Surendranath Dasgupta
1887–1952 · Indian scholar of Sanskrit and Indian philosophy
Surendranath Dasgupta (1887-1952) was an Indian scholar of Sanskrit and classical Indian philosophy. He belonged to a generation of Bengali intellectuals who built bridges between the Sanskrit tradition and Western philosophy.
Born in Kushtia, in Bengal under British rule, he trained in Calcutta in Sanskrit and Western philosophy. After earning a doctorate in Indian philosophy, he travelled to Cambridge with the support of a patron and worked under J. M. E. McTaggart. His contributions to the debates of the Aristotelian Society earned him a reputation as an almost unbeatable debater, and he took part in international philosophy congresses in Paris, Naples and Harvard.
His main work, A History of Indian Philosophy, began as a single planned volume and grew into a series of five, based on original sources in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit, many of them unpublished. Dasgupta argued that Indian thought should be studied historically and critically. He taught at Calcutta and presided over the Indian Philosophical Congress in 1932.
His influence endures in the study of Indian philosophy, and among his students was the historian of religions Mircea Eliade.
Key ideas
- A critical history of Indian thought: he aimed at a systematic account of India's philosophical schools, eventually spread over several volumes.
- Reading from the sources: he worked directly with texts in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit, many of them unpublished.
- Dialogue with the West: against Croce, he argued that much of Croce's philosophy had already been anticipated by Buddhism.
- Dependent emergence: the name he gave to his own philosophical theory.
Books to read
Curiosities
A dedicated volume
Lord Ronaldshay, governor of Bengal, was so impressed by a long conversation with Dasgupta in one of his classes that he asked for the first volume of the History of Indian Philosophy to be dedicated to him.
Letter from Louis Renou
After a reception in Paris, the Sanskrit professor Louis Renou wrote to him that while he was among them, they felt as if a Sankara or a Patanjali had been born again.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.