Johannes Bronkhorst
Biographic Data
| ID | 459433 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Johannes Bronkhorst |
| GIVEN NAMES | Johannes |
| FAMILY NAME | Bronkhorst |
| SIGNATURE | BRONKHORST J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lausanne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5223-4090 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 145 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 70 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Human Behaviors That Reduce Evolutionary Fitness
This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on asceticism, written in response to A. K. Petersen's contribution “Asceticism in Human Evolution,” argues that the word evolution should not be used in religious studies for both genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Petersen's article uses the word primarily in the second sense, even though universal features of human societies like asceticism should be explained instead in terms of genet…
Compendium of All Philosophies: The Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha Translated
Extreme Religious Behaviours: Where Religious Practice and Biological Evolution Clash
Certain religious behaviours clearly reduce biological fitness. These behaviours include celibacy along with various forms of asceticism, and rituals that harm the performer. Such behaviours are found in widely different cultures. How is this possible? This book shows that these behaviours (as is religion in general) are by-products of features of the human mind whose evolutionary fitness is beyond doubt and explores those features. Which are tho…
Two Uses of Anekāntavāda
The thesis I will present is that, whatever its exact origins, the anekāntavāda was primarily (though not exclusively) used for two purposes: (1) to solve the “paradox of causality”, and (2) to classify non-Jaina systems of thought. The earliest texts in which the doctrine occurs present it as a solution to the paradox of causality. Only later do we find its use to classify non-Jaina philosophies
The role of absorption in making God real
Absorption is a central term in Tanya Luhrmann's How God Becomes Real.Absorption, we read, is "a human capacity-an orientation-that can be both innate and trained" (p.58).It is a "capacity to be immersed in the world of the senses, inner and outer-and those who have a talent for it and who train to develop it are more likely to experience invisible others as present" (p.60).The Tellegen Absorption Scale measures "a character trait, a disposition …
The Buddhist Noble Truths: Are They True
Scholarship has not so far raised the question whether the so-called Buddhist noble truths are actually true. The present article addresses this question in light of recent developments in neuroscience and psychology. It bases itself primarily on the theory proposed in some publications by Mark Solms, and on some other recent discoveries in psychology. Concentrating on the role of memories in the formation of personality, it draws attention to th…
Logic and language in Indian religions
This article concentrates on certain beliefs that many Indian thinkers implicitly accepted and that show up in an analysis of reasoned arguments they presented. These beliefs concerned the relationship between language and reality. For Brahmanical thinkers, who owed their privileged position in society in great part to their mastery of texts — the Veda — that were deemed to be directly connected to reality, this relationship between language and …
Whence karma
How did the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution come into existence? W. D. Whitney called it 'one of the most difficult questions in the religious history of India', and Richard Salomon described it, a century later, as 'the single greatest problem of Indological studies'. Scholars have proposed textual continuities leading up to texts that give expression to this belief, but questions can be and have been raised about such continuities. Wor…
Mystical Experience
This paper proposes to study mystical experience by contrasting it with "ordinary" experience, i.e., with standard consciousness. It emphasises the construed nature of standard consciousness and the role that the mutual connectedness of mental contents plays in its construction. It then shows that removal of the factors that are responsible for the "making" of standard consciousness accounts for the principal features of mystical experience; thes…
The Structure of the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha
This article shows in detail that the widely held view according to which the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha has a hierarchical structure is mistaken. It further argues that at least some parts of the texts were independent essays before being incorporated into the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha
The Religious Predisposition
This article first predicts, on the basis of an analysis of deep absorption, a number of features of mystical and related states of consciousness. It then observes that these very same features appear in beliefs held by people who have never experienced deep absorption. Moreover, many people engage in activities that, though not normally leading to deep absorption, bring about lesser states of absorption. The article will propose an answer to the…
Correcting the Text of the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha
