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In this episode of your cutaway and Q&A interview, Minnie Chandran,

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professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology,

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Kanpur, and Caramel Patel, professor of religion and Indian Philosophy at Harvard University.

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We discuss what it is to do, study and teach South Asian philosophy.

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What role should South Asian philosophy as a living tradition of thought play in the discipline and philosophy and what could contribute?

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What kind of attitude and methodology should you adopt in approaching the text?

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Can we and should we apply subdisciplines within the analytic tradition of philosophy to South Asian material?

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What presuppositions should be recognised and abandon? How about terminology, classifications and syllabus design,

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particularly in light of the new undergraduate paper here at Oxford titled Indian Philosophy?

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We also discuss what is lost or not lost in translation. The question of elitism and the urgent need to learn from and support traditionally

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trained scholars within traditional intellectual practises are sincere,

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thanks to Professor Chandran and Professor Patel for joining us.

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We will now begin the conversation introducing our speakers.

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And then he do you want to do you want to begin by introducing me and then I can introduce grandma?

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Professor Minnie Chandran is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

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Professor Children's research interests include translation studies, both between Indian languages and between Indian and other languages.

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In the literature, literary theory,

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literary censorship and Latin American literature for children is also a regular contributor to the Indian Express.

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Great. And we also have with us today, Parliament she could sell who's professor of religion and Indian philosophy at Harvard University.

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His primary academic interests are the history of philosophy in India and its relevance to disciplinary work in philosophy,

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South Asian studies and the philosophy of religion.

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He's focussed on Buddhist philosophy in India, the old and new epistemology east and Indian traditions of physical exam and scepticism.

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And he also has a long standing interest in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of religion.

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So this podcast itself serves as our first episode in the South Asian Philosophy Podcast series that we're doing.

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One of Oxford Public Philosophies goals is to explore philosophies that are less covered in our curricula at Anglophone philosophy departments.

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And in this podcast series, we are looking particularly at the extensive traditions of South Asian philosophy.

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Yet when looking at these vast campuses of writings and philosophical work that we might place under this label of South Asian philosophy,

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the problem arises of how we might usefully classify this material into a coherent scheme.

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Oxford University has recently introduced an Indian philosophy module,

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and Oxford Public Philosophy has to promote a healthy intellectual diversity, offered the alternative classification of South Asian philosophy.

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Today, we want to discuss some of the issues of classification,

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hoping to nuance or understanding a little bit of what these classifications provide and what they leave out.

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And we also hope to gain some perspective on the practical issues involved in teaching South

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Asian philosophy and what unique philosophical contributions this study might offer us.

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So sort of introducing the some of the main sort of overarching topics in the study of South Asian philosophy.

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So that's kind of what we're focussing on. And now I want to sort of hand over to our two speakers, perhaps many,

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if you'd like to go first to just kind of talk for five 10 minutes about about that overall topic.

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Yeah, sure. First of all, thank you for having me here.

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I just want to make a minor correction to Young's introduction. I am actually professor, not associate.

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That's OK. Sorry. And not perfectly. If I just thought I should correct it, that sort of.

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As I said, I'm not a philosophy person, but literature person.

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But does this this categorisation problems and categorisation that you were talking about is something that bothers me also,

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especially since the term Indian aesthetics, I work primarily in India.

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These two things.

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So the term itself is a bit problematic because what generally we understand by Indian aesthetics is generally classical Sanskrit aesthetics.

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So whenever they mention Indian aesthetics to anybody immediately, the response is Oh yes, rust rasa the knee and all of it.

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What people generally tend to overlook.

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It's not as if people don't know is that there is an equally valuable body of aesthetics or copies of aesthetics that comes from the Tamil language,

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so that all copy and which is almost of the same status as an article.

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So even in syllabuses across India, the few places where Indian aesthetics is taught, very rarely that will to be dealt with.

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So although not just I've never looked on in the Wirtanen, were the relatively familiar names to look up here.

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It's not so thermal aesthetics, I think,

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has to be brought together along with Sanskrit and also the other in the you come to the mediaeval period in India.

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The influence of Persian aesthetics, I mean, with the rise of the Mughal Empire and all of it.

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So I would think that the term Indian aesthetics should ideally cover these three strands that we are talking about,

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which is Sanskrit, Tamil and Persian, or otherwise.

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Just stick to the category of Sanskrit aesthetics, Tamil aesthetics and Persian or whatever.

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I mean, although I work in the area of aesthetics, I should also say that other countries that Persian is very underrepresented and I have come across

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very few texts that I would be able to give you regarding the Persian influence on aesthetics in India.

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So that is one thought the the other is that whenever I don't know and I'm not familiar with the way philosophy, certain Oxford or anything,

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but generally when we approach these ancient texts,

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the attitude that people have is one of reverence and unquestioning acceptance and so on in the world.

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And I have said this or whenever Gupta has said this, OK, we have to sort of receive it with with the open hands, that sort of assumption.

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I think it is also equally important to focus on the on the making of this tradition.

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You know, if you look at these thinkers in classical sense with all these philosophers or these aesthetic thinkers in ancient India,

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all of them had a very healthy debate amongst themselves.

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So what is called the power of a bookshop that they would, you know, categorise or they would catalogue what the people who came before them had said?

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And then they would say that you disagree on these. These comes what very often politely but often mean, sometimes not very politely.

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Also because when one case that I'm thinking of is the 11th century Kashmiri

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philosopher Muhammad Plato and his difference with under-10s concept of doing it.

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So my my motto is anything but polite. So later and people wrote about my mother.

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This is one thing that people remark about the way he takes on, and everything ended up being a good thing, so on.

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So that irreverence, I would say I find my mother very refreshing because it's a very irreverent take on the world today.

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And so I think the focus on this aspect, that tradition is not something that is carved in stone,

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that it is a living tradition that perhaps you have to question and embody.

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That is, I think, an important aspect, which very often we tend to forget when it comes to Indian aesthetics.

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The other is about the practical aspect of teaching that you are talking about again, who who is the best person to teach it?

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Is it somebody who is in some way connected to the language, to the culture, somebody who knows the language and the culture?

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Well, I'm not very sure about that because as an Indian, I must say that when I first approached Indian aesthetics, it's not as if it was.

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I did not feel at home with it very honestly. So when I first read my calendar say it was, I was a bit baffled.

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I did not understand what the hype was about. VIDEO Honestly, because it took because I was trained in in English literature in a very western way.

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So although I have studied in India all my life, the academic training that I've had is essentially Western.

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So it really does not help to be Indian or to do not even agree.

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I mean, to know a smattering of Sanskrit, all these things don't really help.

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What you need is an understanding of the culture, and the language was just beyond this.

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So I would say that the Western scholars who are approaching the Indian aesthetics like again,

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the ideology starting from the religious who have received so much of flak from various people,

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the post-colonial theorists, especially, I think they brought in a much needed analytical approach to the Indian aesthetic so

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that that brought in a fresh perspective and that we reinvigorated the tradition.

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So perhaps I should see that if it hadn't been for these in the villages, I don't know if you would have approached Indian aesthetics in this fashion.

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That tradition continues. Even today we have people like Professor Sheldon Pollock and Professor Goldman

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and all of them who are doing very valuable work and very meticulous research,

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I should say. And I think that is helping.

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Having said that, I should also say that there is a tendency to to downplay some of the very valuable contributions made by Indian scholars,

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also like Professor Casey Bondy or Professor Clinton-Era in the area of the Indian theories of meaning.

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These are people who have been published in English. Now there is a wealth of critical material,

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there is a wealth of thought that is lying out there in the regional Indian languages, which hasn't been translated.

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So I am a Malayalam speaker basically, and I can read text in Malayalam and I know how valuable they are.

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Like in Malayalam, I can. The two names that they can immediately think of are keeping at an absurdity and critical

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somehow that they haven't been translated into English or any other Indian language.

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So as Amalia, I can read and understand these texts in Malayalam, and they're helping me immensely in my understanding of Indian aesthetic theory.

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I have heard that The Good has written extensively on aesthetics and his ideas of art, and all of it.

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Only a minuscule of it has been translated into English.

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A whole lot of it is still in Bangla, very frustratingly so because I do not have access to it.

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So an ideal pedagogical method would be to bring all of this together.

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Now the whole of it is something that will be a problem.

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So I mean, these are just my thoughts at the opening.

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We could carry it forward later.

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Yeah, that's brilliant, it's really interesting and really like touches on the exact kind of issue they were hoping to deal with in this podcast.

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Thank you for that. And Professor Patel, if you want to go speak for for sure.

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Well, yes, thank you all for inviting me to. I'm really happy to be here and to be in conversation with Professor Chintan about all this much.

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What she has said resonates with me too and very much in the same spirit.

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So and that's I hope that doesn't make for too much agreement. I thought I might, you know, what are the questions?

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Maybe I'll start here. We have so many reasons for wanting to be interested in the question of what

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should South Asian philosophy pick out like we come from different places,

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we have different reasons for asking that question.

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So I don't think that South Asian philosophy is a kind of natural kind term that you can go out in the world and discover.

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That means are reasons for what we are looking for will naturally affect what we find and what we count,

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what counts as a good answer to the question, but simply to say I might as well just start from my own perspective,

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my interest in the question of what South Asian philosophy is or South Asian philosophy is,

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or Indian philosophy or Sanskrit philosophy has to do with.

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Being committed to introducing.

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Let's say broadly, India or Sanskrit or broadening the canon of what's included in traditional Anglo-American Anglophone philosophy departments,

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which historically have been rather conservative. So for me, in the term South Asian philosophy or whatever its philosophy,

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philosophy picks out an academic discipline, it doesn't pick out an intellectual practise or a way of life.

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It picks out an academic discipline because that's the discipline in which I'm

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trying to make some sort of intervention or as I like to see positive change.

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So that has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages is you inherit.

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A meaning of what philosophy is, even though it's quite broad and has a broad semantic range,

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if it's defined by the discipline of philosophy as practise in Anglophone universities, you have a starting point.

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And the question then to ask is to what degree can or should South Asian index Sanskrit material?

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What role should it play in those disciplines and how can it contribute?

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There's, of course, a danger in that you might think, oh, look, you're exist, your heritage,

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an existing structure and you're forcing that structure or you're forcing South Asian material into that structure in a way that might be a natural.

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Of course, that's a worry, whether in fact you're forced to get into something that's unnatural or you're including it in

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something that's very natural to it is an open question that can only be decided after one is tried.

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Right? So for me, philosophy is an academic discipline.

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And when I look at, let's say, broadly into intellectuals writing in Sanskrit or Persian or Arabic or even the regional languages and even English,

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I see many, many, many people who are writing on issues and writing in ways that fit very comfortably.

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Within the academic discipline of philosophy,

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and I see many who write in ways that fit that fit within the academic discipline and philosophy, but in productively uncomfortable ways.

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So for me.

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When I when I think personally about what it is, as we've discussed, it's just too much for any one or any dozen people to get their mind around,

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even somebody who specialises in Indian aesthetics, even if focussed on just sounds good aesthetics.

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You know it's impossible for one person, let alone one person, to do talk up in Tamil.

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And then also the remarkable work done by traditional scholars, whether in Sanskrit itself or in Malayalam or Tamil or anything.

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So it's just vast. You got to start somewhere. Where have I started? I've obviously started with some good material.

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Why? Well, there's a lot of it. It seems like a very natural starting point if you're interested in working in a philosophy department.

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There's also traditionally trained teachers who are some of the best readers and thinkers of this material around.

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And there's a history of scholarship. And so for me, basically, the South Asian philosophy practically means Sanskrit philosophy.

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It means Sanskrit, shastra and not all Shuster's some justice.

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So I don't I don't. Work on Sunk, for example, at all.

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I wouldn't even start there. I wouldn't start with yoga either, personally.

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So this isn't saying that there is anything produced in the South Asian language or by

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South Asian intellectuals that might not have a place in the philosophy department.

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Maybe it could. I mean, as you know, people do philosophy with The Simpsons, they do philosophy with movies like The Matrix.

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They do fill with Conte and Plato, so it's less about the material and more about what one does with it, I think.

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So there's an openness, even though it sounds conservative when I say that for me, at least when I think of.

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South Asian philosophy and philosophy, I'm thinking primarily of cells good philosophy,

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it's more of a practical place to start and a recognition of limitations.

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So maybe we can talk about that a little bit. One.

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What are the questions you asked was given how vast all of this is?

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Where do you start? How do you start if someone is interested, where do they start?

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To me, that's also very simple. You start with a translation of a primary text.

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Do not read secondary sources, do not read journal articles.

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Start with the translation of a primary text. Why?

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Because just like Professor Chapman said.

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It's not it's going to it's going to teach you everything you need to know in a way that is going to upset you in some way because,

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for example, when you do, when you eat,

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if you if you grow up in a Euro-American American educational context and you encounter are part of it or something,

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you really do, ask yourself what's all the fuss about? I'm really a candidate play.

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Nothing is happening. Why is he spending all this versus talking about trees and forests and king is killing animals?

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It doesn't seem terribly appealing. So just like we all need, just like it's possible to acquire a taste through familiarity and experience.

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One has to. Learn how to see why the tradition thinks there's a fuss about all this stuff, and that's not easy to do.

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It takes many, many hours and hours and hours of reading calculus or botany or something like that.

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Gordon Liddy said he saw that for literature,

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and it also takes a very long time even for professional philosophers to learn how to see and how to learn from Sanskrit philosophical texts.

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So I would say forget all the secondary sources. Don't bother.

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Pick a good translation of a primary text in whatever field you're interested in and spend time reading it.

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You don't have to like it. You don't have to agree with it. Just spend trying to understand a very simple thing.

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Why does this text still exist? The only reason it exists is because people thought it was worth copying.

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Preserving. In some cases, for centuries. Why did they think it was worth copying and preserving?

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Why is this text considered to be important and valuable? That's sort of part one.

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And then you can ask yourself other questions as to, well, why was it important for them?

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How could it be important for me if the author of this text were here or if this text were a living being?

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What conversations would want to participate in? How would it participate in those conversations?

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What parts of this text, what ideas do I want to take forward into the future as resources for me to think with?

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And what ideas are best left in the dustbin of history that we can move on from?

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So. I guess that's a place where I'll start, and then I hopefully we can go in different directions, so.

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Yeah, thank you so much.

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And yeah, I mean, I think in terms of that, that practical advice to begin with primary attacks, I think that resonated with that quite a lot.

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It's amazing to me how you know, the tent,

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the the easiness of reading secondary articles in order to write essays is that but then when you actually go to the primary texts,

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it offers a whole kind of new perspective.

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I was just reading the issue of when he shot this morning, and it's yeah, there's insights that came from it to the secondary literature.

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Seems like, especially in South Asian philosophy was somewhat limited.

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It seems unsupervised. So, yeah, thank you.

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One one question to ask about that always is why is that the case? How come we can read platonic dialogues?

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How come? We read Hume or Locke and even contemporary philosophers and sometimes even parts of country, and they seem to make sense.

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But you pick up Kamala or Tara McCarthy or in the world and you're like, What's going on here?

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Why is that? You think? I think primarily it is because of academia especially has been largely Anglo centric.

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If I may say so. So we are more tuned due to that.

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So you have to this is a completely different way of seeing things that it takes time, at least for me, took time.

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So that's why I'm saying it doesn't help that I'm an idiot and that they can read.

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They even agree. Or, you know, there is some continuity.

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I'm not denying that. But even then, it takes time to to get used.

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It has to grow and use it as a button said it requires patience and time.

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One thing I don't think I appreciated until maybe relatively recently is that,

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I mean, it's a nice, it's naive I should have appreciated long time ago is that?

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The way we understand it is also historically conditioned in the sense I've grown up in North America.

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And I've been educated and snobby North American institutions most of my life until I started studying Sanskrit.

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And you're you're conditioned into what it means to read and what it means to think and

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what it means to understand and how information and ideas and images are presented to you.

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And, you know, day after day, week after week, year after year, you get good at it.

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And when you come to classical, at least in my case, classical sounds good material.

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It's different, and it takes time to learn how to understand and be open to it.

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And sometimes you take that difference and you say this is just weird or this is bad, or if I don't understand it, something's wrong with it.

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And that also often happens with Sanskrit philosophy,

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because if you've been trained as a professional philosopher, you're pretty good at reading philosophy.

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All of a sudden, you encountered that immaturity. You're like, What is going on here?

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So I think the way we understand is clearly historically conditioned. There's also something else that sounds good.

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Philosophical texts present arguments in a different way.

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And if you look at contemporary secondary literature and in philosophy and in most of our academic disciplines,

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it's it's processed in a very particular way. It's presented in a certain kind of outline.

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You can expect a certain kind of structure, right?

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If you read a contemporary Anglo-American philosophy paper, you can outline it without too much trouble.

