Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c4: Acknowledgements
Vāda in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c4
- Language
- English
Acknowledgements
c4.1
I am thankful to the authorities of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, specially its Director, Chetan Singh and Secretary Sunil Verma for their generous support during my stay at Shimla; to Premchand, the Librarian of IIAS and its efficient staff for taking care to make the reference material for this work available to me. My friend Manabendu Banerjee, one of the senior most Sanskrit scholars in the country today, has been immensely helpful as the General Secretary of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata by providing valuable source material. The shocking news of his sudden demise came after I had already gone through the final proofs of this work. A tremendous loss indeed. J.B. Shah readily provided me some important Jaina texts on *vāda* from his institution — the L.D. Institute of Indology. I am indebted to Uma Maheshwari for drawing my attention to *Nīlakeśī* (*Neelakesi*) — the Tamil text and providing me her copy of its abridged English version; to Arindam Chakravarti for providing me with a copy of Waymann's paper on *The Rules of Debate According to Asaṅga*; to Madhav M. Deshpande for kindly sending me the copies of two of his papers which have been useful for my work; for Lala Lajpat Rai's assessment of Dayanand I have consulted Kundan Tuteja; Balram Shukla has been my only source for the treatises in Persian and Urdu, he read and explained to me the relevant passages from *Dabistan-e-Mazahib* and *Mubahisa-e-Hudusa-e-duniya*. Thanks to Vasant Kumar M. Bhatta for drawing my attention to Esther Solomon's work on Indian dialectics and to Harsha Dev Madhav for arranging to send me the two volumes of her work. Rajendra Nanavati, Prashanta Dave and Pravin Pandya went through the rough draft and discussed some of the issues emerging out of this work. Prof. B.K. Bhattacharya not only drew my attention to the *Hindu-Turk-Saṁvāda* of Eknātha, he also made me available the copy of the paper by Elleanor Zellior on this poem. I have no words to thank Shatavadhani R. Ganesh. He pointed out various lacunae in my monograph after going through it carefully, and also gave a number of suggestions. I am also benefited by some positive suggestions by Prof. Shashiprabha Kumar.
c4.2
Finally, I owe this work to the person who stands behind all my endeavours and who has carried *vāda* with me for the last forty years — my wife Satya. She allowed me to stay at Shimla, which was neither easy for her, nor me. The present work, with all its short- comings and drawbacks, together with some of the breakthroughs that it could make, was possible because of her magnanimity.