Papers by Lawrence McCrea
The Encyclopedia of the Novel
Routledge eBooks, Jun 22, 2022
The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, 2016
The Indian Economic Social History Review, 2013
South Asian History and Culture, 2014
The early sixteenth century saw a dramatic rise in the worldly fortunes and intellectual influenc... more The early sixteenth century saw a dramatic rise in the worldly fortunes and intellectual influence of Dvaita Vedānta, principally through the career of the great scholar Vyāsatīrtha (c. 1460–1539 AD). With exhaustive precision, he mapped the full range of philosophical opinion ranged against the tenets of the Dvaita system, not only dating from Madhva’s time, but stretching back to earlier Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita interpretations of Vedānta, as well as the views of Mīmāṃsakas, grammarians, and logicians on more general philosophical and hermeneutical topics. He broke with the practice of his forerunners in the Dvaita tradition, who made few direct references to specific authors and texts from rival traditions and directed their criticisms toward a generic and abstracted representation of a single rival tradition, Advaita Vedānta. In crafting his elaborate surveys, Vyāsatīrtha created what was in effect a systematic doxography of Advaita Vedānta, far more detailed, sophisticated, and historically sensitive than had ever yet been devised by the Advaitins themselves. Yet, while Vyāsatīrtha’s historical survey of Advaita opinion was without precedent, it was certainly not without a sequel. Quite soon after Vyāsatīrtha’s time, the first (and perhaps only) major internal historical doxography of Advaita was produced – Appayya Dīkṣita’s Śātrasiddhāntaleśasaṃgraha. Appayya was acutely conscious of Vyāsatīrtha’s work, which formed the direct target of much of his vicious anti-Dvaita polemic. He was also clearly much influenced by him, both in his treatment of specific topics and in his overall methodology. It is likely that Appayya’s own markedly ‘historical turn’ in his treatment of Advaita was at least partly inspired by Vyāsatīrtha’s pioneering efforts, and a close examination of their works does in fact reveal significant links in their construction of the history of Advaita. The historical/doxographic method displayed most dramatically in the Śāstrasiddhāntaleśasaṃgraha is evident in his other works as well. It played an important role in his remoulding of standard positions in his Alaṃkāra and Mīmāṃsā works as well as his Vedānta ones and became in succeeding generations one of the signal features of the ‘navya’ movements in all of these disciplines. Hence, among his many other accomplishments, Vyāsatīrtha may well be seen as a pioneer in the new brand of historicist scholarship that was to become one of the hallmarks of the ‘new intellectuals’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Journal of Hindu Studies, 2015
Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2014
Apart from his voluminous, immensely learned, and spectacularly successful contributions to the f... more Apart from his voluminous, immensely learned, and spectacularly successful contributions to the fields of Hermeneutics (Mīmāṁ sā), non-dualist Metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta), and poetics, the sixteenth century South Indian polymath Appayyadīkṡita is famed for reviving from obscurity the moribund Ś aivite Vedānta tradition represented by the (thirteenth century?) Brahmasūtrabhāṣya of Ś rīkaṅt˙ha. Appayya's voluminous commentary on this work, his Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, not only reconstitutes Ś rīkaṅt˙ha's system, but radically transforms it, making it into a springboard for Appayya's own highly original critiques of standard views of Mīmāṁ sā and Vedānta. Appayya addresses long sections of his commentary to matters dealt with glancingly or not at all in the root text, drawing conclusions which Ś rīkaṅt˙ha nowhere endorses. Furthermore, the distinctive positions Appayya develops in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā feed into Appayya's other works in ways that have so far been largely ignored by modern scholars. For example, most or all the discussions Appayya's Pūrvottaramīmāṃsāvādanakṣatramālā, twenty-seven essays on scattered topics in Mīmāṁ sā and Vedānta, build on arguments first advanced in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā-most notably Appayya's totally original theory of the signification of adjectives, first developed in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, the full elaboration and defense of which takes up fully sixteen of the twenty-seven essays that make up the Pūrvottaramīmāṃsāvādanakṣatramālā.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2004
... transient emotional states associated with the more persistent emotions on which rasa is base... more ... transient emotional states associated with the more persistent emotions on which rasa is based (eg-in the case of love-joy, longing, anxiety ... Even a little bit of misfortune [vipal-lavo 'pi ], ceaselessly sprinkled with the water of tears/ sprinkled with water ceaselessly brought, grows ...