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You know what the thesis is? You know how the sub arguments go.

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So it's presented in an abstract way, and it's not presented for a particular audience.

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It's predicted for a generic audience, right? That sounds great.

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Philosophical text, as Professor Turner also said are presented.

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As a conversation, as a dialogue, they're not actual dialogue.

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These are not recordings or podcasts or transcripts, right? But it's presented.

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The forum is a dialogue. Now what does that mean? Imagine that you and your roommate or partner are having a debate or a fight about something.

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And you have another friend who's overhearing this fight, so you're arguing back and forth, right?

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Now, what is the structure that that argument takes? It starts somewhere and then you respond to something that someone says, right?

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Then you bring it back to the main point respond to something else. It has a it seems to have a more meandering kind of path.

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Right?

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So if you were to take that meandering path and try to put an analytical outline, it would fault the analytical outline as if we were doing it for,

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say, a course in philosophy department or for a journal would look very different, wouldn't it?

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It wouldn't look anything like that. So it's an imperfect analogy, but some philosophical texts require that so often when we read an argument,

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it's very hard for us to follow the structure or the analytical outline because the kind of outline that we expected to have,

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it doesn't have, and that requires a lot of understanding.

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And you know that the problem is ours and not the texts, but because if you have conversations,

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say in Sanskrit with traditional teachers or traditional scholars, they understand it right away.

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In a very different way than we do, and it takes years and years to begin to tune yourself in to how these techs function.

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And I think that is a real virtue because look, if. South Asian material were exactly the same as Euro-American material.

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I'm not really sure why I should spend most of my adult life learning how to read it and think about it.

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I'd rather just read it all in English. But it is different, and it's learning how to learn from these differences.

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I think that is one of the very potentially powerful things, but it's not so different that it's just alien.

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It's it's very obvious when you read it that some of the concerns are very, very similar.

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Some of the some of the and some of the resources are very, very useful.

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And so it's a value to do so. Yeah, I think that's why I asked the question.

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Yeah.

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No, no, it's really interesting and I guess I have a question kind of following on from these points of sort of you guys have been touching on it,

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but in terms maybe of like practical issues when it comes to students who who are interested in studying this material,

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like how important do you think this sort of the the literary and cultural outsides of these philosophical texts?

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So we have these like texts that seem obviously for talking to us people like Taniguchi being a good example,

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but then because of that being situated in classical India, and the difference is that that creates that.

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I guess the question arises of how important it is to have a general understanding

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of classical Indian culture and and reading literary works like those of corridors.

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And then how about is how important do you think it is for philosophical students who are studying South Asian philosophy to to be familiar with that,

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those kind of border control trends? It's a question to to both of you.

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Really, honestly, I don't know. I mean, when you read Plato and Aristotle, do you feel compelled to read Iliad and Odyssey?

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And I mean the same question to Professor Bartels, do you read it?

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I don't know if reading calendars will help you better understand the term I get the I don't think so because it's again,

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the classical Indian notion of literature, I think was very different.

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I don't think that literature headed didactic, obviously didactic purpose or anything out of embodying a certain perspective of life or something.

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Of course, the artist gave expression to his own viewpoints. That is true,

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but to to expect somebody to have read all this classical Indian literature and then only then will they be able to understand philosophy.

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I don't think that that is a very practical stance to take.

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I don't think an explicit battle has rightly pointed out this is such a vast area.

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I don't think that it's humanly possible to do that.

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And with the Mahabharata, says 18 sagas, I don't think that anybody has ever read them, but they completely, let alone when one said again, fully.

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So I mean, I mean, in its origin, it's so.

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I don't know. Yes, of course, an acquaintance with it.

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And I also I've been on a slightly different note, although Professor Bartels said that it's a structured differently.

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Sometimes they feel that they understand a pin of a good thing and they were that better than, say, the reader or Baudrillard.

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Because again, since I am in literature, I have to read Beaudry or Derrida or, you know, people like this.

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I understand my own and the Wirtanen, but I should say I think they are much clearer in conveying their concepts.

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They do not try to befuddled me in the way very honestly, these French philosophers do.

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I don't know if it's my problem.

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It could be my problem, but I am much more comfortable with the concepts that are equally abstract and equally difficult.

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But reading them, I think, and in the very thing that helps me to understand there is that race to completely bewildered me.

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I don't know if that is because I am an Indian. VIDEO Honestly, I can't see because I haven't been exposed to another culture in that sense.

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So that is for somebody else to say. I don't know.

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But I don't think that a background in classical literature or region that is necessary to to start reading philosophy.

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Yeah, I mean, I don't if you have a I have a pretty radical view about this.

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I think that the outsides of Sanskrit philosophical texts, social, cultural,

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political history are almost irrelevant for understanding the insides of these texts.

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The only parts of the outsides that I think are relevant are other texts.

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Why? First of all, we don't really know how to date a lot of this stuff or locate it regionally, so where are you going to start?

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I mean, if you think 75 years one way or another is insignificant for social cultural history, look, maybe it's useful.

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If you don't think regionality matters, maybe it's useful.

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So my default is to just say the outside social, cultural, political outsides of these texts are irrelevant for understanding the inside.

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Default, I said the only the only things that might be directly relevant would be other texts.

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Now, almost no one I know agrees with this. But so I said it's radical. So what do you do?

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My view is you start from the inside out. You don't start from the outside in.

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And what is the Inside-Out mean, you pick up a text?

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From whenever, whatever you're interested in and you just start reading, it is extremely slow, extremely difficult.

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And then as you discover things, go read a little bit outside. It depends on the text, of course.

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Go read a little bit outside. But start with the primary document and then work your way out.

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Do not do.

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Do not fall victim to the tyranny of history in the humanities and start with the outside and somehow expect that to make the inside transparent.

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In my experience, it just does it. In fact, it it, it confuses you more.

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So that's a radical view. And people disagree, and people argue with me about it all the time, and we can do that too.

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But that's sort of where I start. But I think that is true. For example, if you're reading each of us, you have initiated.

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I mean, what what what material could you read?

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I mean, what material would I? Would I recommend that? You have no idea.

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Because these sticks sort of stand by them till they're suspended in time, so to speak.

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And if you were to ask me to which society I would, I would ascribe them to, I have no idea.

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I don't know. So I think I agree completely with that very radical.

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I mean, you know, it's something like it depends also what kinds of questions we're asking of these texts, right?

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If you're asking, why does this happen? Each other, this philosophical text?

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Why did it occur at this time? Why does it have this genre, this shape?

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Why does it ask these questions and not other questions, right?

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Why is a particular king mentioned in amongst the right?

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So those kinds of questions might be very useful to know something about the.

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Social, cultural, historical context, if you can locate it. I mean, the issue by Nishad, of course.

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Good luck. Right? With any degree of specificity.

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So you can ask those questions, I'm not saying don't. I'm just saying,

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if you think knowing something about social cultural history or literary history is

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going to tell you why someone like Gung Geisha chose to take this view on what semantic,

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what the semantics of operative endings are. I think you're I think it's just it's crazy.

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He's not, you know, these techs are not drains that somehow are fully determined by the wash and history.

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These are people like Young Asians, a philosopher who is an intellectual in his own right,

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obviously, he's influenced by his peers and by what he's read.

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We don't know what they are. So the best way to figure out what he's doing and what he's thinking is to start with him.

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And I think you're going to be hard pressed to trace his actual ideas and his thoughts

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and his views and his arguments to some patron or some cultural force going on.

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Maybe you could figure out why he wrote more on one chapter versus another by something like that?

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Maybe. So my default view is start with the book, start with the individual and work from the inside out.

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If I may ask a follow up question, I guess, to both of you. Isn't there a way in which sense in which it's difficult to separate the inside and the

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outside as it were in the perhaps in a way in the way we currently understand the terms,

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you know, philosophy, culture, religion, I guess politics on the nose or, you know, we understand these terms separately.

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But isn't there perhaps a way in which the distinctions between say, you know, philosophy and religion, for example,

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or philosophy and literature aren't exactly the same as the way we understand them now in these classical texts?

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Does that make sense?

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Basically, your the question you're asking is that they're very clear demarcations between these categories and in ancient India,

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is that what you're asking? Philosophy, religion, literature? Yeah.

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You know, I think again again, I mean, I think the two speakers today here in complete agreement with each other,

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see this attitude to a text that you need to know the socio cultural background of the text and the general conditions in which it was located.

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This is something that in literature also today we have this tendency and I think this is,

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I would say, a problem with the cultural, materialistic approach.

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Personally, again, I do not agree with this approach because I do not see yes, of course,

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it is valuable to know and understand these factors, but I don't think it helps me understand the literary value of the text.

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Like when I read colliders, I read, Calida said, to appreciate the literary aspects of it that the literary merit of it.

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It doesn't help in the least. It doesn't add to the literary merit or take away from the literary merit to know

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that colliders was writing it was withdrawn or that colliders as patron was.

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I mean, the king was unhappy with him or all of it, that this additional material, which might be useful.

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So this question of whether, you know, you can differentiate between literature, religion,

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philosophy, etc., again, at some point, I don't think it matters that much because.

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Of course, philosophy and religion are very closely connected. That is very much there in in in at least in ancient India.

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I think literature, I don't think, has to that extent agreed.

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But if you think of the epics like The Mohabbat, though, the Ramayana there, it becomes difficult to distinguish between these three categories.

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I would say because you can think of them as literary text, it's for some people,

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these are very sacred spiritual texts, and of course, they are highly philosophical.

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So if you're reading something like the epics of the piranhas? Yes.

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But if you're reading something like colliders or you know what is strictly classified as literature, I don't think that that matters a lot.

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I don't know if I've answered your question, but yeah. And.

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No, it's I think it's it's helpful to think about it for sure.

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You know, as I said, a general just saying the ethics, even within the tradition itself, the ethics.

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How to classify the epics is contested. Some people think the epics are short stories, a certain kind of technical treatises.

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Some think some of the epics are Covance. Maybe you want to call Kabir's literature.

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Some people say they're IP horses, whatever that means as a genre. So what bucket to put a text in?

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I think tells you more about the person putting it in the bucket than it may about the text itself.

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Right. So there's a reason as to why a person wants to classify it someone.

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Sure, you learn something about the object. You also learn something about the person or their reasons for putting it in a bucket.

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So I'll say that to start. The second thing is, you know, terms like religion, philosophy and literature in English.

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I don't actually know what they mean at all. I mean, if I'm supposed to identify a book as a religion book.

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OK. What do you mean by religion if you tell me what you mean by religion,

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I might be able to help you as to whether this book fits in that bucket or not, but I don't really know what it means.

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These terms have a huge semantic range in English, and so unless it's further specified, I can't even tell you.

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Where it belongs. That's why when I started, at least for me, philosophy started as something very narrow.

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It just started as a kind of academic discipline that's defined not even globally as defined in sort of, you know, Anglophone departments.

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And so that's sort of a way of not answering your question by making it by sort of phrasing it this way.

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But maybe the spirit of the question is I think that.

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There is no reason to assume. That somehow all these things are all mixed together in a way that you can't tease them apart productively.

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Oh, you know, in in in South Asian material, I mean, look, we're dealing with over a millennium.

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Of work. Well, over a millennium of work over a vast geographical area produced by very well-funded people for many,

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many centuries, there is so much stuff out there.

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And we're not even talking yet about the Persian and Arabic material that's literally rotting in manuscript libraries all over India.

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So. People who say, Oh, you can't separate X and Y and classical India, or Y and Z or you, you know, these labels are harmful or helpful.

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I. I think those are very important questions to ask.

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But for me,

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00:40:51,690 --> 00:40:58,890
I have very little patience with people who think they have clear answers to it because I don't see how they could have a clear answer to it,

386
00:40:58,890 --> 00:41:05,390
considering that we only are, we only know the tip of the iceberg. I think it's productive to say.

387
00:41:05,390 --> 00:41:09,720
Well, there's a way in which here's what I mean by religion for this conversation,

388
00:41:09,720 --> 00:41:14,930
here's what I mean by philosophy for this conversation, it seems to me that in the in philosophical texts,

389
00:41:14,930 --> 00:41:17,000
whatever that means, relate,

390
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:26,090
religion and philosophy as I understand it for this conversation differently than your American texts do of this time and place that seems productive.

391
00:41:26,090 --> 00:41:34,010
But religion, philosophy, literature, it's probably probably just me, but I don't really know what they mean.

392
00:41:34,010 --> 00:41:43,410
So it's hard for me to answer. Maybe you know what they mean, and you have a specific idea of of what what it means to ask.

393
00:41:43,410 --> 00:41:44,920
I don't know, put you on the spot, but you know what I mean?

394
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:52,100
Like, there's something there's something important about the question you're asking right about how they like, can you separate them?

395
00:41:52,100 --> 00:41:56,720
And this is the spirit behind the question that somehow the categories that we use in the American

396
00:41:56,720 --> 00:42:04,260
Academy can distort material that means we're pressured into putting certain texts into boxes.

397
00:42:04,260 --> 00:42:12,780
And that pressure that comes from the existing boxes and the need to classify in a particular way the university demands of us is distorting,

398
00:42:12,780 --> 00:42:17,190
is that the spirit of the question and how to and how, how to how to deal with that?

399
00:42:17,190 --> 00:42:23,430
Or I don't put words in your mouth. So I'm just I'm not, I'm not sure.

400
00:42:23,430 --> 00:42:30,480
But. I suppose I was trying to ask.

401
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:38,040
I mean, this is slightly irrelevant, but I am also interested in Chinese philosophy and in Chinese philosophy,

402
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:47,190
say in Confucian texts, poet pope poems are often featured and also the sociopolitical circumstances of their time is very important.

403
00:42:47,190 --> 00:42:53,410
And there's also a lot of discussion about, you know, a lot of people ask, So is Confucianism a religion?

404
00:42:53,410 --> 00:43:01,290
And I think the accepted answer is it's not really a religion. And so.

405
00:43:01,290 --> 00:43:07,050
I felt like sometimes there's a way in which we use the word philosophy,

406
00:43:07,050 --> 00:43:12,990
but and philosophy might mean certain questions and certain ways of answering, I'm not sure.

407
00:43:12,990 --> 00:43:18,870
But I don't know. I I'm getting confused now.

408
00:43:18,870 --> 00:43:25,700
But. I don't know, I thought I was maybe interested in whether.

409
00:43:25,700 --> 00:43:32,030
You know, the a text could be all of the above, the philosophy and religion and literature,

410
00:43:32,030 --> 00:43:38,590
you know, or whether literature could never be fought here. You know what?

411
00:43:38,590 --> 00:43:41,710
It was, you know, what we mean when something's not right?

412
00:43:41,710 --> 00:43:51,280
I don't know, I just thought that perhaps if we look beyond the Anglo-American tradition of the electrician,

413
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:56,920
sort of the philosophy that I'm used to when we look beyond that, maybe we find radically different forms of doing philosophy.

414
00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:06,860
I guess that's sort of what I was getting on. I mean, I think it's absolutely true, and I think you picked out some really good examples,

415
00:44:06,860 --> 00:44:12,790
so obviously we know that Anglophone philosophy analytic philosophy is one way of doing philosophy.

416
00:44:12,790 --> 00:44:19,030
You don't have to look to other places to see different ways of doing philosophy. We just have to look within the Euro American tradition itself.

417
00:44:19,030 --> 00:44:25,960
Right? Read pragmatism. Look at the philosophers who I don't read Hegel, Heidegger writes.

418
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:34,090
For the French philosophers, it's it's totally different. So obviously, the Chinese material that you pointed to is really different, right?

419
00:44:34,090 --> 00:44:36,790
Because it's so different than the Sanskrit material in so many ways,

420
00:44:36,790 --> 00:44:42,430
it's it seems to be infused in a certain kind of politics and a certain way of poetry and aesthetic.

421
00:44:42,430 --> 00:44:50,020
It's a whole different. It's a whole different way. And we have to ask, is it part of the same conversation or is it a different conversation, right?

422
00:44:50,020 --> 00:44:57,760
Or if the writer of those texts were here today and if they were in a philosophy or what department would they be?

423
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:01,660
And if they were at Oxford today, what department would they want to teach in? Right.

424
00:45:01,660 --> 00:45:05,920
What courses would they teach? How what conversations would they want to be a part of?

425
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:11,820
I think asking the questions in that way might, actually might help us.

426
00:45:11,820 --> 00:45:17,670
Get to what we're really after. And help us get a better feel for what kind of distortions might be there,

427
00:45:17,670 --> 00:45:25,780
but to just think what it requires to do that to what it requires to do that is to really be able to think with.

428
00:45:25,780 --> 00:45:32,700
And about these texts and these figures right now to really inhabit.

429
00:45:32,700 --> 00:45:36,870
Those arguments, or at least those materials and see what you can do with it.

