The term Indology (in German, Indologie) is often associated with German scholarship, and is used more commonly in departmental titles in German and continental European universities than in the anglophone academy. In the Netherlands, the term Indologie was used to designate the study of Indian history and culture in preparation for colonial service in the Dutch East Indies.
Some scholars distinguish Classical Indology from Modern Indology, the former more focussed on Sanskrit, Tamil and other ancient language sources, the latter on contemporary India, its politics and sociology.
The beginnings of the study of India by travellers from outside the subcontinent date back at least to Megasthenes (c. 350–290 BC), a Greek ambassador of the Seleucids to the court of Chandragupta (ruled 322-298 BC), founder of the Mauryan Empire.[2] Based on his life in India Megasthenes composed a four-volume Indica, fragments of which still exist, and which influenced the classical geographers Arrian, Diodor and Strabo.[2]
Indology as generally understood by its practitioners[5] began in the later Early Modern period and incorporates essential features of modernity, including critical self-reflexivity, disembedding mechanisms and globalization, and the reflexive appropriation of knowledge.[6] An important feature of Indology since its beginnings in the late eighteenth century has been the development of networks of academic communication and trust[7] through the creation of learned societies like the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the creation of learned journals like the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
One of the defining features of Indology is the application of scholarly methodologies developed in European Classical Studies or "Classics" to the languages, literatures and cultures of South Asia.
Sanskrit literature included many pre-modern dictionaries, especially the NāmaliṅgānuśāsanaofAmarasiṃha, but a milestone in the Indological study of Sanskrit literature was publication of the St. Petersburg Sanskrit-Wörterbuch during the 1850s to 1870s. Translations of major Hindu texts in the Sacred Books of the East began in 1879. Otto von Böhtlingk's edition of Pāṇini's grammar appeared in 1887. Max Müller's edition of the Rigveda appeared in 1849–1875. Albrecht Weber commenced publishing his pathbreaking journal Indologische Studien in 1849, and in 1897 Sergey Oldenburg launched a systematic edition of key Sanskrit texts, "Bibliotheca Buddhica".
Indologists typically attend conferences such as the American Association of Asian Studies, the American Oriental Society annual conference, the World Sanskrit Conference, and national-level meetings in the UK, Germany, India, Japan, France and elsewhere.
They may be members of such professional bodies as the American Oriental Society, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the Société Asiatique, the Deutsche Morgenlāndische Gesellschaft and others.
^Khan, M. S. (1976). "al-Biruni and the Political History of India". Oriens. 25/26. Brill: 86–115. doi:10.2307/1580658. JSTOR1580658.
^Ahmed, Akbar S. (February 1984). "Al-Beruni: The First Anthropologist". RAIN. 60 (60). Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland: 9–10. doi:10.2307/3033407. JSTOR3033407.
^Bechert, Heinz; Simson, Georg von; Bachmann, Peter (1993). Einführung in die Indologie: Stand, Methoden, Aufgaben (in German). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ISBN3534054660. OCLC33429713.
^Giddens, Anthony (1991). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press. OCLC874200328.
^Polanyi, Michael; Nye, Mary Jo (2015). Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN9780226232621. OCLC880960082.
^Chadha, Ashish (1 February 2011). "Conjuring a river, imagining civilisation: Saraswati, archaeology and science in India". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 45 (1): 55–83. doi:10.1177/006996671004500103. ISSN0069-9667. S2CID144701033.
Balagangadhara, S. N. (1994). "The Heathen in his Blindness..." Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion. Leiden, New York: E. J. Brill.
Balagangadhara, S. N. (2012). Reconceptualizing India studies. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Vishwa Adluri, Joydeep Bagchee: The Nay Science: A History of German Indology. Oxford University Press, New York 2014, ISBN978-0199931361 (Introduction, p. 1–29).
Joydeep Bagchee, Vishwa Adluri: "The passion of Paul Hacker: Indology, orientalism, and evangelism." In: Joanne Miyang Cho, Eric Kurlander, Douglas T McGetchin (Eds.), Transcultural Encounters Between Germany and India: Kindred Spirits in the Nineteenth Century. Routledge, New York 2013, p. 215–229.
Joydeep Bagchee: "German Indology." In: Alf Hiltebeitel (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Hinduism. Oxford University Press, New York 2014.
Chakrabarti, Dilip K.: Colonial Indology, 1997, Munshiram Manoharlal: New Delhi.
Jean Filliozat and Louis Renou – L'inde classique – ISBN B0000DLB66.
Halbfass, W. India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. SUNY Press, Albany: 1988
Inden, R. B. (2010). Imagining India. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press.
Vishwa Adluri, Joydeep Bagchee: The Nay Science: A History of German Indology. Oxford University Press, New York 2014, ISBN978-0199931361
Shourie, Arun. 2014. Eminent historians: their technology, their line, their fraud. HarperCollins. ISBN9789351365921
Trautmann, Thomas. 1997. Aryans and British India, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Windisch, Ernst. Geschichte der Sanskrit-Philologie und Indischen Altertumskunde. 2 vols. Strasbourg. Trübner, K.J., 1917–1920
Zachariae, Theodor. Opera minora zur indischen Wortforschung, zur Geschichte der indischen Literatur und Kultur, zur Geschichte der Sanskritphilologie. Ed. Claus Vogel. Wiesbaden 1977, ISBN3-515-02216-3.
