[INDOLOGY] Amartya Sen and Nalanda

Tue Jul 14 20:03:58 UTC 2015

To quote from Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, 2002, p. 162:

"... Their intellectual level was quite forbidding: "Of those from
abroad who wished to enter the schools of discussion the majority,
beaten by the difficulties of the problems, withdrew; and those who were
deeply versed in old and modern learning were admitted, only two
or three out of ten succeeding." This statement of Hsuan-tsang does not
prove a formal Matriculation Examination as has been suggested, rather a
testing or more likely self-testing of prospective students; those who
felt inadequate withdrew. For Vikramasila, Tibetan sources suggest that
the "gate scholars" (dvara-pandita) guarded the admission
process."

(The "suggestion" to which Scharfe refers comes from Mookerji,
Education, p. 564, but there already seems to be an older disagreement
on how to interpret Xuanzang at this point, as Scharfe also cites St.
Julien and Watters.)

There are references to a kind of test, or entrance rite, but I would
agree with Jonathan that there is no solid basis for "knowing" about
admission processes for study at Nalanda -- what has been written about
this comes from Yijing or Xuanzang, supplemented with accounts found in
later Tibetan historiographies (Tāranātha, for instance). And gaps are
filled in with some speculation, as Scharfe's account demonstrates.

But to what degree Xuanzang's or Tāranātha's accounts might have been
filtered by the perspectives of the respective authors, or, in the case
of Chinese pilgrims, processes of cultural translation -- narrating
about Indian affairs in ways a Chinese target audience could understand,
possibly tacitly translating social categories --, is an open question.
A really interesting one, though!

Best regards, Birgit Kellner

Am 14.07.2015 um 10:33 schrieb Walter Slaje:
>> "entry qualifications"? If Sen knows this, it is a new discovery. I
> don't think anyone knows anything about how 'students' were granted
> 'admission' to 'study' at Nalanda. The entire presentation of Nalanda as
> a 'university' with 'students' who come to 'study' there is, to my mind,
> fantastical.
> 
> Is not the office of intellectually high-ranking dvārapālas, who were to
> decide about admission to Buddhist centres of learning of the Nālandā
> calibre,  mentioned in foreign pilgrims' accounts ? Their function would
> have been to test the mental skills of aspirants. I have only a very
> faint memory, certainly dating back more than thirty years, of having
> read about that in Chinese and/or Tibetan accounts. I am almost sure
> that for instance Śāntarakṣita, too, did hold such a position. Unless
> the function of a monastic dvārapāla was not entirely different from the
> one I am (hopefully correctly) recalling, it was probably an office of
> such a kind Sen might have borne in mind when writing about "entry
> qualifications".
> 
> Regards,
> WS
> 
> -----------------------------
> Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
> Hermann-Löns-Str. 1
> D-99425 Weimar
> Deutschland
> 
> 
> 2015-07-14 9:15 GMT+02:00 Jonathan Silk <kauzeya at gmail.com
> <mailto:kauzeya at gmail.com>>:
> 
>     Thank you Patrick! From the first: "Academics are good at
>     deconstructing everyone’s privileges but their own."
>     Never a truer word was spoken!
> 
>     Although it goes back a few days, may I take this opportunity also
>     briefly to respond to Andrew's worthwhile question: "Maybe Jonathan
>     can tell us what struck him as false, fantastic, ignorant, etc., as
>     opposed to hyperselective."?
> 
>     A catalog is not appropriate, and I am well aware that Sen is not an
>     Indologist (although one might think that it is not very hard to run
>     such a piece by a friend or colleague who is before one publishes), but:
> 
>     "As an institution of higher learning, where the entry
>     qualifications were high, Nalanda was supported by a network of
>     other educational organizations that
> 
>     provided information about Nalanda and also helped to prepare
>     students for studying there."
> 
> 
>     "entry qualifications"? If Sen knows this, it is a new discovery. I
>     don't think anyone knows anything about how 'students' were granted
>     'admission' to 'study' at Nalanda. The entire presentation of
>     Nalanda as a 'university' with 'students' who come to 'study' there
>     is, to my mind, fantastical. This spirit permeates the piece. 
> 
> 
>     "Special care was taken to demolish the beautiful statues of Buddha
>     and other Buddhist figures that were spread across the campus."
> 
> 
>     Setting aside 'campus', I don't think again that there is any
>     evidence for this, and rather, it seems to me that when monasteries
>     were sacked in North India the goal was almost entirely economic.
>     The 'beautiful statues' were often made of precious substances or
>     encrusted with jewels; my guess--but it is nothing more than
>     that--is that there is at least a whiff of some idea that one might
>     connect this sack of Nalanda with the destruction of the Bamiyan
>     Buddhas, which is historically, and typologically, an entirely
>     unrelated event.
> 
>     Birgit has already referred much more authoritatively than I could
>     to the discussion of debate; I have nothing to add.
> 
> 
>     One more:
> 
> 
>     "The issue of the spread of knowledge was raised in a conversation
>     in the seventh century when Xuan Zang completed his studies and
> 
>     was considering going back to China. The professors at Nalanda asked
>     Xuan Zang to stay on as a member of the faculty."
> 
> 
>     The professors? The faculty? Completed his studies? Andrew would
>     perhaps not characterize this as fantastic, but I think it
>     fundamentally and entirely misrepresents the very nature of Nalanda,
>     and plops it right down in the European context to which Sen wishes
>     to equate the Indian institution.
> 
> 
>     Finally, and unrelated, a random question: is it just because he
>     thinks his NYRB readers will expect it that Sen refers to Lokesh
>     Chandra as Chandra? It's one name, LokeshChandra, right?!
> 
> 
>     I would like to sincerely thank the colleagues who have helped place
>     this discussion in the wider context, of which I was entirely
>     ignorant, of contemporary Indian politics. It is an interesting, but
>     depressing, story, which unfortunately seems to hold serious lessons
>     for those of us in Europe also dealing with State control over
>     education and resources.
> 
> 
>     Jonathan
> 
> 
>     On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 7:23 AM, Patrick Olivelle
>     <jpo at uts.cc.utexas.edu <mailto:jpo at uts.cc.utexas.edu>> wrote:
> 
>         Writing from my temporary home in Delhi, those of you interested
>         in the Amartya Sen and Nalanda University fiasco, my profitably
>         read these two essays. The first is by a friend, Pratap Bhanu
>         Mehta (who taught at Harvard). He is a very incisive and
>         insightful public intellectual and analyst of Indian politics
>         and society.
> 
>         http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/nalanda-is-a-syndrome/99/
> 
>         http://thewire.in/2015/07/13/goodbye-sen-welcome-yeo/
> 
>         With best wishes from monsoon soaked Delhi,
> 
>         Patrick
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> 
> 
> 
>     -- 
>     J. Silk
>     Leiden University
>     Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
>     Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
>     2311 BZ Leiden
>     The Netherlands
> 
>     copies of my publications may be found at
>     http://www.buddhismandsocialjustice.com/silk_publications.html
> 
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-- 
----------
Prof. Dr. Birgit Kellner
Chair of Buddhist Studies
Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context - The
Dynamics of Transculturality"
University of Heidelberg
Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstraße 2, Building 4400
D-69115 Heidelberg
Phone: +49(0)6221 - 54 4301 (Office Ina Chebbi: 4363)
Fax: +49(0)6221 - 54 4012