October 2016
काव्यप्रकाशो यवनःकाव्याली च कुलाङ्गना ।अनेन प्रसभाकृष्टाकष्टमेषाऽश्नुते दशाम् ॥
We have seen that Sriharsha pleased Vindhya-vasini-devi and was blessed with impeccable poetic prowess. Not wanting to go out of league of everyone around him, he consciously dimmed his abilities and composed the epic-poem Naishadhiya-charitam.
Eager to know the opinion of Mammata, the great scholar of alankara shastra, Sriharsha went to him with his work. Glancing...
In the previous part of this essay, I traced the origin of the Mackenzie Manuscripts to Col. Colin Mackenzie discovering his life’s mission after his interactions with the Madurai Brahmins whose learning was prolific, vast, deep and multifaceted, and concluded with a mention briefly of their contents.
Quantity is also a Quality
The chief value of the Mackenzie Manuscripts is the sheer lavishness of their abundance, making true the dictum that...
Preface
That the Vijayanagara Empire, right from its foundations resting on the amalgamation of the Brahma-Kshatra spirit, stood not only as the bulwark against rampant Muslim invasions from North India, but also swelled to become one of the greatest empires in the world is well-known. Its geographical spread apart, almost every trader, traveler and in general anybody who had any business with it testify to its unrivalled material prosperity....
The best biography of Professor Mysore Hiriyanna was written by Professor Mysore Hiriyanna himself not by using a paper and pen but by living life as he did. And that living revealed itself in every single sphere—in his personality, dressing, speech, conduct, values, teaching, and to the world as it knew him, in his writing.
Here are a few samples of his writing.
On Indian education, he holds that the “true aim of Indian Education is not to...
Transcript of the keynote address given by Dr. S. L. Bhyrappa at the two-day seminar on ‘Development of Indian Thought up to Modern Times’ conducted by ICPR. 10 September 2016, Sheshadripuram College, Bangalore.
Speaking on a complex topic like philosophy, that too in a more complex language like English is to do injustice to both the listener and the subject. Hence Kannada.
I taught philosophy for about ten years to MA students. I have studied...
ಸುಪ್ರಸಿದ್ಧ ತತ್ತ್ವಶಾಸ್ತ್ರಜ್ಞ ಹಾಗೂ ಜಗತ್ಕಥೆಯೆಂದು ಖ್ಯಾತಿಗಳಿಸಿದ "ದ ಸ್ಟೋರಿ ಆಫ್ ಸಿವಿಲಿಸೇಷನ್ " ಗ್ರಂಥಮಾಲೆಯ ಕರ್ತೃ ವಿಲ್ ಡ್ಯುರಾಂಟ್, ತನ್ನ ಅಷ್ಟೇ ವಿಶ್ರುತವಾದ "ದ ಸ್ಟೋರಿ ಆಫ್ ಫಿಲಾಸಫಿ" ಕೃತಿಯಲ್ಲೊಂದೆಡೆ ಡೇವಿಡ್ ಹ್ಯೂಮ್ ಎಂಬ ವಿದ್ವಾಂಸನ ಅಭಿಪ್ರಾಯವನ್ನು ಸಂಗ್ರಹಿಸುತ್ತಾನೆ. ಈ ಪ್ರಕಾರ ಯಾವುದೇ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವು ತನ್ನ ಆದ್ಯಕರ್ತವ್ಯವೆನಿಸಿದ ಜ್ಞಾನನಿರ್ಮಾಣಪ್ರಕ್ರಿಯೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ತೊಡಗುವಾಗ ಪ್ರತ್ಯಕ್ಷ ಮತ್ತು ಅನುಮಾನಗಳೆಂಬ (ಡೈರೆಕ್ಟ್ ಪರ್ಸೆಪ್ಷನ್ ಅನ್ಡ್ ಇನ್ಫ಼ರೆನ್ಸ್) ಪ್ರಮಾಣಗಳನ್ನು ಹಿಡಿದು ನಿಗಮನಗಳನ್ನು ಹೊರಡಿಸುವಾಗಲೂ...
It could be argued that early in the colonial period, there was genuine interest to study India, and the West did produce some rigorous work in the area in the form of travelogues, comparative religion, military accounts and India-specific formal academic scholarship. Among others, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Niccolao Manucci, Eliot and Dawson, Robert Sewell, and James Todd have left behind invaluable treasures after years of observation,...
If you ask a Hindu what it means to be one, or what Hinduism is, you will get many answers. Some will say it is a way of life and not a religion. Some will say that it is a conglomeration of various belief systems. Some will say it is a religion. Some will say there is no such thing as Hinduism but it is sanatana dharma. And some will have no clue.
There is no straightforward answer. It is at once utterly simple and extremely complicated. That’s...
About thirty-five years ago, I was getting an old house repaired. The roof in the front portion of the house had become rickety. I had assigned the entire work of pulling it out and setting it right to a contractor. Although some portions of that house weren’t in good shape, the main door was stable and looked beautiful. It had come from fifty or sixty years earlier. The contractor and I had agreed that all the work would be done without...
In the 2015 Crime/Mystery Thriller Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, after retrieving a corpse from an abandoned factory, Byomkesh says, “Sach ke aas-paas waala jhoot pakadna mushkil hota hai” (It’s difficult to detect a lie that is close to the truth.) At its very core, the work of a detective is to eliminate falsehood and find the truth. This is perhaps the reason why Saradindu Bandhopadhyay doesn’t call his hero a ‘detective.’ In the original...