[INDOLOGY] On Sanskrit in the USA

[Jonathan Silk]

It is perhaps not reasonable to enter into this question here, but:
insofar as any scholar has his or her own skill set and range of interests,
it is obviously true that "Even if the department enthusiastically pursued
his replacement, it would struggle to find a scholar today with Insler’s
skills." But only if that is understood to mean an exact or very close
match for Insler's skills. For there are more than a few Sanskritists with
excellent broad knowledge of Indo-European, general linguistics, Vedic etc.
and more than one of these scholars, I am quite sure, would be delighted to
apply for a chair at Yale. So it is a pity that Marko Geslani chose to
express the matter in this way. (None of this should be understood to be
any criticism of Prof Granoff, by the way; I was also more than a little
surprised to see that her almost superhuman knowledge of Indic languages
was ignored...)

JAS

On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 1:09 PM, Eli Franco via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

>
> That article was a bit one-sided. Here is a response from one of Granoff's
> students:
>
> LETTER 04.19
> The Yale Daily News     Apr 18, 2018
>
> On “Yale’s last Sanskrit expert to leave”
>
> “Yale’s last Sanskrit expert to leave” is plain wrong. In order to be
> right it minimizes the work of Phyllis Granoff, a religious studies
> professor, to the point of erasure. Far beyond “proficient,” Granoff’s
> linguistic mastery is legendary among Sanskritists worldwide. At Yale she
> revived premodern South Asia and continues to train a vital cohort of
> scholars.
>
> The article seems too busy lamenting the loss of Yale’s historic
> “reputation” in Sanskrit to ask: Why has Salisbury’s chair sat vacant since
> Stanley Insler’s retirement some seven years ago? A question for
> Linguistics, not Religious Studies. Inaugurated for Sanskrit and Arabic,
> this chair won fame through William Dwight Whitney, when rededicated to
> Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in 1869. Accordingly, for nearly five
> decades, Insler taught Sanskrit within the comparative study of languages —
> from proto-Indo-European to Old Norse. Currently, Linguistics has turned
> from this philological-historical project to a presentist, computational
> model, reflecting broader shifts in that field. Even if the department
> enthusiastically pursued his replacement, it would struggle to find a
> scholar today with Insler’s skills.
>
> If we want Sanskrit to continue at Yale, we had better spend more time
> getting our arguments straight rather than courting disparagement from
> non-Yale faculty members whose mansplaining comments are best not given
> published validation.
>
> Sanskrit succeeds as a site of comparative interest. In Granoff’s hands,
> it’s but one of many languages for art, ritual, narrative and philosophy.
> To that extent to call her — or Insler —a “mere” Sanskrititst would be a
> disservice. That is exactly why Sanskrit has thrived at Yale in their care.
>
> Marko Geslani, GRD ’1
>
>
>
>
> Zitat von alakendu das via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>:
>
> Thank you very much for highlighting such an encouraging piece of
>> event.It's heartening indeed to know the esteem with which Sanskrit is held
>> in the West.
>> Alakendu Das.
>>
>> Sent from RediffmailNG on Android
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Christophe Vielle via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
>> Sent: Wed, 30 May 2018 22:23:05 GMT+0530
>> To: Indology <indology at list.indology.info>
>> Subject: [INDOLOGY] On Sanskrit in the USA
>>
>>   https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/04/17/yales-last-sanskri
>> t-expert-to-leave/
>>
>> –––––––––––––––––––
>> Christophe Vielle
>> Louvain-la-Neuve
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Prof. Dr. Eli Franco
> Institut für Indologie und Zentralasienwissenschaften
> Schillerstr. 6
> 04109 Leipzig
>
> Ph. +49 341 9737 121, 9737 120 (dept. office)
> Fax +49 341 9737 148
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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
https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/JASilk


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