Foreword

Many original suggestions can be drawn from the extraordinary life and work of Shyali Ramamrita Ranganathan. Some of them, such as the possibility of collecting information “of a trans-rational nature” – to quote his own words – for a biographical book, could appear particularly unconventional (to say the least) if not properly contextualized within his unifying epistemological “vision”. As a matter of fact, key concepts of Ranganathan’s peculiar methodology – like facet analysis, the “Universe of knowledge”, or conceptual tools as “seminal mnemonics”and “absolute syntax” – are intimately connected with elements belonging to the Hindu Brahmanical tradition, from the Vedic principle of eka-vākyatā (“syntactic unity”) to the description of the cognitive process on the backdrop of the state of samādhi (deep meditative absorption). Introducing this book, I have highlighted how it represents a timely attempt to trace the transition to the new methodologies of Indological research. In fact, innovative tools and an original scientific approach are capable of creating or developing digital applications that can lead to new analyses of already existing materials – texts, images, or entire collections, such as the Peano archive that is the focus of research of the Indological Society “Luigi Pio Tessitori” in Udine, from which materials described in some of the above-mentioned contributions have been taken.