The Perception of the Literary Tradition of Gujarat in the Late Nineteenth Century

1 ■Article■ The Perception of the Literary Tradition of Gujarat in the Late Nineteenth Century ● Riho Isaka I The late nineteenth century saw the rise of interest in the development of vernacular literature among Indian intellectuals educated under the colonial system. Gujarat was no exception, and active debates arose among the literati on the question of defining the 'correct' language , creating 'new' literature and understanding their literary tradition . The aim of this paper is to examine how the Gujarati intellectuals of this period articulated their literary tradition, and what influence this articu- lation had on the social and cultural life of this region in the long term . It attempts to show how these literati, in describing this tradition , selec- tively appropriated ideas and idioms introduced under colonial rule as well as those existing in the local society from the pre-British period , according to their needs and circumstances. By the time British rule began, Gujarat had already established several different genres of literature. Firstly there was a rich collection of Jain literature in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha and old Gujarati.1) Such works were produced by Jain priests over many centuries and preserved in manuscripts, which were then stored in bhandars (storehouses) in 井坂理穂 Riho Isaka, Department of Area Studies, The University of Tokyo . Subject : Modern Indian History. Articles: "Language and Dominance: The Debates over the Gujarati Language in the Late Nineteenth Century", South Asia, 25-1 (April, 2002), pp. 1-19. "M . K. Gandhi and the Problem of Language in India" , Odysseus: Bulletin of the Department of Area Studies, The University of Tokyo, 5 (2000), pp. 132-45. 2 Journalof the JapaneseAssociation for SouthAsian Studies, 14, 2002 various places including Cambay, Surat, Patan, Broach, Limbdi and Ahmedabad [Mallison 1980: 88]. Secondly, there were religious kavya (poems) concerning themes related to Hindu gods. In Gujarat, Vaishnava bhakti poems, especially those on Krishna, were extremely popular. They were originally sung in public but had also begun to be recorded in manuscripts by the early seventeenth century [Mallison 1980: 89]. The languages used in them varied and included Sanskrit, Prakrit, Vraj and Gujarati. The third category was the Persian and Arabic literature, which developed under the patronage of Muslim rulers and governors in Gujarat from the fifteenth century.2) Fourthly, there were Islamic hymns such as ginans (hymns of the Ismaili community), written in a language which drew upon various sources, including Gujarati, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit and others, for both vocabulary and grammar.3) They were transmitted orally, but had also begun to be recorded in writing by the early eigh- teenth century at the latest [Asani 1991: 11] . Besides these genres of literature, there were various kinds of 'folk literature' which were largely unrecorded, such as the 'bardic tradition' and bhavais (folk dramas). Although the study of old literary works was not entirely unprec- edented, it was only in the late nineteenth century, with the emergence of the press and literary associations such as the Gujarat Vernacular Society (established in 1848), that an organised attempt to define the literary tradition started. The people involved in such an attempt were mostly those educated under the colonial system, who often identified themselves as the 'middle class', that is, in their words, 'interpreters' between 'the ruler and the ruled' [Appendix to Education Commission Report 1884: Memorials 8]. Their interest in collecting and publishing old literary works was influenced by the nineteenth-century British no- tion of 'national literature', which regarded literature as nothing less than the 'autobiography of the nation' [Dalmia 1997: 271]. In fact, ini- tially it was often the British officers and scholars who encouraged this development. For example, Alexander Kinloch Forbes (1821-1865), a Scottish judge and the founder of the Gujarat Vernacular Society, started. collecting 'chronicles and traditions' and copying inscriptions from various parts of Gujarat around the middle of the century, with the help of a famous Gujarati poet, Dalpatram Dahyabhai (1820-1898) [Forbes 1856: Preface]. In his voluminous work, Ras Mala: Hindoo Annals of the Prov- ince of Goozerat in Western India, published in 1865, Forbes quoted The Perceptionof the LiteraryTradition of Gujarat 3 extensively from the Jain chronicles such as Hemachandra's Dvyashraya Mahakavya4) and Merutunga's Prabandhachintamani,5) as well as from examples of the bardic tradition. Soon the Gujarati intellectuals began to take an active interest in collecting and preserving 'classical' literature , through which they also attempted to define their region and regional community. For instance, Manilal Dvivedi (1858-1898), a prominent Nagar Brahman scholar, inspected Jain manuscripts for a project sup- ported by a Maharaja of Baroda to preserve these materials as well as to translate and publish them [Report on Publications 1894: 25; Jhaveri 1934: 70-1; Thaker 1983: 32]. Several collections of medieval poems also began to be published. Examples included Kavyadohan (whose English title was Selections from the Gujarati Poets) edited by Dalpatram Dahyabhai in 1861 [Derasari 1911: 117]; thirty-five volumes of Prachinkavyamala (Old Gujarati Poetical Series) edited by Hargovind Dwarkadas Kantawala (1849-1932) and Nathashankar Pujashankar Shastri, and published in the 1890s under the patronage of the Maharaja of Baroda [Kantawala 1890; Jhaveri 1934: 68];6) and eight volumes of Brhat Kavyadohan (Se- lections from the Gujarati Poets) by Ichchharam Suryaram Desai (1853- 1912), which were published between 1886 and 1913. It is important to remember that the kavis (poets) whose works were selected in these series had not necessarily been recognised as poets before the late nineteenth century. Many of them had hitherto been identified- both by themselves and others -not as men and women of literature [Bhayani 1998: 189], but rather as devotees of God. It should be stressed here that their works were transmitted mostly orally, though they began to be recorded in manuscripts from the seventeenth century. Thus, in the late nineteenth century, it was almost im- possible to know the original forms of these works. For instance, Narasimha Mehta is believed to have lived in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, but the earliest known manuscript of his works dates only from the seventeenth century [Mallison 1980: 89]. Dalpatram appears rather naive when he stated in the preface of Kavyadohan in 1861 that the language used for poetry four hundred years ago was not very different from that of his time [Nilkanth 1905: 6], for whatever poems he saw had already been reworked through centuries of oral transmission. Dalpatram, however, also noted the existence of different versions of the same poems, and emphasised the efforts he had made to 'improve' the poems he 4 Journalof the JapaneseAssociation for SouthAsian Studies, 14, 2002 had chosen for the book before publishing them [Nilkanth 1905: 8]. Thus it is evident that the works presented in Kavyadohan were not just selected but simultaneously recast by the literatus to suit his idea of good Gujarati literature, an approach which was rather common among his contemporaries. Besides editing the collections of old poems, intellectuals also published books focusing on individual poets from the past. Narmadshankar Lalshankar (1833-1886), a famous Gujarati intellectual of the late nineteenth century, collected and published the works of Dayaram,7 while Hirachand Kanji, a contemporary of Narmadshankar, did the same with Akho [Jhaveri 1956: 78]. Hargovind Dwarkadas Kantawala, Ichchharam Suryaram Desai and Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi each studied Premanand, Narasimha Mehta and Dayaram respectively. The Buddhi- prakash, a monthly of the Gujarat Vernacular Society, also published many articles on individual poets.8) It is important to note that the literary tradition of Gujarat presented by the leading Gujarati scholars of the late nineteenth century (who were in fact mostly high-caste Hindus, as discussed later) consisted mainly of two kinds: one was the Jain literature written in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha and old Gujarati, and the other was works of well-known Hindu poets. In contrast with these two genres, Persian literature patronised by Muslim courts and Islamic hymns were given little impor- tance in this picture of the literary history of Gujarat. In view of the fact that both Muslim and Hindu elites were deeply associated with Persian language until the nineteenth century,9) the neglect of Persian literature is rather striking. Even in the nineteenth century, several prominent intellectuals in Ahmedabad such as Ranchhodlal Chhotalal (1823-1891) and Bholanath Sarabhai (1822-1886) were acquainted with Persian along with Sanskrit and English [Parekh II 1935: 162, 225-6; Krshnarao 1888: 3]. Besides neglecting Islamic elements, the elite circles of Gujarat, with the exception of a few intellectuals, did not show much interest in 'folk literature', such as the bardic tradition and folk dramas.10) The tradition of Gujarat was thus articulated through a process in which some elements were selected while others were excluded. To understand how this selection was made, the composition of the people involved in this process needs to be examined. The prominent members of the Gujarati literary circles in the late

Load more