Modern Intellectual History, 4, 1 (2007), pp. 43–59 C© 2007 Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017/S147924430600103X Printed in the United Kingdom

contesting translations:orientalism and theinterpretation of the vedas∗

michael s. dodsonIndiana University, Bloomington

This essay examines the contested grounds of authorization for one importantorientalist project in India during the nineteenth century – the translation of theancient Sanskrit R. g Veda, with a view to highlighting the ultimately ambiguous natureof the orientalist enterprise. It is argued that Europeans initially sought to validatetheir translations by adhering to Indian scholarly practices and, in later decades, to amore “scientific” orientalist–philological practice. Indian Sanskrit scholars, however,rather than accepting such translations of the Veda, and the cultural characterizationsthey contained, instead engaged critically with them, reproducing a distinctive visionof Indian civilization through their own translations into English. Moreover, byexamining the diverse ways in which key concepts, such as the “fidelity” of a translation,were negotiated by Europeans and Indians, this essay also suggests that intellectualhistories of the colonial encounter in South Asia should move beyond debatesabout colonial knowledge to more explicitly examine the contexts of knowledgeablepractices.

It has often been argued that British orientalist research in India during theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries served to consolidate and authorize the ruleof the colonial state, and contributed to an emerging European-authored narrat-ive of global history. While it is now evident that orientalism served principallyto construct forms of European power,1 it is often unrecognized that orientalistscholarship in India drew much of its authority from the cultural standing andintellectual expertise of the “traditional” guardians of Sanskrit-based knowledge,

* My thanks to Eivind Kahrs for his comments on this essay, as well as C. A. Bayly,Shruti Kapila, Nick Phillipson, Jon Wilson, Andrew Sartori, Faisal Devji, and the otherparticipants at the New History of Ideas for India workshop held at the Centre for Historyand Economics, King’s College, Cambridge, on 25 July 2006.

1 For example, E. W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); and B. S. Cohn,Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1996).

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the brahman. pan. d. its (“learned men”). For example, in late eighteenth-centuryBengal, orientalists such as William Jones distinguished the superior “accuracy”of their scholarship from earlier published works by reference to their Sanskritskills, but especially to their newly gained ability to conduct a “confidentialintercourse with learned Brahmens”.2 Thus, in a significant manner, orientalismcan be read as a set of “double” practices in India, as Europeans attempted toutilize and redirect forms of Indian cultural expertise and social authority totheir own colonial projects, while also attempting to displace that authority inthe process. But, importantly, orientalism’s dependence upon forms of Indianscholarship also allows us to understand these practices as not simply conduciveto the empowerment of the colonial state, but as simultaneously providingopportunities for learned intermediaries—and Indian Sanskrit scholars moregenerally—to forge their own competing visions of Indian society and historywithin the emerging public sphere, thereby making important contributions toearly formulations of anti-colonial modernity and Hindu national identity. It iswith this aspect of orientalism that this essay is ultimately concerned.3

This essay is composed of two principal sections. The first concerns whatmight be labelled the “grounds of authorization” for one important orientalistproject: the translation of the R. g Veda. It does so with a view to understandingthe evolving ways in which Europeans sought to validate their scholarship:initially by reference to their adherence to Indian scholarly practices, and then,increasingly, to a “scientific” orientalist-philological practice. The second sectiondeals with the critical engagements of a number of Indian Sanskrit scholarswith the findings of European orientalism on the subject of the Vedas, andexplores the potential cultural significance these engagements could be used tocreate. It is also argued that, in an important sense, such engagements (andcritiques) were produced out of the very terms of orientalist practice, especiallywithin India’s educational institutions. Lastly, it is suggested that by examiningthe diverse ways in which key concepts, such as the “fidelity” of a translation,were negotiated by Europeans and Indians, intellectual histories of the colonialencounter in South Asia should be able to move beyond tired debates about“colonial knowledge” (as representative of either colonial power or intercultural“dialogue”),4 to incorporate more explicitly elements of the social and culturalcontexts within which knowledgeable practices were undertaken.

2 W. Jones, “The Tenth Anniversary Discourse, delivered 28 February 1793, by the President,on Asiatic History, Civil and Natural”, Asiatick Researches, 4 (1795), 9.

3 This argument is elaborated in the introduction to M. S. Dodson, Orientalism, Empire,and National Culture: India, 1770–1880 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

4 See W. Pinch, “Same Difference in India and Europe”, History and Theory: Studies in thePhilosophy of History, 38, 3 (1999), 389–407.

