Keynote Speaker: Johannes Bronkhorst
Keynote Title: “Interrogating Indian Texts: New Light on Yoga and Etymology”
The information yielded by data is crucially dependent upon the way they are interrogated. Numerous examples illustrate this. At first sight, nothing stood in the way of historical Chinese astronomers to conclude that the earth is round, but they did not do so. Thinkers in ancient Greece had sufficient information to work out the principle of evolution by natural selection, but they didn’t. In all these cases, it was the Fragestellung with which the data were approached that stood in the way.
My presentation will address the question how we, Indologists, interrogate ancient Indian texts. It will concentrate on certain texts on Yoga and etymology and propose new ways of understanding.
Johannes Bronkhorst is a retired professor of Sanskrit and Indian studies, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. After initial studies of Physics and Mathematics (B.Sc., Amsterdam 1968), he took up the study of Sanskrit and Pali at the University of Rajasthan (Jaipur, India), then at the University of Pune (India). In Pune he obtained an M.A. in 1976 and a Ph.D. in 1979. He obtained a second doctorate from the University of Leiden in 1980. In 1987 he was appointed full professor of Sanskrit & Indian Studies at the University of Lausanne, where he stayed until his retirement in 2011. His numerous publications include the following books:
Greater Magadha (2007), Aux origines de la philosophie indienne (2008), Buddhist Teaching in India (2009), Language and Reality (2011), Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism (2011), Karma (2011), Absorption: Human Nature and Buddhist Liberation (2012), How the Brahmins Won: From Alexander to the Guptas (2016), A Śabda Reader: Language in Classical Indian Thought (2019), Studies in the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha (2024), Extreme religious behaviours: Where religion and biological evolution clash (2024), Compendium of All Philosophies: The Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha translated (in press).
