A basic bibliography on textual reuse can be found at the end of my Introduction to the Reuse of Texts in Indian Philosophy, available Open Access on Academia.edu and on the website of the Journal of Indian Philosophy. Apart from these titles, you might want to know about a few others which have been published thereafter or are now forthcoming:
Monthly Archives: August 2015
TOC of Adaptive Reuse of Texts, Ideas and Images
What does it mean for a Sanskrit author to reuse previously composed texts, concepts or images? What does (s)he want to achieve by doing it? On these topics, I am currently in the process of finishing a volume I edited together with Philipp Maas namely, Adaptive Reuse in premodern South Asian Texts and Contexts (or perhaps Adaptive Reuse. Reflections on its Practice in Pre-modern South Asia), to appaear in the series ‘Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes’, Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden.
What happened at the beginnings of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta?—Part 2
Several distinct component are constitutive of what we now know to be Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and are not present at the time of Rāmānuja:
- 1. The inclusion of the Āḻvār’s theology in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
- 2. The Pāñcarātra orientation of both subschools of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
- 3. The two sub-schools
- 4. The Vedāntisation of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
- 5. The impact of other schools
What happened at the beginnings of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta?—Part 1
The starting point of the present investigation is the fact that between Rāmānuja and Veṅkaṭanātha a significant change appears to have occurred in the scenario of what was later known as Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta (the term is only found after Sudarśana Sūri). The Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as we know it was more or less there by the time of Veṅkaṭanātha, whereas in order to detect it in the oeuvre of Rāmānuja one needs to retrospectively interpret it in the light of its successive developments. This holds true even more, although in a different way, for Rāmānuja’s predecessors, such as Yāmuna, Nāthamuni and the semi-mythical Dramiḍācārya etc.
Two PhD Scholarships in Buddhist Studies at Munich
The Doctoral Program in Buddhist Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany invites applications for two PhD scholarships for dissertation projects related to Buddhism:
Does “the West” exist?
I do not think so, just like I do not believe in other generic categories. Their use seems to me banalising more complex historical issues (à la “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus”).
Working together? A short checklist
I am a passionate fan of co-working, since
- I believe that working with other people (especially if one works with always new people and not always with the same group) helps one becoming aware of one’s implicit presuppositions
- working with other people allows me to achieve more ambitious goals (in my case, an example are the volumes on the Reuse of texts in Classical Indian philosophy I edited for the Journal of Indian Philosophy—I would not have been able to achieve that target alone, since I lack the relevant expertise in many fields of Indian philoosophy)
- working with other people is more fun, and fun motivates one whenever one is stuck in a difficult situation
TT position in South Asian studies at Wisconsin-Madison
The University of Wisconsin-Madison, as part of its initiative to re-envision the study of the languages, cultures, and societies of Asia, is seeking to hire a TransAsia / transdisciplinary scholar with expertise in at least one South or Southeast Asian language, beginning August, 2016.
A glance on the World Sanskrit Conference
The Indian ever-doubting quest for Truth
At times, it almost seemed blasphemous to say the things we said when the eternal flute of the Divine itself called to us every moment to give up the vain, empty, dry world of the intellect and the greeting of the ‘Rādhe Rādhe’ which remained us of the ecstasy of divine love. But amidst these enticements and allurements what sustained us was the unbelievably long, hard-core tradition of the ever-seeking, ever-doubting sāttvika quest for the ultimate Truth by the buddhi in the Indian tradition, which has never been afraid of raising the most formidable pūrvapakṣas against one’s own position and attempting to answer them.
(Daya Krishna, Bhakti, while discussing the saṃvāda on bhakti he organised at Vrindavan)