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i

The R. g Veda is the earliest and arguably most important portion of the fourVedas. Compiled from 1500 to 1200 BCE, the R. g Veda is generally thought toincorporate a series of liturgical verses, intended to be recited during sacrificialritual, and which in earlier millennia would have been utilized to assuage a seriesof naturalistic deities. The Vedas, as a whole, form the core textual constituentof Hinduism, and for more than a hundred generations before the nineteenthcentury had been the sole preserve of brahman. s, Hinduism’s highest caste, dueto their inherent sanctity. The Vedas were considered by nineteenth-centuryEuropeans to be key documents for understanding not only the nature of ancientIndian society, but also contemporary India, given their prominent status withinHindu religious practice. As F. Max Muller noted in 1859, “it is impossible tofind the right point of view for judging of Indian religion, morals, and literaturewithout a knowledge of the literary remains of the Vedic age”.5 The first systematicattempt to render the R. g Veda into English was undertaken by H. H. Wilson (1786–1860), the first Boden Professor of Sanskrit in Oxford.6 In 1854 Wilson identifiedthe difficulties he faced in preparing his translation, arguing, in essence, that thesecould be traced either to the grammatical differences between Vedic Sanskrit andEnglish, or to the vagueness inherent to the language of the R. g Veda itself.Indeed, Vedic Sanskrit is a much earlier form of the language most commonlyused in the sastra (the corpus of Hindu religious texts), the grammar of whichwas codified around the fifth century BCE by Pan. ini in the As.t.adhyayı. VedicSanskrit is distinguished from “classical” Sanskrit, for example, by the presenceof pitch accents, the use of the subjunctive, and twelve different infinitive usages.In particular, Wilson pointed to the frequent use of compound constructionsin the text which were awkward to translate into English; the common use ofadjectives such as vipra (“wise” or “learned”) without substantives, resulting insome ambiguity as to whether they were indeed adjectives or nouns (i.e. “a sage”);as well as difficulties in distinguishing whether some words should be rendered asepithets or names. Jatavedas, for example, is sometimes used as a name, at othertimes as an epithet of the god Agni. Moreover, the epithet had been subjectedto wildly different explanations within subsequent commentarial literature—“heby whom knowledge was acquired by birth”, “he by whom all that has been born

5 F. Max Muller, A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so Far as It Illustrates the PrimitiveReligion of the Brahmans (London: Williams and Norgate, 1859), 9.

6 There were several attempts at Veda translations before Wilson’s, however, though allwere either incomplete or in a non-English language. These included the 1842 Englishtranslation of the Sama Veda by Revd Stevenson (which included some verses from the R. gVeda), a French translation of the R. g Veda begun in 1848 by S. A. Langlois, and T. Benfey’sGerman translation of the Sama Veda in the same year.

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is known”, “he by whom all wealth is generated” and so on—lending furtheruncertainty to the exact translation.7 In recent European translations of parts ofthe Veda corpus (by Stevenson, Langlois, and Benfey), even the seemingly simpleword bhumi had been rendered variously as “earth”, “supplies”, and “food”.8

Wilson felt confident, however, in his ability to overcome what he calledthese “slight obstacles” to a correct translation, citing his own command ofSanskrit, obtained from his long service in India.9 His strategy for translationboiled down, in essence, to producing a rendering which conformed as closelyas possible to the commentary most revered by Indians themselves, that ofSayan. a. This fourteenth-century commentary was produced largely by referenceto the principles of the much older tradition of nirvacanasastra, the science fordetermining, and maintaining, meaning within the Vedas, the key text of which isYaska’s Nirukta (dating perhaps to the fourth century BCE).10 Wilson “faithfully”followed Sayan. a’s commentary as he felt that it represented the “safest guidethrough the intricacies and obscurities of the text”, though he also sometimesstruck out on his own in those difficult passages where Sayan. a was thoughtto have “failed to remove all uncertainty”.11 The important point for Wilson,however, was that while Sayan. a might have resorted to conjecture in instanceswhere the meaning of a word was unclear (or indeed when a key word was missingentirely), the conjecture of a European should always be deemed to be of inferiorauthority (even if “more rational”) to that of Sayan. a, as “it is not that whichhas been accepted for centuries by critics of indisputable learning in their owndepartments of knowledge”.12 Sayan. a was, in short, considered by Wilson still tobe the most “competent interpreter” of the R. g Veda.13

In many ways, Wilson’s approach to translating the R. g Veda was informed byhis long residence in India, the manner in which he had learned Sanskrit andits literature, and the relationships which he had forged with Indian Sanskritscholars. Wilson had arrived in India on the Company’s medical service, butsoon began to learn Sanskrit with the assistance of the pan. d. its, producing,for example, an early translation of Kalidasa’s great Sanskrit poem Meghaduta(The Cloud Messenger) in 1814. In 1811 Wilson was appointed secretary to the

7 H. H. Wilson, transl., Rig-Veda-Sanhita. A Collection of Ancient Hindu Hymns, Constitutingthe Second Ashtaka, or Book, of the Rig-Veda (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1854), xx–xxi.

