Sanskrit literature

From the 14th Century, a Sanskrit Political Satire for All Times

Jyotirmaya Sharma’s interpretation and translation of Jagadesvara Bhattacharya’s Hasyarnava Prahasanam makes the 14th century play accessible to modern readers.

It is uncommon for political scientists in India to study or reflect upon political life in pre-colonial times. In the few instances of its kind that we know of, the end result has been far from satisfactory. What we come across generally are anecdotal treatments of limited databases and impressionistic generalisations based upon them. This is due as much to lack of familiarity with sources and the languages in which they are produced, as to limited engagements with scholarly literatures concerning them.

Jyotirmaya Sharma’s new book is a delightful departure from this state of affairs. Sharma is known for his unconventional treatment of Indian political life in the twentieth century. His works on the RSS differ from most run-on-the-mill diatribes against the Sangh parivar by recognising the tensions and fissures within the parivar. And few writers have placed in relief the ambiguities in Mahatma Gandhi’s thought or the refashioning that Hinduism underwent at the hands of Swami Vivekananda as forcefully as Sharma has done. His irreverence towards received wisdom is evident in the book under review, which is a slim volume containing a translation and a penetrating study of one of the most lurid political satires in Sanskrit, Jagadesvara Bhattacharya’s Hasyarnava Prahasanam.

The Hasyarnava is the celebration of political disorder in the reign of a weak ruler. The play is set in the residence of an ageing prostitute. The names of the characters in the play tell us what the playwright has in store for us. The king is called Anayasindhu (Ocean-of-Disorder), his minister is Kumativarma (Protector-of-Folly), the courtesan is Badhura (Inclined-Vulva), the king’s family priest Vishvabhanda (World-Buffoon) and the latter’s student, Kalahankura (Tumour-of-Strife). There are, among others, a physician called Vyadhisindhu (Ocean-of-Diseases) who is the son of Aturantaka (Death-of-the-Afflicted), a barber called Raktakallola (Joy-in-Blood), a magistrate, Sadhuhimsaka (Tormentor-of-Righteous) a brahmin, Mithyarnava (Ocean-of-Deceit), a preceptor Madanandhamishra (Blind-with-Passion) and his disciple, Kulala (Wild-Cock).

The nature of the satire becomes evident at the very beginning of the play, when a servant spy briefs the king of the decline in law in the kingdom. He says, all men have left the wives of other men and embrace only their wives; despite presence of clusters of well-born and learned brahmins, it is the cobbler who mends shoes. Shameless people worship brahmins despite the secure existence of the lower castes (p. 31). The rest of the play lives up to the expectations that these words generate.

The Ocean of Mirth: Reading Hāsyārṇava Prahasanaṁ of Jagadēśvara Bhaṭṭāchārya,
A Political Satire for All Times,
Translated with an Introduction by Jyotirmaya Sharma,
Routledge: London, New York, New Delhi 2020, Rs 695/-

The Hasyarnava is a short play in two acts. It begins with the arrival of the king and his minister at the prostitute’s house, where the prostitute’s daughter, Mrigankalekha (Streak-of-the-Young-Moon’s-Crescent) is the centre of attraction. The king is drawn towards the girl, but World-Buffoon arrives there as a preceptor to instruct the girl in the art of lovemaking. Attention from the girl deviates with the coming of a few others into the house, but presently World-Buffoon and Tumour-of-Strife come to quarrel over the girl. With the arrival of Blind-with-Passion in the company of Wild-Cock to tutor the girl, things take a different turn. Blind-with-Passion deceives World-Buffoon and makes love with the girl. It is then decided that both World-Buffoon and Blind-with-Passion marry the girl, while Tumour-of-Strife and Wild-Cock are forced to accept Inclined-Vulva. Eventually, Mahanindaka (Mighty-Censurer), who is summoned to officiate over the marriage rites, plays a trick on them and takes the girl away.

