Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, speaking of Materialism in India, here.
Nicolas Bommarito, speaking of Buddhist ethics and how to approach it, here.
William Endelglass, speaking of Buddhism, intercultural philosophy and Levinas, here.
Elisa Freschi, speaking of epistemology, atheism and deontic logic in Mīmāṃsā, here.
Maria Heim, speaking of Buddhaghosa, Buddhist hermeneutics, and emotions, here.
Jonardon Ganeri, speaking of the medicinal model of philosophy, identity and a global history of philosophy, here.
Jay L. Garfield, speaking of Madhayamaka, Tibetan philosophy and comparative philosophy, here.
Malcolm C. Keating, speaking of Indian philosophy of language, here.
Robert Pasnau, speaking of the parochialism in our histories of philosophy (OK, it is not “South Asian philosophy”, but it is still relevant!), here.
Adluri Raghuramaraju, speaking of Ramachandra Gandhi and contemporary Indian philosophy, here.
Evan Thompson, speaking of dreaming, being awake and Advaita Vedānta, here.
Anand Jayprakash Vaidya, speaking of modalities, syllogisms and intercultural philosophy, here.
Jan Westerhoff, speaking of Nāgārjuna and emptiness, here.

Did I miss someone?

UPDATE: Robert Marshall moved all interviews here. The reasons are discussed here. I am grateful to R. Marshall for this important update.

(Thanks to Richard Marshall for the update)

Suganya has focussed so far on the Vaiṣṇava devotional poetry written in Tamil by the Āḻvārs, the poet-saints who were active in South India approximately between the 6th and the 9th c. AD. She also worked on the medieval Śrīvaiṣṇava commentaries on these works, typically written in Maṇipravāḷam, a sanskritised form of Tamil. She also started researching bhakti literature in general, i.e., by reading Śaiva texts.

E.F.: Tell us about your early formation.
S.A.: Tamil is my mother tongue, but I did not have any classical Tamil at school. I went to a French school, where I took (contemporary) Tamil lessons for a few years only. However, I kept on studying Tamil also with my mother. I then studied English literature as a graduate and post-graduate student.

E.F.: What brought you back to Tamil?
S.A.: At that point I had moved to Paris and was teaching there in the public high school. I got interested in Telegu at the INALCO (http://www.campusfrance.org/en/resource/inalco-institut-national-des-langues-et-civilisations-orientales-paris) and this brought me back to Tamil, so that I took an MA in classical Tamil. Dr. Gérard Colas, a Vaiṣṇava scholar with whom I had started working, introduced me to Jean-Luc Chevillard and he introduced me to Eva Wilden. I did my PhD with her and I learnt a strong philological method through her and the Classical Tamil Summer Seminaries (http://www.efeo.fr/base.php?code=534) she conducts every year.

E.F.: You are clearly interested also in the literary aspect of your translation. Has this interested been fuelled by your studies in English literature?
S.A.: Yes, but not only. Eva too helped me with that, since she produced many translations. With each translation, there is a wish to create a basis for further studies, for the sake of which we produce glossaries in order to check how semantic uses and grammar have evolved. So, translating systematically goes with glossary-making and this enables us to check the evolution of language.
Personally, I make two translations, a first one which is only technical, and a further one that is reader-friendly, but never compromises with the meaning. If possible, I also try to make it beautiful.

E.F.: How did you manage to find enough time and money to make your Tamil studies possible?
S.A.: I was working as a school teacher in the Parisian region and thus I could manage to pay the French fees, which are very reasonable anyway.

E.F.: How did you manage to complete your PhD while working full time?
S.A.: This involved a lot of preparing and a lot of responsibility, since I could only work in the evenings and during the weekends. Still, I managed to complete my PhD in 5 years. In this connection, I have to say that in the previous ten years I had explored all possible aspects of teaching and I really wanted to get out of that, go and explore what is beyond that. My PhD became my hobby, I took the same pleasure in doing it as for a hobby. It would have been great to have had a scholarship for my PhD, but at the same time having a full time job was also highly motivating, although I was permanently tired and overworked. This way, you make the most of whatever little time you have and you become organised because you do not have any other choice.

E.F.: What came after your PhD? How did you start your academic career?
S.A.: I started working as a postdoctoral fellow for the NETamil project in Pondichéry in September 2014. The project will go on until February 2019.

E.F.: Which aspects of the academic life do you enjoy more? What bothers you more?
S.A.: I would like to keep on doing research, but I do not mind teaching, as long as this is related with my research.

As for the negative aspects, non-constructive criticism bothers me, but if you are passionate enough about research, you should use these criticisms as fuel to light your passion instead of taking them as water and allowing them to extinguish it. I learnt that you can feed your passion from such destructive remarks. In general, in order to do research you have to be passionate enough not to give up at the first sign of bad weather.

E.F.: Tell us more about the NETAMIL project as an example of a collaborative project.
S.A.: There can be possessiveness (about one’s field of research for example) and envy in this field like in any other, but my NetTamil colleagues are exempt from such non-constructive attitude and behaviour because of the following reasons: 1. each has his/her own field, so they could not really tread on another’s field. 2. even when there are people working on partly overlapping fields, they believe that working together is good for all parties, the results are better and the learning process which is initiated would not be imitable on one’s own. They in this way empower each other instead of taking each other down. And the field is so vast, that people just need to work together.

We have a shared goal: classical Tamil studies should get the right kind of attention and they should be grounded on a solid basis. The former goal depends on the latter: We are doing solid groundwork, upon which proper research on this field can be done.

Eva Wilden, who started the NETamil project, greatly encourages reading together regularly, as she believes in working together she even reads with people not even connected with the EFEO, so the idea is spreading out of its traditional boundaries.

I have myself a few objections (which I signalled in the comment section of each podcast), but am overall very happy that someone is taking Indian philosophy seriously enough while at the same time making it also accessible to lay listeners. In this sense, I cannot but hope that Peter and Jonardon’s attempts are successful.

The series includes also interviews to scholars: Brian Black on the Upaniṣads, Rupert Gethin on Buddhism, Jessica Frazier on “Hinduism” (the quotation marks are mine only), myself on Mīmāṃsā. Further interviews are forthcoming. Criticisms and comments are welcome! (but please avoid commenting on my pronunciation mistakes.)

Her first lecture, on her critical work on the Karmapañjikā (a ritual manual (paddhati) of the Atharvaveda, for which however no Ritual Sūtra is available) has been an interesting chance to discuss how to edit non-standard Sanskrit. As a rule of thumb, Shilpa (and Arlo Griffiths, who edited with her the text) tend to correct errors which originated in the transmission, but to keep the irregularities which were probably present in the author’s original text, even when they lead to sentences such as kathitaṃ sarvam eteṣāṃ [karmaṇāṃ] kramo hariharātmajaḥ. I remember Camillo Formigatti discussed similar cases in the context of “Newari Hybrid Sanskrit” at the 6th Coffee Break Conference. What do you prefer to do? Correct the text to make it understandable? Do a diplomatic edition? Add a chāyā?

