notes:             In Hindi; includes passages in Urdu.
Subjects:          Magic--Religious aspects--Islam.
Series:            Lokopayogi? Tantra vijn?a?nama?la? ; san?khya? 4
LC Classification: MLCSA 2002/00558 BP190.5
Language Code:     hinurd
Overseas Acquisitions No.:
                   I-H-00-288818; 04
Other System No.:  (DLC)   00288818
Reproduction/Stock No.:
                   Library of Congress -- New Delhi Field Office Rs45.00
                      ($10.00 U.S.)
CALL NUMBER:       MLCSA 2002/00558 FT MEADE

I have requested it from remote storage and will report on the content.  However, there are a lot of books on magic which advertise in their titles that they are from some relatively "exotic" source but which turn out to be just the same standard, mostly by not entirely 'Hindu,' stuff.  E.g. Misri ka jadu, Tibbati jadugari, Chini indrajala, or the like. (These are made up titles, but I have seen plenty like them.)

Allen




Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D., Senior Reference Librarian
South Asia Team, Asian Division
Library of Congress, Jefferson Building 150
101 Independence Ave., S.E.
Washington, DC 20540-4810
tel. 202-707-3732; fax 202-707-1724; athr at loc.gov
The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Library of Congress.

>>> mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU 12/01/06 6:28 AM >>>
Some years ago a brief work was published in
Jaipur in Hindi, entitled _Islaamii Tantra_.
I don't have immediate access to my copy,
so I can't describe it in detail just now,
but it may be of some interest in this
context, at least as a curiosity.
While I tend to think that the Alla.h-U in
itself does not offer sufficient material
for an MA paper, it might be possible
to construct an adequate context around it.

Matthew Kapstein




From Palaniappa at AOL.COM  Sat Dec  2 16:58:25 2006
From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan)
Date: Sat, 02 Dec 06 11:58:25 -0500
Subject: Valmiki, the hunter
Message-ID: <161227078814.23782.17884406169034827888.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

 
In 'Authority and meaning in Indian religions : Hinduism and the case of  
Valmiki', based on Taittiriya Praatisaakhya 5.34, 5.35, 5.36, 9.4, and  18.6,  
Julia Leslie discusses the possibility that Valmiki, a  grammarian, might have 
belonged to a community whose mother-tongue was not  Sanskrit. 
 
Can a grammarian not propound a rule based on his observation of language  
use by others? Is there any justification to assume Valmiki's rule is based on  
his own usage? I would appreciate any comments on this from the Sanskrit  
grammarians on this list.
 
Thanks in advance.
 
Regards,
S. Palaniappan
 
 
In a message dated 11/21/2006 6:47:10 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK writes:

This is  the subject of Julia Leslie's book _Authority and meaning in 
Indian  religions : Hinduism and the case of Valmiki_.  Curzon,  2003.

Best,
D




From jpo at UTS.CC.UTEXAS.EDU  Mon Dec  4 14:39:52 2006
From: jpo at UTS.CC.UTEXAS.EDU (Patrick Olivelle)
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 06 08:39:52 -0600
Subject: Archives query
In-Reply-To: <A89F82520EE98A4597C52FCB5B6B5C1E01B0D0FE@EXCHANGE.ltu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <161227078824.23782.15567487028256751699.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

The Bharata Itihas Samshokana Mandana in Pune is alive and well; I 
took a group of students there this past summer. It is open 8:30 - 
10:30 and 4-8 daily (somewhat strange hours). The director is Dr. 
Shobhana Gokhale, a wonderful woman who showed the entire collection 
of manuscripts and artefacts to my students.

Patrick





>Dear list members,
>
>
>
>I am seeking information regarding research visits to the Maharashtra
>State Archives at Elphinstone College in Mumbai and the Bharat Itihas
>Samshodak Mandal in Pune. Should I be prepared with any particular
>papers or should I expect any difficulties? I was told recently that the
>Bharat Itihas Samshodak Mandal may have closed down. Is this the case?
>
>
>
>Thanks in advance
>
>Adam Bowles
>
>La Trobe University, Australia




From j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM  Mon Dec  4 17:15:18 2006
From: j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM (Jan E.M. Houben)
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 06 09:15:18 -0800
Subject: BAU or Buddha's life ... which came first?
Message-ID: <161227078827.23782.12505065767460343162.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear All,
One of the many problems of dating texts and
events in Indian cultural history concerns the
relative dates of the Brhad-Aranyaka-Upanisad and
the life of the Buddha. The 'traditional' view,
starting from estimates by Max M?ller and others,
would place the old Vedic Upanisads, including
BAU, before the Buddha. Some have argued,
however, that the BAU was composed (finalized?)
after the Buddha (and after Panini). I remember
that Johannes Bronkhorst (The two traditions of
meditation) and Richard Gombrich have written on
this (in the 80s-90s). What are the latest
contributions on this topic in which a student of
mine is interested? 
Thanks,
Jan Houben


 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com




From mccomas.taylor at ANU.EDU.AU  Sun Dec  3 22:21:56 2006
From: mccomas.taylor at ANU.EDU.AU (McComas Taylor)
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 06 09:21:56 +1100
Subject: Valmiki, the hunter
In-Reply-To: <bf2.b44157d.32a30ab1@aol.com>
Message-ID: <161227078817.23782.757570910344850381.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear friends

Is there any credible evidence for a single historical figure called 
Valmiki? I don't believe that Julie Leslie offers any. That being the 
case, who is to say what his mother-tongue was?

Yours respectfully

McComas

Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan wrote:
>  
> In 'Authority and meaning in Indian religions : Hinduism and the case of  
> Valmiki', based on Taittiriya Praatisaakhya 5.34, 5.35, 5.36, 9.4, and  18.6,  
> Julia Leslie discusses the possibility that Valmiki, a  grammarian, might have 
> belonged to a community whose mother-tongue was not  Sanskrit. 
>  
> Can a grammarian not propound a rule based on his observation of language  
> use by others? Is there any justification to assume Valmiki's rule is based on  
> his own usage? I would appreciate any comments on this from the Sanskrit  
> grammarians on this list.
>  
> Thanks in advance.
>  
> Regards,
> S. Palaniappan
>  
>  
> In a message dated 11/21/2006 6:47:10 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
> ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK writes:
>
> This is  the subject of Julia Leslie's book _Authority and meaning in 
> Indian  religions : Hinduism and the case of Valmiki_.  Curzon,  2003.
>
> Best,
> D
>   


-- 
===============================
Dr McComas Taylor
Head, South Asia Centre
Faculty of Asian Studies
The Australian National University
ACTON ACT 0200

Tel: +61 2 6125 3179
Fax: +61 2 6125 8326

Email: mccomas.taylor at anu.edu.au

Location: Room E4.26 Baldessin Precinct Building 




From arlo.griffiths at LET.LEIDENUNIV.NL  Mon Dec  4 09:52:10 2006
From: arlo.griffiths at LET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Arlo Griffiths)
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 06 10:52:10 +0100
Subject: Archives query
In-Reply-To: <A89F82520EE98A4597C52FCB5B6B5C1E01B0D0FE@EXCHANGE.ltu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <161227078822.23782.14111852385896837177.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

When I visited it in May 2005, the BISM was in any case a very dusty  
place, not geared to service of research scholars, and --- by the way  
--- without English-speaking staff. But it had not closed down.

Arlo Griffiths
Instituut Kern, Universiteit Leiden
Postbus 9515
2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands

phone: +31-(0)71-5272622
fax: +31-(0)71-5272956
email: <arlo.griffiths at let.leidenuniv.nl>
<www.kerninstitute.leidenuniv.nl>


On Dec 4, 2006, at 7:14 AM, Adam Bowles wrote:

> Dear list members,
>
>
>
> I am seeking information regarding research visits to the Maharashtra
> State Archives at Elphinstone College in Mumbai and the Bharat Itihas
> Samshodak Mandal in Pune. Should I be prepared with any particular
> papers or should I expect any difficulties? I was told recently  
> that the
> Bharat Itihas Samshodak Mandal may have closed down. Is this the case?
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Adam Bowles
>
> La Trobe University, Australia




From A.Bowles at LATROBE.EDU.AU  Mon Dec  4 06:14:10 2006
From: A.Bowles at LATROBE.EDU.AU (Adam Bowles)
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 06 17:14:10 +1100
Subject: Archives query
Message-ID: <161227078819.23782.5886087142682981958.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear list members,

 

I am seeking information regarding research visits to the Maharashtra
State Archives at Elphinstone College in Mumbai and the Bharat Itihas
Samshodak Mandal in Pune. Should I be prepared with any particular
papers or should I expect any difficulties? I was told recently that the
Bharat Itihas Samshodak Mandal may have closed down. Is this the case?

 

Thanks in advance

Adam Bowles

La Trobe University, Australia




From reimann at BERKELEY.EDU  Tue Dec  5 05:33:34 2006
From: reimann at BERKELEY.EDU (Luis Gonzalez-Reimann)
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 06 21:33:34 -0800
Subject: BAU or Buddha's life ... which came first?
In-Reply-To: <826798.42465.qm@web30115.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <161227078829.23782.13434861328021497954.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Jan,

This article may be of some help:

Goto, Toshifumi. 2005. Yaj?avalkya's 
Characterization of the Atman and the Four Kinds 
of Suffering in Early Buddhism. Electronic 
Journal of Vedic Studies 12, no. 2: 71-85.
Online at: http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/.

Luis
_____


At 09:15 AM 12/4/2006, you wrote:
>Dear All,
>One of the many problems of dating texts and
>events in Indian cultural history concerns the
>relative dates of the Brhad-Aranyaka-Upanisad and
>the life of the Buddha. The 'traditional' view,
>starting from estimates by Max M?ller and others,
>would place the old Vedic Upanisads, including
>BAU, before the Buddha. Some have argued,
>however, that the BAU was composed (finalized?)
>after the Buddha (and after Panini). I remember
>that Johannes Bronkhorst (The two traditions of
>meditation) and Richard Gombrich have written on
>this (in the 80s-90s). What are the latest
>contributions on this topic in which a student of
>mine is interested?
>Thanks,
>Jan Houben




From j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM  Tue Dec  5 06:52:00 2006
From: j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM (Jan E.M. Houben)
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 06 22:52:00 -0800
Subject: BAU or Buddha's life ... which came first?
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.0.20061204213134.01ba49a8@berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078832.23782.4168266695213260470.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Luis,
Thanks, this is an important article. The author
apperently accepts, without questioning, the
classical view that the Vedic Upanisads including
the BAU are (just) before the life and teaching
of the Buddha. See for instance in the concluding
paragraph "The conceptions of life and world in
early Buddhism have thus inherited the
reflections on birth and death found in the old
Upanisads, and further explicated them."
Jan


--- Luis Gonzalez-Reimann <reimann at BERKELEY.EDU>
wrote:

> Dear Jan,
> 
> This article may be of some help:
> 
> Goto, Toshifumi. 2005. Yaj?avalkya's 
> Characterization of the Atman and the Four
> Kinds 
> of Suffering in Early Buddhism. Electronic 
> Journal of Vedic Studies 12, no. 2: 71-85.
> Online at: http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/.
> 
> Luis
> _____
> 
> 
> At 09:15 AM 12/4/2006, you wrote:
> >Dear All,
> >One of the many problems of dating texts and
> >events in Indian cultural history concerns the
> >relative dates of the Brhad-Aranyaka-Upanisad
> and
> >the life of the Buddha. The 'traditional'
> view,
> >starting from estimates by Max M?ller and
> others,
> >would place the old Vedic Upanisads, including
> >BAU, before the Buddha. Some have argued,
> >however, that the BAU was composed
> (finalized?)
> >after the Buddha (and after Panini). I
> remember
> >that Johannes Bronkhorst (The two traditions
> of
> >meditation) and Richard Gombrich have written
> on
> >this (in the 80s-90s). What are the latest
> >contributions on this topic in which a student
> of
> >mine is interested?
> >Thanks,
> >Jan Houben
> 



 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Any questions? Get answers on any topic at www.Answers.yahoo.com.  Try it now.




From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU  Tue Dec  5 13:58:10 2006
From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Deshpande, Madhav)
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 06 08:58:10 -0500
Subject: Valmiki, the hunter
Message-ID: <161227078836.23782.8369929598546243369.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Some additional info on Valmiki and grammar.  There is a VAlmIkisUtra, a grammatical text of uncertain date, with a commentary prAkRtarUpAvatAra by simharAja, son of samudrabandhayajvan, edited by E. Hultzsch, Prize Publication Fund, Vol. I, Royal Asiatic Society, 1909.  While the original sUtra text is called VAlmIkisUtra by the editor, neither the sUtras nor the commentary of simharAja make any reference to the name vAlmIki.  I have not seen Julia Leslie's work on Valmiki and hence don't know if she refers to this work.  In any case, one need not make an assumption that one and the same vAlmIki composed the Ramayana as well as these works on Sanskrit and Prakrit grammar.


Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor of Sanskrit and Linguistics

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
Suite 6111, Thayer Building
202 South Thayer Street
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104-1508, USA



-----Original Message-----
From: Indology on behalf of Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan
Sent: Sat 12/2/2006 11:58 AM
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Valmiki, the hunter
 
 
In 'Authority and meaning in Indian religions : Hinduism and the case of  
Valmiki', based on Taittiriya Praatisaakhya 5.34, 5.35, 5.36, 9.4, and  18.6,  
Julia Leslie discusses the possibility that Valmiki, a  grammarian, might have 
belonged to a community whose mother-tongue was not  Sanskrit. 
 
Can a grammarian not propound a rule based on his observation of language  
use by others? Is there any justification to assume Valmiki's rule is based on  
his own usage? I would appreciate any comments on this from the Sanskrit  
grammarians on this list.
 
Thanks in advance.
 
Regards,
S. Palaniappan
 
 
In a message dated 11/21/2006 6:47:10 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK writes:

This is  the subject of Julia Leslie's book _Authority and meaning in 
Indian  religions : Hinduism and the case of Valmiki_.  Curzon,  2003.

Best,
D




From ferenc.ruzsa at ELTE.HU  Tue Dec  5 13:51:23 2006
From: ferenc.ruzsa at ELTE.HU (Ruzsa Ferenc)
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 06 14:51:23 +0100
Subject: BAU or Buddha's life ... which came first?
Message-ID: <161227078834.23782.11584690661679848130.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Jan,

Bronkhorst in his forthcoming book (Greater Magadha. Studies in the Culture
of Early India. Brill, Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 2 South Asia,
19) addresses the problem in detail and suggests convincingly that many
important parts of the BU are *significantly* later than the Buddha.

Yours,
Ferenc

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jan E.M. Houben" <j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM>
To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 6:15 PM
Subject: BAU or Buddha's life ... which came first?


> Dear All,
> One of the many problems of dating texts and
> events in Indian cultural history concerns the
> relative dates of the Brhad-Aranyaka-Upanisad and
> the life of the Buddha. The 'traditional' view,
> starting from estimates by Max M?ller and others,
> would place the old Vedic Upanisads, including
> BAU, before the Buddha. Some have argued,
> however, that the BAU was composed (finalized?)
> after the Buddha (and after Panini). I remember
> that Johannes Bronkhorst (The two traditions of
> meditation) and Richard Gombrich have written on
> this (in the 80s-90s). What are the latest
> contributions on this topic in which a student of
> mine is interested?
> Thanks,
> Jan Houben
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
> http://new.mail.yahoo.com
> 




From antonio.jardim at GMAIL.COM  Tue Dec  5 14:25:38 2006
From: antonio.jardim at GMAIL.COM (Antonio Ferreira-Jardim)
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 06 00:25:38 +1000
Subject: BAU or Buddha's life ... which came first?
In-Reply-To: <356439.63622.qm@web30113.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <161227078838.23782.10686694998605661826.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Professor Houben,

I would recommend your student consult the following passages of
NAKAMURA's important work:

NAKAMURA Hajime. A History of Early Vedanta Philosophy (vol 1). MLBD
(1983) pp.10-16.

This volume is an English translation of Books 1 & 2 of Nakamura's .
The relevant pages in the Japanese Edition are Volume 1 pp.14-23.

NAKAMURA Hajime. "shoki no vEdAnta tetsugaku." [shoki vEdAnta
tetsugakushi vol. 1] . tOkyO: iwanami shoten. 1981

[???. ????????????. [???????????? ; ?1?].
??: ????. 1981 ]

The 1981 Japanese edition of this work contained a substantial
supplement updating the work with further translations, corrections,
explanations and bibliographical material. This material was not
translated in the English edition of this work. Interestingly in light
of the previous discussion, NAKAMURA includes a short article on the
teachings of YajNavalkya as contained in an early Jaina work (the
Isibhasiyaim) - on pages 636-647.

This article and material is not referred to in GOTO Toshifumi's
aforementioned article or in Witzel's recent article:

Witzel, M. "YajNavalkya as Ritualist and Philosopher, and His Personal
Language." in Siamak Adhami (ed). PaitimAna: Essays in Iranian,
Indo-European, and Indian Studies in Honor of Hanns-Peter SCHMIDT.
California: Mazda Publishers (2003) pp.103-143

cf also. Jain, SAgarmal. "RSibhASit: ek adhyayan". [prakRt bhArtI
puSpa: vol 89]. Jaipur: Popular Printers (1988). pp.45-6 (Surendra
Bothar's English translation "Rishibhashit:  A Study. [Prakrit Bharti
Pushpa: vol 90] Jaipur: Popular Printers (1988) pp.34-5).

