Ancient India: Discovery, invention and uses

Ancient India: Discovery,

invention and uses

Rajesh Kochhar

Panjab University Mathematics Department Chandigarh160022

[email protected]

• Physical conquest of India by the British was

relatively a simple affair even though it took 60

long years, 1757-1818.

• But the colonial empire needed legitimacy and

support from among the natives.

• This was accomplished by developing ancient

India as a colonial tool.

• The same tool was utilized by the Hindus to blunt

the missionary attacks on their religion and

develop mild courage to look the empire in the

eye.

• Indology under colonial auspices began in 1772

with the declaration that in civil cases ‘regarding

inheritance, marriage, caste and other religious

usages or institutions’, the Hindus shall be

governed by the laws of their own, based on ‘the

Shaster’.

• Treating the Hindu and Muslim laws as co-equal

was in itself a pronounced gesture towards Hindus

because technically the British were acting on

behalf of the theocratic Mughal Empire.

• Europe of the day would not have known but the exercisewas inherently flawed.

• There was in fact no single Shaster, but a multitude ofancient texts (Shastras) which were neither internally self-consistent nor mutually consistent nor universallyapplicable.

• More importantly, Hindu law in the judicial sense did notexist.

• Hindu practices did not derived their legitimacy from anysacred text but from actual usage which varied from placeto place.

• This realization came later and slowly. But obsession withtracing everything back to ancient texts has persisted.

• Lindsay, Benjamin (1941) “Law”. In : Modern India andthe West (ed: L.S.S. O’Malley), pp. 107-137 ( London:Oxford University Press).

• Pandits were commissioned to prepare Hindu lawdigests and hired as court officials to advise theEuropean presiding officers.

• The ‘looseness’ of Hindu tradition meant that ‘expert’opinions on them could be arbitrary and contrary.

• Distrustful of court Pandits’ scholarship and integrity,the colonialists decided to master Sanskrit themselvesso that they could go to the primary sources, andinterpret the laws they were enforcing.

• Almost immediately, Sanskrit studies transcendedutilitarian arguments and developed into an excitingnew intellectual discipline with profound implicationsfor Indian and world history.

• Colebrooke 1884, Vol. 2, pp. 113-114.

• The British displayed sustained, secular andrespectful interest in sacred Hindu texts;identified and even accentuated Brahminsensitivities with a view to pandering to them;manifestly supported Hindu institutions oflearning and worship; and embarked on‘exceeding in our attention towards them andtheir systems, the care shewn even by their ownnative princes’.

• As a result they were able to endear themselves toBrahmins and enlist them and other leading castesas their allies.

• The Aryan Race Theory provided Britain withlegitimizing ideology for their rule over India.

• Europeans and upper-caste Hindus were seen ascoming from the same ethnic stock, the Aryan,while the Muslims were the undifferentiated other.

• Muslim rule over India was presented as anaberration and its replacement by the British as thereturn of the Aryan.

• The Vedic and classical periods of Indian historywere accepted as constituting the pristine joint Indo-European heritage.

• Hinduism in actual practice was considered to be adegradation brought about by India’s debilitatingclimate and the Muslim influence.

• De-Brahminization of Sanskrit was a

development of great all-round significance.

• Old sacred manuscripts were collected and made

into library books.

• Erstwhile shudras and mlechchhas [barbarian

foreigners] now became Sanskrit scholars.

• Ancient India was as much a discovery for Indians as

it was for the Europeans.

• The resources that the colonialists assembled for

their own use and the scholarship that they generated

became available to Indians also irrespective of their

caste.

• Joint Indo-European heritage enabled Hindu

leadership to initiate theological and social reforms

and also gave it mild courage to look the Empire in

the eye.

• Orientalism, in Edward Said’s Muslim world,

was confrontational.

• But in India it was seductive, persuasive and

interactive, because here it took the form of

Indo-Europeanism.

• The British invented a new India, namely the

Indologist’s India, for the new Indian social class

to dwell in and dwell on.

• While Europe, through the telescope, microscope,

maritime voyages and geographical explorations,

was discovering for itself that knowledge did not

lie in churches, classical and sacred literature or

the past but in the open and into the future, India

was made a prisoner of archivalism; even

solutions to contemporaneous problems had to be

justified on scriptural grounds.

• The Empire could go to ridiculous lengths to establish itscredentials as an ally of pre- and non-Muslim India.

• After the 1842 victory over Afghans, the Governor-General Lord Ellenborough removed the gates of thetomb of Sultan Mahmood of Gazni claimed them to haveoriginally adorned the Somnath temple and ceremoniallyparaded them across India proclaiming that “ The insultof 800 years is avenged”.

• Even though the gates were declared by the experts to beun-connected with Somnath, Ellenborough remainedunrepentant, no doubt convinced that his purpose hadbeen served.