However, Shilpa is also an interesting role model because of different reasons. First of all, she had to struggle to achieve a well-deserved tenured position. She taught at different institutes in Pune Sanskrit, Marathī and Hindī and engaged lectures of Sanskrit for undergraduate classes in a well-known college in Pune at negligible remuneration hoping to get a permanent position there. Nonetheless, when a position was advertised, someone else was preferred, although since the beginning, she had been teaching each sort of Sanskrit  expected from her by the assigning authority by preparing for that topic.

Since Shilpa is an optimist, she told me about that result with the following comment:

It was a good chance to learn that every thing is for the best —had I got that position, I would have had to focus on undergraduate teaching.

Now, she works as a subeditor of the Dictionary, as an Assistant Professor at the Deccan College (where she has to teach up to three hours per day and mentor some PhD students) and manages to keep on with her research and with her collaborative projects. And, she is still an easy-going human being, who is not resentful and enjoys life. (I wish readers can get some hope for their own future.)

CB: I started by focusing on Indo-European studies and, consequently, learnt Sanskrit, Armenian… and Sogdian, which immediately interested me most [see Q2 of part 1]. Thus, I wrote my MA thesis in linguistics under the tuition of Palmira Cipriani and Walter Belardi, with Carlo Cereti as the “correlatore” (additional tutor), on a Sogdian Manichean text, the so-called Manichaeisches Bet- und Beichtbuch (the title of the thesis was Some aspects of Nominal Morphosyntax in Manichaean Sogdian). Cereti became later my PhD tutor, and for my PhD I moved to Berlin and worked at the Center “Turfan Forschung”, where Werner Sundermann suggested me to focus on a Sogdian manuscript (E 5) which had been translated from Syriac. It is a very interesting text, a border-line case in many senses (for instance, the morphology is often agglutinative). I deeply regret that I could not have been able to complete the book dedicated to this research before Sundermann’s death. Apart from Sundermann and Cereti, I have also been helped by the director of the Turfan Forschung center, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst. Since I was working on a Christian text translated from Syriac, I had to learn Syriac, otherwise I would have just been able to describe what was in the manuscript I was studying, without knowing why. Now I work on Syriac and Christian Sogdian manuscript fragments coming from Turfan and belonging to 9th- 11th centuries in order to investigate the Christian manuscript tradition of this milieu and its relationship with the manuscript tradition in the Mesopotamia mother Church.

Q2 EF: You have been able to get two projects funded almost at the same time. Tell us your secret!

CB: I have been in maternity leave for one year and during that time I applied for a Lise Meitner and for an Apart and I got both of them funded. Basically, I presented the same project, further enlarged in the case of the Apart, because this grants 3-ys projects (while Lise Meitner scholarships are only granted for 2 years). Since I first received the acceptance of the FWF-Lise Meitner, I started with that one. After only two weeks I came to know that also the other project had been accepted, so that I postponed the beginning of the Apart for some months (which was admissible) and left the Lise Meitner program only after I had presented my first results at a conference (so that I could have something “objective” to put in my final relation for the Lise Meitner).

EF: It seems like you are a good planner…

CB: I started writing projects during the pregnancy leave [compulsory in Austria for the last 2 months of pregnancy, EF]. Since I had no problem at all, I could work nicely without any other commitment (unlike in the first weeks after the birth of my son). Apart from the two projects you mentioned already, I also sent applications for other positions (religious studies in Groningen, European University at Budapest…). I am sure that the awareness of the difficulties prompted me to try harder. I knew that, since I do not work on Islam, I had not that many chances, not even in the US (where only NY, S. Francisco and Harvard have Iranic studies positions not focusing on Islam). If you want to keep on with this work, you have to be proactive.

Q3 EF: You are also a talented disseminator…
CB: Yes, I could not imagine myself as just an organiser of cultural events, but also not as someone just focusing on her research and with no contact with the world. I am ready to study punctuation, but it needs to play a role within a wider picture [for this wider picture, see the first part of the interview, here]. In this sense, I do not feel at home in the German tradition of 19th c. philology. I do not think that one becomes less serious if one uses keywords which are understandable and appealing also for a wider public, e.g. “the silk-road”. In this sense, I work on creating networks of scholars within the Austrian Academy of Sciences (see, e.g., this project on sociolinguistics applied to dead languages) and also on opening the doors of the Academy to interested visitors, at least once every year.

Q4 EF: Should not one just focus on research, in order to avoid problems, especially with today’s Islamic Republic of Islam?

CB: Culture could and should be a channel to open Iran to the world and in this sense through us people and ideas can cross the boundaries of Iran. We are not meant to do more than that…or we would become political activists.

For the first part of the interview, see here. This post is part of my series of Interviews. If there are additional questions you would like to ask or if there is someone, either a specific person (i.e., yourself), or a representative of a given category (e.g., “A scholar of Nyāya”) you would like me to interview, please let me know.

CB: The project is aimed at identifying and contextualizing the emergence and the development of a Christian Iranian book culture as a result of the cultural-religious activities carried out by the Christian Iranian communities in the Turfan oasis (present-day Xinjian, Uyghur Autonomous Region, China), during late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Some background information: About 30–35,000 fragments have been found in Turfan, most of which extremely short [see Q2], in about twenty different languages and scripts. The Christian community in Turfan used Sogdian as a language of cultural exchanges among Christian communities. Thus, they never adopted Middle Persian (at the same age of the Sogdian documents, one already finds Neo Persian ones, so that it appears that the Middle Persian was already outdated as a spoken language and its choice by other communities was due to other reasons), whereas the Manichean (and, back in Iran, the Zoroastrian) church used Middle Persian. The project focuses on a corpus of nearly five hundred fragments in Sogdian language in East Syriac script and circa fifty fragments in Sogdian secular script. Furthermore, it examines also five hundred fragments in Easy Syriac script (out of which 400 are kept in Berlin, Turfan Collection and 100 are in Saint Petersburg).

Q2. EF: How do you feel about having to work with such a restricted corpus? Don’t you miss whole texts?

CB: Every single day. If I happen to find a fragment with 20 lines I have to be more than happy and this is surely frustrating. One works on some pages of the Bible in Middle Persian from the Turfan oasis, some inscriptions on the so-called Nestorian crosses in Pahlavi,
a short rock inscription…No other manuscripts were found, apart from Turfan, although we know —through Syriac witnesses— that there were Christian communities in Iran and that the Bible has been translated in Middle Persian around the 3rd or 4th century. One cannot avoid hoping that an archaeological expedition not focusing on Persepolis will finally uncover some documents even in Iran. Apart from the middle age zoroastrian literature and the Neo Persian one, all we know about Iran is due to fragments and we scholars need to be able to fruitfully compare small indications, e.g., a Middle Persian Psalter found in Turfan, although in the X c. Middle Persian was neither a liturgical language (the liturgical language was Syriac, although out of Syriac sources we know that local languages were admitted for some parts of the Mass) nor a spoken one (Neo Persian was already in use). Thus, one can speculate that the Psalter has been brought to Turfan by traders on the Silk Road or by missionaries accompanying them. The ductus of the Psalter resembles that of a cross found in today’s Afghanistan, so that this could be its origin…It is very frustrating, but it is also fun to reconstruct the puzzle.