Another very useful resource is the work by Professor Signe Cohen
(http://religiousstudies.missouri.edu/people/cohen.html) -  in
particular her Doctoral thesis which will soon be published and is
currently available via UMI Microfilms. See her bibliography on her
faculty page for details of excerpted articles and also see the
extract available below:

TITLE                    The relative chronology of the older Upanisads: A
metrical and linguistic approach (India)
----------
AUTHOR          Cohen, Signe Marie
----------
DEGREE          PhD
----------
SCHOOL          UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
----------
DATE            1999

http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9953515/


I hope this short note helps your student!!!

Kind regards,

Antonio Ferreira-Jardim
Brisbane
Australia

On 12/5/06, Jan E.M. Houben <j_e_m_houben at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Luis,
> Thanks, this is an important article. The author
> apperently accepts, without questioning, the
> classical view that the Vedic Upanisads including
> the BAU are (just) before the life and teaching
> of the Buddha. See for instance in the concluding
> paragraph "The conceptions of life and world in
> early Buddhism have thus inherited the
> reflections on birth and death found in the old
> Upanisads, and further explicated them."
> Jan
>
>
> --- Luis Gonzalez-Reimann <reimann at BERKELEY.EDU>
> wrote:
>
> > Dear Jan,
> >
> > This article may be of some help:
> >
> > Goto, Toshifumi. 2005. Yaj?avalkya's
> > Characterization of the Atman and the Four
> > Kinds
> > of Suffering in Early Buddhism. Electronic
> > Journal of Vedic Studies 12, no. 2: 71-85.
> > Online at: http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/.
> >
> > Luis
> > _____
> >
> >
> > At 09:15 AM 12/4/2006, you wrote:
> > >Dear All,
> > >One of the many problems of dating texts and
> > >events in Indian cultural history concerns the
> > >relative dates of the Brhad-Aranyaka-Upanisad
> > and
> > >the life of the Buddha. The 'traditional'
> > view,
> > >starting from estimates by Max M?ller and
> > others,
> > >would place the old Vedic Upanisads, including
> > >BAU, before the Buddha. Some have argued,
> > >however, that the BAU was composed
> > (finalized?)
> > >after the Buddha (and after Panini). I
> > remember
> > >that Johannes Bronkhorst (The two traditions
> > of
> > >meditation) and Richard Gombrich have written
> > on
> > >this (in the 80s-90s). What are the latest
> > >contributions on this topic in which a student
> > of
> > >mine is interested?
> > >Thanks,
> > >Jan Houben
> >
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Any questions? Get answers on any topic at www.Answers.yahoo.com.  Try it now.
>




From athr at LOC.GOV  Wed Dec  6 17:49:53 2006
From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher)
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 06 12:49:53 -0500
Subject: Anne David on Tamil Sangam poetry at Library of Congress on              Decmeber 14 at 12:00
Message-ID: <161227078843.23782.5731419376593289167.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

PLEASE FORWARD

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress presents Kluge Fellow, Anne David, in a talk titled "Reading Landscapes:  Philological Issues in Tamil Sangam Poetry" on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 12:00 p.m., in LJ-119, Thomas Jefferson Building.  This event is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.

Classical Tamil ("Sangam") poetry is a secular literature of over 2000 elegant lyric poems, sophisticated and complex in style, clearly the end product of a highly developed tradition.  In her talk, Anne David will offer background information and some basic tools for reading these poems, then examine a few verses with an eye towards elucidating some problems and questions that arise in reading ancient Tamil texts.

Robert Saladini
Program Officer
John W. Kluge Center
Office of Scholarly Programs
The Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue S.E.
Washington, DC  20540-4860
Email:   rsal at loc.gov 
Phone: 202-707-2692
FAX:     202-707-3595




From mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU  Wed Dec  6 22:19:23 2006
From: mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU (Matthew Kapstein)
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 06 16:19:23 -0600
Subject: BAU or Buddha's life ... which came first?
In-Reply-To: <826798.42465.qm@web30115.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <161227078845.23782.16092403011614480677.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

In a similar vein, I note that my article on the
Chaandyoga-U., "Indra's search for the self" (reprinted in
my  book _Reason's Traces_) suggests -- though I did not
state this as robustly as I now think I should have -- that
the final redaction of that "early" Upani.sad was also
post-Buddha. It seems to me that the 19th cent. model -- one
text or tradition coming after another in a linear series --
has to be definitively abandoned in favor of a more
fluid conception in which texts and traditions evolved in
dialogue with one another and arrived at their "finished"
forms in processes spanning centuries. Certainly, works like
the BAU and the ChU seem better understood in this way.

Matthew Kapstein
Chicago and Paris




From franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE  Wed Dec  6 17:34:59 2006
From: franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE (Eli Franco)
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 06 18:34:59 +0100
Subject: Conference in Ulan-Ude
In-Reply-To: <826798.42465.qm@web30115.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <161227078840.23782.7225894768680250006.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

I was asked to forward the following:




INFORMATION

	The International scientific conference "World of Central Asia" will
be held from 27 June to 1 Jule, 2007 in Ulan-Ude, Russian Federation. 
	Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies (IMBTS) of the
Russian Academy of Sciences (Siberian Branch) will organize this scientific
conference. We are planning to celebrate the 85-th anniversary of our
Institute in this period.
	The peculiarities of 
.	History and Culture of Central Asian Nomads;
.	Traditional World Outlook and Religions of Central Asia;
.	Nations of Central Asia in modern Geopolitics;
.	Literature and Language of Mongolian Nations of Central Asia
will be discussed during this conference.
	We would like to invite scholars from Mongolia, China, Japan,
Germany, United States of America, Korea, Ukraine and other countries to
participate our conference.
	Languages to be used: Russian, Mongolian, and English.
	Please inform us of your decision and the title of the paper before
January 30, 2007.
	The short paper should be written in one of the above mentioned
languages in 1 page and to be submitted to us before March 1, 2007.

Our address:

Sakhyanova St., 6,
Ulan-Ude, 670047
Russian Federation 
The Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist 
and Tibetan Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
Fax: (3012)433551
E-mail: imbt at burinfo.ru
Phone: (3012)433018
Dr. Buraeva Olga Vladimirovna 



 
Executive committee




From tccahill at LOYNO.EDU  Thu Dec  7 14:28:55 2006
From: tccahill at LOYNO.EDU (Timothy C. Cahill)
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 06 08:28:55 -0600
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <5A540BE4-8F41-4640-A01D-79EA5868DE38@BALLIOL.OX.AC.UK>
Message-ID: <161227078849.23782.16128754327401073645.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

On Thu, 7 Dec 2006, Richard Gombrich wrote:

>     However, unless we subscribe to the 
> view that the Buddha was omniscient and could therefore respond to texts 
> which would be composed in the future, I do not understand how his references 
> to important passages in the BAU etc. can fail to be interpreted as showing 
> that they already existed when he preached.

Thanks very much for these references!  One small question about the 
remark above.  The Buddha is not generally regarded as a textual scholar, 
and so the carefully chosen phrase "response to texts" of course refers to 
his discourses.  Apart from this, however, is there any evidence that the 
Buddha could read?  Or anything to indicate that the BAU was ever 
inscribed by the time the Buddha taught?

best,
Tim Cahill




From richard.gombrich at BALLIOL.OX.AC.UK  Thu Dec  7 11:00:06 2006
From: richard.gombrich at BALLIOL.OX.AC.UK (Richard Gombrich)
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 06 11:00:06 +0000
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
Message-ID: <161227078847.23782.13333993858743191012.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Jan,  Here is a list of some of my publications which show the  
Buddha referring to passages in the Upanishads, mainly to the BAU.

Old bodies like carts. Journal of the Pali Text Society, vol. 11:  
1-4, 1987.

  Recovering the Buddha's message. In Earliest Buddhism and  
Madhyamaka. D. Ruegg and L. Schmithausen, editors. Leiden: E.J.  
Brill, 5?23, 1990. Reprinted in The Buddhist Forum: Seminar papers  
1987-1988. T. Skorupski, editor. London: School of Oriental and  
African Studies, University of London, 1: 5?20, 1990.

  The Buddha's Book of Genesis? Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 35: 159? 
78, 1992.

  A visit to Brahm? the heron, Journal of Indian Philosophy, v.29,  
April 2001, 95?108.

  How Buddhism began: the conditioned genesis of the early teachings.  
2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2006.

  Religious experience in early Buddhism? Eighth Annual BASR Lecture,  
1997. British Association for the Study of Religions Occasional Paper  
17. Printed by the University of Leeds Printing Service, Leeds [1998].

  Kindness and compassion as means to Nirvana. (1997 Gonda Lecture)  
Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998.



I am just completing a set of ten lectures as Numata Visiting  
Professor at SOAS in which I draw this material together and add some  
more, but I am afraid it will be a while before these lectures are  
published.

It is of course perfectly possible that the texts we now have of the  
Upanishads were compiled over a long period; I don't see how that  
hypothesis could ever be conclusively disproved.  However, unless we  
subscribe to the view that the Buddha was omniscient and could  
therefore respond to texts which would be composed in the future, I  
do not understand how his references to important passages in the BAU  
etc. can fail to be interpreted as showing that they already existed  
when he preached.

Yours,

Richard




From huntington.2 at OSU.EDU  Thu Dec  7 16:04:47 2006
From: huntington.2 at OSU.EDU (John C. Huntington)
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 06 11:04:47 -0500
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.61.0612070821430.1733014@neo1>
Message-ID: <161227078852.23782.11287863932123215346.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

The various narratives of the life of Siddhartha briefly mention his  
education. In many parts of traditional south Asia this means a  
"religious education" to the present day.  Assuming that the  
narrative of his princely status is substantially correct, his  
education would have come at the hands of religious teachers,  
presumably in the eastern Indic region those who knew not only the  
three Veda, but also the Atharaveda and the upanishads.

Whether Siddhartha could read or write is immaterial. Such high level  
(social & religious) instruction would have been oral following the  
millennia-long tradition.  In the discussions of the six heretics,  
the Upanishads are not mentioned but he refutes each one's solution  
to presuppositions postulated in the Upanishads. Thus his  
"Upanishadic education" would have both been reinforced and expanded.

While I claim no specialization in the "Buddha's life," I do hold  
that Siddhartha was one of the most highly educated (religiously)  
individuals of his time and that this is verified by his many  
conversions of Brahmins and other ascetics who have themselves high  
levels of religious education. (After all, when Vajrapani is on your  
side you can't lose!)

John
John C. Huntington, Professor
(Buddhist Art and Methodologies)
Department of the History of Art
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH, U.S.A.

http://history-of-art.osu.edu/3_people/faculty.php

Please also visit our research site
http://huntingtonarchive.osu.edu






On Dec 7, 2006, at 9:28 AM, Timothy C. Cahill wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Dec 2006, Richard Gombrich wrote:
>
>>     However, unless we subscribe to the view that the Buddha was  
>> omniscient and could therefore respond to texts which would be  
>> composed in the future, I do not understand how his references to  
>> important passages in the BAU etc. can fail to be interpreted as  
>> showing that they already existed when he preached.
>
> Thanks very much for these references!  One small question about  
> the remark above.  The Buddha is not generally regarded as a  
> textual scholar, and so the carefully chosen phrase "response to  
> texts" of course refers to his discourses.  Apart from this,  
> however, is there any evidence that the Buddha could read?  Or  
> anything to indicate that the BAU was ever inscribed by the time  
> the Buddha taught?
>
> best,
> Tim Cahill
>
>
> -- 
> BEGIN-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> Teach CanIt if this mail (ID 159540888) is spam:
> Spam:        https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php? 
> c=s&i=159540888&m=6c02d71c480f
> Not spam:    https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php? 
> c=n&i=159540888&m=6c02d71c480f
> Forget vote: https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php? 
> c=f&i=159540888&m=6c02d71c480f
> ------------------------------------------------------
> END-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS
>




From richard.gombrich at BALLIOL.OX.AC.UK  Thu Dec  7 17:55:12 2006
From: richard.gombrich at BALLIOL.OX.AC.UK (Richard Gombrich)
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 06 17:55:12 +0000
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.61.0612070821430.1733014@neo1>
Message-ID: <161227078854.23782.14583363309136236402.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

In response to Tim Cahill, I am sure there was no reading or writing  
(except possibly of numerals?) in the India of the Buddha's day.

Richard Gombrich




From arganis at TODITO.COM  Thu Dec  7 18:57:10 2006
From: arganis at TODITO.COM (Horacio Francisco Arganis Juarez)
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 06 18:57:10 +0000
Subject: Important issue
Message-ID: <161227078856.23782.17706007683983968207.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Prfra. R. Thapar: My more sicere concerns to you. I think the follow is a interesting issue for to you and other scholars, that we are interested in the real truths on India history.
With my best wishes. 
Prfr. Horacio Francisco Arganis, Lic. and MA
Researcher of IBCH; IEFAC and UAdeC
Saltillo, Caohuila.
Northest of Mexico.
-----Mensaje Original-----
Desde: Vrndavan Parker [mailto:vrnparker at yahoo.com]
Enviado: Jueves 7 de Diciembre de 2006 01:09 AM
to a Marxist Agent

Note: In the past 3 years I have recieved several emails from this individual. In these emails he asks me to explain why I became so adamant in my opposition to Romila Thapar's writings.He claims he wants to write a book about my experiance. I looked up the individual and it appears he is a high level marxist activist. Because I am not sure, I refrained from using his name for now and have not sent out this reply to him as of yet. I am waiting further clarification before I do. However regardless of this individual, i enjoyed writing my repsonse and thought it appropriate to share with you all. For the record, the emails I get showing appreciation for my writing, mean alot to me. I know Krsna says forget the fruits but none can deny that when the target audience expresses appreciation, it is solid proof that Im going in the right direction. So thank you from my heart,
Pranams, Vrndavan

Dear (name removed for now till I can verify that this is not some set up),

I thought that it was strange that after 3 years, someone would still be interested in this story. Upon learning that you have a M.A (Political Science) and a Ph. D in (Soviet Polity)  its obvious that you are a Marxist. I understand everything now. No wonder you guys have success and the Hindus are floundering. Its called perserverance. I am sorry to disappoint you but I really put the whole anti-Thapar petition together myself. It was hilarious to see the 'secularists' spouting their conspiracy theories. How I wish the Hindu Leadership were on the ball organizing various global agents into activism. They really should take a page from you commies. 


Anyway, to answer your question as to how I recognized that it was wrong for US tax money to be funding a foreign researcher's Marxist theories regarding my culture?.... As an American, this is my legal right and is a path of redress that is guaranteed by our US constitution. I will do my best to share my percpectives with you as a response to your questions.

As someone who grew up in India as a Hindu, in Hindu Gurukulas, I had a background in the Hindu view of History and culture. I grew up around Hindus that had a sense of self worth based on their traditional perspectives. As a teenager I moved back to America. Initially I rejected everything I learned in India. However after 2 years of exposure to western views on India and Hinduism in particular,I noted a major gap in the western view of India and hinduism and the actual view of those Hindus from within the culture itself. 

In other words, those removed and uninvolved in the culture had perpectives and views on the culture that were a complete contradiction to the views of those actually living the culture. In US High School, our teacher would tell straight out lies regarding the Indian condition. When I dared to stand up and share my hands-on life experiance as someone who lived and breathed India, I was ridiculed and given a failing grade. Ashamed, I began to question as to why their existed such a gulf between the views of Hindus who live the culture and the views on Hinduism from those who simply study the culture. 

Soon I noticed that all African-American studies are headed by African Americans, Women studies by Women, Islamic studies by Muslims, Gay and Lesbian issues and commitees were all headed by Gay activists, Hispanic studies and groups were all headed by Hispanics, American Indians by Indians. However Hindu or Vedic studies did not seem to exist and when they did they were refered to as South Asian Studies. Even the very word Indian seemed to be taboo. Too top it all off, none of the South Asian depts were headed by actual dedicated practitioners of Hindu traditions.

Adding to my suspiscion I noted the fact that despite Hindu civilization being the ancient world's largest source of ancient writings and despite the fact that Hindu civilization represents the world's largest and ongoing cultural phenomenon, the so-called scholars and researchers of the world ignored Hindus as an authentic living resource of knowledge. 

The academics, scholars and researchers of the world, who profess an undying thirst and curiosity for knowledge and information, behave in a completly condratictory manner when it comes to anything regarding Hindu civilization. Actually this goes way beyond anti-hinduism but is actually anti-indian. The very fact that this alleged war on terror has no focus on protecting India...despite India being the world's largest terror target and having a death-rate numbering over 100,000 reveals that something more sinister is at work. 

Anyway, I began looking into the sources of my fellow American's inaccurate views on the culture I had began to love even the more, as I continued my journey as a young American with his heart in India. Almost immediatly I came across Thapar's writings. A History of India in particular. At the time I did not know that people like her existed, actual Indians that promote views contrary to India's own ancient traditions. It was a new phenomenon for me. 

As a white kid who went to an almost all Black High-school in Los Angelos, I had many friends into Black empowerment. Never did I come across a Black source of anti-Black ideologies. Recognizing that their has been injustice in the prcatice of Hindu culture in the past, I gave Thapar the benefit of the doubt. Yet repeatedly rather than being a source of empowerment for Hindus it became clear that Romila Thapar was a native agent designed to legitimize the racist and cultural elitism of the academic community. 

She was the 'Good Injun' (american slang for Indian) that was so instrumental in the destruction of the American Indians. Nearly everything she has promoted as truth, goes completely against the views and conclusions of the ancient Sampradayas and traditions of Vedic culture. As someone who lived in Vrndavan, India UP I knew about the ravages of the savage Mongols=Moghuls. 

I knew that only one original Krsna diety still existed in Vrndavan the town of over 5000 Krsna temples. I knew they were still in Rajastan because they had to be protected by HINDU KINGS from the Muslim iconoclasts. Thapar forgot to mention such truths in her alleged 'History of India.' Despite all her scholardom she did not seem to note the simple point that the Moghuls she glorifies were actually the Mongols of Genghis Khan and Tamerlin.

