Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought

Abstract

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: www.edinburghuniversitypress.com The right of Richard Seaford to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498 AcknowledgementsThe astonishing similarities between early Indian and early Greek thought have long attracted great interest, but seldom the collaboration that is required for a real advance in explaining them. This volume contains most of the papers delivered at a conference at the University of Exeter in July 2014, as part of the project 'Ātman and Psychē: Cosmology and the Self in Ancient India and Ancient Greece'. The conference, and the project as a whole, were funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to which we are most grateful. The conference consisted of days of lively discussion between Indologists, Hellenists and others: interdisciplinary discovery at its best. Another outcome of the project will be a monograph by myself.I would like to thank Richard Fynes for his help with Sanskrit, and Edinburgh University Press for their enthusiastic efficiency. Richard Seaford Exeter, January 2016 Notes on contributorsNick Allen qualified in social anthropology at Oxford, after studying classics and medicine, undertaking fieldwork in Nepal. From 1976 to 2001 he taught Social Anthropology of South Asia at Oxford, publishing on the Himalayas, kinship theory and the Durkheimian Tradition. Since the 1980s he has also worked on Indo-European Cultural Comparativism.Greg Bailey, formerly reader in Sanskrit, is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Program in Asian Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has published translations and studies of the Gaṇeśa Purāṇa, Bhartṛhari's Śatakatrayam and books on the god Brahmā, early Buddhism, contemporary Australian society and many articles on Sanskrit literature. Life: Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips (2012) and Rebirth and the Stream of Life: A Philosophical Study of Reincarnation, Karma and Ethics (2016). Texts (1988) and of articles on Socrates, Plato and the Neoplatonists. Other research interests include comparative philosophy, and philosophy and mysticism in South Asia. Mikel Burley is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Leeds. His publications include Classical Sāṃkhya and Yoga: An Indian Metaphysics of Experience (2007), Contemplating Religious Forms of John Bussanich is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico. He co-edited with Nicholas D. Smith The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates (2013). He is the author of The One and its Relation to Intellect in Plotinus: A Commentary on SelectedAditi Chaturvedi is a doc...