B (4:13)

Yeah, I mean there's so many, many interesting threads in what you said and certainly we will segue momentarily into maybe the sorts of projects that are there. But it's intriguing in that for indology, Indologists, for those familiar with the word, it certainly has a particular disciplinary connotations. And yet it seems that from what I can gather from our correspondence and of course from your way of being in, from the actual program, it's not a delimiting term. Essentially those studying all things Indic or South Asian are welcome to present. And so I find it intriguing that rather than the conference being somehow curtailed by the term indology, in my perspective at least, it seems that you are augmenting the purview or augmenting the association of indology, which I think is an intriguing enterprise.

C (5:13)

I think I just see it as a really wide term that is, you know, it doesn't have very clear boundaries what it is by a period of time, but the kind of topic you might look at, I mean we sort of general idea is that it's to do with the Indian subcontinent and you know, by time we sort of do focus on the pre modern period. But even that to be honest, is not really very strongly boundaried. Especially as many of the things that indologists look at, South Asians look at may have started in the past and we've got our primary sources from, you know, a thousand years ago, but there are practices connected with them that exists still in the present. So even the sort of premodern modernity divide doesn't really work for indological work. So you know, I, I think it's a really inclusive term. At least that's how I understood it when I was studying indology in Germany in the 90s, you know, early 2000s. So you know, I, I think it's a, it's a good term that, you know, is I, I personally associate South Asia studies, perhaps more with more modern South Asian studies. But you know, that's just a personal impression, I would say.

B (6:23)

And when you say modern you mean studying phenomenon. That's, that's not premodern sort of the

C (6:29)

contemporary ethnographic work, for example, contemporary India.

B (6:32)

And then would you say then, just as we're sort of wrapping your brain around this really exciting new, new venture, new initiative, would you say then that if there was someone at a Canadian institution studying who knows, you know, some, some element of, of diasporic Sri Lankans in Canada, who knows what would, would that be allowed at this point or would it be pre modern in its? In its?

C (6:56)

Yeah, I, I sort of, for this one we kind of focused on pre modern India. One could have modern India in, in there as well. And I've been sort of wondering about it. I guess, you know, it's sort of a matter of how I trained and who, who I know. So basically the people I wrote to are people that I know work with pre modern Indian sources, typically Sanskrit ones, sometimes Middle Indo, European languages, apabrantia and so on. And I've been thinking about, you know, how one could also very easily include people using, you know, Persian sources, for example, or you know, vernaculars, you know. So this conference just now doesn't seem feature talks with Persian or with vernacular languages much. There was one talk that was going to use Raj Basha. Unfortunately that scholar had to drop out, couldn't come. But you know, I don't think it needs to be limited to people doing Sanskrit or Pali. I think it could be wider. So this is the first of its kind and we can widen the scope. And I think this one, you know, because it's the first one we're starting a little bit small. I mean it's still a two day conference with 10 talks on each day. I think actually it's more, it's 11 on the second day. So 20 to 21 talks, you know, that's plenty for two days to think about. The. The main motivation is for people to get some space and time to talk with each other, to really get to know each other, to understand what, what the others are doing and so on. We've got a really wide range of topics there, so it' of small but very diverse at the same time. But still it could expand topically, I think.

B (8:42)

Yeah, I mean part of the reason why we're dipping into this is because this is, you know, this is an exciting initiative that is somewhat being co created and of course in large part due to your vision and your initiative and you know, the name signals so much and indology will mean so much to so many people in different ways. And I think that just by the sheer range of topics, I don't get the sense that indology in this case is meant to be used as a delimiting term as you say, you adopt it and understand it as a fairly broad term. And it'll be interesting to see how. It seems instinctive to me that this will be the first and not the last of this sort of conference. It'll be interesting to see how it, it develops and whether that name will be a mainstay or not. But could you tell us a bit about what you see as the purpose for this conference? You know, what is it, what gap does it fill?

C (9:43)

For me it's really about community and, and, and peers. So I. Canada is such a big country, you know, coming from Europe, from European countries, you know, the, the size of this country is still mind boggling to me. And what this has meant is that I haven't really met a lot of my colleagues, you know, people working on India because we're, you know, 3,000 miles apart or you know, so it's, and, and you know, we're working in the same field on very diverse topics. And I just thought it would be wonderful if we got a space to be together to, to see if we have such a thing as a community and a common identity. And you know, I wonder whether when people give their talks whether they would say something like I don't consider myself an indologist, I see myself as a South Asianist. I saw one talk has in the abstract says I'm doing Indology plus. So there's something about either there's more. So Ukraine people will have different ways of understanding what they do. And so I just want us to come together as a community and so really to get to know each other, to see what everybody is working on, to get a sense of what research is actually happening here in Canada. In what context it is happening. You know, I'm in the history department, History and Religious studies and classics. You know, other people may be in philosophy or there. We have independent scholars, we have people at different stages of their career, we have people working in an alternative academia. So I'm just really interest to see who, who everybody is, you know, and what they're doing.

B (11:26)

Absolutely. I mean it's the moment that I got that invitation from you, it just felt like, yes, this needs to exist. I'm glad this is happening. And it was, it was both, actually, both as a scholar who really values vetting, testing, sharpening ideas while presenting as well as the, the irreplaceable dialogue and exchange that Rowan has about scholarly work at conferences and then taking note of the different cultures of different conferences. For example, in my particular case, my degrees are in religious settings of religion. And so I go to the American Academy of Religion relatively regularly. And it's massive, it's a huge machine. And yet the Madison South Asia Conference is much more, there's much more of a sense of community for a variety of reasons, for size, location, just historical connections. And so it's. So one wonders and one sees, wow, it would be lovely to have something contained and connected, not dissimilar from the Madison Conquer zone South Asian studies, for example, but so that we can highlight and get to know a network within people in Canada because there are a number of us and we are spread our over a large space. And when we do convene, it will be at a conference in America, certainly, or maybe this Baldwin Symposium in the religions in uk or maybe the conference on the Sanskrit Olympics and Puranas triennially or World Sanskrit conference or who knows where. So I think there certainly is a niche. There isn't a space for Canadian Indologists or South Asianists or however you want to think of that, you know, Indian studies people to get together. And it's, it's. I think it'll just be mutually rewarding as any conference experience with colleagues. But also it'll really, I think, help teach us things about what might be different in our milieu and what, you know what? I think there's so much that we can learn about what about the Canada piece as well as the Indology piece. And so I think it's a fantastic idea. I'm really looking forward to coming out. So presently, because of your fine initiative and your institutional funding, it's being hosted at the University of Alberta. One wonders, is that sort of. I'm going to say it's a foregone conclusion. This won't be the last conference. Do we feel that that would be. Would that be a permanent feature of the conference? Do you feel the.

C (14:02)

The hosting to be at the University of Alberta? Yeah, no, I imagine that we would rotate between universities and venues. I. I say probably at university simply because then we have access to some institutional funding for this, which is probably harder to get for people if they were working outside of institutions, but even that can be discussed. So we'll have a group discussion on day two, after the talks, on sort of how to go forward, whether this will be a series of conferences. We could also think about the format. Should it be annual, should it be biannual, should it be online? So there's various formats we can take. And it's been a pleasure to organize this and the university has been very generous. We got funds from the Singmar Endowment Fund. And that is actually one of the reasons why I organized this conference is that we have a new Singmar Chair of Indian History, that's Yigal Broner. And I kind of wanted to welcome him to the university. He's just taken up the chair this January, and so I thought this would be a great opportunity to welcome him to Canada, to Edmonton, to the University of Alberta, and to sort of embed him in the group of indologists in Canada. Yeah, he knows everybody and everybody knows him, but I just thought it would be a really nice occasion to do so. But honestly, the idea of the conference, I've had it for many years, and in fact, I spoke years ago with Elisa Fresky about this, who is at Toronto, and we thought, you know, we were thinking of how, you know, to establish a sense of community among South Asianists and geologists here in Canada. It would be great to have some sort of series conferences. I organized a conference for my husband's retirement, Dominic Bouillastic, and that was two years ago, and we all really enjoyed that. And we had, you know, indologists, not just from Canada, but from other places as well. And then Elisa and I were talking about how it would be very, very nice just to have something for Canadians, not. Not, you know, not people of Canadian nationality, I'm not, but, you know, people working in Canada to, To go forward and that. And I've been very inspired by something that Elisa has been involved with in Europe, and that's the Coffee Break conferences. I don't know if you've heard of those. So conferences dedicated to specific topics. So that's different from our conference. But where the breaks are basically the important part of the conference, because the conversation between scholars and the sort of networking and becoming friends is sort of the highlight of the conference. And I wanted to do something like that for Canada, for indology in Canada.

