169th Philosophers’ Carnival

The 169th Philosophers’ Carnival is online! Among several other interesting things, it has some lines on the interpretation of an alien Philosophy and on the Skholiast‘s contribution to the “doing philosophy in a polycentric world” debate (about which see also this post on the Indian Philosophy Blog).

For personal reasons, I am also happy to see also a link to Gabriele Contessa’s plea for a more inclusive policy of inclusion of philosophers who do not have English as their first language. Why should this be important? Apart from the fact that it is fair to include everyone, independent of their (race, gender, sexual preferences… and) native tongue, inclusion of different perspectives is part of the enterprise of ideodiversity, which is what we (=scholars of non-Western philosophies) are all engaged with, isn’t it?

The 168th Philosophers’ Carnival

The 168th version of the Philosophers’ Carnival, with a link to Anand Vaidya’s blogpost on modality in Indian philosophy at the Indian Philosophy Blog, can be read here. Thanks to the reader(s) who pointed to Anand’s post! Keep on alerting the philosophers’ carnival website about interesting blogposts, especially about ones which might escape the editors’ attention because they do not deal with mainstream philosophy.

Jaina libraries in India

Readers might have noticed that I am working on the availability of Buddhist texts after the disappearance of Buddhist communities in South India. Did the vanished Buddhist communities leave beyond libraries of Buddhist texts? —I have no evidence of that. Did Jainas collect Buddhist texts also in South India?

Buddhism in Tamil Nadu until the end of the first millennium AD

Was Buddhism ever predominant in Tamil Nadu? Which Buddhism? And when?

After my last post on the disappearance of Buddhism from South India, I received two emails of readers pointing to the fact that Buddhism must have been prosperous in Tamil Nadu, given that Dharmakīrti himself was born in Tamil Nadu and that the Maṇimēkalai (a Buddhist literary text in Tamil, datable perhaps to the 5th–7th c.) presupposes a Buddhist community and reuses materials from Śaṅkarasvāmin’s Nyāyapraveśa.