Attempts have been made to correct the text of the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha on the basis of the texts that its author used—and sometimes refers to by name—while composing his work. This procedure is promising in texts like the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha , which makes abundant use of other works, and might in principle give results that are independent of, and prior to, the detailed study of its manuscripts. A closer investigation shows that this procedure …
Innovation in Indian Philosophy in Context
This article draws attention to the fact, often overlooked, that innovation is not foreign to the history of Indian philosophy. Three such episodes are briefly discussed (in reverse chronological order): (1) the innovations introduced by Raghunātha and his followers in the Nyāya school of thought (ca. 1500 CE); (2) the innovations that gave rise to satkāryavāda, pariṇāmavāda, śūnyavāda, anekāntavāda and other philosophical positions (early centur…
Asian Traditions of Meditation
La linguistique indienne: Perspectives européennes et indiennes
Ce texte regarde la linguistique indienne de trois perspectives différentes : 1.Les réactions européennes à sa découverte vers la fin du XVIIIème siècle et après; 2.Ce qu’elle, et plus spécifiquement la grammaire sanscrite, signifiait dans son contexte indien; 3.L’influence qu’elle a exercée sur d’autres domaines de pensée, spécialement la philosophie indienne. Il s’avère que les auteurs européens avaient, et dans une certaine mesure continuent à…
Brahmanism: Its place in ancient Indian society
This article shows how Brahmanism was a regional tradition, confined to the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, that passed through a difficult period-which it barely survived-roughly between the time of Alexander and the beginning of the Common Era. It then reinvented itself, in a different shape. No longer primarily a sacrificial tradition, it became a mainly socio-political ideology that borrowed much (including the belief in rebirt…
Asian Traditions of Meditation
Meditation has flourished in different parts of the world ever since the foundations of the great civilizations were laid. It played a vital role in the formation of Asian cultures that trace much of their heritage to ancient India and China. This volume brings together for the first time studies of the major traditions of Asian meditation as well as material on scientific approaches to meditation. It delves deeply into the individual traditions …
Can Religion be Explained
This article claims that the study of religion has overlooked a feature of the human mind that may yet help to explain certain aspects of religion. Awareness, it is here argued, can vary along a dimension that is characterized by the density of associations and other inputs that accompany it. The mechanism behind this is concentration, including the stronger form of concentration here called absorption. Absorption has cognitive effects, and is at…
The Mahābhārata and the Revival of Brahmanism
Mīmāṃsāsūtra and Brahmasūtra
The Correspondence Principle and Its Critics
Rites without Symbols
In this article the argument is that there are rites, or parts of rites, that can be understood by all concerned without recourse to symbolical interpretation. This position is illustrated with the help of examples from different cultures and religions that impose a social hierarchy: typically there is one person or party that is superior, another one that is inferior. The initiator of such rites can be the superior or the inferior person/party. …
Studies on Bhartṛhari, 9: Vākyapadīya 2.119 and the Early History of Mīmāṃsā
Chapter Three. Buddhism Confronted With Brahmanism
The attitude of both Brahmanism and Buddhism toward the sciences was complex. This chapter offers a first analysis, taking as point of departure the attitude toward the sciences in the Christian Middle Ages. Sometime during the early centuries ce, the Buddhists of northwestern India adopted Sanskrit. The present chapter argues that this transformation cannot be dissociated from the confrontation with Brahmanism that Buddhism underwent, and will p…
Chapter One. Introduction: Buddhism Before The New Brahmanism
Buddhism, we are often told, was a reaction against Vedic Brahmanism. Vedic Brahmanism is the religion that finds expression in the Veda, an immense corpus of texts. Vedic Brahmanism, is much older than Buddhism and was indeed the dominant religion in northern India. However, the Brahmins, did not occupy a dominant position in the area in which the Buddha preached his message, and this message was not, therefore, a reaction against brahmanical th…
Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India
Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism
For many centuries Buddhism and Brahmanism coexisted in the Indian subcontinent. This book concentrates on the way in which the two, after an initial period of relative independence, confronted each other, both in and around the royal courts and in society at large. In this confrontation, Buddhism was strong in philosophical debate, but could not compete with Brahmanism in the services it could provide to the centres of political power, primarily…
BHAOJI DkIta On SphoA
Brahmanism: Its place in ancient Indian society
This article shows how Brahmanism was a regional tradition, confined to the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, that passed through a difficult period-which it barely survived-roughly between the time of Alexander and the beginning of the Common Era. It then reinvented itself, in a different shape. No longer primarily a sacrificial tradition, it became a mainly socio-political ideology that borrowed much (including the belief in rebirt…
