- Frits Staal
Frits Staal (born 1930 in the
Netherlands ) is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and South & Southeast Asian Studies at theUniversity of California, Berkeley .Staal studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of
Amsterdam , and continued withIndian philosophy andSanskrit atMadras andBanaras . Staal was Professor of General and Comparative Philosophy in Amsterdam, 1962–67. He became Professor of Philosophy and South Asian Languages at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968, and he retired in 1991.Staal's specialized in the study of
Vedic ritual andmantra s, and the scientific exploration ofritual andmysticism . He is also a scholar of Greek and Indian logic and philosophy, Sanskrit grammar. In 1975, a consortium of scholars, led by Staal, documented the twelve-day performance, inKerala , of the VedicAgnicayana ritual. His recent study has been concerned with Greek and Vedicgeometry .Bibliography
(incomplete)
Additional biographical source: Frits Staal. "There Is No Religion There." Pp. 52-75 in "The Craft of Religious Studies", edited by
Jon R. Stone . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.;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.
*"Rules Without Meaning. Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences", Peter Lang: New York- Bern-Frankfurt am Main-Paris, 1989.
*"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. Stone, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998, 52-75.
*"Artificial Languages across Sciences and Civilizations," Journal of Indian Philosophy 34, 2006, 89-141.;French
*"Jouer avec le feu. Pratique et theorie du rituel vedique", Paris: College de France, 1990.;Dutch
*"Over Zin en Onzin", 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.External links
*http://philosophy.berkeley.edu/staal/
*http://www.soas.ac.uk/Religions/comeandmeet/2000/staal.htm
*http://fritsstaal.googlepages.com/
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