Friday, December 18, 2009
Exploring the Origins of Manuscript Studies in India
Posted on 10:29 AM by daddi amma
In Conversation with Dr. Lokesh Chandra
How would you trace the trajectory of scholarly
interest in, and the study of, Indian manuscripts?
The study of manuscripts in India actually began
with the advent of the British. Upon their arrival
in India, for the first time they realized that
besides the Christian European world and the
Classical Greek and Latin traditions, there exist
other traditions that are equally rich.
What struck them in particular was the text
called Sakuntalam. Until they came across this
text, the British scholars had believed that drama
was a literary form specific to the Greek
tradition, since it did not exist in Arabic, Persian
or even Chinese literature. When I say this, I
speak of the ancient world, not of the modern
world – of course in the modern world there is
everything (in every language) because the
literature after the 19th century became more
and more Westernised. All the genres in Western
literature are today represented in almost every
important language in the world.
With regard to India, in fact, British scholars
felt that here was a tradition that was more or
less on parallel lines with classical Greek and
Latin traditions. There was philosophy, grammar,
lexicography, drama, poetry and even hymns
such as the rajavalis and vamshavalis.
What was the nature of their interest in Indian
manuscripts?
British interest in manuscripts did not begin as
an intellectual or academic enquiry. The
collection of manuscripts and research on
manuscripts began as a part of the imperial
system of government. The British, with their
sense of honesty and fair dealing, thought that
they must understand the people whom they
were going to govern. Similar attitudes guided
them in other places too, including Africa.
In the earlier stages the Western scholars
wanted to study Manusmrti to know what the Hindu law or the Indian law was because they
wanted to integrate the customary law and the
Western law. There were practical questions of
government that had to be answered, and for
these answers at least some knowledge of
manuscripts was required.
Fragment of a Sanskrit drama, the earliest known Sanskrit manuscript in the world, dating to the second century A.D. and
discovered in Qizil, Turfan region, Central Asia
So, when and how did this interest in Indian
manuscripts start addressing a wider range of
manuscripts? When did the study of manuscripts
become an academic exercise?
Well, interest in these manuscripts gained
momentum, let us say, in the second half of the
18th century when they (the British) realized
that the European languages and Sanskrit
originated from a common source. To
understand their own linguistic heritage they had
to go back to the R· g Vedic tradition and as soon
as they did so, they found that many words had
much in common with their own language. For
instance, for the word “opus” (from magnum
opus), there is this R· g Vedic word “apas” which
means “work”. It (apas) doesn’t occur in later
times. Or for instance, the word “drapery”, in the
Rg Vedic traditions was referred to as “drapehi”.
There were many words like this for which they
found the origin in the Vedic traditions.
We must remember that the Europeans had
been struggling for the last two thousand years
to understand the origin of their languages. Also,
the 19th century was a very important century in
Europe because nation states were coming up
and along with the nation states the languages
were evolving. For instance, while French was
already established, both English and German
were being established.
But, whenever they tried to understand their
grammar, they were always at a loss to
understand the deeper structure of those
languages – of Greek and Latin. When they came
in contact with Sanskrit, they thought that here finally, is the key to get an understanding – a
structural understanding – of their own
languages, the development processes of their
languages – so this was what they called the
‘childhood of Europe’.
The first dictionary on historical principles
was the Petersburg’s Dictionary of Sanskrit. They
treated the language on historical principles and
in this treatment they discovered that there was a
clear evolution of the language. The entire
theory of biological evolution so extensively dealt
with by Darwin in his Origin of the Species
ultimately goes back to the perception that there
is a process of development inherent in human
society, in human speech and also in the physical
formation of the human being. It’s a very
important step because in the biblical concept of
genesis – that in seven days God created everything
– there is no concept of development. But
here they saw development. Take the case of
Indian scripts – from Brahmi to the present
scripts, many of the South Asian scripts –
Burmese, Thai, etc. These are all so different from
each other but they all originate from the Brahmi.
In the 19th century then, the British started
collecting manuscripts – they made tremendous
surveys, collected manuscripts and tried to publish them. This was a major academic effort
in the 19th century. It was a part of Indic studies,
but at the same time, it was a part of understanding
the origins of European civilization.
The colonial system of government was prevalent
in almost all parts of Asia during the 19th century.
Did this translate into European interest in studying
manuscripts in other regions of Asia as well?
Yes, a similar exercise was being carried out in
other parts of Asia. The Dutch, for instance,
were ruling Indonesia. When they were in this
region, they saw that here also there was a great
Indic influence and in order to understand this
they also started surveys of the monuments and
manuscripts in Indonesia, Thailand and
Malaysia. So they created the histories of all
these countries, just as the history of India was
largely a British creation. The idea was to
understand the people as also to comprehend
how this understanding shed light on their own
(European) evolution.
All these issues were present during the
colonial period and they came to play a
major role not only in the collection of
manuscripts, but also in assigning them immense
academic importance. As a result, the idea of trying to understand
India also involved a major global effort, in
which the Europeans not only understood India
to a great extent but also the rest of Asia, except
for West Asia. Western Asia has its own
traditions and it is very different from us in India
as also from the European tradition. The idea of
collecting manuscripts and studying them was a
result of (a) the “inquisitive mind of the West”,
(b) of government and (c) an attempt at
understanding the foundations of their own
culture and civilization.
