Book Description

In a traditional sense, the Indian institution of the "pandit" denoted an individual that was a scholar, teacher, adviser, spiritual adviser, specialist, and legal expert says Michaels (classical Indology, U. of Heidelberg, Germany). He presents 13 essays that are at once an examination of the role of the pandit in current Sanskrit scholarship and a festschrift to one particular pandit, K. Parameswara Aithal. The essays explore the nature of being a pandit, examine conflicts between western methods of scholarship and the pandit's approach to the acquisition and preservation of knowledge, and provide profile of past and present pandits. Distributed by South Asia Books. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR