[INDOLOGY] J?ti as Caste in Ny?ya?

Fri Jun 17 04:32:40 UTC 2016

The concept of gotva was brought in by the 'originator of the thread' Prof.
Davis himself, not by me. He used the English translation of it,
'cow-ness'.

The point I was making was that for naiyaayikas , 'cow-ness' is similar
to 'pot-ness'. We can extend this and use words  like pencilness and
carness too.

 If  braamhaNatva (brahminness)  is taken only as similar to cowness, it
leads to the ideas such as 'the varnas have been viewed as similar to
biological species'. But in fact, brahminness is viewed as similar to
carness and pencilness.

If one resorts to sources of knowledge other than empirical observation or
direct perception to substantiate the '-ness' of a certain group of
entities, it shows that one has an understanding that commonality of that
group of entities is not an empirically verifiable or directly perceivable
one.

If one lists empirically verifiable or directly perceivable features to
identify the common identity of a group of entities, then one need not and
does not usually resort to any other source of knowledge as the Vedas for
that purpose.

Prof. Aklujkar pointed out the difference between jaati of grammarians
which is the commonality in the meanings of words denoting entities or the
meaning of the word denoting the group of entities and jaati of the
naiyaayikas which is the commonality in the entities.

On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 12:48 AM, rajam <rajam at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Thanks to Professor Paturi for touching on the concept of “gotva.”
>
> May I ask a naive question: What is the basic semantics of the
> word “gotva?” I’m familiar with “gotra.”
>
> Thanks and regards,
> rajam
>
>
> On Jun 16, 2016, at 11:51 AM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Correction:
> I typed:
> 3. Those mentioned by Jayanta are not saying BraahmaNatva etc. are *not
> like *gotva etc. They are saying exactly the opposite. They are saying
> 'because braahmanatva etc. are not like gotva etc. the validity of what all
> Brahmins have in common can be verified / known only through a different
> source of knowledge than the one that can establish what all cows have in
> common.
>
> I wanted to say:
>
> 3. Those mentioned by Jayanta are not saying BraahmaNatva etc. are *like
> gotva *etc. They are saying exactly the opposite. They are saying
> 'because braahmanatva etc. are not like gotva etc. the validity of what all
> Brahmins have in common can be verified / known only through a different
> source of knowledge than the one that can establish what all cows have in
> common.
>
> On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 12:19 AM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 1. While the discussion of Jayanta is mentioned to be on Varnas, the
>> title of the post /thread has 'caste' in it. Since it is now well
>> established that these two are two different categories /concepts, we
>> might need to be careful about this distinction.
>>
>> 2. For Nyaya, gotva is as much a jaati as  ghaTatva is jaati.
>> ghaTatvajaati is as much empirically observable and directly perceivable as
>> gotvajaati.
>>
>> 3. Those mentioned by Jayanta are not saying BraahmaNatva etc. are not
>> like gotva etc. They are saying exactly the opposite. They are saying
>> 'because braahmanatva etc. are not like gotva etc. the validity of what all
>> Brahmins have in common can be verified / known only through a different
>> source of knowledge than the one that can establish what all cows have in
>> common.
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 10:10 PM, Johannes Bronkhorst <
>> johannes.bronkhorst at unil.ch> wrote:
>>
>>> Vincent Eltschinger’s *« Caste » et philosophie bouddhique* (Vienna
>>> 2000) seems relevant in this connection. An English version of this book is
>>> also available:
>>>
>>> *Caste and Buddhist Philosophy: Continuity of Some Buddhist Arguments
>>> Against the Realist Interpretation of Social Denominations* (Motilal
>>> Banarsidass 2012)
>>> Johannes
>>>
>>> On 16 juin 2016, at 18:37, rajam <rajam at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Many thanks to the originator of this thread!
>>>
>>> Right now, I just want to register the fact that I’m very much
>>> interested in this topic.
>>>
>>> Last year (May 2015), I had a publication (in Tamil) about references
>>> to, or a lack there of, “jāti” and “caste” (as we understand it today) in
>>> Old Tamil literature/grammar, also known as Sangam literature/grammar.
>>>
>>> I don’t know how many of you are aware of the fact that the English
>>> word “caste” has its origin in the Portuguese word “casta,” which was first
>>> recorded in *Arte da Lingua Malabar* written by Fr. Henrique Henriques
>>> in the mid-16th century.
>>>
>>> If one wants to dig deep into the understanding of the terms such as
>>> “jāti” and “caste” … one has to have a minimal understanding of the origins
>>> of the Western contact with India, which happened in the early 16-th
>>> century through Portuguese arrival in South India.
>>>
>>> Thanks and regards,
>>> V.S.Rajam
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 16, 2016, at 8:53 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Don,
>>>
>>> This interests me a lot, and I'd be grateful to read what you might
>>> write about it in future.  It's on my back-burner, but I've long wondered
>>> whether Sanskritic narratives about jati and varna can be thought about in
>>> ways similar to eighteenth and nineteenth century European narratives about
>>> races and species.  Were people of different varnas formally considered to
>>> be of different "species?"   It's a bit shocking to think in these terms,
>>> but I've been wondering about it.  If you ever put flesh on these bones,
>>> one way or another, or can point me to existing discussions on this, I'd be
>>> really interested.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Dominik
>>>
>>> --
>>> Professor Dominik Wujastyk*
>>> <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
>>> Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
>>> Department of History and Classics
>>> <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
>>> University of Alberta, Canada
>>>
>>> On 16 June 2016 at 08:53, Donald R Davis <drdj at austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>>>
>>>> I would be grateful for additional references to an argument mentioned
>>>> in Jayanta Bhatta’s *Āgamaḍambara* 4.143-4 (in Dezso’s edition in the
>>>> Clay series).  The question is whether the *jāti* of Brahmins, etc. is
>>>> like the *jāti* of cow-ness, etc. in being empirically observable or
>>>> directly perceivable.  Jayanta refers to those who say that verbal/textual
>>>> testimony alone (*śabdamātreṇa*) establishes the four-*varṇa* system.
>>>> This prefigures an argument made in Vijñāneśvara’s *Mitākṣarā* (on Yaj
>>>> 1.90) where the same distinction is drawn to refute an objection.
>>>>
>>>> I assumed Jayanta would have made a similar argument in his *
>>>> Nyāyamañjarī*, but I have not been able to locate it (probably because
>>>> I barely know the Nyāya literature).  If anyone could point me toward other
>>>> instances of this issue, whether in original sources or contemporary
>>>> research, I’d appreciate it.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Don Davis
>>>> Dept of Asian Studies
>>>> University of Texas at Austin
>>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Nagaraj Paturi
>>
>> Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.
>>
>> Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies
>>
>> FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,
>>
>> (Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Nagaraj Paturi
>
> Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.
>
> Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies
>
> FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,
>
> (Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )
>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )

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