Indology

The beginnings of the study of India by travellers from outside the subcontinent date back at least to Megasthenes (ca. 350–290 BC), a Greek ambassador of the Seleucids to the court of Chandragupta (ruled 322-298 BC), founder of the Mauryan Empire.[2] Based on his life in India Megasthenes composed a four-volume Indica, fragments of which still exist, and which influenced the classical geographers Arrian, Diodor and Strabo.[2] Megasthenes reported that the caste system dominated an essentially illiterate India.[3][4]

Islamic Golden Age scholar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Al-Biruni (973–1048) in Tarikh Al-Hind (Researches on India) recorded the political and military history of India and covered India's cultural, scientific, social and religious history in detail.[5] He studied the anthropology of India, engaging in extensive participant observation with various Indian groups, learning their languages and studying their primary texts, and presenting his findings with objectivity and neutrality using cross-cultural comparisons.[6]

Indology as generally understood by its practitioners[7] began in the later Early Modern period and incorporates essential features of modernity, including critical self-reflexivity, disembedding mechanisms and globalization, and the reflexive appropriation of knowledge.[8] An important feature of Indology since its beginnings in the late eighteenth century has been the development of networks of academic communication and trust[9] through the creation of learned societies like the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the creation of learned journals like the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

One of the defining features of Indology is the application of scholarly methodologies developed in European Classical Studies or "Classics" to the languages, literatures and cultures of South Asia.

In the wake of eighteenth century pioneers like William Jones, Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Gerasim Lebedev or August Wilhelm Schlegel, Indology as an academic subject emerged in the nineteenth century, in the context of British India, together with Asian studies in general affected by the romantic Orientalism of the time. The Asiatic Society was founded in Calcutta in 1784, Société Asiatique founded in 1822, the Royal Asiatic Society in 1824, the American Oriental Society in 1842, and the German Oriental Society (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft) in 1845, the Japanese Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies[10] in 1949.

Sanskrit literature included many pre-modern dictionaries, especially the Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana of Amarasiṃha, but a milestone in the Indological study of Sanskrit literature was publication of the St. Petersburg Sanskrit-Wörterbuch during the 1850s to 1870s. Translations of major Hindu texts in the Sacred Books of the East began in 1879. Otto von Böhtlingk's edition of Pāṇini's grammar appeared in 1887. Max Müller's edition of the Rigveda appeared in 1849–75. Albrecht Weber commenced publishing his pathbreaking journal Indologische Studien in 1849, and in 1897 Sergey Oldenburg launched a systematic edition of key Sanskrit texts, "Bibliotheca Buddhica".

German indologists arbitrarily identified "layers" in the Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita with the objective of fueling European anti-Semitism via the popular Aryan invasion theory.[11] This required equating Brahmins with Jews, resulting in anti-Brahmanism.[11]

From the late 16th century to the late 18th century, Hinduism was seen as highly on civilization and scholarly basis. But after the 19th century, western scholars often criticized India and Hinduism without ever visiting India or reading Hindu scriptures (i.e. E. M. Forster). As with many academic subjects which seem to have no direct bearing on modern concerns, Indology has come in for criticism. This has prompted a vigorous response from a number of eminent scholars, among them J. Bronkhorst.[12]

• Michel Danino
• Koenraad Elst (1959–present), Hindutva researcher and debater, supporter of the Out of India theory
• Georg Feuerstein
• David Frawley
• Rajiv Malhotra
• Shrikant Talageri
• Hans T. Bakker

• South/Southeast Asia Library. "South Asia Resources". USA: University of California, Berkeley.
• "South Asian Studies". Research Guides. Los Angeles: University of California.
• "South & Southeast Asian Studies Research Guides". New York, USA: Columbia University Libraries. Archived from the original on 12 August 2014. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
• Library. "India Studies". Topic Guides. UK: London School of Economics and Political Science. Archived from the original on 26 August 2014.
• "South Asia". Subject Guides. School of Oriental and African Studies Library, University of London.
• "South Asia". Oxford LibGuides. Oxford, UK: University of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries.
• "South/Southeast Asia". Research Guides. USA: University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.