When one works on the intellectual history of the Sanskrit cosmopolis*, by contrast, one still needs to map the entire territory, whose extension still escapes us. Very few elements of the landscape have been fixated, and might still need to be re-assessed.

What are the mountains, main cities as well as rivers, bridges, routes that we would need to fix on the map? Key authors, key theories, key schools, as well as languages and manners of communication and how they worked (public debates? where? how?).
I mentioned authors before schools because for decades intellectual historians looking at the Sanskrit cosmopolis emphasized, and often overemphasized the role of schools at the expense of the fundamental role of individual thinkers, thus risking to oversee their individual contributions and to flatten historical developments, as if nothing had changed in astronomy or philosophy for centuries. This hermeneutic mistake is due to the fact that while the norm in Europe and North America after Descartes and the Enlightenment has been increasingly to highlight novelty, originality is constantly understated in the Sanskrit cosmopolis. It is not socially acceptable to claim to be novel and original in the Sanskrit world, just like it is not acceptable to be just “continuing a project” in a grant application in Europe or North America.
Still, schools are often the departure point for any investigation, since they give one a first basic understanding of the landscape. How does this exactly work?
For instance, we know that the Vedānta systems were a major player in the intellectual arena, with all other religious and philosophical schools having to face them, in some form of the other. However, it is not at all clear which schools within Vedānta were broadly influential, where within South Asia, and in which languages. Michael Allen, among others, worked extensively on Advaita Vedānta in Hindī sources, but were they read also by Sanskrit authors and did the latter react to them? Were Hindī texts on Vedānta read only in the Gangetic valley or throughout the Indian subcontinent? The same questions should be investigated with regard to the other schools of Vedānta (Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śaivādvaita…), the other vernacular languages they interacted with (respectively: Tamil and Maṇipravāḷam, Kannaḍa…), and the regions of the Indian subcontinent they originated in. And this is just about Vedānta schools.
Similarly, we still have to understand which other schools entered into a debate with philosophy and among each other and which interdisciplinary debates took place. Scholars of European intellectual history know how Kepler was influenced by Platonism and how Galileo influenced the development of philosophy. What happened in the Sanskrit cosmopolis?
Dagmar Wujastyk recently focused on the intersection of medicine (āyurveda) alchemy (rasaśāstra) and yoga. Which other disciplines were in a constant dialogue? Who read mathematical and astronomical texts, for instance? It is clear, because many texts themselves often repeat it, that Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Vyākaraṇa (hermeneutics, logic and grammar) were considered a sort of basic trivium, to be known by every learned person. But the very exclusion of Vedānta from the trivium (it cannot be considered to be included in “Mīmāṃsā” unless in the Viśiṣṭādvaita self-interpretation) shows that the trivium is only the starting point of one’s instruction and is not at all exhaustive. And we have not even started to look at many disciplines, from music to rhetorics.

One might wonder whether it is not enough to look at reports by today’s or yesterday’s Sanskrit intellectuals themselves in order to know what is worth reading and why. However, as discussed above, such reports would not boast about innovations and main breakthroughs. Sanskrit philosophy (and the same probably applies to Sanskrit mathematics etc.) is primarily commentarial. That is, authors presuppose a basic shared background knowledge and innovate while engaging with it rather than imagining to be pioneers in a new world of ideas. In a commentarial philosophy, innovations are concealed and breakthroughs are present, but not emphasised. Hence, one needs a lot of background knowledge to recognise them.

I would like to map the territory to realise who was studying what, where and how. How can this be done? The main obstacle is the amount of unpublished material, literally millions of manuscripts that still remain to be read, edited, translated and studied (I am relying on David Pingree’s estimate). Editing and translating them all requires a multi-generational effort of hundreds of people. However, a quick survey of them, ideally through an enhanced ORC technology, would enable scholars to figure out which languages were used, which theories and topics were debated, which authors were mentioned, and who was replying to whom.

This approach will remind some readers of the distant reading proposed by Franco Moretti. I am personally a trained philologist and a spokesperson for close reading. However, moving back and forth between the two methods seems to be the most productive methodology if the purpose is mapping an unknown territory. Close reading alone will keep one busy for decades and will not enable one to start the hermeneutic circle through which one’s knowledge of the situation of communication helps one better understanding even the content of the text one is closely focusing on. As hinted at above, this is particularly crucial in the case of a commentarial philosophy, where one needs to be able to master a lot of the author’s background in order to evaluate his contribution.

