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.)

Federico Squarcini recently disputed this claim on the basis of the fact that it is too much dependent on the manuscript transmission, which is not so meaningful, given that all manuscripts are centuries later than the YS–YBh:

La maggior parte di quelli datati fra essi (manoscritti dello YS–YBh) è del XIX secolo. […] non si conoscono manoscritti degli Yogasūtra più antichi del XVI secolo d.C (Squarcini 2015, cxii).

Squarcini also mentions as an evidence in favour of the distinction of the two texts, text-passages such as the following of the YBh:

iti patañjaliḥ etat svarūpam ity uktam (YBh ad YS 3.44)

Here, the author or the YBh seems to quote from the YS as a work by someone different from himself, called Patañjali.

If you read Squarcini, Bronkhorst and Maas, which arguments convince you more?

On Maas 2013 and Maas’ view on the single author of YS and YBh, see here.

These thoughts led me to a (great) lecture by Alan Scott, which was based on his 2013 article published on The Journal of Classical Sociology (an abstract is available here). Scott examines the possible non economic reasons for the raise of Capitalism, especially discussing Hirschman, Weber and Simmel. Since Weber is more well-known, I will avoid any gross summary of his views (as exemplified by his thesis that capitalism is the result of the Calvinist ethics). Hirschman, by contrast, considers capitalism as the paradoxical result of the ruling agents who were trying to secure the existing social order. As an alternative to Hobbes’ Leviathan, in fact, they tried to tame lust transforming it into a rational interest for gain, which would have in turn tamed other “hot passions” such as lust. Thus, against Weber, capitalism would not be an exogenous process, due to the emergence of a new class, the bourgeoisie, but an endogenous one, due to the ruling class.
Particularly interesting is Scott’s implicit way of contrasting this claim with Weber’s sentences about the “enemies of capitalism”, which are exactly those groups who are interested in defending their social assets, challenged by capitalism, i.e., peasantry, jurists and civil servants, academics, the church and the aristocracy.
Last, Scott discusses also Simmel. Weber and Simmel agree on the fact that capitalism can have some appeal also on people who are not going to take advantage of it (e.g., peasant moving from the countryside to wage labour). Weber explains it because of individualism: people prefer to receive a meager pay in order to escape from the control of the pre-modern autocratic landlord. Simmel is less positive about the value of individualism and rather maintains the conflict between individual and society as implied in Capitalism (which on the one hand promotes freedom and on the other enforces control).
Long story short: Scott showed (strong) arguments in favour of the non-Adam-Smith view that Capitalism is a cultural product (and not the result of the human inclination to exchange goods).

Let me now turn back to Eltschinger and Sanderson. How plausible is it that Śaivism was the best available match for the ruling class and that this was the reason of its success? Does it sound plausible to you that neither the ruling class nor the emerging ones had any agency in regard to the ideologies of their time and that they could only choose among existing options? Did religions and other Weltanschauung compete among themselves for the rulers’ sponsorship, with monks and other authors having the ability to orient their religious movements according to the needs of the rulers? It seems to me that Sanderson and Eltschinger are, though only implicitly, proposing a model which is neither Marxist nor Weberian and which leaves some room to individual agency in the case of Buddhist and Vai.s.nava authors, although within the deterministic perspective of their having no choice other than to adapt to the needs of the ruling class. The only methodological flaw I can point out is the lack of a theorisation of the causal model presupposed by this view.

Eltschinger’s article is part of Franco 2013. For other posts on articles within Eli Franco’s 2013 book (Periodization and Historiography of Indian Philosophy), check the tag “Eli Franco 2013”

(cross-posted, with more introductory material for lay readers, here.)

The fore-last essay (called Classification and Periodization of Indian Philosophical Traditions: Some Conceptual and Theoretical Aspects) in Franco’s Periodization and Historiography of Indian Philosophy, by Claus Oetke, raises very general issues, departing from the problematic definition of “Indian philosophy”, in which both noun and adjective should be better assessed (does not “Indian” philosophy include also authors who were active in Burma or Tibet? —not to speak of Sri Lanka? This problem had already been raised by Michel Hulin in his long introduction to his translation of the Nyayabhasya, whose review you can read on my Academia page, here.)

But the main core of Oetke’s investigation is the problem of why we keep on doing periodisations, although they are so slippery. Perhaps, Oetke insinuates, because “by classifying objects[,] rational beings are better equipped for making predictions” (p. 349). By accident, this sentence is almost the last one on a right side page, so that a reader has a few seconds to ponder about it before turning to the next page. And he or she might even find it tempting, before being brought back, on the next page, to the more rational position that predictions about human events are untenable, since historical developments are not subject to one and the same scheme and, thus, predictions are unwarranted. (It is not, for instance, the case, that a “Golden Age” is necessarily followed by a “decline”.)

An alternative might be a sheer chronological periodisation, which would be far less risky, suggests Oetke. (However, one might argue that already the choice of one or the other —presumably Christian— chronology influences one’s way to look at the material. It cannot be a coincidence that most periodizations dealt with in Franco 2013 agree about a turning point in Indian philosophy “towards the end of the first half of the First Millennium CE”. Is not it the case that their own chronology inclines scholars to settle the turning point around 500 CE instead of, say, 430 or 623?) Oetke’s main objection against such periodisation, anyway, is that they are less risky only at the cost of being less informative.