The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 2013
This article considers the implications of Kalhaṇa’s statement that in his great poetic history ‘... more This article considers the implications of Kalhaṇa’s statement that in his great poetic history ‘śāntarasa rules supreme’. Kalhaṇa’s identification of the emotional mood he seeks to cultivate has often been noted, but its implications for Kalhaṇa’s historical vision have seldom been discussed in depth. In framing the aesthetic content of his work in terms of śāntarasa, the aestheticised emotion of ‘quiescence’, Kalhaṇa links it with the only śāntarasa poem acknowledged by the poeticians of Kashmir at the time—the Mahābhārata . The Mahābhārata is the great canonical example of such a poem, first discussed as such by Ānandavardhana in his Dhvanyāloka . On Ānandavardhana’s reading, the Mahābhārata is to be seen as a śāntarasa text because, through the lamentable ends to which even the ‘victors’ in its cataclysmic war are reduced, it inculcates despair with all worldly endeavour, inducing readers to turn instead to the path of renunciation. By explicitly invoking śāntarasa, Kalhaṇa plac...
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2013
planet-austria.at
... says Śabara, “human statements have no authority, just like the statements of congenitally bl... more ... says Śabara, “human statements have no authority, just like the statements of congenitally blind people regarding ... śraddheyārthe 'pi kalpayet || tenāpi pāratantryeṇa sādhitā syāt pramāṇatā | prāmāṇyaṃ cet svayaṃ tasya kāpekṣānyendriyādiṣu || yathaivātrendriyādibhyaḥ ...
Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, 2019
Recent years have witnessed much debate about the best way to make sense of Dharmakīrti's apparen... more Recent years have witnessed much debate about the best way to make sense of Dharmakīrti's apparent diversity of philosophical positions regarding the status of mind-independent objects: at some times he appears to argue in ways that presuppose the existence of such objects, while at others he argues against them. Several approaches have been proposed to account for this apparent contradiction in Dharmakīrti's various statements regarding ontology. Most famously John Dunne (2004), building on earlier interpretive strategies suggested by Georges Dreyfus (1997) and Sara McClintock (2003), has suggested that we should see such positions as ranged along a "sliding scale" of hierarchically arranged stances, in which "more accurate descriptions of what we perceive and think supersede less accurate ones." He finds in the Pramāṇavārttika four such levels of analysis: "The Views of Ordinary Persons," "the Abhidharma Typology," "External Realism" and "Epistemic Idealism." Each of these levels is said to give way to the next through a specific kind of "mereological" transition argument, which shows that certain entities accepted as real on a given ontological level cannot be accounted for either as unitary or as multiform-as "one or many"-forcing one to abandon this ontology and ascend to the next, higher level of analysis. Dunne's views have provoked much discussion and several significant critiques. I will mention here specifically only Kellner (2011) Arnold (2008). Kellner challenges the uniformity of the "mereological" model for ascending the levels, among others discussing a specific idealist argument of Dharmakīrti, showing that there is no way to satisfactorily distinguish definitionally between the supposedly external object of a cognition and the immediately preceding cognition (samanantara-pratyaya) that gives rise to it, since both are causes of the awareness, and resemble it in form. Arnold questions whether the third, external realist level is philosophically viable, even as a theoretical alternative to the "epistemic idealist" level, to which he believes it inevitably reduces. But neither of them, or any other critic of the sliding scale so far as I know, questions the hierarchy itself-in particular the idea that the idealist or Yogācāra position set forth at certain points in the Pramāṇavārttika and Pramāṇaviniścaya is meant to be presented as clearly and unambiguously preferable to the external realist, "Sautrāntika" or bāhyārthavāda level. It is this widespread assumption I wish here to call into question. On Dunne's view, the external realist or "Sautrāntika" arguments Dharmakīrti often relies upon are there only as preliminary, conditional positions-as stepping stones which invariably give way through a specific kind of "transition argument" to the more accurate and more soteriologically beneficial idealist or Yogācāra position which represents Dharmakīrti's real view. Dunne characterizes the interpretive strategy that leads him to this conclusion as one of a "hermeneutics of charity." 1 As Dunne explains this, 1
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Papers by Lawrence McCrea