The pandit : traditional scholarship in India

Abstract

In January 1999, the distinguished scholar Pandit Dr Parameswara Aithal retired from his position at Heidelberg University. To mark this occasion, Professor Axel Michaels organised a symposium on the institution of the Pandit and the future of traditional Sanskrit scholarship in India and the West. Pt. Aithal, an internationally esteemed expert in Dharmashastra and manuscriptology, was born in Kota (Karnataka). He received his early Sanskrit education in the traditional method at home and became a staff member of the Adyar Library and Reserch Centre, Chennai, in 1962. In 1968, he joined the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, as a Sanskrit lecturer where he stayed for about thirty years. The present volume contains the learned papers of the conference which cover a wide range of topics: the pandit as a private scholar, university teacher, public intellectual or legal adviser; traditional ways of Sanskrit teaching and learning, especially the methods of memorisation and transfer of traditional knowledge; the relevance of traditional Sanskrit grammar for the learning of Sanskrit; the prestige of Sanskrit and the social standing of pandits; the special guru-shishya-relationship; the relationship between pandit and professor in academic systems; life histories of some well-known pandits such as Krishnashastri Chiplunkar, Hazari Prasad Dvivedi, Gopinath Kaviraj, V S Apte and others --the role of Tantrik pandits. The contributors of this Festschrifts are friends and colleagues of Pandit Aithal.

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