A Graduate Book Report on "The Nay Science - A History of German Indology"

Abstract

In the Nay Science – A History of German Indology, Vishwa Adluri and Joy Bagchee make three crucial claims: that the historical-critical method used by German Indologists to study the Indian Epic Mahābhārata evolved out of the Neo-Protestantism of the eighteenth century; that this unacknowledged origin of the historical-critical method led German Indologists to pseudo-critical interpretations such as the presence of an Indo-Germanic race in the Indian Epic; and that scholars should not use supposedly scientific methods to discern the truth of texts in the humanities. By exploring (1) how an early German Indologist, Adolf Holtzmann, projected Neo-Protestantism onto German Indological research, (2) how the conclusions from this method express unacknowledged theological biases and prejudices, and (3) how the authors think that a practitioner-scholar, Gandhi, better engages with an interpretation of the Indian Epic, I show how the authors make out their argument. Although I agree with the authors’ indictment of the methods of German Indology, I think, however, that by employing a practitioner-scholar to counteract German Indological scholars’ mode of scholarship, the authors made Gandhi an easy target of modern scholarly biases against practitioner-scholars.