The play revels in the disorder of the world without offering an apology for this state of affair. It holds out no promise for a restoration of order. “Is this,” Sharma asks in his Introduction, “a case of inversion of reality? Or is it, as (David) Shulman suggests, an instance of a ‘kind of order that disorder can represent’?” Sharma identifies the situation as “disorder at its best” and goes on to describe it as an expression of freedom: “hierarchies weaken or collapse, insecurity thrives, the powerful torment the weak, the weak retaliate when given a chance, boundaries disappear, wealth gets freed from the dharma-framework and so does erotic love, well-worn pieties dissolve, derisive laughter resounds, mediocrity triumphs, creativity finds release, fidelity to customs and traditions dissipates, rituals become meaningless, judgement flounders. It is this breach in the dharma-fortress that constitutes an instance of freedom” (p. 12-13). Freedom, Sharma argues, “is artha and kāma freed from the stranglehold of dharma” (p. 13).

Jyotirmaya Sharma. Photo toynbeeprize.org

The discussion in the Introduction places the Hasyarnava in the context of treatises on statecraft contained in Sanskrit texts such as the Dharmasutras, the Dharmashastras (especially, the Manusmriti), the Arthashastra, the Mahabharata and the Dandaviveka. The reflections made in the light of political precepts contained in these texts urge us to read the play as a spirited commentary on the political life of the times in which it was composed.

Sharma’s conclusion that the Hasyarnava subverts the political ideal espoused in texts such as the Manusmriti and the Dandaviveka is reasonable. This is a widely popular line of thinking, and had Sharma brought his analysis to a close at this point, the book would have been far less appealing than it is now. The great merit of his Introduction lies in its problematisation of the dimensions of erotic desire in the play.

Sharma observes that the king and his entourage violate all norms of erotic love recommended in texts such as the Arthashastra and the Kamasutra. There is another important angle to this violation. In his evaluation of the opening verses in which the playwright depicts Shiva and Parvati in amorous sport, Sharma draws parallels with analogous passages in the Shivapurana, Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhavam and Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda. He highlights the tantric influences on the Hasyarnava, especially of Sahajiya Vaishnavism in Bengal, but at the same time, acknowledges the possibility of alternative influences too, which include a few comparable descriptions in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and the Aitareya Brahmana. This makes the Hasyarnava a text of “fascinating complexity,” one that “encourages us to look at the past with new eyes, if only because our sense of the past is increasingly inadequate, our sense of reality simplistic and we lack sense of the innumerable ironies, tensions, contradictions and paradoxes that fabricated our imperfect but colourful world” (p. 18).

If the Introduction is instructive in more ways than one, the translation that follows is no less marked by erudition. The satire comes out with great force and vibrance in Sharma’s rendering. The ease with which he brings verbose Sanskrit lines to English shows his great sensitivity towards the poetic heart of both languages. It will not be an exaggeration to state that future translators rendering literary works from Sanskrit to English will find a formidable challenge in the standards that this work has set.

Jyotirmaya Sharma has given us a wonderful little book to relish and reflect upon. In the disorderliness that characterises our times, The Ocean of Mirth provides an invaluable moment to ruminate over the limits and possibilities of desire, power, fear and freedom.

Manu V. Devadevan is Assistant Professor of History at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Himachal Pradesh and J. Gonda Fellow in Residence, International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden

Remembering Professor Allison Busch’s Academic Brilliance and Spirited Immersion

Her scholarly understanding of medieval Indian history and medieval Hindi literature inspired many.

That morning, Patna was drenched in an autumnal drizzle. I was in a delightful mood and on my way to an event named ‘Do Din Kavita Ke’ – jointly organised by Arthshila, Patna and Raza Foundation, Delhi. One of the reasons for my mood was that I was about to meet Sanjeev, a friend for 20 years, after a long hiatus.

I was also glad to be in Patna, where our association had started and remains safely guarded. I sat in a tempo and by habit, I pulled out my phone immediately to open Facebook.

