Nathaniel Brassey Halhed
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Nathaniel Brassey Halhed “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED 1751 May 25, Saturday (Old Style): Nathaniel Brassey Halhed was born at Westminster, England and would be christened at the church of St Peter-le-Poer. He would be educated at Harrow, and would there begin an intimacy with Richard Brinsley Sheridan which would continue at Christ Church, Oxford. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Nathaniel Brassey Halhed “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED 1768 July 13, Monday: Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, having completed the education at Harrow, entered Christ Church at Oxford University. There he would in addition to his friendship with Richard Brinsley Sheridan make the acquaintance of William Jones, who would persuade him to study Persian. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED 1771 December 4, Wednesday: Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, not completing the education at Christ Church at Oxford University, but having studied accounting and the Persian language, went into the service of the East India Company, He would be sent out to India. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Nathaniel Brassey Halhed “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED 1772 The East India Company, almost bankrupt, borrowed £1,000,000 from the British government and began its long process of transforming itself from a trading organization into an arm of the imperial government. Warren Hastings was appointed to the most important post in India, the governorship of Bengal. Hastings sponsored a compilation of the Hindu legal code known as the Vivadarnavasetu or “bridge over the ocean of disputes.” THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Nathaniel Brassey Halhed “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED 1776 Warren Hastings had directed that a compilation be created of the Hindu legal code known as the Vivadarnavasetu or “bridge over the ocean of disputes,” and this had been completed in a Farsi version of the original Sanskrit. He had suggested to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed that he translate this compilation into the English language. In this year the requested translation appeared as A CODE OF GENTOO LAWS, OR, ORDINATIONS OF THE PUNDITS, FROM A PERSIAN TRANSLATION MADE FROM THE ORIGINAL, WRITTEN IN THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE.... THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED. CODE OF GENTOO LAWS DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED 1778 From this year into 1782, Warren Hastings would be defending the dominions of the East India Company against attacks by native Indian rulers who had aligned themselves with the French — his victories would secure British influence in India. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed published a Bengali grammar, on a printing press which he set up at Hugh that was the 1st press in India. Apparently Halhed would be the 1st to call attention to (which does not imply that he had been the 1st to notice something so utterly obvious to anyone who reads or speaks these languages) the philological connection between Sanskrit and Farsi, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Nathaniel Brassey Halhed “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED 1785 Nathaniel Brassey Halhed returned from India to England. Charles Wilkins translated THE BHAGVAT-GEETA OR DIALOGUES OF KREESHNA AND ARJOON into English (London: Nourse), the 1st Sanskrit work from India to be rendered even in part into any European language.1 BHAGVAT-GEETA HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED This would be the translation which both Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau would access:2 ... read the Bhagvat-Geeta, an episode in the Mahabharat, said to have been written by Kreeshna Dwypayen Veias, ... more than four thousand years ago, ... translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves to be read with reverence even by Yankees, as a part of the sacred writings of a devout people; and the intelligent Hebrew will rejoice to find in it a moral grandeur and sublimity akin to those in his own Scriptures. 1. The BHAGAVADGITA or “The Song of the Adorable Possessed of all Excellences” forms part of Book VI of the MAHABHARATA or “Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty” and consists largely of a dialog on the field of battle between the prince Arjuna and his friendly chariot-driver Krishna who happens also to be an incarnation of the deity Vishnu. The 700 stanzas of this poem date to the 1st or 2nd centuries of our common era. It is said to have been written by someone named Vyasa, but there is no information whatever as to who this Vyasa was, or when it was that he lived and wrote. 2. Consult the new edition of this, published with new introductions by Michael Franklin by the University of Wales at Aberystwyth in November 2001 HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED A WEEK: The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta. Warren Hastings, in his sensible letter recommending the translation of this book to the Chairman of the East India Company, declares the original to be “of a sublimity of conception, reasoning, and diction almost unequalled,” and that the writings of the Indian philosophers “will survive when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources which it once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance.” It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us. Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics, even more than by the manner in which they are treated. The Oriental philosophy approaches, easily, loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense. Speaking of the spiritual discipline to which the Brahmans subjected themselves, and the wonderful power of abstraction to which they attained, instances of which had come under his notice, Hastings says: — “To those who have never been accustomed to the separation of the mind from the notices of the senses, it may not be easy to conceive by what means such a power is to be attained; since even the most studious men of our hemisphere will find it difficult so to restrain their attention, but that it will wander to some object of present sense or recollection; and even the buzzing of a fly will sometimes have the power to disturb it. But if we are told that there have been men who were successively, for ages past, in the daily habit of abstracted contemplation, begun in the earliest period of youth, and continued in many to the maturity of age, each adding some portion of knowledge to the store accumulated by his predecessors; it is not assuming too much to conclude, that as the mind ever gathers strength, like the body, by exercise, so in such an exercise it may in each have acquired the faculty to which they aspired, and [page 112] that their collective studies may have led them to the discovery of new tracks and combinations of sentiment, totally different from the doctrines with which the learned of other nations are acquainted; doctrines which, however speculative and subtle, still as they possess the advantage of being derived from a source so free from every adventitious mixture, may be equally founded in truth with the most simple of our own.” WARREN HASTINGS HDT WHAT? INDEX NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED A WEEK: Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is it necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the Chinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism. Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. “There are the worshippers with offerings, and the worshippers with mortifications; and again the worshippers with enthusiastic devotion; so there are those the wisdom of whose reading is their worship, men of subdued passions and severe manners; — This world is not for him who doth not worship; and where, O Arjoon, is there another?” Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap. The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive. Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institutions, — such call I good books.