SI-1 paper abstract
Title: German Indology, Sanskrit and Nazi ideology
We first discuss Pollock’s work on the question of “German Indology, Sanskrit and Nazi ideology” in his paper “Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj” (1993). We critically examine his thesis on complicity of Sanskrit, through German Indology, for the Nazi genocide; other claims in the paper (such as German Indologists attributing degeneracy to India) are not addressed here, or briefly touched upon if at all. Using the propaganda model of the US media proposed by Herman and Chomsky (1988), we examine whether Pollock’s writings on this subject can best be explained from a propaganda model. We end the paper with a brief discussion to examine if and how traditional knowledge systems or Indic systems could have the protection that artistic works in principle enjoy – such as “moral rights”, a form of IPR. This has implications for Indic systems as many of them are in the informal domain and hence are subject to capture, disinformation or “digestion”.
SI-2 paper abstract
Title: Towards a Computational Theory of Rasa
Prof. Sheldon Pollock opines that Indian thinkers have neither attempted a robust theory for creativity nor did they have theory across kalā-s. We arque here against this opinion by sketching a computationally inspired theory of rasa (a work in progress), and attempt to uncover Indic insights over the ages in support of the theory. Finally, we illustrate it with examples from certain art forms.
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 An Initial Riposte
1.2 Outline of the Paper
1.3 Commonalities across painting and other arts as per Citra-sūtra
2 A Brief Introduction to Rasa
3 A High Level Theory for Rasa
3.1 Current theories of mind related to Rasa and synergistic models
4 Outline of a contemporaneous Indic theory for Rasa
4.1 The “atomic units” in the various art forms and higher level structures
4.2 A computer systems model for communication across multiple roles and multiple persons
4.3 Rasa in Music: an example
5 Computational Thinking and its relevance for Rasa
5.1 The Computational Basis of Rasa in Poetry
5.2 The Computational Basis of Rasa in Music
5.3 The Computational Basis of Rasa in Architecture
5.4 The Computational Basis of Rasa in Varied “Crafts”
6 Conclusions
APPENDIX
1 Brief background on Computational Thinking
2 Brief Background on Computational Thinking in Indic Tradition