The Importance of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Understanding the History of Science

Inaugural Remarks: Shri K.N. Shrivastava, Director, IIC

Speaker: Prof. Dominik Wujastyk, Saroj and Prem Singhmar Chair of Classical Indian Polity and Society, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Canada

Chair: Dr. Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, IIC-International Research Division

Professor Dominik Wujastyk holds the Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity at the University of Alberta, Canada. After completing a BSc in Physics, he took masters and doctoral degrees in Sanskrit from Oxford. He has worked extensively with Sanskrit manuscripts and on Indian social and intellectual history, including traditions of debate. His expertise ranges from Sanskrit grammar, to the history of Indian medicine and science, and the history of yoga. Among his books are, A Handlist of Sanskrit and Prakrit Manuscripts, Metarules of Paninian Grammar and The Roots of Ayurveda. He founded the INDOLOGY online discussion forum in 1990, and was co-founder of the journal, History of Science in South Asia. In 2020, Professor Wujastyk was awarded a four-year Canadian SSHRC Insight Grant for the Suśruta Project (http://sushrutaproject.org) that is investigating the early history of medicine in South Asia.

The largest and intellectually most important collections of Indian manuscripts are to be found in India and Nepal. Many of these manuscripts provide unique insights into the history of Indian mathematics, medicine and other sciences. There are four major problems that face a scholar who wishes to study the manuscript heritage: discovery, access, interpretation and dissemination. Yet modern developments in software and Digital Humanities provide important solutions to these problems. This lecture will discuss these issues with reference to a research project on the medical classic called The Compendium of Su?ruta. The discovery of a 1000-year-old manuscript allows us to plot the changes the work has gone between the ninth century and today, but the discovery brings with it many practical difficulties.

First in a new series of lectures organised by IIC-International Research Division

Registration link:
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZNuh0JKKQcq2j1Kvkh-BVw

March of the Penguins (France)
(80 min; 2005; English and with subtitles)
Director: Luc Jacquet
English narration: Morgan Freeman

Multiple award winner including Oscar Award for Best Documentary, Feature, Academy of Awards, USA 2006; Critics Choice Award for Best Documentary, Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2006; Audience Award for Best International Feature, Los Angeles Film Festival 2005; NBR Award for Best Documentary & Top Five Documentaries, National Board of Review, USA 2005; among others

A wonderfully moving nature film that is both informative and entertaining, following a colony of three-foot-tall Empire penguins of Antartica (about a thousand) and their survival and mating during the course of a year (from the end of the Antarctic summer in February, a time when the sea ice is melted, to the following February) in a place that is known for having the most inhospitable climate in the world. 

https://www.documentarymania.com/player.php?title=March+of+the+Penguins
 

Ibn Battuta: The Man who Walked Across the World (UK)
A three-part BBC Four travelogue with Tim Mackintosh-Smith, British Arabist, writer, traveller and lecturer.  In an effort to break the west's monolithic view of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith follows in the footsteps of 14th century Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta, regarded by many to be one of the greatest travellers and explorers the world has ever seen, who covered 75,000 miles, 40 countries and three continents in a 30-year odyssey.  

Episode 1: Wanderlust
(60 min; 2008; English)
Beginning in North Africa, Tim Mackintosh-Smith visits Battuta's birthplace of Tangier in Morocco, and stumbles on a performance of medieval trance music. In Egypt, he goes to a remote village where Battuta had an astonishing prophetic dream and visits the world's oldest university in Cairo.

https://vimeo.com/38091671
 

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (USA)
(81 min; 2011; Japanese with English subtitles)
Director: David Gelb

Recipient of the Audience Award for Best International Feature Film, Monterrey International Film Festival 2011; DFCS Award for Best Documentary Film, Denver Film Critics Society 2013; and DFCS Award for Best Documentary, Detroit Film Critics Society Awards 2012

In the basement of a Tokyo office building, 85 year old sushi master Jiro Ono works tirelessly in his world renowned restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro. As his son Yoshikazu faces the pressures of stepping into his father's shoes and taking over the legendary restaurant, Jiro relentlessly pursues his lifelong quest to create the perfect piece of sushi.

The Secret History of Writing (UK)
The Secret History of Writing, a three-part BBC 4 documentary series presented by Lydia Wilson.
Wilson, an academic and journalist who is also the editor of the Cambridge Literary Review, started off by looking at the moment when writing with pictures transformed into writing with words, a quest that centred on the Rebus, a puzzle or pun in which pictures are used to represent words.