A post by my dear friend Dalpat Rajpurohit stared straight back at me. What he had written would translate into this:

“Today is a day of deep grief. A serious scholar of Hindi literature and Mughal India, Allison Busch, is no longer with us. Like me, a lot of us who have had the opportunity to work with her, will forever remember Allison not only for her intellectual vigour but also her genuine warmth and affectionate care for friends, students and colleagues. For the field of Hindi scholarship, this is an irreparable loss, but Allison will continue to live and inspire us through her work.”

How I felt – and still feel – after reading this is beyond description. Just recently, I had sent a string of emails to Allison. For nearly seven years, we had conversed over email. But, of late, there had been no reply. A little defeated, I finally wrote to her husband and acclaimed Sanskritist, professor Sheldon Pollock. He informed me that Allison had taken seriously ill and that she would get back to me once she recovers.

What had my association with Allison Busch been like? The two of us have never met, but we kept charting plans to do so. When her significant book Poetry of Kings was published, she sent me a copy with great love and affection. The first page said: “For Yogesh. With best wishes. Allison.”

In this book, Professor Busch questioned the popular imagination around ‘reeti-kavya’ with rich archival evidence to support her claim and then went on to unearth Keshavdas’ poetry. I had a discussion about her book with my teacher and acclaimed critic, professor Tarun Kumar who hailed it as “pioneering work”.

That was around the time Busch and Pollock were both visiting India. I spoke to them on the phone when they were here. I told Professor Busch that my teacher had read her book and was astonished by the breadth of her work. Allison responded with a giggle and her habitual warmth: “Much gratitude, Yogesh. What can be better for me than for my work to be praised by an Indian professor!” That giggle still rings in my ears – effused with love, excitement, enthusiasm and spirited immersion.

Also read: Swadeshi Indology and the Destruction of Sanskrit

In November 2017, the highly regarded academic Francesca Orsini collaborated with professor Apoorvanand to organise a seminar on multilingualism in New Delhi. I had to prepare a presentation on the beginnings of Hindi literary history for this seminar. I am again reminded of the intellectual generosity of Orsini here. She had not only translated my paper into English of her own volition, but also made some powerpoint slides by sieving out the argument of my submission.

Imagine the amount of labour that she had invested for someone as newly initiated as me, who was still learning to roll the pen between his fingers before committing it to paper. My senses were so clouded with emotion and gratitude that words escaped me. Even today, I only have my muteness for acknowledgement. What can one even say about this? Except for accepting this magnanimity with distant reverence.

Later, in trying to report on this seminar, I emailed Allison Busch. She wrote back with a rare shine of wonder and excitement.

I once wrote an essay on ‘reeti-kavya’ and emailed it to her for feedback. After quite a few days, I received a reply from Allison Busch. It went thus: “Dear Yogesh. I have read your piece. You shall find my comments attached here.” As I opened the word file and started reading it, I could not but bow in earnestness and respect. She had read my essay with tremendous caution and paid the deepest attention to every minute turn of argument.

At places, she even registered her slight disapproval at the impatience in my style. But, in the end, she urged me: Keep writing. Whatever seems fit for the moment and the task. What was my association with Professor Allison Busch? Can anyone say how much of her stays on with me even now? The tears in my eyes and the wrenching pain that tugs at my mind are but a flash of that permanence.

In September 2018, the then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj conferred the World Hindi Honor upon Professor Busch in New York. Photo: indiainnewyork/Facebook

At one point in my career, I wanted to work on Gaha Sattasai. I immediately emailed Allison and asked her for sources and archives that I might mobilise. She forwarded that email to professor Sheldon Pollock, and introduced me thus: “Here is a Hindi scholar. Wants to work on Gatha Saptashati.” Being called a ‘Hindi scholar’ by Allison Busch made me feel very grateful.

Not only did Pollock go on to suggest names of books, but also forwarded my solicitation to many other scholars who work on Prakrit poetry like Andrew Ollett. What association did I have with professor Pollock? Shamsher Bahadur Singh, in one of his poems on Nirala, gasped – if only he could understand Nirala as much as he loved him! Borrowing Singh’s sentiment, if I were to sieve through the slightest bit of Pollock’s work and internalise it, I could have achieved much more.