8 Ibid., xxvi–xxix.

9 Ibid., xxii.

10 E. G. Kahrs, Indian Semantic Analysis: The Nirvacana Tradition (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998), esp. 27–8, 32–3.

11 Wilson, Rig-Veda-Sanhita . . . Second Ashtaka, xviii.

12 Ibid., xxiii.

13 Ibid., xxix.

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Asiatic Society in Calcutta, and in 1823 became the secretary to the government’sGeneral Committee of Public Instruction, where he was a leading advocate forthe promotion of Sanskrit education in India.14 Wilson viewed the cultivationof Sanskrit, in India especially, to be of “intrinsic value”, not only as a pointof antiquarian interest to Europeans, but as a means to improve Indian societyupon its own terms, through a renewal of its textual-cultural heritage.15 Thegovernment promotion of Sanskrit scholarship (both European and Indian),therefore, he regarded as capable of being directed towards the enhancement ofIndians’ understanding of the content of their own literature, as well as a being ameans of reinvigorating the Indian vernacular languages, which were conceivedto be wholly dependent upon Sanskrit for their power of expression.16

Wilson wrote sparingly about his relationships with Indian scholars, but clearlyvalued them at least partly for their usefulness in validating his own scholarship.The time he spent working at Benares Sanskrit College in 1819 and 1820 was citedin his application to become Boden Professor, on the grounds that “the eminentpandits of that city . . . afforded [him] valuable opportunities of improving [his]knowledge of Sanscrit”.17 In this respect, Wilson learned Sanskrit, and forged hisstrategy for translating its literature, within the context of orientalist practices inIndia which remained largely dependent upon Indian Sanskrit scholars, despiterepeated attempts to “institutionalize” the language and its literature.18 Europeansrelied upon the pan. d. its to gain access to Sanskrit manuscripts and to explain thecultural meaningfulness of Sanskrit literature, as well as to naturalize orientalistresearch into the Indian socio-cultural context. Wilson’s 1819 Sanskrit–Englishdictionary, for example, the first dictionary of its kind, had been enlarged froma compilation made by a number of pan. d. its employed in the Company’s collegeat Fort William in Calcutta, and overseen by Raghuman. i Bhat.t.acarya.19 Wilson

14 See also Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture, chap. 3; and O. P. Kejariwal,The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past, 1784–1838 (Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, 1988), 118–61.

15 See, for example, enclosure to letter, H. H. Wilson to H. Mackenzie, dated 17 July 1821,British Library, OIOC, Bengal Revenue Consultations, P/59/1, No. 26 (21 August 1821).

16 H. H. Wilson, “Education of the Natives of India”, Asiatic Journal, NS, 19, 73 (1836),reprinted in L. Zastoupil & M. Moir, eds., The Great Indian Education Debate: DocumentsRelating to the Orientalist–Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843 (London: Curzon Press, 1999),221.

17 Letter of H. H. Wilson, dated 28 May 1831, reprinted in “The Boden Professorship ofSanscrit at Oxford”, Asiatic Journal, NS, 7, 27 (1832), 242.

18 Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture, chap. 2; cf. Cohn, Colonialism and itsForms of Knowledge.

19 H. H. Wilson, A Dictionary, Sanscrit and English: Translated, Amended and Enlarged,from an Original Compilation Prepared by Learned Natives for the College of Fort William(Calcutta: Hindostanee Press, 1819), i.

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viewed it as an improvement on the lists of vocabulary (kosa) often used in India,such as the Amarakosa, translated by H. T. Colebrooke in 1808 (not least becauseof Wilson’s decision to use alphabetization), as well as on the very complex,and often “erroneous”, original compilation of Bhat.t.acarya.20 Indeed, Wilsonexplicitly noted that one could place “little dependence” upon “native research”,unless it was “sedulously and unremittingly controuled”.21 Yet Wilson also clearlyunderstood his dictionary to be a literary production which had been formulatedwithin the norms of established Indian scholarly tradition. For example, heensured that the dictionary was composed from Indian kosas, rather than fromthe vocabulary of “the classical compositions of the best Hindu writers”, as theformer were the “received authorities of all India”, and they were “perpetuallycited in the ablest commentaries”.22 He also identified the grammatical andetymological features of words according to the “generally cultivated methodof Panini”.23 In essence, Wilson felt that his dictionary simply displayed “allthe information we possess at present of those writers [of the kosas], who arecelebrated as lexicographers by the Hindus”.24

Nevertheless, Wilson’s strategy for translating and interpreting Sanskritgenerally, and the Vedas in particular, increasingly came to be disputed within theEuropean orientalist establishment. On the continent, orientalists working withinthe philological tradition forged by Franz Bopp had little patience for acceptinganalyses of Sanskrit on the authority of Indian sources. Thus the first volume ofthe Sanskrit-Worterbuch, a multi-volume Sanskrit–German dictionary, compiledby Otto Bohtlingk and Rudolph Roth, and published from 1855,25 acknowledgedthe debt which European Sanskritists owed to Wilson’s labours, but could notconcur in Wilson’s invariable reference to Indian authority: “But we regret thathe [Wilson] chose to persist with this practice, i.e. that of the Indian scholars, inthe dictionary as well as in the grammar [Wilson’s Sanskrit grammar of 1841],rather than embark on the route required by European scholarship.”26 Wilson’sdictionary had been a product of its time, they stated, and the Sanskrit-Worterbuchaimed to surpass it by reference to modern European philology.

20 Ibid., i–iii.

21 Ibid., iii.

22 Ibid., iv.

23 Ibid., xxiv.

24 Ibid., v.

25 Sanskrit-Worterbuch, herausgegeben von der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften,bearbeitet von Otto Bohtlingk und Rudolph Roth, Vol. 1 (St Petersburg, 1855).

26 Ibid., iii. “wir . . . bedauern aber, dass er es vorgezogen hat, beim Worterbuch wie bei derGrammatik auf dem Standpunkte der indischen Gelehrten zu verharren, statt den von dereuropaischen Wissenschaft geforderten Weg zu betreten”.

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With regard to the translation of terms found in the Vedas, Bohtlingk and Rothargued that while Indian commentarial literature had proved to be an excellentguide to the decipherment of later Brahman. a theological literature (which soughtto explain the Vedas), the distinctive, very early character of the Vedas and theirlanguage rendered that literature unsuitable guides to rely upon uncritically. Theauthors of such commentaries, they noted, lacked “a freedom of judgment anda greater breadth of view and of historical intuitions”.27 In essence, Bohtlingkand Roth argued that later Indian commentators would likely have read theVedas as necessarily being in accordance with their own belief systems, given thatthey did not recognize a historical development in the tenets and practices ofBrahmanical religion over the centuries. Orientalists, they noted, working withinthe tradition of comparative philology, were thus ultimately responsible for thetask of deciphering the Vedas according to “the sense which the [original] poetsthemselves have put into their hymns and utterances”.28 Therefore, in additionto moving beyond a dependence upon the Indian kosas, Bohtlingk and Rothstated that in the preparation of their dictionary, they had followed the “tedious”and “laborious” practice of correlating all the occurrences of a particular wordwithin the Vedas, as this was a superior way of establishing its meaning, especiallyin comparison to a reliance upon etymology alone. Indeed, they noted that noIndian commentator or European translator had yet undertaken such a task.29

While some Europeans, like Theodor Goldstucker, Professor of Sanskritat University College London, continued to defend the value of Indiancommentaries for interpreting the Vedas,30 others, such as John Muir, arguedin 1866 that no one interpretative strategy could be adequate to solve theproblems inherent in understanding the R. g Veda. In a lengthy comparison ofthe varying interpretations of difficult Vedic words given by Yaska, Sayan. a, andcontemporary Europeans, Muir pointed out that Yaska and Sayan. a often gaveconflicting interpretations of words and provided a range of possible meaningsfor some words on etymological grounds, indicating that they likely did not knowa word’s actual signification, and that Sayan. a, especially, was inconsistent in hisrenderings. As such, Muir argued that Indian commentators should not be reliedupon uncritically, but only in cases where there was further philological evidenceto substantiate their understandings. Muir advocated, therefore, a translationalpractice which did not “stand still” at the point where Sayan. a ended, but one

27 Cited and translated by J. Muir in “On the Interpretation of the Veda”, Journal of the RoyalAsiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, NS, 2 (1866), 308.