Etymology and Magic: Yāska's Nirukta, Plato's Cratylus, and the Riddle of Semantic Etymologies
Semantic etymologies are to be distinguished from historical etymologies. A historical etymology presents the origin or early history of a word. Semantic etymologies do something completely different. They connect one word with one or more others which are believed to elucidate its meaning. Semantic etymologies are practically universal in pre-modern cultures, and there are treatises in some cultures - such as Yāska's Nirukta in ancient India, Pl…
Can Religion be Explained
This article claims that the study of religion has overlooked a feature of the human mind that may yet help to explain certain aspects of religion. Awareness, it is here argued, can vary along a dimension that is characterized by the density of associations and other inputs that accompany it. The mechanism behind this is concentration, including the stronger form of concentration here called absorption. Absorption has cognitive effects, and is at…
Dharma and Abhidharma
Most commonly it is presented as a list of beneficial psychic characteristics (kuśala dharma) or simply psychic characteristics (dharma). Sometimes practising the items of this list is stated to be a precondition for liberation from the intoxicants (āśrava). Or else the list is said to constitute the 'cultivation of the road' (mārgabhāvanā). In a few instances the items of the list are characterized as 'jewels' (ratna). This characterization occu…
The Riddle of the Jainas and ājīvikas in Early Buddhist Literature
Asceticism, Religion, and Biological Evolution
This article initially argues that asceticism and related phenomena in classical India and in Christian antiquity suggest the existence of a universal, shared, innate human predisposition. After providing descriptive data on the widespread belief in a soul distinct from the body, along with cross-cultural accounts of ascetic practices, the article turns to a general reflection concerning the characteristics of an innate disposition termed the 'as…
Mystical Experience
This paper proposes to study mystical experience by contrasting it with "ordinary" experience, i.e., with standard consciousness. It emphasises the construed nature of standard consciousness and the role that the mutual connectedness of mental contents plays in its construction. It then shows that removal of the factors that are responsible for the "making" of standard consciousness accounts for the principal features of mystical experience; thes…
The Religious Predisposition
This article first predicts, on the basis of an analysis of deep absorption, a number of features of mystical and related states of consciousness. It then observes that these very same features appear in beliefs held by people who have never experienced deep absorption. Moreover, many people engage in activities that, though not normally leading to deep absorption, bring about lesser states of absorption. The article will propose an answer to the…
The orthoepic diaskeuasis of the gveda and the date of Pāini
Compendium of All Philosophies: The Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha Translated
The Buddhist Noble Truths: Are They True
Scholarship has not so far raised the question whether the so-called Buddhist noble truths are actually true. The present article addresses this question in light of recent developments in neuroscience and psychology. It bases itself primarily on the theory proposed in some publications by Mark Solms, and on some other recent discoveries in psychology. Concentrating on the role of memories in the formation of personality, it draws attention to th…
Logic and language in Indian religions
This article concentrates on certain beliefs that many Indian thinkers implicitly accepted and that show up in an analysis of reasoned arguments they presented. These beliefs concerned the relationship between language and reality. For Brahmanical thinkers, who owed their privileged position in society in great part to their mastery of texts — the Veda — that were deemed to be directly connected to reality, this relationship between language and …
Whence karma
How did the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution come into existence? W. D. Whitney called it 'one of the most difficult questions in the religious history of India', and Richard Salomon described it, a century later, as 'the single greatest problem of Indological studies'. Scholars have proposed textual continuities leading up to texts that give expression to this belief, but questions can be and have been raised about such continuities. Wor…
Rites without Symbols
In this article the argument is that there are rites, or parts of rites, that can be understood by all concerned without recourse to symbolical interpretation. This position is illustrated with the help of examples from different cultures and religions that impose a social hierarchy: typically there is one person or party that is superior, another one that is inferior. The initiator of such rites can be the superior or the inferior person/party. …
Is there Correlative Thought in Indian Philosophy
Is there correlative thought in Indian philosophy
Why Is There Philosophy in India
Sāmkhya in the Abhidharmakośa Bhāsya
The Two Sources of Indian Asceticism