 Here we see the evil genuis of Thapar at work. Despite the world recognizing the brutality and genocidal nature of the Mongols throughout their various empires, we turn to the Mongols in India. Now they are the Noble Moghuls. Suddenly they built Taj Mahals and bring light and liberty to evil dark India. 

Will if that is a fact that should be considered another proof regarding the glory of Hindu civilization. Here we have the brutal represive Mongols suddenly turning into enlightened leaders of truth, justice and liberty, building unique palaces to loveetc. yet even here Thapar does not give credit to the gentrifying and enobling nature of Hindu India. 

She is like these Muslim apologists who attempt to high-light the alleged women-empowering aspects of Islam by revealing that both 'Pakistan and Bangladesh have had women leaders'. They ignore the fact that it is the Indian basis of these countries that allows for women leaders, thus both India and Sri Lanka have had Women Leaders. Its the Indian basis of these cultures that empowers these women to become national leaders. No other Muslim country has ever had a Female Head of State. 

A true scholar would look at the facts and ignore the rhetoric and admit the truth. As an agent for disinformation, Thapar highlights positivity that is denuded of Hinduism and denigrates Hinduism by shearing it of positivity.

She unashamedly promotes the false idea that India was never a Nation using Western constructs as to what the term Nation means. She articficially imposes an external measurement system that can not accurately incorporate the concepts and ideas of Indigenous civilization. This one point alone is enough to expose her as a source of misinformation. She is using foriegn terminologies and perpectives and tries to force them unto the Native perspective. 

To put it simple for all your Scholars out there. Indeginous civilizations maintained an integral holistic approach to society. Due to the fact that Native societies required nearly total individual independance amongst the community, what to speak of amongst tribes or nations, there was always a very loose understanding of what constituded a national identity. This in itself is one of the integral aspects of Indigenous societies and Nationhood. Any terms and names were always more than just a term or a name. 

Most of the times these terms refered to sacred responsibilities. Thus Bharatiyas are those that support, maintain or bear a burden. Yet today in the western construct it simply means an Indian. Thapar uses the western method which will simply say that Bharat means India. Yet the Hindu traditional perspective can accurately tell you the actual meaning that 'it is someone who sustains'. The Hindu traditional perspective can give you the cultural geography that will educate the seeker in their attemp to understand what Bharat really means. By using these various names and terms the Vedic society instilled actual behaviours into the general masses that reflected the nature of their civilization or nation. The modern West does not have this same view when it comes to the idea of a people or a nation. Yet Thapar continues to promote such incompatibility as an authentic research methodology. The very fact that so many Hindu traditionalists reject her works is proof in itself that she is way off base. They open her book and in it she says everything in contradiction to the average Hindu's parents, elders, traditions and gurus. Thus many Hindus embarrasingly use terms like Hindu mythology, Hindu idols and speak of the allegorical nature of the Mahabharata etc. 

In sheer arragonce, intelectuals denigrate tales of the ancient world as a source of fantastic legends or noble lies. Again to put it simple for all the scholars. If I were to describe cell phone technology, the internet or my ability to fly around the world in 1 day to your average educated westerner of the 1800s, he would think I was a lunatic. Yet today such things are common sense and instantly understandble by all.

In the same way, Humanity needs to carefully consider its true history thru the prism of humility and wonder. Humility and wonder for the great work that our common anscestors have done in researching and presenting their ancient conclusions for us all. We are in no real position to guage wehter or not our current understanding and awareness is broadmined enough to encompass the true depths and dimensions of the ancients. We still do not have the correct language or terminologies to map the ancient cultural geography of the world. Yet if we accept the ancient research of the Rshis as a starting point, we can surely get somewhere.

So Thapar is obviously ignorant of the indeginous view and will always reach false conclusions because she is using wrong and opposing methodologies in her attempts to present Indian history and culture. 

So I had to use my own GOD given logic. Here we have civilizations (Western, Islamic and Marxist) that are completley incapable of maintaining the basic sign of sustainibility ie a balanced birth and death rate, Civilizations that obviously do not know how to peacefully co-exist. All signs point to complete disfunctionality and yet we are supposed to seriously accept their conclusions as Gospel. Oh and these conclusions always change according to the latest research, even though allegedly 'the latest research has proven...' COME ON DUDE. I would be a complete brain dead idiot to keep accepting such crap as truth.

On the other hand we have Hindu or Vedic civilization. The very fact that it is here today with nearly a billion members and has a perspective on everything from Sex positions to the Souls's position is worthy of note in itself. It has an obvious sustainibility that allows for a massive human population base along with some of the world's last surviving animal species.

 Anyway to put it simply I had a clear choice in front of me...Accept the conclusions of the limited experiance and obvious deficiencies of people studying an ancient reality from outside its dimensions or accept the ancient continuity, the ancient life experiances and research of those from within the culture. I mean its simple logic that even the greatest Professors seem to miss. If you want to know the facts about a certain subject go to those immersed in the subject and inquire from them. The fact that academia does this for nearly everything acccept Hindu studies speaks volumes.

In conclusion, we both have no doubt that the greatest enemy to the ongoing Marxist/Atheist conspiracy to strip humanity of its mystic and sacred birth-right is the Vedic/Hindu tradition. Your ongoing war against the sacred can only be stopped by the continued growth of Global Hinduism. Unlike Islam, Christianity, Judaism etc we Hindus can say it loud and clear that our traditions allow and welcome the natural diversity that is part of creation.

AS A VAISHNAVA-HINDU I CAN LOOK A MUSLIM AND A CHRISTIAN STRAIGHT IN THE EYE AND SAY WITHOUT A DOUBT THAT PRAYING TO ALLAH OR JESUS WILL BRING THEM SALVATION. (As long as they stop insulting God/Goddesses' other children by denigrating their sacred relationships to the Divine thru conversion .) No other major global religious tradition can say this. 

The Secularists and Marxists are creating a world meant to divorce humanity from the sacred. However It is Hinduism's all-inclusiveness that will save humanity from this ongoing cultural genocide. 

So in short, the answer to your question as to the exact source of my awakening regarding the anti-Hindu works of Thapar were the writings of Thapar herself. As a Ram-Bhakta the very fact that she wrote 'The Ram Myth' is also a clear sign as to her intent and agenda. I also point out another very simple logical point that once again scholars can not seem to understand. One does not need to listen to or watch an entire album or movie in order to gauge the worth and quality of the product. Distinguishing people have natural abilities to decipher quality and the viability of an issue etc. This effort to nitpick exact quotes to quarrel over is a diffusing tactic meant to divert attention and disempower the concerned and the aggrieved. 

The effort of many scholars to enforce academic values upon humanity in order to guage truth is a form of tyranny. When seen thru the Hindu prism it is outright hypocracy. I challenge the academic world to apply the same rules to the study of Vedic civilization as they do to the study of every other major field. They can not do it and will not do it. Why? 

Because an honest aproach to Indian studies would reveal a picture completly at odds with the modern atheistic paradigm. The similirities of European language and culture would represent either a maintanance of the genocidal-inducing Aryan race theories or an awakening to the truth that the whole world really was Aryan in the Vedic sense.
It is Such! It is Satch! It is Satya!

On a side note, I noticed you have expertise in Political science. I am curious to know, have you ever studied your own Kautilya? I recently attended a conference along with some delegates from Beijing, China. At this conference, we were quite intrigued to learn that the Chinese Universities teach and study Kautilya yet the Indian universities do not. As an Indian leader in this field, do you not see the inconsistencies and illogical approach to India's research of it's own legacies? 

So thank you for hearing me out.

You mention you are writing a book on this affair and issue. I have no doubt you will attempt to misrepresent my views. SO I HEREBY DO NOT GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO USE MY WRITINGS IN YOUR BOOK.

Krunvanto Vishvam Aryam.
Sincerely, Vrndavan Parker


------------------------------------------------------------
Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates.

> -----Mensaje Original-----
> Desde: Romila Thapar [mailto:romila at SPACPL.COM]
> Enviado: Domingo 4 de Junio de 2006 09:08 AM
> Para: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
> Tema: Re: Question re: Niscaladasa and/or Dadu Mahashay
> 
> Dear Prem, 
> 
> First of all if you are coming to Delhi during June or August please get in 
> touch. I am out in July. Call me at 26831744 or 41328003. It will be great 
> to see you again. 
> 
> Never heard of your village, unless Kerhowli is a mistake for Mehrauli, 
> which was a village near Delhi with many khanqahs, etc; and is now a 
> fashionable suburb of south Delhi ! But we could go there and enquire about 
> the shAkhA. 
> 
> But I suggest you consult the topographical sheets of the Survey of India 
> for villages near Delhi. 
> 
> Best wishes, 
> Romila 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Prem Pahlajrai" <prem at U.WASHINGTON.EDU> 
> To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk> 
> Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 6:21 AM 
> Subject: Question re: Niscaladasa and/or Dadu Mahashay 
> 
> 
> > Dear Indologists, particularly those familiar with Delhi & Kashi, 
> > 
> > I am studying the works of Ni'scaladAsa, a late 19th century advaita 
> > scholar and author of the V.rttiprabhAkara and VicArasAgara. I recently 
> > came across a reference in the latter work where the author states the the 
> > text was completed in a village by the name of Kiha.dauli, 18 kos west of 
> > Delhi. A possible alternate name may be Kehrowli. An introduction to a 
> > 1962 edition of this work states that Ni'scaladasa's guru, DAdU MahA'saya 
> > lived in this village and that there is still a lineage ('si.sya-'sAkhA) 
> > functioning there. 
> > 
> > I will be in India this summer and am hoping to visit this village, if I 
> > can find it. Has anyone heard of it, or of this lineage? 
> > 
> > Ni'scaladAsa is also said to have been active in Varanasi, and Ramsimha 
> > Raja of Bundi was a patron of his. I'd appreciate any leads in this 
> > connection. 
> > 
> > Thank you, 
> > 
> > 
> > Prem Pahlajrai 
> > PhD student 
> > University of Washington, 
> > Seattle USA 
> > http://students.washington.edu/prem 
> > 
> ___________________________________________________________________
Sube tus fotos m?s divertidas a enbloga.com




From arganis at TODITO.COM  Thu Dec  7 19:07:08 2006
From: arganis at TODITO.COM (Horacio Francisco Arganis Juarez)
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 06 19:07:08 +0000
Subject: Please don't take care
Message-ID: <161227078859.23782.3599108491637676833.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dearest Indological-list moderater: 
If you had recieved a letter to Prfr. R. Thapar from me, please don't passed it in the list. Because, accidentally I sended to you this. Forgiven me for this mistake.
Sincerily Horacio F. Arganis. 



> -----Mensaje Original-----
> Desde: Romila Thapar [mailto:romila at SPACPL.COM]
> Enviado: Domingo 4 de Junio de 2006 09:08 AM
> Para: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
> Tema: Re: Question re: Niscaladasa and/or Dadu Mahashay
> 
> Dear Prem, 
> 
> First of all if you are coming to Delhi during June or August please get in 
> touch. I am out in July. Call me at 26831744 or 41328003. It will be great 
> to see you again. 
> 
> Never heard of your village, unless Kerhowli is a mistake for Mehrauli, 
> which was a village near Delhi with many khanqahs, etc; and is now a 
> fashionable suburb of south Delhi ! But we could go there and enquire about 
> the shAkhA. 
> 
> But I suggest you consult the topographical sheets of the Survey of India 
> for villages near Delhi. 
> 
> Best wishes, 
> Romila 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Prem Pahlajrai" <prem at U.WASHINGTON.EDU> 
> To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk> 
> Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 6:21 AM 
> Subject: Question re: Niscaladasa and/or Dadu Mahashay 
> 
> 
> > Dear Indologists, particularly those familiar with Delhi & Kashi, 
> > 
> > I am studying the works of Ni'scaladAsa, a late 19th century advaita 
> > scholar and author of the V.rttiprabhAkara and VicArasAgara. I recently 
> > came across a reference in the latter work where the author states the the 
> > text was completed in a village by the name of Kiha.dauli, 18 kos west of 
> > Delhi. A possible alternate name may be Kehrowli. An introduction to a 
> > 1962 edition of this work states that Ni'scaladasa's guru, DAdU MahA'saya 
> > lived in this village and that there is still a lineage ('si.sya-'sAkhA) 
> > functioning there. 
> > 
> > I will be in India this summer and am hoping to visit this village, if I 
> > can find it. Has anyone heard of it, or of this lineage? 
> > 
> > Ni'scaladAsa is also said to have been active in Varanasi, and Ramsimha 
> > Raja of Bundi was a patron of his. I'd appreciate any leads in this 
> > connection. 
> > 
> > Thank you, 
> > 
> > 
> > Prem Pahlajrai 
> > PhD student 
> > University of Washington, 
> > Seattle USA 
> > http://students.washington.edu/prem 
> > 
> 
___________________________________________________________________
Sube tus fotos m?s divertidas a enbloga.com




From j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM  Fri Dec  8 19:33:06 2006
From: j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM (Jan E.M. Houben)
Date: Fri, 08 Dec 06 11:33:06 -0800
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
Message-ID: <161227078861.23782.17035088653947159166.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Thanks to Luis Gonzalez-Reimann, Antonio
Ferreira-Jardim, Ruzsa Ferenc, Matthew Kapstein,
Richard Gombrich, Tim Cahill and John Huntington
for all their valuable thoughts and references on
this topic which is indeed of considerable
importance ... 
So we have a Buddha who is remarkably familiar
with passages in BAU, and we have, according to
others, indications that passages in the current
BAU are post-Buddhist. If the BAU was not yet
written down in Buddha's time these two positions
seem not mutually contradictory (see also
Matthew's observation). Moreover, the Upanisads,
if they existed in the Buddha's time, were not
yet isolated from their Vedic context for public
polemic purposes, since traces of this appear
only significantly after the Buddha, most solidly
with Sankara's commentaries on them. That means
that the Buddha must have become familiar with
the BAU in its early oral recension from a
private teacher, who, in the Magadha of his time,
could have been a Vaajasaneyin. Is there any
information that Gautama's (or his father's)
family-guru belonged to this school? Or did his
family keep priests of all the three Vedas
(probably not yet AV) and could he have become
familiar with the esoteric teachings (Upanisads)
of all three Vedas?
Jan Houben



 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Want to start your own business?
Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index




From tccahill at LOYNO.EDU  Fri Dec  8 21:38:19 2006
From: tccahill at LOYNO.EDU (Timothy C. Cahill)
Date: Fri, 08 Dec 06 15:38:19 -0600
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
In-Reply-To: <20061208193306.70423.qmail@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <161227078863.23782.11460869017351898991.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Jan!

    Familiar with the *ideas*, yes.  With the *passages*, well, I guess 
not.  (Although the Richard Gombrich had me very hopeful there for a 
second!)  No info that his father was a Vaajasaneyin, as far as I know. 
Nor can we be sure that his father kept a priest from/for each Veda, but 
Peter Harvey mentions that the republic of the Sakka people "was not 
Brahmanized, and rule was by a council of household-heads, perhaps 
qualified by age or social standing."  So perhaps the Magadha connection 
was not strong for our young Buddha.

    I'm not clear about your question: "...could he have become
> familiar with the esoteric teachings (Upanisads) of all three Vedas?"

My guess is that as a youth he had no special acquaintance with 
speculations on the utility of rituals since he wasn't a brahman, nor a 
Jain.  He probably acquired such a background as a result of being a 
spiritual seeker as an adult in an environment where such questions were 
in the air.  The Buddha probably knew the word "upaniSad" not as a 
set/stratum of texts but as a common noun (= 'connection', 'hidden name', 
'equivalence').  So I'm curious about your statement that the
> Upanisads, if they existed in the Buddha's time, were not
> yet isolated from their Vedic context for public
> polemic purposes, since traces of this appear
> only significantly after the Buddha, most solidly
> with Sankara's commentaries on them.

    Oh, never mind!  I just realized I'd misread you.  Of course, these 
"upaniSads" are supposed to be esoteric for their brahman communities, but 
become public property, open for debate to all others (Jains, Ajivikas) in 
an age of lively debate of 'new' ideas.  You're of course quite right in 
saying that they don't become eligible for debate theologically (within 
the Vedanta tradition) until much later. And this is "isolation from their 
Vedic context."

best,
Tim




From veerankp at GMAIL.COM  Sat Dec  9 14:46:48 2006
From: veerankp at GMAIL.COM (veeranarayana Pandurangi)
Date: Sat, 09 Dec 06 06:46:48 -0800
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.61.0612081451490.2080924@neo1>
Message-ID: <161227078865.23782.1841867704665965020.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

dear freinds,
I suggest that while discussing the popularity of Upanishads, the
brahmasuutras which disucss these upanishadic sentenes should be taken into
consideration.
veeranarayana


On 12/8/06, Timothy C. Cahill <tccahill at loyno.edu> wrote:
>
> Jan!
>
>    Familiar with the *ideas*, yes.  With the *passages*, well, I guess
> not.  (Although the Richard Gombrich had me very hopeful there for a
> second!)  No info that his father was a Vaajasaneyin, as far as I know.
> Nor can we be sure that his father kept a priest from/for each Veda, but
> Peter Harvey mentions that the republic of the Sakka people "was not
> Brahmanized, and rule was by a council of household-heads, perhaps
> qualified by age or social standing."  So perhaps the Magadha connection
> was not strong for our young Buddha.
>
>    I'm not clear about your question: "...could he have become
> > familiar with the esoteric teachings (Upanisads) of all three Vedas?"
>
> My guess is that as a youth he had no special acquaintance with
> speculations on the utility of rituals since he wasn't a brahman, nor a
> Jain.  He probably acquired such a background as a result of being a
> spiritual seeker as an adult in an environment where such questions were
> in the air.  The Buddha probably knew the word "upaniSad" not as a
> set/stratum of texts but as a common noun (= 'connection', 'hidden name',
> 'equivalence').  So I'm curious about your statement that the
> > Upanisads, if they existed in the Buddha's time, were not
> > yet isolated from their Vedic context for public
> > polemic purposes, since traces of this appear
> > only significantly after the Buddha, most solidly
> > with Sankara's commentaries on them.
>
>    Oh, never mind!  I just realized I'd misread you.  Of course, these
> "upaniSads" are supposed to be esoteric for their brahman communities, but
> become public property, open for debate to all others (Jains, Ajivikas) in
> an age of lively debate of 'new' ideas.  You're of course quite right in
> saying that they don't become eligible for debate theologically (within
> the Vedanta tradition) until much later. And this is "isolation from their
> Vedic context."
>
> best,
> Tim
>



-- 
V.N.K.Pandurangi
Head, Dept of Darshan,
Yoganandacharya Bhavan,
Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajsthan Sanskrita University, Madau, post
Bhankrota, Jaipur, 302026.




