“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 (atīta) to which we have the full right to freely apply pratyakṣa (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 pratyakṣa and anumāna – 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 āgama and those emphasizing pratyakṣa 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