Discovering India's Past
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292 Chapter 5 Discovering India's Past In ancient times there existed diplomatic, commercial and cultural relations between India and Hellenic and the Hellenistic Worlds. After the rise of Islam and with that the expansion of Islamic political power there existed little or no direct communication between India and Europe. With the arrival of Vasco da Gama in Calicut in 1498, there came to be discovered the direct sea route between India and Europe. The Portuguese were followed by the other European trading companies namely the Dutch, the French, the Danish and the British. The European colonial powers put an end to the Turkish Supremacy on the Indian Ocean and the Arab monopoly of trade between Asia and Europe. In the end, in the struggle between European colonial powers, for establishing political supremacy in India, the British emerged as victorious. During the period of three centuries from the end of the fifteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, there were merchants, envoys, physicians, soldiers, sailors, adventurers, missionaries and fortune seekers, who came from different countries of Europe to India. Some of them wrote their observations about India: its people and society; some of them attempted to study Indian languages and literature. For instance Thomas Stephens or Stevens (1549-1619) an Englishman was one of the fzrst Europeans in modem times to study Indian languages seriously.^ ' He studied Konkani, a dialect of Marathi and published a Konkani grammar and composed a remarkable poem entitled Kristana Purana. But most of them had inadequate knowledge of the geography of India, of its customs, traditions and of its literature and languages. They recorded their hurried 293 and superficial observations and obviously their accounts contain stereotype information about India. The prejudiced ones made fantastic and unrealistic presentations. For instance, Abbe Dubois in presenting Hindus as degraded and superstitious, described exclusively the dark side of Hinduism.^^ In conclusion, until the second half of the eighteenth century, few Europeans made serious attempt to understand Indian Society in its proper historical perspective. Thomas R. Trautmann described orientalism after the arrival of Sir William Jones in India in 1783 as 'the new orientalism'.^^ However, there were a few orientalists, who came before Jones arrived in India, who were the first practitioners of the new orientalism. Trautmann explained certain characteristics of the first practitioners of the new orientalism.^ ^ In the first place, the earlier writings on India that had been considered as authoritative* came to be replaced by the works of new orientalists. Secondly the first practitioners of orientalism approached to India's past through Persian; their works were mostly translations fi^om Persian. Thirdly, they based their knowledge of India on direct interchange with the pandits in India, who were either teachers of language or scholarly interlocutors to them or experts on the Hindu law. They were sympathetic in their attitude towards understanding India's past and its culture. And lastly, they drew authority from their knowledge of the languages of India as opposed to those of the travelers and missionaries. 'The command of language'^ ^ * These works were such as : "the Dutch missionary Abraham Roger's Open door to heathendom, widely known through the French translation of 1670, La Porte Ouverte, Pour parvenir a la connoissance du paganisme cache'; Henry Lord's A display of two forraigne sects in the East Indies (1630); the letters edifiantes et Curieuses of the Jesuits (1702-77); the writings of the travelers especially Francois Bemier (1968)[1698]; and those of the Savants. Trautmann, Thomas R., Aryans and British India (New Delhi, Vistar Publications, 1997), p. 30 294 as the phrase coined by Bernard Cohn, enabled them to go 'to the deeper meaning of things, to intentionaHty of those',*- ^ whom they were trying to understand and describe. The French were the first to take interest in Indian learning. They started a systematic investigation by the beginning of the eighteenth century.* The first practitioner of the new orientalism was Anque'til Duperron. He with the help of Parsi scholars in India discovered the Avesta and published it in three volumes in 1771. Interestingly, his next achievement was his translation of the Upanishads. It was in 1636, the Persian translation of the Upanishads under the title Sirr-ul-Akbar was made by Dara Shukoh 'in order to discover any Wahdat-al-wujud doctrines hidden in them, and not as a linguistic exercise'.^ ^ The Persian manuscript of this work was secured by Duperron and from this he prepared the first European translation of the fifty Upanishads in Latin. His French translation was never published but the Latin version known as "Oupnek'hat" was published in 1801-02.