Buddha and the Sahebs - 8 - Ten books that influenced me

 

I picked up Charles Allen’s The Buddha and the Sahebs at the Eluru Library in Boag Road, Thyagaraya Nagar. It opened up a facet of Indian history that I was almost totally unaware of until then – the European contributions to the rediscovery of India’s past and its enormous role in shaping India’s present and future.

It was as shocking and eye-opening as The Lexus and the OliveTree which made me understand how unaware I was of current affairs, or Sivakamiyin Sabatham, which made me aware of my ignorance of Indian history and Tamil culture. The history I learnt in school, PS Senior Secondary school in Mylapore, was basically half about some aspects of India’s past, and half about British colonialism and India’s independence movement.

A common complaint among Indians nowadays, especially those who take up learning about Indian history in their twenties or later, not from academia but from reading books, tweets, blogs and attending lectures, is that there is too much stress on Guptas and Mughals and almost complete neglect of every other aspect of Indian history. Tamils feel the pang that Cholas and Pandyas are left out, Kannadigas about Hoysalas and Chalukyas, Telugus about Kakatiyas and Satavahanas and so on. Another complaint is that Leftists took over academia, obliterating the noble and glorious accomplishments of not just these dynasties but of poets, scientists, artists, philosophers of that period. While there is some truth to such allegations and angst, reading this made me aware of how widely, deeply, passionately and dispassionately, European scholars, primarily English, and some Indian collaborators had researched vast swathes of India’s buried past; and how much Indians owe an enormous debt to such scholarship. Allen and the geniuses in his book –William Jones, James Prinsep, Alexander Cunningham and others – almost turned me into an Anglophile.

Allen’s book is perhaps the most perfect and scholarly riposte that I have read, to Edward Said’s critique of colonial scholarship – “Orientalism”.

I found Said’s book practically unreadable; Allen’s book is unputdownable.

I later discovered that Allen followed in the footsteps of John Keay, several of whose books I have also enjoyed reading. I think that Indian academics have tossed out the baby of Orientalist scholarship along with the bathwater of European colonial exploitation, at least as far as school textbooks are concerned.

I read this book around 2009 or 2010 I think. I had read some other history books on India before this – Nilakanta Sastri’s History of South India, Abraham Eraly’s Gem in the Lotus (where I first read about Ajivakas), AL Basham’s The Wonder that was India, Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India, al Beruni’s Indica, Travels of ibn Batuta; and several others I don’t remember.

The Buddha and the Sahebs starts with the discovery, in the late eighteenth century, of several isolated pillars in some major cities lke Delhi and Prayagraj (Allahabad); and remote places like Vaishali, Lauriya Nandangarh and Sanchi in India. Some of them, like that in Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi and the Allahabad pillar, had inscriptions, not only in Persian in the Arabic script but also others in an archaic Nagari script and a then unknown script which no living Indian could read or recognize. Curious and adventurous Englishmen kept stumbling upon mounds, temples, buried and destroyed monuments, broken idols, abandoned cities, coins, and all kinds of objects, whose existence was a surprise and whose history was a closed book to the most learned Indians of that time. The bureaucrats and scholars brought over from England by the East India Company, to help the businessmen make money, collect taxes and administer society, found endless wonders wherever they looked – if they looked. The formal establishment of a society to study Indian history, geography, culture, literature, law, economy, music, science, medicine, religion etc organized the information they collected across the length and breadth of the land. The very act of organizing, discussing and theorizing produced a wealth of information that astounded eager audiences in Europe, who only had vague notions of what India was from Arabian tales, ancient Greek and Roman travelogues, and the chaotic, disjointed, and sometimes fanciful accounts of sailors and merchants.

The company’s adventurers not only explored India, but also all its surrounding territories – Nepal, Tibet, Burma, Ceylon. The recent field of archaeology was yielding rich treasures in Europe itself, about ancient Rome and Greece; and newly conquered old civilizations like Egypt and Mesopotamia. Some of the Indian pundits who were first skeptical and cautious about the English sahebs, later recognized that some of them were truly curious and eager scholars, and began to both help them and learn all the new fields of knowledge that the European Enlightenment, Renaissance and the  Industrial Revolution had to offer.

Allen explains the travels, discoveries, missteps, surprises, of these Orientalists, who published them under the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The tales are as riveting as are their adventures. Their ignorance was sweeping in its scale; what amazed me was how much Indians too were ignorant of their own past, and substituted myth and legend and hearsay for actual history, with no sense of the scale of the eras or the volume and dimension of the events of their past. All of this is presented in school text books in bland and dull prose, as though Indians always knew all this history.

I had a chance to present this exciting story of the rediscovery of India’s past a few times; once at the Indianoil, Patna branch, thanks to a friend, Ganesh, who helped me travel and enjoy several places in Bihar. A second time for INTACH, at the New College in Royapettah, Chennai. And afterwards for THT and Ethiraj college.

The first reading of The Buddha and the Sahebs effected a substantial transformation in my understanding of history. And of the political social and cultural motives that inspired people and institutions to ignore and obfuscate it.

Literature essays in my blog

History essays in my blog

The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India's past

India doesn't want to know

This essay is a continuation of this previous essay.

