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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO Additional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here M. J. Hutt: Nepali: a national language and its literature. xii, 252 pp., map. London: School of Oriental and African Studies; New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Ltd., 1988. £12. R. K. Sprigg Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 53 / Issue 01 / February 1990, pp 155 157 DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00021595, Published online: 24 December 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00021595 How to cite this article: R. K. Sprigg (1990). Review of M. J. Hutt 'Nepali: a national language and its literature' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 53, pp 155157 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00021595 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 17 Oct 2012 REVIEWS 155 of the thirteenth-century Vaisnava Varada's texts which contradict their own views. Neither Sribhasyaprameyamdld. Half of the first volume of them resorts to the usual Purva-MImamsa is given to an account of the texts, an explana- explanation that contradictory texts indicate an tion of the points of controversy, and a discus- option (vikalpa); for in a dispute of this kind it is sion of their aims and methods. The rest of this necessary to prove that one's opponent is not volume contains four Advaita texts, in roman- just different but wrong. Advaitins treat texts ization and translation, and the second volume enjoining the topknot, the sacred thread or the contains five Visistadvaita texts and a set of triple staff as applying to lower grades of indexes. samnydsin; Visistadvaitins, on the other hand, The points of controversy concern the initia- treat the contrary texts, not always plausibly, as tion and way of life of the samnydsin. They are dpaddharma, applying only in emergencies. apparently superficial but, like similar points in Occasionally the authenticity of a text is other religious traditions, have far-reaching impugned, and such arguments throw interest- theological implications. That according to ing light on the nature of authority as viewed by Advaita a samnydsin should discard his topknot these thinkers. and sacred thread, while according to Olivelle discusses the views and methods Visistadvaita he should retain them, isnot hard shown in the texts with great clarity. The to understand; it is of a piece with Sankara's translations are clear and scholarly, but one understanding of the old opposition between might question the habitual translation of knowledge and action, for the topknot and parimoksa as ' nudity ', and vrtti as ' lifestyle ' sacred thread are the badges of one who per- (which usually refers to what one does with forms Vedic ritual, the action par excellence, one's surplus of time and resources) rather than and the performance of ritual presupposes ' livelihood ' (referring to how one acquires the assumptions which are incompatible with the necessities of life). For Vedic mantras he relies highest knowledge. On the other hand, it seems on Griffith, without acknowledgement. By an to be purely arbitrary that the Advaita ascetic oversight, notes 55 and 67 of volume I refer to should carry a single staff, while the the same iconographic material, but describe it Visistadvaitin should carry a bundle of three. differently. The word ' hypocrisy' is misspelt. Yet this is a difference on which the texts expend But these are minor and infrequent blemishes in considerable ingenuity and polemical force. an excellent work. Olivelle shows that the reason for their insistence on this apparently arbitrary dif- D. H. KILLINGLEY ference is that the triple staff was originally a portable tripod, used by ascetics, Buddhist as well as brahmanical, to keep their water pots M. J. HUTT: Nepali: a national langu- from being polluted by contact with the ground, age and its literature, xii, 252 pp., a concern which should not affect the samnydsin map. London: School of Oriental according to Advaita Vedanta. The situation is and African Studies; New Delhi: complicated by the fact that Visistadvaita texts sometimes, but not always, distinguish between Sterling Publishers Private Ltd., the tridanda or triple staff and the trivistabdha, 1988. £12. literally' fixed apart three ways', or tripod. The Since the very name Nepali has recently been opposition between tridandin and ekadandin rejected by some Indian speakers of the langu- ascetics is much older than Visistadvaita as we age that they share with a majority of the people now know it, being found in the Mahdbhdrata. of Nepal, Dr. Hutt's book can certainly claim to It seems that the original function of the triple be topical; but, though he does not ignore staff has been lost, and it has become a mere