430
00:45:36,870 --> 00:45:41,510
I think a good place to look at this question of literature, philosophy or religion would be,

431
00:45:41,510 --> 00:45:47,610
you look at the work of someone like I've been over Gupta, right? I've been over Gupta, who clearly was a shave, a theologian.

432
00:45:47,610 --> 00:45:57,690
No question. Clearly on aesthetics. Clearly rote works in epistemology and metaphysics as part of a kind of broader philosophical theological picture.

433
00:45:57,690 --> 00:46:04,830
You can ask the question there. How does each part of a systematic corpus relate to these terms that we use?

434
00:46:04,830 --> 00:46:09,750
What are the harms in characterising one of his tests one way versus another?

435
00:46:09,750 --> 00:46:18,260
Right? Or something like that? Yeah, I think it's primarily a question of how you read the text.

436
00:46:18,260 --> 00:46:26,640
Like, for example, even car leaders, although he said the literature by itself, I mean, classical sense with literature stands as literary literature.

437
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:32,270
Khalid US, for example, appearing on a show on the little girl, was a known show, right?

438
00:46:32,270 --> 00:46:36,320
And that is that is a good take away from it. So was it a reflection?

439
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:40,070
I mean, the recognition that he's notion this recognition of Shakuntala?

440
00:46:40,070 --> 00:46:45,140
Can you think of it as the prototypical philosophy? I, I don't know.

441
00:46:45,140 --> 00:46:51,410
See it. So it's a question of interpretation. You can approach any text in whichever way you want.

442
00:46:51,410 --> 00:46:57,650
Nothing is preventing you from doing it. And I think the epics, especially the Mahabharata, would be very fruitful in that sense.

443
00:46:57,650 --> 00:47:01,370
I mean, all these things that you're talking about literature, religion, politics,

444
00:47:01,370 --> 00:47:07,490
all of it sort of come together in that epic, specifically both Ramayana and the Mahabharat.

445
00:47:07,490 --> 00:47:18,170
So again, you see two DVDs in literature, we do all sorts of things to text, so I am coming from a discipline where anything goes.

446
00:47:18,170 --> 00:47:25,710
So this question of can we read it in a particular way? We would say yes, of course we are fine with it.

447
00:47:25,710 --> 00:47:30,900
And actually, as you may know, in the Sanskrit tradition of commentaries itself, that's very common.

448
00:47:30,900 --> 00:47:42,960
So you'll find the text, say the Amaru. There's a you'll find you'll find a poem that, at least to most readers, seems to be about neurotics,

449
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:48,960
and you'll find a commentator who interprets it being as being a devotional work, right?

450
00:47:48,960 --> 00:47:57,060
Devotional work to God. So one has to ask, all right, is what is the epistemic significance of these commentary or practises?

451
00:47:57,060 --> 00:48:02,100
What does that tell us about how they understand what a text is versus what a text can be?

452
00:48:02,100 --> 00:48:05,880
What do we do with that information in our academy today?

453
00:48:05,880 --> 00:48:12,870
So there's a reception histories of texts, right?

454
00:48:12,870 --> 00:48:19,110
And in the South Asian world that can be in the form of literally so-called commentaries on texts and commentaries.

455
00:48:19,110 --> 00:48:25,380
Aren't exegesis right? Their interpretations? Or it could be writing new versions of a mob heart that I mean a story.

456
00:48:25,380 --> 00:48:31,050
That's a kind of commentary. It could be artistic representations, which are commentaries.

457
00:48:31,050 --> 00:48:34,380
So there's many ways in which we can look at a reception history of a text and reception.

458
00:48:34,380 --> 00:48:38,340
Histories sometimes can be identified in time and place an agenda.

459
00:48:38,340 --> 00:48:41,490
And so maybe you can learn something about two of the issues we talked about the

460
00:48:41,490 --> 00:48:45,600
issue of social and cultural history and how it was viewed at a particular time,

461
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:52,110
and maybe also the question you're asking about. And that professor was saying it's not about maybe what a text is always.

462
00:48:52,110 --> 00:48:53,410
It's about what you can do with it.

463
00:48:53,410 --> 00:48:59,700
And we have concrete examples of how people in South Asia, what they did with these texts, we'd have to agree with them.

464
00:48:59,700 --> 00:49:07,500
We can just say this is what they did with it. Maybe that helps us with this question. But I think trying to say in advance.

465
00:49:07,500 --> 00:49:12,030
Without some proper scene setting, is this a work of philosophy?

466
00:49:12,030 --> 00:49:18,060
Is this a work of religion? Is this a work of literature? It might be of less value that are initially.

467
00:49:18,060 --> 00:49:28,610
Might seem. Yeah, thank you, I think that sort of approach to focus more on the insides of texts and to sort of initially like bracket,

468
00:49:28,610 --> 00:49:32,040
the question of what the outsides can tell us is is a really useful and practical approach,

469
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:35,420
specially when we're talking about the how vast all of this material is.

470
00:49:35,420 --> 00:49:41,330
But then to go through the study of the insides to sort of reveal more and more what

471
00:49:41,330 --> 00:49:45,620
the cultural situation was so that you can have this sort of growing understanding.

472
00:49:45,620 --> 00:49:55,310
I think it's quite a flexible one, I think. Yeah, it's sort of from my very limited experience how it feels to kind of enter into these texts.

473
00:49:55,310 --> 00:49:59,120
But perhaps perhaps we can sort of move on to sort of a related question and

474
00:49:59,120 --> 00:50:03,050
perhaps perhaps one that you too might have slightly different perspectives on.

475
00:50:03,050 --> 00:50:07,940
But I'm interested in and both of you initially talked about a little bit about

476
00:50:07,940 --> 00:50:13,340
the role of Sanskrit when it comes to classifying South Asian philosophy.

477
00:50:13,340 --> 00:50:18,920
And it seems like perhaps you, you offered maybe complementary but slightly different approaches,

478
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:26,690
meaning you talked a little bit about how the Sanskrit approach to Indian aesthetics like limits limits our view

479
00:50:26,690 --> 00:50:32,450
because it ignores perhaps common aesthetics and Persian aesthetics that are both really interesting and influential.

480
00:50:32,450 --> 00:50:38,570
And then all you talked about how the Sanskrit tradition itself is so wide and vast

481
00:50:38,570 --> 00:50:44,120
that it's a great place to start when we when thinking about Indian philosophy.

482
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:51,200
So I wonder, perhaps a question this sort of could relate those two perspectives and sort of create discussion

483
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:59,740
is thinking about how self-contained Sanskrit is as a kind of body of philosophical literature,

484
00:50:59,740 --> 00:51:07,460
like how important are not texts, not in Sanskrit, in the world of Sanskrit philosophy.

485
00:51:07,460 --> 00:51:15,410
And so that might give us perspective on how useful it is to think of Indian philosophy in terms of Sanskrit philosophy.

486
00:51:15,410 --> 00:51:18,750
And what do you mean by Sanskrit philosophy per se?

487
00:51:18,750 --> 00:51:25,550
You mean just three texts in Sanskrit sort of dharma, keerthy type things and type things.

488
00:51:25,550 --> 00:51:38,390
The mom's the type, things like that. Yeah, I mean, things like, I think Shastra or I guess that is a kind of somewhat open question.

489
00:51:38,390 --> 00:51:44,690
So I guess limiting it Sanskrit philosophy to it's a text written in Sanskrit, then what exactly would class as philosophy?

490
00:51:44,690 --> 00:51:54,200
But yeah, I guess. I mean, the most obviously philosophical texts might be the Shostak texts, at least in my understanding.

491
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:58,220
Are we asking? I mean, I think that. Are we asking a broader question? Sort of.

492
00:51:58,220 --> 00:51:59,750
We know that there are many.

493
00:51:59,750 --> 00:52:06,410
There are intellectuals working in a very wide variety of languages at certain moments and South Asian intellectual history.

494
00:52:06,410 --> 00:52:13,460
We know there are people writing in Sanskrit and Tamil and other regional Latin bridge, for example, in Persian and Arabic.

495
00:52:13,460 --> 00:52:21,380
We also know that many of these intellectuals, especially with the Persian Arabic set up in South Texas, have lived near each other.

496
00:52:21,380 --> 00:52:25,370
Right, they are. They live near each other, live near each other.

497
00:52:25,370 --> 00:52:28,790
It's not. They didn't know each other. They lived around each other. They probably saw each other.

498
00:52:28,790 --> 00:52:37,760
They talk to each other. And are we saying, OK, look, you have all these people, all these smart, serious intellectuals living together?

499
00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:42,500
What influence do they have on each other? Do we see evidence of that influence?

500
00:52:42,500 --> 00:52:44,720
And you seem to be asking the question.

501
00:52:44,720 --> 00:52:52,430
We have that, say, 17th century when we have these Persian Sanskrit intellectuals, we have scholars from all over India.

502
00:52:52,430 --> 00:52:57,770
They're all over what we call India there. What influence do they have?

503
00:52:57,770 --> 00:53:03,680
Is a Sanskrit thing. Close? Was it opened? We have evidence, cetera. I think that's the spirit of the question.

504
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:07,700
Let me give you an A. Let me make a little bit of analogy.

505
00:53:07,700 --> 00:53:14,290
Then I'll try to answer it and see what Professor Jonathan thinks about it. And let's think of Oxford.

506
00:53:14,290 --> 00:53:20,920
Or Harvard? And let's think of all the people who read Plato and read can't.

507
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:26,380
Right. I take it they recount in English faculty and theology faculty, probably Plato, too.

508
00:53:26,380 --> 00:53:35,220
They might read it in the philosophy faculty. Do they talk to each other at all?

509
00:53:35,220 --> 00:53:41,430
At all. I'm sure they go to a high table together. I'm sure they go to the pub together.

510
00:53:41,430 --> 00:53:47,410
Do they talk to each other really close to each other about it, really in a way that shows up in their work?

511
00:53:47,410 --> 00:53:55,740
Two people from the philosophy faculty site, faculty and English faculty who write on current and constant critique.

512
00:53:55,740 --> 00:54:02,130
Why they know each other, they like each other. Why don't they say to each other?

513
00:54:02,130 --> 00:54:12,540
Why don't they, why don't we see evidence of their interactions? Different audiences.

514
00:54:12,540 --> 00:54:16,870
Does that mean there was no influence? No, but it just it's not visible.

515
00:54:16,870 --> 00:54:21,370
So with I can talk about this sounds good in Arabic and Persian step a little bit.

516
00:54:21,370 --> 00:54:26,020
It seems to me that even if you have a Sanskrit writer in 17th century Benaras,

517
00:54:26,020 --> 00:54:32,500
a Persian writer and Arabic writer writing on issues of epistemology and metaphysics, they're writing for totally different people.

518
00:54:32,500 --> 00:54:39,610
There's no evidence, none that I've been able to find of any kind of deep level interaction.

519
00:54:39,610 --> 00:54:49,500
Of any type, where do you see interaction? So, for example, you see interaction certain kinds of theological and religious traditions, right?

520
00:54:49,500 --> 00:54:56,650
So you see writers of Persian like Finda, risky drawing on yoga traditions are certain to punish gods.

521
00:54:56,650 --> 00:55:02,910
Right, that's clear. You can also fear exactly why he's drawing on those who pirate.

522
00:55:02,910 --> 00:55:09,090
It's it's it's not clear the exact nature of that interaction is not necessarily one of mutual influence.

523
00:55:09,090 --> 00:55:17,350
It might be one of consumption. Right. We also see examples of people writing poetry.

524
00:55:17,350 --> 00:55:23,540
There's some flash, a copy, it's right in different parts, actually to copy it in different languages.

525
00:55:23,540 --> 00:55:30,230
We see examples in bridge, for example, of people incorporating sounds could be done to traditions and writing bridge versions,

526
00:55:30,230 --> 00:55:39,850
which has a whole vernacular Vedanta tradition, which is huge. But the idea that in these kinds of scholastic traditions.

527
00:55:39,850 --> 00:55:44,960
There is a lot of mutual interaction. Intellectual interact.

528
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:51,680
I just see I mean, almost no evidence of it. It's shocking how little there is and trying.

529
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:56,330
Given given how many people there were and how much time they were all together, it's shocking how little there is.

530
00:55:56,330 --> 00:55:58,220
Does that mean there was none? No.

531
00:55:58,220 --> 00:56:04,160
What's interesting, though, is not that there might be some, so that's important to figure out what that was and what the nature of it was.

532
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:10,490
What's interesting to me is why there's so little. And the best I can come up with is it's like Harvard.

533
00:56:10,490 --> 00:56:15,840
A lot of people said he can't. A lot of people who read Plato don't talk to each other because they have different audiences.

534
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:19,970
So I'm sitting in my house as a sounds with intellectual.

535
00:56:19,970 --> 00:56:24,830
Suppose I live next door to someone who writes in Persian or live next door to celebrate in Tamil or or Arabic.

536
00:56:24,830 --> 00:56:28,610
We meet, we talk. We have languages in common. We talk about whatever.

537
00:56:28,610 --> 00:56:34,550
But when I write, I'm writing for this jet stream that goes over there. He's writing for this jet stream that goes over here.

538
00:56:34,550 --> 00:56:39,250
Someone else is writing for a jet stream that looks south. And that's it.

539
00:56:39,250 --> 00:56:47,160
I mean, this is simplistic answer, but it's trying to share the spirit of at least sort of what I think and maybe get a little bit at your question.

540
00:56:47,160 --> 00:56:51,510
I don't know, Professor Jonathan thinks about this. Yeah, I know.

541
00:56:51,510 --> 00:56:59,610
I think I agree that sounds good, at least doesn't show any evidence of being influenced by other languages.

542
00:56:59,610 --> 00:57:07,440
It's, you know, it's just there. But again, it's also that it's a matter of dispute.

543
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:11,460
But there are people who say that the toll Caribbean was influenced by the Nazi shastra.

544
00:57:11,460 --> 00:57:15,420
But then there are people who say that the disaster was influenced by Aristotle's politics.

545
00:57:15,420 --> 00:57:25,560
So I mean, I don't want to go into that at all. But there was a lot of interaction between the parties or the regional Indian languages,

546
00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:29,220
as you would say, like have a grudge or Reagan between Tamil and Malayalam.

547
00:57:29,220 --> 00:57:36,210
There was a lot of interaction going on and at least in the matter of politics, I mean, not in the sense of poetic concepts.

548
00:57:36,210 --> 00:57:43,920
If you think of it what Malayalam has today, or if you can call something like Malayalam politics in daily Sanskrit.

549
00:57:43,920 --> 00:57:46,620
So including the metas and all of it.

550
00:57:46,620 --> 00:57:53,340
So even in Malayalam Malayalam poems that it didn't most of the metres that are used Sanskrit metres not read in metres.

551
00:57:53,340 --> 00:58:03,960
Of course, occasionally we do have the reading metres, but Malayalam is a language that is heavily sensitised with a little bit of Tamil influence.

552
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:09,510
So but this is happening only in the, say, 15 to 16 centuries.

553
00:58:09,510 --> 00:58:18,390
So till then, what happened between Sanskrit and other portions like, say, for example, the Maharashtra Library,

554
00:58:18,390 --> 00:58:25,620
you have somebody like Raja shake it up writing in Sanskrit, but apparently his wife wrote in Maharashtra separately.

555
00:58:25,620 --> 00:58:31,230
So these are things I mean, obviously people who are bilingual, can we really call them bilingual?

556
00:58:31,230 --> 00:58:37,740
Or was it just, you know, somewhat a language that is related to to Sanskrit?

557
00:58:37,740 --> 00:58:44,520
These are things that we don't know. But there is one movement, if you think of it, that that spread across India.

558
00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:50,630
And I would say this is a philosophical school rather than literary. One is the movement.

559
00:58:50,630 --> 00:58:55,910
So the movement that started around the six to seven centuries in Tamil Nadu,

560
00:58:55,910 --> 00:59:04,580
which was begun by a vision of eight scholars in Tamil Nadu, interestingly takes on various shapes that as it progresses across India.

561
00:59:04,580 --> 00:59:11,990
So what is essentially a Hindu movement in Tamil Nadu becomes a lower-cost sort of movement with in Maharashtra,

562
00:59:11,990 --> 00:59:18,410
for example, the whole with all the the.

563
00:59:18,410 --> 00:59:24,680
Poor pilgrimage and all of it, if you look at micrometeorites and bridge and and bridge by composers,

564
00:59:24,680 --> 00:59:32,960
I shouldn't say Mira Road because Beatles sang and so sang in blood pressure and and Dorothy and all of it.

565
00:59:32,960 --> 00:59:36,290
So this philosophy, perhaps. I mean this.

566
00:59:36,290 --> 00:59:43,010
I don't know if you can really call it a philosophical school because this was the.

