History of Science in Early South Asia
This group will focus on the kinds of research published in journals such as the Indian Journal of History of Science, the e-Journal of Indian Medicine: EJIM, Asian Medicine, and History of Science in South Asia. The working group will bring together scholars who study the history of science in South Asia before about 1800 and as discoverable from literatures in Sanskrit and other indigenous Indian languages. We take “South Asia” as an inclusive, non-political, socio-geographic term referring to the area from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, from Pakistan to Bangladesh, and of course India. Discussions on the influences of South Asian cultures beyond these borders is also welcome, for example Nepalese or Tibetan influences on China, Sri Lankan influences on the Maldives, or Indian influences in South-East Asia. We take “science” to be broadly conceived, and to include all forms of rigorous intellectual activity that adopt at least to some extent a quantitative and empirical approach, as in the German “die Wissenschaft,” that covers most forms of academic scholarship. Theoretical discussions of the meaning of “science” in the South Asian context are welcome. The group will meet monthly during the 2020-2021 academic year and focus in the first instance on group readings of premodern scientific texts in early Indian languages, especially Sanskrit. We plan to begin with readings in South Asian medical and alchemical literatures.
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Upcoming Meetings
There are no currently scheduled upcoming events.
Past Meetings
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May 15, 2023
Speaker: Dr Vijaya Deshpande
Title: The Rasopaniṣad
Abstract: I recently revised my earlier work on a Sanskrit alchemical text called the Rasopanișad. The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, published it last year as Rasopanișad - A Discourse on Indian Alchemy. I will discuss some points related to this work such as what is this text about, why I selected it for a detailed study, why it is somewhat peculiar and what it tells us about medieval Indian chemistry and metallurgy.
A series of five lectures on this topic were recorded by BORI. They are for a lay person who is new to the topic. They are accessible on the following link.
https://bori.ac.in/infosys-a-p-videos/
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April 17, 2023
Speaker: Dr Cristina Pecchia, University of Vienna and Austrian Academy of Sciences
Topic: Ayurveda and Philology: Gangadhar Ray Kaviraj and His Legacy.*
The wide spreading and popularization of Ayurveda makes it more urgent to gain a deeper understanding of the formative stages that led to the present configuration of this medical tradition. In this talk I will present the research project “Ayurveda and Philology: Gangadhar Ray Kaviraj and His Legacy”, which aims at exploring the interplay between Ayurveda and the Sanskritic culture during the colonial period. Its main focus is Gangadhar Ray Kaviraj (1798–1885), who was editor and commentator of the Carakasamhita. The project will study Gangadhar’s editorial and interpretative activity and his legacy in the making of modern Ayurveda, with special regard to practices and dynamics concerning texts and the context of their production.
* The project is based at the University of Vienna and funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.25cm; background: transparent }
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March 20, 2023
Speaker: Dr Lisa Brooks, Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta
Topic: Classification, Coagency, and Care: Human-Leech Medicine in Early South Asia
Abstract: Leeches and humans have a long history of medical entanglement. For over two thousand years and across a range of geographical and cultural spaces, leeches have been regarded by humans as a both a venomous nuisance and a medical technology. The oldest and most detailed surviving description of leech therapy is found in an early first-millennium Sanskrit treatise focused on surgery, theSuśrutasaṃhitā. In this treatise, non-venomous leeches are listed as a type of medical tool, an accessory or substitute sharp instrument (anuśastra) for surgical practice, and as the gentlest method of bloodletting. But the treatise also highlights their nature as living beings by detailing how a physician should interpret leech behavior and care for them. The way in which leeches and human-leech interactions are portrayed reveal a range of attitudes about physicians’ sensory expertise, the nature of leeches, and what constitutes medical agency or a medical technology. The talk will explore how textual representations of leeches challenge early ayurvedic classificatory schemes, and the ways that, in practice, leeches push against the notion of locating medical agency solely in the realm of the human.
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March 6, 2023
Special session for the discussion of future directions for the history of science in early SA, and especially funding.
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February 20, 2023
Speaker: Anthony Cerulli, Professor of South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Topic: We will discuss Prof. Cerulli's new monograph, The Practice of Texts: Education and Healing in South India (University of California Press, 2022). The book is available as Open Access in several formats.
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January 16, 2023
Speaker: Dr Andrey Klebanov
Title: Textual parallels between the compendia of Caraka and Suśruta: What can we learn from them?