Darjeeling, Dehra Dun, and other parts of India emblem, like a pharmacist's coloured bottles; where emigrants from Nepal have settled, it is but it remains associated with the view that the with the Nepali of the Kingdom of Nepal that samnydsin is not exempt from ritual rules. If we he is mainly concerned. may venture beyond Olivelle's arguments, the The greater part of the book (pp. 71-231) is tripod may have once been both a piece of an account of Nepali literature, as a major equipment and a symbol of the samnydsin's indication of the language's growing strength homelessness; for householders hang their pots and prestige; but the author begins by putting from the rafters, but a man with no roof over his literary achievements in Nepali in perspective head needs something else to hang his pot from. with a chapter dealing with the topography of Once samnydsins took to living in houses or the Kingdom of Nepal within the frontiers fixed maths, the function of the tripod disappeared. in 1816. He follows this with a brief history of The arguments are conducted in terms of that area going back in time beyond the con- scriptural authority and its interpretation, quests of Prithvi Narayan Shah, King of rather than in terms of perception and Gorkha, and his immediate successors inference; this is natural when dealing with (1744-90) to the immigration of the Khas, prob- ritual questions which are not amenable to ably during the ninth century, and of Rajput worldly proof. Texts can be found to support refugees about two centuries later. both the wearing and the discarding of the Hutt thinks it likely that it was the Khas who topknot and sacred thread, or the carrying of founded the kingdom of Jumla, in what is now both the single and the triple staff. This inciden- western Nepal, in the twelfth century. The tally shows that these variations in ascetic prac- importance of this kingdom for Nepali lies in tice are more ancient than the existing schools the fact that it is in the Jumla area, about 200 of Vedanta; but this of course is not the theolo- miles to the west of Kathmandu, that the gians' concern. As Olivelle shows, the two thirteenth- and fourteenth-century inscriptions schools of Vedanta exemplified here use have been found that are claimed to be Nepali divergent forms of argument when faced with in its earliest written form. In addition, his table VOL. LIII. PART 1. 156 REVIEWS of statistics of' Nepali-speakers in the Zones of English, especially from Shakespeare and Ten- Nepal (1971)' shows the highest percentage, nyson for Sam, but Wordsworth for Devkota. 96%, for Karnali, the Zone in which Jumla is The closing chapter, ' Modern Nepali situated, and the next highest figures, all of them literature ', brings the literary survey up to date, between 82.2% and 90.7%, for Dhaulagiri and with subsections on fiction, the novel, the short for Rapti, adjoining Karnali to the east and story, and poetry. It is in this chapter that south-east, and for the Seti and the Mahakal Darjeeling's contribution to Nepali literature Zones lying between Karnali and Nepal's appears; and, partly for this reason, personali- western frontier with the Indian district of ties from outside the Brahmin and Chettri com- Kumaon (by contrast, the Bagmati Zone, in munities come into the picture, Rais, Tamangs, which Kathmandu lies, in central Nepal, has and Thakalis, for example, including Lainsingh only 56.4% Nepali-speakers, a bare majority). Bangdel, Accha Rai ' Rasik', Parijat, and With this historical connexion with the Khas Bhupi Sherchan. in mind it is not surprising that khas kurd should A few passages in the nine chapters on Nepali appear prominently in the section in which Hutt literature have been given in both Nepali and deals with the various names by which Nepali English; so those readers with a sufficient has been known during the last 700 years, knowledge of Nepali can form an opinion of together with such other names as parbate, or Hutt's skill in conveying the rhythm and parbatiya, paharl, gorkhdli, and gorkhd bhdsd, subtleties of Nepali in an English translation, eventually giving way to Nepali (it was not until and an estimate of the poetic inspiration and 1932, incidentally, that gorkhd and gorkhd literary talent to be found in the passages that sarkdr were replaced by nepdl sarkdr on he has chosen for his illustrations. Nepalese postage stamps, which had been Conflict with authority seems to have been a issued since 1881). recurring feature of the literary life of Nepal In a few paragraphs on its relationship to during the Rana regime (1846-1950): other Indo-European languages the author Bhanubhakta, Paudyal, Sam, and Devkota suf- compares Nepali with Hindi, Gujerati, Panjabi, fered detention, censorship, proscription, fines, and Bengali; but there is no mention of and voluntary exile, which can hardly have left Kumaoni.