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Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c11.s4: Orientalism

Vāda in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c11.s4

Language
English

Orientalism

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Orientalist discourse had two faces right from the beginning. Edward Said has rightly portrayed its one face:

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If the knowledge of Orientalism has any meaning, it is being a reminder of the seductive degradation of knowledge, of any knowledge, anywhere, at any time. Now perhaps more than before.³⁸

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But then, Said’s analysis, reveals only one side of Orientalism, and his “concept of Orientalist discourse is too monolithic and homogeneous”.³⁹

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On the other hand, the contributions of Orientalist like William Jones and Max Müller helped in the process of a national reawakening. This was the view the intellectuals in India were holding during the last decades of the nineteenth century projected by nationalist journals like the *Indian Mirror*:

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The advent of the English found us a nation low sunk in the mire of superstition, ignorance and political servitude. The advent of scholars like Sir William Jones found us fully established in a rank above that of every nation as that from modern civilization could be distinctly traced. It would be interesting to contemplate what would have been our position if the science of philology had not been discovered.
We should know that it is to the study of the roots and inflexions of Sanskrit that we owe our national salvation. . . . Within a few years after the discovery of Sanskrit, a revolution took place in the history of comparative science. Never were so many discoveries made at once, and from the speculations of learned scholars like Max Müller, the dawning of many truths are even now visible to the world. . . . Comparative Mythology and Comparative Religion are now terms altogether in the world.⁴⁰

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During the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries, Orientalism was griping the West, particularly Germany. Raymond Schwab gave an encyclopaedic description of this sweeping impact from 1765 to 1850 in his *La Renaissance Orientale*: “there was a virtual epidemic of orientalia affecting every major poet, essayist and philosopher of the period”. Schwab’s notion that

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Oriental identifies an amateur or professional enthusiasm for everything Asiatic, which was wonderfully synonymous with exotic, the mysterious, the profound, the seminal was a later transposition eastwards of a similar enthusiasm in Europe for Greek and Latin antiquity during High Renaissance.⁴¹

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West moved beyond the “Biblical orient”. The first initiative was by Abraham Hyacinthe Anqueil-Duperron (1731–1805), who was

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an eccentric theoretician of egalitarianism, a man who managed his head to reconcile Jansenism with orthodox Catholicism and Brāhmanism, and who travelled to Asia in order to prove the actual primitive existence of a chosen people and the Biblical genealogies. Instead he overshot his early goal and travelled as far as Surat, there to find a cache of Avestan texts, there also to complete his translation of Avesta.⁴²

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He finished the translation of Avesta in Surat in 1759 and the translation of Upaniṣads in Paris in 1786. “He has dug a channel between the hemispheres of human genius, correcting and expanding the old humanism of the Mediterranean basin.”⁴³ He started comparative studies between Greek and Persian.

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Friedrich Schlegel declared even before he learnt Sanskrit that it was in the East that the Europeans must look for the highest Romanticism. He stated his conviction more emphatically after having learnt Sanskrit in his *Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier* (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians) in 1808. Nirad C. Chaudhury called it a manifesto of a new Renaissance for Europe from India.⁴⁴

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An awareness about the intellectual and cultural India was dawning in the West. The renderings of the Upaniṣads from their Persian translation had also come out before Max Müller started his work. The German philosophers like Schelling and Schopenhauer were attracted to the Upaniṣads. Schlegel’s edition and translation of *Bhagavadgītā* attracted linguists and philosophers like Humboldt and Hegel.⁴⁵ The responses of Schelling and Schopenhauer became helpful in the search for a new identity by the Indians like Raja Rammohun Roy and Keshub Chandra Sen. They were drawn to Christianity but found a ground on the Upaniṣadic soil itself for their faith.

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It is true that Orientalism initially served the colonial masters, but it is also true that the Orientalists in Germany, England and other European countries tried to establish contacts with the *paṇḍits* in India and quite often also depended on them for original sources. This also led to a process of dialogue and sometimes debates between the Orientalists and the *paṇḍits*. William Jones appreciated “the superior accuracy of their scholarship” and accuracy and authenticity with which they helped.⁴⁶ The Orientalist scholars from the West to a large extent worked for the empowerment of colonial rule, but their correspondences with Indian scholars and Sanskrit *paṇḍits* gave an opportunity to the *paṇḍits* to develop their own vision to compete with the Orientalist discourse.

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Like William Jones, H.H. Wilson also learned Sanskrit from the *paṇḍits*. He had forged relationships with Indian scholars. It was with their help that he could produce a translation of *Meghadūta* in 1814. Wilson was an influencial figure; he served as a secretary to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta from 1811, and in 1823 became the secretary to the Government’s Central Committee of Public Instruction, where he was a leading advocate for the promotion of Sanskrit education in India. He wanted to encourage Sanskrit learning for uplifting of the Indian society. He pleaded for encouraging Sanskrit studies, to enable the Indians to better understand their own culture and literature. He utilized his stay at the Banaras Sanskrit College during 1819-20 to prepare for the Bodon Professorship and also acknowledged that the Oriental *paṇḍits* of the city “afforded him valuable opportunities for improving (his) knowledge of Sanskrit”. Wilson’s *Dictionary of Sanskrit and English* was translated and amended and an enlarged version of the original compilation prepared by “Learned Natives for the College of Fort William”, under the supervision of Pt. Raghumani Bhattacharya.

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It was because of Sanskrit and the intrinsic values which it imbibed, the Orientalist carried with them a feeling of illumination amounting sometimes to euphoria.

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In 1867 Max Müller had published an advertisement in *The Pundit* of Banaras inviting subscriptions to his edition of *Ṛgveda* with an explanation of the whole scheme of translation. The advertisement drew sharp reactions from traditional scholars. Responses from several *paṇḍits*, including the rejoinder by Pt. Shiv Prasad in Sanskrit were subsequently published in *The Pundit*.⁴⁷

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During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Kāśī and Calcutta became centres of vigorous intellectual exercises provoked by the onslaught of Orientalism. Pramadādāsa Mitra was one of the most vocal members of these groups. He came from a Bengali merchant family settled at Banaras and had served as Assistant Anglo-Sanskrit Professor in Banaras College teaching English through the medium of Sanskrit to the traditional students there. Working in close association with R.T.H. Griffith, the Principal of the college and other European scholars there, he was instrumental in revising the English translation of *Sāhityadarpaṇa* by J.R. Ballantyne. However, he developed sharp differences with the European Orientalists later much to their chagrin. When George Thibaut proposed to introduce the techniques of modern Orientalism for improvement of Sanskrit studies in the college, by introducing the works of John Muir, Max Müller and H.T. Colebrooke in the syllabus, Mitra launched an angry protest. He wrote that “even a most confident and learned European Sanskritist will not deny that he has yet to learn a good deal about the numerous philosophical systems of India” and for a deep understanding of texts these scholars were still dependent upon the *paṇḍits* of “the true India type”,⁴⁸ Thibaut criticized Pramadādāsa for being overly partial to the *paṇḍits*. Mitra also refuted the view of Āryanization and European scholars view of Vedic deities in his letter to the editor of *The Pundit* (November 1876).

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