From wedemeyer at UCHICAGO.EDU  Sat Dec  9 15:40:38 2006
From: wedemeyer at UCHICAGO.EDU (Christian K. Wedemeyer)
Date: Sat, 09 Dec 06 09:40:38 -0600
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
Message-ID: <161227078867.23782.13569167147536017955.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

>Here is a list of some of my publications which show the  Buddha 
>referring to passages in the Upanishads. . .
><snip>
>It is of course perfectly possible that the texts we now have of the 
>Upanishads were compiled over a long period; I don't see how that 
>hypothesis could ever be conclusively disproved.  However, unless we 
>subscribe to the view that the Buddha was omniscient and could 
>therefore respond to texts which would be composed in the future, I 
>do not understand how his references to important passages in the 
>BAU  etc. can fail to be interpreted as showing that they already 
>existed  when he preached.

Whoa, slow down!  Yes, "the Buddha" (qua literary character) may 
refer to Upanisadic passages in some suttas, but that "Buddha" (or 
variants thereof) appear in literary works composed in India up 
through (at least) the 15th century AD.  As, presumably, the works 
Prof. Gombrich is referring to are from the Pali, this still puts 
them at no more (for sure) than pre-4th century, with the possibility 
that they were redacted ca. 1st cent. BC, with the further possiblity 
that parts of them date a few centuries earlier. There is no solid 
(i.e. non-confessional) evidence that I know of to link them to 
Gotama (the man who started the ball rolling in whatever unknown way 
he did).

So, as far as I can tell, to claim (comme "les palisans") that the 
Upanisads in question (or the relevant passages therein) must date 
from a period prior to when Gotama "preached" merely because they are 
alluded to in Pali sources (which do tend to be centered around the 
literary conceit of Gotama "preaching") is rather to outrun the 
evidence at our disposal.

This is, of course, not a novel objection on my part--and one I know 
Prof. Gombrich is well-aware of--so I was surprised to see it so 
glossed over in his post (and in the subsequent posts of Profs. 
Houben and Cahill). Have we become so unskeptical, then, that we can 
speak so blithely about what the Buddha (as opposed to the various 
literary representations of "the Buddha") knew and didn't know with 
such specificity? Or about his father and family teacher?!

All the best,

Christian



-- 
Christian K. Wedemeyer
Assistant Professor of the History of Religions
The University of Chicago Divinity School
1025 East 58th Street
Chicago, Illinois  60637  USA




From silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU  Mon Dec 11 06:16:49 2006
From: silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU (Jonathan Silk)
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 06 22:16:49 -0800
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <457CACFD0200004A0001D374@GwD1.wlu.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078888.23782.5530746734028797424.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

This is neither the time nor the place to reopen the very complicated 
debates about what we can know of early Buddhism in general. But one 
small reminder might be in order a propos a recent comment.

Tim Lubin wrote, in referring to some remarks of Christian Wedemeyer:

>virtually nothing can be asserted with certainty about what Buddhism 
>[was?  JAS]
>taught much prior to Buddhaghosa,

This is not so. Not only do we now have Gandhari materials some of 
which may contain not only contents but may actually be physically 
significantly older than Buddhaghosa, but we have long had Chinese 
materials which significantly predate him as well. There are, to be 
sure, some significant challenges in dealing with this material, but 
in terms of confirming (otherwise later) Indic language materials, at 
the very least, they cannot and should not be ignored.

JAS
-- 
Jonathan Silk
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
Center for Buddhist Studies
UCLA
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
phone: (310) 206-8235
fax:  (310) 825-8808
silk (at) humnet.ucla.edu




From somadevah at MAC.COM  Mon Dec 11 06:56:47 2006
From: somadevah at MAC.COM (Som Dev Vasudeva)
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 06 22:56:47 -0800
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <457CACFD0200004A0001D374@GwD1.wlu.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078874.23782.7831124063500466723.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Its seems to me that the expressed scepticism about the value of grappling with early textual sources to interpret and then comment on historical events easily can be taken too far (particularly by scholars not actively engaged in philological work themselves). This is not at all a new phenomenon, consider the amusing but brilliant spoof produced Richard Whately in 1819, "Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte" :

"What, then, are we to believe? If we are disposed to credit all that
is told us, we must believe in the existence not only of one, but of
two or three Buonapartes; if we admit nothing but what is well
authenticated, we shall be compelled to doubt of the existence of
any.

It appears, then, that those on whose testimony the existence and
actions of Buonaparte are generally believed, fail in ALL the most
essential points on which the credibility of witnesses depends: first,
we have no assurance that they have access to correct information;
secondly, they have an apparent interest in propagating falsehood;
and, thirdly, they palpably contradict each other in the most
important points."


Somadeva Vasudeva




From LubinT at WLU.EDU  Mon Dec 11 05:57:33 2006
From: LubinT at WLU.EDU (Timothy Lubin)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 00:57:33 -0500
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <p0623092dc1a08384c346@[172.16.1.33]>
Message-ID: <161227078871.23782.5724540248581164890.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

When we take account of these two caveats --
Matthew's: the Upani.sads [and the Pali sources] are composite works,
redacted over a period of time, and thus must be approached as "fluid"
and in "dialogue" with one another, not as strictly in linear succession
to one another.
Christian's: the extant forms of the "early" Buddhist sources are
almost certainly not nearly as early as the extant forms of the
Upani.sads; and the Buddha depicted in them may differ greatly from the
actual Siddhattha Gotama, and cannot be offered as concrete evidence for
any biographical details of his life and teachings.
there is very little basis to form a conclusion one way or the other
about which of these sources had the first word.  
 
The strong form of the critique echoed by Christian here is that
virtually nothing can be asserted with certainty about what Buddhism
taught much prior to Buddhaghosa, and that even the oldest strata (e.g.,
Suttanipaata) may not precede 1st c. BCE.  Yet it seems still to be
irresistable for Buddhologists to reconstruct the historical Buddha on
the basis of the Pali texts, using the logic of "it seems reasonable to
suppose" and "there is nothing to prevent us from accepting" that one or
another detail is essentially based on fact. 
 
Not all Pali scholars feel constrained to abandon the idea that
certain, identifiable parts are older (on philological grounds).  On
this basis, it has been asserted that the Buddha was indeed no brahmin,
but that his family had the gotra name Gotama (= the Vedic sage
Gautama), which they would have adopted from their purohita (according
to the custom described by Brough).  Which would imply that, in spite of
being Sakyas, they could have been exposed to Vedic learning.
 
Asoka at least knows of the Buddhavacana, although he knows it only as
an ethical ideal, with a heavenly reward, plus the names of a few texts.
 And we know that sama.nas and braahma.nas were both recipients of his
patronage, and thus potentially rivals, who might well have argued
(indeed, they surely did).
 
But all those Pali accounts of the Buddha engaging brahmins in debate,
along with all the ingenious appropriation and redefinition of
Brahmanical terminology and ethicization of Brahmanical ideals (see
Norman, Gombrich, Collins' Agga~n~nasutta, etc.) -- as plausible as it
may seem as a feature of the Buddha's time -- may indeed really belong
to a few centuries later.  So how are we to be sure that the Buddha
himself knew or did not know the BAU or ChU, or oral traditions that
would soon be canonized in those works, or anything else?  
 
Tim
 
 

 
 
 
 
Timothy Lubin
Associate Professor, Department of Religion
Director, East Asian Studies Program
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, Virginia  USA
 
lubint at wlu.edu   |   http://home.wlu.edu/~lubint
 
Tel : (office) 540.458.8146; (home) 540.463.6833
Fax: 540.458.8498

>>> "Christian K. Wedemeyer" <wedemeyer at UCHICAGO.EDU> 12/09/06 10:40 AM
>>>

Whoa, slow down!  Yes, "the Buddha" (qua literary character) may 
refer to Upanisadic passages in some suttas, but that "Buddha" (or 
variants thereof) appear in literary works composed in India up 
through (at least) the 15th century AD.  As, presumably, the works 
Prof. Gombrich is referring to are from the Pali, this still puts 
them at no more (for sure) than pre-4th century, with the possibility 
that they were redacted ca. 1st cent. BC, with the further possiblity 
that parts of them date a few centuries earlier. There is no solid 
(i.e. non-confessional) evidence that I know of to link them to 
Gotama (the man who started the ball rolling in whatever unknown way 
he did).

So, as far as I can tell, to claim (comme "les palisans") that the 
Upanisads in question (or the relevant passages therein) must date 
from a period prior to when Gotama "preached" merely because they are 
alluded to in Pali sources (which do tend to be centered around the 
literary conceit of Gotama "preaching") is rather to outrun the 
evidence at our disposal.

This is, of course, not a novel objection on my part--and one I know 
Prof. Gombrich is well-aware of--so I was surprised to see it so 
glossed over in his post (and in the subsequent posts of Profs. 
Houben and Cahill). Have we become so unskeptical, then, that we can 
speak so blithely about what the Buddha (as opposed to the various 
literary representations of "the Buddha") knew and didn't know with 
such specificity? Or about his father and family teacher?!

All the best,

Christian



-- 
Christian K. Wedemeyer
Assistant Professor of the History of Religions
The University of Chicago Divinity School
1025 East 58th Street
Chicago, Illinois  60637  USA




From selwyn at NTLWORLD.COM  Mon Dec 11 07:53:57 2006
From: selwyn at NTLWORLD.COM (L.S. Cousins)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 07:53:57 +0000
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <457CACFD0200004A0001D374@GwD1.wlu.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078876.23782.4662028386269819585.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Timothy Lubin:
>Christian's: the extant forms of the "early" Buddhist sources are
>almost certainly not nearly as early as the extant forms of the
>Upani.sads; and the Buddha depicted in them may differ greatly from the
>actual Siddhattha Gotama, and cannot be offered as concrete evidence for
>any biographical details of his life and teachings.

I cannot see the first of these statements in Christian Wedermeyer's 
post. Is this really true ? I am not at all expert in the textual 
history of the Upanis.ads; so I am curious about the date from which 
we can establish their exact text in the detail with which the Pali 
text is established by Buddhaghosa.

>The strong form of the critique echoed by Christian here is that
>virtually nothing can be asserted with certainty about what Buddhism
>taught much prior to Buddhaghosa, and that even the oldest strata (e.g.,
>Suttanipaata) may not precede 1st c. BCE.

In this strong form, the critique seems simply untenable. We have 
translations in Chinese from the late second century which tell us a 
great deal about what Buddhism taught. That is two centuries or so 
before Buddhaghosa. We even have some Gaandhaarii texts apparently 
from the first century A.D. We have inscriptions and sculptures from 
earlier still.

I am myself somewhat sceptical about the detailed stratification of 
the Buddhist texts within the four Nikaayas. But I cannot see any way 
to doubt that texts like Buddhavam.sa & Apadaana are later than 
anything else in the Pali Canon, while texts like the Petavatthu or 
much of the canonical Abhidhamma are later than most of the other 
works in the four Nikaayas. It is very hard to conceive of these 
developments as happening over a short period of time.

>Asoka at least knows of the Buddhavacana, although he knows it only as
>an ethical ideal, with a heavenly reward, plus the names of a few texts.

We cannot speak of what he knows, only of what he says. Is there any 
king in the history of Buddhism who recommends his subjects to 
practise meditation and attain nirvaa.na ?

Lance Cousins




From swantam at ASIANETINDIA.COM  Mon Dec 11 03:06:56 2006
From: swantam at ASIANETINDIA.COM (Maheswaran Nair)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 08:36:56 +0530
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.61.0612081451490.2080924@neo1>
Message-ID: <161227078869.23782.6690139147470666275.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Hallo,
We have to take into account the Brahmana-Sramana  dichotomy.   
Brahmana and Sramana constituted two divergent traditions of which  
Upanishads follow the first and the Buddha the second. The 27  
pre-Buddhas and 23 Tirthankaras together constituted the Sramana. The  
ideological clashes between the Sadvaada of Brahmanas and Asadvaada of  
Sramanas existed before Gautama the Buddha. The Chandogya makes clear  
mention about that(6-2-1). So it is no wonder that the Buddha was  
familiar with the Upanisads which played an important role in his  
ideological past.
Regards
K.Maheswaran Nair
University of Kerala
Thiruvananthapuram
India




From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU  Mon Dec 11 13:52:36 2006
From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 08:52:36 -0500
Subject: Indology in Berlin
In-Reply-To: <1165841401.457d53f93d0b4@webmail.rrz.uni-hamburg.de>
Message-ID: <161227078884.23782.1830037128524390999.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Many thanks to Haru Isaacson for transmitting the message of Dr.s Strauch and
Dreyer.

We had begun to discuss the situation on our intl. Pan-Asian list
(Indo-Eurasian-Research, more than 700 members from 30 disciplines).

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/5607>

and have been preparing an international write-in to the Berlin authorities.

* Please see my next message for details.*

It is essential that as many of us as possible participate in this effort, so
that at least some sections of Berlin Indology at Freie Univertsitaet and
Humboldt Universitaet be saved.

Best,
M. Witzel


Quoting Harunaga Isaacson <Harunaga.Isaacson at UNI-HAMBURG.DE>:

> Dr. Ingo Strauch (Freie Universitaet Berlin) has requested the INDOLOGY
> committee to post to the list a message which was sent a few days ago to the
> Indo-Eurasian Research Yahoo group by Dr. Caren Dreyer. It is about a matter
> which will surely be of concern to all Indologists.
>
> ===
> This is to inform [the List], that not only at Cambridge but also at
> Berlin there will be no in-depth Sanskrit Studies any more in the near
> future.
>
> Since 1821 Sanskrit has been taught at a Berlin university by such well
> known scholars as Bopp, Weber, Pischel, L?ders et al.
>
> http://web.fu-berlin.de/indologie/geschichte/ph_allg1.html
>
> Now as a result of structural policy of the two major Berlin
> universities on the one hand and the over all BA/MA reforms on the other
> there will be no more students after 2008 of Sanskrit in a BA-course. As
> a consequence traditional Indology will cease to exist at Berlin.
>
> http://web.fu-berlin.de/indologie/Zukunft.htm
>
> There is no consolation in the fact, that the teaching of Indian
> Art-History will survive for the time being as a subject under the roof
> of General Art-History and Modern Indian History will still be taught at
> Humboldt-University. Sanskrit and the other historical Indian Languages
> and the bulk of literature and informations transmitted through them
> will remain closed to all students of that fields.
>
> To indologists these measures are obviously short sighted and ridiculous
> in the light of the importance of Sanskrit and its derivates for the
> development and spread of all cultures in India, Central- and
> South-East-Asia.
>
> It is deplorable that the many years fight of a scholar of great
> international reputation as Harry Falk for the survival of his field at
> one of the two Berlin universities seems to have been in vain.
>
> For further information please contact:
>
> Caren Dreyer:mail at caren-dreyer.de
> or
> Ingo Strauch: strauchi at zedat.fu-berlin.de
>
> ===
>
> --
> Prof. Dr. Harunaga Isaacson
> Universit?t Hamburg
> Asien-Afrika-Institut
> Abteilung f?r Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und Tibets
> Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 (Hauptgeb?ude)
> D-20146
> Hamburg
> Germany
> tel. +49 (0)40 42838-3382
>




From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU  Mon Dec 11 13:57:41 2006
From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 08:57:41 -0500
Subject: None
Message-ID: <161227078886.23782.7548338898741187436.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

 Dear List,

Yesterday I discussed the general background of the Berlin case on the List, but
there is much more to be said, which I will try to cover today or tomorrow
(involving, for example, new B.A.and M.A. rules in Germany, which besides
financial issues are big factors in the proposed closings.) Here is what I said
yesterday about the background:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/5607

However, since time is of the essence, last night I wrote a detailed letter to
the Berlin authorities.

We have been told that it would be potentially helpful if other researchers
involved either in Sanskrit, Indology, or other ancient fields that directly
*or* indirectly depend on these fields could do the same. We have set up a
special email address for letters addressed to the German officials at:

 berlinindology at gmail.com

Any letters sent to this address will be retransmitted to all the appropriate
German officials, with a copy in each case to you. Your letters or names will
NOT be made public.

In my own letter (quite long, in German) I stressed some of the following
points, which I give below in abbreviated English form. I provide this as only
a very crude model, since it gives some background information that you might
not have, that you are free to draw from in any way you want in your own
message. The more personal your notes the better, of course, but you can use or
discard any of the materials in the model (you may also find data that you might
want to use in my post above) as you wish.