Q3. EF: How many languages does one need to know in order to (try to) reconstruct the puzzle?

CB: Theoretically many: Middle Persian, Parthian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Khotanese… Since I focus on the phenomena of interculturation shown through Syriac elements in the Sogdian book culture, I also had to learn Syriac. People who focus on Buddhist Sogdian will have to know Sanskrit and in some case Chinese, too. In fact, the Sogdian corpus consists of translations and, thus, the resulting Sogdian is very much influenced by the source language. This is proved by the fact that the same language, at about the same time and in the same area looks very different according to the source language it translates. The Manichean Sogdian is easier, because the source language (Middle Persian or Parthian) is closer, since it is also a middle persian language of about the same period. Mani used Middle Persian and other middlepersian languages to spread his religion, because he understood himself as the “seal between Jesus, the Buddha and Zarathustra” and thus wanted his religion to be understood. It is not clear whether the invention of the so-called Manichean script (a script based on the Aramaic one) is also due to Mani’s circle as a part of this project (perhaps in order to characterise the new religion with a clear identity marker —-although other scripts were also used for missionary purposes— this topic is currently investigated in a PhD research project in Berlin). The Christian Sogdian has also a similar origin, since Christians also wanted their texts to be spread and understood. Within the Iranian area, the situation of the Zoroastrian religion is, instead, quite different, since Pahlavi texts are deliberately conservative, since one can only be born a Zoroastrian and conversions are not allowed.

Q4. EF: Until now, we have spoken of languages and of the scripts used to represent them. However, you also focus on other elements in your fragments, such as punctuation and the like. Which role do they play in your cultural reconstruction?

CB: A very important one. I have been, e.g., working on the small crosses drawn on some folia and have found them in Syriac and Sogdian texts. Where do they come from? Some scholars believe that the smaller ones mark the versum of manuscripts, but if so, why do they occur only on some folia? Perhaps they marked the end of a quire, but it is difficult to ascertain it, since we only have small fragments. Do they depend on the scribe? On the scriptorium? Are they the imprimatur sign of a certain monastery? These are the questions I will try to answer in my current project. As for punctuation, Christian Sogdian texts tend to follow the Syriac punctuation. Because it was more authoritative or because there was no Sogdian one? Some elements are found also in Sogdian Buddhist texts, e.g., four points building a square at the end of a text to indicare a pause. The opposite corners are, respectively, black and red and I am currently working on the meaning of such an alternation. Also the small points in Manichean texts probably had a meaning, but it is not clear what is the direction of the borrowings (Manichean and Christian texts are more or less contemporary). Similarly shared is the number of pages per quire and this time it seems that a certain usage has been brought to Turfan by the Christians.

Q5. EF: What needs to be done now in your area? Which priorities would you set?

CB: We can now build upon over one hundred years of decipherment works. The decipherment of the fragments, due to their paucity is thus almost completed and the critical editions are accurate. It is now time to reconsider the whole corpus and investigate on
1. which phenomena are due to the influence of the language one is translating,
2. which ones are due to contacts (as I said before, we must remember that those were bi- or trilingual communities)
3. which ones are common developments in the Iranian area.
For instance, certain phenomena are found in the Eastern Iranian area, but also in Iran, centuries before. This proves that the Eastern Iranian area remained for centuries more conservative. But how long? Other elements are found in some rather conservative dialects of central Iran (see my forthcoming article in the proceedings of the 7th International Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea). Such comparisons would enable the distinction between phenomena due to interferences (contact or translation) and ones due to inner developments of the Iranian Asia. As for 1, the influence of the language one was translating has often been underestimated. For instance, W.B. Henning has studied the sociolinguistic of Sogdian and decided that the Manichean Sogdian corresponded to a higher sociolinguistic level and the Christian one to a lower one. Among the elements he considered are the frequency of periphrastic constructions in Christian Sogdian. However, these differences might be explained also through the fact that the Manichean religion had its own Iranian terminology, whereas the Christian one needed to create one and thus used periphrastic verbs (e.g., “cross” + “to put” to translate “crucify”) and could thus avoid Syriac loanwords. Further periphrastic constructions (such as the periphrastic preterit of some verbs) could be explained diachronically rather than diastritically. It is also important to remember that these varieties of Sogdian were never spoken languages and that in this sense sociolinguistic considerations need to be supplemented with a translation-studies analysis. But in order to do that, one needs to master many languages and to be aware of the religious and historical background.

EF: One also needs to master many scripts…

CB: The various scripts might be of help, since for instance the Manichean and the Sogdian secular scripts are based on the Aramaic one and, thus, do not record vowels. By contrast, whenever Sogdian is transcribed in Syriac script (a script also derived from the Aramaic one, but with added diacritics), we can gather more information about the vowels through the diacritic signs.

Q6. EF: It is fascinating to see how you start from concrete elements in languages and scripts but interpret them in order to reconstruct a wider cultural scenario.

CB: Yes, through the study of linguistic phenomena and of scripts one can reconstruct the relations between communities and their nature. Were they due to trade? Did they imply bilingualism? An instance is the Sogdian Psalter written not in the eastern Syriac script (the standard one for Christian texts), but in Sogdian secular script [see above, Q 2]. Why writing it in a secular script, usually employed for letters, bills, etc.? Perhaps because the text was meant for a wider diffusion outside the monastic communities, e.g., for traders? This is confirmed also by the fact that the Psalter is the text more translated in the various languages of Turfan (Uighur, Neopersian and other spoken languages of that time). And also the most translated ones among Mani’s Psalms have been written using the Sogdian secular script instead of the Manichean one. Thus, through the script one can understand the reception and diffusion of a text. Through a linguistic study, one can further reconstruct that there were trilingual communities around Turfan, since after a certain point of time, turkish was also spoken there. In fact, one finds Turkish-Sogdian documents, bilingual letters in which the main language is Sogdian, but the morphology is halfway between the two and one notices phenomena of code-copying. Going back to the small crosses referred to above [Q 4], after some of them one finds a sign I interpret as the Syriac word hayé ‘life’ (I discuss this topic in my forthcoming book, The Sogdian Lectionary in E5). Why does the word occur only in some cases? Does this have to do with the kind of text (this does not seem to be the case)? Or with the scribe? The presence of the word hayé is anyway not out of place because the cross has a different meaning in the Oriental Churches, where it is never depicted with the dying Jesus on it and it is rather a symbol of life and glory.

Readers who work on manuscript fragments from Gandhāra and the like are also encouraged to answer Question 2!
For more on scriptoria and their cultural role, see also this interview.

This post is part of my series of Interviews. If there are additional questions you would like to ask or if there is someone, either a specific person (i.e., yourself), or a representative of a given category (e.g., “A scholar of Nyāya”) you would like me to interview, please let me know.

Q1: What is your current project about?
SK: In 2013 I won an ERC grant to investigate about how “Tibetan Medicine” is now becoming a transnational industry. This will lead me for the first time away from my main focus on the Tibetan exile community, since the project will focus on four countries, namely India, China, Bhutan and Mongolia. Nepal could have also been taken into account, but the process of institutionalization and industrialization of Tibetan Medicine is not so advanced there.