B (16:54)

Yeah, beautiful. And I love the quip in passing about, you know, it's not for. Just for people who are native to Canada, because I'm not. Yeah, he says. And I'm thinking to myself, what's intriguing is that I think very much part of fixating cultural identity is being a welcoming home for people from around the world. And I muse that, that Toronto is the world's most diverse city. It's. It's a relatively young city. I mean, there are ancient global cities or ancient global centers that people going to for a long time. And yet Toronto, it's statistically the most diverse city on the planet. And I think something 55% of Torontonians are from different nations. And those different nations are not. They're not. I mean, over 100 nations, it's a little bit. It's, you know, you see 20 people in Toronto on a streetcar or on the street, and they're different from 20 different regions of the world. It's fascinating. So it is an interesting culture. I like the idea of having, of course, we'll talk. We'll talk as a. As we'll talk as colleagues on secondary. But I like the idea of having perhaps rotating hosting because it really gives us a chance to soak up the cultures of different institutions and learn from different elements. That sounds great. Let's see. So one of the other questions I had was about who can attend. I think we more or less covered that in terms of who can attend disciplinarily or in terms of what one is researching. But you also mentioned in passing that there were independent scholars who are presenting. So, you know, so that's another question. Is it, you know, who is it? Is it for a particular stage of career or particular type of career? And might there be space? Of course, for students or emerging scholars?

C (18:50)

There certainly is. That was really important to me. So the schedule as it stands now, we have PhD students, we have postdocs, we have established assistant, associate and full professors, we have emeritus professors, we have students, scholars working in. In alternative academia. So just going into a different pathway of working in the field. So it's very diverse. And in fact, the way I organized the schedule wasn't really panels by topic, but panels by coming from different universities or different working spaces and different stages in people's careers. So I Want this to be really inclusive and then, you know, speaking of audience, anyone can come. Anyone who's just interested in the topic can come. I think the room can fit 80 people. We've got 20 speakers, you know, so there's going to be space for people to just come in and listen and find out more about indology and South Asian studies. Everything feels more expensive right now. That's why this matters. TikTok Shop has a huge selection of products with surprising, surprising deals. You don't expect affordable finds for everyday life. Download TikTok now.

B (20:06)

Let's see. And those of you in, in northern Alberta or, or, or those of you a global stone throw away from, from, from Edmonton.

C (20:17)

So far away. It's true. We're in the middle of the prairie. There isn't much around us. Well, there's red deer and then there's Calgary.

B (20:24)

That's all right. There's, yeah, there's, there's. I mean, the natural setting alone in your part of the world is worth traveling for. I mean, Bam's not super far from you and it's extraordinary, right? Extraordinary.

C (20:35)

In Canadian it is four or five hours away, but yes, in Canadian, yeah.

B (20:39)

No, no, no, no, no, I, I, yes. In terms of locally, like, like I would hesitate to go to Buffalo, New York, although it's like an hour, hour and a half away locally. But of course, if I'm literally flying from here to California and I'm flying to Los Angeles and asking people in San Diego, hey, I'll be in California, three hour drive, it's like that. So, yeah, I get it. But yeah, you never know. There might be people who are listening to podcasts who would, would welcome, know learning that they're allowed to attend. That's great. Yeah. So I guess some of my questions, our questions, I think we, from what you've said will work out together in terms of frequency or hosting or future iterations. Did you have an instinct or a wish list for the frequency of the sort of conference?