28 Ibid., 309.

29 Ibid.

30 T. Goldstucker, Panini: His Place in Sanskrit Literature (London: N. Trubner & Co., 1861),esp. 248.

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which advanced further, to “improve upon his lessons . . . rejecting a good dealthat [is] learned from him, as erroneous”.31

It was F. Max Muller (1823–1900), however, Wilson’s co-labourer in Oxford,and editor of the Sanskrit text of the R. g Veda with the commentary of Sayan. a, whomost clearly articulated the reformist, philological agenda of Bohtlingk and Rothin the interpretation of the Vedas. Max Muller evidently felt that Sayan. a gave the“traditional” interpretation of Vedic hymns, rather than their “original sense”,and argued in 1856 that the authors of the Brahman. as were “blinded by theology”,while Yaska (author of the Nirukta) was “deceived by etymological fictions”.32

A decade later, Max Muller published what he considered to be a definitivepronouncement upon the merits of the varying strategies for translating the R. gVeda, by comparing translations of a series of verses, one produced according tothe commentary of Sayan. a, the other utilizing the principles of modern philologyand European orientalist expertise.33 The problems Max Muller identified witha translation based upon Sayan. a’s commentary ranged from his reliance upon“tradition” to grammatical errors, misapprehensions of the pitch accent, and soforth.

In one verse, R. g x, 57, 6, Max Muller argued that in the phrase “vrate tavamanas tanus.u bibhratah. ”, bhr. (“to bear”) with manas (“mind”) should not meanto “keep one’s mind on something”, as Sayan. a suggested, but rather, departingfrom the now commonly accepted understanding of manas as “mind”, as “to keep[bhr.] the soul [manas] in our bodies [tanus.u]”.34 Again, R. g, x, 59, 6 had beentranslated by Max Muller according to the dictates of Sayan. a in the followingmanner:

O life-leading goddess, give to us (to Subandhu) again the eye, again here to us breath,

and pleasure! May we long see the rising sun! O Anumati, pity us, hail!

The “improved” orientalist translation, in comparison, reads:

Thou guide of life, bestow again upon us sight, again breath, here to enjoy. May we long

see the rising sun! O (increasing) Moon, be gracious to us with mercy!

The principal point of revision here is how one should render the termanumati. Max Muller understood anumati as “compliance, grace”, and Sayan. a’scommentary invoked the meaning of goddess, or a personification of grace.Yet anumati also refers to a phase of the moon, and Max Muller argued that

31 Muir, “On the Interpretation of the Veda”, 397–401.

32 F. Max Muller, ed., Rig-Veda-Sanhita, the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans; together with theCommentary of Sayanacharya, Vol. 3, (London: W. H. Allen, 1856), vii–ix.

33 F. Max Muller, “The Hymns of the Gaupanyanas and the Legend of King Asamati”, Journalof the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, NS, 2, (1866), 426–79.

34 Ibid., 449, 454, 458.

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translating the term by reference to “moon” was here more appropriate, giventhat “in a prayer for life”, such as this verse is thought to represent, “the moonwould naturally come in for an invocation”.35

The following year, in June 1867, Max Muller published an advertisementin the Benares-based journal The Pandit inviting Indian subscriptions to anedition of his own, more comprehensive, English translation of the R. g Veda.36

While he noted in this prospectus that Sayan. a’s commentary, the Nirukta, andthe Brahman. as were all important guides to deciphering the Vedas, he alsoplanned to utilize the philological practices of comparison of word occurrences,etymological analysis, and consultation of cognate languages, in order to producea fuller, more accurate translation. Such a strategy was controversial, Max Mullerconceded, but ultimately he felt, echoing John Muir, that “it is the duty of everyscholar never to allow himself to be guided by tradition, unless, that tradition hasfirst been submitted to the same critical tests which are applied to the suggestionsof his own private judgment”.37 Max Muller’s prospectus met with a numberof direct responses from Indians living in Benares, including one in Sanskrit bySiva Prasad, a government inspector for public instruction in northern India.38

Such confrontations of European orientalist initiatives are largely missing fromdiscussions of the broader context of the debate over Veda translation in Europe, asare the further number of critiques of orientalist translation practices which werearticulated in India in a variety of other fora. Indeed, by the end of the nineteenthcentury the portrayal of ancient Indian culture presented within such orientalisttranslations—that is, of the Vedas as representative of a “primitive religion”dominated by sacrificial ritual and a mythology of deities which personifiednatural phenomena—was ultimately contested, in a wide variety of media,on the grounds of Indians’ intrinsic ability to produce superior translation–interpretations. This is the subject of the final section of this essay.

ii

While European orientalists disputed the appropriate methodology to utilizein translating, or, to use Max Muller’s term, “deciphering”, the R. g Veda, itwas seemingly taken for granted that Europeans had the right, and even the

35 Ibid., 450, 460.

36 F. Max Muller, “Prospectus of the Rig-Veda Translation”, The Pandit, 2, 13 (June 1867),21–2. Only one volume was eventually published: F. Max Muller, transl., Rig-Veda-Sanhita,The Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans, Translated and Explained. Vol. 1, Hymns to the Marutsor the Storm Gods (London: Trubner & Co., 1869).

