Presenter
Duquette Jonathan - University of Cambridge, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge, United KingdomPanel
87 – Traditional Indian Scholarship on Advaita Vedanta in Colonial IndiaAbstract
A comprehensive Sanskrit intellectual history of Advaita Vedānta in the colonial era requires that we also pay due attention to the works and ideas of traditional scholars who were active in brahmin settlements (agrahāra, brahmadeya), beyond the large urban and cosmopolitan colonial centres where the more well-known ‘neo-Vedānta’ was being fashioned at the same time. What were traditional scholars writing about? How did they regard the ‘classical past’ of their tradition? How does their interpretation of vedāntic materials compare with neo-Vedānta, and how can this help us rethink Advaita Vedānta in the colonial era? In this presentation, I give an overview of the dynamic, and often innovative, production of traditional scholars who were writing in Sanskrit on Advaita Vedānta during the colonial era, with a focus on brahmin settlements located along the Kaveri river in Tamilnadu.