C (21:25)

Yeah, I mean, One of the PhD students from UBC in Vancouver was actually writing to me and was saying, you know, how about annual meetings? And I, I was hesitant at first because I thought, okay, we're all, you know, we all do various conferences and, and it's sort of a big part, but you know, the travel funds and so on. So I was wondering whether it could be like one year it could be online and then the second year it could be in person somewhere. So something like that. I mean, you want to keep a regularity that, so that it doesn't lose impetus.

B (21:58)

Absolutely.

C (22:00)

So. But at the same time, maybe annual would be a bit much, but at

B (22:04)

least, yeah, I'd say the outside, the far side of that would be triennial. You know, certainly Djibouti is a great example of every three year conference and people look forward to it. And I think much more beyond that. It would be too sparse. Something obviously between one, two or three years. But I like the idea of every other year and then having an online component in there. I mean, I think every other year works well. We'll see if there's interest in annuals, but I think we'll figure it out. Sounds exciting.

C (22:37)

Yeah. The group, right. We'll be together and then sort of talk about what actually would suit people as a group together. I mean, for this I decided not to do a hybrid format. Right. I kind of decided against it. And a lot of people have asked me, you know, could, could we have, you know, could they join online? And I said, sorry, but no, because this time I really want bodies in a room and people to get to know each other. And also, to be honest, you know, the technological setup always causes so many problems. And I personally have never been convinced of hybrid conferences that just never seem to go very well. So for me, it's either fully online, everybody's online, or everybody's in a room. And I, I think, you know, post pandemic, you know, being in a room together, we can see how valuable that can be for forging real relationships.

B (23:31)

Yeah, absolutely. It's, I mean, it's irreplaceable, the in person experience. And, and the flip side of that is if people can present. I mean, I presented in a number of nations in the past year that I would, I would, I wouldn't visit six nations in the year necessarily, but it's, yeah, there's, there's certainly a trade off there. I like, I like the idea that there is consideration for space for online engagement, but for this initial one, it seems that it's so formative and it's so just to get a, to take the temperature and to cultivate a, to cultivate a, you know, a texture, a feel for the conference and to see, you know, shows up and what, you know, how it goes for you. I mean, I think that sounds smart to be contained initially and then decide to, you know, whether you want to test hybrid or do you do them entirely online and even there, I mean, that would be interesting. And I'm, I've already mentioned probably off air, on air, but I pledge my sword so just put me to work. You need a whether catering meeting? Certainly. Presenting. Let me know what you need. It's all good. So speaking of other conference and other conference cultures, is this conference related to any other conferences or institutional bodies in the field?

C (24:55)

No, not really. It's a sort of free floating conference that may become something more institutional if we decide to come together as a sort of Indology or South Asian Studies in Canada group, if we want to do that. So that's, that's up to the group C. C If there is interest to have a body or not. You know, this is an informal beginning of something that we will need to define more closely together. And you know, I, I think, you know, maybe the World Sanskrit conference is the closest in terms of breadth of topics that are being tackled in this conference. So we're not saying, okay, everybody has to talk about the epics or everybody has to talk about medicine or so, you know, anybody will talk. Everybody who gives a talk will talk about what they're actually researching, what their actual interests are. So that's very similar to the World Science Conference with this sort of geographic confinement of Canada.

B (25:52)

Yeah, really interesting. So is there anything that we want to say about or about the actual lineup? I mean, we touched on it in passing. So do we want to characterize the line of spin anyway?

C (26:07)

Yeah, so we talked a little bit about this sort of different stages of Korea that people are in. But we're going to cover things like, you know, aspects of the narrative traditions, the epics, Hindu and Buddhist narrative literatures, grammatical traditions, poetics, storytelling, science. So that would be medicine and alchemy and astronomy, talks about astronomy. There's also going to be a talk on, on the theory of erotics or karma Shastra. There's going to be a talk about Buddhist inscriptions. So it's, it's really very wide and I think all of us will learn a lot, you know, by topic and about just, you know, what kinds of things Indologists can do. You know, that's, you know, it's very, very wide. When I, my own talk will be about Indian alchemy and I want to talk about whether it's a fringe topic or a mainstream topic, you know, in Indian history. But then, you know, thinking, oh, my topic is very fringe. But then I look at all the different topics that people are talking on and it becomes very difficult to say, well, is there a mainstream. We're all doing very diverse things.

