History of Science in Early South Asia

 
Dreams and Tooth-cleaning-sticks: Two Omens from Indian Tantric Traditions
 
Dominique Baur, M.A. (Heidelberg University),
Dr. Daisy Cheung (Hamburg University)

Omens are present in many traditional Indian scientific knowledge systems such as
Āyurveda and Jyotiḥśāstra. Although many scholars have surveyed omens in various texts
and contexts, detailed studies are few. Within Jyotiḥśāstra, von Negelein has extensively
studied Jagaddeva’s Svapnacintāmaṇi (1912), a compendium on dream omens. Zysk has
systematically studied human marks (2016) and crow omens (2022) across knowledge
systems. Within ritual studies, Geslani (2018) has focused on the ritual use of omens
concerning kingship rituals. However, none of these works have addressed the place that
omens occupy in Tantric traditions, such as Pāñcarātra, Śaivism and tantric Buddhism.

In our paper, we will investigate the dream (svapna) and the throwing of the tooth-
cleaning-stick (dantakāṣṭha) as two common examples of omens in Tantric ritual. Drawing
from sources in Sanskrit, Tibetan and classical Chinese we will compare, among other
texts, passages from the Jayākhya-, the Viśvaksena- and the Paramasaṃhitā, the
Niśvāsatattvasaṃgraha, the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna, the *Svapnohana and the
Svapnādhyāya. With a detailed study of these two omens we hope to provide more
examples of intertextuality and to address the question of a common ‘cultural substratum’,
as well as to shed light on omens as a new field of study.

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/
 
 

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)

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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.

Special session for the discussion of future directions for the history of science in early SA, and especially funding.

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.

Speaker: Dr Andrey Klebanov
Title: Textual parallels between the compendia of Caraka and Suśruta: What can we learn from them?

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.

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

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.

• Menon, M. (2021) “Indigenous Knowledges and Colonial Sciences in South Asia,” South Asian History and Culture. 13: 1–18.

• 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."