567
00:59:43,010 --> 00:59:50,180
The School of Diversion or Apathy, where the middleman between God and the ordinary believer disappears.

568
00:59:50,180 --> 00:59:58,880
So despite the lack of contact or the lack of give and take between Sanskrit and the other pressures,

569
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:04,040
you have this sort of a woman that is spreading across India. Now the question is how did it?

570
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:07,820
How did it from the 7th to the 14th centuries?

571
01:00:07,820 --> 01:00:15,560
I mean, if you think of from the vision of eight nine miles up to the state, the name of who somebody in Bengal you have,

572
01:00:15,560 --> 01:00:20,780
if you look across India, you have various poets who belong to this particular school.

573
01:00:20,780 --> 01:00:29,880
I would think that this is one very good example of give and take amongst Indian languages in Indian schools of thought.

574
01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:35,790
If I may call it, I mean, I don't know, philosophers may disagree, even call it a philosophical school.

575
01:00:35,790 --> 01:00:44,130
Because it doesn't have that sort of, I suppose, disciplinary rigour that you would associate with a particular philosophical school.

576
01:00:44,130 --> 01:00:48,210
But I really do not know how to classify.

577
01:00:48,210 --> 01:00:53,880
I mean, the the problem with categories again, how do you understand the book?

578
01:00:53,880 --> 01:00:55,590
I mean, there are people who would say that it does not.

579
01:00:55,590 --> 01:01:00,840
You cannot really call it a movement because it is not the movement in the usual sense of the word,

580
01:01:00,840 --> 01:01:06,940
because it was not spearheaded by a single leader and it did not have a manifesto, which is true.

581
01:01:06,940 --> 01:01:19,570
So it is rather a decentralised sort of thinking that so various representatives of it, they're very different from each other and very alike also.

582
01:01:19,570 --> 01:01:29,140
I mean, if you think of Kabeer and Mira or Barnaby or people like that far removed in in space, time and culture and language.

583
01:01:29,140 --> 01:01:39,790
But that is something in common with all of them that even today that the Dalit woman in India often falls back upon, say, somebody like Ryders.

584
01:01:39,790 --> 01:01:50,710
So they draw inspiration from people like this. So the Buckley movement, I think, is something that might provide an interesting insight into this.

585
01:01:50,710 --> 01:02:00,640
I mean, I mean, one way to think about this, too, is let's take Persian, Arabic broadly Islamic cultural influences.

586
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:10,160
We see influences absolutely almost everywhere music, food, architecture, painting.

587
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:17,960
Every sense there's somehow influence, and it's even hard to decide what came from where, but influence is obvious.

588
01:02:17,960 --> 01:02:29,090
What's so shocking and what's important is that you see nothing like that in Sanskrit intellectual work or in Persian intellectual work.

589
01:02:29,090 --> 01:02:34,860
Basically, for Arabic intellectual work, with the only exception that I know.

590
01:02:34,860 --> 01:02:36,840
Is.

591
01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:47,190
With Persian reception of sort of these kind of yogic traditions and also in an shots that I say or somebody in the introductions to some of his must,

592
01:02:47,190 --> 01:02:54,690
must never you begin, you see influence of sort of broader intake of unconscious shastra, but the other way around, you just don't see it.

593
01:02:54,690 --> 01:03:01,380
But you know, there was tremendous interaction, you know, there was tremendous learning in some other every other aspect of life.

594
01:03:01,380 --> 01:03:06,930
So. People say, is this a bad thing or a good thing?

595
01:03:06,930 --> 01:03:10,560
What do you mean, a good thing or a bad thing? It's it's what we see.

596
01:03:10,560 --> 01:03:13,860
So let's try to understand why that might be the case.

597
01:03:13,860 --> 01:03:22,020
Some people say, Oh, it's because Sanskrit intellectuals are very conservative and rabbinical, and they didn't want to talk to anybody else.

598
01:03:22,020 --> 01:03:26,280
OK, maybe, but they sure ate the food. They sure were changed their clothes.

599
01:03:26,280 --> 01:03:30,330
They sure listened to music. They listen to artistic traditions. Maybe the answer.

600
01:03:30,330 --> 01:03:32,160
So I said, Oh, they just had different audiences.

601
01:03:32,160 --> 01:03:40,440
I mean, but so people who this question becomes important because it's obviously historical interest and intellectual interest,

602
01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:45,870
but people often have an agenda in why they ask it and what they think counts as an answer.

603
01:03:45,870 --> 01:03:49,080
And that gets to be a little bit troubling. Just like what sounds with in general, as you know,

604
01:03:49,080 --> 01:03:55,980
contemporary social scientists and many people who work in modern South Asian studies have a certain picture of Sanskrit,

605
01:03:55,980 --> 01:04:02,990
partly due to the politicisation that is really. It's it's really naive.

606
01:04:02,990 --> 01:04:11,510
I don't know how else to put it, it's really naive. And.

607
01:04:11,510 --> 01:04:19,050
And that naivete results in distortion. And that naivete result in.

608
01:04:19,050 --> 01:04:23,940
Turning your back on things that might be of incredible value to you, right?

609
01:04:23,940 --> 01:04:28,440
People who no one I mean, I hope nobody thinks that just because something is and sounds good,

610
01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:31,740
this gets back to the authority point that Professor temporarily raised.

611
01:04:31,740 --> 01:04:35,340
Just because something's in soundscape doesn't mean it's good. It's a language, for goodness sakes.

612
01:04:35,340 --> 01:04:38,370
There's good stuff. There's bad stuff, there's offensive stuff.

613
01:04:38,370 --> 01:04:45,300
There's stuff that's worth, you know, wishing was never produced and forgetting from the past, and there's stuff that we can learn from.

614
01:04:45,300 --> 01:04:56,720
So I guess part of part of asking you about this is to say we to always be sensitive, I think, as to why we're asking certain questions.

615
01:04:56,720 --> 01:05:01,840
And whether there's actually something we have at stake. In what the answer is and why,

616
01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:08,020
and I think this issue of interaction can be asked from with many different perspectives and for many different agendas,

617
01:05:08,020 --> 01:05:12,970
what's most striking to me is just how little, how shockingly little there is.

618
01:05:12,970 --> 01:05:17,110
And it's a next question of how to interpret what that means.

619
01:05:17,110 --> 01:05:22,830
We also don't know very much as we keep talking about, right? I mean, like I said.

620
01:05:22,830 --> 01:05:28,080
There could easily be Persian and Arabic manuscripts that show other kinds of learning.

621
01:05:28,080 --> 01:05:31,410
Maybe there are Sanskrit manuscripts that show learning from Persian Arabic,

622
01:05:31,410 --> 01:05:35,990
though I doubt it in a significant way in these areas, right versus science.

623
01:05:35,990 --> 01:05:42,150
We know that there were translations from science fiction and back, so they were translations.

624
01:05:42,150 --> 01:05:47,580
But personally, I don't know any aesthetic text in Persian.

625
01:05:47,580 --> 01:05:56,080
I've been looking for it. I haven't really come across one. So I don't know, and I'm equally puzzled by this.

626
01:05:56,080 --> 01:05:58,250
So if there was translation activity, in fact,

627
01:05:58,250 --> 01:06:11,170
but I think did have an office for translation and his son may not be able to send, but data show Johnson so he had.

628
01:06:11,170 --> 01:06:15,340
He translated personally. He translated, the pig would get in the bush and all of it.

629
01:06:15,340 --> 01:06:18,580
So there was a lot of translation activity happening.

630
01:06:18,580 --> 01:06:25,570
But then Woody, the alligator, hamsters or any of the Ngubeni should say things did get translated into question.

631
01:06:25,570 --> 01:06:35,860
That didn't happen. But the protesters did the sense with the language adjusted over influence motion or again, the reverse happened.

632
01:06:35,860 --> 01:06:37,550
This is something that we never get to know.

633
01:06:37,550 --> 01:06:46,010
I don't know if Ponderosa Dog another would give an answer because he's somebody who lived during the time of Shahjahan.

634
01:06:46,010 --> 01:06:53,340
So but even then, I don't know. I don't think he shows any influence in that sense.

635
01:06:53,340 --> 01:06:59,320
And you the translation projects, it's almost predictable, it's often predictable what was translated and what wasn't.

636
01:06:59,320 --> 01:07:03,720
So if you look at which you find, the shades were translated. Not all of them.

637
01:07:03,720 --> 01:07:10,440
And you can pretty much figure out why they would translate. Why the ones that were translated were translated has to do with the theological

638
01:07:10,440 --> 01:07:16,050
interest or the practical interests of the particular Persians who were engaged in it.

639
01:07:16,050 --> 01:07:24,450
Now that said, with the influence of, say, other kinds of, you know, we also know that poetry was translated and things like that,

640
01:07:24,450 --> 01:07:28,560
you know, things like that be dynamo that shook us up, that these are translated to Persian.

641
01:07:28,560 --> 01:07:36,730
That feature is not a translation, right? Look, that the the primary question we're asking is, look how hard it is for us.

642
01:07:36,730 --> 01:07:47,430
To point to. Intellectual interaction at the level of scholastic texts or writing, it's not hard in almost any other aspect of life.

643
01:07:47,430 --> 01:07:50,790
It's obvious if you look at governance and political structures,

644
01:07:50,790 --> 01:07:59,200
look at even my so you can see influence music, food, as I said, clothing city planning.

645
01:07:59,200 --> 01:08:08,610
Science. It's this is this kind of scholastic intellectual work is the exception.

646
01:08:08,610 --> 01:08:13,920
And that's interesting in a lot of ways, it's interesting that it's an exception.

647
01:08:13,920 --> 01:08:24,730
It's important that it's an exception. But you can't take it. As being somehow of broader significance, because everywhere else you look.

648
01:08:24,730 --> 01:08:28,540
How do you separate them out? You know, this kind of thing.

649
01:08:28,540 --> 01:08:30,340
So I think that again,

650
01:08:30,340 --> 01:08:35,410
the context in which we ask the question becomes very important and the reasons we're asking the question become very important.

651
01:08:35,410 --> 01:08:41,440
And what we do with our answers and how we interpret it becomes very important, particularly in this, I'll say,

652
01:08:41,440 --> 01:08:48,280
politically charged climate of today regarding sounds good and what classical,

653
01:08:48,280 --> 01:08:53,830
whatever that means, South Asia means or should mean for the future and investing.

654
01:08:53,830 --> 01:08:58,480
And those historical details are really interesting. I guess for me,

655
01:08:58,480 --> 01:09:05,510
the question comes out of it sort of fits into this sort of broader question about like with the Indian philosophy

656
01:09:05,510 --> 01:09:11,740
might should be introduced at Oxford for undergrads this year to focus primarily is on Sanskrit literature.

657
01:09:11,740 --> 01:09:17,680
And so I guess I guess this question arises from, like I said, apply Indian philosophy.

658
01:09:17,680 --> 01:09:25,060
This geographical term gets located in Sanskrit in particular and when how, how appropriate that location is.

659
01:09:25,060 --> 01:09:26,920
But from from what you guys have been saying,

660
01:09:26,920 --> 01:09:33,700
it does seem that that Sanskrit as a sort of coherent intellectual, Walden's makes references within itself,

661
01:09:33,700 --> 01:09:41,500
largely even if there's these other broader influences that are important to understand that it could be understood coherently within itself.

662
01:09:41,500 --> 01:09:50,790
It's my understanding, you know, the way to think about this label Indian philosophy module is.

663
01:09:50,790 --> 01:09:56,340
You know, Indian, if we associate the word India and India with the modern nation state and its borders and

664
01:09:56,340 --> 01:10:03,030
its agenda is obviously the term Indian philosophy is highly limiting and problematic.

665
01:10:03,030 --> 01:10:08,310
Right. But there's other, you know, the word India and India and Indian, all those derivatives.

666
01:10:08,310 --> 01:10:12,750
It's a historically sensitive term at different points in history, picked out different regions.

667
01:10:12,750 --> 01:10:16,020
If we have an Indian philosophy module, I'm not saying that's the term I would take.

668
01:10:16,020 --> 01:10:21,390
But if we pick an Indian philosophy module, why don't we just tell us, tell what we mean by it?

669
01:10:21,390 --> 01:10:28,560
Here's our Indian philosophy module. Here's what we mean. Yes, it turns out that most of what we do is Sanskrit philosophy,

670
01:10:28,560 --> 01:10:34,110
but that's due right now to the current staffing and the place we decided you got to start somewhere.

671
01:10:34,110 --> 01:10:40,320
We decided to start with some. So we decided not to start with Arabic writing in South in India as Indian philosophy,

672
01:10:40,320 --> 01:10:46,800
we decided not to start with English writing in India as Indian philosophy, we're choosing to start with Sanskrit.

673
01:10:46,800 --> 01:10:51,310
That doesn't preclude other things, but we're starting over time.

674
01:10:51,310 --> 01:10:58,500
Let's see how it grows. I don't think there's. I mean, as long as one is self conscious and aware.

675
01:10:58,500 --> 01:11:07,080
And I think in principle, open, it's fine there gets to be a worry for me if someone says if suppose Oxford had decided to

676
01:11:07,080 --> 01:11:13,840
start an Indian philosophy module and start with Indian philosophy written only in English.

677
01:11:13,840 --> 01:11:20,980
Right. Now. By my own way of talking about it, they would be entitled to do that right?

678
01:11:20,980 --> 01:11:29,670
Would I criticise it? I would criticise, depending what their objective is, if they said that we believe this.

679
01:11:29,670 --> 01:11:34,110
It depends on what their story is as to why they're starting there, whether I would criticise it, I personally,

680
01:11:34,110 --> 01:11:40,500
because I have limited imagination, have a hard time imagining what story they could tell that I would find very compelling.

681
01:11:40,500 --> 01:11:44,760
But it's I'm open to it. I just don't see.

682
01:11:44,760 --> 01:11:48,690
I guess I'm I guess I'd like to know more about it. I understand why.

683
01:11:48,690 --> 01:11:55,260
What are the worries about, say this label? Suppose they just suppose you could change the label to South Asian philosophy tomorrow.

684
01:11:55,260 --> 01:12:01,710
The module is going to get a new name South Asian philosophy. What do you think the advantage of that would be?

685
01:12:01,710 --> 01:12:02,220
Yeah. Well,

686
01:12:02,220 --> 01:12:14,910
I guess OAP's thinking is that we want to make sure that all of the influential voices involved in this philosophical material are accounted for.

687
01:12:14,910 --> 01:12:19,290
And I suppose there's also perhaps, you know, political worries,

688
01:12:19,290 --> 01:12:29,340
contemporary and ancient about the role of Sanskrit in and perhaps the potential hegemonic role of Sanskrit in India.

689
01:12:29,340 --> 01:12:35,850
So I guess those are worries that sort of arise and just wanting to acknowledge voices

690
01:12:35,850 --> 01:12:39,660
where they have been influential and if those are in other languages other than Sanskrit.

691
01:12:39,660 --> 01:12:47,940
Understanding why Sanskrit has come to operate in the role of this sort of paradigmatic philosophical language in India

692
01:12:47,940 --> 01:12:55,950
and the Andes are sort of open questions that we have and so not ones that I have any sort of conclusive answers to.

693
01:12:55,950 --> 01:13:04,080
I just think that in terms of what BP and its interests and what's the kind of questions it wants to explore, it's interesting.

694
01:13:04,080 --> 01:13:09,440
And I think those are, of course, very important. Whenever I mean, if we're if we're including something called,

695
01:13:09,440 --> 01:13:17,430
if we're trying to capture intellectuals who worked in broadly this geographic region over 1400 years,

696
01:13:17,430 --> 01:13:23,400
we want to make sure that we are open to all the voices. The question is, what's the best way to do that?

697
01:13:23,400 --> 01:13:31,370
Is the best way to do that to. Ask one great entry point is to ask about the name, right?

698
01:13:31,370 --> 01:13:40,780
But changing the name solves nothing. What would actually solve something is coming up with a syllabus.

699
01:13:40,780 --> 01:13:52,560
For, of course, the deals with South Asian philosophy that say, focuses on everyone or focuses on a whole tradition other than Sanskrit tradition.

700
01:13:52,560 --> 01:13:55,940
If the curriculum is heavily Sanskrit.

701
01:13:55,940 --> 01:14:03,200
And that there's many reasons why that would be the case, some good, it's some pragmatic, some maybe not so good, depending on who you are.

702
01:14:03,200 --> 01:14:14,290
Then the best way is to provide another syllabus. Or set of syllabi and say, Hey, does this fit within the purview?

703
01:14:14,290 --> 01:14:18,550
And if the answer is no, they have to put their money where their mouth is and explain, why not?

704
01:14:18,550 --> 01:14:25,290
And if yes, then you have to see if there's anybody on the planet who can teach it.