This study argues that the Indian Ascetic traditions have two independent sources, the one Vedic, the other non-vedic. This point of view has been expressed here and there in the scholarly literature, but it has never yet been argued in detail on the bssis of textual evidence. The primary evidence is as follows: Early Indian Literature - Primarily the Epics, Buddhist and Jaina Litrature - explicitly differentiates between two types of ascetics, w…
Nāgārjuna and the Naiyāyikas
Some observations on the Padapāha of the gveda
JOHANNES BRONKHORST S O M E O B S E R V A T I O N S O N T H E PADAP,~T. H A O F T H E . R G V E D A * Abbreviations P. P - .al:hnian sQtra Pp. Padap~i.tha R V .Rg~eda Sp. Sa .mhit~p~t.ha The abbreviations for journals etc. are the ones explained in George Cardona's PdninL A Survey o f Research, Mouton, The Hague-Pads, 1976, pp. 5 - 1 2 . 1.1. In another article (Bronkhorst, 1981 : w 1 ; see also Bronkhorst, 1982) I have shown that the
Asiddha in the Aṣṭādhyāyī: A misunderstanding among the traditional commentators
Meaning entries in dha?tup?tha
The orthoepic diaskeuasis of the gveda and the date of Pāini
The variationist Pāini and vedic: A review article
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Some observations on the Padapāha of the gveda
JOHANNES BRONKHORST S O M E O B S E R V A T I O N S O N T H E PADAP,~T. H A O F T H E . R G V E D A * Abbreviations P. P - .al:hnian sQtra Pp. Padap~i.tha R V .Rg~eda Sp. Sa .mhit~p~t.ha The abbreviations for journals etc. are the ones explained in George Cardona's PdninL A Survey o f Research, Mouton, The Hague-Pads, 1976, pp. 5 - 1 2 . 1.1. In another article (Bronkhorst, 1981 : w 1 ; see also Bronkhorst, 1982) I have shown that the
Nirukta, Uādi Sūtra, and Aādhyāyī: A review article
Nāgārjuna and the Naiyāyikas
Dharma and Abhidharma
Most commonly it is presented as a list of beneficial psychic characteristics (kuśala dharma) or simply psychic characteristics (dharma). Sometimes practising the items of this list is stated to be a precondition for liberation from the intoxicants (āśrava). Or else the list is said to constitute the 'cultivation of the road' (mārgabhāvanā). In a few instances the items of the list are characterized as 'jewels' (ratna). This characterization occu…
Panels of the VIIth World Sanskrit Conference
Panels of the VIIth World Sanskrit Conference
The Two Sources of Indian Asceticism
This study argues that the Indian Ascetic traditions have two independent sources, the one Vedic, the other non-vedic. This point of view has been expressed here and there in the scholarly literature, but it has never yet been argued in detail on the bssis of textual evidence. The primary evidence is as follows: Early Indian Literature - Primarily the Epics, Buddhist and Jaina Litrature - explicitly differentiates between two types of ascetics, w…
Sāmkhya in the Abhidharmakośa Bhāsya
Les éléments linguistiques porteurs de sens dans la tradition grammaticale du sanskrit
This article deals with the changing ideas about meaning bearing elements in language from Pânini through Patanjali to Bhartrhari. For Pânini the grammatical constituents of words verbal roots, nominal stems and suffixes are the primary bearers of mening ; from their meanings the meanings of larger linguistic units such as words are derived. For Patanjali, on the other hand, the primary meaning bearing units are the words; grammatical constituent…
Studies on Bhartrhari, 8: Prākrta Dhvani and the Sāmkhya Tanmātras
The Riddle of the Jainas and ājīvikas in Early Buddhist Literature
Karma and teleology: A problem and its solutions in Indian philosophy
Asceticism, Religion, and Biological Evolution
This article initially argues that asceticism and related phenomena in classical India and in Christian antiquity suggest the existence of a universal, shared, innate human predisposition. After providing descriptive data on the widespread belief in a soul distinct from the body, along with cross-cultural accounts of ascetic practices, the article turns to a general reflection concerning the characteristics of an innate disposition termed the 'as…
Pānini and Euclid: Reflections on Indian Geometry
Etymology and Magic: Yāska's Nirukta, Plato's Cratylus, and the Riddle of Semantic Etymologies
Semantic etymologies are to be distinguished from historical etymologies. A historical etymology presents the origin or early history of a word. Semantic etymologies do something completely different. They connect one word with one or more others which are believed to elucidate its meaning. Semantic etymologies are practically universal in pre-modern cultures, and there are treatises in some cultures - such as Yāska's Nirukta in ancient India, Pl…
Early Buddhism. A new approach. The I of the Beholder. Sue Hamilton
Early Buddhism. A new approach. The I of the Beholder. Sue Hamilton. Curzon Press, Richmond, Surrey 2000. xi, 233 pp. pb. £16.99 ISBN 0-7007-1357-3
Discipliné par le débat
Water and ocean
No Abstract
Why Is There Philosophy in India
L'expression du moi dans les religions de l'Inde
Une évidente préoccupation de l'immobilité caractérise les religions indigènes de l'Inde. Dans certains courants cette préoccupation s'exprime sous forme de pratiques ascétiques ; dans d'autres on accepte l'existence d'une âme inactive, dont la connaissance est une condition nécessaire pour atteindre la libération. Le bouddhisme n'accepte ni ces pratiques ascétiques, ni la voie vers le salut par la connaissance d'une telle âme. Il ne réussit pour…
Some Uses of Dharma in Classical Indian Philosophy
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