B (27:13)

Yeah, I mean, that's abundantly clear even from, from the list of invitees and the various Institutions and the various, you know, the various subjects that we, we investigate. It was clear that it was, you know, you're, you're, you're researching something indic. You're stationed in Canada B, you know, welcome here. We are. And yet I had the same self censoring insofar as, you know, when you, you know, you're like just whatever you're working on. And I've had this new translation of the day, if you hop me my desk for two and a half years that I've been. And now I'm sort of just going through the footnote and compare and maybe tweak or justify some of the translation choices. But, but it actually, it, it really just poured out of me. After looking at the text for well over a decade, it poured out of me in the sense of how I think this would, this could be rendered into English. But now I'm going back to have this painstaking, well, you know, this is, this is a liberty. You know, how do I document the liberties? How do I justify the liberties? I understand why I'm saying, you know, obeisance, obeisance, obeisance. We now bow down. I get what, how that translates to an English feel. But what is, you know, we now bow down is not in the Namaste necessarily, is it? There's no we. How do you. So, so, so now it's that. It's that sort of painstaking, nerdy component. But I thought to myself, wait a minute. Yes, the whole translation thing is very much on the logical. But I'm responding to a request on behalf of so many students who. They've looked at Coburn, they've looked at David Atakali, they've looked at a number of translations and they want one that sort of sings in English, that flows in English, not necessarily. Not poetic in the sense of taking liberties to render poetic, but sort of poetic in the sense of having a certain quality of a cadence. Rhythm. Right. And so I'm thinking, wait a minute. I mean translating is actually a text is very ideological. But this whole, you know, rendering accessible for English utterance, I don't know, that's too out there. We'll be trying to edit that. So I myself am having this, this conver. Like, I don't know, is, is this appropriate for Theology Canada Conference? I don't know.

C (29:28)

So, you know, I find it very appropriate. And also, you know, if you think of translation studies and we always think of audiences, who are we writing for and what is it supposed to achieve? You know, are we talking to other hardcore indologists who want to have everything in brackets that is not strictly part of the Sanskrit, or. Or are we talking to people who want to get the rasa, the feeling of. Of the. The thing that is translated. You know, there's such different styles. Sometimes it's different in different countries. You know, German translations are often very technical and have all these brackets and so on. But I think it's also whether the person translating is a poet themselves, for example, like somebody like Martha Selby, for example, who does beautiful translations, you know, or. Or is it, you know, are you interested in the technical structure of the sentence or, you know, what's your relationship to. To language and who is your audience? So this is spot on, I think, for working.

B (30:29)

That's great insofar as, you know, certainly there's no shortage of Sanskrit decisions. You know, there's nerdy things like, you know, Mahadevi. Mahasri. Is Mahasudi an asura or a lady. You know, the Amara Kocha says this, like there's nerdy things to get into. Absolutely. That I think I might even poll the audience and ask you guys anything about a couple of these quibbles with translation. But, you know, more than a generation ago, 1992, Coburn's, you know, relatively pristine. He takes maybe a handful of liberties, in my opinion, but, you know, a pristine, literal translation, a little bit clunky in places, but we have literal trans. We have clarity on what these verses say in English, for the most part. And so this is. This is the journey is now. Okay, we can do that. We've done that. But why are people not satisfied with that? The people that I'm talking to, especially when they start reading Sanskrit, especially when they, you know, we study the shakrani sukti, and then they're like, what? They read the English and they read the Sanskrit, you know, and they're like, what. What. What are we missing here? It's not. It's. It's not capturing the beautiful words that you use. The rasa. Right. The. The flavor, in a sense. And so. So I'm sort of trying to capture the rasa. It's gotten a really, really favorable response on behalf of a number of students who I've shown it to and we've gotten some feedback on, because they are the audience. They are the ultimate audience. They're the ones who are requesting it, actually. But what I'm trying to do in the paper is trying to understand how much of this process is. How much of this process. Can I repeat? Can I say, can I sort of create A template of, okay, these are some strategies I've done instinctively or going back. This is what I've opted for. This, these are, these are the kind of rules of translation that I've adopted. Adopted. And so it's a different experiment. I mean, I'll be really frank with you. I have, I have paper interpreting the, the, the, the, the, the, the genome frame of the Mahabharata. That's much more like. It's, it's very clear. It's very. This here's, you know, here, here's the text, here's your interpretation. I was just going to present that because it, it really kind of fit the mold more so of what I think of a standard academic paper would look like. But yet I, I couldn't resist your invitation to just, just, just present what's on my desk. And what's on my desk is this kind of quirky translation project.