Also read: What the Petition against the Sanskritist Sheldon Pollock Is Really About

His recently compiled reader on ‘rasa’ is rewardingly deep and nuanced. A person of such intellectual breadth and measure reached out to a novice like me, and so very wholly. He cued me to invaluable books and introduced me to experts in allied fields of inquiry. My mind keeps asking: but, what association do I have with professor Sheldon Pollock and professor Allison Busch? And then I hear it answer: yes, I have a relationship with their academic brilliance, their academic integrity. It is this integrity that makes Francesca translate my work and Allison comment on it with conscientious attention.

The famous English literary critic, F.R. Leavis, saw a morally enabling function within criticism. Human life is indeed structured around this evaluative practice of criticism. But, the essence of the academic lifeworld rests on this function and it is precisely this essence that ties me inseparably to professor Allison Busch. It is this that will survive her passing away, and I will hold fast on to.

Hazariprasad Dwivedi had remarked once that greatness belongs to her, in meeting whom one’s self-worth is elevated. The love, generosity, academic rigour and integrity that Allison Busch unflinchingly carried with her has inspired me to do something worthwhile. Through her, I have come to believe that relationships can still be forged in the mind. I have come to realise that the truth of humanity is in its borderlessness. And, so is the truth of knowledge in its unfencing. Knowledge, if it has to survive, must earn its rights to citizenship within an order of democracy.

I still cannot believe that professor Allison Busch is no more. For a moment, I tugged at my heart and wanted to wring out its grief in an email to professor Sheldon Pollock. But then, it felt utterly strange. What will I say to him? To him, whose reading of Sanskrit literature spans across my world and others’, what words of condolence might I have to offer him? That would be plain overreach.

Whenever I spoke to professor Allison Busch, the two of us planned to meet the next time she visited India. But, meet we could not. But, can one really say that we never met? Are we not still in conversation, within my world of thought and through her body of work? My words here are draped in respect, love and gratitude. Professor Allison Busch will forever resonate across the depths of medieval Indian history and medieval Hindi literature.

Translated from the Hindi original by Debaditya Bhattacharya.

Yogesh Pratap Shekhar teaches Hindi at South Bihar Central University.

A Treasure Chest of Scholarship on Kavis and Kavya

Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kavya Literature is a joyous, exuberant and passionate celebration of the Sanskrit language and its most ornate literary form – kavya.

A panel depicting a section of the Lalitavistara Sutra in Borobudur, Indonesia. Credit: Anandajoti/Wikimedia Common CC BY-SA 3.0

A book of eight hundred pages of essays about kavis and kavya is not something that can be read from end to end in a single sitting. Nor is it a book that one lolls around with. This is a book that demands that you sit upright and concentrate as you marvel at the treasures it contains. Its jewels are often blinding and the reader may want to rest her eyes and her mind before reaching into the chest for another ornament to admire.

In plotting this history of kavya, the editors, as the title states, have chosen to look at turning points in this complex and surprisingly diverse genre, to examine who made a difference and when, to ponder what that difference was and how it affected the trajectory of a living language whose literature grew and responded to historical, political, aesthetic and emotional moments. Coming as they do from a conference of very scholarly birds, the essays are dense and mostly very specific – to particular texts, to sub-genres, to poets.

Traditions – oral, written and Buddhist

Yigal Bronner, David Shulman, Gary Tubb (eds)
Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kavya Literature
Oxford University Press.

A volume so vast can hardly be summed up pithily, so I’ll take a couple of general ideas that caught my fancy and reflect on those. First of all, the book reminds us that there is far more to our literary constructions than the oh-so-fetishised oral tradition. Of course, much early literature was composed, shared and disseminated orally. Much folk literature still is. But in our pride and joy in these spontaneous outbursts of literary grace, we must not overlook the fact that the metric and imagistic complexity of kavya demands that it be composed in writing. It is likely that some shorter verses were composed orally at competitions and festivals, but that should not take us away from the larger idea that, as a culture, we venerate the written word as much as we do the spoken one. We take as much pleasure in reading as we do in listening.