• Algernon Law (ed.) (1926) India under LordEllenborough (London: John Murray), p 55.

• When Upper Ganges[Ganga] canal was constructed, byway of ‘some atonement for the liberties taken with the[holy river] Ganges’, a new masonry bathing ghat wasbuilt at its headworks in Hardwar and general facilities forpilgrims improved.

• The canal was officially opened on 8 April 1854 at thedown-stream Roorkee.

• There were two components in the ceremony. While a50000-strong native crowd waited outside, a religiousceremony was conducted ‘according to a form expresslyprepared by the bishop’ for those ‘as being of Christianbirth and connection’, in the presence of special nativeinvitees such as Maharaja of Gwalior.

• After the Christian ceremony, the canal was publiclydeclared open with appropriate pomp.

• Interestingly, the real but unpublicized opening had

already taken place on 1 April 1854 at Hardwar,

where ‘ten Fakeers led the working party’.

• The colonial government had to balance two

contrary pulls: it was viewed as a Christian

government by its own people and expected to act as

one. At the same time for reasons of governance it

had to manifestly show its sensitivity to Hindu

culture, customs, beliefs and superstitions.

• North American Review (1855) Vol. 81, p. 535-543;

see p. 535

Archivalism

• East India Company did not wish to be seen asforcing a reformative agenda on unwillingnatives.

• To avoid any possibility of native backlash, itsought to present liberal or progressiveinitiatives as anchored in ancient India andsupported by, if not the majority, an influentialsection of public opinion.

• The value colonial administration attached toarchivalism can be gauged from the fact that it didnot mind committing a fraud to support the cause.

• When vaccination was introduced in South India

in early 19th century, attempts were made to pass

off newly composed pro-vaccination Sanskrit

verses written on old paper as if they were from

old texts.

• Wujastyk, Domink (2001) “A pious fraud.” In :

Studies on Indian Medical History (eds: G. Jan

Meulenbeld and D. Wujastyk) ( Delhi: Motilal

Banarasidass).

• As preparation for human dissection in late 1835 or

early 1836 at Medical College in Calcutta,

Madhusudan Gupta the Indian professor of Sanskrit

medicine was asked to equip himself with suitable

quotes from scriptures.

• At a subsequent debate with the pandits, Madhusudan

convinced them about ‘the existence of dissection in

ancient India’.

• Interestingly the meeting was convened by the

Lieutenant Governor and presided over by Maharaja

of Nadia, a well known centre of Brahmin learning.

• Bose, Debasis (1994) Madhusudan Gupta. IJHS

29(1): 31-40; see p. 33

• Selective scriptures were similarly quoted in

support of the 1829 ban on widow burning

(called suttee in official records), upheld by the

Privy Council in 1832 in the presence of his

Majesty and the later (1856) permission for

widow remarriage.

• In both cases, the staus quoists also came up with

scriptural passages supporting their case.

• Missionary Register, 1832, Volume 20, p. 319

• Quoting the scriptures was not a pro-active

exercise. Rather, the real reasons were

contemporaneous, but legitimization came from

the past.

Religious reform

• Rammohun Roy was the first Indian to translate Upanishads

into an Indian language (Bengali) and English. His work was

greatly facilitated by the researches of British Indologists HT

Colebrooke and HH Wilson.

• He is presumably the first person to use the term Hinduism.

• With a view to blunting the attack on Hinduism by the

missionaries, he met them more than half way by arguing that

• the superstitious practices which deform the Hindoo religion

have nothing to do with the ‘spirit of its dictates’; and the real

or pure Hinduism was the one based on the Upanishads.

• Nag and Burman1995,pt.1, p.12.

• Rammohun was ‘totally ignorant of the Rig-Veda’; not a copy of which was known as existingin Bengal in his time.

• The first specimen of the Rigveda was publishedin Europe in 1830 by Rosen, the year in whichRam Mohun Roy left India for Europe, never toreturn.

• Rev. Kenneth S. Macdonald’s 1890 paper inIndian Evangelical Review, quoted in Robertson1995, p. 84.

• The Vedas were brought into Indian discourse by Gujarat-bornSwami Dayanand Sarasvati who was largely driven by his ownstudies.

• He pushed the roots of Hinduism further back from theVedanta to the Vedas themselves which were given the statusof revealed texts.

• Even though he did not know English he took pains to acquainthimself with English translation of Rigveda being carried outin England under Max Muller. Rammohun-inspired BrahmoSamaj de-ritualized Hinduism; Dayanand reintroduced ritualbut de-Brahminized it.

• It is not surprising that his Arya Samaj (founded 1875) becamepopular in Punjab and Haryana where Brahminism hadtraditionally been weak.

