[INDOLOGY] Publication Announcement

Wed Dec 18 03:44:43 UTC 2013

Though, Vishnu Purana comes to mind, in which, as I recall, the Buddha is
presented as missleading people against the Veda, and Jains don't fare much
better either.
On Dec 17, 2013 9:25 PM, "Aleksandar Uskokov" <uskokov at uchicago.edu> wrote:

> Yes, but Gita's syncretism is almost fully inclusive, it appears to me.
> and vague--no one is openly denied place, except for the "asuras". With
> Sanatana and Jiva Goswamis, we see a worldview of progress towards Krishna
> in which advaitins fit, though not high on the ladder, but not Buddhist,
> Jains etc. This seems similar to what Vijnanabhiksu and Madhusudana were
> doing, with the order reversed. Brihad-Bhagavatamrita does read like a
> project of "Unifying Hinduism" if we have in view the milieu in which it
> was written -- Jains were not gone, Muslims were the rulers, sometimes even
> temple patrons, but they are not "on the way to Krishna". There is, in
> other words, an attempt of delimiting the borders of the orthodox.
>
> Kind regards
> Aleksandar
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 8:57 PM, Howard Resnick <hr at ivs.edu> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for this great question. Of course one might say that the Gita
>> itself is famously syncretistic, though certainly not metaphysically
>> relativistic. We do have five occurences of 'brahma-nirvana', along with
>> frequent, almost proto-Sankara references to Brahman, such as 13.31: "When
>> one perceives that the state of separate beings stands as one, just from
>> that one then advances to the brahman expansion." (my translation)
>> All the best,
>> Howard
>>
>> On Dec 17, 2013, at 6:33 PM, Aleksandar Uskokov <uskokov at uchicago.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> It is, nevetheless, interesting to see Vaishnavas writing at roughly the
>> same time as Vijnanabhiksu, Sanatana Goswami for instance, in his Brhad
>> Bhagavatamrta, presenting a path in which those who we would classify as
>> Hindus today find a place in the progression towards Krishna, and others --
>> Buddhists, Jains, what to say of Muslims -- do not. Do we see such schemes
>> before the 16th century? If not, the question is, what has changed to allow
>> for such a paradigm.
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Aleksandar
>> On Dec 17, 2013 7:00 PM, "Howard Resnick" <hr at ivs.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Thank you Andrew, and congratulations on your prize-winning publication.
>>> Forgive me for commenting based on the blurb, but I assume it to be
>>> accurate.
>>> "…thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga,
>>> along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as belonging to a
>>> single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as
>>> separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers
>>> leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality."
>>>  This is certainly true in the case of some thinkers, and these
>>> thinkers did eventually emerge as powerful shapers of what one might call
>>> unified Hindu thought.
>>>  It bears mentioning that some of the involuntarily "unified"
>>> communities, certainly strict Vaishnava groups, perceived this development
>>> with something akin to theological horror. Indeed the greatest Vaishanva
>>> Vedantists, including Ramanuja, Madhva, and Baladeva, explicitly sought to
>>> refute the notion that all paths lead as rivers into the ocean of Brahman,
>>> unless by that one meant Krishna as param brahman (Gita 10.12)
>>>  Thus for centuries there has been strong tension, and theological
>>> battles, between on the one hand the unifying Hindu view, including what
>>> Halbfass called the "Neo-Hindu" thought of Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan etc,
>>> with their roots in Sankara et all, and on the other hand the various
>>> Vaishnava traditions including the Sri Vaishnava followers of Ramanuja, the
>>> Dvaita-vadi followers of Madhva, and the Gaudiya Vaishnava followers of
>>> Caitanya.
>>>  I present all this not as an argument against your thesis, which I
>>> basically accept, but rather to elicit your learned view on the matter.
>>> Thanks!
>>> Howard
>>>
>>>
>>> On Dec 17, 2013, at 2:07 PM, Andrew Nicholson <
>>> andrew.nicholson at stonybrook.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>  Dear list members,
>>>
>>> I am pleased to announce that my first book, *Unifying Hinduism:
>>> Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, *is now
>>> available in an affordable paperback edition from Columbia University Press.
>>>
>>> In addition, if you enter the discount code UNINIC when ordering the
>>> paperback edition from the Columbia University Press website you will
>>> receive $8.40 off the normal list price of $28.
>>>
>>> For more information on the contents of the book, please click on the
>>> link or see below.
>>>
>>> http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14986-0/
>>>
>>> Warmest season's greetings,
>>> Andrew
>>> _____________________________________
>>> Andrew J. Nicholson
>>> Associate Professor
>>> SUNY Stony Brook
>>> Stony Brook, NY 11794-5343  USA
>>> Tel: (631) 632-4030  Fax: (631) 632-4098
>>> http://sbsuny.academia.edu/AndrewNicholson
>>>
>>> --------
>>> Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History
>>> Paper, 280 pages,
>>> ISBN: 978-0-231-14987-7
>>> $28.00 / £19.50
>>>
>>> *Winner of the Book Award for Best First Book in the History of
>>> Religions, American Academy of Religion*
>>>
>>> Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of
>>> belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British
>>> imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although
>>> a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its
>>> roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to
>>> seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies
>>> of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva,
>>> and Sakti, as belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead
>>> of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned
>>> them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate
>>> reality.
>>>
>>> Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early
>>> modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana
>>> Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta
>>> philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project
>>> paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda,
>>> Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all
>>> world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson
>>> also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and
>>> dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and
>>> heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>

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