Q2: In your works, I enjoy the blend of field work and history. Where did you learn it?
SK: Nowhere really, but I think it is important. Early anthropologists tended to look at the present situation as if it were the last chance to look at disappearing cultures. Now, perhaps by contrast, anthropologists often emphasise how a certain phenomenon is “new” or “modern”, but if only one looks at history one quickly notices that there are continuities which should not be overlooked.
EF: Such continuities become evident in the case of your work on the Hanupa (Kloos 2006, about which see this post), which are now confronted with the influence of the Ladakh’s capital, Leh. But if one looks back at their history, one notices that in the 16th century they decided to give up their language and opted for Ladakhi under the influence of the political center…Thus, today’s challenges do not represent the first intrusion of a center in Hanu.

SK: This article is the result of the field work I did for my MA thesis. It was a difficult time, I spent 6 weeks staying at the place of the amchi [practitioner of traditional “Tibetan” medicine, ef] Tashi Bulu and I interviewed people about his social role. But the answers were always very elusive, like “He is a good doctor”. It was very frustrating.
EF: How did things turn out well at the end?
SK: First, I got a new interpreter, this time from a nearby village, who was a real research-assistant. In the morning, we would discuss my research-objectives for the day and he would ask the right questions in my place. I would only join the discussion if I caught something interesting. Second, I started getting interested in local stories and asked questions about them. I even traced the genealogies of all the families in the village (discovering many interesting things concerning polyandry, polygamy and openness of relations). To those questions, people started answering. And in the last ten days I could even receive more interesting answers concerning the controversial figure of Tashi Bulu. Thus, I understood that they had been reluctant to openly tell me their opinions of Tashi Buly precisely because of his controversial social role in the village. They were scared and jealous of him but also dependent, and were afraid that I would tell him what they said.

Q3: Reading your works, one gets the feeling that you are on the one hand quite sympathetic towards the Tibetan community (there is even a quote by the Dalai Lama on the home page of your website), while on the other hand you can be very analytic in your critical approach to their self-narratives…
SK: Well, anthropology means critical scrutiny!
EF: Ok, this is the last stone on the graveyard of my prejudices against anthropology!
SK: Anyway, I am happy you mention it, because this is also what I expect from myself. For a long time Tibetan studies were either text-based, avoiding politics, or they were uncritical, taking the discourses of exile Tibetans at face value. The wave of post-colonial studies arrived quite late in the 1990s, and it entailed a more sophisticated approach. Scholars like Donald Lopez, Robert Barnett and Toni Huber wrote about the imagined “Tibetanness” in texts such as Prisoners of Shangri-la or Imagining Tibet. It was the first critical approach to Tibet and it —rightly— stated that “Tibet” is a construction, and a political one. It was the comeback of politics, which was left out of the picture by earlier scholars. It is left out even by some contemporary scholars like Melvyn Goldstein in The Snow Lion and the Dragon. There, he rigidly separates politics from culture and proposes a possible solution of the China-Tibet conflict by means of leaving politics to the former and culture or religion to the latter. But Lopez etc. are right in maintaining that culture is political. But it is even more pervasive than they think, because even they still distinguish between politics and ethics, between the Tibetans’ strategies and their “real identity”. Without reducing everything to politics, but there is really no domain that’s free from politics, least of all in the Tibetan exile community.
EF: I think this has to do with the Western quest for purity, as if it were at all possible. We look for “pure” love, one where interests should not play any role; “pure” religion, one where economics and politics should have nothing to say… and dismiss actual reality, which is always mixed. This is the reason for which we often fail to understand Middle Age religious attitudes in which so many different aspects are intertwined.
SK: Yes, this has to do with the Enlightenment and the expected separation between State and Church. This just does not apply to Tibet, which has a completely different history and political system. This is why I try instead to find a middle way between uncritically supporting the claims of the Tibetan exile community (I want to question and analyse what they say) and thinking that it is all just made up for strategic reasons, that it is all just a show.
EF: Then, what about the Dalai Lama’s quote (“Tibetan medicine is an asset that reasserts the truth and existence of the Tibetan nation”) on the home page of your website?
SK: I put it because it exactly represents what I am working on, i.e., the role of medicine in the self-representations about the identity of Tibetans in exile. Basically, Tibetans in exile could no longer identify themselves through geographic references and had to reinvent their Tibetanness in the context of nationalism and exile. For this purpose they chose Buddhist ethics, which they equate on the one hand with Tibetanness and on the other with altruism. And it is through Tibetan medicine that they can manifest – and prove the efficacy and relevance – of this ethics, this cultural identity.

Q4: How would you then characterise your approach, as distinct from those of other scholars?
SK: The amchis told me directly what medicine represents for them. The only thing I did was to take them seriously. I tried to understand what that they meant and how it could work, rather than simply dismissing their claims as mere rhetoric. In this sense, I am following Foucault’s approach (rather than a hermeneutics of suspicion) and assume that people mean what they say, that what they say is significant, and try to understand how it makes sense. Moreover, the amchis themselves have usually reflected a lot about the topic.
EF: Possibly because, being in exile, they need to create a new narrative about their being Tibetan, their being doctors and the like. They just cannot disregard the topic.
SK: That’s right, and in this sense, it is interesting to observe how for centuries Tibetan medicine has used India as the source of its legitimation (“medical knowledge came from India together with Buddhism, and by that virtue it must be accorded highest authority and respect”).Nowadays, by contrast, Tibetans need to resist the Indian tendency to appropriate Tibetan medicine as “Indian”, and that’s why the Bon roots of Tibetan medicine are currently emphasised.

Q5: And how do you see the work of scholars working on the political aspects of Western medicine and denouncing its hegemonic claims? In your 2011 article you interestingly note that they are right, but that they risk to just want to substitute one hegemony through another, insofar as they would like to sweep aside Western sciences in favour of indigenous ones.

SK: Yes, moreover, “Tibetan medicine” is itself hegemonic in regard to the traditional amchis in Ladakh and the like!

Q6: We are often encouraged to have, for instance in the case of the Habilitation, more than one focus. Your example, however, shows how much deeper one can go if one does not step away from one topic. How did you manage to resist and specialise?
SK: It was only towards the end of my PhD that I could finally ask meaningful questions, had access to interesting data, and contacts to the right people: it would have been counterproductive to change topic then! Also, I don’t feel a strong pressure to change my area of specialization for the Habilitation. Having said that, I’m happy to expand my scope to other areas where Tibetan medicine is practiced as part of my ERC project [see Q1].

EF: Do you think it had to do with the fact that you had chosen a topic of so great significance? Or does everything become significant, when one engages more deeply with it?
SK: Some topics follow the Zeitgeist, but in general it is the depth and the quality of one’s research and research questions that make a topic interesting. Think of the founder of social anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski: who cares about the people of the Trobriand islands? But they became interesting and famous through his outstanding work.

