Papers of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference

History of Indological studies

The history of Western knowledge of Indian began about 2500 years ago, but the history of Indology only about 230 years ago. It happened in Kolkata, as a fusion of colonial and scholarly interests, but also not uninfluenced by the scholarly traditions of India. In the next 75 years Indological chairs were founded in important universities in most European countries. The present volume contains a general introduction to the history of South Asian studies, a bibliography and six case studies of different aspects, including early Indological studies in India, Indological traditions in Sweden and Denmark, sanskrit studies in Russian cultural history, Ukrainian translations from Sanskrit and the Sanskrit correspondence between the French Indologist Sylvain Levi and the Nepalese scholar Hemaraja Sarma.

The last two decades of Indological research have led to a marked increase in the investigation of logic in India, especially in the earliest period of classical India. A panel of senior and junior scholars from America, Asia, and Europe, all specialists working in this area, was concerned at the 12th World Sanskrit Conference, held in Helsinki in the summer of 2003. This volume contains not only their papers, which address both philosophical and philological matters pertaining to logic as propounded in texts from this period, but also an introduction designed to permit non-specialists, whether non-Indologists or non-philosophers, to learn about Indian logic in its infancy.