Bimal Krishna Matilal

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Bimal Krishna Matilal
British India
(present-day South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India)
Died8 June 1991 (aged 56)
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
EducationSanskrit, Mathematics and Logic
Alma materMaulana Azad College
Harvard University
Notable workFounding editor of the Journal of Indian Philosophy
AwardsPadma Bhushan (1990)

Bimal Krishna Matilal (1 June 1935 – 8 June 1991) was an eminent

philosopher[1][2] whose writings presented the Indian philosophical tradition as a comprehensive system of logic incorporating most issues addressed by themes in Western philosophy. Born in Calcutta, he lived and worked in Calcutta, Harvard, Toronto and Oxford. From 1977 to 1991, he served as the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at the University of Oxford
.

Education

Literate in

Sanskrit College
, where he himself was a teacher from 1957 to 1962. He was taught by scholars like pandit Taranath Tarkatirtha and Kalipada Tarkacharya. He also interacted with pandit Ananta Kumar Nyayatarkatirtha, Madhusudan Nyayacharya and Visvabandhu Tarkatirtha. He was awarded the upadhi (degree) of Tarkatirtha (master of Logic) in 1962.

While teaching at the

Daniel Ingalls, an Indologist at Harvard University, who encouraged him to join the PhD program there. Matilal secured a Fulbright fellowship and completed his PhD under Ingalls on the Navya-Nyāya doctrine of negation, between 1962 and 1965. During this period, he also studied with Willard Van Orman Quine. Subsequently, he was professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto, and in 1977 he was elected Spalding Professor at Oxford, succeeding Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Robert Charles Zaehner
.

Death

Matilal died of cancer on 8 June 1991.

Awards

Works by Matilal

In his work, he presented Indian logic, particularly

Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā and Buddhist philosophy
, as being relevant in modern philosophical discourse. Matilal presented Indian Philosophical thought more as a synthesis rather than a mere exposition. This helped create a vibrant revival of interest in Indian philosophical tradition as a relevant source of ideas rather than a dead discipline.

He was also the founding editor of the Journal of Indian Philosophy.

Books

  • Bimal Krishna Matilal (1971). Epistemology, Logic and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis. De Gruyter.
    ISBN 9789997821942.[3][4]
  • Bimal Krishna Matilal (1985). Logic, Language, and Reality: an introduction to Indian philosophical studies. Motilal Banarsidass.
    ISBN 978-81-208-0008-3.[5]
  • Bimal Krishna Matilal (1985). Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge. Clarendon.[6]
  • Logical and Ethical Issues: An essay on the Indian Philosophy of Religion, Calcutta University 1982 (repr. Chronicle Books, Delhi 2004)
  • Navya Nyâya Doctrine of Negation, Harvard Oriental Series 46, 1968
  • Bimal Krishna Matilal (1990). The Word and the World: India's contribution to the study of language. Oxford University Press.
    ISBN 978-0-19-562515-8.[7]
  • Bimal Krishna Matilal (1999). The Character of Logic in India. Oxford University Press.
    ISBN 978-0-19-564896-6.[8][9][10][11]
  • Niti, Yukti o Dharma, (in Bengali), Ananda Publishers Calcutta 1988.

See also the entries in Worldcat.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 October 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
  2. ^ Mukim, Mantra (1 March 2019). "Bimal Krishna Matilal on the epics". The Caravan. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
  3. S2CID 117338922
    .
  4. JSTOR 600381
    .
  5. JSTOR 2255069
    .
  6. JSTOR 41095766
    .
  7. JSTOR 41694389
    .
  8. S2CID 170622156
    .
  9. S2CID 162731116
    .
  10. S2CID 144679476
    .
  11. JSTOR 606527
    .

Further reading

External links

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