Whitney Cox
Research Project
Sastram
Project Team:
2019 – 2020
Project Summary
| This interdisciplinary collaboration examined the forms and intersecting histories of South Asian practices of knowledge, with a focus on the geographical and historical spread of cultural norms and technologies. |
The Sanskrit word śāstra, from a verb meaning “to discipline, to govern,” supplies a blanket term for a vast and heterogeneous spectrum of Southern Asian texts and the social forms in which these have been propagated. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the very basis of South Asian conceptualization and practices of knowledge was founded on the idea of śāstra. With antecedents available throughout the recorded history of India, by the middle of the first millennium CE śāstra had attained something like its recognizable “classical” form: the Laws of Manu are one instance of śāstra, as is the Kāmasūtra or the grammar of Pāṇini; so too are works of philosophy, texts on elephant lore, magical grimoires, or commentaries on literary classics. To pass as codified knowledge in early India (and beyond), was to be framed as śāstra of some sort. Despite this centrality, little sustained reflection has been devoted to understanding what śāstra was and what it did, such that it could have such a formative capacity in shaping cultures and histories throughout Asia. This project will bring together philologists and intellectual historians specializing in Sanskrit and those working in other adjacent linguistic cultures with linguistic anthropologists, historians of science, and specialists of East Asia and the classical West to understand how this package of cultural and cognitive technologies functioned across a range of specific historical and regional contexts, with the intention of better understanding the internal logics and historical instantiation of these practices of knowledge.
Research Team
Thomas Hunter
Thomas Hunter
Lecturer in Sanskrit and South-Southeast Asian Studies
The University of British Columbia
Constantine Nakassis
Constantine Nakassis
Associate Professor of Anthropology and of the Social Sciences in the College; Associate Faculty of Cinema and Media Studies and Comparative Human Development
University of Chicago
Sarah Nooter
Andrew Ollett
Andrew Ollett
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago
Haun Saussy
Haun Saussy
University Professor with appointments in Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, and Committee on Social Thought
University of Chicago
Gary Tubb
Gary Tubb
Anupama and Guru Ramakrishnan Professor; Department Chair, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago
Project Narrative
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Their Lordships Are Again at Great Disadvantage in Not Knowing Sanskrit
Lecture
Their Lordships Are Again at Great Disadvantage in Not Knowing Sanskrit
Lecture by Chris Minkowski on the Privy Council, Mīmāṃsā, and Anantakrishna Shastri
Regimes of Knowledge in the Early Indic World
Symposium
Regimes of Knowledge in the Early Indic World
The domain of śāstra – disciplined, textualized systematic thought, composed in Sanskrit and other languages – forms premodern southern Asia’s greatest archive for the history of knowledge. The ...
A Premodern Indian Enlightenment?
Lecture
A Premodern Indian Enlightenment?
Indian philosophers in the mid-first millennium elevated epistemology to a commanding position. It came to be widely accepted that all claims of any kind, to be taken seriously in philosophical ...
The Interrelation of Pali and Sanskrit Grammatical Traditions
Lecture
The Interrelation of Pali and Sanskrit Grammatical Traditions
The major works of Pali grammar are the Kaccāyana Vyākaraṇa (6th/7th c. CE), the Moggallāna Vyākaraṇa (1165 CE), and Aggavaṁsa’s Saddanīti (later 12th c. CE?). These works, and the rich exegetical ...
Buddhists’ Contribution to South Asian Lexicography: Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan
Lecture
Buddhists’ Contribution to South Asian Lexicography: Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan
Lexicography is one of the oldest traditions of language analysis in South Asia, beginning with the compilation of nighaṇṭus or “word-lists” that focused on “rare, unexplained, vague, or otherwise ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Their Lordships Are Again at Great Disadvantage in Not Knowing Sanskrit
Lecture
Their Lordships Are Again at Great Disadvantage in Not Knowing Sanskrit
Lecture by Chris Minkowski on the Privy Council, Mīmāṃsā, and Anantakrishna Shastri
A Premodern Indian Enlightenment?
Lecture
A Premodern Indian Enlightenment?
Indian philosophers in the mid-first millennium elevated epistemology to a commanding position. It came to be widely accepted that all claims of any kind, to be taken seriously in philosophical ...
The Interrelation of Pali and Sanskrit Grammatical Traditions
Lecture
The Interrelation of Pali and Sanskrit Grammatical Traditions
The major works of Pali grammar are the Kaccāyana Vyākaraṇa (6th/7th c. CE), the Moggallāna Vyākaraṇa (1165 CE), and Aggavaṁsa’s Saddanīti (later 12th c. CE?). These works, and the rich exegetical ...
Buddhists’ Contribution to South Asian Lexicography: Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan
Lecture
Buddhists’ Contribution to South Asian Lexicography: Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan
Lexicography is one of the oldest traditions of language analysis in South Asia, beginning with the compilation of nighaṇṭus or “word-lists” that focused on “rare, unexplained, vague, or otherwise ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Regimes of Knowledge in the Early Indic World
Symposium
Regimes of Knowledge in the Early Indic World
The domain of śāstra – disciplined, textualized systematic thought, composed in Sanskrit and other languages – forms premodern southern Asia’s greatest archive for the history of knowledge. The ...
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