Tradition and Discipline: How should one read ancient Indian texts?

Abstract

This is a review article of two recent books. The first is D. Venkat Rao's�Cultures of Memory in South Asia: Orality, Literacy and the Problem of Inheritance; the second, Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee's�The Nay Science: A History of German Indology. Rao's conviction is that Indology has failed in its mandate. He claims that Indology so far has produced only European representations of India and not what should have been the choicest self-images of India's past. If Rao begins with a hostile tone towards Indology and expresses his intention to do something with India's texts without either relying on or having recourse to anything that belongs to the Indologist's ragbag, Adluri and Bagchee set out to expose what they refer to as Indology's �pretension� to scientific method and objectivity in their�The Nay Science, an unprecedented polemical history of German Indology. I divide this review into two parts: a critical examination of�The Nay Science�s critique of German Indology and its commitment to a methodological reform, and a distilled critical account of�Cultures of Memory�s approach to Indian textual traditions and the problems of such an approach. Finally, after examining the important challenges facing Indology, I'll make a case for how the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre may help our understanding of the nature, dynamics, and the relevance of tradition in South Asia.