“Both parties, however, agreed on the need to codify the laws of India's communities”

Ironically, Jones translated Manu Smriti into English. After this, British courts ruled Hindus according to it, and Muslims according to Sharia which he also translated. The British for the most part, did not mess around with Hindu law, on marriage (including polygamy and child marriage), caste, food habits, property rights, temple administration, festivals, rituals, etc. They siezed whole kingdoms from kings, they killed Indian shipping, they indulged in the slave trade etc, but this was par for the course. The greatest change they implemented was the abolition of sati, which was a practice limited to royalty, and a few very very rich Indians, with pretensions of royalty. 

If both the Anglicists and the Orientalists agreed on the “need to codify the laws of Indian communities,” they did very little about it. People like John Shore, the head of the East India Company, who later became Lord Teignmouth, and wrote a biography of William Jones, were passionately Christian, and wrote reams of paper hoping to turn India into a Christian country (Jones himself also wrote letters professing deep Christian belief, and wishing the benevolence of Christianity upon this poor pagan nation, once glorious, now decayed), but one wonders if they were playing to the gallery in London; especially to morally opprobious critics of the like of Edmund Burke. Jones may have been defending himself of the grave charge of turning Hindu himself, like Charles Stuart before him.

What Indians miss, especially Hindus, is how dramatically England and Europe transformed – socially, economically, politically – during this Orientalist phase. Far far far more than India. The industrial revolution, Adam Smith’s economics, the defeat of four Napoleons, the terrifying possibility of the French revolution repeating elsewhere, exposure to very different and strange countries and cultures, the astounding heritage of these cultures, rediscovered by Orientalists, increasing literacy in Europe, increasing living standards, all had a transformative effect – very much like the transformation China has undergone in the last forty years, since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Discoveries in biology, like fossils and dinosaurs, microbes and inoculation, drastically reduced the power of the Church, and increased the influence of intellectuals and scientists. The overthrow of the four elements theory by Lavoisier was as significant as the discoveries of Newton and Galileo, or Darwin’s theory of evolution, but it doesn’t get even a fraction of the attention. Different denominations of churches spurted out in England, especially, and a vast army of curates and vicars and bishops and clergy, deeply delved into science – remember Gregor Mendel was a monk; and Darwin almost became a priest.

Joseph Priestley, who discovered carbon dioxide, that plants and animals breathed differently, and produced “different airs”, started his own church, which was burnt down, and he escaped England into the welcoming arms of Thomas Jefferson’s America.

India did not become more English during this era. England became less English.

The single biggest legal social and political reform in India was the abolition of slavery, in 1843. They sepoy mutiny, the abolition of sati, the abolition of untouchability(yes, even that), raising the age of marriage, abolition of princely kingdoms, abolition of the devadasi system, transformation from monarchy to democracy, the unification of 540 kingdoms and zamindari territories, the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan – the two world wars, the famines(yes, even famines), the plagues – all of these pale into comparison, when you consider the abolition of slavery. It is the elephant in the room of history that nobody talks about.

Neither the Anglicists nor the Orientalists in the 1780s even imagined that particular reform. Slavery was still in vogue in Europe. They didn’t imagine the French revolution or the steam engine either. Slavery was abolished in India, not because there were raging social movements or national hunger strikes or threat of revolution by Indian soldiers in the British or other armed forces, but because, in my opinion, technology made it possible to live in a human society without slavery. This is my opinion, I may be totally wrong. Who imagined that the USA would elect a half-black President in 2008, that he would invade Libya, destroy it - and bring back slave markets?! Or that it would be completely not worthy of news or discussion, at all? Well 1843 seems to be a good precursor to this.

Are there any monuments, statues, memorial buildings, celebratory festivals, durbars, even nautch performances celebrating the abolition of slavery in India? Too inconvenient. It is simply not in the collective conscience of the country.

Almost every single Indian pretends that colonial rule itself was a form of slavery, while Indians owning, selling, buying other Indians was nothing significant or egregious. One explanation is that colonial powers merely replaced it with indentured labor, which was “practically the same as slavery”, so they should not get any credit whatsover. Indentured labour was terrible, but it wasn’t slavery. But it may easier to expain algebra to a snail, than convince anyone of this.

We seem to believe that Abraham Lincoln ended slavery in the USA, and the rest of the world magically eradicated it too. Except slavery ended in India, twenty years BEFORE Lincoln ended it in the USA.

We love to pretend that 1947 was the end of real slavery.

Also we simply don’t study the history of law in India. I think most people believe law is something the British gave us. If we don’t, we secretly believe British law was far better than Hindu law, but we don’t want to be caught praising them.

Back to the Indian Constitution.

Only in 1947 did we decide that none of our ancient Smritis is relevant. The Constituent Assembly created a Constitution, guided by those of the USA, France, USSR, Ireland etc with long history in Roman law. We chose a unitary over a federal constitution, parliamentary versus presidential form of government, universal adult franchise, abolition of untouchability.

This replaced the Hindu legal system. Notice that I say Hindu  legal system, not Hindu law. Hindu law has a long history of reform, including under British rule. We learn nothing about Hindu law in schools, in society, in art, in literature, in public entertainment, or even in social discourse.  It is all about how the Gandhi led Congress was heroically fighting the British.  One of these days, we will have a history book that tells us General Manekshaw liberated Bangladesh by going on a salt satyagraha in Dhaka and a hunger strike in Chittagong. It will be a two mark question in a history exam, and by God, two marks in a test are more important than actual history.