Further, what we know as Hindu literatures are often preceded by Buddhist texts in Sanskrit. For example, Asvaghosa’s Buddhacarita and Saundarananda are as much mahakavyas as Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa, which follows much later. The Lalitavistara Sutra is probably the first of the great prose poems, the gadyas, which were refined by Subandhu and Bana. Bana, (also known as Banabhatta), the court poet of the emperor Harsha, is best known for his Harsacarita (‘The Acts of King Harsha,’ a royal biography) and for Kadambari which is sometimes called the first Indian “novel”. This volume chooses Bana and seventh century Kanauj as a pivotal moment in the development of gadya. These were sprawling narratives written in poetic prose, replete with puns, ornamented speech, sentences that run for a whole page, passages that can be read backwards and forwards, compounds that boggle the mind with their length and complexity. More than that, gadya introduced “new topics (such as everyday poverty) that had been previously considered unpoetic, new metrical patterns and new techniques of connecting individual verses together in extended groups, and a new willingness to use striking phonetic and compositional tools…” (p.234).

One of my favourite essays in the book, “The Nail Mark that Lit the Bedroom” by Yigal Bronner, is in this section. With equal amounts of humour, affection and erudition, Bronner unpacks the particular compound noun from Subandhu’s Vasavadatta that forms the title of the essay, displaying the linguistic tricks of which Sanskrit is capable.

From breezy confidence to humility

The title of this volume calls attention to itself, Toward a History of Kavya Literature. It is a clear indication of the long distance that has been travelled in the scholarship about and historiographies of literature(s). In fact, it brought to my mind a similar volume (also located in the specific scholarly positions at the University of Chicago’s South Asia program), The Literatures of India, edited by Gordon Rodarmel (1974) with essays by such men as J.A.B. van Buitenen, Ed Dimock, C.M. Naim and A.K. Ramanujan, all of whom went on to frame the discourse about literatures in the languages they worked with.

I find the contrast in the titles of these books worth mentioning, the older book so secure in its remit to indicate a canon as it chronicled a history, the newer book (no less star-studded in terms of its contributors), so circumspect about the position it takes in terms of how its contents are presented and how delicately scholars place themselves in relation to that material. The Rodarmel book, too, in its time, was seminal. It challenged some foundational ideas of how we thought about literature by choosing to talk of the “literatures of India”, rather than of “Indian literature”. By using the plural, the book and its contributors forced us to consider that there are many literary inspirations and aspirations in the subcontinent, that Sanskrit was not the only classical (and literary) language worth considering, that the stories we tell and the books we write have, more accurately, many sources. And many ends.

Also worth noting is that the new book, despite its many hundreds of pages (it is almost four times the size of the Rodarmel volume), focuses on one genre of writing from the subcontinent, unlike the older one which breezes through about 2,000 years with confidence and ease. Despite its heft, the editors of the Kavya volume modestly say, “This book, however, is not a history of Sanskrit kavya. We may be generations away from such a work… What we hope to offer is a series of pilot studies, sometimes the first serious interpretive essays on major kavya works…arranged in a rough chronological sequence that highlights structural, stylistic, thematic, and generic breakthroughs.” (p.26)

The joy and love of foreign researchers

The breadth and depth presented by the Kavya volume is simply astounding. Most importantly, Toward a History of Kavya Literature places the ball firmly back in the courts of those who challenge the right of non-Indian scholars to write about Indian literatures and culture. I have not encountered such an intelligent, passionate and erudite collection of essays that treat their material with so much respect. And love. And joy.