37 Max Muller, “Prospectus of the Rig-Veda Translation”.

38 Siva Prasad, “Moks.amularakr. ta-r.gvedanuvadah. ” [“the translation of the R. g Veda made byMax Muller”], The Pandit, 4, 41 (October 1869), 110–14.

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duty, to do so. Wilson hoped that his orientalist works would form part of aEuropean revival of Sanskrit literature on behalf of Indians, for example, andMax Muller justified the translation of the Vedas on the grounds that it wouldenhance Europeans’ understanding of their own ancient Aryan heritage. In otherwords, the highly sacred status of the Vedas was conventionally redirected toEuropean cultural and political agendas, even as the conditions of a “correct”translation were contested. Yet Indians also engaged critically with the findingsand methodologies of this orientalist research, in effect claiming a distinct, andtherefore authoritative, ground for speaking on behalf of the Indian cultural-textual past. Indian disputes with the findings of orientalist research were veryoften centred on the issue of the translation, as well as the cultural translatability,of Sanskrit texts. Importantly, such disputations were commonly articulatedby those most closely associated with the colonial institutions of orientalistresearch—Indians working as translators and teachers in the educational service,for example. The Sanskrit scholarship of college pan. d. its, as well as a number ofother emerging learned groups, became during the course of the 1860s, 1870s and1880s a very public activity in cities such as Benares, and one which held importantramifications for the elaboration of Sanskrit’s place within a nationalized Hinduidentity.

One of the most vocal critics of European orientalism who engaged explicitlyin the critique of European representations of Hindu religious doctrine andhistory was Pramadadasa Mittra (fl. 1860s–1880s), a member of a prominentBengali merchant family in Benares. Mittra had attained an admirable commandof Sanskrit and English, and became assistant Anglo-Sanskrit professor in theBenares College in the early 1860s.39 There Mittra principally taught studentsEnglish through the medium of Sanskrit.40 He also worked closely with theEuropeans of the college, including the principal R. T. H. Griffith (a formerstudent of H. H. Wilson at Oxford), and A. E. Gough, the Anglo-Sanskritprofessor. Both men assisted Mittra in the task of revising and completing theEnglish translation begun by the former college principal, J. R. Ballantyne, ofthe Sanskrit Sahitya Darpan. a, a difficult text on rhetoric.41 Mittra’s views on the

39 Griffith had described Babu Pramadadasa Mittra as “a scholar of this college as eminentlyfitted for the post by his knowledge and love of Sanskrit and English literature”. See R.Griffith to M. Kempson, dated 4 June 1862. Uttar Pradesh Regional Archive (Allahabad),Files of the Director of Education, SL 12, File 420, No. 62 of 1862.

40 M. Kempson, Report on the Progress of Education in the North Western Provinces, for theyear 1865–66 (Allahabad: Government Press, 1866), 7.

41 Pramadadasa Mittra, transl., The Mirror of Composition, A Treatise on Poetical Criticism,Being an English Translation of the Sahitya Darpan. a of Viswanatha Kaviraja (Calcutta:Baptist Mission Press, 1875), “Preface”.

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respective roles of Indians and Europeans in Sanskrit scholarship and education,however, clearly challenged the expectations of Europeans.

This was highlighted most clearly in 1884, as the reorganization (and revival)of the Anglo-Sanskrit Department of Benares College was being contemplated.Its then-principal, George Thibaut, desired to “improve” the study of Sanskritin India by reference to the techniques of modern European orientalism, and inparticular its use of philology and critical manuscript editing. In a memorandumon the proposed re-establishment of Anglo-Sanskrit, he argued that such a changewould convert the institution’s students and “old school” pan. d. its into what hecalled “accomplished Sanskrit scholars, in the European sense of the word”.Indeed, Thibaut was particularly concerned that the college’s dozen or so pan. d. its,who acted as its principal teachers (although under European superintendence),could not be said to possess a “critical” knowledge of Sanskrit and its literature,being largely ignorant of its historical character. He thus pointedly recommendeda course of instruction whereby all Sanskrit students would be exposed to English-language orientalist texts, such as John Muir’s Sanskrit Texts (1858), Max Muller’sHistory of Ancient Sanskrit Literature (1859), and the essays of the celebratedorientalist H. T. Colebrooke. This, Thibaut thought, would be the best way toenable Indian students, and the pan. d. its, “to form wider and more enlightenedviews of Indian literature, history, and antiquities”.42 For Thibaut, orientalistresearch had surpassed the traditional Sanskrit scholarship of the pan. d. its, andhe clearly felt that authority on the objects of orientalism—Indian history andSanskrit literature—now rested in the higher educational institutions of Europe.

