I am reading the Adluri/Bagchee book right now; though not without its problems, I have to agree with George Hart's assessment.

But, I will also say, as a student of religion (my graduate department had the rather comprehensive and so, too, largely meaningless name, "Department of the History and Literature of Religions"), Americans have long struggled with the precise meaning of "wissenschaftlich."  The 19th century American world was a direct descendent of the German academy, but lacked its sophistication.  (Somewhere early in the JAOS I recall that the reason given for the turn to Oriental studies was to "keep up with the Joneses"--i.e., the Europeans; not much science there, I am afraid.)

cheers,

Herman Tull 

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 10:27 AM, George Hart <glhart@berkeley.edu> wrote:

If you search the book at Amazon, you can read significant parts of it (“Look inside this book”). The authors are serious, well-read scholars and have put a colossal amount of work into their effort. The book strikes me as an important contribution whose ideas should be seriously considered by indologists. George Hart

On Jun 12, 2015, at 5:48 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk@gmail.com> wrote:

On 12 June 2015 at 14:15, Philipp Maas <philipp.a.maas@gmail.com> wrote:

In reading these lines, I get quite puzzled. Are historical-critical methods in general flawed, or only when practiced by Germans?

Only when practised by Germans, as any Italian would certainly answer :-)

(This refers to a running joke between some of us British, German and Italian philologists here at the Vienna department.)

I suppose the Adluri & Bagchee book deserves a more serious response, but I'm not interested personally. How did this get by the commissioning editor at OUP NY?

Best,
Dominik Wujastyk

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Herman Tull
Princeton, NJ