[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit can tackle climate change

[Jonathan Silk]

I am sorry if I was unclear: mine was not a plea to allow a certain
viewpoint (please do not assume that because I use that term I think "there
are always two sides to any issue" or make any other assumptions about my
position or motivation)--mine was not a plea to allow a certain viewpoint;
it was a plea NOT to introduce Trump into the Indology list, and to
introduce Modi only insofar as his policies directly relate to Indology
(Skt, Tamil, etc).
I may well be astonishingly naive, that obviously is something of which I
would be the least qualified judge. And astonishment is naturally an
entirely subjective experience, so you are welcome to it. But please please
let us keep politics off this list. [Again, simply to make overly clear:
this does NOT mean that I think discussion of the theories concerning the
MBh propounded by whomever are not fair game. Certainly they are, but just
because, for instance, the authors of those theories engage in ad hominem
attacks does not mean that the proper response is to respond in kind.
"Racist" anything stands or falls on its own merits. [this is a different,
although not entirely different, perhaps, issue than whether we should
acknowledge and take into account the work of persons whose history is
absolutely clear -- eg the studies of Wust, or I would venture to say,
although foreign to most of the readers of the Indology list, the research
of Miyamoto Shoson, who was an incredible Japanese imperialist--one of his
prefaces celebrates the day the Imperial Japanese army entered India, the
land of the Buddha's birth. This, to be as polite as possible, turns my
stomach, but that does not solve the question whether I should, therefore,
stop reading his book at the preface. [you might, all of you, take solace
in the fact that this proves that at least one person reads prefaces!]]]
(sorry, lost count of my embedded brackets!)
Anyway, back to the point (there was one): I am far from the first person
to notice that it hardly makes any sense at all to speak of "German"
Indology in the first place, but whatever attacks are made against one
approach or another, whether the nature of those attacks makes any sense is
not to be determined by the motivation of the attacker. Let's sift the
wheat from the chaff, and perhaps, after all, some ideas, even if published
as scholarship, are not really worthwhile rebutting at all.

Hoping earnestly that I have clarified my ideas, as poor and unhelpful as
they may be,

Jonathan

On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 12:40 AM, George Thompson <gthomgt at gmail.com> wrote:

> re JOYDEEP
>
> As long as you all allow this hindutva racist to post to this list, mr
> joydeep, who has regularly attacked "German Indology" over the years, then
> I will fight with you.  I don't defend "German Indology" because I am
> German. I defend it because German Indology has been good Indology.
> Joydeep's Indology is a racist Indology.  I think that Jonathan and Nagaraj
> are astonishingly naïve when it comes to Joydeep's ideology.  Have they
> read Joydeep's papers?
>
> Shame on you both!  Please read some of  Joydeep's papers, and then get
> back in touch with the rest of us.
>
> best wishes,
>
> George Thompson
>
>
>
>
-- 
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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