The Nay Science by Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee

IndiaFacts.org, 2018

2016

Indian history writing has witnessed biased writings from the beginning by modern writers. Mauryas, Guptas etc has been tried to be part of the Brahmin social order exclusively known as the Varnashram system. The historians intended to prove that Brahmin ideology and traditions were prevalent from the earliest time possible. They took advantage of the weak historical evidences and eventually made efforts to disfigure the History. They refused all evidences deliberately that supported the cause of the non-Brahmin traditions. They tried to place the period of Vedic evidences far earlier than it could be. They accepted or refuted the very evidences of Puranas according to their suitability. They calculated the reigning years of pre-Brahmin dynasties less to keep non-Brahmanic era shorter. They tried to establish that Kshatriyas were people evolved accordingly to the Purushshukta. They tried to establish that Buddhism was evolved after Brahmanism. They keep silence over the fact that if...

Religions of South Asia, 2016

Brahmanism is the term I use to refer to a movement that arose out of Vedic religion. Vedic religion was what the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann (2003) might call a primary religion. It was a priestly religion, not unlike the priestly religions of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. As such it was indissociably linked to one single culture, to one single society, and to one single language. It had a close association with the rulers of the society to which it belonged, for whom it provided ritual services. Like other primary religions, Vedic religion had no exclusive truth claims of a religious nature, and did not try to make converts.

ANTIQUITY AND CONTINUITY OF INDIAN HISTORY (FROM SWAYAMBHUVA MANU TO GUPTA DYNASTY), 1996

One consequence of the rising political, intellectual and religious self-confidence and self-assertion of contemporary India, especially its Hindu majority, is the Indian attempt to reclaim from the Western academy the right to 'objectively' and 'authoritatively', if not 'scientifically', explain itself and its history to the world. There is frequent tension between those (a) who would defend with a learned voice Hinduism's traditional, scripture-based self-history, and those (b) who seek to explain India by the standards of Western humanistic scholarship, under the various rubrics of Indology. However, as Norvin Hein pointed out: Ultimately, the opponents need each other ... They (a) ... are the most attentive people in the work of academics (b), with a scrutiny review of their writings, and how on the other hand, the contribution of these scholars (a) is necessary for the (b), although this makes them feel the most irritable. (Hein, 1992). If this process is not accepted, we would come to face the problem pointed out by Carl Sagan: "When one excludes the possibility of making critical observations and engaging in discussion, she/he is hiding the truth". Thus, in order to take this step of cognitive progress, Sagan suggests: "If we want to determine the truth on an issue, we should approach it with the greatest mental openness possible, and in full consciousness of our limitations and biases."

IndiaFacts.org, 2018

"At the Shores of the Sky" Asian Studies for Albert Hoffstädt, 2020

The Brahmanical tradition has exerted a profound influence on India, from an early time onward.1 This tradition, like all traditions, had a certain vision of the past, and its enormous success has given it ample opportunity to impose that vision. The task of the historian, here as elsewhere, is to verify the prevailing vision of the past, and correct it where necessary. One of the features of Brahmanism is that it has always presented itself as old and unchanging. Indeed, the claim was made, at least since the grammarian Patañjali in the second century bce, that Sanskrit, the language of Brahmanism, was not just old but beginningless. The same view came to be held with regard the Veda, the literary corpus connected with Brahmanism: the Veda was not just old but beginningless. Inevitably, Brahmanical civilization was also thought of as tremendously old, and as the background of other cultural and religious movements in India. This view came to prevail and has survived until today. Buddhism, in particular, was thought of as a reaction against Brahmanism; it was taken for granted that when Buddhism arose, Brahmanism had been around for a very long time, also in the region where the Buddha preached. My research over the years has convinced me that this vision of the past is not correct. It is true that Brahmanism had existed for a long while when Buddhism arose, but not in the region where the Buddha preached, nor in many other regions of India. Brahmanism is an ideology that in due time spread all over India and over much of Southeast Asia, but this spread had hardly begun at the time of the Buddha. At that time Brahmanism was largely centered in one part of the subcontinent, its northwestern corner. At the time of the grammarian Patañjali in the second century bce, some two and a half centuries after the death of the Buddha, the term Āryāvarta was used, and Patañjali gives a rather precise description of the extent of this Āryāvarta, which shows that it covered only a part of the Ganges plain. (GM, Introduction)