Pollock and Weber preprint

Despite its neglect by scholars in the Western academic world, Rajiv Malhotra’s recent bestselling and impactive book `The Battle for Sanskrit’ (TBFS) succeeds in its objective and will resonate with its target readers: traditional Sanskrit scholars in India as well as English-speaking right-leaning Hindus across the world. Malhotra raises hard questions and presents grim facts in lucid vocabulary and a style which is a combination of academic, critical, trenchant, and motivational. He summarizes debatable and objectionable views and theories of Sheldon Pollock and what he calls ‘American Orientalism’; offers counter-views and alternate theories; and exhorts traditional Sanskrit scholars to critique Pollock’s works, views, and theories more substantially. In this article, I present a detailed review of the book and highlight what in my opinion are the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Although I have a favourable opinion of Malhotra’s book, I hope the contents of the article will prove useful, for the purpose of discussions and debates around the issues raised in the book, to even readers who are neutral or opposed to Malhotra’s views. In addition to an appendix on proofreading errors in TBFS, the article includes two more appendixes—one critiquing Pollock’s claim of an instance of semantic inversion and another analyzing contents of a recent statement that Pollock signed.

Economic & Political Weekly, 2017

Infinity Foundation India, 2021

Prof. Sheldon Pollock's body of work shows his penchant for a few pet topics: his positioning Buddhism as the silver bullet that saved the 'Indian' from Vedic and Brahmanic oppression and his strenuous case to uncover tenuous parallels between Greek classics and Indian epics, effectively taking away the Indian claim to deeply native and formative elements of her culture. The dismissal of centuries of indigenous oral traditions, a strategic emphasis on deliberately limited aspects of the essence and historicity of kāvya in evaluating its contributive value, his theorisation of a perceived tension between Sanskrit and the regional languages as well as his position that the field of Sanskrit has not had a history of examining its own literary change, among other similar fantastic claims, constitute some of his key arguments. When different works from his scholarship are considered together, not only do logical and chronological inconsistencies become evident, but also the near-absence of a detailed chronology, which in his own words is 'central to comparative intellectual-historical practice.' Ergo, we present a detailed consolidation of his dispersed chronological data into a framework and proceed to address questions such as-"Does tradition disagree with some of the dates he assigns? Which ones and with what evidence or logic do traditional scholars disagree with Pollock?"-with a particular focus on the epoch around the first of the "two great moments of transformation in culture and power in premodern India" (Pollock 2006:1) when the supposed 'momentous rupture' that led Sanskrit to descend from 'The World of Gods' to 'the World of Men.' Particular recurrent themes in Pollock's work as well as the larger context he provides for the study and revival (or a case for no revival) of Sanskrit, in context of his chronology, are also probed in this paper. *pp. 25-76. In: Kannan, K. S. and Meera, H. R. (Ed.s) (2021). Chronology and Causation: Negating Neo-Orientalism. Chennai: Infinity Foundation India.

Interventions , 2024

A translation of the named article by the early Soviet Indologist A. P. Barannikov (1890–1952) is introduced. The topicality of the article in relation to current trends in scholarship is discussed, and a brief consideration of the historical context of the publication of the original article is provided. This includes reflections on the specificities of pre-Revolutionary Indology in Russia, especially as represented in the work ofS. F. Ol’denburg (1863–1934) and F. I. Shcherbatskoi (aka Theodor Stcherbatsky, 1866–1942), and the development of a new form of Indology as represented by the translated article. Information is provided about the intellectual sources of the article, highlighting the development of sociological approaches to language in the early USSR, and comparisons with the ideas of Antonio Gramsci. It is suggested that Barannikov’s work, with its discussion of the centrality of conflictual relations between Sanskrit and vernacular traditions, anticipates some recent works on the anti-caste movement, and it suggests a more complex relationship between colonial philology and oriental studies more generally, and the intellectual traditions of the indigenous elite.

Language & History 62 (3): 195-226, 2019

Filip Vesdin, known by his monastic name Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo (1748–1806), was a Carmelite missionary stationed from 1776 to 1789 in Southwestern India. Vesdin authored an impressive opus of 32 books and smaller treatises on Brahmanic religion and customs, oriental manuscripts and antiques collections, language comparison and missionary history. This article focuses on the field of language comparison, principally on Vesdin’s book De antiquitate et affinitate linguae Zendicae, Samscrdamicae, et Germanicae dissertatio (= Dissertation on the Antiquity and the Affinity of the Zend, Sanskrit, and Germanic Languages), published in Rome in 1798. In this rather short treatise (56 pages), the most important part consists of three word-lists where a large number of words from Avestan, Sanskrit and Germanic languages are compared in order to prove that these languages are related. The paper presents Vesdin’s three word-lists together with a description and evaluation of his views on the relationships between these languages in order to highlight his significance in the history of comparative and historical linguistics. The paper also provides new insights into the relationship of De antiquitate to Vesdin’s later proto-linguistic treatise, De Latini sermonis origine (1802).

Indian Economic and Social History Review

This essay offers critical reflection on the work of Sheldon Pollock and Sudipto Kaviraj in connection with the project, ‘Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems on the Eve of Colonialism.’ While both Pollock and Kaviraj have written of the ‘death’ of Sanskrit, this essay advises against metaphors of historical rupture. If we wish to make sense of the fate of Sanskrit intellectuals under colonial modernity, we should attend to processes of cultural convergence and the concrete choices made by Sanskrit scholars. A selection from the reformist writings of Ishwaracandra Vidyasagara is examined to demonstrate one pandit’s on-going engagement with the Sanskrit intellectual tradition.

Guruparamparā. Studies on Buddhism, India, Tibet and More in Honour of Professor Marek Mejor. Edited by Katarzyna Marciniak, Stanisław Jan Kania, Małgorzata Wielińska-Soltwedel, Agata Bareja-Starzyńska, 2022

Heinrich Roth is the author of the first known European Sanskrit grammar. Although his work is unique in its perfection and the author’s palpable admiration for and dependence on the indigenous Indian tradition (especially on the Sārasvata system), it has not yet been published and consequently has had little impact on the history of Indology. This paper attempts to highlight the great loss that Sanskrit studies have suffered as a result of this omission. It does so by analysing the first chapter of Roth’s treatise on the basis of the edition and translation currently being prepared by Johannes Schneider (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities). After detailed analysis, which includes the explanation of the technical vocabulary, and after dealing with the general features of Roth’s grammar and his supposed and actual errors or inconsistencies, the way Roth presents his material is compared with the description in other early European grammars: four Latin (Hanxleden, Pons, Paulinus’ Siddharubam and Vyàcarana) and four English (Colebrooke, Carey, Wilkins, Forster). The paper concludes with the slightly speculative question of what would have happened if Roth’s grammar had been published during his lifetime and had received the interest and recognition it deserved.