*As discussed several times elsewhere, I use “Sanskrit philosophy” or “Sanskrit intellectual history” as a short term for “philosophy in a cosmopolis in which Sanskrit was the dominant language of culture and everyone had to come to terms with it”, as with the use of “philosophy in the Islamic world”, that includes also thinkers part of the Islamic world but who were not themselves Muslims.

(The above are just quick notes. Any feedback is welcome!)

The early second millennium in South India saw a culmination of scholarly activities in the sphere of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava devotional movements, including both philosophical and ritual discourses. While we tend to study these separately from each other, for Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava thinkers both aspects – theological speculations and ritual practice – played an integral part in their intellectual and daily lives, and thus we should consider their theological works deeply entangled in the ritual world they moved in.

Further, these scholarly activities were embedded in an environment with a long history of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava interactions, with some works showing passages conceived in direct response to their competitors. The present workshop aims to transcend disciplinary boundaries and investigate the interactions between both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava thinkers as well as theological theory and ritual practice and how these may be manifested in discourses of identity on both an ideological and a practical level. Some of the questions will be: Do ritual practice and theological theory correspond to each other? How did theories develop from rituals and subsequently feed back and impact theological discourses and vice versa? To what extent do rituals presuppose an identification between God and His human devotees? And does the answer to this question depend on a dispute between opponents, who upheld the opposite view (i.e., a non-dualist Śaiva answer may depend on a dualist Vaiṣṇava opponent)? Or how much do Śaiva-Vaiṣṇava or intra-Vaiṣṇava and intra-Śaiva exchanges shape prescriptive and theoretical discourses on ritual practices relating to external religious markers?

In order to pursue this set of questions, a range of specialists has been asked to choose a passage from key works that shaped the intellectual and ritual life of early medieval South India. While an introduction to each of the sources will be presented, the sessions will focus on the joint reading to be held in the light of this set of guiding questions. In addition, further specialists have been invited to join the reading and contribute towards the discussions.

You can read the whole program here.

Why am I asking these questions? Because —no matter how sophisticated our discussions of specific topics of philosophy can be— one still encounters these prejudices in secondary literature…and consequently also in the writings of many colleagues who do not have access to direct sources. They cannot be blamed for that, but I hope that they will be grateful to receive some advice concerning what they believe on the basis of surpassed or unreliable sources. The last example for me was a collection of notes on Academia.edu. Its author starts with the good intention “I’ve had enough of ignorance about Indian philosophy” and overall he sounds engaged and interesting. Unfortunately, however, he has received bad advices and/or chose badly among them. The result is a short summary of the usual suspects, with a strong bias in favour of Advaita Vedānta mistaken to be “Indian Philosophy” sic et simpliciter (bold passages are the author’s ones, followed by my comments):