Manu was not the only smriti of India, it was one of eighteen, but definitely the most popular and widely used. There were several overlapping concepts among these smritis, and as inscriptions of kings through several centuries attest, a scholar need only know one of these to be a royal official, minister, judge etc. I consider these smritis as akin to the aadhara shruti of a Carnatic singer or traditional singer vs the standardized frequencies in western music, which I think are akin to the unitary Constitutions of almost every democracy. In fact, we see this dominant unitary global standard in European thought - the SI units, universal human rights, Generally Accepted Accounting Practices(GAAP), patent law, architecture standards, road standards, uniform sizes of shipping containers, banking standards, internet protocols, 110V/240V, etc.

• Different agamas for different temples
• Choice of astronomy texts - Surya Siddhanta or Pitamaha siddhanta or another, and hence the calendar, almanac or panchangam
• Choice of silpa sastras for temple, house, and town planning
• a variety of religious philosphies
• Local autonomy for administration and certain forms of taxation
• Variations in property rights, including community trusteeship, like public land, pasture land, forests, water sources
• Autonomy of merchant guilds to govern themselves, and even set tax and lending rates; and even build mercantile forts (which is why Fort St George, Fort St William etc were allowed - as mercantile forts).

 Whereas in India, in every aspect of art and technology the artist or artisan had freedom to innovate.     

I will stop here. I just think historians, especially Indian historians, do a very poor job of understanding or analysing all of this. And society, for the most part, is happy with this. The white supremacist colonial narrative drowns out the hard facts of far superior technology, military, finance/trade and administrative marvels that the English discovered or invented to transform themselves, while Indians were practically stagnating.

Related Links 

Should April 7 be India's real independence day

History essays

Four Napoleons and the Steam Engine

 

Dr VS Ramachandran sent me this clipping and photo by email a few days ago. It is a memorial  to Sir William Jones, founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, at the University College chapel in Oxford university. Ramachandran is a huge fan of Jones and his scholarship, and the founding of Indology (one branch of Orientalism). He believes that the Tamil Heritage Trust can continue where the British Indologists left off, and we can do this best by forming a new Indology society.

The sculpture shows Jones seated at a table, taking notes from Hindu pandits (Sanskrit scholars). This is an artist’s interpretation. One line in the website of Prof Faisal Devji, says “He was of the 'Orientalist' party, opposed by the 'Anglicists' who thought Indian knowledge and traditions worthless.”

For this essay, I use this line as a launching pad for my thoughts about this period.

I think this a very poorly studied period, except from the view of colonialism. Before the arrival of Jones and the discoveries of the Asiatic Society, Europeans had an extremely poor understanding of India. They were completely unaware of Sanskrit, its riches, Hinduism, Buddhism, Indian architecture: in fact all the sixteen items listed in Jones' list of things to study, on the ship to India.

But equally, India was almost completely unaware of the amazing progress in Europe since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In science, in economics, in military techniques, in seafaring, in conquest. These filtered through to large sections of society, especially Hindu society, only via the Industrial revolution and English education.

Also, there is a reason the Anglicists gained the upper hand by 1840 or so - before that Europeans may have considered themselves superior, but between 1770 and 1840 they had indisputable proof that they were superior, in several fields – science, technology, military ability, seafaring, economics, management. They were not superior to Indians in music, agriculture, medicine, art, architecture, law and order, judiciary, dispute resolution, taxation, water management, etc.

But let us look at some technological and military achievements of the British (not just Europeans)

1740s-1760s The Cotton Revolution, the first Industrial revolution in England

1746: The Battle of Adayar, France captures Madras under Governor la Bourdannais

1747: Major Stringer Lawrence creates the The Madras Regiment, the mother regiment of the Indian Army

1749: France returns Madras to England

1757 : Clive gains an empire, Madras and Bengal

1774 : Lavoisier / Priestley discover modern chemistry

1775 : James Watt patents steam engine

1776 : Adam Smith publishes Wealth of Nations

This is all very inconvenient to the political historians. We have at least three isolated islands of history, one of military conquest and colonialism, one of technological and scientific leaps and a third of the massive collection of information about India and its civilization, the project of the Asiatic Society and similar organizations. We get these as separate streams of discourse, because for each group the other two are quite inconvenient. 

At the start of this period 1770, Imperial France was a mighty rival to England in politics, finance and military strength, perhaps considered superior culturally. The Netherlands was a business equal to England. Germany equal in science and technology, but not quite unified, or even Germany. Spain and Portugal had a larger political base, but far behind in science, technology, trade.

1789: French Revolution, effective American independence

This saw French decline in the colonies, especially their rivalry in India, but Napoleon soon became a major challenge in Europe, and threatened to even make England a French colony. In India there were three Napoleons who were a threat to England : Hyder Ali / Tipu Sultan, the Mahrattas and the Sikhs. These are insignificant names outside India, but the victories over the first two were among the most torrid and coming within such a short time, of very great significance.