• Also, while Brahmoism remained cerebral, Arya Samajdisplayed a stridency which was directed against otherreligions.

• It is not very well known that the first ever

initiative (early 1870) for a pan-Indian middle

class organization invoked Aryan Race Theory

(and was in the name of science).

• Dr Mahendralal Sircar argued that it was the duty

of the British to take their Indian “brethren, now

fallen and degraded” by hand and elevate them in

elevating them in the scale of nations.

• Both the colonial and Indians continually reworkedancient India to meet requirements of the day.

• In the initial stage the Hindus were told that in the pastwhen Indo-Aryans held sway, Europeans were stillbarbarians. Now it was the turn of the Europeans to rule.

• Subsequently, when India wanted a more equalpartnership based on Indo-Europeanism, Indians were toldthat their forte was metaphysics and things like scienceshould be left to the Europeans.

• When the Indians pointed out that the Buddhistshad worked extensively on health-related chemistry , theywere told with a straight face that in their ancient texts ,probably by Buddhist , Arabs were meant.

• Surely Arabs would have liked to hear that. But it was notconsidered necessary to inform them.

• They in their place were told that their role in the worldhistory of science had been no more than as librariansand archivists for preserving Greek science till Europewas in a position to take its heritage back.

• A Calcutta-based British author while preparing a texton geometry in Arabic for use in government-runmadrasas ( traditional Muslim schools) removed ‘allthat is not Euclids’ so that Muslim students would notlearn anything about the celebrated al-Tusi .

• The Second Report of Calcutta School Book Society’sProceedings, 1819, App. IV, p. 37.

Ancient India in contemporary politics

• Immediately on return home from South Africa in1915, Mahatma Gandhi set out to make thenationalist movement broad based.

• With a view to connecting with the newconstituency he decided to use symbolism fromHinduism in actual practice.

• He exhorted people to establish Ram Rajya [thekingdom of Lord Rama].

• From the context it is clear that his first everreference was to the epic Ramayana.

• Very soon he idealized the concept to make ituniversal.

• Unlike the archaeologists of Hinduism like

Rammohun Roy and Dayanand who were

Brahmins, Gandhi was a Bania.

• Backlash against his attempts to secularize

Hinduism also came from Banias. Attempts to

celebrate Puranic Hinduism in its own right as it

stood were initiated in 1923, by leaders of the

Marwari Aggarwal Bania community with the

setting up of Gita Press Gorakhpur.

• In recent times, Puranic and Epical Hinduism has

come to occupy centre stage due to a combination

of factors: compulsions of electoral processes,

populism, posturing and quest for smaller and

smaller identities.

• There has been a flourishing industry in Indiawhich takes modern scientific discoveriesmade in the West and discovers references tothem in ancient texts. The exercise is post-facto.

• Nobody has ever obtained a clue from old textsand made modern discovery.

• There is some method in this madness. Linkingmodern scientific discoveries to ancient texts,traditions and myths makes it possible toaccept West-centred advancements withoutfeeling culturally threatened.

• As you know, the number of malls and

multiplexes has drastically increased in India in

recent times to cater to the new Globalization-era

middle class.

• What is not known so well is that the number of

temples dedicated to the malignant planet Saturn

(Shani) have multiplied even more.

• A new phenomenon is taking place.

• The new young middle class powered by

globalization-era economics and entertained by

the electronic media, with high levels of personal

insecurities and hardly any time or inclination to

delve into any texts leave aside of the religious or

spiritual type, has avidly grabbed mythology,

pseudo-mythology, pseudo-science and

supernaturalism for time pass and as a refuge

from the present.

References

• Baron, John (1827) The Life of Edward Jenner, Vol. 1

(London: Henry Colburn)

• Colebrooke, T. E. (1884) Life of the Honourable

Mountstuart Elphinstone, 2 vols ( 2011: Cambridge

University Press).

• Max Muller, F. (1884) Biographical Essays (London: Scribner)

• Mukhopadhyaya , Girindranath (1922-1929) History of Indian

Medicine, Vol. I ( Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.

• Nag, Kalidas and Burman, Debajyoti (1995) The English

Works of Raja Rammohun Roy (Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo

Samaj).

• Robertson, Bruce Carlisle (1995) Raja Rammohan

Roy (Delhi: Oxford University Press).

• Sinha, Samita (1993) Pandits in a Changing

Environment (Calcutta: Sarat Book House).

• Upadhyaya, Baldev (1994) Kashi ki Panditya

Parampara (Varanasi: Vishvavidyalaya Prakashan).

• Wujastyk, Domink (2001) “A pious fraud.” In :

Studies on Indian Medical History (eds: G. Jan

Meulenbeld and D. Wujastyk) ( Delhi: Motilal

Banarasidass).