Q7: You obtained a Fulbright fellowship, a Marie Curie fellowship and then even an ERC grant (success rate: less than 10%). How did you convince yourself that it was worth trying? And what would you suggest to younger colleagues working on their applications to the one or the other program?
SK: Do you want the truth? My institute’s director, Andre Gingrich, who himself won a Wittgenstein price, insisted that I apply for a new, large grant within the Academy of Sciences, called “New Frontiers Group”.
EF: Well, he must have seen that you had the potentialities…
SK: I had won a Marie Curie fellowship before, that’s why. Anyway, I discussed with a colleague of mine, Calum Blaikie, about a possible topic and we decided that the transformation of Tibetan medicine into an industry was the topic worth investigating. The more we thought about this, the more enthusiastic we became. So I worked on the application for two months, and then found out that I could also submit it for a START prize from the Austrian FWF. This, in turn, required me to also submit the same project for an ERC Starting Grant. You could say I maximized my chances, but really I didn’t expect to get any of these grants. Surprisingly I did.

Q8: As already mentioned, your website is one among the best I have ever seen among scholars. Why did you invest time and energy in it?
SK: I want to reach out to a wider public. And the website is also quite useful for my work in the Tibetan community. For those Tibetans who don’t know me yet, this is a good way to check me out, to see what I write about them. What I hope that they see, most of all, is that I take them seriously. I am sympathetic to them and their cause, but also critical. In my experience, this opens doors. In fact, I believe that to be truly critical, in the sense of Kant, one needs to seriously engage with one’s subject. And at least in anthropology, you cannot seriously engage with someone unless there is a good personal connection. I respect the Tibetans tremendously, and it is really a pleasure to work with them.

Q9: What would you recommend to younger colleagues wishing to specialise on the anthropology of Tibetan medicine?
SK: Assuming they are in Austria or Germany, I would recommend to go abroad. At least to France or the UK, even better if one can manage to study in North America. I applied for a Fulbright and could study in San Francisco where there is a PhD program specifically on medical anthropology. I learnt a lot there. I decided to go there instead of UK because I had already been in UK with an Erasmus scholarship during my MA, and I chose San Francisco/Berkeley because five out of the eight scholars I found most important to my work were based there.
EF: This indirectly points also to the fact that one needs to have a clear idea about the people one wants to work with (I did not have it when I started my PhD).
SK: Well, one doesn’t need to, as your example shows, but it certainly makes things easier!

(this post is part of my series of Interviews. If there are additional questions you would like to ask or if there is someone, either a specific person (i.e., yourself), or a representative of a given category (e.g., “A scholar of Nyāya”) you would like me to interview, please let me know.)

elisa freschi (Question 1): Tell us something about your current project.
Mrinal Kaul: At present I am working on a section of the third chapter of the Tantrāloka of Abhinavagupta along with its commentary by Jayaratha. This section talks about the bimbapratibimbavāda (the theory of reflection). I am preparing a critical edition of the text along with an annotated translation and critical essays about how Abhinava understands the theory of reflection and how Jayaratha interprets him.

ef: How did you get interested into the topic?
MK: Several years back when I was trying to explore the so called “Kashmir Śaivism” and reading its seminal texts with my teachers I also read Tantrāloka chapters 1, 2 and 3. The chapter one of the Tantrāloka —which entails 37 chapters— is a very illustrious introduction to the Trika tradition of Abhinava. Chapter two talks about the anupāya (“[means] without means”). It is a very small chapter of about 50 verses. And then the chapter 3 is about śāmbhavopāya [‘Śaiva means’, ef]. But when I  read the first section of the third chapter, which talks about reflection, I was fascinated with this idea without  being aware how difficult this topic would eventually turn out to be.

ef: I see, but you still did not say what captured your interest in the bimba-pratibimbavāda…
MK: I think it was the sheer beauty of the metaphor itself. I mean the way Abhinava explains that this world is in reality a reflection of the Absolute. The metaphor of mirror is very important for him. And it is through the means of this metaphor that he tries to explain his theory. In other words, I think I was fascinated by the metaphor and the explanation of the idea that the world is just a reflection of the Absolute.

ef (Question 2): A question which risks to be very much stereotyped: how much did your non-academic background influence your academic choice?
MK: I would say tremendously. I never expected that I would get into academics so seriously. I think it was a bit my grandfather’s influence who was an academician, but not in a very strict sense. I grew up looking at Śaiva and Vedānta texts around me and I wanted to know what they talked about, but it was beyond any question that I would go for humanities because of the background I came from, according to which it is absolutely unusual that you would go for the study of Sanskrit or some related subjects. But after I finished high school I made the very unusual choice of studying Sanskrit. And when I look back I see how I had begun to study it and how I look at it now. I mean I think I started with a complete orthodox approach and now I am —from a certain point of view— completely opposite to it.

ef: What do you mean when you say that it was “beyond question” that you would go for humanities? Did your relatives expect that you study natural sciences? (If I am getting too curious, just stop me).
MK: I still remember when my 10th standard results came and I was together with all my friends who then started to discuss which subjects to choose for the 11th class. It was but obvious that everyone would go either for sciences or commerce. Frankly, at that point of time I did not even know that one could study Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Philosophy, History etc. in schools or colleges. In other words, I was just expected to go either for science or commerce. Some of my friends and relatives even said I was crazy and was taking my career too easily. I mean their perspective was also justified in the sense that in humanities there are very less opportunities for jobs etc. But I stood firm and I think the most important thing is that my family never stopped supporting me in whatever I wanted to do. I know many of my friends who had to sacrifice their passion for the wishes of their parents simply because they thought that it was not right to follow one’s passion.

ef: When you say that your approach is now completely opposite to the orthodox one, do you refer to the fact that textual criticism is connected with a sort of critical attitude towards the text?
MK: Studying Sanskrit with both traditional and modern scholars has made me realize that both the systems of pedagogy are critical in their own way. Even while a traditional Sanskrit scholar might be hesitant to make an emendation or proposing a conjecture in a text, at the same time I must point out the critical approach with which texts are studied in proper traditional Sanskrit schools. In some traditional Sanskrit debates and discussions the criticism is indeed hair-splitting. At the same time there are many dimensions lacking in traditional approach. In the context of Indian scholarship of Sanskrit I think traditional schools are doing much better than the modern universities. Having said that I must also add that there are many things lacking in the modern approach. In my understanding the most useful approach is the one which complements both of them. We should, I think, try to develop an approach which is based on mutual critical attitude towards a text.