See also (in German):
<http://web.fu-berlin.de/indologie/geschichte/ph_allg1.html>
<http://web.fu-berlin.de/indologie/Zukunft.htm>

Official meetings are being held this week to further discuss the proposed
closings, so the sooner your notes are written, the better.

 With many thanks and best wishes,
 Michael Witzel

 ---------------


To Whom It May Concern [we will add in the appropriate titles; you'll be cc'd
final copies]:

A few days ago I learned through international channels that there were plans
underway to abolish Indian studies in Berlin. I am writing to you today to ask
that Berlin's world famous Institute of Indology not be   closed.

   [You may of course want to add something briefly about your own background
here.]

This request does not apply to modern South Asian Studies, which I understand
are to be continued in some form, but to Classical Philology and Indology.

Classical Indian philology, primarily referring to Sanskrit studies, has been a
mainstay at Berlin since 1821, and even during the communist period after World
War II, the discipline was continued at Humboldt University by Professors Ruben
and Morgenroth. Indology, which depends heavily on knowledge of Sanskrit, deals
broadly with native Indian world views, religion, the history of science, and
art as represented in Sanskrit texts and those of related   ancient languages.
It is impossible to understand modern Indian topics without first mastering
Sanskrit, which lies at the heart of Indian culture.

Sanskrit, which was one of the official languages of India until 1835, is
essential for any understanding of the massive numbers of Indian texts produced
over the last three thousand years in fields including traditional Indian
medicine (Ayurveda) and linguistics, which in its unique indigenous forms (via
Panini, etc.) continue to provide a major stimulus to modern linguistic
studies.

Just as every other modern civilization, contemporary India can only be
understood through study (via Sanskrit) of its foundational texts and their
impact in the medieval and modern periods. Knowledge of such studies is even
critical in the Indian political arena, due the unusual stress paid to ancient
history in modern Indian culture. In the national elections of 2004, even
classical philologists were frequently drawn into the political discourse
precisely for this reason.

For many reasons, even in modern studies of India, studies of Sanskrit and
classical Indology play critical roles. Berlin has a proud tradition of
studying Sanskrit that spans nearly 200 years, and many internationally famous
scholars have emerged from its Institute of Indology.

In the early 19th century, introduction of the study of ancient India was one of
the essential points in Humboldt?s reform of German universities. It is critical
that this not be forgotten now that India is coming into its own as a global
power and its economic and political importance is increasing.

It can finally be noted that the reputation of German Indology is
well-recognized in India. The long-standing interest of German intellectuals in
Indian civilization has made Indology one of Germany's best ambassadors to the
country. The closure of Berlin's prestigious Institutes for Indology would be
met with by disbelief both in India and in the global scholarly community.

The preservation of the Institute is also important to help preserve Berlin's
reputation as an international research center. Closure of Sanskrit studies in
Berlin would be especially short-sighted in light of the large collections of
Indian manuscripts in the Prussian State Library, in the Berlin-Brandenburg
Academy, and in the rich holdings of Berlin's Museum of Indian Art. Any such
closure would bring 200 years of a great tradition to an end.

I therefore appeal to you to preserve B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. level courses in
Sanskrit and Indology. To do otherwise would tragically bring to an end one of
Germany's proudest historical institutions.

 Yours faithfully,

 X.Y.

 (official position) (address) (email)




From silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU  Mon Dec 11 17:53:39 2006
From: silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU (Jonathan Silk)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 09:53:39 -0800
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <457D38510200004A0001D43B@GwD1.wlu.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078897.23782.3682628267232732618.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

I could have been clearer. Tim wrote:

>  I should have specified that the "strong form" of the
>argument pertained to the content of the Pali tradition rather than to
>knowledge of Buddhism in general, for the knowledge of which we have
>Chinese and Gandhari sources. 
>
What I, in turn, should have specified is that, in the particular 
case at hand, one of the things to which I referred, or meant to 
refer, is that we can verify the existence of some Pali 
materials--better to say, some materials preserved in Pali-- in 
periods prior to their final redaction (by Buddhaghosa, according to 
tradition) in cases in which there are close parallels in other 
datable sources, namely Gandhari mss (not much, really, volume-wise, 
at least known so far) and Chinese (much, widely available for study, 
but as I said earlier, involving problems such that it cannot be used 
'as is').

So, can we date some Pali materials with confidence to some period 
prior to Buddhaghosa, even if precise wording is sometimes in 
question? Yes. Can we internally stratify some materials, at least on 
philological/linguistic grounds? Yes. Does this provide us with any 
absolute chronology locating anything in Buddhist materials surely in 
the 5th c BCE? No. We cannot move back earlier than the beginning of 
the Common Era, as far as I can tell.
(It is another question about materials which can be shown, and have 
been shown, to be shared by Jains and Buddhists. I think the 
implications of these overlappings are yet to be fully worked out. )

Jonathan
-- 
Jonathan Silk
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
Center for Buddhist Studies
UCLA
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
phone: (310) 206-8235
fax:  (310) 825-8808
silk (at) humnet.ucla.edu




From LubinT at WLU.EDU  Mon Dec 11 15:52:01 2006
From: LubinT at WLU.EDU (Timothy Lubin)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 10:52:01 -0500
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <p06230911c1a2a67c3238@[75.1.243.19]>
Message-ID: <161227078890.23782.13460011668523548691.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

In my reference to the cautionary approach mentioned by Christian W., I
was not quoting him but alluding to certain line of argument I have
heard in Pali studies (to which I thought he was referring), but I did
misstate it: I should have specified that the "strong form" of the
argument pertained to the content of the Pali tradition rather than to
knowledge of Buddhism in general, for the knowledge of which we have
Chinese and Gandhari sources.  
 
I should also have noted that I do not myself *endorse* this strong
form of the argument, even limiting it to the Pali literature.  I am
quite willing to consider parts of the canon older on philological
grounds (and I use similar arguments in my own work on late Vedic texts
and minor upani.sads).
 
But I do feel that the specificity with which the Buddha's actual life
and words are reconstructed frequently overreaches.  And even if it is
*possible* that parts of the Pali sources are as old as the BAU and ChU,
the textual basis for an argument for the priority of the Buddhist ideas
must remain very tenuous, I think.
 
Tim

>>> Jonathan Silk silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU> 12/11/06 1:16 AM >>

... Tim Lubin wrote, in referring to some remarks of Christian
Wedemeyer:

>virtually nothing can be asserted with certainty about what Buddhism 
>[was?  JAS]
>taught much prior to Buddhaghosa,

This is not so. Not only do we now have Gandhari materials some of 
which may contain not only contents but may actually be physically 
significantly older than Buddhaghosa, but we have long had Chinese 
materials which significantly predate him as well. There are, to be 
sure, some significant challenges in dealing with this material, but 
in terms of confirming (otherwise later) Indic language materials, at 
the very least, they cannot and should not be ignored.

JAS
-- 
Jonathan Silk
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
Center for Buddhist Studies
UCLA
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
phone: (310) 206-8235
fax:  (310) 825-8808
silk (at) humnet.ucla.edu




From LubinT at WLU.EDU  Mon Dec 11 16:10:21 2006
From: LubinT at WLU.EDU (Timothy Lubin)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 11:10:21 -0500
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <DAA15E6D-010F-1000-E297-7FDFE7DC6188-Webmail-10023@mac.com>
Message-ID: <161227078894.23782.1009227312332691473.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

The analogy is amusing but misleading: the range and nature of our
sources on Napoleon permit much greater certainty.  A better analogy
would be the "quest for the historical Jesus."  In that case, the chief
sources can much more confidently be dated much closer to the life of
the subject, but there is still considerable doubt about what they can
tell us about the historical personage.
 
My own skepticism relates not to the value of grappling with the texts
and commenting on historical events; it applies only in cases where the
result seems to be largely an endorsement of hagiography as fact.  
 
Tim
 

>>> Som Dev Vasudeva <somadevah at MAC.COM> 12/11/06 1:56 AM >>>

Its seems to me that the expressed scepticism about the value of
grappling with early textual sources to interpret and then comment on
historical events easily can be taken too far (particularly by scholars
not actively engaged in philological work themselves). This is not at
all a new phenomenon, consider the amusing but brilliant spoof produced
Richard Whately in 1819, "Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon
Buonaparte" :

"What, then, are we to believe? If we are disposed to credit all that
is told us, we must believe in the existence not only of one, but of
two or three Buonapartes; if we admit nothing but what is well
authenticated, we shall be compelled to doubt of the existence of
any.

It appears, then, that those on whose testimony the existence and
actions of Buonaparte are generally believed, fail in ALL the most
essential points on which the credibility of witnesses depends: first,
we have no assurance that they have access to correct information;
secondly, they have an apparent interest in propagating falsehood;
and, thirdly, they palpably contradict each other in the most
important points."


Somadeva Vasudeva




From acollins at GCI.NET  Mon Dec 11 22:06:04 2006
From: acollins at GCI.NET (Alfred Collins)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 13:06:04 -0900
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
In-Reply-To: <20061211083656.abvurta9wkc4g484@mail.asianetindia.com>
Message-ID: <161227078902.23782.12477052202753180883.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

 The Chandogya passage seems to refer to RV X.129, and to agree with that text that in the beginning there was an "eka" although it records a dispute over whether that eka was sat or asat.  (the opposition in Ch 6.2.1 is between sad ekam advitiyam and asad ekam advitiyam.) X.129 says neither sat not asat, Ch says sat.  I published an article on this long ago, J of IndoEuropean Studies 1975 arguing that X.129 means that it is neither asat nor sat because it is in the process of developing, in statu nascendi,  from asat to sat.  Asat in the Ch reference seems to be understood quite differently as a vacuity and sat to have become a sort of avyakta, as in Samkhya.  In X.129 asat meant more or less what sat means in the Ch.

If this is right, what does it say about the Buddha and what he knew (and when he knew it)?  Nothing definite of course, but some speculations seem possible. In particular, I wonder whether the origin of Buddhism might not have something to do with the growing sharpness of the distinction between sat and asat, and could have represented initially an attempt to hold onto the intuition of the indefiniteness of the beginnings and basis of world and self in opposition to a tendency to reify them.  anatman in a primordial Buddhist intuition (Gautama's?) then would have meant something like asat in the X.129 sense (a "full" emptiness of self) and not in the Ch sense ("empty" emptiness?).  At times anatman may have developed (in some Buddhist traditions, specifically the pali canon) toward a sense like that of asat in the Ch reference, perhaps in an attempt to compensate in the other direction for the over assertion of a substantial (sat-full) self. 

And yet there is something strange or paradoxical about this Chandogya asat.  It is characterized as ekam advitiyam, "one without a second." Surely that does not sound like the void that the Ch argument against it seems to assume!  This asad ekam advitiyam seems ambivalent about its fullness versus emptiness, and in this might be quite appropriate as a description of pratityasamutpada.  Conclusion: Buddhism may carry on the vedic tradition just as much as Samkhya and Vedanta, but to opt for one side of a split in thought that the "Hindu" schools took the other side of.  I think both Buddhism and Samkhya etc. tried to regain the older intuition present before the split, but in different ways.  Buddhism moved from a sometimes void interpretation of anatman back to the more "full" origin of the putative "self" in conditioned coorigination, samkhya from an increasingly definite ("marked" in McKim Marriott's terms) prakrti organized around ahamkara to one saying "nasmi na me naha
m" (Samkhya karika 64), which I think also represents a return to origins, in this case a pratiprasava or nivrtti of the gunas toward avyakta.  

Al Collins




From Harunaga.Isaacson at UNI-HAMBURG.DE  Mon Dec 11 12:50:01 2006
From: Harunaga.Isaacson at UNI-HAMBURG.DE (Harunaga Isaacson)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 13:50:01 +0100
Subject: Indology in Berlin
Message-ID: <161227078878.23782.6714707246227343666.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dr. Ingo Strauch (Freie Universitaet Berlin) has requested the INDOLOGY
committee to post to the list a message which was sent a few days ago to the
Indo-Eurasian Research Yahoo group by Dr. Caren Dreyer. It is about a matter
which will surely be of concern to all Indologists. 

===
This is to inform [the List], that not only at Cambridge but also at
Berlin there will be no in-depth Sanskrit Studies any more in the near
future.

Since 1821 Sanskrit has been taught at a Berlin university by such well
known scholars as Bopp, Weber, Pischel, L?ders et al.

http://web.fu-berlin.de/indologie/geschichte/ph_allg1.html

Now as a result of structural policy of the two major Berlin
universities on the one hand and the over all BA/MA reforms on the other
there will be no more students after 2008 of Sanskrit in a BA-course. As
a consequence traditional Indology will cease to exist at Berlin.

http://web.fu-berlin.de/indologie/Zukunft.htm

There is no consolation in the fact, that the teaching of Indian
Art-History will survive for the time being as a subject under the roof
of General Art-History and Modern Indian History will still be taught at
Humboldt-University. Sanskrit and the other historical Indian Languages
and the bulk of literature and informations transmitted through them
will remain closed to all students of that fields.

To indologists these measures are obviously short sighted and ridiculous
in the light of the importance of Sanskrit and its derivates for the
development and spread of all cultures in India, Central- and
South-East-Asia.

It is deplorable that the many years fight of a scholar of great
international reputation as Harry Falk for the survival of his field at
one of the two Berlin universities seems to have been in vain.

For further information please contact:

Caren Dreyer:mail at caren-dreyer.de
or
Ingo Strauch: strauchi at zedat.fu-berlin.de

===

-- 
Prof. Dr. Harunaga Isaacson
Universit?t Hamburg
Asien-Afrika-Institut
Abteilung f?r Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und Tibets
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 (Hauptgeb?ude)
D-20146
Hamburg
Germany
tel. +49 (0)40 42838-3382




From eastwestcultural at YAHOO.COM  Mon Dec 11 22:50:55 2006
From: eastwestcultural at YAHOO.COM (Dean Anderson)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 14:50:55 -0800
Subject: Anurddha and the Mallas in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta
In-Reply-To: <457D5DD3.7090303@ms19.hinet.net>
Message-ID: <161227078904.23782.4548935647857946117.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

--- ?????? <mirek at MS19.HINET.NET> wrote:

> Dear members:
> In the 6. chapter (6.14, 6.15) of the
> Mahaparinibbana Sutta, there is an
> interesting scene, when the Mallas wish to take the
> Buddha's body south
> of the town, not entering the town and not being
> able to move it, they
> ask Anuruddha for the reason.
> He then tells them that the deities wish the
> Buddha's body be taken to
> the north of the town, then through the northern
> gate into the center of
> town, then again by the east gate to the eastern
> side of the town, where
> it should be cremated in the Makuta-bandhana shrine.
> I wonder why the northern and eastern side of the
> town. Is it "only" to
> emphasize the difference of the Buddha from other
> important people (who
> are to be cremated on the southern side and whose
> body should not be
> carried into the town)? Or could there be any other
> reason?

The different directions are ruled by deities called
Dikpalas. South is ruled by Yama the god of death.
Those who are destined for rebirth are under his
influence. The East is ruled by Indra and the North by
Kuvera and are considered auspicious. Perhaps these
directions were chosen because the Buddha was freed
from rebirth.

Dean Anderson




From chlodwig.h.werba at UNIVIE.AC.AT  Mon Dec 11 16:00:00 2006
From: chlodwig.h.werba at UNIVIE.AC.AT (Dr. Chlodwig H. Werba)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 17:00:00 +0100
Subject: puurvabuddhavaadetihaase
In-Reply-To: <p06230911c1a2a67c3238@[75.1.243.19]>
Message-ID: <161227078892.23782.5368292665828115359.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Colleagues,
Please, do not ignore either what was published in the WZKS' most recent
volume about the 'historical worth' of the Tipi.taka and related texts:
Alexander Wynne, The Historical Authenticity of Early Buddhist Literature. A
Critical Evaluation. WZKS 49 (2005[06]) 35-70.
With best wishes
Chlodwig H. Werba, co-ed. WZKS 

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Indology [mailto:INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk] Im Auftrag von Jonathan Silk
Gesendet: Montag, 11. Dezember 2006 07:17
An: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Betreff: Re: The Buddha and the Upanishads

This is neither the time nor the place to reopen the very complicated 
debates about what we can know of early Buddhism in general. But one 
small reminder might be in order a propos a recent comment.

Tim Lubin wrote, in referring to some remarks of Christian Wedemeyer:

>virtually nothing can be asserted with certainty about what Buddhism 
>[was?  JAS]
>taught much prior to Buddhaghosa,

This is not so. Not only do we now have Gandhari materials some of 
which may contain not only contents but may actually be physically 
significantly older than Buddhaghosa, but we have long had Chinese 
materials which significantly predate him as well. There are, to be 
sure, some significant challenges in dealing with this material, but 
in terms of confirming (otherwise later) Indic language materials, at 
the very least, they cannot and should not be ignored.

JAS
-- 
Jonathan Silk
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
Center for Buddhist Studies
UCLA
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
phone: (310) 206-8235
fax:  (310) 825-8808
silk (at) humnet.ucla.edu




From mirek at MS19.HINET.NET  Mon Dec 11 13:32:03 2006
From: mirek at MS19.HINET.NET (=?utf-8?B?576F5piO55Ge?=)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 21:32:03 +0800
Subject: Anurddha and the Mallas in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta
Message-ID: <161227078881.23782.14470926089288734710.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear members:
In the 6. chapter (6.14, 6.15) of the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, there is an
interesting scene, when the Mallas wish to take the Buddha's body south
of the town, not entering the town and not being able to move it, they
ask Anuruddha for the reason.
He then tells them that the deities wish the Buddha's body be taken to
the north of the town, then through the northern gate into the center of
town, then again by the east gate to the eastern side of the town, where
it should be cremated in the Makuta-bandhana shrine.
I wonder why the northern and eastern side of the town. Is it "only" to
emphasize the difference of the Buddha from other important people (who
are to be cremated on the southern side and whose body should not be
carried into the town)? Or could there be any other reason?
Is anybody aware of any research being done in this area?

