2. India and Europe

Question 1

India Europe Connections

Answer 1

• major factor in current processes of globalization BUT ALSO:
• shaped by a long history of encounters and exchanges:
• hegemonic forms of imperialism
• nationalist contestations
• dissemination of technologies and material goods
• circulation of artefacts, texts, concepts and practices
• entangled production of historical narratives
• personal encounters between actors involved in these processes

Question 2

Cultural contact / interculturality

Answer 2

• “Perceiving” and “Understanding”the”Other”
• Reflection on one’s own forms of perception and categories of understanding

Question 3

Perception / Understanding

Answer 3

• “Stereotypes” * “Cliché”
• “Prejudice”
  => Taxonomies: Classifications / categories and forms of evaluation

Question 4

Xenologie / Xenology*

Answer 4

• Wilhelm Halbfass, Michael Harbsmeier
  Þ Forms and categories with which cultures / societies classify and evaluate “others” or “foreigners” within the framework of their self-representation
  Þ Changing attitudes: expressions of self-understanding, self- affirmation, self-criticism
  Þ The other “out there” and the other “at home” Þ Differences: “relational”
  *from Greek xenos, stranger

Question 5

Ethnocentrism

Answer 5

• Startingpoint: applicability and “correctness” of one’s own perspectives
• Greek “bárbaros”: to speak unintelligibly
• Sanskrit “mleccha”: ritually impure, nosocial transactions

Question 6

Xenology and Cosmography

Answer 6

• Description and localisation of own and foreign culture produces:
  Þ Cosmography: visualisations (maps etc.)
  Þ Fictional / Fantastic Elements (Imagination)

Question 7

India and “Paradise”

Answer 7

• The Christian tradition locates Paradise on Earth in the “East” and identifies the Ganges with the Paradise River Phison of the Garden of Eden
• Visualisation in the medieval mappa mundi

Question 8

India-Europe encounters

Answer 8

• In India there is no parallel interest in or speculation about Europe
  Þ No symmetry in India’s historical representation of encounters with Europe
  “India has at no time defined itself in relation to the other, nor acknowledged the other in its unassimilable otherness”
  (quoted in Halbfass 1988, p. 172)
• This process starts only in the 18th-19th c. with the establishment of colonial rule and “Westernization”

Question 9

Indian xenology

Answer 9

• India has never been isolated from the rest of the world and has since early times experienced encounters with the “other”
• Travels from India in the Mediterranean world in ancient and classical times, spread of Buddhism, “Greater India”
• Assimilation of foreigner groups within India (“Hinduization” of autochthonous outsiders)

Question 10

Words for foreigners

Answer 10

• Dāsa/dasyu (vs. ārya), eventually assimilated with śūdra
• Mleccha: foreign who is not part of the ritual, religious, social and linguistic community of the āryas, does not speak Sanskrit and does not follow Vedic norms, sometimes equated with demons (asura) → socio- religious exclusion
• Yavana (“Ionians”, Greeks or invaders from the North- West). Cited together with śaka, draviḍa, darada, pahlava and cīna. → descriptive concept. Explained as mixed or fallen members of the warrior caste (kṣatriya)

Question 11

Bhāratavarṣa

Answer 11

• “Land of the Descendants of King Bharata”
  Þ Name of the subcontinent in Sanskrit sources Þ Bhārat: Name for India after 1947 (Hindi)

Only in Bhāratavarṣa (India) exist:
* Law of karman
=> Heaven (svarga) and hells (naraka) Þ Possibility of “liberation”(mokṣa)
* Rules of caste society (dharma) and “ritual purity”

Question 12

Hindu cosmography

Answer 12

• Jambudvīpa (“Island continent of the rose-apple tree”)
  In the south of Jambudvīpa: => Bhāratavarṣa (India)