But between 1799 and 1840 England saw amazing and significant military conquests in India. Lord Cornwallis who had lost to George Washington in the Revolutionary War that led to the formation of the USA, held off Tipu Sultan in one of the Mysore Wars in 1793. Tipu Sultan was completely routed and killed in 1799. Arthur Wellesley, who served first under Cornwallis, and was Governor of Mysore after Tipu’s defeat, later defeated the Mahrattas at Assaye, in 1803, and used this experience to beat Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Wellesley later became the Duke of Wellington. He himself said, that while his defeat of Napoleon was more significant, the battle against the Mahrattas was the fiercest he fought in his life.

And after the death of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh kingdom also fell to England. Only the weak Mughals in Delhi were left to conquer in 1857. In about forty years they conquered as much of India as Muslims did in nearly 700 years (but still less the either Chandragupta Maurya or Samudragupta did). And they were discovering things about India, Egypt, Sumeria, Persia, etc all old civilizations in steep decline, and barely aware of their own past greatness

This was also the period 1799-1840 when England discovered electricity via Faraday and others, improved the steam engine and built the railways, massively exploited mines and discovered minerals and new elements, explored the world, and went far ahead of others in the Industrial revolution.

No wonder the Anglicists felt superior, and triumphed over the Orientalists. No wonder Macaulay and Mill became the guiding lights who would bless and improve India with the benevolence of British knowledge and wisdom.

This was helped by the fact that Indians themselves wanted all the new marvels that the English brought along (long before the steam engine). Paper, printing, clocks, telescopes, a hundred tiny engineering marvels. A number of liberal and progressive Hindus also used the English to reform Hindu law and a number of customs.

Which set the stage for the next quote. Which I will write about in a separate essay. 

“Both parties, however, agreed on the need to codify the laws of India's communities”

Links 

New Asiatic Society needed – Times of India report

THT program video - VS Ramachandran announces a new Asiatic society

William Jones and the Asiatic Society

Antoine Lavoisier - The Discovery of Modern Chemistry 

Macaulay, Sanskrit and English

History blogs

அசோகத்தூண் கண்டெடுத்த கதை

அசோகத்தூண் கண்டெடுத்த கதை

(வில்லியம் ஜோன்ஸ், ஜேம்ஸ் பிரின்செப் வாழ்த்து)

வில்லியம் ஜோன்ஸ்

ஜேம்ஸ் பிரின்ஸெப்

23.10.2016 அன்று, ஆர்.கே. கன்வென்ஷன் சென்டரில், நான் (ர. கோபு) ஆற்றிய உரையின் ஒரு பகுதியை, பாடலில் சொல்லியுள்ளார் சுதர்சனம். அவர் அனுமதி பெற்று இப்பாடல்களையும் பொழிப்புரையையும் பதிவிடுகிறேன். அதற்கும் பின் என்னுடைய விளக்கத்தை படிக்கலாம்.

அறுசீர் விருத்தம்

மா காய் காய் வஞ்சி விருத்தம் இரட்டித்தது

வண்டித் தடமமைத்த பணியாளர்
... வாகாய்ப் பிடித்தொருநீள் பெருங்குழவி
மண்ணைப் பொடித்தழுத்த உருட்டிவந்தார்;
... மேலைக் கடலிருந்து மேற்பார்வை
பண்ண வந்ததுரை பிரின்சப்பு
... ‘பெற்ற தெங்ஙனமிக் குழவி’யென்ன
‘உண்டிவ் விடத்தினிலே என்றுமெ’ன்றார்
... நுனியில் சிறுத்தடியில் பருக்குழவி!  (1)

மெத்தப் பெருநீளக் குழவியது
... மருங்குக் குமருங்காய் மல்லாந்து
மொத்தப் பரப்புக்கும் உருண்டதுபார்!
... மங்கும் விழித்திறத்தர் ஆனாலும்
சித்தப் பொறியாளன் பிரின்சப்பு
... சிதைந்த நுனிகண்டு சிந்தித்தான்
‘இத்தைப் பகுத்தீரோ?’ ‘இஃதெ’ன்றார்’
... இளைத்த நாற்சீயம் சிரித்ததங்கே (2)

நின்று நிமிர்த்தியதும் அத்தம்பம்
... நெஞ்சு விறைத்தபடி நின்றதுகொல்!
இன்று நம்நாட்டின் சின்னத்தூண்
... இற்று நிலமுருண்ட கதையிஃதாம்
பின்றை கன்னலுக்குப் புரட்டியதும்
... பீட சோகத்தூண் சோகத்தை
இன்றெ மக்குரைத்தார் சொல்லீசர்
... இவர்தம் பெற்றியினைச் சொலவுண்டோ (3)

(பீட சோகத்தூண் சோகத்தை - பீடு அசோகத்தூண் சோகத்தை)

இரும்புக் குச்சிகளை வளைத்ததுபோல்
... இருக்கும் எழுத்துக்கள் இத்தூணில்;
பரந்து கிடக்கின்ற பாரதத்தில்
... பலவே றிடம்தன்னில் கிடைத்ததென்றார்
தெரிந்த பண்டிதர்கள் இல்லாமல்
... தொலைந்து போனப்பி ரம்மியென்றார்
விரிந்த அறிவுடைநம் கோபுவென்பார்
... விரித்த வரலாற்றைக் கேட்டோமே! (4)

பொழிப்புரை
1. மாட்டு வண்டிகளும் குதிரை வண்டிகளும் செல்வதற்காகத் தடம் அமைத்துக் கொண்டிருந்த வேலைக்காரர்கள், ஒரு பெரிய நீளமான குழவிக்கல்லை வாட்டமாக வைத்து உருட்டிக்கொண்டு, நிரவிய மண்ணைப் பொடித்துக் கிட்டித்துக் கொண்டிருந்தார்கள்.