1. “‘See the Self’ is the keynote of all schools of Indian philosophy. And this is the reason why most of the schools are also religious sects” (p. 1). I thought that B.K. Matilal had done enough to defeat this prejudice, but this seems not to be the case. Thus, I am afraid I will not be able to defeat it myself. Let me just note that this is a short summary of what some schools of Vedānta could be said to do but it has little or nothing to do with the vast majority of Indian philosophers. There is no “religious sect” called “Mīmāṃsā” or “Nyāya” or “Vaiśeṣika” and so on. Not to speak of Buddhist schools of philosophy, who tend to be anātmavādin `deniers of the existence of a [permanent] Self’.
2. Self-forgetful service of others is a Christian, not a Hindu idea (p. 1). Well, one might argue that self-forgetful service of others is difficult to attain for human beings. And one is reminded of Hegel’s critique of Kant’s concept of morality. Moreover, self-forgetful service of others is exactly the Bodhisattva ideal —which the author himself mentions at p. 9.
3. (Evidently all the life-denying aspects of Indian tradition, as well as the superstitious and degrading religious practices, proceed largely from the caste system, its lack of dynamism, its oppressive structure, its eternal unchangingness. A society that worships Hanuman the monkey and Sabbala the cow, that countenances the burning of wives after their husband’s death, is an inhuman one, in which man is subjugated both by the earth and especially by a caste-structured povert) (pp.1–2). My personal position is not consistent with strict Marxism as for the idea that philosophy were only a superstructure of economic relationships. But in any case, I am strongly suspicious about such summaries highlighting an a-historical laundry list of shameful acts of Indians (not Indian philosophers) without any effort to understand (worshipping Hanuman is not like worshipping a monkey, just like believing in St. Mary does not amount to beliving that virginal births are possible in general).
4. Hegel, Hegel, Hegel (except for the mysticism) (p.3). No, thanks. Again, the author is speaking of Advaita Vedānta and thinks of “Indian Philosophy” as if Advaita Vedānta were its only representative. In fact, Advaita Vedānta, as discussed by Daya Krishna (Three Myths of Indian Philosophy), is virtually absent from the philosophical arena until almost the end of the first Millennium AD. And, one might add, its role in the second Millennium AD has been possibly overemphasised by well-known activists of Advaita Vedānta such as Vivekānanda who looked at Indian Philosophy through these lenses.
5. Hinayana, a religion without a God, emphasizes self-help […]. Mahayana, on the other hand, is less egoistic and negative […]. In this sect Buddha is transformed into God and worshipped as such. […] The Mahayana religion has more missionary zeal than the Hinayana; it is more progressive and dynamic (p. 9). “Hinayana” is already a bad start, since it is a pejorative term (literally meaning ‘deminished* vehicle’, opposed to Mahāyāna ‘big vehicle’) applied by Mahāyāna Buddhists to their forerunners. “God” seems to me here a misleading category. If one thinks at the Western and Indian concept of God as creator of the world, dispenser of mercy, etc., then the Buddha is surely not a God, not even in Mahāyāna. And so on.
6. The original teachings of Buddha were not incompatible with the Upanishads—for instance, he emphasized Atman, the Great Self, and encouraged people to act under the light of that Self, to seek union with it—but his early Hinayana disciples (of the Sarvastivada, or Vaibhasika, school) changed that (p. 9). This is a neo-Vedāntic interpretation of Buddhism, which uses a fundamentalistic device (“the origins were good, the successors mixed all up”) in order to suggest that the Buddha was in fact a crypto Vedāntin.
7. Idealism is obviously the philosophy of choice for most Indian thinkers (p. 10). This is not so, and surely not “obviously” so. Which schools would one count among the Idealist ones? I can only think of Advaita Vedānta, Yogācāra and perhaps some trends of Pratyabhijñā philosophy. Which schools are closer to Realism, Representationalism, etc.? Mīmāṃsā, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya, Śaivasiddhānta, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, Dvaita Vedānta… (all of them are never mentioned in the “Notes”), Nyāya, Yoga, both schools of Jaina philosophy, most schools of Buddhist Philosophy, Cārvākas, and so on.

Long story short: Perhaps we have really to do something to spread some better-funded knowledge on Indian Philosophy (and perhaps interested scholars should make some efforts in selecting their sources). Which misconceptions do you encounter more frequently?

*translation improved thanks to Jayarava’s comment (see below).

Should you have arrived here for the first time: Please read this page about the purposes of this blog before feeling offended. I want to initiate discussions, not to offend anyone.

In fact, it seems that forgery has been used, although this term and its negative connotations might be completely out of place in classical India. The first example one might think of is Madhva, who quoted profusely from texts which have not been traced. If he really forged his quoted, Madhva would seem to me a unique case in the Classical Indian horizon —I still do not understand why he did not just interpret the texts he had at his disposal in the way he wanted.

Now, one might object, Madhva’s case is not that exceptional, given that many other authors founded their teachings on lost texts. Mīmāṃsā authors justified the validity of Smṛtis and even of sadācāra ‘the behaviour of right people’ exactly by postulating that they are founded on lost Vedic texts, or on only-inferable ones (nityānumeya). But this is not a suitable comparison.
In fact, on the one hand we have Mīmāṃsā and Dharmaśāstra (and later also Vedānta) authors trying to justify existing behaviours on the basis of inferred texts, on the other we have Madhva trying to ground new ideas on the basis of untraced but existing quotes.
Thus, Madhva is more or less doing the opposite of what Kumārila and Co. were doing.
However, what about Madhva’s successors and supporters, both within and without his school (e.g., the Gauḍīya Jīva Gosvāmī)? In this case, could the fact that the idea of lost Vedas was already current have helped in making the claim that Madhva had quoted from texts which were later lost less preposterous?
Perhaps. But I tend to doubt it, given that the claim of loss texts seems to be always projected to a far-away antiquity, and more specifically to the Vedas (including texts contemporary scholars would not recognise as part of the Veda, but which were presented as such, like the Pāñcarātra Ekāyanaveda). Also the gter ma-device of “finding” back (allegedly) lost Buddhist texts had a different purpose (namely legitimizing whole new texts).
Madhva and his followers, as far as I know, never used the lost Veda argument to support their claims. This might be a further indirect evidence of the fact that they also thought of the two cases as quite far apart.

What do you think? Did you ever encounter “forged” texts in Classical Indian Philosophy?

On Madhva’s quotes, see this post.

Cross-posted on The Indian Philosophy Blog, where you can also read several interesting comments.