The World Renouncer and Man-In-The-World: Revisiting an Old Paradigm

Speaker: Patrick Olivelle, Professor Emeritus of Sanskrit and Indian Religions, University of Texas at Austin

Chair: Upinder Singh, Professor of History, Ashoka University

In 1958 the French anthropologist Louis Dumont published a small but seminal paper entitled “World Renunciation in Indian Religions.” It has been called “probably the most imaginative and insightful attempt to grasp Indian religions as a whole in the history of Indology.” Dumont himself says that this early paper “provides the main framework for all my later work, both on India itself and beyond that setting.” The talk takes issue with Dumont’s main contention, especially his opposition of the world renouncer to the man living in society, based on new understanding of the early history of the householder or grihastha.

(Collaboration: Ashoka University)