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JOHANNES BRONKHORST
Traditional and Modern Sanskrit Scholarship:
How Do They Relate to Each Other?
Indologists are lucky. Unlike most other scholars who study the intellectual history of a major culture, their object of study does not exclusively consist of old texts. In India there is a living tradition of indigenous scholarship, which continues, in a more or less unbroken succession, the subjects that interest the modern scholar. It is no coincidence that the early European explorers of Sanskrit literature worked with Indian pandits, and that many modern scholars, too, draw considerable advantage from working with them. I am personally proud to have worked with several outstanding pandits in Poona, and there can be no doubt that this has been a major privilege.
Those who have worked with traditional pandits—and I repeat that I count myself among them know that there is little hope that they will ever be able to compete with these pandits in their areas of specialisation, whether it be grammar, poetics, or one of the schools of Indian philosophy. Few modern scholars, and practically no modern western scholars, have been exposed to the various traditional disciplines of India at such a young age and in such an intensive fashion as the traditional pandit. This is a disadvantage which few modern scholars will ever completely overcome.
We arrive, then, at the following picture. The scholar of, say, early Greek thought has to reconstruct the object of his study with the help of surviving old texts, and with nothing else. There is no one around to help him (except other modern scholars who are in the same situation as he is), so that he is condemned to try to reach results on his own. The scholar of early Indian thought, on the other hand, finds that thought, those same branches of knowledge and enquiry, alive and well in modern India, and that at a level of competence which he cannot dream of attaining. This gives rise to some important questions, but perhaps not the ones that are most often asked. The question is not "What is the place of traditional Sanskrit scholarship in the study of Indian thought?", but rather: "What is the place of modern scholarship in the study of Indian thought?” or even better: "Is there place for modern scholarship in the study of Indian thought? Is there anything modern scholarship can contribute to this field of study? Are modern scholars not doomed to be at best pale copies of the traditional scholars whom they cannot but try to imitate, normally with limited success?
It seems that some modern Sanskrit scholars do indeed think that imitating traditional scholars should be their aspiration. Others disagree, and point out that traditional and modern Sanskrit scholars do not normally study