எப்படி இருந்த அசோக தூண்
இப்படி சாலை குழவி ஆனது?
அந்தோ!

மேற்குப் புறக் கடல் தாண்டி இச்சாலை அமைக்கும் பணியை மேற்பார்வை செய்யவந்த பிரின்சப்பு துரை (Sir James Prinsep) ‘இந்தக் குழவி எப்படிக் கிடைத்தது?’ என்று கேட்டார்.
பணியாளர்கள் ‘இந்த இடத்திலே ரொம்ப காலமாகக் கிடக்கிறது’ என்றார்கள்.
அந்தக் குழவி ஒரு நுனியில் குறுகியும், மற்றொரு நுனியில் பருத்தும் இருந்தது.
2. மிகவும் பெரிய குழவி அது. எவ்வளவு பெரிதென்றால், சாலையின் ஒரு புறத்தில் இருந்து, மறுபுறம் வரைக்கும், கரைக்குக் கரை மல்லாந்து கிடந்தது.
பிரின்சப்பு துரை, பார்வைக் குறை உடையவர்தான். ஆனாலும், சிறந்த பொறியாளர் (ஜித்தன்!) அந்தக் குழவியின் சிறுத்த நுனியும் சிதைந்து கிடந்தது. இது எப்படிக் குழவியாக இருக்கும் என்று அவர் சிந்தித்தார்.
‘இதை வெட்டினீர்களோ?’ என்று பணியாளர்களைக் கேட்டார். அவர்கள் ‘ஆமாம். இதோ வெட்டிய பகுதி’ என்று காண்பித்தார்கள்.
அங்கே, வெட்டுப்பட்ட , நான்கு சிங்க உருவங்கள் கொண்ட பகுதி சிரிப்பாய்ச் சிரித்துக்கொண்டு கிடந்தது.

துண்டாய் நிற்கும்
அசோகனின் சார்னாத் தூண் தலை

3. (அவர் உடனே அந்தக் குழவியை உயர்த்தச் சொன்னார்)

பணியாளர்கள், அந்தக் குழவியை, நிற்க வைத்து நிமிர்த்தியதும், அது ஒரு கம்பமாய், நெஞ்சை விறைத்துக் கொண்டு, நின்றதே பாருங்கள்!

இன்று நமது இந்திய நாட்டின் சின்னமான தூண்தான் அது! இப்படி, சிதிலமடைந்து, தரையில் உருண்டு கிடந்த கதி இதுதான்!

பின்னால், கரும்பில் சாறு பிழிய, நாம் புரட்டியதும் அதேபோல் இன்னொரு கம்பம் தான். இப்படி பீடு உடைய அசோகத்தூணின் சோகக்கதையை இன்று சொல்லீசர் (நான், முன்பொரு சமயம் Francis Whyte Ellis பற்றி கோபுவின் உரையைக் கேட்டுவிட்டு, அவரைச் சொல்லீசர் என்று ஒரு பாடலில் குறித்திருந்தேன்) எமக்குச் சொன்னார். அவரின் பெருமையை என்னால் சொல்லவும் முடியுமோ?

4. பிரின்சப்பு துரை இரும்புக் குச்சிகளை வளைத்தது போல் இருக்கும் எழுத்துக்கள் இத்தூணில் இருப்பதைக் கண்டார். இந்தப் பரந்த நிலப்பரப்பு கொண்ட பாரத தேசத்தில், பல இடங்களில், இந்த எழுத்துக்கள் காணக் கிடைத்தன.

படிக்கத் தெரிந்த பண்டிதர்கள் இல்லாமல், வழக்கத்தில் இருந்து தொலைந்து போன பிராம்மி எழுத்துக்கள்தான் இவை என்றார்

விசாலமான அறிவு உடைய, நம்முடைய கோபு, இப்படி வரலாற்றை விவரமாகச் சொன்னதை, நாம் கேட்டோம்.

கோபுவின் குறிப்பு

ஒரிசா தலைநகரம் புவனேசுவருக்கு தெற்கே உள்ள தௌலியில், மௌரிய மன்னன் சம்ராட் அசோகனின் கல்வெட்டும், மேற்கே உதயகிரி-கொண்டகிரி மலைகளில் காரவேலன் கல்வெட்டும் உள்ளன. அவை பிராகிருத மொழியில் பிராமி லிபியில் உள்ளன.

