Perenialism in Indology Today.

[Guest guest]

That Traditionalist Perennialism also informed Eliade's later work (as

did that of Georges Dumézil ) is suggested by one of his former

students. The student, by then himself a professor of religion, read

the proofs of a book he had written on early Taoism with dismay:

"Every other paragraph seemed to use the word `primordial' or some

classic Eliadean variant. I went through the proofs in a frenzy to

purge myself once and for all of the contamination of primordiality!"(

N. J. Girardot, "Smiles and Whispers," in Changing Religious Worlds,

ed. Rennie, p. 157.)

 

My question is, if someone knows how widespread Perenialism is among

Indologists today ?

 

For a Pereniliast approach see Steve Farmer and Michael Witzel;

 

http://www.safarmer.com/pico/

 

In Europe of course there are also organizations like "Synergies

Européennes",plus the earlier books by Georges Dumézil and Alain

Daniélou that where of a perenialist (Traditionalist in the sense of

historian Mark Sedgwick's book on the subject),nature.

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "ewynants" <ewynants> wrote:

>

> That Traditionalist Perennialism also informed Eliade's later work (as

> did that of Georges Dumézil ) is suggested by one of his former

> students....

>

> My question is, if someone knows how widespread Perenialism is among

> Indologists today ?

>

> For a Pereniliast approach see Steve Farmer and Michael Witzel

 

The webpage that you give in your post is to a book of mine (_Syncretism in the

West_, 1999) subtitled "the evolution of traditional religious, philosophical,

and

cosmological systems." It was published before I had done any collaborative work

with Michael Witzel. And "perennialist"?? Both that book and my collaborative

studies

with Michael sharply criticize such approaches (e.g., Eliade is criticized on

just this

issue in a well-known 2002 paper of ours) and instead develops models, as the

subtitle of my book implies, that are explicitly evolutionary in focus. Some of

our

models even involve computer simulations of the growth of manuscript traditions.

 

Evolutionary perspectives also underlie the sharply focused Indo-Eurasian

research

List (it was just opened two weeks ago, but it already has 300 members from

Indology, Iranology, Central Asian studies, Sinology, and a dozen other fields)

that

Michael Witzel, George Thompson, and I moderate at:

 

Indo-Eurasian_research

 

In any event, "perennialist" is about the last term that anyone who has ever

read any

of my studies would apply to me -- or to Michael Witzel either, whose studies of

the

Vedas (_Inside and Outside the Texts_ 1997) and countless papers in historical

linguistics also reflect strong evolutionary perspectives.

 

Best,

Steve Farmer