Criticism of Bharatiya Samskritam texts by Witzel
I went through these 90 pages with trepidation, expecting the usual vitriol from a person immersed in Hindu-phobia.
At the outset, I should state that the presentation is balanced, comprehensive in the coverage of mainly Bharatiya texts, a subject being dealt currently with on a non-Samskritam plane by Murty-Murthy grant of over $5 million to Harvard for a Murty catalog promising glossy coffee-table books. See:
The only point with which I wholeheartedly agree is when Witzel cites A.E. Housman: "Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head." (AE Housman, 1921, Application of Thought to Textual Criticism. Proceedings of the Classical Association18, 1921, 84.)
While philology may be a study of a civilization, the orientation of the philologist is a necessary component for evaluation of the reliability and integrity of, say, a 'critical edition' produced.
Witzel ducks the devastating critique of philology posed by Cerquiliani: “Philology is a bourgeois, paternalist and hygienist system of thought about the family; it cherishes filiation, tracks down adulterers, and is afraid of contamination. It is though based on what is wrong (the variant being a form of deviant behavior), and it is the basis for a positive methodology.” Cerquiliani 1999: 49.Cerquiliani, B. In praise of the variant: a critical history of philology. Baltimore 1999, 49. [originally: Elogede la variante: Histoire critique de la philology. Paris 1989.]
Most of the works of European indologists suffuced with Hindu-phobia are works produced with racist overtones, a Eurocentric gestalt, assuming that nothing good could come out of a people who were merely fit only to be hewers of wood and drawers of water and hence, incapable of ‘thought’ and certainly not capable of producing ‘knowledge systems’. Such prejudiced opinions do not constitute philology, meant to result in abhyudayam – a key determinant of dharma, but hate literature couched in Harvard Donkey Trial type of diction, evidenced during the California Text Books struggle to undo the bigoted depictions by some self-styled historians of Hindu civilization.
Having said this as an over-arching critique of Witzel’s account of European approach to Indian philology, it is necessary for Bharatiya scholars to introspect, in the true Tantra Yukti tradition -- an ancient Hindu method of theorization -- of evaluating knowledge systems and improve upon them, as evidenced by the History of Mathematics in Ancient India so ably documented in 40 volumes by Profs. MD Srinivas, MS Sriram and K Ramasubramanian. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2014/01/course-on-mathematics-in-india-from.html History of Mathematics in India from Vedic Period to Modern Times. In my view, these 40 volumes are philology par excellence, contributing to a narrative of itihaasa of mathematical knowledge in the Hindu tradition.
Anyway, I commend Witzel’s essay for review and consideration by Bharatiya philologists, true purveyors in the continuum of Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization.
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Centre
January 7, 2015
--
S. Kalyanaraman