Understanding a philosophical text. The problem of “meaning” in Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī, Book 5

The authors make an attempt to comparatively analyse some stances of the Old Indian philosophy of language, exemplified by the Medieval Indian author Jayanta, along with the Western tradition of the analytical philosophy of language, and to highlight the differences as well as the similarities

There is no “East”: Deconstructing the idea of Asia and rethinking the disciplines working on it

This introduction summarises the steps which led the scholars grouped in the Coffee Break group to undertake the project and then accompanied them from the awareness of the need to deconstruct the idea of geographic boundaries and, consequently, of area studies such as “Indology” or “South Asian studies”, to the need to deconstruct disciplines such as “Philology” or “Literature” themselves, since they are also historically and culturally loaded and risk to tell one more about their subjects than about their alleged objects of study. This pars destruens is followed by a pars construens suggesting as an alternative a situated epistemology which refutes to essentialise the “Other” and, on a more practical level, by the constant implementation of team work

There is only “Philosophy”: The case of testimony

The present introduction summarises the debate on the epistemological value of testimony, with a special focus on the reductionism vs. antireductionism polemics, and situates Indian philosophers within it. One thus sees that some Indian philosophical schools (especially Vaiśeṣika and Buddhist epistemology) attempted to reduce testimony to another, more fundamental, instrument of knowledge, typically to inference, whereas others (especially Mīmāṃṣā and Nyāya) emphasised the independent nature of testimony. The study then moves to the problem of the criteria for a reliable speaker and discusses border-line cases, such as that of speaking instruments (computers, clocks and the like). Finally, it looks at some promising and open-ended topics evoked by the Indian-European dialogue on testimony

Adaptive Reuse

The present volume explores a specific aspect of creativity in South Asian systems of knowledge, literature and rituals. Under the heading of “adaptive reuse,” it discusses the relationship between innovation and perpetuation of earlier forms and contents of knowledge and aesthetic expressions within the process of creating new works. Although this relation rarely became the topic of explicit reflections in the South Asian intellectual traditions, it is here investigated by taking a closer look at the treatment of older materials by later authors."Adaptive Reuse" ist ein wichtiges theoretisches Konzept aus dem Bereich der Architektur. Dort bezeichnete es die Verwendung eines teilweise umgebauten Gebäudes zu andern Zwecken als denen seiner ursprünglichen Errichtung. Im vorliegenden Band wird dieses Konzept zum ersten Mal auf ein weiteres Spektrum kulturellen Schaffens übertragen, nämlich auf die Komposition von Texten und auf die Kreation neuer Konzepte und Ritual

The Role of paribhāṣās in Mīmāṃsā: Rational Rules of Textual Exegesis

This article provides a first investigation on the metarules adopted in the Mīmāṃsā school of textual exegesis. These are not systematically listed and discussed, but they can be seen at work throughout the history of Mīmāṃsā. The Mīmāṃsā school has the exegesis of the sacred texts called Veda as its main focus. The metarules used to understand the Vedic texts are, however, not derived from the Veda itself and are rather rational rules which can be derived from the use of language in general and which Mīmāṃsā authors recognized and analyzed. Since the metarules are considered to be not derived from the Veda, it is all but natural that later authors inspired by Mīmāṃsā apply them outside the precinct of the Veda, for instance in the fields of textual linguistics, poetics, theology and jurisprudence

Abhidharma

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