பாரத மக்களுக்கு வரலாற்று உணர்வும் ஆர்வமும் மிகக்குறைவு என்பது ஐரோப்பிய வரலாற்று வல்லுனர்களின் கருத்து. பிடிக்காத வரலாற்றை மறக்க முயல்வதும், வசதிக்கேற்ப திரிப்பதிலும் பாரத மக்களுள் சிலருக்கு ஆர்வம் அதிகம் என்பது என்னுடைய சந்தேகம். பாரதம் என்ன, பிறஹா மொழி பேசும் மக்களை தவிற, உலகின் அனைத்து மக்களுக்கும் இந்த பண்பு இருக்கலாம். 

1784ல் வங்காள ஆசிய கழகம் என்ற ஒரு ஆய்வு நிறுவனத்தை வில்லியம் ஜோன்ஸ் என்ற மாபெரும் மேதாவி, கவர்னர் ஜெனரல் வாரன் ஹேஸ்டிங்கிஸின் தலைமையில் நிறுவினார். இந்தியாவை பற்றி பிரமிப்பூட்டும் மாய கதைகளையே அறிந்திருந்த ஐரோப்பிய சமூகத்தை, வரலாற்று ஆய்வுகளாலும் மொழி ஆய்வுகளாலும் அசத்தினார் ஜோன்ஸ். 

சம்ஸ்கிருத, கிரேக்க, லத்தீன, பாரசீக மொழிகளுக்குள்ள தொடர்பை உணர்ந்து, அவற்றிர்க்கு ஒரு தாய்மொழி இருந்து காலத்தால் அழிந்துபோயிருக்கலாம் என்று 1784ல் முதலில் சான்றோடு முன்வைத்தவர் வில்லியம் ஜோன்ஸ். அவை இந்தோ-ஐரோப்பிய மொழிக்குடும்பம் என்று பெயர் பெற்றன.

அவரை தொடர்ந்து பல மாமேதைகள் ஆய்விற்கும் அற்புதங்களை காணவும் பாரதம் வந்தனர். அவ்வரிசையில் வந்தவர் ஹென்றி கோலப்ரூக், ஹொரேஸ் வில்சன், எல்லிஸ், கால்டுவெல், மார்ஸ்டென். அவர்களுல் ஜேம்ஸ் பிரின்செப் என்பவரும் முக்கியமானவர். பரிதாபமாக, நோயால் நாற்பத்தியெட்டு வயதிலேயே மாண்டு போன ஜோன்ஸ் விட்டுச்சென்ற பணிகளையும் புதிர்களையும், பிரின்செப்பும் பலரும் தொடர்ந்தனர்; புதிர்களுக்கு விடை சமைத்தனர். 

குறிப்பாக இந்தியர்களின் வழக்கிலிருந்து அற்றுப்போன பிராமி லிபியை அபாரமான ஆய்வினால் புரிந்துகொண்டு, கண்டுபிடித்து, உலகுக்களித்து மங்காப்புகழை எய்தினார். இதனால் அறுநூறு ஆண்டு இந்திய வரலாறும், பல மறந்து போன வம்சங்களின் விவரங்களும் நமக்கு கிடைத்தன.

கார்ளா குகை தூணில் பிராமி லிபி
புனா நகரம் அருகே மகாராட்டிரம்

இத்தகைய மாபெரும் சாதனையாளர்களை பாரத சமுதாயம் மறந்திருப்பதும், நன்றி பாராட்டி புகழாதது நம் பேரிழுக்கு.

சென்ற வருடம் தமிழ் பாரம்பரிய அறக்கட்டளையின் வருடாந்திர கலை உலாவிற்கு ஒரிசாவை தேர்ந்தெடுத்தோம். உலாவுக்கு செல்லுமுன் வாரந்தோரும் ஒரிசா சம்பந்தபட்ட சொற்பொழிவுகள் நடந்தன. ஜோன்ஸ் பிரின்செப்பின் ஆய்வுகள் பற்றியும், பிராமி லிபியை பின்னவர் துப்பரிந்த கதையையும் நான் விளக்கினேன். (முன்னர் இதே தலைப்பில் பேசிய வீடியோ இங்கே) கேட்க வந்த நண்பர் திவாகர தனயன் அவர்கள் பணிகளை பாடலாக்கினர். இதோ அந்த பாடல்களும், பொழிப்புரையும். (இந்த மாமேதைகளாகிய நெல்லுக்கு பாய்ந்த திவாகர தனயனின் தமிழ் நீர், புல்லான எனக்கும் ஓரிடத்தில் பாய்ந்துள்ளது)

திவாகர தனயன் சிறப்பாக பாடுவார். மாமல்லபுரத்து பல்லவ கல்வெட்டை அவர் பாடியுள்ளார், இங்கே கேட்டு ரசிக்கலாம். 

சமண ஜோதிடர் மகாவீரரின் கணித வாழ்த்தை இங்கே பாடியுள்ளார். 

Related blogs

1.    The Rediscovery of Brahmi and Asoka 

2.    எடிசன் வாழ்த்து 

3.    சலைவன் வாழ்த்து 

4.    மல்லை சிற்பியர் வாழ்த்து 

5.    காஞ்சி கைலாசநாதர் கோவில் வாழ்த்து 

6.   தனி ஒரு மொழி - பிறஹா

Aryabhata's sloka for pi

The Greek letter pi for the ratio between circumference of a circle and its diameter was given only in the 18th century by William Jones, a mathematician (father of the more famous Sir William "Oriental" Jones, founder of Asiatic Society of Bengal), 2000 years after the Greeks had realized that such a thing existed. We, or at least some mathematicians, only celebrate March 14 (3-14) somewhat recently after the American usage of month followed by date (3-14), rather than the British usage of date followed by month (14-3).