ef (Question 3): This fits nicely with my third question: How did you form yourself as a Sanskritist?
MK: Absolutely honestly, I am ashamed of calling myself a Sanskritist. Those who are aware of my so called academic “qualities” as a Sanskritist are aware of my limitations. I call myself a pseudo Sanskritist. You remember in the Deśopadeśa or Narmamālā, Kṣemendra uses a phrase for people like me vismṛtalaṭpratyayo vidvān. But at the same time I must say that I am trying to improve everyday. I am still going back to undergraduate manuals of Sanskrit and locating the forms that I either forget or never knew. I am not trying to be humble, but I am just trying to be sincere. Anyway, in the year 1998 I came across Paṇḍit Dinanath Yaccha who was a head-paṇḍit in the Jammu and Kashmir Research Department. I continued to study with him for a long time and I still remember when I met him for the first time I asked him “Do you know Sanskrit ?”. I wanted advice from him because I had just started studying Sanskrit. He said if I wanted to be a university teacher who knows nothing (meaning if I wanted to be a pseudo-Sanskritist) then I should do whatever I wanted, but if I was really interested in understanding the core I should start studying the Laghusiddhāntakaumudī. He recommended an edition that he had studied from when he was a student at the Panjab University in Lahore. I could not find that edition, but I did manage some other edition. Then he taught me the Laghukaumudī, followed by the Amarakoṣa and Kālīdāsa’s Śakuntalā. After this he asked me to focus on some Śaiva texts. This was my introduction to the Śaiva system of Kashmir. Later, I went to St Stephen’s College in Delhi where I read for my undergraduate and master’s degrees in Sanskrit. I was lucky to have teachers like Dr Harsh Kumar and Dr A.D. Mathur there, from both of whom I learnt a great deal. Looking back I think it was Dr Mathur who actually pushed me towards research oriented study in Sanskrit. Thereafter, I also studied in the University of Pune for a while with Prof V.N. Jha. I wanted to study Logic with him. This officially made me a Sanskritist, I think. With the inspiration of Prof Bettina Baumer I used to visit Benaras regularly to study Śaiva texts with Pandit Hemendra Nath Chakravarty, and some times with Dr Mark Dyczkowski. Benaras is obviously a dynamic centre for Sanskrit studies.

ef: You have been studying in many different places, what did you learn from each experience? What you recommend to which kind of person?
MK: Well, this one is going to be very long to answer. I think I would have lots to say, but I will keep myself brief. I think it pays off very much if you have a good base in traditional study and then you adopt the modern approach. I still regret I did not spend enough time studying traditionally. Once a traditional Nyāya scholar Dr Devadatta Patil in Pune told me “Give me five years of my life and I will give you all Nyāya from the Tarkasaṁgraha to the Tattvācintāmaṇi“, but I was not courageous enough to accept his offer. Now I deeply regret it. Even if I was interested in Śaiva of Kashmir I should still have considered mastering a system of Śāstra completely which would later have helped me in understanding any other śāstric system. At the same time the modern approach is absolutely crucial. So while India does remain a main hub for studying Sanskrit at different levels, I think in the West the North American system represents theoretical aspects smartly, and Europe is stronger in the philological approach. For me personally studying with traditional Sanskrit scholars of Kashmir was very different from reading with traditional paṇḍits of Benaras or Pune, and studying in North America was very different from studying in Europe, but all these encounters added to my knowledge and experience (although I still continue to be naive).

ef: Add, please, a line about your studies in UK, Canada and Italy.
MK: In Oxford I studied for my master’s course after I had finished my M.A. in Delhi University. I worked with Prof A.G.J.S. Sanderson on the 9th chapter of the Tantrāloka which talks about the causality and the tattva-krama in the Trika system of Abhinavagupta. Studying with Prof Sanderson was an eye-opener for me. It was like jñāna-cakṣu-unmīlana [“the sudden opening of the knowledge-eye”, ef]. I could not continue studying  for my D.Phil with him for want of funding. Thus, I joined a Ph.D. course in Montreal. It was another eye-opener. In the first three years of Ph.D. I was expected to read a lot about the  methodological approaches in studying social sciences. This pushed me outside the philological bubble I used to live in. I discovered another world out there which is absolutely equally important as philology is. Hopefully, I will finish my Ph.D. thesis in 2014. Meantime, since early 2012 I have been in Italy. Italy for me means two people: Prof R. Torella and Prof F. Sferra. I have been working with Prof Sferra for a long time. We are also working together on a critical edition of the Minor Works of Abhinavagupta along with an annotated translation and notes. This will be published in 2014. Since I was already working with Prof Sferra it made more sense working with him for my thesis. I got a small visiting travel grant from the Québec Government. I could spend some time working with him and I continue doing so, now as a lecturer at the “L’Orientale” University in Naples.

ef (Question 4): A question which is very relevant for me: you started at a very early age/at a very early stage of your academic career to edit volumes. Would you recommend it? Did you learn a lot or do you feel you wasted more time you could have better invested?
MK: Honestly I think I should have put more effort in doing my college assignments. Nonetheless, I think I can write another volume on my experiences while working for the projects of the two books I edited. If you see the first book titled The Variegated Plumage you will come across innumerable traces of my inexperience. But I think it was this experience that helped me in producing a better volume like the Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir [of which you can read interesting reviews on Mrinal’s blog, e.g., Saroja Bhate’s one here, ef] even though I think this could also have been better in many respects. I do not know if I would recommend to any one getting engaged in editing or publishing at an early age, but if I could go back in time, I would focus more on doing the college assignments. That said, working on these volumes was not at all wasting time in any way. I cannot explain in words how much I have learnt working with Prof. Aklujkar on the Linguistic Traditions of Kashmir. Even though I am not a grammarian (which I make very clear in my introduction to the volume) I can confidently speak about the history of Sanskrit grammar in Kashmir. And Prof Aklujkar is a hard task master, and an amazing personality. Even though I have never been his student formally, I owe a lot to him.

ef (Question 5): Now a practical question: what would you recommend to young fellows from India who would like to keep on studying?
MK: Many years back Prof Aklujkar inspired me so much with a verse (this is probably from the Mahābhārata): ācāryād pādaṃ ādhatte, pādaṃ śiśyaḥ svamedhayā | pādaṃ kālena labhate, pādaṃ svabrahmacāribhiḥ || So I would like to recommend to younger students that we have all very different sources of learning available to us, but what matters is the method with which we study a certain discipline. And it does all depend on us – how we strive to learn harder and better. That said I think the problem with young scholarship in India is not that there are no bright young students who want to study classical Indian studies, but the problem is the system and the teachers in these systems. In many ways, I feel that many of the Sanskrit departments in Indian universities are not involved in research but rather with the idea that they want to “preserve” and “propagate” the so called ‘Indian culture’. Such approaches which are driven more by a nationalistic agenda rather than seeking academic excellence offers least interest to the students who are aspiring for an intellectual pursuit. In many Sanskrit departments in Indian universities  student are are not trained in critical thinking, but are made to think of themselves as custodians of the “Indian culture”. Anyway, the students who are really interested in the intellectual part will surely find their ways, if not in Sanskrit departments (unfortunately), but in other departments. If they are really interested in studying Sanskrit, I would recommend studying either in some good traditional Sanskrit university (like the Tirupathi Sanskrit University) or studying privately with some paṇḍits. That always made more sense to me.

ef (Question 6): Do you interact with people working on similar topics (e.g., ontology or metaphysics) but within different cultural settings (e.g., “Western” philosophy)?
MK: Unfortunately, I do not see myself doing that although in my understanding it is extremely important. Lately, I have been gradually trying to introduce myself to such similar topics in different cultural settings.

