--- On Mon, 28/3/11, Anand Manikutty <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Anand Manikutty <[email protected]> Subject: [silk] ancient Indian thought To: [email protected] Date: Monday, 28 March, 2011, 4:34 I was in a bookstore in the Bay Area a while back, and happened across a book by Frits Staal, a now retired professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The book was called "Discovering The Vedas : Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights". It is an excellent read and I can vouch for its quality. I would recommend it to anyone interested in ancient India. Imagine my surprise when a few days ago I saw the same Frits Staal on the Indo-Eurasian mailing list replying to a comment right after mine. Frits Staal has written many excellent books on India, and since he is also reachable on the other list, I will offer to send him any comments that Chetan or anyone else may have on the contributions of ancient Indian thinkers to the world of ideas. I do think it is important that we laud the achievements of the premodern Indians, but it would be good if we lauded the right set of achievements. One of Staal's arguments is that ancient Indian grammarians, in particular Panini, had discovered many rules underlying language that were not rediscovered until the 20th century. He has called Panini "the Indian Euclid", and rightly so. As for the ideas in metaphysics (the nature of matter, et cetera) that we were discussing in the previous discussion, the ancient Indian works would now be considered generally speculative. The ideas in mathematics and linguistics are, however, well grounded and rightfully acclaimed. Anand The problem is that we must now decide which portions are acceptable and which are not, and that raises the question of how this judgement is done, and by whom. Many may disagree with including mathematics in this very short list; others may disagree with putting astronomy in, everyone has their own short list. Regarding Panini, his use of sutras, in a recursive fashion, to store complex and voluminous data, has ardent fans even today, especially in the programming fraternity internationally. Why do you exclude literature? Because it is not hard science? Then why do you include linguistics? Is it a science in the first place? Somehow the thought of carrying judgements across cultural systems and comparing apples with pineapples is quease-inspiring. I think it is best to leave each cultural system to make its own judgements on its own products internally, and not try to transfer such products across systems.