Incidentally the ratio for circumference to diameter was stated as a Sanskrit sloka by Aryabhata in the fifth century. I attach the sloka and its meaning in this JPEG here. Aryabhata knew it was not an EXACT number but an approximate number ( though he didn't know about irrational or transcendental numbers), so he used the word "aasannaH" which means "approximately".

If you liked this, you might also like reading these:

1. Some 

mathematical terms in Sanskrit (and their English (or Greek/Latin) & Tamil translations)

2. The mathematician Mahavira's Sanksrit Anthem for Mathematics

3. Nilakanta Somasatvan's Sloka - with a pun, a number, a date, a book

4. Some Sanskrit slokas from Indian Astronomy

5. VarahaMihira's Agastya Sthothram

The Rediscovery of Brahmi, Asoka, and Indian History

The Road Roller of Bihar

While building a road in Bihar, in the early nineteenth century, the supervisor of the construction project noticed that the road-roller seemed to be narrower at one end and broader at the other. On closer inspection, he found some inscriptions on its side, which that Brahmin pandit of the nearby village was unable to read. He could not even identify the script (which he called the pin-men script) or the language of the inscription. It seemed to be a pillar from some monument. The road workers told the supervisor that the pillar had a lion capital, which they cut off, so the pillar could be more useful as a road-roller. Such was the fate Samrat Asoka’s pillar!

The road supervisor was James Prinsep, who discovered that the language was Pali, the script Brahmi,the capital destined to become India’s national emblem, the the king and his dynasty forgotten, by a country with teeming not just with history, but with people who cared not a whit about it. Ironically, most of us schooled in independent India are now familiar with Asoka and his pillar and utterly ignorant of Prinsep.

When Prinsep stumbled upon the pillar, he was a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which had been founded in 1784 by Sir William “Oriental” Jones, a polymath of tremendous accomplishment, to whose contribution to India was immense, and who is almost as spectacularly forgotten as Prinsep.

Sir William "Oriental" Jones

Jones & the Asiatic Society of Bengal

The East India company and later, the British government, were the funnels through which India was enriched by Western science and industrialization. The Asiatic Society was the funnel through which new fields in the humanities, like Geology, Numismatics, Archaeology, Anthropology, Economics, Art History, all recently evolving in Europe, enriched India. Jones, a child prodigy, master of 28 languages, and scholar of law, was appointed as a Puisne Judge of the Calcutta Supreme Court in 1783. He formulated an agenda to study the law, sciences, mathematics, history, geography, medicine, trade, manufacture, agriculture and religions of not just India, but all of Asia. He surmounted obstacles to quickly learn Sanskrit, and found such a similarity between it, Persian, Latin and Greek, that he proposed that they all had a common ancestry.

His oft quoted passage from his third lecture is : “The Sanskrit language, whatever its antiquity is of a perfect structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than Latin, more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both a stronger affinity, in roots of verbs and forms of grammar, than can have possibly been produced by accident. So strong that they…must have some common source…reason to believe Celtic, Gothic, old Persian also had the same origin as Sanskrit.” This heralds the beginning of Modern Linguistics and the discovery of the Indo-European Language Family.

Jones went on to translate the Manu Smriti to English to better administer justice. He also translated Kalidasa’s plays like Abinjana Shakuntalam, which took Europe by storm. He discovered that Chess and Algebra had Indian origins, wrote a treatise on Music, and studying Greek and Indian history, proposed that Sandrocottus mentioned by Megasthenes was Chandragupta. On further study, he also established the river Erranaboas was the Sone (originally called Hiranyabahu) and that Chandragupta last capital Palibothra must have been Pataliputra, now Patna, in Bihar (overturning Prayag, Kannauj, Varanasi etc as candidates). Jones also told a thrilled Europe that India had an ancient God called Buddha, perhaps of African origin, who founded a religion called Buddhism in India,now forgotten. Europe soon discovered that Buddhism was alive and well in the rest of Asia, but Jones’ discoveries launched an earnest inquiry into India and Asia’s history, that primarily relied on literature for the next three decades.

James Prinsep

And then James Prinsep arrived in Calcutta in 1819. A prodigy very different from Jones, with far humbler origins and far less accomplished youth, Prinsep nevertheless made dramatic impacts on the Asiatic Society and scholarship. After working in mints and civil administration, he turned to history in 1832. He transformed the field from ‘scholastic archaeologists’ to ‘field archaeologists’ or ‘travelling antiquarians.’ His intellectual successor Alexander Cunningham said of Prinsep, that between 1833 and 1838, “more of India’s history was reconstructed than before or since.”

The Society faced bankruptcy and a shutdown by Macaulay and Mill, who called Oriental studies “waste paper and accumulation of timber.” But Governor General Auckland restored its funding.