Thank you,

Miroslav Rozehnal




From wedemeyer at UCHICAGO.EDU  Tue Dec 12 04:06:30 2006
From: wedemeyer at UCHICAGO.EDU (Christian K. Wedemeyer)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 22:06:30 -0600
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
Message-ID: <161227078906.23782.3893321254625659788.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Thanks to Lance for reading closely. No, I was not arguing for the 
"strong view." Jonathan, I think, puts it well and succinctly:

>So, can we date some Pali materials with confidence to some period 
>prior to Buddhaghosa, even if precise wording is sometimes in 
>question? Yes. Can we internally stratify some materials, at least 
>on philological/linguistic grounds? Yes. Does this provide us with 
>any absolute chronology locating anything in Buddhist materials 
>surely in the 5th c BCE? No. We cannot move back earlier than the 
>beginning of the Common Era, as far as I can tell.

This, I would assume, would be the general consensus view in the 
field, which was why I was surprised at intimations to the contrary. 
Given that much the same is true of the Upanisadic corpus as Jonathan 
notes of the corpus of Buddhist aagama-s/nikaaya-s--and given that 
both corpora shows signs of mutual influence--I think Matthew's 
assessment is quite sound; that is:

>the texts and traditions evolved in dialogue with one another and 
>arrived at their "finished"
>forms in processes spanning centuries.

Thus, one shouldn't (as Tim appears to) take my reservations about 
putting the words of the nikaaya-s in the mouth of Gotama to imply 
that any given Upanisadic passage is necessarily any earlier than any 
given Buddhist passage.

With best regards,

Christian (taking a break from "active engagement in philological 
work" to dither around his computer)



-- 
Christian K. Wedemeyer
Assistant Professor of the History of Religions
The University of Chicago Divinity School
1025 East 58th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637    USA
(773) 702-8265 (phone)
(773) 702-8223 (fax)




From a.passi at ALMA.UNIBO.IT  Mon Dec 11 21:11:28 2006
From: a.passi at ALMA.UNIBO.IT (Alex Passi)
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 06 22:11:28 +0100
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
In-Reply-To: <p06230913c1a348090ef6@[75.1.243.19]>
Message-ID: <161227078900.23782.7416706380275873440.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Starting from:
In this strong form, the critique seems simply untenable. We have  
translations in Chinese from the late second century which tell us a  
great deal about what Buddhism taught. That is two centuries or so  
before Buddhaghosa. We even have some Gaandhaarii texts apparently  
from the first century A.D. We have inscriptions and sculptures from  
earlier still.

I must agree here. And what about A'svagho.sa? The Buddha-story is  
very well developed both in the Buddhacarita and the Saundarananda --  
so well developed that there is much reason to believe that this  
biography of the life of the Sage of the 'Sakyas, obviously well- 
known to the poet's contemporaries (NB I would not endorse the  
opinion that it is a "historical" biography in the common meaning of  
the word), comes as an end-product of a fairly long evolution. And,  
together with the tale of the Buddha's life and that of his rather  
simpatico half-brother Nanda, these kaavya-s contain entire sarga-s  
completely dedicated to "hard-core" buddhist teachings, where the  
doctrine, or rather the Way, is explained in much detail.
Nonetheless, the earliest MS fragments of these kavyas probably date  
from the beginning of the C.E., and Johnston's monumental work of  
exegesis seems to point to a date between the Ist century B.C.E. and  
the Ist century after (and I don't give a hoot about the date of  
Kani.ska -- there simply is not enough evidence to tie the poet, an  
Easterner from Oudh, to the great Kushan king!).
Another point indicating an early age for both A'svagho.sa kaavya-s  
(though definitely post-A'soka, in any event!) lies in the difference  
between the Ramayana and Mahabharata legends as we know them now, and  
the state in which they emerge, almost casually, in the "exempla"  
quoted by the poet.
The real problem, IMHO, lies in the fact that we have, as of yet, no  
way of reconstructing the time-line within which both ideas and  
legends evolve. Must we really believe that it took 400 years to  
creat the Great Epic? Or does literary and doctrinal evolution  
proceed in great, non-linear, leaps and bounds?

Alex Passi


Alex (Alessandro) Passi,
Dipartimento Studi Linguistici
e Orientali
Universit? di Bologna,
Via Zamboni 33
Bologna, 40126, Italy.

a.passi at alma.unibo.it
alexpassi at gmail.com
+39-051-209.8472
cellphone +39-338.269.4933
fax +39-051-209.8443.




From mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU  Tue Dec 12 10:39:55 2006
From: mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU (mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU)
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 06 04:39:55 -0600
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
Message-ID: <161227078909.23782.805189599599912773.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

The passage from the Chaandogya that concerns me is 
book 8, not book 6. Here, the question
is specifically the perception of the 
self (aatman). Now, the verb used here
is upa-labh, and the problem that is raised
concerns the non-apprehension, anupalabdhi, of the 
self. Though, as is well known, anupalabdhi becomes
a widely ramified problem in later Indian philosophy,
so far as I can determine, the use of upa-labh we
find here is unknown throughout the Vedic corpus, including
the Braahma.nas and Upani.sads, with the sole exception 
of this passage. The problem of whether the self
can or cannot be the object of upa-labh is, however,
found throughout early Buddhist literature. Given that
Chaandogya 8 is at pains to refute a view that
looks much like a simplified version of
Buddhist anaatmavaada, my assumption is that this
book of the Upani.sad is in fact a response to 
Buddhism. This, at least, seems a far more compelling
explanation than it is to posit that early Buddhism,
with its problematic of aatmaanupalabdhi, was inspired
by an Upani.sadic passage that, if it is not responding
to Buddhism, seems altogether anomalous.

Matthew Kapstein
Chicago and Paris
Matthew T. Kapstein
Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies
The University of Chicago Divinity School

Directeur d'?tudes
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris




From slaje at T-ONLINE.DE  Wed Dec 13 06:53:00 2006
From: slaje at T-ONLINE.DE (Walter Slaje)
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 06 06:53:00 +0000
Subject: van Buitenen's Critical Edition of Bhaskara's              Brahmasutrabhasya
In-Reply-To: <BAY110-W817457FC59B2AFA8ABB82CDD60@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <161227078913.23782.18237739664024555665.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Diwakar,

the typoskript left by Van Buitenen is with me.
Takahiro Kato, Ph.D. student, is preparing a new
edition from it
(takahiro.kato at indologie.uni-halle.de).

Best regards,

Walter

-------------------------
Prof Dr Walter Slaje
Hermann-Loens-Str. 1
D-99425 Weimar (Germany)
Tel/Fax: +49-(0)3643 501391
www.indologie.uni-halle.de

Ego ex animi mei sententia spondeo ac polliceor
me studia humanitatis impigro labore culturum et
provecturum
non sordidi lucri causa nec ad vanam captandam
gloriam,
sed quo magis veritas propagetur et lux eius, qua
salus
humani generis continetur, clarius effulgeat.
Vindobonae, die XXI. mensis Novembris MCMLXXXIII.




From acollins at GCI.NET  Wed Dec 13 19:08:14 2006
From: acollins at GCI.NET (Alfred Collins)
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 06 10:08:14 -0900
Subject: van Buitenen's Critical Edition of Bhaskara's              Brahmasutrabhasya
In-Reply-To: <20061213T105107Z_AE4F00170000@loc.gov>
Message-ID: <161227078924.23782.9976651752241961950.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

I believe this was the Bhaaskara Gitiabhaa.sya, which Ingalls' obituary to van Buitenen (in the Rocher edited papers volume) indicates he did turn over to him but was never finished.

Al Collins




From scharf at BROWN.EDU  Wed Dec 13 15:43:23 2006
From: scharf at BROWN.EDU (Peter M. Scharf)
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 06 10:43:23 -0500
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
In-Reply-To: <20061212043955.AHS36387@m4500-02.uchicago.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078918.23782.6168947273258314217.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Mathew,
Exactly what passage in Chandogya 8 contains a usage of the verb upa- 
labh?  I don't see it on a quick read nor do I find it in the TITUS  
word list.  I don't see any evidence Buddhist precursors to the ideas  
there either.  The asat of RV 10.129.1 as described by Alfred collins  
certainly implies the idea of anupalabdhi.
Peter

*********************************************************
Peter M. Scharf                           (401) 863-2720 office
Department of Classics             (401) 863-2123 dept
Brown University
PO Box 1856                               (401) 863-7484 fax
Providence, RI 02912                Scharf at brown.edu
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Classics/Scharf/
http://sanskritlibrary.org/
*********************************************************



On Dec 12, 2006, at 5:39 AM, mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU wrote:

> The passage from the Chaandogya that concerns me is
> book 8, not book 6. Here, the question
> is specifically the perception of the
> self (aatman). Now, the verb used here
> is upa-labh, and the problem that is raised
> concerns the non-apprehension, anupalabdhi, of the
> self. Though, as is well known, anupalabdhi becomes
> a widely ramified problem in later Indian philosophy,
> so far as I can determine, the use of upa-labh we
> find here is unknown throughout the Vedic corpus, including
> the Braahma.nas and Upani.sads, with the sole exception
> of this passage. The problem of whether the self
> can or cannot be the object of upa-labh is, however,
> found throughout early Buddhist literature. Given that
> Chaandogya 8 is at pains to refute a view that
> looks much like a simplified version of
> Buddhist anaatmavaada, my assumption is that this
> book of the Upani.sad is in fact a response to
> Buddhism. This, at least, seems a far more compelling
> explanation than it is to posit that early Buddhism,
> with its problematic of aatmaanupalabdhi, was inspired
> by an Upani.sadic passage that, if it is not responding
> to Buddhism, seems altogether anomalous.
>
> Matthew Kapstein
> Chicago and Paris
> Matthew T. Kapstein
> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies
> The University of Chicago Divinity School
>
> Directeur d'?tudes
> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris




From athr at LOC.GOV  Wed Dec 13 15:51:07 2006
From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher)
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 06 10:51:07 -0500
Subject: van Buitenen's Critical Edition of Bhaskara's              Brahmasutrabhasya
Message-ID: <161227078921.23782.2329368868330904646.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

I seem to remember that my revered Guru Daniel Ingalls had begun a similar project.  Did he turn it over to van Buitenen?

Allen


Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D., Senior Reference Librarian
South Asia Team, Asian Division
Library of Congress, Jefferson Building 150
101 Independence Ave., S.E.
Washington, DC 20540-4810
tel. 202-707-3732; fax 202-707-1724; athr at loc.gov
The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Library of Congress.

>>> acharyadiwakar at HOTMAIL.COM 12/12/06 10:03 PM >>>

Dear the list,

I am curious about the critical edition of Bhaaskara's Brahmasutrabhaa.sya the late J.A.B. van Buitenen was preparing. Emery R. Boose in a review article (IIJ 23) refers to this unpublished critical edition. From the later's remarks, it appears that the edition, based on nine of the eleven known manuscripts, was almost ready. 

I would be very much grateful for any information. 

Thanking you in advance,

Diwakar==========Dr. Diwakar Acharya Graduate School of LettersKyoto UniversityYoshida Honmachi, Sakyo-kuKyoto 606-8501, JapanTel.:       +81 75 753 2803 
_________________________________________________________________
Call friends with PC-to-PC calling -- FREE
http://get.live.com/messenger/overview




From richard.gombrich at BALLIOL.OX.AC.UK  Wed Dec 13 11:20:01 2006
From: richard.gombrich at BALLIOL.OX.AC.UK (Richard Gombrich)
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 06 11:20:01 +0000
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
Message-ID: <161227078915.23782.10896742438936212427.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

The posting from Prof. Christian Wedemeyer dated 9 Dec raises two  
points of fundamental importance. Since none of the subsequent  
correspondence has mentioned them, I feel constrained to do so.

1. Use of the word "know". Do we know what "the Buddha" "preached"?  
(The scare quotes are Wedemeyer's.) Except in the case of analytic  
truths, "to know" means "to follow the best hypothesis available". An  
analytic truth is just a matter of logic; e.g. "If Gombrich is  
stupider than Wedemeyer, and Wedemeyer is stupider than the Buddha,  
then Gombrich is stupider than the Buddha." Here evidence and its  
interpretation are irrelevant. The truth of empirical statements  
(whether made inside or outside academia) can however never be  
finally established. There is a conference going on in Tehran about  
whether the holocaust occurred. The evidence for it is incomparably  
stronger than that for the existence of Buddhaghosa, let alone the  
Buddha. But evidence does not speak for itself; it requires  
interpretation, and that in turn requires the use of reason and  
judgment, and the willingness to follow where they lead. There's none  
so blind as those who will not see.
	This basic epistemology has implications for pedagogy. We can tell  
our students that we cannot know anything about the Buddha, and that  
is true if one means "know with 100% certainty", but it is also  
banal. Such information as the probable date of the oldest extant  
manuscript is well worth teaching.  But if one leaves it there, isn't  
one selling them short? Why should our subject survive if all we tell  
them about what they really want to know is that it is unknowable?

2. Professional ethics. I retired from Oxford University two years  
ago, and may well be seen as a crotchety old man with outmoded  
notions. But I would like to inform my juniors that in the old days  
it was considered unethical to criticise work you had not read, and  
particularly so in a public forum. If you did something so  
unprofessional, well, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to  
virtue, and at least you did not admit to it. Professor Wedemeyer's  
wording "Presumably..." makes it perfectly clear that he does not  
even pretend to have read the works of mine which he is criticising.  
Are his students encouraged to follow his example?
	 I am, for the time being, Academic Director of the Oxford Centre  
for Buddhist Studies, and the University has just advertised a chair  
in Buddhist Studies; its holder will very likely succeed me in that  
position. If you look at the OCBS website (www.ocbs.org/) you will  
see that we are concerned with the ethos of the profession. Those who  
intend to make public criticism of works they have not read need not  
apply. I hope that others will.

What about the Buddha and the Upanishads? Since I produced easily  
accessible publications on this topic as long ago as 1990 and 1992,  
and have already posted the references in this series, I invite those  
interested to read them (and indeed my other listed works) -- and  
then to criticise them.

Richard Gombrich




From acharyadiwakar at HOTMAIL.COM  Wed Dec 13 03:03:52 2006
From: acharyadiwakar at HOTMAIL.COM (diwakar acharya)
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 06 12:03:52 +0900
Subject: van Buitenen's Critical Edition of Bhaskara's Brahmasutrabhasya
Message-ID: <161227078911.23782.1317813334356142933.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear the list,
 
I am curious about the critical edition of Bhaaskara's Brahmasutrabhaa.sya the late J.A.B. van Buitenen was preparing. Emery R. Boose in a review article (IIJ 23) refers to this unpublished critical edition. From the later's remarks, it appears that the edition, based on nine of the eleven known manuscripts, was almost ready. 
 
I would be very much grateful for any information. 
 
Thanking you in advance,
 
Diwakar==========Dr. Diwakar Acharya Graduate School of LettersKyoto UniversityYoshida Honmachi, Sakyo-kuKyoto 606-8501, JapanTel.:       +81 75 753 2803 
_________________________________________________________________
Call friends with PC-to-PC calling -- FREE
http://get.live.com/messenger/overview




From wedemeyer at UCHICAGO.EDU  Wed Dec 13 21:28:20 2006
From: wedemeyer at UCHICAGO.EDU (Christian K. Wedemeyer)
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 06 21:28:20 +0000
Subject: The Buddha and the Upanishads
Message-ID: <161227078926.23782.12614081890234854596.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Friends (including, I hope, Prof. Gombrich),

Once again, I seem to have been misconstrued as arguing a much stronger position than I meant 
to. My general penchant for enthusiastically arguing unpopular hypotheses may be partially to 
blame; or perhaps it is my unfortunate tendency to intemperence of expression. However it may 
be, this exchange has certainly shaken my naive, youthful sense that--as "Nagasena" put it (in the 
translation of "Henry Clarke Warren")--"when the wise converse, whether they become entangled 
by their opponents' arguments or whether they extricate themselves, whether they or their 
opponents convicted of error, whether their own superiority or that of their opponents is 
established, nothing in all this can make them angry." Apparently, the wise can become angry and 
to the extent that I am responsible for that, I am sorry.

It was not at all my intention to argue that Richard Gombrich is a "crotchety old man with 
outmoded notions." Indeed, for the record, I am a great fan of "Richard Gombrich" (even, one 
might say, of Richard Gombrich himself!), I have indeed read many (though unfortunately not all) 
of his published writings (some even that I have gone to great lengths to track down in obscure 
Festschriften), and I do assign them in my classes, where I and my students read them to great 
profit.

That said, a few comments are in order on Prof. Gombrich's concerns:

>1.The truth of empirical statements
>(whether made inside or outside academia) can however never be
>finally established. There is a conference going on in Tehran about
>whether the holocaust occurred. The evidence for it is incomparably
>stronger than that for the existence of Buddhaghosa, let alone the
>Buddha. But evidence does not speak for itself; it requires
>interpretation, and that in turn requires the use of reason and
>judgment, and the willingness to follow where they lead. There's none
>so blind as those who will not see.

