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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

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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 , 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 , 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 , 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 , 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', , 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. Since Kumaoni is also considered to their literary output unaffected. Another factor have developed from the language spoken by restricting literary production at that time must the Khas, and is, moreover, Nepali's linguistic have been the limited opportunities for would- neighbour to the west, as well as being a fellow be authors to publish; so Hutt's chapter on early member of the Pahari language group, some publishing in Nepali is important for a proper information on the affinity of Nepali to understanding of the difficulties under which Kumaoni would have been instructive. How Nepali writers worked, in Nepal at least. It is well, for example, does the linguistic boundary significant that Bhanubhakta's translation of of Nepali with Kumaoni correspond to the the Ramayana was published, in 1887, not in political frontier of Nepal to the west? Nepal but at Benares. With the exception of Gorkhapatra, published continuously since In the Jumla area, not far from that western 1901, the nine titles comprised in Hutt's list of frontier, Hutt has listed 17 inscriptions for the periodicals published in Nepal prior to 1950 period 1245-1591. In trying to establish whether seem to have had short and erratic careers. the language of these inscriptions is indeed in a Indeed, it was outside Nepal, in Calcutta, that direct line of ancestry for Nepali he is influenced the first grammar of Nepali, Ayton's A gram- by such factors as that it is not until 1498 that mar of the Nepalese language, was published, in the ho form of the verb ' to be', together with 1820. Hutt has not failed to mention this gram- garnu as opposed to the kar- root, appears, that mar; but he has nowhere mentioned a landmark the first use of the agentive suffix le appears in a in translation into Nepali, The Holy Bible, con- lalmohar of 1529, and that the perfect participle taining the Old and New Testaments translated form in -dko (current-Nepali -eko) first appears from the originals into the Nepalg language. The in 1581. Mission Press, Serampore, printed a thousand The chapter ' Early Nepali literature' copies of Volume v containing the New Testa- (pp. 77-112) contains a list of 17 works written ment a year later than the Grammar, in 1821. between circa 1401 and 1798; and 16 Nepali The author has listed 31 ' Nepali periodicals of the early nineteenth century are listed, published in India prior to 1950'. About half of with the titles of their works. This chapter is a these publications are from Darjeeling District; prelude to a chapter on so it is not surprising that names other than (1814-68) as the 'founder ' of Nepali those of Brahmins and Chettris should appear literature, on his translation of the Rdmdyana in this field of literary activity too, as well as into something approaching the spoken form of those already mentioned in the chapter his mother tongue, and on his biographer, ' Modern Nepali literature'. Prominent among Motiram Bhatt. these are the names of Newars, of Tibeto- The three more recent literary figures to Burman linguistic ancestry, Ganga Prasad receive individual consideration, Lekhnath Pradhan and Paras Mani Pradhan. Paudyal (1884-1965), Balakrishna Sam Another of Hutt's numerous tables,' Langu- (1902-81), and Lakshmi Prasad Devkota ages of the Nepalese population of Darjeeling (1909-59), also demonstrate the Nepali langu- (1961)', shows a clear majority for Nepali, with age's debt to Brahmins; for Balakrishna Sam, a 369,100 speakers (approximately 70%), easily Chettri, is the only one of the five thus far outnumbering such other immigrant languages, mentioned not to have been a Brahmin. Each of Tibeto-Burman languages, as Rai, Tamang, and these three receives a pen portrait, in about 20 Limbu. For Nepal itself his table' Languages of pages, with some mention of influence on his Nepal' (1971) also gives a majority for Nepali, written style from Sanskrit originals or from 52.44% (6,060,800 speakers), with two other REVIEWS 157

Indo-European languages coming second and indices on [26] microfiches. third, Maithili, a distant second, though with over a million speakers (1,327,200; 11.48%), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987. and Bhojpuri third, with 806,500 speakers DM 146. (6.98%). The increasing importance of Nepali This work consists of the printed text of the can be seen in the chapters ' Nationalism and Brahmapurana, in Roman transliteration, the National Language' and ' The standardiza- together with full indexes. It is the first of a tion of the National Language' (pp. 37-70), in projected three-volume set which is to include which Hutt deals with his second main topic, an English summary with subject indexes, and a and chronicles a century of attempts to prepare general bibliography of purana