ef (Question 7): In your review of Prof. Rastogi’s book you emphasise the importance of thinking of Sanskrit thought as philosophy (and not just as a relic of the past). What do you think is needed to achieve this purpose?
MK: I think the best thing to do is to stop thinking of Sanskrit philosophy texts as things of the past and get them engage also with the modern thoughts. I have witnessed a big and deep gap between the traditional and modern Sanskrit scholars and I have always believed that there should be a common platform for scholars from both traditions to discuss about such things. Many traditional Sanskrit scholars are still writing new texts to revise the ideas of Patañjali, Gautama and others. And many of these texts compel us to think differently. I recall some years back I saw a book titled Saṁvāda published by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research which was basically a compilation of the debates that took place in an extraordinary meeting held between traditional and modern scholars of “Indian Sanskrit philosophy”. It was indeed interesting to read a book like that. May be we could organize for gatherings like that.

ef (Question 8): What would you recommend to someone who wishes to specialise on Kaśmīr Śaivism?
MK: 

One of my teachers, Professor Nilkanth Gurtoo with whom I studied some Śaiva texts used to emphasize the fact that we may only study one text of a certain system, but we should master it so well that it becomes easy to understand any other manual of a certain Sanskrit philosophical system. He used to quote (I think from the Mahābhāṣya): ekaḥ śabdaḥ suprayuktaḥ samyakjñātaḥ | svarge loke kāmadhuk bhavati |  In other words if we have an easy understanding of any Śāstric system it would also become easy to approach the Śaiva literature. As far as the basic texts of the Trika Śaiva system of Kashmir are concerned, one can start with the Parāprāveśikā attributed to Kṣemarāja (but most probably not by him actually), the Paramārthasāra attributed to Abhinavagupta (although Prof A. Sanderson doubts its authorship), or the Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya of Kṣemarāja. Reading the works of Prof A. Sanderson is crucial for developing a critical eye in understanding the significant historical development in Kashmirian Śaiva schools. Then for philosophical study we have the works of Prof K.C. Pandey, Prof R. Torella, Prof. N. Rastogi, Dr. Isabelle Ratie, Dr Alex Watson.

You can find other interviews under the label “Interview”. Do let me know if there is someone you would like me to interview or a question you would like me to ask.

EF: In fact, it appears clearly from your work that plans, space, and drawing play an important role for you.
GK: I always start my articles and presentations with some drawings, plans or models. The text just flows automatically once these are ready.

EF: Two things have particularly impressed me in your articles. The first one is importance of architectonic space.
GK: Yes, one cannot understand architecture only through the surfaces, as if one were an ant climbing on the walls and unable to appreciate the three-dimensionality of space. The lantern ceilings which reproduce a maṇḍala in such a way as to unable the practitioner to actually be in its centre are a good example. One cannot achieve it just in a two-dimensional painting. And in order to understand the symbolic value of such a  maṇḍala, one needs to take into account the possibilities it opens for practitioners, possibilities which one would overlook if one were to focus only on the beauty of the paintings.

the sketch shows the approach of the practicioner to a two- or three-dimensional maṇḍala (drawing by GK)

EF: The other point which impressed me is the fact that your articles are not only descriptive. As in the example you just mentioned, one sees how you connect art and architecture with their symbolic value.
GK: I try to focus on the vision of the one who thought about building a certain temple, of what he wanted to achieve. Once I have produced a plan and then also a three-dimensional model of the building many things become apparent to me. For instance, it becomes clear that the 100-Stūpa temple must have impressed its visitors who were at first lost and needed to look for the main stūpa. This conveys the idea of the stūpa as a fundamental axis mundi (see image).

the many stūpas around the main one (drawing by GK)

EF: Now to your career. You have the uncommon specificity (among researchers) of having taken parental leave for two years when your daughter was born.
GK: Not even I did it, but I am so thankful for that. That step back from the academic milieu enabled me to focus on what I really liked, again, on drawing, descriptive geometry, history and Asia. And while my daughter slept I drew and wrote my first FWF application, on the development of the Vajrāyāna stūpa-architecture.

EF: Your work is so complex that I wonder how you manage to do all on your own…
GK: I have a good network of people I exchange information with. I show them my models or support them with plans and they help me with Tibetan inscriptions, material analysis of colours and so on. I do not value “interdisciplinarity” if it only means juxtaposition of different perspectives, but sharing expertise is of fundamental importance.

EF: You managed to find your own area of research bridging Tibetology, Buddhist studies, Art History, Architecture… What would you recommend to younger scholars?
GK: To ask themselves what motivated them at first. I managed to unite all my passions in one research and this is what makes it possible for me to enjoy my work.

EF (Q. 1): You are an atypical Sanskritist, since you specialise not only on texts, but also on their vehicles, i.e., on manuscripts. How did this interest arise within your Indological curriculum?

CF: First of all, thanks for the interview (if this were a documentary movie, I’de be smiling). And, well, in the first place I don’t think I’m a Sanskritist, precisely because I do not spend —at least now— most of the time only reading Sanskrit texts.

(EF: This is what prompted me to ask, since I am interested in “out-of-place” people (I feel myself out-of-place, both in Sanskrit and Philosophy).)

CF: Coming back to your question, my interest for manuscripts arose gradually. I started studying Indology and Sanskrit as a secondary subject back in Italy, when I was studying Classics at the “Università Statale” in Milan.

EF: Did you have to do with manuscripts at that time?
CF: Yes and no. As a student, I worked in the library of the institute for papyrology (a chair you find only in Italy, by the way) and there I first came in direct contact with manuscripts, but I have to say I’ve always been fascinated by libraries and books as objects. In fact, originally I wanted to study archaeology and the material sources for the reconstruction of the past and I have always been fascinated by what you call “micro history”. Thus, I also studied bibliography and bibliotheconomy during my MA. It’s because I always wanted to feel that i was doing something useful for others —and down-to-earth.

EF: I can understand that books or manuscripts might be more “down-to-earth” if compared to texts, but why do you think that they are useful?

CF: I think that education and access to knowledge is something that should be central in the life of every human being, and it is something worth fighting for. Books —and hence libraries— are useful to others because in our era they are (still) the main means through which knowledge is spread, at least in the West. By preserving the books and facilitating the access to them —be they manuscripts or printed books— I think I can be useful to those who cannot read, to the people who make the revolutions and then end up with a fistful of sand. I know it could sound naïve, but i do feel useful to others, doing this.
Have you ever seen Sergio Leone’s movie Duck, you sucker? There is a very insightful discussion about books between Rod Steiger, who is portraying a Mexican peon and bandit, and James Coburn, who is portraying an Irish revolutionary who is fighting for the Mexican revolution (you can listen to it here). Thus, access to knowledge is of paramount importance for every human being, because it is the only way, i think, to avoid that people are exploited without even knowing it, just in the example of the revolution as told by Rod Steiger in the movie. And in order to guarantee this access, one needs teachers, but also books (and computers) and libraries (since not every one can afford to buy books).

EF: What happened after Marburg?
CF: Then, Germany happened. I mean, I went to Marburg to study Sanskrit, Prakrit and Tibetan as an Erasmus student and decided to continue to study there instead of Milan. At that time, prof. Michael Hahn was still there and as you know, he is primarily a philologist.
I started reading manuscripts and xylographies of Buddhist texts (Sanskrit and Tibetan) for the sake of editing texts. The topic of my MA thesis and of my first PhD project (which I never completed) was Kṣemendra’s Bodhisattvāvadānakalpalatā, but we read manuscripts even during the various seminars, it was an integral part of the curruculum, although mostly to check the correctness or completeness of an edition.

