[Advaita-l] shaDdarhana and other unorthodox schools

[Shrisha Rao]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:

> How about testing Western philosophers on the benchmarks reserved for 
> traditional Indian philosophers? It requires a great deal of self-confidence 
> to do that.

Good point.  There is a disconnect between the Western traditions of 
philosophy and logic, and the classical "six schools" approach of Indian 
philosophy [*].  The charge of poor scholarship, though probably accurate 
in respect of contemporary Indian scholarship, is however not unique to 
it, as other parts of the social sciences are also afflicted [**].

It is my considered though limited personal opinion that no Vedantin (or 
indeed even an adherent of one of the shhaD-darshana-s) needs to hang his 
head in shame because his tradition of study is inferior.

[*] See http://www.dvaita.net/pdf/papers/epistemology.pdf for a transcript 
of an interesting keynote.

[**] For example, note the "Fashionable Nonsense" book by Alan Sokal and 
Jean Bricmont, a debunking of "cognitive relativism" in academia.  I 
honestly think that a proper critical study could result in exactly such a 
thorough debunking of much of contemporary academic Indology.

Regards,

Shrisha Rao