studies. the language for a national role through standardizing its orthography and through pro- In the introduction, the authors make it clear viding it with a unified grammar and lexicon. that they consider the indexes to be the main He makes it clear that these efforts have been so work, and the text itself merely a concrete far successful during the present century that reference for the convenience of the user of the Nepali has been formally declared the language indexes. However, purana scholars will be glad of administration and education, and is de facto of the text too, which, apart from being beauti- the language of the law courts. Even so, he fully printed, provides advantages over other quotes Ballabh Mani Dahal as having, as existing editions. recently as 1976, ' bewailed the fact that Nepali The text is a reproduction of the lexicographers have failed to standardize Nepali Anandasrama edition (Poona 1895), which was spelling as much as is required'. The difficulties based on six manuscripts. The Poona editors to be faced in any attempt to reconcile Nepali presented manuscript variants in footnotes, spelling with the facts of Nepali pronunciation although they made no apparent attempt to can be clearly seen in the innovations proposed weigh them. The only other edition of the work by R. L. Turner more than sixty years ago, and not derived from the Poona edition is the followed in printing his Comparative and etymo- Verikatesvara Press edition (Bombay 1906). logical dictionary of the . His based on four unidentified manuscripts. The solution to the problem of having two symbols, Bombay editors gave no variants, but only the i and f, for the single vowel unit i, and u and u, occasional passages in parentheses or in similarly, for the single vowel unit u, was to footnotes. The present text has been created make an arbitrary choice in favour of i and «, intelligently and carefully so as to preserve all except that loan words from Sanskrit should the manuscript and printed text evidence pro- follow their own usage; but it failed to com- vided by the two earlier editions. Once again, mend itself to Nepali writers. To phoneticians, the available textual variants are not weighed, too, his choice, i and u, is likely to seem anti- and no attempt has been made to gather further phonetic, because the two Nepali vowels manuscript evidence. These policies have not generally sound closer in quality to the long been adopted lightly, and are satisfactorily vowels of Sanskrit, but these are symbolized by F defended in the introduction. The authors have and u. It seems a little odd to find the Nepali for preferred to devote their present labours to ' Nepali' spelt nepdli in Turner's Dictionary providing tools that will make the resolution of rather than Nepali. these and other questions very much easier in the future. In this, their main purpose, they have Attractive in its general appearance the book succeeded admirably. It might at first glance suffers here and there from letters that have seem that an elaborate set of indexes based on made only half an impression on the printed an admittedly unsure textual foundation might page; especially is this so in Romanizations itself be unsure. But there is a major mitigating containing a macron, it seems. As regards factor: the indexes include all variants. This is accuracy there are occasional misprints of unusual enough to be worth remarking upon, figures and dates; '1950', for example, can and it means that the indexes are in fact not hardly have been the date on which Chandra merely based on the texts as decided upon by Shamsher (Prime Minister, 1901-29) was said to the Poona and Bombay editors, but also upon have 'declared Nepali the language of his the six individual manuscripts that were used by administration' (p. 43). The index seems a little the Poona editors (inasmuch as they are haphazard; Jumla, for example, does not appear represented in the footnotes). A KWIC index to in it, nor does Kathmandu, nor Prithvi Narayan any of the printed texts alone would be a useful Shah. tool: when one uses these indexes, one is scan- These, however, are only minor blemishes. ning both the manuscripts and the printed texts Dr. Hutt's survey of the history, status, and for evidence. This broadens the base of the literature of the language that has not only indexes to an acceptable degree, in relation to become the rostra bhdsd of Nepal but has also the current state of purana studies. A further extended its sphere of influence well beyond the mitigating factor is that the methodology frontiers of that country is highly informative employed in creating this work (see below) is and generously supported with statistics; it is flexible enough to permit the seamless addition also highly readable. of more textual evidence in the future and, if R. K. SPRIGG necessary, a semi-automatic new edition. There are three distinct indexes. The largest, PETER SCHREINER AND RENATE which at 4728 pages is indeed vast, is the KWIC SOHNEN: Sanskrit indices and text index. ,Let us consider the word vedhyam, as it of the Brahmapurana. (Purana appears in the line Research Publications, Tubingen, karandavam cdvedhyanfca trivistapam Vol. i.) xxiii, 826 pp. Brahmapurana athaparam |