Dear Colleagues,

I am responding to this thread as the INDOLOGY committee member on duty this week.

The INDOLOGY governing committee moderate discussion on the list, not other scholarly activities. Accordingly, alleged plagiarism in scholarship concerning South Asia is certainly a welcome topic of civil discussion on INDOLOGY. But the governing committee does not claim authority to adjudicate or discipline anything that happens off list.

Audrey Truschke

Audrey Truschke
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Religious Studies

Stanford University

e-mail | website

On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Jan E.M. Houben <jemhouben@gmail.com> wrote:

Indology and plagiarism

Apart from borderline cases there are also cases of undeniable massive plagiarism. 

One case was discussed long ago by Roy Andrew Miller (JAOS 115.2 [1995]: 343-344), and 

a new episode in the same case history was discussed eight years later, now twelve years 

ago, by me (AS/EA 57.1 [2003] p 163, author's copy academia.edu/7196478/ p 55). 

From a quick online search I infer that the publication based on massive 

plagiarizing is apparently still for sale and present in university libraries. 

Some similarities with the current case under discussion, except, I hope, quantitatively:

R Diekstra, till 1997 prof of psychology at Univ of Leiden: those who discovered textual borrowings which were not or very incompletely acknowledged were aggressively attacked by adherents of their favourite public intellectual Diekstra, his sources were (page after page) from sources relatively unknown to his target public (dutch readers on psychotherapy), he claimed to be working in haste for a higher aim (helping those needing psychotherapy). 

http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9704/fn9704.html

This could be a suitable occasion for the Indology List, since 2001 the ONLY ONLINE 

FORUM IN THE WORLD specializing in academic exchange for bona fide scholars, "east" 

and "west", in Indology and classical South Asia studies, to give a stronger profile

to Indology's "brand name". 

Would there be any harm if the current dvārapālas of the Indology List specify

"Indology"'s position on plagiarism in the Guidelines, for instance that the hypothetic case of plagiarizing (at least if it is massive?) leads to cancellation of full membership (should have been self-evident but perhaps it is not), and that emphatic encouragement and condoning of plagiarism 

leads to first a warning next to suspension of full membership? Pro-plagiarists and pro-plagiarism 

leniency may feel irritated through such explicit stance but 95% others would either welcome it or consider it self-evident. 

This move could liberate bandwidth of the List for more useful and interesting topics and 

issues. 

Jan Houben 

      

Jan E.M. HOUBEN

Directeur d’Études

Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite

École Pratique des Hautes Études

Sciences historiques et philologiques 

54, rue Saint-Jacques

CS 20525 – 75005 Paris

johannes.houben@ephe.sorbonne.fr

https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

www.ephe.fr

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