Summary

What are the indigenous knowledge systems in South Asia that map onto the English word “science”? How did such systems and the knowledge-making practices associated with them change with the English East India Company’s colonization of the region? What do we mean when we speak of “colonial science” in South Asia? The speakers at this workshop will address these questions by examining Sanskrit, vernacular, and Indo-Muslim knowledge systems such as ayurveda, unani and jyotihsastra, tracing the changes produced in them once they were appropriated by western categories of knowledge.

The papers will focus on a variety of themes including the guru-shishya relationship in ayurveda, the philological activities of nineteenth-century editors of ayurvedic texts, the changes in the technical vocabulary of mathematical astronomy under colonialism and the geographical imagination of eighteenth-century Orientalism in India. The workshop will also include a session in which speakers will introduce and discuss primary sources in the South Asian languages used by them.

The main aims of the workshop are: identifying pre-colonial forms of thought considered systematic knowledge/science; tracing their careers in the colonial world; and charting the new scientific knowledge forms and the practices associated with them that colonialism engendered.

Speakers include:

Seema Alavi, University of Delhi

Anthony Cerulli, Hobart & William Smith Colleges

Pratik Chakrabarti, University of Manchester

Projit Bihari Mukharji, University of Pennsylvania

Cristina Pecchia, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Kim Plofker, Union College, Schenectady

Joydeep Sen, University of Manchester

D. Senthil Babu, French Institute, Pondicherry

Diana Lange, Humboldt University

Papers will be pre-circulated but each speaker will also make a 15-minute presentation on their paper after which the floor will be open for discussion.

You can download the abstracts via the download section at top right.

With best wishes,

Minakshi Menon

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science