705
01:14:25,290 --> 01:14:31,710
So. Well, I'm. The spirit.

706
01:14:31,710 --> 01:14:40,590
Of asking about classification is incredibly important because it takes us to very serious real places, right?

707
01:14:40,590 --> 01:14:50,880
But as a practical matter. If what we actually care about is making sure that important voices aren't left out.

708
01:14:50,880 --> 01:14:55,650
I'm not sure that's the I guess it's an open question. I'm not sure that that's where we ought to put our energy.

709
01:14:55,650 --> 01:15:00,930
It seems we want to put our energy putting together and syllabus and taking that to the powers that be and saying, Hey,

710
01:15:00,930 --> 01:15:06,030
we've noticed we have this great whatever x module philosophy module and we're

711
01:15:06,030 --> 01:15:10,800
concerned we want to know whether we're concerned that it's so Sanskrit heavy.

712
01:15:10,800 --> 01:15:14,700
And we want to know whether the module is capacious enough to include something like this.

713
01:15:14,700 --> 01:15:21,090
Why or why not? I mean.

714
01:15:21,090 --> 01:15:28,390
I guess that's part of my my question. If it's practically oriented, I have this question if it's a theoretical matter.

715
01:15:28,390 --> 01:15:34,300
Then that's great, too, that's that's different kind of classification again, from the practical point of view.

716
01:15:34,300 --> 01:15:43,570
I think that any any goes on in philosophy will be heavily edited with to Sanskrit because if it is,

717
01:15:43,570 --> 01:15:54,790
if you're worried about representation at a certain point of time, scholars across India say, Do you have post-corona who supposedly is from Kerala?

718
01:15:54,790 --> 01:16:01,990
He also wrote in Sanskrit. So this is one language that is linking, maybe this was the language of knowledge or whatever.

719
01:16:01,990 --> 01:16:10,970
So in that sense, India at one point thought and expressed itself in sense for whatever reason.

720
01:16:10,970 --> 01:16:16,060
And again, I don't know, I don't I'm not getting into the reasons for it.

721
01:16:16,060 --> 01:16:22,660
So the representative ability in that sense until the mediaeval ages, at least if you wanted to study Indian philosophy,

722
01:16:22,660 --> 01:16:28,420
I don't think there is any other language to to study it from, really honestly.

723
01:16:28,420 --> 01:16:33,040
So I don't think there's somebody in brackets, huh?

724
01:16:33,040 --> 01:16:38,740
But we can Bali, which, of course, that is the that's it.

725
01:16:38,740 --> 01:16:42,400
But majority media part of it is Sanskrit.

726
01:16:42,400 --> 01:16:46,240
I mean, we cannot know it's all sense critic, at least.

727
01:16:46,240 --> 01:16:53,410
Yes. Yeah. So so I think this is a really good point because.

728
01:16:53,410 --> 01:17:01,870
One of the problems people have, what sounds good is they think it's elite. The question is, when you say, what do you mean by elite?

729
01:17:01,870 --> 01:17:03,700
You don't really get very much.

730
01:17:03,700 --> 01:17:14,290
So we tend to think, ah, people tend to think that intellectual elite, social elite, political elite, financial elite all come together.

731
01:17:14,290 --> 01:17:22,750
And that those who are that Sanskrit somehow picks up all those forms of being elite, which is demonstrably false.

732
01:17:22,750 --> 01:17:33,380
Philosophers. We're never fight, we're almost never financial elites, nor were they social or political elites, they were intellectual elites.

733
01:17:33,380 --> 01:17:38,800
You read people like even people who say, like, say, someone like Manu.

734
01:17:38,800 --> 01:17:42,820
And the monument had a mission where people think, Oh, well, this is the example of elite,

735
01:17:42,820 --> 01:17:49,230
if you just read the text, you realise that the people who composed many were hardly elite.

736
01:17:49,230 --> 01:17:49,680
Yeah.

737
01:17:49,680 --> 01:17:57,860
Maybe they're educated and so forth, but they weren't elite in any other way, they were bemoaning the fact that no one's paying attention to them.

738
01:17:57,860 --> 01:18:07,400
So we can begin to unpack things, which helps us understand what our concerns are and maybe focus them more.

739
01:18:07,400 --> 01:18:17,340
I think I think a debate that is going on in India right now, again about education should be in English or not.

740
01:18:17,340 --> 01:18:24,750
I think this is somewhat similar if you think of, because for Indians, English is the language of education and that is the language of the elite.

741
01:18:24,750 --> 01:18:34,200
About 0.01 percent of Indians know and understand English, but still education is almost exclusively conducted in English.

742
01:18:34,200 --> 01:18:37,470
So should it be in English or should it be in the Indian land?

743
01:18:37,470 --> 01:18:43,140
One of the Indian languages is that question. I mean, it's an ongoing debate that is never an answer to it.

744
01:18:43,140 --> 01:18:48,310
So I would say that the position of Sanskrit in ancient India was somewhat similar.

745
01:18:48,310 --> 01:18:55,340
So if you need to study something from ancient India, I don't think that.

746
01:18:55,340 --> 01:19:01,220
I mean, when are beginning our course on Indian philosophy, I think Sanskrit is an option.

747
01:19:01,220 --> 01:19:03,620
I mean, that is the only option.

748
01:19:03,620 --> 01:19:10,850
And I don't think you should be worried about the presentation because again, within Indian philosophy, again, of course,

749
01:19:10,850 --> 01:19:20,130
all of you would be better judges of this than me, but they were very different schools, a philosophy that did not agree with each other, right?

750
01:19:20,130 --> 01:19:27,830
So you are getting the viewpoints of completely different classes of people that are workers, for example.

751
01:19:27,830 --> 01:19:32,300
So you have a representation of difference.

752
01:19:32,300 --> 01:19:39,800
It is not as if it's a completely agreed to homogenised ideology that you're talking about.

753
01:19:39,800 --> 01:19:44,050
And I think that to avoid negative signalling. Right.

754
01:19:44,050 --> 01:19:48,140
That can be a worry that, oh, look, yes, we agree that this labour is important,

755
01:19:48,140 --> 01:19:51,580
we agree that most of the books that we have are pedagogical materials we have read and sounds good.

756
01:19:51,580 --> 01:19:52,600
So we're going to start there.

757
01:19:52,600 --> 01:20:00,360
If one is concerned about the signal that sends in a contemporary context, that's very easy to correct with a decent description.

758
01:20:00,360 --> 01:20:11,350
Right, so I. I think that it's ongoing and, you know, it's an ongoing question.

759
01:20:11,350 --> 01:20:19,980
How to how to how to manage this over time, but practically. I don't see any problem with this at all.

760
01:20:19,980 --> 01:20:26,390
As long as they're open. To an equally compelling syllabus, right?

761
01:20:26,390 --> 01:20:35,750
I mean, you could have a whole course if suppose all the Persian Arabic tracks in produced in South Asia city, it were translated.

762
01:20:35,750 --> 01:20:48,280
You can have years and years and years and years of courses on Arabic and Persian language philosophy produced in South Asia by South Asians.

763
01:20:48,280 --> 01:20:51,880
Now you can ask, should that be called? That wouldn't be called Sanskrit philosophy.

764
01:20:51,880 --> 01:20:56,950
It could be called South Asian philosophy if all you mean it was produced in the geographical region.

765
01:20:56,950 --> 01:21:03,370
The question there will be will be interesting ask is how different is that philosophical work than work producing the same language and say,

766
01:21:03,370 --> 01:21:08,050
Iran or the same language produced in Syria or Egypt, right?

767
01:21:08,050 --> 01:21:10,810
Where their areas of difference? Where are there areas of commonality?

768
01:21:10,810 --> 01:21:14,650
Is there something regionally inflected that reflects, as you would say, social,

769
01:21:14,650 --> 01:21:18,640
cultural, historical conditions or that show some influence from their neighbours?

770
01:21:18,640 --> 01:21:27,010
These are all great questions that we are nowhere close to answering. And so in the face of that ignorance.

771
01:21:27,010 --> 01:21:33,300
What do we do? Of course, we try to correct it. But at the same time, we have.

772
01:21:33,300 --> 01:21:38,830
If our if our objective is to introduce new authors.

773
01:21:38,830 --> 01:21:46,500
Into the discipline of philosophy. To write about new authors to include new materials.

774
01:21:46,500 --> 01:21:53,090
What practically where do you start? And is there intellectual justification for that practical start?

775
01:21:53,090 --> 01:22:01,100
To me, the answer is just it's it's not. I don't think I think it's very difficult to say you shouldn't start with sounds good.

776
01:22:01,100 --> 01:22:04,790
And it's not only it's not a practically reasonable place to start.

777
01:22:04,790 --> 01:22:10,700
If someone said I'm going to start teaching South Asian philosophy by starting with Arabic and Persian,

778
01:22:10,700 --> 01:22:15,300
I would just think that's not the right place to start. Could you do it?

779
01:22:15,300 --> 01:22:19,170
Yes. Would I want to wait until I have enough material to start a programme there?

780
01:22:19,170 --> 01:22:23,090
No. That's just me, maybe.

781
01:22:23,090 --> 01:22:29,980
And again, we know so little that I don't know. I mean, I'm open to learning from somebody about it.

782
01:22:29,980 --> 01:22:38,300
My worry is different. My worry is that. We.

783
01:22:38,300 --> 01:22:43,630
We don't have good enough materials. We don't have good enough translations.

784
01:22:43,630 --> 01:22:50,740
That we that some people think the only way you can study sounds good philosophy is by learning sounds good.

785
01:22:50,740 --> 01:22:55,260
And as someone who spent most of his adult life trying to learn it well.

786
01:22:55,260 --> 01:23:01,260
You know, I'm not sure we should wait for people to have to learn some skills as well, you know, to the extent I've had to.

787
01:23:01,260 --> 01:23:09,420
It doesn't make any sense. We have friendly people doing good work with Conte, who don't read German and Greek and read Plato and Latin and German.

788
01:23:09,420 --> 01:23:14,530
We should. We should allow. We should have the confidence in the material.

789
01:23:14,530 --> 01:23:23,750
To allow people to study and learn and do philosophical work or static work without learning the primary language, it's not for everybody.

790
01:23:23,750 --> 01:23:29,930
And we have to have the confidence to allow people in our universities to misuse Indic material in the same way they misuse Playtone,

791
01:23:29,930 --> 01:23:33,380
Condon, Reagan and Hagel.

792
01:23:33,380 --> 01:23:41,360
But what it means, what's different in a field like this, where there's relatively little available is people have to work together better.

793
01:23:41,360 --> 01:23:44,720
And in fact, what happens is that people kill each other off.

794
01:23:44,720 --> 01:23:50,510
So those of us who work with primary languages in primary taxi, those who don't read the language shouldn't be doing it.

795
01:23:50,510 --> 01:23:53,900
Those who don't read the language are doing higher so-called higher level

796
01:23:53,900 --> 01:23:58,580
philosophical work than those people who are doing textual work or somehow backwards.

797
01:23:58,580 --> 01:24:05,900
Right. So what has to happen is people have to support each other. Those who can read the text well should be able to correct.

798
01:24:05,900 --> 01:24:14,500
Often those desperate need to correct those who aren't reading the text or making interpretive mistakes based on.

799
01:24:14,500 --> 01:24:18,100
Not be able to read the primary languages and those who mean those who are great philosophers

800
01:24:18,100 --> 01:24:22,480
who may not read the primary languages can teach those who do how to read the text better also.

801
01:24:22,480 --> 01:24:27,580
But we don't do that. We tend to kill each other off in the ecosystem of the university, and that's a problem.

802
01:24:27,580 --> 01:24:35,240
So those are more worries for me than the issue of, you know, is somehow the label Indian philosophy leaving too many people out.

803
01:24:35,240 --> 01:24:39,620
I don't see necessarily why it does. I don't see practically that it has.

804
01:24:39,620 --> 01:24:45,920
And I suppose these are sort of cautions that OPB has, but there's more cautions and open questions.

805
01:24:45,920 --> 01:24:51,860
And if the answers are that there is an intellectual justification for these things, that's a comforting thing.

806
01:24:51,860 --> 01:24:54,560
And so, yeah, thank you for your perspectives on that.

807
01:24:54,560 --> 01:25:00,680
And and it's great that you moved us onto the issue of translation and language and the importance

808
01:25:00,680 --> 01:25:06,420
of that because because we we sort of had some questions in in that realm and in healing,

809
01:25:06,420 --> 01:25:13,430
you had some thoughts on this. Maybe if you'd if you want to, um.

810
01:25:13,430 --> 01:25:19,180
So on the yeah. Now, Professor Chandra, go ahead.

811
01:25:19,180 --> 01:25:29,860
Yeah. Um, I suppose on a question of translations, we have several questions, but one that comes to my mind right now as well.

812
01:25:29,860 --> 01:25:38,590
Is anything ever lost in translation? And if there if there are things that are lost in translation, well, is it possible?

813
01:25:38,590 --> 01:25:41,440
How is it possible to make up for that?

814
01:25:41,440 --> 01:25:53,920
So is it possible to convey, say, in English, what would be lost in translating, say, Sanskrit term, which is what is lost?

815
01:25:53,920 --> 01:26:00,520
That's something that is at all communicable converible in English.

816
01:26:00,520 --> 01:26:07,900
That's an issue that we perhaps wanted to discuss. Is something lost in translation?

817
01:26:07,900 --> 01:26:15,070
Yes, definitely. A lot of things are lost in translation, and that is not necessarily from Sanskrit to English,

818
01:26:15,070 --> 01:26:21,490
but you translate it from any language to any other language. Something definitely definitely gets lost.

819
01:26:21,490 --> 01:26:28,030
But does that mean that languages are untranslatable? No, I don't think so.

820
01:26:28,030 --> 01:26:32,680
See the problem, especially when you translate Sanskrit philosophy, I suppose,

821
01:26:32,680 --> 01:26:38,350
is again, this this very simple term of Maya that we have in philosophy.

822
01:26:38,350 --> 01:26:47,830
How do you translate it into English? Maya usually is translated as illusion, as ignorance and things like that.

823
01:26:47,830 --> 01:26:52,240
So that, I mean, people will have differences of opinion.

824
01:26:52,240 --> 01:26:58,150
But given all of these things, I still think that we should have translations.

825
01:26:58,150 --> 01:27:03,640
And if you are talking about untranslatable native of languages, we wouldn't be getting anywhere right.

826
01:27:03,640 --> 01:27:08,020
I mean, we can't sort of sit back and say, Oh, just throw up our hands and say, OK,

827
01:27:08,020 --> 01:27:13,270
this is we cannot translated into into English, then where would we be getting?

828
01:27:13,270 --> 01:27:24,790
So I think it is the I never think about whether I'm reading the right thing, for example, when I'm reading Plato or Socrates or Aristotle.

829
01:27:24,790 --> 01:27:31,530
Why is it that I should be so worried when I'm reading a translation of the when the ships, for example?

830
01:27:31,530 --> 01:27:40,240
And so one reason could be that it is very strange. The strangeness of it all could be the reason why people are worried about it.

831
01:27:40,240 --> 01:27:49,960
But I would agree with the premise of the battle that if not to insist on knowing Sanskrit first, tend to read a sensitive text.

832
01:27:49,960 --> 01:27:56,680
That's a very, very daunting task. It's not an easy language, and even if you learn it, if you do manage to learn it,

833
01:27:56,680 --> 01:28:01,960
which I think is very difficult, it's difficult to understand the nuances.

834
01:28:01,960 --> 01:28:05,050
So at best, if you really want to insist on that,

835
01:28:05,050 --> 01:28:11,080
perhaps a smattering of Sanskrit might help in the sense that when you feel that the translation is a bit awkward,

836
01:28:11,080 --> 01:28:21,880
if you could perhaps refer to the into the text and see what it says in the original, if you know that much of a sense, perhaps that might help.

837
01:28:21,880 --> 01:28:27,280
But by and large, again, I am speaking from the literary point of view.

838
01:28:27,280 --> 01:28:30,850
So again, I have there are multiple translations of colliders, for example,

839
01:28:30,850 --> 01:28:40,140
but you have the intelligence at which Wilson has translated make a do that is in the in the 19th century,

840
01:28:40,140 --> 01:28:44,710
and you also have later translations of make do with them.

841
01:28:44,710 --> 01:28:53,410
And that's a very contemporary one. Also, very honestly, I prefer the artist Vincent Van, because by and large,

842
01:28:53,410 --> 01:29:03,460
it is what you call a faithful translation in the sense that it has translated managed to keep the spirit of it.

843
01:29:03,460 --> 01:29:07,570
It has managed to come up with a matriarchal pattern,

844
01:29:07,570 --> 01:29:16,570
which is more or less aligned to the original calendar and because Calida says Make Them is composed in a very slow moving metre commander Granda.

