Joydeep Bagchee

Philology and Criticism contrasts the Mahābhārata’s preservation and transmission within the Indian scribal and commentarial traditions with Sanskrit philology after 1900, as German Indologists proposed a critical edition of the Mahābhārata to validate their racial and nationalist views. Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee show how, in contrast to the Indologists’ unscientific theories, V. S. Sukthankar assimilated the principles of neo-Lachmannian textual criticism to defend the transmitted text and its traditional reception as a work of law, philosophy and salvation. The authors demonstrate why, after the edition’s completion, no justification exists for claiming that an earlier heroic epic existed, that the Brahmans redacted the heroic epic to produce the Mahābhārata or that they interpolated “sectarian” gods such as Vis.n.u and Śiva into the work. By demonstrating how the Indologists committed technical errors, cited flawed and biased scholarship and used circular argumentation to validate their racist and anti-Semitic theories, Philology and Criticism frees readers to approach the Mahābhārata as “the principal monument of bhakti” (Madeleine Biardeau). The authoritative guide to the critical edition’s correct use and interpretation, Philology and Criticism urges South Asianists to view Hinduism as a complex debate about ontology and ethics rather than through the lenses of “Brahmanism” and “sectarianism.” It launches a new world philology—one that is plural and self-reflexive rather than Eurocentric and ahistorical.

An evaluation of German Indology's epistemic and institutional features, and a restatement of The Nay Science's thesis in response to Eli Franco's review.

Keywords: German Indology, contemporary debates, philology, The Nay Science, Eli Franco

Argument and Design features fifteen essays by leading scholars of the Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, discussing the Mahābhārata’s upākhyānas, subtales that branch off from the central storyline and provide vantage points for reflecting on it.

Contributors include: Vishwa Adluri, Joydeep Bagchee, Greg Bailey, Adam Bowles, Simon Brodbeck, Nicolas Dejenne, Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, Robert P. Goldman, Alf Hiltebeitel, Thennilapuram Mahadevan, Adheesh Sathaye, Bruce M. Sullivan, and Fernando Wulff Alonso.

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The Nay Science offers a new perspective on the problem of scientific method in the human sciences. Taking German Indological scholarship on the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita as their example, Adluri and Bagchee develop a critique of the modern valorization of method over truth in the humanities.

The authors show how, from its origins in eighteenth-century Neo-Protestantism onwards, the critical method was used as a way of making theological claims against rival philosophical and/or religious traditions. Via discussions of German Romanticism, the pantheism controversy, scientific positivism, and empiricism, they show how theological concerns dominated German scholarship on the Indian texts. Indology functions as a test case for wider concerns: the rise of historicism, the displacement of philosophical concerns from thinking, and the belief in the ability of a technical method to produce truth.

Based on the historical evidence of the first part of the book, Adluri and Bagchee make a case in the second part for going beyond both the critical pretensions of modern academic scholarship and and the objections of its post-structuralist or post-Orientalist critics. By contrasting German Indology with Plato's concern for virtue and Gandhi's focus on praxis, the authors argue for a conception of the humanities as a dialogue between the ancients and moderns and between eastern and western cultures.

This article addresses the issue of methods and contexts in the study of religion in South Asia. Along the lines of the "'natural history'… of religious studies" proposed in Lease 1995, it proposes a "natural history" of the study of religion in South Asia, insofar as it originates not only in a "Protestant Christian 'apologetic' theological project" (Smith 2010) but also, more specifically, in reconstructions of traditions using the "text-historical method." The case studies in MTSR 1995 provide a differential diagnosis of the pathologies responsible for the demise of five programs in religion. We focus, instead, on the disciplinary crisis in religious studies, using the work of Paul Hacker as an example. Smith's (1995) three preconditions for the formation of a discipline-"theory, general studies, and professionalism"-are the criteria we apply to comprehend the field's diremption. On a positive note, the article argues for reconsidering the role of method in religious studies. Recognizing and correcting for the shortcomings of past scholarship is a sine qua non for progressing the academic study of religion. A comprehensive topically arranged bibliography provides suggestions for further reading.

This piece addresses the misuse of 'Hindutva' in contemporary South Asian studies. In response to criticisms of the so-called text-historical method in Indology, the old guard of academia raises the spectre of Hindutva to scare off critics. With such anti-intellectual tactics, Indologists have betrayed liberal ideals. Originally submitted to South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies in response to Eli Franco's review of The Nay Science, this piece makes a larger case for a discipline-critical philology. If we are to reclaim the university as a place for open dialogue and debate, we must continue the critique of professorial privilege. Facile self-righteousness must not become a cover for intellectual vacuity.

This article addresses the experiences and fates of Jewish scholars in Indology. It asks whether these scholars were sufficiently aware of Indology's anti-Semitic bias or were also playing the institutional game of othering and denigrating the Indians in a quest for acceptance in a pervasively anti-Semitic discipline. The article demonstrates that whereas Jewish scholars entered Indology in a misguided attempt at social advancement, they were never accepted as equals by their colleagues. Indology remains a fundamentally Protestant discipline, which requires a deracination or de-Judification as the price for entry. In view of the fact that contemporary Jewish Indologists failed to recognize or acknowledge these issues, a degree of skepticism toward their claims of moral and epistemic authority is warranted.

Vishwa P. Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, “The Redemption of the Brahman: Garbe and German Interpreters of the Bhagavadgītā.” In Transcultural Encounters between Germany and India: Kindred Spirits in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, edited by Joanne Miyang Cho, Eric Kurlander, and Douglas McGetchin, 68–83. New York: Routledge, 2013.

International Journal of Dharma Studies 4, no. 4 (2016): 1–41

This article discusses the political and theological ends to which the thesis of different “recensions” of the Bhagavadgītā were put in light of recent work on the search for an “original” Gītā (Adluri, Vishwa and Joydeep Bagchee, 2014, The Nay Science: A History of German Indology; Adluri, Vishwa and Joydeep Bagchee, 2016a, Paradigm Lost: The Application of the Historical-Critical Method to the Bhagavad Gītā).

Pre-production version of:
Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, "Paradigm Lost: The Application of the Historical-Critical Method to the Bhagavad Gītā," International Journal of Hindu Studies (2016); http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11407-016-9187-4

This version may contain some errors. Please cite the text according to the published version. Our contract with Springer prevents us from making available the final version.

A Response to Andrew Nicholson’s Review of Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, The Nay Science: A History of German Indology, forthcoming in The International Journal of Hindu Studies (draft version published on Academia.edu on October 10, 2015).
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