Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi
Born
in Kosben, Goa, India
July 31, 1907
Died
June 29, 1966
Website
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An Introduction to the Study of Indian History
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published
1990
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5 editions
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The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline
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published
1965
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10 editions
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Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture
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Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method
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The Oxford India Kosambi
by
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published
2009
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Science, Society and Peace
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published
1996
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Adventures into the Unknown: Essays
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The Essential Writings
by
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published
2010
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Combined Methods in Indology and Other Essays
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published
2002
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4 editions
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The Epigrams Attributed to Bhartrhari
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“Marxism cannot, even on the grounds of political expediency or party solidarity, be reduced to a rigid formalism like mathematics. Nor can it be treated as a standard technique such as work on an automatic lathe. The material, when it is present in human society, has endless variations; the observer is himself part of the observed population, with which he interacts strongly and reciprocally. This means that the successful application of the theory needs the development of analytical power, the ability to pick out the essential factors in a given situation. This cannot be learned from books alone. The one way to learn it is by constant contact with the major sections of the people. For an intellectual, this means at least a few months spent in manual labour, to earn his livelihood as a member of the working class; not as a superior being, nor as a reformist, nor as a sentimental "progressive" visitor to the slums. The experience gained from living with worker and peasant, as one of them, has then to be consistently refreshed and regularly evaluated in the light of one's reading. For those who are prepared to do this, these essays might provide some encouragement, and food for thought.”
― Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method
― Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method
“Certain opponents of Marxism dismiss it as an outworn economic dogma based upon 19th century prejudices. Marxism never was a dogma. There is no reason why its formulation in the 19th century should make it obsolete and wrong, any more than the discoveries of Gauss, Faraday and Darwin, which have passed into the body of science... The defense generally given is that the Gita and the Upanishads are Indian; that foreign ideas like Marxism are objectionable. This is generally argued in English the foreign language common to educated Indians; and by persons who live under a mode of production (the bourgeois system forcibly introduced by the foreigner into India.) The objection, therefore seems less to the foreign origin than to the ideas themselves which might endanger class privilege. Marxism is said to be based upon violence, upon the class-war in which the very best people do not believe nowadays. They might as well proclaim that meteorology encourages storms by predicting them. No Marxist work contains incitement to war and specious arguments for senseless killing remotely comparable to those in the divine Gita.”
― Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method
― Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method






















