[INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman

[Madhav Deshpande]

While there was no historical awareness in pre-modern India in the modern
sense of history, many genealogies of medieval kings (including the
Bhosales of Maharashtra) begin with the coronation of Yudhishthira, and so
they are treating the epic and puranic lists as historical in their own
understanding of history.

Madhav Deshpande


On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Bijlert, V.A. van <v.a.van.bijlert at vu.nl>
wrote:

>  Do you know of any other source in the nineteenth and early twentieth
> century that Hindu propagandists could have used? Is there any early
> pre-modern or even pre-islamic discussion in Indian thought about the
> Mahabharata and Ramayana as accurate depictions of historical facts?
>
>   ------------------------------
>
> Dr. Victor A. van Bijlert
>
> Associate professor Religious Studies
>
> Department of Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Study of Religions
>
> Faculty of Theology, VU University
>
> De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>
> v.a.van.bijlert at vu.nl
>
> +31613184203
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* Howard Resnick [hr at ivs.edu]
> *Sent:* Sunday, July 13, 2014 1:49 PM
> *To:* Bijlert, V.A. van
> *Cc:* Indology List
> *Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman
>
>  Can we really attribute to modern Christian influence the Hindu belief
> in Mahabharata and Ramayana as sacred history, apart from the many other
> meanings of the texts?
>
>
>  On Jul 13, 2014, at 7:43 AM, Bijlert, V.A. van <v.a.van.bijlert at vu.nl>
> wrote:
>
>   It seems to me there is a task for hermeneutics rather than pure
> philological indology. We are dealing with rather simplistic views of what
> the Mahabharata and Ramayana (and other puranas as well?) represent. The
> idea that these texts are historical seems to derive from the rather
> fundamentalist evangelical christian view of the Bible as containing
> undiluted historical truth. Hindus since the nineteenth century were
> confronted with this view propounded by missionaries and as a reaction
> claimed that their own Sanskrit texts were also historical. In christian
> hermeneutics and Biblical philology as indeed in theology such simplistic
> historical views have long been discarded. But apparently not so among some
> Hindus with regard to epics and the puranas.
> Victor van Bijlert
>
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> Dr. Victor A. van Bijlert
>  Associate professor Religious Studies
>  Department of Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Study of Religions
>  Faculty of Theology, VU University
>  De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>  v.a.van.bijlert at vu.nl
>  +31613184203
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-- 
Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor of Sanskrit and Linguistics
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
202 South Thayer Street, Suite 6111
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608, USA


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