Something wrong with the WSC?

[John Brockington]

Ferenc Ruzsa wrote:

> Friends,
>
> I am not allowed to speak at the 13th World Sanskrit Conference in 
> Edinburgh. This might seem a purely personal affair [and it is: living 
> in Budapest, it is not exactly nice to be cut off from an important 
> forum of communication with the scholarly community], but perhaps it 
> does have some general interest as well.
>
> 1. I offered a paper in which I intended to disprove the generally 
> accepted view according to which the cosmogonical myth of the 
> Puru.sa-suukta is Indo-European inheritance.
> 2. It was rejected – no reason given. 

This second statement is not accurate.  Professor Ruzsa was informed 
that "it was judged that the subject matter of your abstract "Is the 
Cosmic Giant an IE myth?" was not sufficiently relevant to the concerns 
of a World Sanskrit Conference to be suitable for presentation at the 
13th WSC; had we been organising a conference of Indo-European studies 
we would no doubt have welcomed it warmly (it is an indication of its 
nature that the only reference in your abstract was to Bruce Lincoln's 
Myth, Cosmos and Society)."

Professor Ruzsa is of course still welcome to attend the conference like 
anyone else.

John Brockington


Professor J. L. Brockington
Secretary General, International Association of Sanskrit Studies
Asian Studies
7-8 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh EH8 9LW