This is an exuberant but entirely serious celebration of the Sanskrit language as expressed in its most ornate literary form, kavya. For example, Bronner, when he speaks of his favourite compound, says, “Seen through Subandhu’s self-reflexive subjects, when reminded of the night’s events, and with the aid of a self-reflexive language that calls attention to its own musical, iconic and other para-linguistic aspects, love emerges as a special blend of pain and pleasure or, indeed, intensity and sweetness. Pleasure surely outweighs the pain, but the ultimate smile is nonetheless inseparable from the ache that produced it. The sit sound is thus the nexus of an internal, creative transformation on several levels – of pain to pleasure, presence to memory, and sound to meaning – powerful enough to transform the external world and sufficiently savory to bring about a new day of love.” (p.259)

Match that, ye locals.

Arshia Sattar is a translator and teaches classical Indian literatures at various institutes across the country. Her most recent book is The Mouse Merchant: Money in Ancient India.

India Has to Be its Own Cultural Ambassador, But it Has to Be Scientific About it: Manjul Bhargava

Edited excerpts from a speech delivered by mathematician and Fields medallist Manjul Bhargava on January 2, 2016 at the Madras Sanskrit College

Manjul Bhargava. Source: bates.edu

On January 2, Princeton University mathematician and 2014 Fields Medallist Manjul Bhargava delivered a lecture at the Madras Sanskrit College, Chennai, on the connection between Sanskrit and mathematics. Over 75 minutes, he touched upon ancient Indian contributions to advancing number theory and geometry, the importance of preserving their historic contexts, and what institutions like Sanskrit College can do to legitimise modern debates over India’s claims to primacy. Edited excerpts of his speech follow.

On the Sanskrit-mathematics connection

I’ve always had a great interest in the history of mathematics. For me, I learned many mathematical concepts as a child through ancient Indian works. Then I would go to school and see that they were named after other people. And that got me interested in the question: why are things named the way they are and why do people not know the correct history of things? That’s what started my interest in the history of mathematics.

I also found that knowing the correct history of mathematics was useful in my own research, because if you learn from the original source how an idea came about, that can give you great insight. When you learn a mathematical concept in school nowadays, you usually don’t learn it the way it was originally discovered. Instead, you learn about it all wrapped up in modern mathematical jargon collected over subsequent centuries.

For me, some of the research works that I’ve done came about because I went to the original sources. In some cases these sources were Gauss and Dirichlet, and in some cases they were Pingala and Hemachandra.

I went to the original sources. The ideas [there] are described in their purest form, in their simplest form, with the simplest most basic application of why they [the authors] were interested [in that subject]. By going to the original sources, instead of being influenced by what people thought about that idea over the next several centuries, you can start afresh and build your own path, starting from that seed, rather than starting with centuries of language, terminology and notation that has been loaded onto that simple concept in ensuing years.

Obviously it’s worth learning any concept in the modern way, but it helps to have it supplemented with the original, historical reasons of how it came up and why it came up. That’s been very helpful to me. That’s another reason why it is important to bring out these ancient texts – because the ideas are there in their most basic form without loaded terminology. And often there are insights there that have since been forgotten! Bringing those insights back – in schools or for researchers – stimulates the mind and allows for greater creativity.

That’s why for me it was helpful to have learned that way.

On the mainstream debate as to what ancient India offers us scientifically

So you probably all see in the media how there are debates about what was known in Ancient India about various mathematical things. These debates often happen not based on any particular evidence or sources. There are often two sides with their own agendas. One side says we should keep things the way they are and that nothing was known in Ancient India. Then there is another side that says we should only do things that were there in Ancient India.

Often none of them are talking about any particular works or sources or evidences. They just have their own opinions. They just go back and forth debating it and neither side gives any kind of evidence for what they are saying. So a lot of this is driven by personal opinion and personal bias, rather than a scientific and historical discussion.

Now we can’t necessarily blame them for it. The problem is that a lot of these ancient works are being debated, but the people who are debating them don’t know the ancient languages.

And here is where this institute and Sanskrit colleges around the country can help. The reason that it is not entirely their fault is that a lot of these ancient works have no [English or other language] translation! So people are forced to have debates and there isn’t an option for them to go and look at a source that they can understand.

