“Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonialism”

Professor Pollock will address Sanskrit intellectual history during the two centuries before the consolidation of European power. This period, from about 1550 to 1750, was one of the most dynamic in the history of Indian science and scholarship. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the dynamism was gone, and with it ended the capacity of Sanskrit knowledge to shape the thought world of South Asia. What made it impossible for one of the most remarkable intellectual cultures in world history to survive in the face of colonial modernity?