Profile by Mike Spencer-Nairn and Matthew Clark
Frits Staal has been a major influence on academic thought throughout his long and distinguished career. His emphasis has been on the value of the great classical languages that have shaped contemporary civilization: Sanskrit, Chinese and Arabic along with Greek. In Indology, Staal's aim has not been to study cultural diversity or 'the exotic', but to show what South Asia has contributed to humanity. This emphasis on universality has led him to the study of Indian logic, linguistics and other sciences, where his background in philosophy and mathematics enabled him to adopt a cross-disciplinary perspective. The Introduction to his 1997 Festschrift, India and Beyond, highlights this fluidity and Staal's ability 'to melt down all sorts of conceptual barriers characterizing the faculties and departments in academia'. Although his ideas have sometimes generated controversy, they have been difficult to ignore: for example, the thesis that ritual and mantras are meaningless (with mantras being the the missing link between ritual and language), which, in the words of Harvey Alper, 'cannot be refuted as easily as one might imagine'.
Staal studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, and continued with Indian philosophy and Sanskrit at Madras and Banaras Hindu Universities. Returning to Europe in 1957 on a cargo boat, he wrote his second book, on Nambudiri Veda Recitation. After delivering a lecture on Vedic recitation at SOAS, he was offered a job by John Brough. A brief spell at Philadelphia was followed by Staal's return to Amsterdam as Professor of General and Comparative Philosophy (1962-67). After a Visiting Professorship of Linguistics at M.I.T., he became Professor of Philosophy and South Asian Languages at the University of California, Berkeley, a position he occupied from 1968 until he took early retirement in 1991. He has held visiting posts in Banaras, Bangkok, Kyoto, Paris, Peradeniya, Stanford, Sussex, Tokyo and Washington. He continues his work today, adding to his voluminous publications, which include fourteen books, over 130 articles, two films and a record album.
Staal's publications include studies of Vedic ritual and mantras, Greek and Indian logic and philosophy, mysticism, Sanskrit grammar, the stamps of Jammu and Kashmir, Balinese ritual, science, orality, rationality and relativism. In 1975, a consortium of scholars, led by Staal, documented the twelve-day performance, in Kerala, of the Vedic Agnicayana ritual, published in two large illustrated volumes, and also recorded on film (Altar of Fire). His best-known books are, perhaps, Exploring Mysticism (1975), Universals: Studies in Indian Logic and Linguistics (1988) and Rules Without Meaning (1993). His recent study has been concerned with Greek and Vedic geometry.
Methodologically, Staal is convinced that the entire universe is open to rational inquiry: 'Studying something "irrationally" is refusing to study it.' A recurring theme is that areas such as mysticism or ritual are as open to rational, scientific investigation as any other feature of the universe. According to Staal, artificial distinctions between 'East' and 'West' or the sciences and humanities prevent fruitful investigations of human life. His study of Panini's Sanskrit grammar undermined the previously assumed superiority of the ancient Greeks in areas of scientific analysis. Logic, linguistics and other sciences are not features of particular civilizations but universals of humanity.
Frits Staal is as interesting to meet as he is to read, with as profound and lively an interest in the individuals around him as in comparative study.
For further information on Frits Staal, see http://philosophy.berkeley.edu/staal/
Mike Spencer-Nairn and Matthew Clark are both research students in the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS, under the supervision of Dr Julia Leslie. Mike (mike@spencer-nairn.freeserve.uk) is researching the role of sacred sound in Hinduism, and Matthew (mclark@mistral.co.uk) is researching renunciation in Hinduism.