That the invocation of the example of "Holocaust deniers" in this context is inflammatory should 
go without saying. That is a straw man: no one is claiming the Holocaust didn't happen and no 
one has claimed that we can only make assertions of things of which we have absolute certainty. I 
would very much concur with Gombrich that the evidence for the Holocaust is stronger than that 
for either Buddhaghosa or Buddha. However (and I'm quite surprised to discover that we may 
differ somewhat here), I personally think that this has important consequences for how we speak, 
write, and reason about those topics. We should be more or less circumspect, depending on how 
solid our evidence is. By the time we get back to centuries before the putative time of Christ, I feel, 
that, given the thin evidentiary record, our circumspection should be profound indeed. Note that 
"circumspection" is not in fact tantamount to "not seeing." It is, as one would expect, "looking 
around."

>	This basic epistemology has implications for pedagogy. We can tell
>our students that we cannot know anything about the Buddha, and that
>is true if one means "know with 100% certainty", but it is also
>banal. Such information as the probable date of the oldest extant
>manuscript is well worth teaching.  But if one leaves it there, isn't
>one selling them short? Why should our subject survive if all we tell
>them about what they really want to know is that it is unknowable?

With all due respect, if what my students really want to know about is the Buddha (rather than, 
say, "the Buddha") they are barking up the wrong tree and should study something else or 
somewhere else (Oxford, perhaps?!).  "Our subject" (sorry, can't resist the scare quotes) is perfectly 
entitled to survive, regardless of what misguided students may or may not want to know. Buddhist 
Studies is not Buddhist Theology that seeks to know about "the Buddha" and what he did or didn't 
teach. From an historical and cultural perspective, the Buddha has no priority--his priority is only 
relevant from within a normative, theological (or crypto-theological) perspective. We don't assume 
his divinity (or sarvaj?atva), and what he did or didn't teach is rather irrelevant to the historical 
and critical study of Buddhism. He is vastly outnumbered by the millions, if not billions, of people 
who have also spoken about and acted in accord with their own understandings of buddhadharma, 
whether that dharma be sad- or mRSaa-, or something else altogether. While it may be mildly 
interesting in a descriptive/analytic context to determine (to the extent one could) what Gotama 
did or didn't teach or know; its interest pales dramatically in comparison to the long and much 
better documented history of what others thought (or claimed they thought) Gotama taught or 
knew.

Now, the more regrettable angle:

>2. Professional ethics. I retired from Oxford University two years
>ago, and may well be seen as a crotchety old man with outmoded
>notions. But I would like to inform my juniors that in the old days
>it was considered unethical to criticise work you had not read, and
>particularly so in a public forum. 

Please see above about "crotchety old men" and let's please do think twice before jumping to 
conclusions about rash, arrogant, and unprofessional young men. I freely admit to being, not only 
Prof. Gombrich's junior, but much his inferior in learning and accomplishment (though not, it may 
seem, in civility). Still, I would expect we might be able to have a calm and reasoned conversation 
in an online forum. And that is, we might recall (pace the equivocation about "public fora"), what 
this is: this is not a refereed journal, but an electronic conversation. Thus, my sense is that 
criticism might be aired in this context based on what is specifically expressed in that forum, 
which was my intent.

For, in fact, I was not criticizing the articles to which Gombrich referred (though that might be a 
worthy project for another occasion).  I was just taking issue with how Gombrich expressed 
himself in his posting. My acknowledgement that I thought Gombrich was well aware of concerns 
such as mine was meant to imply that I thought I might have been misconstruing his thinking on 
the matter (in fact, I still wonder about this!) and was meant as an invitation to generate 
discussion of the issue--which it did, to some extent--not as a condemnation of Gombrich tout 
court.  

Gombrich specifically wrote (to which I was responding): "unless we subscribe to the view that the 
Buddha was omniscient and could therefore respond to texts which would be composed in the 
future, I do not understand how his references to important passages in the BAU etc. can fail to be 
interpreted as showing that they already existed when he preached." In my posting, I merely tried 
(though I apparently did not express myself well) to indicate that there was a perfectly 
reasonable--indeed, more historically responsible--way of understanding how "his" references 
can fail to be interpreted in the way Gombrich suggests is indubitable. That is, one might entertain 
the possibility that they were not "his" at all, that Gotama may not have preached these particular 
passages--a possibility to which I had previously assumed (based upon his published works) that 
Prof. Gombrich would readily accede. That position, it should be further noted, is the beginning of 
a line of inquiry, not the end. But I find it very strange to suggest that that hypothesis itself is 
unentertainable (as Gombrich appeared to in saying he did "not understand how. . .[it] can fail. . .). 
That, I hope it is clear, is what I was responding to--not the articles cited.  

Hence, I hope I may be acquitted of being unprofessional and hypocritical (at least for the reasons 
adduced by Prof. Gombrich).

Most graciously, Prof. Gombrich concludes by observing that:

>Oxford. . .has just advertised a chair
>in Buddhist Studies; Those who
>intend to make public criticism of works they have not read need not
>apply. I hope that others will.

Since I hope in the foregoing to have cleared myself of the charge of criticizing works I have not 
read, I should probably then thank Prof. Gombrich for the kind invitation to apply for the 
advertised chair of Buddhist Studies at Oxford. I am grateful for the courtesy. However, I am really 
quite happy in my current post; and, what's more, since I understand from my extensive reading 
of the oeuvre of a certain Oxford don-emeritus that "British higher education policy over the last 
twenty years has been an unmitigated catastrophe" and that "management studies is the only field 
at Oxford which is not short of funds," I hope that he may not take it so to heart if I don't take him 
up on his gracious offer.

Zubham astu yuSmaakam,

Christian Wedemeyer


-- 
Christian K. Wedemeyer
Assistant Professor of the History of Religions
The University of Chicago Divinity School
1025 East 58th Street
Chicago, Illinois  60637  USA




From harshadehejia at HOTMAIL.COM  Thu Dec 14 09:21:04 2006
From: harshadehejia at HOTMAIL.COM (Harsha Dehejia)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 09:21:04 +0000
Subject: Saraswati
Message-ID: <161227078933.23782.14014741381599298540.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Friends:
 
In one of the Puranic myths an account is given of how Saraswati was pursued by demons and she hid in the water and when the demons entered the water she hid in a tree and finally to save herself from the demons asked that she be transformed into a flute and a kalam (pen) so that the word would be safe.
 
Can anyone help me identify this myth and tell me which Purana it is from?
 
Season's Greetings.
 
Harsha
Prof. Harsha V. Dehejia
Professor of Indian Studies, Carleton University
Ottawa,ON. Canada.




From mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU  Thu Dec 14 15:44:36 2006
From: mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU (mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 09:44:36 -0600
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
Message-ID: <161227078942.23782.14360757445236882012.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Also note that there can be no implication
from asat to anupalabdhi, if, as seem to
be the case, anupalabdhi is not yet part
of the lexicon. My point concerns actual
terminology, and not ex post facto 
associations of ideas.

Matthew T. Kapstein
Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies
The University of Chicago Divinity School

Directeur d'?tudes
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris




From slaje at T-ONLINE.DE  Thu Dec 14 09:45:00 2006
From: slaje at T-ONLINE.DE (Walter Slaje)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 09:45:00 +0000
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
Message-ID: <161227078935.23782.13223211309213586767.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

"gruenendahl"
<gruenen at MAIL.SUB.UNI-GOETTINGEN.DE>
schrieb:

> See the electronic text on GRETIL:
> 
> http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/gretil.htm#ChandUp
> 
> 
> ChUp_8.8.4
> 
> for upalabh see also ChUp_2.22.3-4

It is worth considering that in ChU II 22,3-4
only
"upa-A-labh" occurs, which, by the semantic force
of the upasarga "A", carries an entirely
different
meaning.
I take it that on account of this difference
Limaye/Vadekar refrained from making any
cross-references from upa-labh to upa-A-labh in
their edition.

Walter Slaje

----------------------------
Prof Dr Walter Slaje
Hermann-Loens-Str. 1
D-99425 Weimar (Germany)
Tel/Fax: +49-(0)3643 501391
www.indologie.uni-halle.de

Ego ex animi mei sententia spondeo ac polliceor
me studia humanitatis impigro labore culturum et
provecturum
non sordidi lucri causa nec ad vanam captandam
gloriam,
sed quo magis veritas propagetur et lux eius, qua
salus
humani generis continetur, clarius effulgeat.
Vindobonae, die XXI. mensis Novembris MCMLXXXIII.




From gruenen at MAIL.SUB.UNI-GOETTINGEN.DE  Thu Dec 14 08:45:17 2006
From: gruenen at MAIL.SUB.UNI-GOETTINGEN.DE (gruenendahl)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 09:45:17 +0100
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
In-Reply-To: <B8BE3BD8-D3F1-4C8E-8AE2-E4915E76E309@brown.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078931.23782.12318077452512061753.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Peter M. Scharf  wrote:

> Exactly what passage in Chandogya 8 contains a usage of the verb upa- 
> labh?  I don't see it on a quick read nor do I find it in the TITUS  
> word list. 


See the electronic text on GRETIL:

http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/gretil.htm#ChandUp


ChUp_8.8.4

for upalabh see also ChUp_2.22.3-4


R. Gr?nendahl





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

Dr. Reinhold Gruenendahl
Niedersaechsische Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek
Fachreferat sued- und suedostasiatische Philologien
(Dept. of Indology)

37070 G?ttingen, Germany
Tel (+49) (0)5 51 / 39 52 83
Fax (+49) (0)5 51 / 39 23 61
gruenen at mail.sub.uni-goettingen.de

FACH-INFORMATIONEN INDOLOGIE, GOETTINGEN:
http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/fiindolo.htm
In English:
http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/fiindole.htm

GRETIL - Goettingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages
http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/gretil.htm




From swantam at ASIANETINDIA.COM  Thu Dec 14 06:30:34 2006
From: swantam at ASIANETINDIA.COM (Maheswaran Nair)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 12:00:34 +0530
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
In-Reply-To: <B8BE3BD8-D3F1-4C8E-8AE2-E4915E76E309@brown.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078928.23782.708039067125281323.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Hallo,
It is true, the 8th chapter of Chandogya does not contain a usage of the verb
upa-labh. Upasampadya, sampanno bhavati, vindate etc are used in the chapter.
K.Maheswaran Nair
University of Kerala
India


Quoting "Peter M. Scharf" <scharf at BROWN.EDU>:

> Dear Mathew,
> Exactly what passage in Chandogya 8 contains a usage of the verb
> upa-labh?  I don't see it on a quick read nor do I find it in the TITUS
> word list.  I don't see any evidence Buddhist precursors to the ideas
> there either.  The asat of RV 10.129.1 as described by Alfred collins
> certainly implies the idea of anupalabdhi.
> Peter
>
> *********************************************************
> Peter M. Scharf                           (401) 863-2720 office
> Department of Classics             (401) 863-2123 dept
> Brown University
> PO Box 1856                               (401) 863-7484 fax
> Providence, RI 02912                Scharf at brown.edu
> http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Classics/Scharf/
> http://sanskritlibrary.org/
> *********************************************************
>
>
>
> On Dec 12, 2006, at 5:39 AM, mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU wrote:
>
>> The passage from the Chaandogya that concerns me is
>> book 8, not book 6. Here, the question
>> is specifically the perception of the
>> self (aatman). Now, the verb used here
>> is upa-labh, and the problem that is raised
>> concerns the non-apprehension, anupalabdhi, of the
>> self. Though, as is well known, anupalabdhi becomes
>> a widely ramified problem in later Indian philosophy,
>> so far as I can determine, the use of upa-labh we
>> find here is unknown throughout the Vedic corpus, including
>> the Braahma.nas and Upani.sads, with the sole exception
>> of this passage. The problem of whether the self
>> can or cannot be the object of upa-labh is, however,
>> found throughout early Buddhist literature. Given that
>> Chaandogya 8 is at pains to refute a view that
>> looks much like a simplified version of
>> Buddhist anaatmavaada, my assumption is that this
>> book of the Upani.sad is in fact a response to
>> Buddhism. This, at least, seems a far more compelling
>> explanation than it is to posit that early Buddhism,
>> with its problematic of aatmaanupalabdhi, was inspired
>> by an Upani.sadic passage that, if it is not responding
>> to Buddhism, seems altogether anomalous.
>>
>> Matthew Kapstein
>> Chicago and Paris
>> Matthew T. Kapstein
>> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies
>> The University of Chicago Divinity School
>>
>> Directeur d'?tudes
>> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris




From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK  Thu Dec 14 12:52:32 2006
From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 12:52:32 +0000
Subject: Book announcement  (fwd)
Message-ID: <161227078937.23782.2442564928054446771.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>



---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Marcus Schm?cker <Marcus.Schmuecker at oeaw.ac.at>
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:05:27 +0100
Subject: Re: book announcement


New Publication of the SDN (Sammlung De Nobili)

Alex Watson, /The Self's Awareness of Itself. /Bhat,t,a Ramakantha's 
Arguments against the Buddhist Doctrine of No-Self. Wien 2006. 433p. (Euro 
43)


    For Orders* www.univie.ac.at/istb/sdn
    <http://www.univie.ac.at/istb/sdn>*







From elizabeth.demichelis at ORIEL.OX.AC.UK  Thu Dec 14 14:18:25 2006
From: elizabeth.demichelis at ORIEL.OX.AC.UK (Elizabeth De Michelis)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 14:18:25 +0000
Subject: John Marr
Message-ID: <161227078940.23782.14779841868748055149.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Esteemed colleagues,

would anyone have contact details for Dr John (Ralston) Marr, Tamil  
language and Indian art expert, formerly working at SOAS?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Elizabeth De Michelis


Dr Elizabeth De Michelis
Oriel College, Oriel Square,
Oxford, UK         OX1 4EW




From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK  Thu Dec 14 18:34:53 2006
From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 18:34:53 +0000
Subject: Schwartzberg's Historical Atlas of South Asia goes digital
Message-ID: <161227078946.23782.6792916823778548953.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

The Digital Library of South Asia, at the University of Chicago, has just 
mounted a digital version of Schwartzberg's invaluable historical atlas. 
See

 	http://dsal.uchicago.edu

under "reference resources".



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Nye <jnye at midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:54:11 -0600
Subject: Re: Schwartzberg

Dear Dominik,

[...]

We're still calling this a trial release.  A number of smallish 
improvements will be added over the next few weeks.  Some major 
improvements involving a GIS interface should be available before the 
middle of next year.

Please do announce it on INDOLOGY.

Jim




From swantam at ASIANETINDIA.COM  Thu Dec 14 18:06:08 2006
From: swantam at ASIANETINDIA.COM (Maheswaran Nair)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 06 23:36:08 +0530
Subject: The Buddha's familiarity with upanisadic ideas
In-Reply-To: <20061214094436.AHV45000@m4500-02.uchicago.edu>
Message-ID: <161227078944.23782.10990313347421015501.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Hallo,
  I now realise that as Gruenendahl pointed out, ChU 8.8.4 contains  
the word anupalabhya.My point is different.ChU 6.2.1 mentions-  
taddhaika aahurasadevedamagra aasiid....Here the asadvaada is, as  
pointed out by  Sankaracharya in his commentary, of the Buddhists. So  
Buddha might have been familiar with Upanisadic ideas.

K.Maheswaran Nair
University of Kerala


Quoting mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU:

> Also note that there can be no implication
> from asat to anupalabdhi, if, as seem to
> be the case, anupalabdhi is not yet part
> of the lexicon. My point concerns actual
> terminology, and not ex post facto
> associations of ideas.
>
> Matthew T. Kapstein
> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies
> The University of Chicago Divinity School
>
> Directeur d'?tudes
> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
>




From veerankp at GMAIL.COM  Fri Dec 15 14:36:32 2006
From: veerankp at GMAIL.COM (veeranarayana Pandurangi)
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 06 06:36:32 -0800
Subject: van Buitenen's Critical Edition of Bhaskara's              Brahmasutrabhasya
In-Reply-To: <f67f81443293.457fd10e@gci.net>
Message-ID: <161227078948.23782.1282430931821372044.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

dear freinds,
again one of my freiends is working on Madhvas gitabhasya. but it  contains
numerous referances of bhaskaras gitabhasya. we have one edition of
Gbhaskaras gitabhasya from Saravatibhavan up to 7 th chapter.. is there any
other edition of it?
veeranarayana


On 12/13/06, Alfred Collins <acollins at gci.net> wrote:
>
> I believe this was the Bhaaskara Gitiabhaa.sya, which Ingalls' obituary to
> van Buitenen (in the Rocher edited papers volume) indicates he did turn over
> to him but was never finished.
>
> Al Collins
>



-- 
V.N.K.Pandurangi
Head, Dept of Darshan,
Yoganandacharya Bhavan,
Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajsthan Sanskrita University, Madau, post
Bhankrota, Jaipur, 302026.




From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK  Fri Dec 15 15:01:26 2006
From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk)
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 06 15:01:26 +0000
Subject: van Buitenen's Critical Edition of Bhaskara's              Brahmasutrabhasya
In-Reply-To: <965fdc5f0612150636y689aee11n116e99a902fa267@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <161227078950.23782.11607278442204543874.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Bhaskara's Bhagavadanu"sayaanusara.na / Giitaabhaa.sya commentary is 
preserved in only two, only partially overlapping, manuscripts.  One is in 
Varanasi, I think, and the other, for sure, is in the Wellcome Library in 
London.  Shelf mark: MS Indic alpha 1241.  Sarada script, ff. 35--61. 
Described, with bibliographical references to van Buitenen and 2 articles 
by Raghavan, in that library's Handlist of Skt and Pkt Manuscripts, vol.1 
(1985), page 30.