845
01:29:16,570 --> 01:29:20,800
Of course, there is no translation of a metre from Sanskrit to English. You can't do that.

846
01:29:20,800 --> 01:29:24,910
So it is. Wilson has more or less succeeded in capturing that,

847
01:29:24,910 --> 01:29:33,820
whereas I find that many of the little ones that that have been done by Deans themselves are not really very good.

848
01:29:33,820 --> 01:29:38,590
So in these matters, I would say use your discretion in one matter,

849
01:29:38,590 --> 01:29:43,420
but I cannot talk about philosophy in that sense because I am talking about literature.

850
01:29:43,420 --> 01:29:48,340
So what matters in literature? The qualities that I look for in the literary work are very different.

851
01:29:48,340 --> 01:29:53,230
So there is a marker, for example, who's a very who's a great Sanskrit scholar.

852
01:29:53,230 --> 01:30:00,520
So he has translated calendars. And I would say that they're actually painful to read because Scully is.

853
01:30:00,520 --> 01:30:05,860
Literally word for word translation, which sometimes does not make any sense.

854
01:30:05,860 --> 01:30:10,720
But I always have garlic because garlic gives me a whole lot of information on, say,

855
01:30:10,720 --> 01:30:17,680
the etymology of the other word or like all of the other uses this word, the word, the various retentions and things like that.

856
01:30:17,680 --> 01:30:24,760
But for readability, I would most probably go back, go to somebody else like Barbara Strolla, me or somebody.

857
01:30:24,760 --> 01:30:33,880
So in these matters, I'm very eclectic. But coming back to your original question about what is lost in translation, I think.

858
01:30:33,880 --> 01:30:40,390
Don't worry about that. Forget that because if it does, if at all, it's some consolation to you.

859
01:30:40,390 --> 01:30:44,620
There is a loss in every communication like like right now and I'm talking to you.

860
01:30:44,620 --> 01:30:48,460
I'm not really sure if you understand mean that I spirit that I am talking.

861
01:30:48,460 --> 01:30:53,020
So in that sense, is this something is lost essentially live communication.

862
01:30:53,020 --> 01:30:57,550
So translations are, I would say, good.

863
01:30:57,550 --> 01:31:02,330
You can trust that it's my take on it.

864
01:31:02,330 --> 01:31:06,710
Yeah. I mean, I think I guess I always start with this so young.

865
01:31:06,710 --> 01:31:11,940
I assume you're at least bilingual. Fully bilingual, right?

866
01:31:11,940 --> 01:31:18,280
So you have a great personal experience. With translation.

867
01:31:18,280 --> 01:31:21,700
And the limits. And the advantages,

868
01:31:21,700 --> 01:31:29,170
there's also advantages to having to translate something that you may understand in Korean that you need to put into English or vice versa.

869
01:31:29,170 --> 01:31:36,640
So I think that people who are fully who have the privilege of being able to work hard to be fully bilingual,

870
01:31:36,640 --> 01:31:39,800
you have great insight into some of these questions and you should feel free to apply them.

871
01:31:39,800 --> 01:31:46,180
I think when you think about the translations of literary or poetic text from another language.

872
01:31:46,180 --> 01:31:52,970
There are. I also think that the importance of a translation depends on what you're trying to do with the text.

873
01:31:52,970 --> 01:32:01,070
So if you're trying to give an interpretation. Of, say, a poem, right?

874
01:32:01,070 --> 01:32:13,040
Take Qaeda says, make a deal with them. You know, if you have an inaccurate translation, you're not going to be interpreting us as Bob.

875
01:32:13,040 --> 01:32:20,810
So there is something about accuracy and reliability, but then what counts, what's enough for being accurate?

876
01:32:20,810 --> 01:32:26,870
So Professor Jonathan talked about the metre and it's it's a slow metre.

877
01:32:26,870 --> 01:32:32,900
So the first version, you know, she had gone to her guru and asked, What a dick.

878
01:32:32,900 --> 01:32:37,860
So the question is, does the metre convey something about the content?

879
01:32:37,860 --> 01:32:46,950
Of the poem, and if so, then obviously you need to understand the metre because you're not going to get it from my car teacher's translation, right?

880
01:32:46,950 --> 01:32:54,400
So again then, but different translations may offer you different things and it really depends on what you're after.

881
01:32:54,400 --> 01:32:59,220
And I think it's because something is always lost and sometimes it's something significant.

882
01:32:59,220 --> 01:33:06,210
It's not fair to expect maybe one translation to do all things as the original one translation is going to replace the original,

883
01:33:06,210 --> 01:33:10,780
but a translation can. Of certain kinds of tests and get you pretty far.

884
01:33:10,780 --> 01:33:15,800
Just take a difference. Think of the difference between a translation of a shopping list.

885
01:33:15,800 --> 01:33:26,720
It's a grocery list. Go buy milk, eggs, cheese or whatever. Close the translation of an instruction manual for your computer.

886
01:33:26,720 --> 01:33:32,690
The translation of a poem, translation of a philosophical text, I mean, there's different.

887
01:33:32,690 --> 01:33:36,350
Different things are lost, and it matters to different degrees, depending on what you're trying to do.

888
01:33:36,350 --> 01:33:43,040
So with philosophical texts, prosthetic tech, scholastic texts.

889
01:33:43,040 --> 01:33:46,970
Translate. Translation is extremely difficult.

890
01:33:46,970 --> 01:33:53,390
Just like with any tech, but it's it's difficult because as you saying terms like Maya, there's technical terms we have to write.

891
01:33:53,390 --> 01:33:57,110
An English technical, philosophical Sanskrit is difficult.

892
01:33:57,110 --> 01:34:03,440
So is technical, philosophical, English. If you expect the translation to somehow not be technical and not be difficult.

893
01:34:03,440 --> 01:34:10,480
That's that's crazy because that's the nature of the original text itself and you're always making choices.

894
01:34:10,480 --> 01:34:17,320
Like, do you translate a word like onion them a simple word as awareness or cognition?

895
01:34:17,320 --> 01:34:23,120
Sometimes it means knowledge. So I guess.

896
01:34:23,120 --> 01:34:28,030
I think that. We shouldn't wait to figure out.

897
01:34:28,030 --> 01:34:34,960
Translation theory before we start translating, and people shouldn't feel afraid to start translating on their own,

898
01:34:34,960 --> 01:34:39,730
but you should also remember that there are, I think there are better and worse translations.

899
01:34:39,730 --> 01:34:42,610
Some are just irresponsible and should be thrown away.

900
01:34:42,610 --> 01:34:47,970
But there's many versions of a responsible translation, and we seem to keep working together to do it.

901
01:34:47,970 --> 01:34:53,590
For example, there are very few. Good translations of Sanskrit,

902
01:34:53,590 --> 01:34:59,850
philosophical texts that you can use in a philosophy curriculum for people who don't know Sanskrit, there just aren't enough.

903
01:34:59,850 --> 01:35:06,830
There's into logical translations, which can't which can't be read by most people unless you already know the language.

904
01:35:06,830 --> 01:35:09,170
So there's going to be a whole range.

905
01:35:09,170 --> 01:35:15,500
Now the people who do say there are some people think that a translation is an English reconstruction of sounds good, right?

906
01:35:15,500 --> 01:35:21,740
So in English, let's say Corey and Mark II, some are English reconstructions of sounds that some people say that's not even close enough.

907
01:35:21,740 --> 01:35:29,390
Is that what you want as a translation, or is it translation someone who's supposed to be able to read English words and have Sanskrit thoughts?

908
01:35:29,390 --> 01:35:35,860
Is that what a translation is? So, you know, I think we need to be just much more open.

909
01:35:35,860 --> 01:35:43,690
About. How we understand it, what a translation is and what its expectations are in a particular context for a particular purpose.

910
01:35:43,690 --> 01:35:45,160
I don't want them to be wrong.

911
01:35:45,160 --> 01:35:54,760
That means if there were a if the S.R. McCarthy were here and he read my translations of its text and you knew English was fluent and said,

912
01:35:54,760 --> 01:35:59,230
this is just not this is just wrong, I'd be upset. Right?

913
01:35:59,230 --> 01:36:04,450
But if you said I would translate it differently. Fine. That's OK. I don't make mistakes.

914
01:36:04,450 --> 01:36:11,230
But I think we sometimes worry about this a bit too much.

915
01:36:11,230 --> 01:36:22,500
Or not worry about it enough, depending on what the case may be. Till then, how plausible do you think this is for both of you?

916
01:36:22,500 --> 01:36:31,800
How would you think it's the case that we philosophise or we think differently in different languages?

917
01:36:31,800 --> 01:36:40,940
Like. Do you think it's the case that when we do philosophy in English, we'll do it in a different way than say,

918
01:36:40,940 --> 01:36:49,720
we did it in in another language saying a friend pays different kinds of Indian languages.

919
01:36:49,720 --> 01:36:57,170
Do you think it's the case that we fundamentally. Think differently when we use different languages.

920
01:36:57,170 --> 01:36:58,760
I would think so, because, again,

921
01:36:58,760 --> 01:37:08,840
this is one of the pet theories of translation studies scholars that each language represents a culture so an entire culture.

922
01:37:08,840 --> 01:37:14,240
So it's basically in that sense that untranslatable we do think differently.

923
01:37:14,240 --> 01:37:21,300
That is true. But if that had really been the case, then we wouldn't be talking to each other at all.

924
01:37:21,300 --> 01:37:31,380
Right, so I think personally, I think that there is a lot of us being made about this so-called, you know, quote unquote untranslatable.

925
01:37:31,380 --> 01:37:35,880
So rather than focus on that, I think we should focus on on, you know,

926
01:37:35,880 --> 01:37:41,310
translating and understanding mutual comprehend civility rather than incomprehensible attack.

927
01:37:41,310 --> 01:37:47,310
So there are certain things, of course. I mean, all of us are human beings and we do understand certain things, of course,

928
01:37:47,310 --> 01:37:52,020
certain culture specific things that there are certain worldviews that you might not understand,

929
01:37:52,020 --> 01:37:55,980
and especially when it comes to philosophical takes, maybe there will be difficulties.

930
01:37:55,980 --> 01:38:01,440
I I'm not downplaying all of that. That is that we cannot get away from it.

931
01:38:01,440 --> 01:38:08,250
But this realisation, if you approach them with this realisation that this text is different and different,

932
01:38:08,250 --> 01:38:16,500
it does not always mean that it is hostile to you and I and that and you take that extra effort to understand it.

933
01:38:16,500 --> 01:38:19,800
Just as I took the effort to understand my colliders, right,

934
01:38:19,800 --> 01:38:27,990
I built a bridge as I did not help me at all because, you know, I made the effort and I was immensely rewarded.

935
01:38:27,990 --> 01:38:34,260
So in the same way, I think the translated text that you're approaching, you should trust it.

936
01:38:34,260 --> 01:38:40,350
Basically do not approach it with this hermeneutics hermeneutics of suspicion, right?

937
01:38:40,350 --> 01:38:50,610
So trust it. And I think if you have this realisation that, yes, what you understand might have other connotations and all of it.

938
01:38:50,610 --> 01:38:56,280
I think that goes a long way in helping you understand the text.

939
01:38:56,280 --> 01:39:01,640
So especially since I am not talking about literature here, and of course,

940
01:39:01,640 --> 01:39:06,230
the primary purpose of a philosophical text is very different from that of literature.

941
01:39:06,230 --> 01:39:10,970
So if it's a literary text, I wouldn't tell you this because the purpose of literature Oregon is to,

942
01:39:10,970 --> 01:39:14,900
you know, interpretation and this open multiple, open ended or all sorts of things.

943
01:39:14,900 --> 01:39:23,070
We can have that. But a philosophical text, I suppose, especially a strict text, cannot have that.

944
01:39:23,070 --> 01:39:30,800
So I think by and large, yes, these stakes are translatable.

945
01:39:30,800 --> 01:39:36,290
I don't think that there is a problem and this awareness helps.

946
01:39:36,290 --> 01:39:44,180
It's what I would think. Yeah, I agree, I think they're translatable.

947
01:39:44,180 --> 01:39:48,170
The question of whether the specifics,

948
01:39:48,170 --> 01:39:52,790
the grammatical ity of a language conditions and therefore determines the kinds of thoughts you can

949
01:39:52,790 --> 01:39:59,420
have and whether it does so in such a way that it makes that it somehow unique to that language.

950
01:39:59,420 --> 01:40:02,360
I mean, as you know, that's a that's a tough question,

951
01:40:02,360 --> 01:40:13,020
an old question and one that it's really fascinating and I don't have a educated view on it at that level of specificity.

952
01:40:13,020 --> 01:40:20,220
All I can say is I have no if there are significant differences.

953
01:40:20,220 --> 01:40:27,540
I at least have not experienced it with sales growth in English and Marathi or German or whatever.

954
01:40:27,540 --> 01:40:38,090
So for me, the default is that we can be bilingual and there may be limitations to being bilingual, but I'm not sure those limitations.

955
01:40:38,090 --> 01:40:42,710
I don't mean to put it this way. I think we can be bilingual or multilingual.

956
01:40:42,710 --> 01:40:45,860
I'm not sure the limitations of that.

957
01:40:45,860 --> 01:40:54,000
I don't know where the limitations of that impact my ability to do philosophy with the text written in the language.

958
01:40:54,000 --> 01:41:00,620
Other than, say, in another language, does that make sense? It's acknowledging there may be limitations.

959
01:41:00,620 --> 01:41:07,160
I don't know what they are, but I have not yet experienced any place with those limitations somehow significantly

960
01:41:07,160 --> 01:41:12,380
or negatively impact my ability to read or understand philosophical text.

961
01:41:12,380 --> 01:41:20,680
One thing about sunscreen that we have a huge advantage is that there is still there are still remarkable.

962
01:41:20,680 --> 01:41:25,910
Traditionally trained Sanskrit scholars in India.

963
01:41:25,910 --> 01:41:34,060
They. There. So, you know, they're needed, they're basically his.

964
01:41:34,060 --> 01:41:41,060
Consumers, readers, producers of sounds good, in a sense. And so you and they're multilingual.

965
01:41:41,060 --> 01:41:50,510
In some itself or in the regional language or in English and learning from them and talking with them and interacting with them.

966
01:41:50,510 --> 01:41:55,880
Gives you even gives at least me even more confidence that we're not missing a lot.

967
01:41:55,880 --> 01:42:03,100
Right. Look, so there's a theoretical question, and there's a practical question, both to me are fascinating.

968
01:42:03,100 --> 01:42:07,930
I personally haven't experienced anything or have any reason to experience it somehow.

969
01:42:07,930 --> 01:42:16,060
The grammatical nature of sounds with is such that the kinds of thoughts that you can have in Sanskrit can't be conveyed in English.

970
01:42:16,060 --> 01:42:20,170
That's just my experience. Yeah, thank you so much.

971
01:42:20,170 --> 01:42:29,050
And I, yeah, you sort of touch on the issue of traditionally strange South Asian scholars, which which was something that we wanted to talk about too.

972
01:42:29,050 --> 01:42:33,400
And yeah, so so kind of building, I suppose,

973
01:42:33,400 --> 01:42:39,040
on this more charitable way of thinking about the nature of translation relationships

974
01:42:39,040 --> 01:42:43,120
between languages and and being optimistic about the possibility of translation.

975
01:42:43,120 --> 01:42:51,790
I guess that that sort of opens the door perhaps a bit more to to the usefulness of these traditionally trained South Asians.

976
01:42:51,790 --> 01:42:59,800
I suppose we're interested in the practicalities of of what role they could and should play and how students who are

977
01:42:59,800 --> 01:43:07,780
interested in South Asian philosophy could speak to the limited ways and ways that they can interact with such scholars.

978
01:43:07,780 --> 01:43:18,260
And and how you think they could function in departments, in Anglophone departments, perhaps and quite interested in that question.

979
01:43:18,260 --> 01:43:23,840
I suppose that's a question that all of the parties could possibly unsaid.

980
01:43:23,840 --> 01:43:31,670
No, I think that President Bush made a very good point when she started about people, about scholars who are writing in Malayalam, right?

981
01:43:31,670 --> 01:43:33,710
Aw, come on. Let's say Malayalam.

982
01:43:33,710 --> 01:43:42,830
Some of these scholars who only wrote in regional languages are some of the greatest readers and scholars of these texts that we've yet seen.

983
01:43:42,830 --> 01:43:50,660
And yet their work is completely unknown because to access their work, you have to read Malayalam and not just read Malayalam.

984
01:43:50,660 --> 01:43:57,600
Two years of Malayalam is not going to give you access to their work. You have to really read Malayalam.

985
01:43:57,600 --> 01:44:02,280
And, you know, at least in the Anglophone world, not enough people do that.

