First Words, Last Words: New Theories for Reading Old Texts in Sixteenth-Century India. By Yigal Bronner and Lawrence McCrea

Abstract

In First Words, Last Words, Yigal Bronner and Lawrence McCrea expand on the trending topic of intellectual life in early modern India by discussing in detail the scholastic debate on scriptural interpretation and the role of sequence between the sixteenth-century Dualists, defended by Vyāsatīrtha and Vijayīndratīrtha, and the Nondualists, represented by Appayya Dīkṣita. They present this complex topic with a finesse that will please scholars seasoned in the algebraic complexities of hermeneutics across religious traditions, and with a fluency that can excite academics interested in the intellectual innovativeness of historical South Asia. Their approach focuses on the quest for newness in early modern Indian scholarship which continues to be described as traditionalist even in recent studies that seek to challenge such view (e.g. Pollock 1985, 2001 and Ganeri 2011, 2008; pp. 6–11). By discussing also parallel hermeneutic issues of sequence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, they show that social and institutional traditionalising forces were at play in religious traditions across the globe. This contextualisation takes Indic philology out of its too often isolated place. Nevertheless, the discussion from India on its own can fascinate a range of scholars.