Moreover, being a philosopher himself, Oetke suggests to focus not only on chronological periodisations, but also on discussions of the philosophical contents dealt with (as done in the third part of von Glasenapp 1958).

Alternatively, at the very end of his essay, Oetke suggests “classifications relating to different ways of performing philosophy and to diverse methods of philosophical reasoning” (p. 355) (one is reminded of the sutra- bhasya- and prakarana periods).

In the same essay, Oetke offers also a further interesting contribution to the Frauwallner-debate (which is one of the leitmotivs of the whole Franco 2013), namely the remark that it is not the “ethnic [i.e., racial, EF] explanation” to be problematic in Frauwallner, but rather the fact that he does not explain why it fits the material he was dealing with. Given that Frauwallner seemingly did explain that non-Aryan religious cults prevailed in the second period, Oetke’s point amounts to saying that Frauwallner was a priori convinced of a given explanation and did not look for the best one among many.

Further posts on Franco 2013 can be found following the tag “Eli Franco 2013” on my blog.

(cross posted also on The Indian Philosophy Blog)

जैनप्रत्यक्षजिज्ञासायाम्, श्रीमत्याः अान् क्लावेल् (Anne Clavel) प्रकरणम् एतस्मिन् पुस्तके पठितव्यम् ।

This Friday, I read the Foreword of Vincent Eltschinger’s and Helmut Krasser’s Scriptural Authority, Reason and Action. Proceedings of a Panel at the 14th World Sanskrit Conference, Kyoto, September 1st–5th 2009 (please note the unfashionable acknowledgement of the papers’ origin). They consistently opted for the first option, limiting themselves to a summary of the papers that follow and describing how they programmatically left as much freedom as possible to the contributors.*

While summarising the papers, however, they designed a chronological (and thematic) path through them. The great protagonist of the book —so interpreted— is the Buddhist dialectical relation of reason and authority. Eltschinger and Krasser start by commenting on Peter Skilling‘s and on Joseph Walser‘s articles. These discuss pre-Pramāṇavāda material, i.e., Buddhist material related to the question of authority but belonging to milieus in which the philosophical problem of the authority of the Buddhist Sacred Texts had still not become a distinct topic of investigation. Instead, both articles discuss how the Buddha becomes an authority through physical elements, i.e., through an external validation. This can assume the form of the Buddha’s supernaturally long tongue (Skilling) or of the fact of promoting Buddhist teaching from thrones and daises (Walser). Next comes the Pramāṇavāda time, with Eltschinger‘s contribution working as a bridge towards it. Four contributions focus on Pramāṇavāda (Eltschinger, Krasser, Moriyama and McClintock). Next comes a discussion of the controversy between Pramāṇavāda and Mīmāṃsā by Kataoka and a paper dwelling further on (Pūrva and Uttara) Mīmāṃsā by Hugo David. This is particularly interesting to me at the moment, because it highlights Maṇḍana Miśra’s strategy of interpreting Vedic prescriptions to do X as if they were descriptions of the fact that X is the means to achieve some desired result. According to David, this interpretation is part of Maṇḍana’s Vedāntic agenda, since it enables him to overcome the difference between vidhis (Vedic prescriptions, of independent value) and arthavādas (commendatory statements, of only subordinate value). This distinction had been implemented by Pūrva Mīmāṃsā authors to many descriptive statements of the Upaniṣads, which were thus thought to be subordinate to a prescription. Maṇḍana’s attempt, instead, negates the distinction and, with it, the lower hierarchical status of the Upaniṣads.
After Buddhism, Jainism is introduced by Eltschinger and Krasser as the other target of Mīmāṃsā critics and in fact Balcerowicz‘ contribution deals with Jaina attempts to establish the omniscience of the Jina and the validity of the Jaina canon.
The volume is closed by two contributions (by Ratié and by Torella) dedicated to the Śaiva Pratyabhijñā school, again seen under the perspective of its debate with the Buddhist Pramāṇavāda. Torella sees Kumārila as the main critical target of the Pratyabhijñā concept of an all-pervasive prasiddhi (akin to Bhartṛhari’s śabdatattva). Ratié shows that this omnipervasive principle is tantamount to Śiva’s self-manifestation and that this informs of itself all Sacred Texts. All Sacred Texts are just in some way valid, although only the Śaiva ones are completely so, insofar as the others contain only a partial manifestation of Śiva who instead revealed himself completely in the Śaiva scriptures.

What would you do while editing a book? And on a different level, what would you add about the relation reason-authority in the schools you are more familiar with?

*This also means that they refused to uniform the bibliographic style and the conventions of the contributions, “as long as these have been consistent”. To do so programmatically is a welcome innovation in an era in which we risk to correct footnote positions and oversee what is really at stake in an editorial enterprise.

Thus, periodisation is a risky enterprise. However, it is hard to avoid it, since one needs some structure while approaching the clumsy mass of uninterpreted historical events.