So who did create writing as we know it? As Wilson discovered, this was an entertainingly fraught topic that continues to be debated passionately by Egyptologists and specialists in Mesopotamian culture. The fascinating story that finally unfolded revealed that while some things stay the same (a hieroglyph on an Egyptian sapphire mine turned out to be a series of complaints about weather and working conditions), the smallest moment can change the world.

Series 3: Changing the Script
(59 min; 2020; English)
Director: David Sington

For more than a century, the world has seemed to be moving to a single universal script - the Latin alphabet. But that means more than changing words. It means changing identity.

https://www.documentarymania.com/player.php?title=Changing+the+Script

FOCUS ON WESTERN CLASSICAL MUSIC COMPOSERS

The Genius of Verdi with Rolando Villazón (UK)
(60 min; 2013; English)
Director: Dominic Best
A BBC Four production

Superstar opera tenor Rolando Villazón reveals an insider's view on performing music by one of the greatest opera composers, Giuseppe Verdi, who celebrates his bicentenary in 2013. By looking at some of Verdi's most well-known works including the operas Macbeth, Rigoletto, La Traviata, as well as his Requiem, Villazón shares his unique and passionate insight on Verdi's consummate skill - how he constructed dramatic episodes of searing reality, as well as the historical context in which the operas are set. Along with interviews with some of the world's leading Verdi singers, conductors and theatre directors, Villazón tells us why he thinks Verdi is a genius.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xzuf2z
 

Life, Animated (USA)
(92 min; 2016; English)
Director: Roger Ross Williams

Multiple award winner including Audience Award for Documentary Feature, Berkshire International Film Festival 2016; Student Jury Award, Budapest International Documentary Festival 2016; Critics’ Choice Documentary Award for Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary, Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards 2016; Emmy for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary, News & Documentary Emmy Awards 2018; among others

The inspirational story of Owen Suskind, a boy of considerable promise, until he developed autism at the age of 3. He was unable to speak until he and his family discovered a unique way to communicate by immersing themselves in the world of classic Disney animated films. This emotional coming-of-age story follows Owen as he graduates to adulthood and takes his first steps toward independence.

https://www.documentarymania.com/player.php?title=LIfe+Animated

PHYSICAL / HYBRID PROGRAMME

Release of the book India-Japan @70: Building Beyond the Bilateral
Edited by Srabani Roychoudhury, Sahana Thankachan and Parul Bakshi
 
Chief Guest: H.E. Mr. Satoshi Suzuki, Ambassador of Japan to India
Guest of Honour: Prof. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, Vice Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Chair: Shri Shyam Saran, former Foreign Secretary and Life Trustee, IIC
Welcome Address: Mr. Koji Sato, Director General, The Japan Foundation
Special Remarks: Amb. Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa, former Ambassador to Japan
Remarks: Prof. Srabani RoyChoudhury, Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Vote of Thanks: Dr. Sudhakar Vaddi, Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
 
As India and Japan celebrate 70 years of cultural and civilizational bedrock of their diplomatic relations, this volume delineates the past to the present, and offers a vision for the future. Commemorating the traditional areas of cooperation, it redefines the contours and components of bilateralism, and it offers a glimpse of existing and emerging areas of cooperation, enabling them to “Build Beyond the Bilateral”

This programme will be conducted in hybrid mode. 

The hot dusty Delhi summer calls for a change of palate to a refreshingly light Continental menu. Find the cooling flavours of mint, coriander, oregano and other fresh summer herbs in quiches, pancakes, cutlets and casseroles in this weekend’s menu. Steak Lyonnaise, Chicken Supreme and Fish Belle Meuniere, all popular items on the IIC menu, provide tempting choices for the non-vegetarian diner. For dessert, try the chilled Savarin, colourful with a variety of fruit, or  the sweet-tart apple crumble eaten cold, but also delicious with ice cream. IIC will be serving the special menu from 22nd - 24th April 2022. These items shall be served in addition to the regular take away/dine in menu.

Take away services with prior booking will be available from 1100 hrs to 2100 hrs.

Last order can be placed at 2030 hrs. Kindly Place order at: 011-24609359, 24609449, 24609472

Kanwal Wali
Secretary