EF: Hence, for purposes different than your actual ones. I mean, at the time of your MA thesis you were still using manuscripts instead of focusing on them, isn’t it?
CF: Yes, then, I got a post in Hamburg in a research project focusing on manuscripts as material artefacts and I started working on a different PhD topic, abandoning the first one on Kṣemendra’s Bodhisattvāvadānakalpalatā. The research group was focusing on manuscripts both as carrier of texts and as archeological artefacts, so to say, and there we go, I was back to archeology!
EF: This also shows that abandoning a project might be for a bigger good (i.e., following/discovering one’s own real interest)
CF: Indeed! It was first in Hamburg that i realised how much historical information you can squeeze out of manuscripts just by asking them the correct questions. In other words, I discovered the world of codicology and manuscript studies.

EF (Q. 2): This brings me directly to the second question: Suppose one wants to specialise on Sanskrit manuscripts (for their own sake, i.e., not in order to do critical editions with them, but with an “archaeological” interest), what would you recommend? Which languages does s/he needs to know? Where should s/he study? What does s/he need to read?

CF: I. One has to learn Sanskrit, of course. Or, better, one should learn Sanskrits.
In other words, one should get rid of the idea that Pāṇinian Sanskrit is the only Sanskrit. One example from another field: you remember for sure how you studied Greek and Latin in high school, and that Herodotos wrote in Ionic, the choirs in Greek tragedies are in Doric etc. Well, there are more ancient Greeks, not only one, but we usually read Attic. If you transfer this to the domain of Sanskrit, you should think of different types of Sanskrit.
One simple example is the so-called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. One should start reading texts that are written in less standardised Sanskrit, in order to learn that this is a multifaceted language.
II. Studying Prakrit. Because it is important to get an idea of the fact that languages change. Moreover, a very important element of a manuscript is the colophon, which is the place where you find information as to when, how, by whom, for whom etc. a manuscript has been written. Very often, colophons are written in a very irregular Sanskrit, a sort of ”vernacularized Sanskrit”. Therefore, some knowledge of Prakrits and modern languages is very helpful. It enables you to recognise what phonetical changes might lie behind an irregular form and thus guess the “correct” Sanskrit form. Moreover, one should learn Prakrit even because if you want to work as a codicologist, you should be able to handle, so to say, also manuscripts of texts in Middle Indo-Aryan languages, since they belong to the same manuscript tradition, whereas manuscripts of texts in modern Indo-Aryan languages, although akin to the Sanskrit manuscript tradition, were produced in a different environment.
III. Learning German, English and French, in the sense that you should be able to at least read secondary literature in the relevant languages, and in order to do it more quickly, you have to spend some time abroad, a couple of years at least.

EF: What about learning Italian?
CF: For codicology and manuscript studies, it is still a must, in this sense, I’m very lucky. Since South Asian codicology, in my humble opinion, is still in its infancy, very often I have to turn to works on the codicology of “Western” manuscripts, just to learn the methodologies and see if they fit or not for our material, and as  to Western codicology and book history studies, Italian scholars are still at the top. Marilena Maniaci, Maria Luisa Agati, Guglielmo Cavallo are the Italian scholars that come to my mind immediately, but
I’m sure I left out many other valid scholars. For instance, i studied library science with Giorgio Montecchi back in Milan. But still, this is something else, not codicology.

EF: Other must-read in other languages:
CF: The Dutch scholar J.P. Gumbert and the French Denis Muzerelle.

EF (Q. 3): You are also an atypical Italian Sanskritist insofar as you spent most of your academic life abroad. You said you learnt textual criticism in Marburg and manuscriptology in Hamburg. What about your present experience in Cambridge?
CF: After my PhD, I wanted to catalogue manuscripts, although I could not have foreseen to work in Cambridge. This is an amazing opportunity for many reasons: first of all, the Cambridge University collections of South Asian manuscripts are relatively small (about 1,600 manuscripts, a big collection for Europe, but a small one if you take into account the South Asian ones, e.g., the archives in Kathmandu), but host very important manuscripts; secondly, they include manuscripts from very different manuscript traditions and coming from all over the subcontinent, from the Himālayan range to South India. It is the perfect place to learn, because in the field of manuscript studies more than in others, you always have the feeling that you still have to learn; you think you’ve seen all possible things, and then the next manuscript you open has a feature you have never seen before.

Ah, and one coda, so to say: in fact, I do not think of myself as an “Italian” Sanskritist, precisely because, as you say in the question, i spent most of my time abroad.

EF (Q. 4): You have been working at the Manuscript Project in Hamburg and now at the Sanskrit Manuscript Project in Cambridge. How did you manage to work there?
CF: I guess luck, in the first place. Or better, it’s a mixture of passion, hard work and above all, luck. Let me explain one aspect after the other, starting with the last one. When I say luck, I mean that I have had the best teachers I could have hoped for. I had the luck of finding teachers who listened to me, helped me finding out what were my strengths and told me to pursue them. Codicology is not very widespread as a research field, among Indologists but despite this, I’ve been encouraged to pursue this way. As to the second aspect, it goes without saying that it was a steep way to go: you first have to learn the languages (see above, No. 2) and methodologies (see above, No. 2).

EF (Q. 5): Can you tell me about your future projects?

CF: As I said in the previous answer, it was a steep way to get where I am now, and now i am not sure where to go, to tell the truth. You see, even if you are passionate about what you do, in my case, South Asian codicology, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the world shares your passion, and still, you have to pay the rent or the mortgage, or, if you have a family, you want your kids to have the best opportunities… I am thinking of a solution that enables me to go on with my passion. I think that in our field, and by this I mean South Asian studies, one should always have a plan B, if the academic career is taking its toll and you don’t want to jump from one job to another. In my case, I am seriously thinking of library and information science as a possible plan B. My hope is that at some I point I can work in a library that holds South Asian manuscripts.

EF: What about the plan A?
CF: Working with a great numbers of manuscripts, like we do now, gives you a different view on what might have been the production, use and circulation of manuscripts in a given geographical and cultural area. In our case, we noticed, for instance, that from the 15th century onwards, in the Kathmandu Valley paper started to replace palm-leaf as the main writing material employed in the production of manuscripts, until it completely replaced palm-leaf by the 17th century; and that the 17th century witnessed a flourishing in the production of manuscripts. A major motor of cultural change during the Western Renaissance has been the discovery of movable print and the diffusion of printing presses, which allowed the production and diffusion of books on an unprecedented way. Considering the fact that palm-leaf had to be imported in Nepal, we asked ourselves the following question: like in the case of the printing press in the West, can a technological change like the diffusion of paper as a writing material have triggered a cultural change in the Kathmandu Valley? During our cataloguing work we noticed that many Nepales manuscripts from the 14th to the 17th century are still unpublished and my colleague, Daniele Cuneo, immediately thought of a sort of “Malla Renaissance”. I have presented a paper on the hypothesis of this “Malla Reinassance” at the IATS Conference in Mongolia, August 2013.

Do you agree that new techniques can produce cultural changes, instead of being produced by them?