[INDOLOGY] “ideodiversity as a planetary value”

Jan E.M. Houben jemhouben at gmail.com
Wed Aug 15 11:36:56 UTC 2018


“ideodiversity as a planetary value”



Although I participated in the WSC mega-Sanskrit-conference in Vancouver, I
missed the stormy event to which Dr. Farkhondeh and others refer. I
therefore thank Dr. Audrey Truschke, Dr. Iris Farkhondeh and Dr. Ananya
Vajpeyi for sharing and expressing their trying experiences and their
well-considered positions. Since a lack of understanding and communication
in combination with deep emotions is evidently a part of the problem, it
could be useful to try to express their main points *also* in classical
Sanskrit which was, from its post-Pāṇinian beginnings onwards, a language
of communication and emancipation shaped to a large extent *also* by
Buddhist thinkers and scholars, a language which was for the first time in
human history easily, quickly, widely and reliably accessible for learning,
debate and discussion, in just 6 months, by anyone willing to study one of
the available grammars  –

see, inter alia, section 2 in my

"Linguistic Paradox and Diglossia:

the emergence of Sanskrit and Sanskritic language in Ancient India"

www.degruyter.com/view/j/opli.2018.4.issue-1/opli-2018-0001/opli-2018-0001.xml?format=INT

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2018-0001



To be taken into account in the discussion is that what some of us can
study as just “the past” gone by (*at**ī**ta*) to which we have the full
right to freely apply *pratyak**ṣa* (attestable text passages) and
*anumāna*-based
exegesis, may be for others knowledge that arrives to us from the elders (
*ā-**gama*) for which we have the full right to support it enthusiastically
through *pratyak**ṣ**a* and *anu**māna* – which is what usually happens in
our academic traditions as well, the paradigm being primordial and the
perceptual and inferential being supportive as long as it goes: Alexandre
Koyré, Thomas Kuhn, Randall Collins and other historians of science.



The impasse to which the opposition between those emphasizing *ā**gama* and
those emphasizing* pratyak**ṣa* and *anumāna* (in ancient India: Buddhists
but also early Sāṁkhya thinkers: www.academia.edu/6171052) will sooner or
later lead will remain insurmountable, unless both parties become aware of,
and are willing to appreciate, the very plurality of *āgama*. (This does
not imply a full-fledged relativity of all *āgama*: the Human Rights –
*mānavādhikārāḥ
*www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Language.aspx?LangID=skt* –* are an obvious
candidate as widely acceptable bottom-line.) As much as it is undesirable
to emphasize one-sidedly *anumāna *(*kiyad vā śakyam unnetum  svatarkam
anudhāvatā*, at the conclusion of the ancient commentary on the
Vākyapadīya), it is also undesirable to emphasize one-sidedly one’s own
traditional instructions (*aitihya*) without attempting an empathic study
of other traditions as well. This study of various traditions has itself a
humanistic, formative value and sharpens our intellect (*prajñā vivekaṁ
labhate...*).



Since I have concluded here and elsewhere that it is important in Indology
to express our conclusions not only in the intellectual *lingua franca* of
modern times, (no more French or German, but now) English (and in the
future, according to some, perhaps Chinese), but also in the language which
is for many of us a major object of study and which has *de facto*
functioned as intellectual *lingua franca* in ancient India and Asia up to
modern times, I summarize my position here as follows in Sanskrit, in a
couple of self-composed verses (*śloka* and *indravajrā*) with, in the
second verse, a few obvious intertextual references to well-known
philosophical texts in Sanskrit:



यत्रयत्र ह्यतीतत्वम्  एके विन्दन्ति चिन्तनात् ।

   तत्रतत्रागमः सोऽयम्  एके पश्यन्ति सर्वदा ॥ १ ॥

प्रज्ञा विवेकं लभते गुरूणां  भिन्नागमप्रेक्षणशीलनेन ।

  स्वैतिह्यमात्रात् कियदुन्नयेत  किं ज्ञानतुल्यं हि पवित्रमत्र ॥ २ ॥

yatrayatra hy atītatvam  eke vindanti cintanāt /

   tatratatr‘āgamaḥ so’yam’ eke paśyanti sarvadā // 1 //

prajñā vivekaṁ labhate gurūṇāṁ   bhinnāgamaprekṣaṇaśīlanena /

   svaitihyamātrāt kiyad unnayeta   kiṁ jñānatulyaṁ hi pavitram atra // 2 //



The second verse is part of my “Poetic Lines on the Universality of
Sanskrit” (contribution to the Kavisamavāya at the WSC in Vancouver), and
as popular metres and melodies have played a significant role, ca. 2000
years ago, in the development of classical, post-Vedic metres, I have felt
free and justified to put these and other metres (*śloka*, *indravajrā* and
the less well-known *mandākinī*) to modern melodies inspired by *prasiddhāni
saṁgītāni *(guess which ones?):

https://vimeo.com/281011286



Best wishes to all, Jan Houben




-- 

*Jan E.M. Houben*

Directeur d'Études, Professor of South Asian History and Philology

*Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite*

École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, PSL - Université Paris)

*Sciences historiques et philologiques *

54, rue Saint-Jacques, CS 20525 – 75005 Paris

*johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr <johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr>*

*johannes.houben at ephe.psl.eu <johannes.houben at ephe.psl.eu>*

*https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
<https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben>*

[image: 1506959459738_Signature]


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