C (32:46)

Yeah, exactly. I mean, the whole point is to, to really show what do indologists do, you know, what, what are we actually spending our time with? So, you know, I think this fits this very beautifully. And these are thoughts all of us have to think about who we are talking to and are we just talking in university context to other colleagues? Are we talking to our students, whom we're teaching? Are we talking to the wider public? In explaining to the wider public why indology is interesting, you know, why the study of India is, is rewarding and, you know, so I think they're, you know, doing that, that work in, in, in addressing, you know, people who may not know the culture or who may not care very deeply about, you know, the grammatical, you know, fine points or so, you know, to do something where you're, you're doing almost like diplomatic work. You know, I think this is very,

B (33:37)

very valid that, you know, there's a, I'm too in it to see it because just, it's just my particular way of life. But that whole public scholarship thing, I'd say that's 90% of what I do. The amount of public talks, the amount of continuing studies courses, the amount of teaching people, you know, teaching academics and putting teaching, of course, University of Calgary, for example, like I do, I do teach undergrads here and there and keep those chops fresh. But the vast majority of the teaching and speaking are to people interested in the topic on some level. But they're not scholars. Some of them, many of them are really bright. They're accomplished in their own fields, but they're not, they're not into logical scholars and not South Asianists. And so, so much what we're doing is translating, not translating the text, but translating our methods, Translating, translating for them what it is that we're doing and why it matters. And I like that distinction, actually, because that's, that's, that's a. In my particular case, I mean, others will have a luxury to not worry too, too much about, you know, public engagement. And, and for whatever bizarre reason, I find myself doing 90%, you know, public scholarship. Strange but true. Here we are. Well, here we are on this part. Why would this, you know, why it would only be somebody out there like me who would be interested in doing this podcast, for example. So here we are. We're on the podcast how meta. Talking about public scholarship. I think we've done a great job of putting this on people's radar. Is there anything, you know, it's in the, the, the link to the papers and the registrations and the podcast notes. But is there anything about the, you know, the conference, the prospect, the, the vision, the, the future that you sort of wanted to share before we close for today?

C (35:18)

I just wanted to say that you don't actually have to register. You just come, come along. On our poster, there's a QR code and it just leads to the program. So just, just come along and join in and be there for the question and answers and for the conversations with colleagues or with people, you know, who you just haven't met before and topics you haven't engaged with before. I'm really keen to meet anyone who is interested in the topic and I'm really looking forward to meeting all colleagues. I think it's going to be a blast. I think we're going to have so much fun. It's just going to be a really nice and quite informal occasion. So, yeah, that's what I want to say.

B (35:59)

How delightful. Well, thank you very much for appearing on the podcast today.

C (36:02)

Thank you.

B (36:03)

For those listening, we've been speaking with Dr. Dagmar Wiastic, who is associate professor and director of graduate programs at the University of Alberta. We've been speaking about this really fascinating new initiative, Indology in Canada. Check out the link in the podcast notes. You might be interested to learn what some of us are doing. And if you're at all in the area wanting to come to the area, we'd love to see you there in person. Until then, keep, well, keep reading, keep thinking and keep contemplating this thing called Indology. Bye for now. Sa.