^ It is significant that Duperron recommended to treat the Indian classics on a par with those * Bignan, the librarian of the French king made an appeal in 1718 asking travellers 'to purchase or make a copy of every book of note, as well as grammars and dictionaries, available in India or in regions where Indian culture prevailed'. Accordingly, many French officials, residents, missionaries and visitors started collecting Indian Texts. For instance, the missionary Calmette, obtained copies of the first three Vedas. Pere Pons collected many works in the different branches of classical Sanskrit literature. His efforts resulted in the publication of the first printed catalogue of Sanskrit literature in Paris in 1739. Sihghal, D.P., India and Worid Civilization (Calcutta, Rupa and Co., 1993), p. 209. ^ Friedrich Majer's book on Hindu thought Published in 1819 introduced Schopenhauer to Indian Philosophy. One of the books which Schopenhauer had read earlier included the name of the Oupnekhat. When he read it, he wrote , "it has been the solace of my life and will be the solace of my death" Das, Sisir Kumar, Western Sailors Estem Seas German Response to Indian Culture (New Delhi, Thomson Press (India) ltd., 1971), p. 17. 295 of Greece and Rome ^^ He emphatically stated the need to go beyond the mere antiquarian interest and to study the philosophy of the Oupnek'hat seriously.^ •' John Zephaniah Holwell's account of "The Religious Tenets of the Gentoos", appeared in his 'Interesting Historical Events' relative to the provinces of Bengal and the Empire of Indostan (1767). This is an account of a body of written laws by Brahma, which Holwell describes it as the Chatah Bhade Shastah. Holwell explicitly stated his view-point that not to rely earlier accounts about India by authors in almost all ages.# Quite contrary to the views expressed by his predecessors, who depicted the Hindus as " a race of stupid and gross idolaters",^ ^ Holwell went to the extent of suggesting that Homer, Virgil, Lucretius, Ovid, Lucian availed themselves of the simple cosmology of Brahma and derived their myths of creation from the Hindus. He further wrote that "from these our Mitton copied".^^^^ Holwell was of the view that the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans borrowed their mythology and cosmology from the doctrines of the * Edmund Burke who was keenly interested in the affairs in India described Holwell's account in the Annual Ragister as "a very curious and important acquisition to the general stock of literature in Europe"(a) Voltaire called Halwell's shastah 'the oldest homage to God on earth.' (b) Annual Register (1766), II, p. 307 Quoted in Singh, C.S., Theory of Literature (New Delhi, Anmol Publications, 1998), p. 19 b) Oeuvres xxix, p. 167 Quoted in Singh, C.S., op. cit., p. 20. ^ Holwell in his Preliminary Discourse to the Religious Tenets of the Gentoos said : "Having sediously perused all that has been written of the empire of Indostan, both as to its ancient as well as more modem state; as also the various accounts transmitted to us, by authors in almost all ages ... I venture to pronounce them all very defective, fallacious and unsatisfactory to an inquisitive searcher after tmth; and only tending to convey a very imperfect and injurious resemblance of a people, who from the earliest times have been an ornament to the creation if so much can with propriety be said of any known people upon earth". Kejariwal, O.P., The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India's Past. (Delhi, O.U.P., 1988), p. 19. 296 Brahmins/ ^ Holwell on the basis of the existence of an early connection between India, Persia and Egypt expressed that 'Pythagoras came to India and borrowed the doctrines of the unity of Godhead, ... from the Brahmins of India'/ ' What Holwell was trying to do was to establish the great antiquity of the Indian people and their literature. He, expressing himself against superficial studies, emphasized the need for a new orientation to Indian studies. In this context he told not to depend only on the application of European standards to the study of India's past.^ -* Alexander Dow (1735-79) published his History of Hindustan in three volumes between 1768 and 1772. Dow was primarily a Persian scholar and his 'History of Hindustan' is mainly a translation of the portions of Tarikh-i-Firishta and the work came to be regarded as 'the first general history of Muslim India to have been written in Great Briton'.^ ^ His work deals with the rise, expansion and decline of the Islamic powers in India from the eleventh to the eighteenth century. It remained the standard work until the publication of John Brigg's 'History of the Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India' in 1829.^ ^ The first volume of his 'History of Hindostan' contains the dissertation on the customs, manners, language, religion and philosophy of the Hindus and a catalogue of the Gods of the Hindus. Dow was one of the earliest writers in modem times to mention the four Vedas and to describe them as the principal tenets of Brahmins.