Pramadadasa Mittra, who had by 1884 retired from the college, was indignantwhen he learned of Thibault’s memo, feeling that it contained more than atrace of “envy” at the knowledge of the pan. d. its. Mittra argued in a response togovernment that even the “most confident and learned European Sanskritist willnot deny that he has yet to learn a good deal about the numerous philosophicalsystems of India”. In more sophisticated forms of Sanskrit scholarship, he noted,European orientalists were still dependent upon the expertise of pan. d. its of “thetrue Indian type”. In any case, Mittra thought that Sanskrit scholarship in Benareswas not yet in such a pitiable state as to require the pan. d. its to resort to Europeanorientalist works in order to gain a correct knowledge of their own religion andphilosophy.43 Thibaut’s immediate response to this letter was to criticize Mittra asbeing overly partial to traditional Indian knowledge, as well as being essentially

42 G. Thibaut, “Memorandum on the Proposed Re-establishment of an Anglo-SanskritDepartment in the Benares College”, dated 25 March 1884. Uttar Pradesh State Archive(Lucknow), Education Block, Box 4, SL17, File 35, No. 2.

43 Babu Pramadadasa Mittra to Director of Public Instruction, NWP, dated 2 April 1884.Uttar Pradesh State Archive (Lucknow), Education Dept, Box 4, SL17, File 35, No. 3.

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contemptuous of European Sanskritists, which he most certainly was.44 Yet itwas equally Mittra’s long-standing position at Benares College which had bothfed that contempt and facilitated his critique of European orientalism, by virtueof his access to a wide range of resources, including the forum of the college’sjournal, The Pandit, to which he was a regular contributor.

Once again, the issue of translation was to be a particularly high-profile site forthe disputation of orientalist authority, and in this regard Pramadadasa Mittrahad a long and distinguished record. For example, in reviewing the Sanskritdictionary of Theodor Goldstucker, professor of Sanskrit at University CollegeLondon, in an early issue of The Pandit (1866), Mittra had commended theauthor for the “arduousness of the task” being undertaken, although he soughtalso to provide corrections to Goldstucker’s definitions of some of the technicalterms in rhetoric (the alan.karasastra). Mittra argued, for instance, that the termabhidhana did not mean “a word” (in the compound anvitabhidhanavadinah. )as Goldstucker supposed, but rather the “act of expressing”. The compound, ineffect, was intended to refer to “those who hold the expression of the logicallyconnected”, being a designation for followers of the philosophical school ofmımam. sa. It was an important error, Mittra noted, because it distinguished themfrom followers of the nyaya on the basis of their very different understandings ofthe way in which meaning is constructed by the constituent parts of a sentence.45

One of Mittra’s more notable critiques, however, related to Europeanspeculations regarding the historical emergence of Sanskritic Aryanism in thesubcontinent, and its relationship with India’s “aboriginal” inhabitants, througha close reading of the Vedas.46 In a letter of 1877, published in The Pandit, Mittratook particular issue with John Muir’s view of the Vedic god Rudra, whom Muirhad characterized as “originally a demon worshipped by the aborigines, as thelord of evil spirits and subsequently introduced into Aryan worship”.47 Mittraargued that Rudra was properly understood as “the immortal and undecaying

44 G. Thibaut to R. Griffith, Director of Public Instruction, NWP, dated 1 May 1884. UttarPradesh State Archive (Lucknow), Education Dept, Box 4, SL17, File 35, handwrittenenclosure.

45 Pramadadasa Mittra, “Remarks on Prof. Goldstucker’s Enlarged Edition of Wilson’sSanskrit Dictionary”, The Pandit, 1, 1 (June 1866), 9–10. The difference being whetherwords convey meaning in the context of a sentence only, or through the recollection ofthe meanings of the individual words. See K. Kunjunni Raja, Indian Theories of Meaning(Madras: Adyar Library and Research Center, 1963), 193–203.

46 On this point see T. R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1997), esp. 206–18.

47 J. Muir, “Relations of the Priests to Other Classes of Indian Society in the Vedic Age”, ThePandit, 2, 14 (July 1867), 45. This article had originally appeared in the Journal of the RoyalAsiatic Society, NS, 2 (1866), 257–302.

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lord of life and death as well as immortality . . . the dispenser of healing medicines,the best of physicians and the father of the world”. Such positive attributes hadbeen explained away by Muir as mere “flattery”, but Mittra, in turn, interpreteda series of Vedic authorities to demonstrate that Muir had not understood thenature of the “Aryan concept of the unity of the Being who variously manifestshimself in the great powers of nature”. For example, Mittra argued that Muirinterpreted the ambiguous pronoun sah. (“he”) as referring to Rudra in a versefrom the Atharva Veda, (“he is death, he is immortality, he is vastness . . .”),when in fact it was meant to refer to the “One God”. This interpretation, Mittranoted, was apparent from the larger context of the whole hymn in which the versewas situated. Elsewhere, Muir had apparently confused parts of a verse’s predicatewith the subject, thus rendering Rudra the referent of sah. (in the nominative case)rather than the singular deity.48 Thus Muir had, in Mittra’s opinion, interpretedVedic mythology rather too literally, instead of as a naturalistic aspect of a single,supreme deity, due to his insufficient knowledge of the whole of Vedic text, aswell as by carrying out a series of grammatical errors.

