Classical and Contemporary Issues in Indian Studies (Essays in Honour of Trichur S. Rukmani)

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This book is a Festschrift volume in honour of Prof. Trichur S. Rukmani that reflects the plethora of issues which she studied in her scholastic life. It includes twenty-four essays by distinguished scholars on various classical and contemporary issues pertaining to Indian studies. While the volume discusses current research in the field of Yoga – Prof. Rukmani’s primary research field – it also invites further reflection on other areas of Indian thought which have attracted her attention in the course of her long and fruitful academic career.

The volume is divided thematically into six sections. The first two sections deal with the interpretation of the Yoga, Vedanta and Gaudiya-Vaisnava traditions, exploring issues of hermeneutics, methodology and philosophical analysis. The third section addresses issues of continuity within the Indian tradition and includes essays on tantric Saivism, Mimamsa and the Bhagavad-Gita. The next two sections feature essays on the Sanskrit philosophical discourse, grammar, epic literature and renunciation in the Indian tradition. The last section of the volume takes up issues of contemporary relevance such as the insights from the Hindu tradition towards environmental ethics, the Svadhyaya movement and its dharmic ecology, non-violence, gender, cultural identity as well as syncretism.

The volume, including essays as diverse as Prof. Trichur S. Rukmani’s own scholarly interests, will certainly benefit all scholars and students of Indology, especially those concerned with the religious and philosophical traditions of India.

P. Pratap Kumar is Professor of Hinduism and Comparative Religions in the School of Religion Philosophy and Classics, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Aftrica. In addition to several scholarly essays and articles his publications include The Goddess Lakshmi in South Indian Vaishnavism (Scholars Press, Atlanta, GA USA, 1997); Hindus in South Africa: Their Tradition and Beliefs (Durban: University of Durban-Westvile, 2000); Methods and Theories in the Study of Religions: Perspectives from the Study of Hinduism and other Indian Religions (Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan Publications, 2004); Religious Pluralism and the Diaspora (ed.), (Leiden: E.J, Brill, 2006). He was also one of the editors of the Numen Book Series of the International Association for the History of Religions (Brill, 2004-07). He is also an Associate Editor of South Asian Diaspora Journal (Routledge).

Jonathan Duquette is currently a Visiting Researcher at the Asien-Afrika-Institut from the Universitat Hamburg, Germany. He received his PhD in Religious Studies with Prof. Trichur S. Rukmani as his supervisor and has also been her research assistant for several years. His research interests include Advaita Vedanta, Indian Buddhism, Sanskrit commentarial literature and the interaction between natural sciences and religion. He has published articles in Numen, Philosophy East and West, Journal of Indian Philosophy and Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.

The idea of producing a Festschrift volume in the honour of Prof. T.S. Rukmani occurred informally among the colleagues who are close to her and who sincerely felt it might be an opportune moment to reflect on each others’ work with her as the focal point. Several scholars responded enthusiastically to our call for their involvement in the project. The project has taken longer than what we had originally anticipated due to various logistic reasons, but more importantly, in the course of a rigorous editorial process to select and determine the essays that would eventually make it to this volume. The idea behind the volume was not only to reproduce current research works in the field of Yoga, a subject close to Prof. Rukmani’s primary research field, but also to look more broadly on the Indian studies so as to include issues of contemporary scholarly significance. Fortunately, Prof. Rukmani’s scholarly interests are just as diverse that we could accommodate such diversity of essays as are contained in this volume. We tried to fit these essays within the frameworks of classical and contemporary which we used as the overall theme of this volume. We hope that the essays included in this volume would offer a stimulating reading for both, specialists and generalists alike.

As in other disciplines, Indian studies generally tend to privilege the classical against the contemporary as an idealized past. For this reason, classification of our discourse in Indian studies has generally assumed two important categories: "classical" and "contemporary." Undoubtedly, there is a certain privilege associated with the term "classical," especially in treating India. Obviously, it has something to do with the way in which the orientalist discourse privileged the classical as something that is sought after, something that is the best that India was able to produce and something that perhaps had Indo-European connections. On the other hand, the "contemporary" has always been benchmarked against the standards of the classical and hence its status even though it belongs to a certain lower order nature of the discourse. Perhaps this fits in with the scheme that India itself has produced, viz. a cyclical way of seeing things in which the ancient, the primordial, the beginning of the age was seen as the ideal, and what followed was seen as degeneration of the ideal. This is rooted in the religious cosmology of the Hindus. But what has often gone unnoticed or at least has not been said enough about is that in the typical Hindu cosmology the end is supposed to bring a new beginning once again and hence it is cyclical. Therefore, seen as a whole, technically there cannot be anything that is either ideal or degenerate. For it is a process. That is, the simple truth of cyclical way of thinking may be put in the modern cliché — what goes around must come around. That does not mean a value judgement on either classical or modern/contemporary. What is considered classical was once contemporary too. In our enthusiasm to eulogize and idealize the past we lose sight of the present and not realize how different the issues are today. Classical writers on India could not have thought of contemporary issues that we face today. Therefore, what is crucial is not to juxtapose the two as radically separable, but rather to find out continuities between the two.

Understanding Indian society and culture requires taking into account disparate issues. It is not necessary to force a coherent frame to these issues in order to illuminate the unity of Indian culture. Given its diversity of philosophical and religious orientations, such forcibly achieved coherence would only result in missing the point. However, it is useful and pragmatic to find continuity between the seeming disparateness of the Indian world views. The essays in this volume attempt just that and present a variety of issues from classical to contemporary times. Each of the essays in its own way sees the importance of continuity between the seeming dualisms and disparateness. Whether it is lan Whicher trying to achieve integration between purusa and prakrti or Ashok Aklujkar seeking to establish the link between Pairva-Mimamsa and Uttara-Mimamsa vis-a- vis the Sankarsa-kanda or Sthaneshwar Timalsina finding continuity between Bhartrhari and Abhinavagupta, just to cite a few examples in this volume, there is a sense that emerges from the essays presented here that there is a larger universal vision in conceptualizing the Indian world view. Synthesis does not obliterate the diversity rooted in the particular philosophical and scholarly engagements. Furthermore, continuity between the classical and the contemporary, the past and the present, need not always overcome the privilege of the classical and its past authority as it gets reinforced in new ways. Gregory Bailey reminds us of this in his reflections on the Mahabharata (Mbh) in this volume —

Part of the attraction of the Mbh is that it looks backwards as well as forwards and this requires it to assert and preserve continuities with the past and perhaps even to justify them.

**Contents and Sample Pages**