James Prinsep

Coins and PinMen

An army of Orientalist coin collectors, including Horace Wilson, Col James Tod, Charles Masson, General Ventura, helped unravel several aspects of history. Masson collected thirty thousand coins, which brought to light a number of Indo-Greek kings from Theodotus (225 BC), Apollodorus, Menander, Eucradites, Antialkides, Agathocles and Kanerkos (who was later identified as Kanishka by Prinsep). Some of these like the coins of Agathocles had legends in both Greek and Sanskrit (Rajane Agathakulasya). The Sanskrit script was the same as the pin-men script, in Prinsep’s road roller.

Several other pillars including the famous Feroz Lat in Delhi, Lauriya Nandangarh in Bihar and in Allahabad had been discovered, with the same pin-men script. The Allahabad pillar, for example, also had two other inscriptions, one of Samudragupta in Sanskrit in Nagari script and Jehangir in Persian. Comparing transcripts Prinsep realized that all three pillars had the same text, not just the same script! The script had also been found at slabs in Bodh Gaya; a stupa at Sanchi; and at Dhauli and at Udayagiri-Khondagiri, both near Bhubaneshvar. The Samudragupta, son of Chandragupta of the Allahabad pillar was of the Solar race, whereas William Jones’ Sandrocottus was of the Lunar race. 

Asoka's Pillar and Buddhist stupa in Vaishali, Bihar

Rock with Asoka's Pali edict in Brahmi script
at Dhauli, Orissa 

Brahmi inscription at Karla caves, Maharashtra
Lower line reads "daanam" ( दानं )

Studying the Sanchi inscriptions, Prinsep observed that several of them ended in the same set of three characters. He brilliantly guessed that they were records of donations, based on similar later inscriptions at other stupas in Buddhist nations. Perhaps they were the phrase “-ssa daanam.” (-’s donation). Now he was confident that the language was Pali, not Sanskrit. With intelligent guessing, and dedicated effort, he decoded the script in six weeks! The Brahmi script was now readable, nearly 1500 years after it had been replaced by its daughter script Nagari.

Sanchi stupa Brahmi inscriptions
ending with daanam

Most of the pin-men (Brahmi) inscriptions began with the phrase “Devaanaampiya PiyaDassi laaja hevam aaha” (“Thus spake King Beloved-of-the-Gods PiyaDassi”), but, who was this king? That continued to be a puzzle. There seemed to be no PiyaDassi in Indian literature. 

Concurrently, Turnour, an Orientalist in Kandy was given a copy of the Mahavamsa, the History of Sri Lanka, by the Thero of the Saffragam monastery. He came across this passage : “King Devenampiya Tissa, induced Dammasoka, Ruler of several kingdoms of Dambadiva (Jambudvipa) to depute his son Mahindu and daughter Sangamitta to Auradhapura to introduce religion of Buddha.”

The Thero also gave Turnour the Dipavamso, which threw a flood of light : “218 years after MahaParinnirvana of Buddha, Piyadassi, son of Bindusara and grandson of Chandragupta, Viceroy of Ujjaiyini was inaugurated king.”

Thus, Devanampiya Piyadassi was revealed to be Dammasoka or Dharma Asoka, grandson of Chandragupta Maurya. The wide spread of his pillars and edicts, from Afghanistan to Andhra Pradesh, showed how vast an empire he ruled; it gave details of the Kalinga war, and of Asoka’s change of heart; and of his sending emissaries to spread Buddhism across the world.

Consequences

Inscriptions of the period 300 BC to 300 AD turned out to be in the Brahmi script, in Prakrit or Sanskrit, and so, suddenly, six hundred years of history stood revealed, including the dynasties of the Kshatrapas, the Kushanas, the Shungas, the Satavahanas. The Hathigumpha inscriptions were of king Kharavela of the Mahameghavahana dynasty.

In the twentieth century, Tamil inscriptions in the Tamil Brahmi script were also discovered. The field of palaeography was enriched when it was realized that the Brahmi script is the parent script of both Nagari and Grantham scripts, the latter of which was the parent of scripts of the South East Asian languages like Thai, Burmese, Sumatran, Cambodian etc.

References
1. Buddha and the Sahibs by Charles Allen
2. The Asiatic Society of Bengal by O.P. Kejriwal
3. The Powerpoint presentations of S Swaminathan
4. Essays by James Prinsep, Journal of the Asiatic Society

Video of INTACT lecture Rediscovery of Asoka - lecture in 2013
Audio of 2016 DUJ Lecture on Rediscovery of Brahmi and Asoka - Part 1
Audio of 2016 DUJ Lecture on Rediscovery of Brahmi and Asoka - Part 2

My blogs on Western Orientalists
1. Ellenborough - Abolition of slavery in India
2. Robert Caldwell - discoverer of Munda language family
3. Francis Whyte Ellis - discoverer of Dravidian language family
4. An Englishman's Tamil inscription
5. A mathematician's Poem about Madras
6. Did Macaulay undermine Indian education?
7. Madras and its American connections

My History blogs
Three Perspectives on History - Caldwell, Mark Twain, PT Srinivasa Iyengar
Novel on Samrat Asoka - some speeches
Timelines of Gujarat and Tamilnadu
Timelines of Karnataka and Tamilnadu
Vaishali

Origins of Chemistry
Beginning of Electronics