Two Whiffs of Air: A Critical Essay

Abstract: When John Chamberlain and other missionaries arrived in India in 1803, the first steps were taken toward the creation of a new religion in due course called Hinduism. This new religion was a form of Vaishnavism, projected into a Vedic past and accepted by Indian nationalists as well as Sanskrit scholars such as R.G. Bhandarkar and M. Monier Williams. Hermeneutics started with Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias and addressed logicians, philosophers, and students of language after which it lost its precise meaning. Louis Renou, the foremost Sanskritist of the twentieth century, revived its use to characterise a theory of metarule, a rule about rules, which flourished among ritualists and grammarians beginning with the Ritual Sūtras of the Late Vedic Period. And when concepts are lacking, a word appears in the very nick of time (Und wo Begriffe fehlen, da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein