Messages from the Deep: The west Encounters the Rig-veda

Language: English
Pages: 286

About the Book
This volume reviews from the postcolonial position, the event of the culture confrontation between the modern West and ancient India between the enlightened Europe triumphant in expansionist adventures, and India with a millennia-old culture. Debilitated and decadent at that point of time. The probing analysis of the Western scholars' encounter with India. Particularly of Max Muller's reading of the Rig-vela, brings out the complex nature of the interaction: the study unravels the layered narrative of the West's epistemic conquest of the alien mode. The situation here the author argues, had been more challenging to the West than in other sites of colonization. India with her vast and undeniably rich tradition, had presented an "other" more formidable than in other parts of the planet. The experience was complex: there were contrary pulls, both intellectual and imperial. The "new knowledge" that emerged, the knowledge that, Max Muller asserted, had marked a "renaissance", grew into a text and a sub-text. "Iridology" records the spectacle of the epistemic engagement. Understanding the nature and the full impact of this event is of vital importance in comprehending colonization as a global historical process.
About the Author
Sati Chatterjee, formerly of the Department of English, Jadavpur University, has been engaged for the last couple of decades in culture studies. A published author on the Dharma Sastras and the Upanishads, Professor Chatterjee edited the compilation of Sri Aurobindo texts entitled Sri Aurobindo: a Postcolonial Reader published by The Centre of Sri Aurobindo Studies, Department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University in association with the National Council of Education, Bengal, in 2015. Her recent research publications includ