Prof. Kapil Kapoor

Kapil KapoorProf. Kapoor is a former Professor of English, Centre for Linguistics and English (from 1996) and was designated as Concurrent Professor, Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2000 (the only Concurrent Professor at JNU). He has guided 42 PhDs and 30 MPhils.

He has been the Dean of the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, JNU, 1996–1999, rector (Pro-Vice-Chancellor) of JNU, 1999–2002. (Retired from JNU in 2005.), Editor-in-Chief of the 11-Volume Encyclopaedia of Hinduism (sponsored by Parmarth Niketan / India Heritage Research Foundation, USA) published in January 2012, Chief Editor of the Sahitya Akademi sponsored Encyclopaedia of Indian Poetics, a UNESCO project, under publication, Visiting Professor at the Irish Academy of Cultural Heritages, University of Ulster, U.K., 2005–2009, nominated Member, Advisory Board for India Studies, Trinity College, University of Dublin, nominated Birla Foundation Fellow in 2007, UGC Emeritus Fellow at JNU, his parent university, 2007-2009, adviser CBSE, New Delhi, for English since 2000, member governing body, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS), Shimla, nominated Member Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), nominated Satindra Singh Noor Fellow, Punjabi University, Patiala, 2011–2013, member of the Monitoring and Planning Committee of Central University of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, nominated member of the Academic Council of the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, and of the Executive Councils of Central University of Hyderabad and Gurukula Kangri, Haridwar, adviser at Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Vishwavidyalaya, Khanpur Kalan, Haryana, 2010–2014. Currently he has been nominated Member of Sanchi University Mentor Group (SUMG) / General Council of the Sanchi University of Buddhist and Indic Studies to be established at Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh.


Abstract of the talk

Only two ancient cultures have theorized about different knowledge domains such as language, dramaturgy, philosophy mathematics and astronomy. Besides, the ancient Hindus also theorized about other arts and involved minor technologies such as dance music, other modes of communication and fabrication of musical instruments, stage properties and masks etc. These ancient speculations served as the fountainheads in the subsequent systemic formulations of different disciplines of knowledge in both the tradition, India and Western.

The Indian tradition is characterized by the following lakshanas (markers):

  1. Continuity and cumulativeness (of texts and thinkers)
  2. Movement from observations to reflection to the formulation of an abstract explanatory principal.
  3. Evolution of discipline through the contribution of numerous thinkers in the form of descriptive texts ending in the formulation of an authentic primary text of the discipline, the text that often superseded the earlier texts to ensure economy of memorization in the oral tradition.
  4. Each discipline moved through given phases:
    1. Examination and statement of the different dimensions of a knowledge domain (in the form of numerous texts);
    2. Formulation of a seminal primary text;
    3. Explanation of the primary text in different types of commentaries;
    4. Constitution of recensions of the primary text along different parameters;
    5. Simplified, reorganized adaptation of the primary text;
    6. Translations of the primary text.
  5. On account of the virtual opacity of the primary text, tīkā-parampara (a series of successive interlinked commentaries on the primary text) evolved.
  6. The mode of enquiry was dialogic, in fact multi-logic, in a system of disputation (vāda), argument against the other points of view. In this framework, even when there was no opposing point of view, it was constructed by the thinker himself as the pūrva-paksha, to elaborate his own position.
  7. A unique feature has been a collaborative confrontational disputation over more than two millennia among the three Sampradāyas —the Brahman (Vedantic), the Bauddha and the Jaina schools of thought. The disputation rose over several issues such as the nature of reality, the sources of knowledge, the nature and sources of creativity, the elements that constitute and entity, the nature of the self, holistic knowledge of an object, ability or inability to know, the means of knowing the truth etc. In this sense, India’s intellectual tradition is eclectic and pluralistic.
  8. Required by the orality of the intellectual tradition, various techniques were developed and employed to maintain intact the knowledge texts in the memory, including the guru-shishya paramparā, with the result that important knowledge texts have come down intact even after three millennia if not more.
  9. In the long history India’s knowledge texts were repeatedly lost due to both text-internal and text-external factors. However repeatedly through the exertions of learned sages and thinkers the lost texts were reconstructed and recovered from the memories of the people. The last recoded event of this kind was Janamejeya’s nagayajña at Indraprastha in the place in Delhi known today as Nigam Bodh Ghat, which literally means ‘the river bank where the knowledge of Vedas [was recovered]’. And Max Müller said in the middle of the 19th century that even if all the copies of Rig-Veda were lost, Rig-Veda could be reconstructed from the minds of the people.

All this explains the cultural and civilizational continuity of India. Unlike in the West, in India there has been no ‘rupture’ either in ideas or vocabulary.India’s knowledge texts are empirical, i.e. based on actual observation of life. They are descriptive, not prescriptive, and they are composed in Sūtraic form, i.e. in highly abbreviated dense language. Hence they require a guru, a teacher, or tīkākāras, commentators to understand the text.

We shall be talking in this course about at least three texts: Pānini’s Ashtādhyāyī, Bharata’s Nātyashāstra, and a brief extracts from Bhartrhari’s Vākyapadīya.