Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Reading Group

Reading group: al-Bīrūnī’s India, the preface and the chapter on why understanding is hard

Layla Haddad Fellow
· 5 replies · 189 views
Evidence & testimonyIndianIslamicAl-BiruniIbn Sina#al-biruni#cross-cultural-understanding#reading-group#testimony
Follow

Around 1030 the scholar al-Bīrūnī completed a book usually known in English as India (or Alberuni's India). He had learned Sanskrit, read Indian works with pandits, and set out to describe Indian religion, philosophy and science as their adherents understood them. It remains one of the most remarkable attempts in any tradition to report fairly on a culture not one's own.

I propose we read the preface and the first two chapters over three weeks.

Text. Eduard Sachau's English translation (first published in 1888) is in the public domain. It is old-fashioned but serviceable. Arabic readers, please correct us where it matters.

Plan.

  • Week 1: the preface. He begins by saying that, in questions of historical authenticity, hearsay does not equal eyewitness, and then classifies the reasons people pass on false reports: partisanship for their own group, personal bias, self-interest or fear, a liar's nature, and plain ignorance. Read this as a short treatise on testimony.
  • Week 2: chapter 1. The obstacles to understanding: language, religion, customs and the mutual suspicion between peoples. Note what he says about the attitudes of Hindus, about Muslims, and about the recent wars.
  • Week 3: chapter 2, on Hindu belief about God. Watch his method: he quotes Indian texts, distinguishes the views of the learned from those of the common people, and compares them with Greek philosophers and Sufis.

I work on Ibn Sina, who exchanged letters with al-Bīrūnī as a young man. I am reading partly to see the mind of his most demanding correspondent.

LikeReply
Follow5 replies

Members reply here. Reading is always free.

Sign in to reply

5 replies

  1. Mona Fathy

    Contributor

    Week 1. As someone who catalogues manuscripts, I found the preface's list of liars bracing. It is a taxonomy of the ways testimony fails, and every category is still with us: the patriot, the client loyal to his patron, the frightened, the habitual liar, and the one who simply repeats what he heard without checking.

    What struck me most was the last one. Al-Bīrūnī does not treat ignorance as innocent. Passing on what you have not examined is, for him, a way of being part of a falsehood. Every cataloguer should have that sentence on the wall.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Govinda Prasad Mishra

    Fellow

    Week 2. The famous passage made me laugh and wince. He says the Hindus believe there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no science like theirs, and that if they travelled and mixed with other nations they would soon change their minds, since their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation.

    As someone from a family of Varanasi pandits, I can say he was not entirely wrong about some of my ancestors. But notice he immediately adds the political context. He is frank that the campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, whom he served, had ruined the country and deepened the aversion. That is a scholar telling the truth about his own patron's wars. It is rarer than it should be.

  3. Arjun Iyer

    Fellow

    Week 3. His treatment of the idea of God is fairer than many modern textbooks. He insists on separating what the educated hold, a single, eternal, unchanging God, from popular images, and he says the same distinction applies in every religion, including his own. He quotes the Gītā and refers to Patañjali, and he compares Indian ideas with Greek ones.

    One caution: his informants were learned pandits, so his India is the India of a particular class of Sanskrit scholars. That is a limit of his testimony, not a failure of honesty, and he seems aware of it.

    Helpful · 1
  4. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    A note on his Sanskrit work. Al-Bīrūnī also translated, or adapted, Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra into Arabic, and the result is a fascinating case study: he sometimes recasts Indian ideas in terms familiar to Muslim readers. So even this most careful of reporters translated by assimilating. That isn't a criticism. It is what all understanding across languages involves, and he is more open about it than most.

    Helpful · 2
  5. Layla Haddad

    Fellow

    Thank you, everyone. Govinda's point about Mahmud and Meera's about assimilation are the two I'll keep. The book is a model precisely because it doesn't pretend to a view from nowhere: he tells you who he is, whom he served, who taught him and what he could not reach. That is what makes his testimony usable. Next time I'd like to read his exchange with Ibn Sina, where he is a ruthless questioner of Aristotle's physics.

    Helpful · 3