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Philosophy Then

A Passage to India

Peter Adamson crosses continents, cultures and concepts.

You may be familiar with the contrast between ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitters’. Lumpers like to put many different things under one heading, emphasising the similarity between them. Splitters instead focus on the differences, and delight in making distinctions. Well, in mid-seventeenth century India, one of history’s most adventurous lumpers met one of its most notorious splitters.

The scene was the Mughal court during the period of Muslim political domination of the subcontinent.

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