This is where colleges like this are so important. So the other thing I really want to encourage students here to do is not just learn Sanskrit, but learn what’s in the literature and learn how to connect it to national public discussions and debates. It’s the duty of the people who actually understand the language to supply the evidence so a legitimate discussion can actively happen. If you’re learning Sanskrit, surely you have other interests too. If you have a proficiency in English or other languages you can prepare nice and accurate translations of ancient texts that are being discussed.

Then you can enter the debate, and you will have an advantage because you know the sources. Or if you don’t want to enter the debate, you can give people the actual translations so that we can have an accurate, scientific and historical discussion [of what Ancient India can offer us]. You can also write about it and speak about it without agenda. Just say what’s there, because what’s there is very beautiful.

As you near your graduation, you will want to think about how you can use your skills to enlighten the world. That’s what I want to encourage the students to do, going forward. Its not about learning Sanskrit for Sanskrit’s sake, but to do something for the greater good and to educate the public in an accurate and clear manner about what they are missing.

Its also not just about translations – you also have to connect it to the modern way of thinking. It doesn’t suffice to say that you understand this ancient philosophical book and now I will translate it and tell people. No, there’s a whole way of how people teach and understand modern philosophy now. How does it [the traditional text] fit into there? What does it add to the way modern philosophy is thought about now? How is it different? What are insights there that are attributed wrongly now, that we can correct?

So if you have interests in philosophy or mathematics, also learn it the modern way so you can connect the two. That’s also extremely important. Thus I encourage you to have an interest outside Sanskrit as well, and learn it in both the traditional and modern ways, and then help to bridge the two so that you make both stronger.

On keeping ancient treasures alive

India has to be its own cultural ambassador. It has to bring alive all those beautiful works of the country that are not yet known to the public at large. But it has to be done in a scientific manner and it has to be done in a correct manner. That’s why it’s important for institutions like this to do correct translations. It’s very important to have these works available in an accessible form in various languages. Whatever your skills are, please help bring alive these texts in an accurate and correct manner.

Spread the word in a correct, accurate way, so that eventually the world gets to be enriched by it. That’s my suggestion.

My basic point is that there are a lot of treasures in the ancient languages of India. These treasures need to be preserved. Slowly people are forgetting these ancient languages, and it is the responsibility of those who do know those ancient languages to bring to light those treasures to the public.

These treasures are in every area – philosophical treasures, poetic treasures, story-telling treasures and then scientific treasures. And all of these things – they should not be forgotten. We need to do our best to keep it all alive. That’s why I salute the students of this college.

What’s there in Sanskrit literature?

For me, my other interest apart from Sanskrit was mathematics. So the works I concentrated on were in these areas. I am definitely not a Sanskrit scholar like you all will be. I learned enough so that I could understand the works that I was interested in. And whenever I got stuck in Sanskrit translations, I was lucky that I could just go to my grandfather and ask him ‘what does this mean?’. And he would tell me and then I would go work out the mathematics based on the translations that he helped me with.

So for those of you that are interested in mathematics, I thought I would share with you some of the things I found in Sanskrit literature. All these ancient mathematical works are so beautiful and yet there are no translations available for the public. Only somebody who knows Sanskrit and knows mathematics in a modern way can appreciate these works! That’s a very tiny percentage of the population. And that’s just not acceptable – when there’s such beauty out there and only a tiny percentage of people can appreciate that.

I want to give you a few examples of things that I think are not taught correctly and really need to be brought out to the public. I feel I’m not good enough of a Sanskrit scholar to do all these translations myself. I think all of you would be better qualified. I just scrapped up enough to know that there is something there, and something not quite right with the way we are being taught, and I want to pass that onto you.

On the Hindu numeral system

One thing most people do know: there’s a famous T-shirt that states ‘India’s Contribution to Mathematics is Zero’. And that statement is true, at least in one of the interpretations (laughter)… namely, that the concept of zero was invented in India, when you interpret that statement correctly. Of course, people often interpret it incorrectly.