Dominik


On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, veeranarayana Pandurangi wrote:

> dear freinds,
> again one of my freiends is working on Madhvas gitabhasya. but it  contains
> numerous referances of bhaskaras gitabhasya. we have one edition of
> Gbhaskaras gitabhasya from Saravatibhavan up to 7 th chapter.. is there any
> other edition of it?
> veeranarayana
>
>
> On 12/13/06, Alfred Collins <acollins at gci.net> wrote:
>> 
>> I believe this was the Bhaaskara Gitiabhaa.sya, which Ingalls' obituary to
>> van Buitenen (in the Rocher edited papers volume) indicates he did turn 
>> over
>> to him but was never finished.
>> 
>> Al Collins
>> 
>
>
>
>




From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK  Fri Dec 15 15:50:43 2006
From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk)
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 06 15:50:43 +0000
Subject: INDOLOGY website bookstore
Message-ID: <161227078953.23782.12771316585802150586.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

The bookstore on the http://indology.info/books website has been asleep 
for a couple of years.  Amazon has now introduced some new facilities to 
make this kind of thing less labour-intensive, and I've added some new 
references for the last couple of years and 2007 that may be of interest 
to list members.  See the "new" link on the above page.

Best,
Dominik




From veerankp at GMAIL.COM  Tue Dec 19 06:03:16 2006
From: veerankp at GMAIL.COM (veeranarayana Pandurangi)
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 06 11:33:16 +0530
Subject: van Buitenen's Critical Edition of Bhaskara's              Brahmasutrabhasya
In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.64.0612151456500.7944@Caraka>
Message-ID: <161227078955.23782.5080945811300690130.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

thanks. Dominik.
veeranarayana

On 12/15/06, Dominik Wujastyk <ucgadkw at ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Bhaskara's Bhagavadanu"sayaanusara.na / Giitaabhaa.sya commentary is
> preserved in only two, only partially overlapping, manuscripts.  One is in
> Varanasi, I think, and the other, for sure, is in the Wellcome Library in
> London.  Shelf mark: MS Indic alpha 1241.  Sarada script, ff. 35--61.
> Described, with bibliographical references to van Buitenen and 2 articles
> by Raghavan, in that library's Handlist of Skt and Pkt Manuscripts, vol.1
> (1985), page 30.
>
> Dominik
>
>
> On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, veeranarayana Pandurangi wrote:
>
> > dear freinds,
> > again one of my freiends is working on Madhvas gitabhasya. but it
> contains
> > numerous referances of bhaskaras gitabhasya. we have one edition of
> > Gbhaskaras gitabhasya from Saravatibhavan up to 7 th chapter.. is there
> any
> > other edition of it?
> > veeranarayana
> >
> >
> > On 12/13/06, Alfred Collins <acollins at gci.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> I believe this was the Bhaaskara Gitiabhaa.sya, which Ingalls' obituary
> to
> >> van Buitenen (in the Rocher edited papers volume) indicates he did turn
> >> over
> >> to him but was never finished.
> >>
> >> Al Collins
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>


-- 
V.N.K.Pandurangi
Head, Dept of Darshan,
Yoganandacharya Bhavan,
Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajsthan Sanskrita University, Madau, post
Bhankrota, Jaipur, 302026.




From silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU  Thu Dec 21 19:33:39 2006
From: silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU (Jonathan Silk)
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 06 11:33:39 -0800
Subject: Tibeto-logical blog of interest
Message-ID: <161227078957.23782.1298831786775711711.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

I'm sure most of us have much better things to do than read blogs. 
But there is one that is of perhaps special interest, since it is 
that of the  masterful Tibetologist Dan Martin. If, like me, you find 
pretty much everything he writes illuminating, read on:

This morning he posted what is essentially an article/work in 
progress on Armenians in Tibet, early contacts between Tibet and 
Europe, trade and missionary contact, the Fifth Dalai Lama and 
Christianity, and other points of fascination. I'd like to share the 
URL, and to pass along Dan's wish that any interested readers are 
invited to contribute their insights and information. Although he 
doesn't explicitly say so, maybe this will help contribute to the 
type of collaborative scholarship which our field(s) haven't yet 
really taken advantage of.


>http://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2006/12/mysterious-whitehead_21.html

cross-posted to H-Buddhism and Indology
-- 
Jonathan Silk
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
Center for Buddhist Studies
UCLA
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
phone: (310) 206-8235
fax:  (310) 825-8808
silk (at) humnet.ucla.edu




From silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU  Fri Dec 22 15:42:38 2006
From: silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU (Jonathan Silk)
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 06 07:42:38 -0800
Subject: maayaa-purusha
In-Reply-To: <web-40742531@uni-bonn.de>
Message-ID: <161227078963.23782.5683772245184000337.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

This does not refer to the text Eli is looking at/for, but the 
Sanskrit Word-Index to the Abhisamayalamkaraloka 
Prajnaparamitavyakhya [excuse abscene of diacritics] by Ryusei Keira 
and Noboru Ueda does list a number of occurences in the sutra itself, 
and many more in the cy. In the sutra they appear on pp 69, 72, 92, 
482, 841, 875 (Wogihara ed) --if it occurs other than as the first 
member of a compound, you'd have to look elsewhere though...
-- 
Jonathan Silk
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
Center for Buddhist Studies
UCLA
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
phone: (310) 206-8235
fax:  (310) 825-8808
silk (at) humnet.ucla.edu




From chrishaskett at YAHOO.COM  Fri Dec 22 15:51:49 2006
From: chrishaskett at YAHOO.COM (Chris Haskett)
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 06 07:51:49 -0800
Subject: maayaa-purusha
In-Reply-To: <p06230902c1b1ac6c89af@[75.1.243.19]>
Message-ID: <161227078965.23782.8322867964593642636.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Also, if you're willing to backtrack through the Tibetan, there is an electronic version of the 25,000 at www.asianclassics.org, and a quick search does turn up a dozen or so instances of sgyu ma'i skyes bu.

See KL0009-1, particularly 216.b ff & KL-0009-2 at 

http://www.asianclassics.org/research_site/download/KangSkt.html

Chris Haskett
PhD candidate
LCA, UW-Madison

Jonathan Silk <silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU> wrote: This does not refer to the text Eli is looking at/for, but the 
Sanskrit Word-Index to the Abhisamayalamkaraloka 
Prajnaparamitavyakhya [excuse abscene of diacritics] by Ryusei Keira 
and Noboru Ueda does list a number of occurences in the sutra itself, 
and many more in the cy. In the sutra they appear on pp 69, 72, 92, 
482, 841, 875 (Wogihara ed) --if it occurs other than as the first 
member of a compound, you'd have to look elsewhere though...
-- 
Jonathan Silk
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
Center for Buddhist Studies
UCLA
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
phone: (310) 206-8235
fax:  (310) 825-8808
silk (at) humnet.ucla.edu


 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 




From franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE  Fri Dec 22 12:10:12 2006
From: franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE (Eli Franco)
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 06 13:10:12 +0100
Subject: maayaa-purusha
In-Reply-To: <p06230969c1b09023e99b@[75.1.243.19]>
Message-ID: <161227078959.23782.17448176323845493557.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear friends and colleagues,
Does anyone have a digital version of the Satasahasrika Prajnaparamita?
I am trying to locate a reference to a bodhisattva as maayaa-purusha.
Many thanks in advance,
Eli Franco




From pwyzlic at UNI-BONN.DE  Fri Dec 22 15:28:22 2006
From: pwyzlic at UNI-BONN.DE (Peter Wyzlic)
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 06 16:28:22 +0100
Subject: maayaa-purusha
In-Reply-To: <20061222121015.9EC5413@server1.rz.uni-leipzig.de>
Message-ID: <161227078961.23782.7270578386120612403.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:10:12 +0100
  Eli Franco <franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE> wrote:

> Does anyone have a digital version of the Satasahasrika 
>Prajnaparamita?
> I am trying to locate a reference to a bodhisattva as 
>maayaa-purusha.

The "Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon" site 
(http://www.uwest.edu/sanskritcanon/index.html) seems to 
be preparing an online version, but it is not available at 
this moment (go to "download", "Sutra"; Satasahasrika 
appears in the list, but it is not clickable).

By the way, Edward Conze gives some references to 
mAyA-puruSa in his _Materials for a dictionary the 
Praj?ApAramitA literature_ / by Edward Conze. - Tokyo : 
Suzuki Research foundation, 1967, p. 320, s.v.
According to Conze, there are passages in the 
Astasahasrika, Pa?cavimsatisahasrika and Saptasatika (one 
of the Pa?cavimsati- references seems to correspond to the 
Satasahasrika).

Hope it helps
Peter Wyzlic

--
Indologisches Seminar der
Universit?t Bonn
Regina-Pacis-Weg 7
D-53113 Bonn
Deutschland / Germany




From j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM  Sat Dec 23 13:23:11 2006
From: j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM (Jan E.M. Houben)
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 06 05:23:11 -0800
Subject: flattering metaphors ...
Message-ID: <161227078968.23782.7970143587356617868.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

The following request reached the Indology
Committee, I forward it to the list. 

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

Dear Committee,

I am a Ph. D. candidate at Columbia University, 
Italian Department. I am 
writing a dissertation on Dante's Inferno and I 
would need the help of 
the scholars of your forum. As you know in 
Dante's Hell we find very 
explicit images and expressions. I would need to 
know if in Oriental 
languages (especially Sanskrit) you find any 
equivalent of the vulgar 
contumely addressed to flatters that we find in 
all Europena languages, 
which associate the act of flattering to 
excrements (brown noser, leche 
cul, lame culos, Arschkriecher etc.) After a long

search I found a carme 
from Catullus (98) which uses the expression 
"culos lingere" applied to 
a "verbosus"  man. This is a great piece of 
evidence that the expression 
existed in Latin in association to flattery and 
that it is indeed 
ancient. But I don't know if any similar 
expression exists in Greek, 
Sanskrit or Oriental languages. Sanskrit would be

of the highest 
importance for me. Do you happen to know about 
the existence of a such 
an expression? Any help would be most 
appreciated!!!!!
Thank you very much in advance.

Daniela Castelli



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 




From franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE  Sat Dec 23 16:59:11 2006
From: franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE (franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE)
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 06 17:59:11 +0100
Subject: maayaapurusha
In-Reply-To: <20061223132311.41827.qmail@web30110.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <161227078970.23782.16695363770570247656.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Friends,
Many thanks for the references. They are very helpful indeed. I am trying to
find out the difference between maayaa-purusha and nirmitika-purusha, assuming
that there is a difference (both are mentioned in Mahayanasutras as men
magically created by the Buddhas, etc.). Nagarjuna mentions both in the
beginning of the Vigrahavyavartani as if they were similar, but not identical.
If anyone knows more about it, I would be grateful for any suggestions.
All the best,
Eli Franco

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.




From vasubandhu at EARTHLINK.NET  Sun Dec 24 09:21:35 2006
From: vasubandhu at EARTHLINK.NET (Dan Lusthaus)
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 06 04:21:35 -0500
Subject: maayaapurusha
Message-ID: <161227078973.23782.6622514627935764895.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

Dear Eli,

While, offhand, I can't offer a source that discusses this distinction, I
would imagine it might derive from cosmological distinctions made in some
Pali sources between manomaya and nimmanarati devas. The former are
associated with the Radiance (aabhassara) loka, considered, especially in
the earlier sources, as the highest deva realm, while the latter are still
explicitly in the kaama-loka (above Tusita and below the
Paranimmita-vasavattii devas). Nimmana and nimmita sometimes get conflated
in Pali (cf. e.g., PTS Pali-Eng Dict, p. 368, re: nimitta, Nimmaniyati,
etc.).

B.C. Law, _Heaven and Hell in Buddhist Perspective_ (Varanasi: Pilgrims
Publishing, 2004 rpt of 1925 ed) gives a cursory account of these deva
realms and their inhabitants, with some references to canonical and
commentarial sources.

The Abhidharmakosa-bhasya discusses mayapurusa somewhere around 3:9 or 3:10,
I believe, but I don't remember any discussion of nirmitika-purusa there.

best,
Dan Lusthaus


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE>
To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk>
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 11:59 AM
Subject: maayaapurusha


Dear Friends,
Many thanks for the references. They are very helpful indeed. I am trying to
find out the difference between maayaa-purusha and nirmitika-purusha,
assuming
that there is a difference (both are mentioned in Mahayanasutras as men
magically created by the Buddhas, etc.). Nagarjuna mentions both in the
beginning of the Vigrahavyavartani as if they were similar, but not
identical.
If anyone knows more about it, I would be grateful for any suggestions.
All the best,
Eli Franco




From rsalomon at U.WASHINGTON.EDU  Tue Dec 26 19:30:40 2006
From: rsalomon at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Richard Salomon)
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 06 11:30:40 -0800
Subject: flattering metaphors ...
Message-ID: <161227078975.23782.7348753635369878003.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

I don't know of any such offhand, but if there is, a likely source would be 
Ksemendra's satires.

Rich Salomon

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jan E.M. Houben" <j_e_m_houben at YAHOO.COM>
To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk>
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 5:23 AM
Subject: flattering metaphors ...


> The following request reached the Indology
> Committee, I forward it to the list.
>
> *** *** *** *** ***
>
> Dear Committee,
>
> I am a Ph. D. candidate at Columbia University,
> Italian Department. I am
> writing a dissertation on Dante's Inferno and I
> would need the help of
> the scholars of your forum. As you know in
> Dante's Hell we find very
> explicit images and expressions. I would need to
> know if in Oriental
> languages (especially Sanskrit) you find any
> equivalent of the vulgar
> contumely addressed to flatters that we find in
> all Europena languages,
> which associate the act of flattering to
> excrements (brown noser, leche
> cul, lame culos, Arschkriecher etc.) After a long
>
> search I found a carme
> from Catullus (98) which uses the expression
> "culos lingere" applied to
> a "verbosus"  man. This is a great piece of
> evidence that the expression
> existed in Latin in association to flattery and
> that it is indeed
> ancient. But I don't know if any similar
> expression exists in Greek,
> Sanskrit or Oriental languages. Sanskrit would be
>
> of the highest
> importance for me. Do you happen to know about
> the existence of a such
> an expression? Any help would be most
> appreciated!!!!!
> Thank you very much in advance.
>
> Daniela Castelli
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> 




From jean.fezas at WANADOO.FR  Wed Dec 27 10:02:35 2006
From: jean.fezas at WANADOO.FR (Jean FEZAS)
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 06 11:02:35 +0100
Subject: flattering metaphors ...
Message-ID: <161227078978.23782.5039423750468132587.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

In modern Nepali*, the word loTe** (meaning 'carrier of the loTA') is commonly used as an equivalent of the french 'l?che-cul'. The loTA is the water-pot made of copper used for ablutions after defecation***. The idea, it seems, is that the flatterer cleans (or helps to clean) the flattered of the stinking (and, in the hindu context, extremely impure) remnants of his activity.

J.F.
*RL Turner, dictionary of the nepali language p. 562 sv loTA renvoie ? lohoTA (ibid. 563b) 'A small metal water-pot'; ** The final -e is used in a contemptuous manner in Nepali (cf. sAle, etc.); *** Defecation is ritually obligatory for a hindu before the other occupations of the day; the use of water for purification after 'answering the calls of nature' is regulated by the smRti texts (Manu, etc.).

> Message du 26/12/06 23:33
> De : "Richard Salomon" 
> A : INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
> Copie ? : 
> Objet : Re: flattering metaphors ...
> 
> I don't know of any such offhand, but if there is, a likely source would be 
> Ksemendra's satires.
> 
> Rich Salomon
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jan E.M. Houben" 
> To: 
> Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 5:23 AM
> Subject: flattering metaphors ...
> 
> 
> > The following request reached the Indology
> > Committee, I forward it to the list.
> >
> > *** *** *** *** ***
> >
> > Dear Committee,
> >
> > I am a Ph. D. candidate at Columbia University,
> > Italian Department. I am
> > writing a dissertation on Dante's Inferno and I
> > would need the help of
> > the scholars of your forum. As you know in
> > Dante's Hell we find very
> > explicit images and expressions. I would need to
> > know if in Oriental
> > languages (especially Sanskrit) you find any
> > equivalent of the vulgar
> > contumely addressed to flatters that we find in
> > all Europena languages,
> > which associate the act of flattering to
> > excrements (brown noser, leche
> > cul, lame culos, Arschkriecher etc.) After a long
> >
> > search I found a carme
> > from Catullus (98) which uses the expression
> > "culos lingere" applied to
> > a "verbosus" man. This is a great piece of
> > evidence that the expression
> > existed in Latin in association to flattery and
> > that it is indeed
> > ancient. But I don't know if any similar
> > expression exists in Greek,
> > Sanskrit or Oriental languages. Sanskrit would be
> >
> > of the highest
> > importance for me. Do you happen to know about
> > the existence of a such
> > an expression? Any help would be most
> > appreciated!!!!!
> > Thank you very much in advance.
> >
> > Daniela Castelli
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > 
> 
>




From jhakgirish at YAHOO.COM  Sun Dec 31 16:02:22 2006
From: jhakgirish at YAHOO.COM (girish jha)
Date: Sun, 31 Dec 06 08:02:22 -0800
Subject: Greetings.
Message-ID: <161227078980.23782.7939365508791291402.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io>

                                GREETINGS
Dear  sir,
Accept   my  very best wishes for a  happy 
,prosperous, and  spiritual  new  year.
        Vasundhar&#257;  &#347;asyamay&#299; 
suramy&#257;  
          Pus&#803;paih&#803;  praphullair 
madhuraih&#803;&#803;  phalai&#347; ca.
          G&#257;yantu sadbh&#257;vadhan&#257; 
jan&#257;&#347;  ca 
           Navam&#803; sakhe man&#729;galam astu
vars&#803;&#803;&#803;am&#803;. 
Regards,
Sincerely
GIRISH  K.  JHA  DEPT  OF  SANSKRIT  PATNA  UNIVERSITY
 PATNA  800005
INDIA
   
                                

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