986
01:44:02,280 --> 01:44:03,780
Certainly with Malala, they don't.

987
01:44:03,780 --> 01:44:12,030
And even with language like Tamil or Hindi Urdu, where it's more common, even their people don't do it to the extent that they should.

988
01:44:12,030 --> 01:44:18,100
That's also saying some scrap scholars write books in some script.

989
01:44:18,100 --> 01:44:26,020
They write books in modern Sanskrit. That means it's not as if they're brilliant.

990
01:44:26,020 --> 01:44:34,960
Not enough people use that either. So one way in which one can benefit from traditional learning is to learn the

991
01:44:34,960 --> 01:44:39,670
modern version of a language and read secondary literature in that language.

992
01:44:39,670 --> 01:44:43,630
That's absolutely one way in which it can be done and it's not done.

993
01:44:43,630 --> 01:44:52,540
One reason it's not done is in many programmes the languages of secondary scholarship you're supposed to learn are French and German or Japanese.

994
01:44:52,540 --> 01:44:58,150
I mean, there's no reason why you shouldn't also be able to learn or instead learn, depending on your area of interest.

995
01:44:58,150 --> 01:45:03,210
Madeleine. Or Canada? But what to do?

996
01:45:03,210 --> 01:45:09,680
Or even sounds good. So this is a prejudice of the contemporary academy that needs to be corrected.

997
01:45:09,680 --> 01:45:16,690
No question. That's one way. The second thing is there are some people who are really trained in both.

998
01:45:16,690 --> 01:45:24,010
Professors who trained in the traditional way came to the West did PhDs and teach in your American style universities, right?

999
01:45:24,010 --> 01:45:31,990
That's another way, the third way and the way in which many students do is they they like I did or like many of my students,

1000
01:45:31,990 --> 01:45:41,360
you travel to India and you ask a traditional teacher. If he or she will teach you in the traditional way, which is in sounds good medium.

1001
01:45:41,360 --> 01:45:45,570
And you study with them, it takes months and years.

1002
01:45:45,570 --> 01:45:55,760
One thing that's changed recently is that for the first time, how many of these traditional teachers are willing to teach over Zoom?

1003
01:45:55,760 --> 01:46:00,800
They're now willing to have their classes recorded. And this is all new.

1004
01:46:00,800 --> 01:46:03,350
And when I started doing this many years ago,

1005
01:46:03,350 --> 01:46:10,950
it took me almost four or five months before some of my teachers were willing to let me tape record them on a tape recorder.

1006
01:46:10,950 --> 01:46:16,440
Right. So there are ways and there are now many people have tapes of the traditional teachers teaching,

1007
01:46:16,440 --> 01:46:23,710
there are DVDs of them teaching all in Sanskrit medium. You can go to YouTube and find them teaching.

1008
01:46:23,710 --> 01:46:28,990
So there are many ways one can learn from them.

1009
01:46:28,990 --> 01:46:39,110
One of the problems is that often what is learnt from them is not acknowledged and properly recognised, that is a huge problem.

1010
01:46:39,110 --> 01:46:48,060
And. I don't see a simple solution to that other than people who do learn.

1011
01:46:48,060 --> 01:46:56,620
Really acknowledge and try to really document how they've learnt and what they've learnt and provide some way of recognition.

1012
01:46:56,620 --> 01:47:03,340
For these traditional teachers. But the greatest readers.

1013
01:47:03,340 --> 01:47:09,010
Interpreters. Thinkers about sounds good philosophy.

1014
01:47:09,010 --> 01:47:15,230
Are. Speaking, teaching, writing in.

1015
01:47:15,230 --> 01:47:23,070
Sounds good. Most of them.

1016
01:47:23,070 --> 01:47:32,120
Not most of it, I would say, a significant number of them. Don't have the level of comfort and experience writing in English.

1017
01:47:32,120 --> 01:47:40,450
To write in English. And if they do. To write in the genre of English required for their work to be recognised in the academy.

1018
01:47:40,450 --> 01:47:46,680
Right. I mean, we spent years learning how to write a philosophy paper.

1019
01:47:46,680 --> 01:47:51,580
Just because someone is a brilliant Sanskrit philosopher, and as we know, the tax work in a different genre,

1020
01:47:51,580 --> 01:47:57,900
it doesn't mean even if he or she knows English fluently, that doesn't mean you can write a philosophy paper.

1021
01:47:57,900 --> 01:48:08,070
It requires special training. So their work and their expertise is tremendously underappreciated and under-recognized.

1022
01:48:08,070 --> 01:48:12,430
And this is terrible. And we should try.

1023
01:48:12,430 --> 01:48:17,800
I mean, many of us do we try to spend do what we can to try to correct this.

1024
01:48:17,800 --> 01:48:23,270
We don't get there's not a lot of support within South Asia itself. For this kind of work.

1025
01:48:23,270 --> 01:48:30,890
And so it becomes difficult. But there's many if you if you want to learn.

1026
01:48:30,890 --> 01:48:37,880
From traditionally trained people, you went to learn from scholars in the region about local intellectual practises.

1027
01:48:37,880 --> 01:48:43,810
You absolutely can. Requires learning of modern South Asian language.

1028
01:48:43,810 --> 01:48:49,480
And it requires going there and meeting them and sincerely studying from them,

1029
01:48:49,480 --> 01:48:55,900
or it requires learning the language well enough that you can make use of YouTube and DVDs.

1030
01:48:55,900 --> 01:49:02,860
It would also be good if universities are able to bring traditionally trained scholars to do PhDs in the West.

1031
01:49:02,860 --> 01:49:08,200
Be good for there to be exchange programmes. So we do these things.

1032
01:49:08,200 --> 01:49:12,190
It's small scale and they're always fraught.

1033
01:49:12,190 --> 01:49:16,150
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But this is what's required.

1034
01:49:16,150 --> 01:49:22,180
And those of us who are institutions that have high visibility stationery, right,

1035
01:49:22,180 --> 01:49:29,740
like Oxford or Harvard or other places, it's we have a special responsibility to try to do something about this.

1036
01:49:29,740 --> 01:49:37,740
I fear that we're doing too little, too late. And I worry what the impact is going to be a generation from now.

1037
01:49:37,740 --> 01:49:40,550
The number of traditionally trained teachers.

1038
01:49:40,550 --> 01:49:48,440
Is dwindling for a variety of reasons, many of which are obvious to those who understand modern India, right?

1039
01:49:48,440 --> 01:49:54,790
And the role of the humanities in modern India. And so I'm.

1040
01:49:54,790 --> 01:50:02,210
I'm actually very worried about this. I'm not optimistic. I'm hopeful, but not optimistic.

1041
01:50:02,210 --> 01:50:14,020
And if we lose this, we will have lost something. I'm I'm I'm sorry that speak of all, I'm sorry that I can't give you anything more positive on that.

1042
01:50:14,020 --> 01:50:23,170
I mean, so it's not really the not very positive in that sense.

1043
01:50:23,170 --> 01:50:30,320
So, yeah. The one thing that gives me hope is that.

1044
01:50:30,320 --> 01:50:41,610
You know, is that despite how difficult everything is despite the situation and are genuine reasons for being pessimistic?

1045
01:50:41,610 --> 01:50:52,640
You still find counterexamples here and there, you still see remarkable people despite these truly horrible circumstances.

1046
01:50:52,640 --> 01:50:58,250
By their sheer will and grit and perseverance.

1047
01:50:58,250 --> 01:51:02,960
Being flowering examples of what this can be, and that's what gives me hope, but it's self,

1048
01:51:02,960 --> 01:51:11,570
you know, and you need to have an ecosystem to sustain it and it'll be a tragedy.

1049
01:51:11,570 --> 01:51:14,540
It is a tragedy happening, and this is despite the modern,

1050
01:51:14,540 --> 01:51:20,330
the current government claiming to support Sanskrit learning or traditional learning or whatever,

1051
01:51:20,330 --> 01:51:28,730
it's this is this is not providing deep enough or proper support for a long term project of

1052
01:51:28,730 --> 01:51:36,400
ensuring the continuity and continued development of traditional intellectual practises.

1053
01:51:36,400 --> 01:51:38,620
Yeah, that's my rant. I'm sorry.

1054
01:51:38,620 --> 01:51:44,830
No, no, it's a really important one, and I think I mean, I've been lucky enough to the Oxford Centre of Hindu studies,

1055
01:51:44,830 --> 01:51:55,660
which set up a small programme in Nepal for some students, and I was invited along to go and learn from some tradition trained scholars.

1056
01:51:55,660 --> 01:52:02,980
And so, so yeah, I had a little bit of experience that I think Oxford Doctors and the Hindu studies is doing important work with that.

1057
01:52:02,980 --> 01:52:06,370
It is limited at the moment in the process of setting it up,

1058
01:52:06,370 --> 01:52:15,070
but they want to make a relationship with the Nepal Sanskrit University and as part of my experience that I found it absolutely inspiring.

1059
01:52:15,070 --> 01:52:20,470
How much? I mean, as you both are saying, how much these how deeply these scholars understand.

1060
01:52:20,470 --> 01:52:28,870
But in this specific sense of how much that memorised and the emphasis on memorisation and like reams of text that they could just say of by heart.

1061
01:52:28,870 --> 01:52:33,950
And so I find that feature of traditional South Asian scholarship really fascinating.

1062
01:52:33,950 --> 01:52:40,040
I wonder, I wonder as well what what both of your perspectives are on what that kind of education offers

1063
01:52:40,040 --> 01:52:45,240
philosophy and philosophical education and what advantages and perhaps to some extent,

1064
01:52:45,240 --> 01:52:55,080
what disadvantages as well, because traditional scholars maybe spend more time on memorisation than they do on writing papers,

1065
01:52:55,080 --> 01:53:00,350
at least compared to us in the modern West and often to my understanding,

1066
01:53:00,350 --> 01:53:09,950
trained within particular intellectual lineages and teachers that will follow these texts in a way

1067
01:53:09,950 --> 01:53:17,030
that sometimes and perhaps it seemed as as many were saying earlier in a sort of more devotional way.

1068
01:53:17,030 --> 01:53:25,430
And so, yeah, I wonder what you think the relationship between the traditional and the modern ways of learning are in those regards.

1069
01:53:25,430 --> 01:53:32,630
I would say even this very traditional way of learning by rote that that happens with Vedic scholars especially.

1070
01:53:32,630 --> 01:53:38,120
And I find that Kerala has a very strong tradition of these sort of Vedic scholars.

1071
01:53:38,120 --> 01:53:42,860
In fact, it has a centre where they teach the Vedas in this manner.

1072
01:53:42,860 --> 01:53:48,560
So again, this immense capacity to memorise the whole of the.

1073
01:53:48,560 --> 01:53:57,470
So in fact, they can they can specify which passage, which line they're referring to again with through a certain sign language.

1074
01:53:57,470 --> 01:54:03,920
So this is something that happens within that close circle of Vedic scholars.

1075
01:54:03,920 --> 01:54:11,030
I think that it is important in the sense that because it carries on the tradition in a certain and a certain way,

1076
01:54:11,030 --> 01:54:18,680
because the inflexions of the way the languages, the inflexions of the language and the mantra in all of it is carried forward.

1077
01:54:18,680 --> 01:54:24,000
They don't write papers, obviously, because they belong to a completely different intellectual tradition.

1078
01:54:24,000 --> 01:54:28,200
Let's so again to people like us in academia.

1079
01:54:28,200 --> 01:54:32,720
Again, we write papers, which very honestly, nobody reads.

1080
01:54:32,720 --> 01:54:39,640
Very few people read. So I would say that we send that they don't need papers.

1081
01:54:39,640 --> 01:54:50,390
It's a different tradition that we are talking about. So what we have to now look at is what we stand to gain from the.

1082
01:54:50,390 --> 01:54:57,320
So if you think of it that way, the traditional systems of knowledge of the traditional or the people trained in these traditional ways

1083
01:54:57,320 --> 01:55:06,770
of acquiring knowledge and the least interested in in modern contemporary academic sort of practises.

1084
01:55:06,770 --> 01:55:13,190
So the problem here is, again, as I said, bridge these two two words as it were.

1085
01:55:13,190 --> 01:55:21,230
So how do you view this as part of the bottles point and got many of these people are not fluent in English.

1086
01:55:21,230 --> 01:55:30,350
They might be bilingual and they're Indians. Then most probably they know Sanskrit very well and another Indian language, but perhaps not English.

1087
01:55:30,350 --> 01:55:38,840
So this is a major. This is the problem that I was talking about when I first broached the topic that you have a whole lot of people writing in the

1088
01:55:38,840 --> 01:55:46,820
regional languages but are not comfortable with the English or have not been translated into English so that how do you stop that?

1089
01:55:46,820 --> 01:55:54,860
Well, that treasure of knowledge that is existing there and I don't have, again,

1090
01:55:54,860 --> 01:56:00,900
as I said, proper answers to it unless people working in this area take active steps.

1091
01:56:00,900 --> 01:56:09,040
So, for example, from universities like Oxford or Harvard, if you reach out to these people and you,

1092
01:56:09,040 --> 01:56:15,320
you take an effort to reach out to them and try to tap into these sources of knowledge.

1093
01:56:15,320 --> 01:56:22,940
I don't think that anything can be done because they said these people are not ambitious in the usual sense of the word,

1094
01:56:22,940 --> 01:56:30,080
if you understand what I'm saying. So I don't think they will reach out to you and say he's really interested in this or something like that.

1095
01:56:30,080 --> 01:56:38,660
So it's for you to reach. I think Varanasi, for example, you have a whole lot of people, Varanasi using the treasure trove, so to speak.

1096
01:56:38,660 --> 01:56:49,480
So you have a whole lot of Sanskrit scholars over there. I think the problem is knowing how to reach out to the.

1097
01:56:49,480 --> 01:56:53,130
In that sense. No, I mean, I agree with that.

1098
01:56:53,130 --> 01:56:58,920
I would just. Just to pick up on some of the things that you said, I mean about. Memorisation.

1099
01:56:58,920 --> 01:57:06,060
To me, it's very simple. Try it. Take a text if you're interested in poetry.

1100
01:57:06,060 --> 01:57:11,040
Take a poetic text, if you're interested in philosophy, take one of the guarantors.

1101
01:57:11,040 --> 01:57:21,900
Go ahead. Just memorise 50 verses or 50 lines and then you tell me whether it's helpful or not and in what ways it's helpful or not.

1102
01:57:21,900 --> 01:57:29,370
When I studied the traditional ways, of course, I had to memorise texts. I found some of it incredibly helpful.

1103
01:57:29,370 --> 01:57:34,930
I never found any kind of rigidity or.

1104
01:57:34,930 --> 01:57:39,250
Conservative and being required to memorise it and remember, different teachers are different.

1105
01:57:39,250 --> 01:57:44,170
Some have different personalities, just like we do in the West. So memorisation very simple.

1106
01:57:44,170 --> 01:57:47,410
Try it. Tell me if it helps you, it helps you keep doing it.

1107
01:57:47,410 --> 01:57:51,800
If it doesn't. Forget it. Simple. Second,

1108
01:57:51,800 --> 01:57:59,930
the idea that somehow traditionally trained teachers are more conservative because they study with a particular teacher or in a particular lineage,

1109
01:57:59,930 --> 01:58:04,770
I think is a bit. Ridiculous.

1110
01:58:04,770 --> 01:58:11,430
I have I know scholars in the modern university who are big constituents who seem or

1111
01:58:11,430 --> 01:58:18,020
process philosophers or huggy aliens who seem like totally they drank the Kool-Aid.

1112
01:58:18,020 --> 01:58:20,900
They don't seem very critical at all to me. In some cases,

1113
01:58:20,900 --> 01:58:28,130
so I'm not I don't see anything amongst which I like good people and I don't see anything amongst good people who who are traditionally trained.

1114
01:58:28,130 --> 01:58:34,880
It sounds good to make me think they're any, any significant way more or less conservative or less creative.

1115
01:58:34,880 --> 01:58:39,530
Than anybody else we know. One thing to remember is style.

1116
01:58:39,530 --> 01:58:45,230
So as you know, in the classical soundscape world, being original is not considered a good thing.

1117
01:58:45,230 --> 01:58:51,850
Why? Because if you're original, that means a person who taught you was wrong.

1118
01:58:51,850 --> 01:58:56,260
Now, does that mean you think your teachers are always right? No, of course not.

1119
01:58:56,260 --> 01:59:00,340
Does that mean that when you claim to be interpreting them faithfully, you're not making radical innovations?

1120
01:59:00,340 --> 01:59:04,990
Of course not. Of course you are. You just don't announce it like we do.

1121
01:59:04,990 --> 01:59:13,230
Oh, look, I improved on what my teacher did. So, you know, people confuse style.