Folios from a Kangyur volume, Ladakh
You also mentioned, during a lecture that colonial
efforts in China and Central Asia lent a great
impetus specifically to the study of Sanskrit
manuscripts. Could you elaborate on this?
Academic interest in China was raised by
Rousseau, who said that China is a very
interesting case of a government because it has
existed for five thousand years continuously as a
centralized state – of course with varying degrees
of area under central control – but still a central
state. This concept of a central state is very
clearly specified in the 24 dynastic annals of
China. Henceforth, European interest in
understanding China increased.
In the beginning, when the French scholars
were studying Chinese, they thought that
Buddhism is a Chinese religion, and they
referred to it as Fo-ism, because the word for
Buddha is Fo in Chinese. But then H. A. Giles
translated the travels of Fa-hsien to India and for
the first time it was realized that Buddhism went
from India to China. So India became even more
important in order to understand the Chinese
socio-political context. Whenever Europeans
wanted to understand the Chinese history or
Chinese people, they had to go back to the
Sanskrit originals, if possible. They had to at
least understand what the ideas were in Sanskrit,
because Sanskrit was clearer than Chinese, since
Chinese is an un-conjugated language and
therefore more difficult. Each sentence in
Chinese lends itself to multiple interpretations.
By the end of the 19th century, the Europeans
had investigated China, but there was another
area that suddenly excited interest amongst
Western scholars – Central Asia. At one point, on
a mission to capture an escaped criminal, a British officer, General Powell, reached a town by the
name of Dunhuang and the residents there told
him to look for the criminal in the caves that
surrounded the town. General Powell went there
and when he opened the door to the first cave,
he found three ancient Sanskrit manuscripts.
For the first time a European had come across
such ancient Sanskrit manuscripts. The earliest
we had (prior to Dunhuang) dated from the Pala
period – 10th to 11th century and of course, even
those were to be found in Nepal. At Dunhuang,
however, the manuscripts that were discovered
were written during the 6th and 7th centuries.
Post this discovery, from 1900, a serious attempt
was made to collect these ancient manuscripts
from Central Asia. When Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a
British archaeologist, went to Dunhuang in 1907
he saw 50,000 manuscripts there – the richest
cache of manuscripts ever discovered in the world.
What is the corpus of the Dunhuang caves
manuscripts? Was it Sanskrit or Chinese
Buddhism?
You see, when we go to collect manuscripts, we
have no time to see what it is. So we just bring it
back. Once it is here, we may or may not study
it – it takes generations to study manuscripts.
Stein collected about 8000-9000 manuscripts
there without caring for the language or the
script. These turned out to be mostly Chinese,
but there were also Buddhist Turkish manuscripts,
Khotanese, Sogdian, Sanskrit, Tibetan,
Runic, Turki and Uighur manuscripts in
Dunhuang. A lot of those manuscripts are now
to be found in the British library. The discovery
of manuscripts was a great adventure, an
intellectual adventure. Scholars felt that they
could now fill in the gaps of history. Now there
is a major Dunhuang project going on at the
British Library. But still the Dunhuang
manuscripts need to be translated and, published.
A folio from Dhvanyalokalocanatika, RORI, Jodhpur
What do you feel about Indians’ attitudes
towards their manuscripts?
There are two things about Indian scholars, or
even society – when a boy’s mother keeps calling
him “raja beta” (princely son) he remains (or
behaves like) a raja all the time, even when he is
90 yrs old – everyone is spoilt. The second thing
about us Indians is that we don’t lay the dining table for a meal. When I went to study at
Oxford, 50–55 years ago, I asked someone:
“Why do you waste so much time merely
arranging forks and knives on the table?” He
replied: “If we stop doing this, our civilization
will die”.
The way they lay their table – 2 or 3 times a
day – they know that they have to follow a
system. In India, we don’t follow systems like
that. The point is that we must learn the systems
in order not to lose our civilization.
Furthermore, denigration of the Western
traditions is a very, very wrong effort but lots of
people indulge in this. Of course, we have
differences with them. The problem is that even
in India, very few people know Sanskrit or read
it. Even those who study it, do not apply it.
How would you compare the condition of manuscripts
in India vis-à-vis the condition of those in
China, Japan and others?
Most of the time, yes, they are kept beautifully.
You see, in Japan, if you own a “national
treasure” it is mentioned in the national register
– it is akin to a status symbol. If you register in
India, I think you will have more problems and less status. So people in Japan try to get their
manuscripts registered in the national register
and declared as national treasures.
In India, things tend to slow down when it
gets official – nobody takes a personal interest.
The Mission must do something, must get
people interested in this work – but don’t make
it too official. All this is possible and will happen
more effectively only if individuals, in their
personal capacity, start collecting, studying and
publishing manuscripts.
In India, we should seriously collect
manuscripts – collection is the most important
step we should take so as not to lose our
heritage.
Lokesh Chandra is a world-renowned scholar and is
considered one of the foremost authorities on
Buddhism, its traditions and heritage. Currently the
Director General of the International Academy of
Indian Culture in New Delhi, India, he is a prolific
writer.
Courtesy (http://www.namami.org/)
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