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December 19, 2022
Speaker: Dr Vitus Angermeier, PI at the FWF Project "Epidemics and Crisis Management in Pre-modern South Asia", University of Vienna
Topic: Epidemiology in the Bhelasaṃhitā – the chapter on distinctions according to land and people
Note: Dr Angermeier's presentation, "A contagion theory in the Hārītasaṃhita? The chapter on upasarga." originally scheduled for March 20,. 2023, has now been postponed until September.
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November 21, 2022
Speaker: Lucy May Constantini
Title: Understanding Text in Relation to the Embodied Practice of Kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘: investigating alternative methodologies
Abstract:
Kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘ is a martial art with an allied medical system that originated in South India in the Malabar region of what is now the modern state of Kerala. Its long and complex history includes a revival from near-extinction in the early twentieth century when a few practitioners gathered and systematised what knowledge remained, both practice and text. Malabar kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘ evinces a particular relationship between its inherited texts and lived practice. A kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘ gurukkaḷ (lineage-holder) carries the responsibility of preserving and transmitting the lineage, and, regardless of any reverence for inherited manuscripts, the final śāstric authority of the kaḷari resides in the gurukkaḷ’s body and practice. As such, written texts only partially represent a kaḷari’s śāstra, which is only complete when informed by the experience of embodied practice. To date there has been little academic enquiry into the texts of kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘, in part because of the inaccessibility of kaḷari paramparā manuscripts, which introduces further complication.This talk will present a brief survey of known kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘ texts and discuss the methodologies I have evolved to collect and analyse discrete sections of otherwise closely- guarded texts from the CVN lineage that is the chief focus of my research. I will discuss these and their working translations, which are still evolving as part of my PhD project. This textual analysis has been guided by Dr. SAS Sarma at l'École française d'Extrême-Orient at Pondicherry.
My PhD is at the Open University in the UK, exploring the relationship between practice and textual traditions in kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership. This interdisciplinary research encompasses ethnography, drawing on a relationship since 2002 with CVN Kalari in Thiruvananthapuram, and the study of manuscripts in Malayalam and Sanskrit. My background is in dance and somatic practices, where my work investigates the confluence of my praxes of postmodern dance, martial arts and yoga.
You can read more about Lucy's PhD project here: http://www.open.ac.uk/people/lmc662
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October 17, 2022
Speaker: Dr Charu Singh, Dept. of History, Stanford University (from January 2023: Assistant Professor, Dept. History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge)
Title: When science became vijñāna: Redescriptions of knowledge in colonial north India, 1915–1935.
See attached papers, all in the zip file:- Charu Singh, "When science became vijñāna: Redescriptions of knowledge in colonial north India, 1915–1935." Abstract.
- Elshakry, M. (2010) “When Science Became Western: Historiographical Reflections,” Isis 101: 98–109. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/652691.
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Menon, M. (2021) “Indigenous Knowledges and Colonial Sciences in South Asia,” South Asian History and Culture. 13: 1–18.
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Pollock, S. (2011) “The Languages of Science in Early Modern India,” in Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800. Durham NC and London: Duke University Press, pp. 19–48.
Dr Singh will make a 30-minute presentation on the discussions and reflections on vijñāna in the Hindi-language science monthly that she studies, Vigyan. She requests that we combine this presentation with a group discussion on the readings above.
Dr Singh says: "In choosing programmatic work in the global history of science (Elshakry) with South Asian reflections on knowledge categories (Pollock, Menon), I'm hoping we can all together think through the problem presented by several cognates of "science" across premodern and modern South Asia. In addition, I'm hoping that the empirical evidence I will provide for one such knowledge category can serve as a case study for our discussion."
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September 19, 2022
TBA
Group Conveners
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Lisa Brooks
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Andrey Klebanov
Andrey Klebanov is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, University of Vienna, Austria. Klebanov has published on the history of Indian medicine and the history of medieval literary commentaries, with a focus on the use of manuscript sources.
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Dominik Wujastyk
Dominik Wujastyk is Professor and Singhmar Chair of Classical Indian Society and Polity, Dept. of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Canada. Previous appointments include a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship at the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. Wujastyk has taught and published on the history of science and medicine in ancient India and on Indian manuscripts and codicology . Recent work has included research on the history of classical Indian medicine, yoga and alchemy. He is the Principal Investigator of the recently launched Suśruta Project
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Dagmar Wujastyk
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Kenneth Zysk
Kenneth Zysk is Emeritus Professor of Indology and Indian Science, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Zysk has taught and published extensively on the history of science and medicine in ancient India. Recent projects include work on the history of medicine and medical theory in early India with a view to cross-cultural influences and on early forms of augury and prophecy in Indian astral science, with a focus on manuscript sources.