[Appeared in (1991) CULTURAL DYNAMICS. 4(1). p.98-106] FRITS STAAL. Rules Without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences. Toronto Studies in Religion, Vol. 4. New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1989 xxii+490. In order…
Read more[Original Dutch version is here.] Today, there are multiple images of India current in the West. There is the mystic India, an image that the German Romantics created and the…
Read more1. My book is not about India but about the western culture. It is a study of the western culture using one thread, namely, religion. To the extent I talk…
Read more1. Whether or not we observe ‘commonalities’ has to do with the descriptive framework we use. Things might share common properties in one description; at the same time, share nothing…
Read moreIt is partly a term of the art (in the philosophy of sciences) and partly retains the commonsense usage. When one compares theories (in order to choose the best one…
Read moreAll works of Balagangadhara make use of use-mention distinction. Please get familiarized with this distinction. In logic the words ‘use’ and ‘mention’ [both the nouns and the verbs] are sometimes…
Read more1. What did the theory of gravitation do? Apart from describing the fall of bodies on earth, it also tied the motion of planets and the ebb and tide in…
Read more1. The English word ‘Hinduism’ not only carries multiple meanings it also appears to refer to many different things. If the context of the discussion were to help us disambiguate…
Read more1. Let me focus on the citation “Ours is the true religion because, above all, it…stands up… to tell and to declare to the nations who are mere children of…
Read more[For extended discussion on sat, truth, etc, check this paper.] To take German language, let us look at how Heidegger talks about ‘being’: there is the ‘big Being’ (‘Sein’) and…
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