A similar case is that of the interpretation of the history of a given philosophical school. It is fascinating to look at Kumārila’s and Prabhākara’s main philosophical innovations as replies to Dignāga (as does McCrea 2013), and we as scholars need to have and to provide some interpretative cues unless we want to end up in a Babel’s library, where the critical edition of each 20th c. school’s paper counts as that of a crucial manuscript for the history of Nyāya. However, great theses are also dangerous, insofar as we tend to cling at them and to become blind to other hypotheses (cf. on this point Andrew’s commentary on this post).

Remember that relative who would not listen to your revolutionary ideas and would just say “You think like that because you are young, but you will change your mind in ten years”? Do you remember hating his frame of mind which did not allow for any other possible explanation? I, for one, do not want to exercise the same kind of violence on the texts I read. Nor do I want to read texts only in order to find confirmations of my theory (and to have to disregard blatant counter examples).

Long story short: we need interpretative frames as orienteering tools and because otherwise we would just fall prey of an even more dangerous implicit methodology. But, if you ask me, I think that all such interpretative schemes should be constantly revised. Let us attempt great theories, general periodisations and classifications of authors and ideas, but if and only if we are then not only willing, but also ready to question them. The great interpretative frame is not a goal to be reached once and forever. It is “always to be revised”.

When did the Middle Ages (or Antiquity, or the Modern Age…) “end” according to your school teachers? And according to your grown-up you? And, did you ever radically change your interpretation of something?

On implicit methodologies, see this post. On various hypotheses for a periodisation of Indian philosophy, see this post and its comments, where also Franco 2013 (where the papers by Lipner and by McCrea mentioned above are found) is discussed.

(cross-posted also on the Indian Philosophy Blog).

Bronkhorst suggested that the Yogasūtras have been assembled by the author of the Bhāṣya (“the sūtras were brought together by the author of the Yogabhāṣya“, p. 17), who might have added further sūtras to the lore of transmitted ones and mentions among his evidences the fact that the YS 1.21–23 have an unforced interpretation which has been violated by the author of the Bhāṣya (who, then, evidently took pre-existing sūtras and provided them with a new context and a new interpretation). Accordingly, Bronkhorst suggests that “the available evidence points to two persons, Patañjali [as author of the YS] and Vindhyavāsin [as author of the Bhāṣya]” (p. 18). A large part of Bronkhorst 1985, in fact, points to the reconstruction of the theoretical background of YS and YBh and connects it with Sāṅkhya teachings.

Maas, seems to push the thesis further and maintains that the only text whose existence can be reconstructed is the Pātañjala Yogaśāstra (henceforth PYŚ, as in Maas 2013), already including sūtra and bhāṣya (to be understood not as “different literary genres but compositional elements of scholarly works (śāstra)”, p. 65). In the case of YS 1.2, 1.41 and 2.23, Maas suggests that the fact that they are introduced with the perfect tense pravavṛte instead of the usual present passive might be a hint of the fact that these sūtras were older. Noteworthy is also the fact that Maas uses a different set of arguments than the ones used by Bronkhorst 1985. In harmony with his textual critical interests, Maas picks out manuscript evidences, such as the lack of an independent transmission of the YS, which are only transmitted together with the YBh, the lack of a consistent marking of the sūtras in the manuscripts, and the colophons, which are not present separately for the YS part and which mention the “YBh” of Vyāsa only “in a few manuscripts of limited stemmatic relevance” (p. 58).

A very interesting way to validate Maas’ arguments would be, thus, to test them against the evidence of the other philosophical sūtras. Are not they also only transmitted within their Bhāṣya? And how do their colophons look like? Are the sūtras marked in manuscripts? I only know a little bit about the Mīmāṃsā– and Nyāyasūtra and have no information about their colophons.

Have you ever read Madeleine Biardeau’s Theory of knowledge and philosophy of language in Classical Brahmanism (the original is written in French, 1964)? I have a very positive opinion about it, but one must say that it presents the philosophical systems as if they had always existed, i.e., devoid of an inner development, as pure systems. Eli Franco, in his introduction (called On the Periodization and Historiography of Indian Philosophy) of the volume he recently edited, Periodization and Historiography of Indian Philosophy, individuates this attitude and blames for it the influence of an only emic approach, i.e., the adherence to the Indian ahistorical model.
More interestingly, however, Gérard Colas in “Histoire, Oralité, Structure. À propos d’un tournant dans l’oeuvre de Madeleine Biardeau” (Journal Asiatique 2012), reconstructs the cultural milieu in which Biardeau was working and recognises the influence of French structuralism, as shown by Biardeau’s own words in Biardeau 1964, where she declares that she wants to formulate “a structural study of the Indian thought”.
In other words, there is more than just the emic vs. etic contraposition, since even within the West (if this category at all makes any sense) different trends have developed and historicism was only one among them. Although historicism was perhaps the dominant trend in the German cultural milieu, the situation was completely different in France, where historicism has never be the rule (and, I will argue in future posts, in the UK, Italy, etc.).

Who are the Yoga philosophers? What and where (i.e., in which texts) did they discuss? In other words: What am I missing?

On the Yoga in Transformation conference, see here.