What is so amazing about the concept of zero? For one thing, it has to do with how we write numerals today. The way we write numbers today originated in India. I’m not talking about the exact shapes of the numbers, but the system of the way we write numbers. The history is that it developed in India, it got transported to the Arab world and then later it got transported to Europe. Europe learned it from the Arab world so they called it the Arabic numerals. The US continued to call it the Arabic numerals. And now India also sometimes calls it the Arabic numerals!

Of course, we had to wait for the U.S. to take a leadership role in changing things as far as the correct names – India won’t. In the U.S., about a decade ago, in textbooks, they decided to call it the Hindu-Arabic numerals with the eventual goal of changing it to Hindu numerals. And then when the United States changes it, then maybe India will!

But my point here is that we shouldn’t wait for that. Why can’t India take the lead in doing the research and doing what’s correct?

Why are they called the Hindu numerals? Hindu does not refer to the religion. Sometimes when you say Hindu numerals in India, some people get upset and ask why are you bringing religion into this? Well actually it’s not. When you say Hindu numerals, it’s not about isolating a religion to name it after. The Arabs called it Hindsa, which means coming from the Hindus. And what did the word Hindu refer to? The word Hindu came from the river Sindhu – people who lived near the Sindhu river were called Hindus by those who lived further west of the Sindhu. (The ‘S’ sound would become an ‘H’ sound in Persia.)

So in this particular historical context, when you talk about Hindu contributions or Hindu civilisation you are talking about the civilisation around the Sindhu river. In this particular historical context, it’s actually not referring to religion but refers to a group of people who lived in a certain geographic area at a certain time. In the Arab world, they are called the Hindu numerals for that reason. And the United States is trying to move to the correct attribution of history, of how these numerals came about.

This system of numerals was really incredible – it’s one of the greatest mathematical contributions in history. Its really the ‘0’ that enables us to write large numbers and do science the way we do today.

And the history of this remarkable way of writing large numbers is one of the things that people are trying to understand. Not in India, but in Holland! Researchers in Holland are trying to figure out the history of one of the greatest scientific contributions of all time. And again, my suggestion is, for the Sanskrit students who are interested in this, it would be nice if India helped in this project because the manuscripts are all here. I always find it a shame that the interest is greater outside India than in India, when this is India’s contribution. India shouldn’t be afraid to own, study, and recognise this contribution. You’ll notice that some textbooks in India go out of their way to call it the Arabic system and not even mention that it was invented in India. It would be nice if this kind of culture was changed.

Because India can actually contribute a lot in understanding the history of this if it got interested in its own things!

On Indian origins of the Pythagoras theorem

There was a big controversy about the Pythagorean theorem last year, about whether it was discovered in India. And in these debates, nobody gives a shred of evidence either way. And in Indian school textbooks, there’s this big picture of Pythagoras. And there’s no picture or mention of anything that was ever done in India. So of course, obviously the debates [in India] will look like that. The way our textbooks are – they have no historical analysis.

So here’s the truth: that story about Pythagoras that is shown in Indian textbooks, the fact that he discovered and proved the Pythagorean theorem – well, there’s no shred of evidence that he ever proved the Pythagorean theorem. Nobody has any source on that. It’s just a legend.

On the other hand, there is a concrete source in India – namely, Baudhayana’s Sulba Sutra – that is before Pythagoras, and that has the Pythagorean theorem stated absolutely clearly. And, that goes back to around 800 BCE. The Pythagorean theorem is clearly stated there, with an interpretation in terms of areas that leads to a proof, and in other Indian works as well.

But again, that connection to modern mathematics and being able to tell the public accurately – that’s the beauty of what Sanskrit students can do in the future. Read these things. Know about them. Write about them. Do it in an accurate way. It’s not your agenda to show that everything originated in India. It’s your agenda to show what originated in India in an accurate and clear way.

How will the world make a judgement if India doesn’t begin to be its own ambassador about the things that happened here?

Please make it your duty to contribute accurately to our knowledge base while helping to preserve the treasures of India. I wish you great success in your future endeavours!