Johan Frederik "Frits" Staal (3 November 1930 – 19 February 2012) was the department founder and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and South/Southeast Asian Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
.
Staal specialized in the study of
Vedic ritual
The historical Vedic religion (also known as Vedicism, Vedism or ancient Hinduism and subsequently Brahmanism (also spelled as Brahminism)), constituted the religious ideas and practices among some Indo-Aryan peoples of northwest Indian Subco ...
and
mantra
A mantra ( Pali: ''manta'') or mantram (मन्त्रम्) is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit, Pali and other languages believed by practitioners to have religious, ...
s, and the scientific exploration of
ritual
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized ...
and
mysticism
Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ...
. He was also a scholar of Greek and Indian logic and philosophy and Sanskrit grammar.
Biography
Staal was born in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
, the son of the architect
Jan Frederik Staal, and studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the
University of Amsterdam
The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...
. He continued with
Indian philosophy
Indian philosophy refers to philosophical traditions of the Indian subcontinent. A traditional Hindu classification divides āstika and nāstika schools of philosophy, depending on one of three alternate criteria: whether it believes the Veda ...
and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
at
Madras
Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...
and
Banaras
Varanasi (; ; also Banaras or Benares (; ), and Kashi.) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world.
*
*
*
* The city has a syncretic tr ...
. Staal was Professor of General and Comparative Philosophy in Amsterdam, 1962–67. In 1968, he became Professor of Philosophy and South Asian Languages at the University of California, Berkeley, and he retired in 1991.
In 1975, a consortium of scholars, led by Staal, documented the twelve-day performance, in
Panjal
Panjal (IAST: ''pāññāḷ'') is a village near Chelakkara, Thrissur district in the state of Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorg ...
village,
Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South Ca ...
, of the Vedic
Agnicayana ritual, which is available as a documentary titled ''Altar of Fire''. It was thought possible that this would be the last performance of the ritual, but it has since been revived.
In 1979, Staal became a corresponding member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...
.
Staal retired to Thailand, and died at his home in
Chiangmai, aged 81.
Work
Staal argued that the ancient Indian grammarians, especially
Pāṇini
, era = ;;6th–5th century BCE
, region = Indian philosophy
, main_interests = Grammar, linguistics
, notable_works = ' ( Classical Sanskrit)
, influenced=
, notable_ideas= Descriptive linguistics
(Devana ...
, had completely mastered methods of linguistic theory not rediscovered again until the 1950s and the applications of modern mathematical logic to linguistics by
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
. (Chomsky himself has said that the first
generative grammar
Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguisti ...
in the modern sense was Panini's grammar).
[An event in Kolkata]
, Frontline
Front line refers to the forward-most forces on a battlefield.
Front line, front lines or variants may also refer to:
Books and publications
* ''Front Lines'' (novel), young adult historical novel by American author Michael Grant
* ''Frontlines ...
The early methods allowed the construction of discrete, potentially infinite generative systems. Remarkably, these early linguistic systems were codified orally, though writing was then used to develop them in some way. The formal basis for Panini's methods involved the use of "auxiliary" markers, rediscovered in the 1930s by the logician
Emil Post.
Post's
rewrite systems are now a standard approach for the description of computer languages. The ancient discoveries were motivated by the need to preserve exact Sanskrit pronunciation and expression given the primacy of language in ancient Indian thought.
In ''Rules without Meaning'' Staal controversially suggested that mantras "predate language in the development of man in a chronological sense". He pointed out that there is evidence that ritual existed before language, and argued that syntax was influenced by ritual.
His more recent study was concerned with Greek and
Vedic geometry. He drew a parallel between geometry and linguistics, writing that, "Pāṇini is the Indian Euclid."
Staal's point is that Pāṇini showed how to extend spoken Sanskrit to a formal
metalanguage for the language itself.
Bibliography
;English
*''Advaita and Neoplatonism'', University of Madras, 1961.
*''Nambudiri Veda Recitation'', The Hague: Mouton, 1961.
*''Word Order in Sanskrit and Universal Grammar'', Dordrecht: Reidel, 1967.
*''A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians'', Cambridge Mass.: MIT, 1972.
*''Exploring Mysticism. A Methodological Essay'', Penguin Books; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
*''The Science of Ritual'', Poona:
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1982.
*with C. V. Somayajipad and Itti Ravi Nambudiri, ''AGNI - The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar'', Vols. I-II, Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1983.
*''The Stamps of Jammu and Kashmir'', New York: The Collectors Club, 1983.
*''Universals. Studies in Indian Logic and Linguistics'', Chicago and London: University of Chicago, 1988.
*
*''Concepts of Science in Europe and Asia'', Leiden: International Institute of Asian Studies, 1993, 1994.
*''Mantras between Fire and Water. Reflections on a Balinese Rite'', Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences/North-Holland, 1995.
*"There Is No Religion There." in: ''The Craft of Religious Studies'', ed. Jon R. Stone, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998, 52-75.
*"Artificial Languages across Sciences and Civilizations," ''Journal of Indian Philosophy'' 34, 2006, 89-141.
*''
Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights'' Penguin Books India, 2008.
;French
*''Jouer avec le feu. Pratique et theorie du rituel vedique'', Paris: College de France, 1990.
;Dutch
*''Over zin en onzin in filosofie, religie en wetenschap'', Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1986.
*''Een Wijsgeer in het Oosten. Op reis door Java en Kalimantan'', Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1988.
*''Drie bergen en zeven rivieren: Essays'', Amsterdam: Meulenhoff 2004.
References
External links
Archived website*Berkeley
Frits Staal southasia.berkeley.edu
Johan Frederik Frits Staal Obituary South and Southeast Asian Studies department
{{DEFAULTSORT:Staal, Frits
1930 births
2012 deaths
Dutch Indologists
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Mysticism scholars
University of Amsterdam alumni
University of Amsterdam faculty
University of California, Berkeley faculty