The Nay Science A History of German Indology [Paperback]

The Nay Scienceoffers a new perspective on the problem of scientific method in the human sciences. Taking German Indological scholarship on theMahabharataand theBhagavadgitaas their example, Adluri and Bagchee develop a critique of the modern valorization of method over truth in the humanities.

The authors show how, from its origins in eighteenth-century Neo-Protestantism onwards, the critical method was used as a way of making theological claims against rival philosophical and/or religious traditions. Via discussions of German Romanticism, the pantheism controversy, scientific positivism, and empiricism, they show how theological concerns dominated German scholarship on the Indian texts. Indology functions as a test case for wider concerns: the rise of historicism, the displacement of philosophical concerns from thinking, and the belief in the ability of a technical method to produce truth.

Based on the historical evidence of the first part of the book, Adluri and Bagchee make a case in the second part for going beyond both the critical pretensions of modern academic scholarship and the objections of its post-structuralist or post-Orientalist critics. By contrasting German Indology with Plato's concern for virtue and Gandhi's focus on praxis, the authors argue for a conception of the humanities as a dialogue between the ancients and moderns and between eastern and western cultures.

Acknowledgments
Prologue

Introduction
A History of German Indology
The History of German Indology as a History of Method
The Origins of the Historical-Critical Method in the Neo-Protestantism of the Eighteenth Century
Defining the Scope of Inquiry
Plan of Study

1. The Search for an Urepos
Introduction
The First Phase of German Gita Reception
The Birth of German Mahabharata Studies
Ideas of Heroic Epic
The Indo-Germanic Epic
The Birth of Modern Mahabl£H