1122
01:59:13,230 --> 01:59:24,290
With conservativism to discover if there's a real innovation, however, what you have to do is really, really think and really, really read, right?

1123
01:59:24,290 --> 01:59:31,120
So I don't. I don't think there's I don't think there's anything.

1124
01:59:31,120 --> 01:59:40,270
About the very best examples of traditionally trained people. That somehow.

1125
01:59:40,270 --> 01:59:49,880
Shows. Significant negatives. Relative to even the negatives, the negatives we find in our own.

1126
01:59:49,880 --> 01:59:53,690
Systems of learning amongst the very best people, I'm talking about the best people,

1127
01:59:53,690 --> 01:59:58,190
right, we all know that we well, we want to compare different kinds of vehicles.

1128
01:59:58,190 --> 02:00:02,850
I'm going to talk about ones that are fully functioning, right? We don't talk about ones that are partly broken.

1129
02:00:02,850 --> 02:00:07,560
I'm talking about fully functioning.

1130
02:00:07,560 --> 02:00:16,160
And, you know, the kind of memorisation that produced I was talking about Vedic memorisation is for preservation purposes.

1131
02:00:16,160 --> 02:00:25,910
So that's why it's so particular. Other types of memorisation memorising say, you know, Barnini or the amateur.

1132
02:00:25,910 --> 02:00:35,350
That's not for preservation purposes, that's for pedagogical purposes, creativity purposes, learning purposes and then memorising chastity texts.

1133
02:00:35,350 --> 02:00:41,800
Or passages of shots or Texas for yet another purpose, so there's no such thing as memorisation.

1134
02:00:41,800 --> 02:00:48,880
In a sense, there's memorisation of different kinds of texts for different purposes at different phases of one's educational career.

1135
02:00:48,880 --> 02:00:53,660
But it's certainly important, and I would just simply say, try it.

1136
02:00:53,660 --> 02:00:55,250
And see where you find it useful, yeah,

1137
02:00:55,250 --> 02:01:02,760
I've had some really brilliant experiences with the very limited ones that I've had, but yeah, so I found it interesting.

1138
02:01:02,760 --> 02:01:06,410
It was it first is just really fun to memorise them and then to have them in you mind.

1139
02:01:06,410 --> 02:01:11,090
And so it does sort of feel like there's some unconscious way in which you're chewing on the grammar and the

1140
02:01:11,090 --> 02:01:16,790
things will sort of slot in and that there's a kind of process that happens when when you've memorised them,

1141
02:01:16,790 --> 02:01:23,420
even if you're not consciously going over them again and again. And that's the way that the Sanskrit teaches that I was interacting with.

1142
02:01:23,420 --> 02:01:29,870
We'd talk about it and talk about it is like, you've bitten it now you have to chew it for a couple of years in a way that

1143
02:01:29,870 --> 02:01:34,910
I think wasn't really reflected in the way that I've been taught in Oxford.

1144
02:01:34,910 --> 02:01:39,350
So, yeah, it's a sort of different perspective that with memorisation,

1145
02:01:39,350 --> 02:01:50,020
it's sort of perhaps a different sort of sense of how learning happens in your mind as well, which I find really interesting.

1146
02:01:50,020 --> 02:01:54,760
The other thing to worry about memorisation is that, you know, even in your american-style universities,

1147
02:01:54,760 --> 02:02:00,860
memorisation was very, very common until relatively recently late in the history of our institution.

1148
02:02:00,860 --> 02:02:10,960
So I mean, I think it's just obvious that memorisation is a very useful pedagogical aid and also for philosophical texts,

1149
02:02:10,960 --> 02:02:18,200
especially texts that were designed to be heard. And it's useful, like learning vocabulary lists,

1150
02:02:18,200 --> 02:02:26,640
a lot of these percussion acronyms are like conceptual vocabulary lists in verse four seasons, which is practically useful.

1151
02:02:26,640 --> 02:02:32,290
So I think it's some like magical thing that solves all problems are.

1152
02:02:32,290 --> 02:02:36,020
You know, creates all problems. It's a tool.

1153
02:02:36,020 --> 02:02:41,660
When that we should celebrate, I think another difference is that, you know, when you're starting out, learning sounds good and by starting out,

1154
02:02:41,660 --> 02:02:49,370
I mean, your first 10 years, memorisation is going to have a very different role for you than after you've been doing it for 10 years.

1155
02:02:49,370 --> 02:02:52,310
I might ask as well if either of you know,

1156
02:02:52,310 --> 02:03:00,620
any tradition or any scholars that sort of bridged the gap between this traditional traditional train style and the modern western style,

1157
02:03:00,620 --> 02:03:05,240
perhaps perhaps people who were trained in that and then writing in English now.

1158
02:03:05,240 --> 02:03:12,290
And any any any particular individuals that you think would be helpful for this course of trying to get these voices heard a bit more.

1159
02:03:12,290 --> 02:03:19,190
And you know, if you know any of the top of your head and perhaps we can reference them in the in the bibliography of this podcast as well.

1160
02:03:19,190 --> 02:03:27,640
If not, that's also fine. But I think it's actually too many to mention.

1161
02:03:27,640 --> 02:03:33,580
So many of the people, many people of a certain generation and even some today who are working in Euro

1162
02:03:33,580 --> 02:03:39,220
American style universities and writing in English were all traditionally trained.

1163
02:03:39,220 --> 02:03:43,570
Just think at Oxford, right? Diplomatic law was recently changed.

1164
02:03:43,570 --> 02:03:51,400
Professor Diwakar Attari has traditionally trained in the West people like a guard, but they were traditionally trained.

1165
02:03:51,400 --> 02:03:56,290
People like Alexis Sanderson were traditionally trained. People like me were also traditionally trained.

1166
02:03:56,290 --> 02:04:11,320
I mean, so it's there's too many. The question, though, is whether those people have some special skill in trying to help support.

1167
02:04:11,320 --> 02:04:15,910
Traditional learning in India or to help bridge this gap.

1168
02:04:15,910 --> 02:04:23,090
Right. And every person I know, Dominic Logistics and everyone I know.

1169
02:04:23,090 --> 02:04:30,960
It is cares about this and and does what they can and tries to get students and support the project.

1170
02:04:30,960 --> 02:04:35,010
It's very it's it's. So everyone is.

1171
02:04:35,010 --> 02:04:39,150
Everyone I know who does this is doing what they can in some way.

1172
02:04:39,150 --> 02:04:43,640
There hasn't been a large systematic.

1173
02:04:43,640 --> 02:04:53,750
Well funded effort to do so for a variety of reasons and the ideal structure for doing this would be a nation state, right?

1174
02:04:53,750 --> 02:05:00,930
I mean would be the resources of a government. Because it takes to do this takes it's not money.

1175
02:05:00,930 --> 02:05:07,510
Money is not the problem here. If money were the problem, it could be easily fixed.

1176
02:05:07,510 --> 02:05:10,740
The problem is much more serious.

1177
02:05:10,740 --> 02:05:18,130
To really solve this problem, there has to be certain kinds of cultural change, a certain kind of reorientation of what's valuable.

1178
02:05:18,130 --> 02:05:23,710
A kind of transformation of parts of the humanities and South Asian institutions.

1179
02:05:23,710 --> 02:05:26,860
Right. It's it's a big, big,

1180
02:05:26,860 --> 02:05:36,520
big problem in some ways to try to really make a visible dent within a generation out when you're outside the region in some ways,

1181
02:05:36,520 --> 02:05:41,470
because I don't think it's a money problem. My experience, not primarily a money problem.

1182
02:05:41,470 --> 02:05:49,900
I think at the individual level there have been items like in the likes of Sir David Shulman,

1183
02:05:49,900 --> 02:05:56,230
he comes regularly and he works closely with them for his career.

1184
02:05:56,230 --> 02:06:03,670
So he has done a lot for that. And he also manages to get these artists and managed to get them over to to his place.

1185
02:06:03,670 --> 02:06:09,190
So at the government level, yes, I don't think there is anything happening.

1186
02:06:09,190 --> 02:06:13,420
But scholars at their individual levels are trying to do this.

1187
02:06:13,420 --> 02:06:20,090
So actually, in that sense, the effort has to come from outside India rather than from within India.

1188
02:06:20,090 --> 02:06:25,750
And because again, the people here will not know what to what to do, how to reach out.

1189
02:06:25,750 --> 02:06:30,820
So that is one of the things that I see happening that's positive is actually, you know,

1190
02:06:30,820 --> 02:06:37,150
things like YouTube and the willingness of traditional scholars to be videotaped and taught teach.

1191
02:06:37,150 --> 02:06:46,110
It's really extending the impact and I think extending the visibility. So that's actually I see really positive.

1192
02:06:46,110 --> 02:06:52,200
But in that sense, I suppose it's easier for you these days than it used to be.

1193
02:06:52,200 --> 02:06:58,230
The date is back, so I don't think they'll be for me when I was a student.

1194
02:06:58,230 --> 02:07:00,180
Yeah, yeah, I think so too. I mean.

1195
02:07:00,180 --> 02:07:08,010
I mean, when I was a student, you know, the only way for me to do it was to go to India and spend four months or a year or two in different cities,

1196
02:07:08,010 --> 02:07:13,680
going to the homes of traditional teachers and studying and then going home and preparing and going back.

1197
02:07:13,680 --> 02:07:23,730
And I did that for years. But now it's much more accessible, but I don't I mean, this is not the.

1198
02:07:23,730 --> 02:07:29,740
If there's going to be serious effort to somehow.

1199
02:07:29,740 --> 02:07:36,880
If we're going to be successful in intervening in this, there need to be a dozen different efforts, a dozen different kinds of things tried.

1200
02:07:36,880 --> 02:07:42,730
I'll give you some examples. So you know that there's the clay Sanskrit library in the Moorthy Classical Library

1201
02:07:42,730 --> 02:07:48,130
of India and what the libraries may have been involved with since the beginning. That's one kind of effort that's necessary.

1202
02:07:48,130 --> 02:07:56,560
The traditional teachers, some of them make DVDs very useful way.

1203
02:07:56,560 --> 02:08:03,400
Maybe more scholars in the West acknowledging and finding ways to recognise traditional teachers is really important.

1204
02:08:03,400 --> 02:08:09,270
The work that David has done with the artist with artists has been really important.

1205
02:08:09,270 --> 02:08:14,260
Maybe looking at certain kinds of Indian institutions where they've supported this.

1206
02:08:14,260 --> 02:08:18,040
So for example, for, you know, 20 years ago,

1207
02:08:18,040 --> 02:08:26,380
the Sanskrit department at the University of Sydney would bring traditional teachers and teach their students and then tape them.

1208
02:08:26,380 --> 02:08:29,500
So there's lots and lots of things that have to be tried.

1209
02:08:29,500 --> 02:08:34,570
Maybe having grants where you give it to individuals who are trying to do something, just individuals.

1210
02:08:34,570 --> 02:08:38,180
Someone says, I need funds to buy books.

1211
02:08:38,180 --> 02:08:46,300
Finally, this kind of thing, so many, many things need to be done, but it's going to be a multipronged effort and it's going to require a generation.

1212
02:08:46,300 --> 02:08:55,950
I think another problem is that right now, there are actually very few people working on Indian philosophy in a very serious way in India.

1213
02:08:55,950 --> 02:08:58,650
I think that's the biggest tragedy of all.

1214
02:08:58,650 --> 02:09:08,110
So these questions that you're raising, perhaps they're are valid at Oxford, but I don't think they're valid for philosophy students in India.

1215
02:09:08,110 --> 02:09:10,720
So it's very difficult at this point of time, so for example,

1216
02:09:10,720 --> 02:09:17,840
when I have a question in Indian aesthetics or philosophy and we do have a philosophy discipline here that I good,

1217
02:09:17,840 --> 02:09:28,010
nobody is working in the area of Indian philosophy. So I think primarily that is another major reason.

1218
02:09:28,010 --> 02:09:38,400
So a serious study of Indian aesthetics and in philosophy is today perhaps paradoxically happening outside India, not within India.

1219
02:09:38,400 --> 02:09:43,350
And so that could also be a major reason for this, you know, glaring, yeah, no, I think it is.

1220
02:09:43,350 --> 02:09:51,860
Yeah. It's immediate. I think it is because the natural, the natural institutional home and cultural home is not being invaded,

1221
02:09:51,860 --> 02:09:58,370
is not made, has not made sensible, sustainable investments in this area.

1222
02:09:58,370 --> 02:10:01,970
In my view, since the modern nation state was created, but that's a separate issue.

1223
02:10:01,970 --> 02:10:08,210
So I work in Indian aesthetics. I don't have a single colleague, I don't have students who are interested in it.

1224
02:10:08,210 --> 02:10:13,880
Everybody thinks I'm a person because I am happy.

1225
02:10:13,880 --> 02:10:21,860
I would know that I have a problem with it, but still that if very, very few people working in this right now within India,

1226
02:10:21,860 --> 02:10:28,070
you know, one thing that's been although most everything about the pandemic has been horrific.

1227
02:10:28,070 --> 02:10:32,660
One good thing that has come from the pandemic is actually that people have become very

1228
02:10:32,660 --> 02:10:37,670
comfortable using Zoom and getting to know each other over Zoom and working together over Zoom.

1229
02:10:37,670 --> 02:10:41,420
And it really is helping to bring the world closer together.

1230
02:10:41,420 --> 02:10:48,470
And so those even though there's always going to be very few people who are interested in Indian scholastic traditions and intellectual traditions,

1231
02:10:48,470 --> 02:10:53,750
I hope that with Zoom, people feel comfortable and empowered to work together.

1232
02:10:53,750 --> 02:10:57,230
There's no reason for someone in Kanpur, right,

1233
02:10:57,230 --> 02:11:03,320
or professor attending to to not be able to reach out to anyone she wants anywhere in the world who's interested in aesthetics and say, Look,

1234
02:11:03,320 --> 02:11:07,940
I had this question, what can you help me or can I help you in the end,

1235
02:11:07,940 --> 02:11:12,290
because there's so few of us as we get to know each other that we need to learn how to make better use of each other.

1236
02:11:12,290 --> 02:11:17,480
And that's something that we've been very bad at. We tend to do it very formally through journals.

1237
02:11:17,480 --> 02:11:23,760
It's kind of ridiculous. We should meet and have tea and talk about it, and I hope with Zoom we can do that.

1238
02:11:23,760 --> 02:11:32,540
Yeah. And I think that's actually going to make a big difference, but it requires it requires us to have a new kind of humility.

1239
02:11:32,540 --> 02:11:40,540
For me to say, for me to have the confidence, to say, Look, I don't know, I'm just going to call Professor Chandler and I'm going to ask her.

1240
02:11:40,540 --> 02:11:43,060
It doesn't matter if he thinks I should know, or if he thinks I'm foolish,

1241
02:11:43,060 --> 02:11:50,440
I'm just going to reach out to her, ask if she wants to have Zoom tea and talk to her about Malayalam.

1242
02:11:50,440 --> 02:11:57,730
And vice versa, I mean, this is what we need to do. There are many reasons we don't want is this cultural thing which we can change.

1243
02:11:57,730 --> 02:12:03,220
The second is the fact that as you young and as you will learn.

1244
02:12:03,220 --> 02:12:07,150
Being a professor, you're you have too many you're doing too many things at once.

1245
02:12:07,150 --> 02:12:11,440
And so there's also a time question. But this is the kind of thing we should make time for.

1246
02:12:11,440 --> 02:12:14,920
And I think one thing I love about this podcast and the work that you're all doing is it creates

1247
02:12:14,920 --> 02:12:20,470
those new connexions and it creates opportunity for people to know that they should reach out.

1248
02:12:20,470 --> 02:12:26,680
They should ask questions, and we need to connect up with each other because our strength will come from learning how to work together.

1249
02:12:26,680 --> 02:12:34,110
You will not come from doing things in silos and complaining it won't.

1250
02:12:34,110 --> 02:12:42,250
A brilliant thank you. And can I just ask, how are we doing for time it because I know that we said, Yeah, I want it all.

1251
02:12:42,250 --> 02:12:46,200
So I wonder it's getting late. Yeah, yeah.

1252
02:12:46,200 --> 02:12:50,160
Well, yeah, it has been. It's been a long recording.

1253
02:12:50,160 --> 02:12:55,130
There's some really, really interesting stuff there. So we thank. Thank you.

1254
02:12:55,130 --> 02:12:58,940
Great to meet you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you.

1255
02:12:58,940 --> 02:13:05,060
Nice to meet you. I'm looking forward to maybe having some teeth. Yeah, definitely.

1256
02:13:05,060 --> 02:13:12,880
Yeah, no, it's it's really fantastic to have this discussion and to meet you and thank you so much for contributing.

1257
02:13:12,880 --> 02:13:36,640
I appreciate the thing.