But the most ardent critic of European interpretations of the Vedas in the latenineteenth century was Guru Datta Vidyarthı (1864–90), leader of the “Gurukul”wing of the Hindu reformist organization, the Arya Samaj. Like PramadadasaMittra, Vidyarthı argued, in essence, that European orientalists such as John Muir,Max Muller, and Monier-Williams had wholly misinterpreted the Vedas in theirtranslations, and had thereby misrepresented the nature of ancient Indian society.The founder of the Arya Samaj, Dayananda Sarasvatı, had from the 1860s beendevoted to reinstating a “pure”, “original”, and “pristine” Hinduism based on theabsolute primacy of the Vedic texts, through the purging from Hindu religiouspractice of later, i.e. Puran. ik, “corruptions” such as idol worship, the institutionsof caste, and the prohibition of widow remarriage. In essence, the Arya Samaj was amodernizing movement within Hinduism which attempted to establish the Vedasas its sole canonical scripture.49 An important component of the Arya Samaj’sagenda through the late nineteenth century, therefore, was to authoritativelyestablish the Vedas as a superior, philosophical, and even “scientific” body ofknowledge when compared with either the Bible or the Koran.50 As such, theEuropean interpretation of the contents of the Vedas was deemed by Samajıssuch as Vidyarthı to be unacceptable, given that it presented the content of thesetexts as composed primarily of a “primitive” mythology.

48 Pramadadasa Mittra, letter to the editor, The Pandit, NS, 1 (November 1876), 382–6.

49 On the Arya Samaj see, for example, K. W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in19th-Century Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).

50 See G. Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India, (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), chap. 4.

56 michael s. dodson

Dayananda Sarasvatı had criticized the Veda translations of Europeanorientalists on several occasions, including one in which he accused Max Mullerof being largely ignorant of Vedic Sanskrit,51 but it was Guru Datta Vidyarthı whospelled out the full rationale for rejecting these translation–interpretations, oftenutilizing the very terms of European orientalist debates over Vedic translation.Vidyarthı had attended the Government College in Lahore, and in the early1880s was appointed professor of science in that same institution.52 In an essayentitled “The Terminology of the Vedas and European Scholars”, published in hisown Vedic Magazine in 1889, Vidyarthı claimed that European orientalists wereblind to the true meaning of the Vedas for a number of reasons. At the outset,Vidyarthı argued that in order to fully understand the Vedas—indeed, to producea “rational interpretation” of them—one must first be “a complete master” ofall branches of Sanskrit knowledge, including the “science of morals”, grammar,yoga, and vedanta. European orientalists such as Max Muller quite simply lackedsuch full training—a training, one can assume, which was available only in India.In addition, orientalists most often laboured under a strong Christian prejudice,which eliminated them as “impartial” students of the Vedas. The propagation ofsuch misunderstandings had caused untold damage to Indian understandingsof the Vedas, Vidyarthı also argued, as English-educated Indians with littleknowledge of Sanskrit often took orientalist interpretations at face value.53 Hetherefore set out to establish what he considered to be the accurate interpretationof the Vedas by reference to the ancient Sanskrit science of determining meaningwithin the Vedas, the nirvacanasastra.

Vidyarthı explained that the Nirukta of Yaska, the principal text of thenirvacanasastra, unequivocally stated that all Vedic terms are yaugika; that is, theyretain the meaning ascribed to them by virtue of their etymological structure.Signification in the Vedas was, therefore, derived from the basic meaning ofthe verbal root, together with any modifying prefixes or suffixes.54 Europeanorientalists, he argued, had singularly failed to appreciate this point, insteadinterpreting many words as laukika or rud. hi (with reference to its ordinary,worldly meaning). By abandoning the tenets of Sanskrit grammatical analysis,and interpreting the Vedas in their translations according to common usage,

51 Dayananda Saraswatı, Satyarth Prakas, cited in Guru Datta Vidyarthı, “The Terminologyof the Vedas and European Scholars”, in Svamı Vedananda Tırtha, ed., Wisdom of theRishis, or, Works of Pt. Gurudutta Vidyarthi, M.A. (New Delhi: M D Reprints Corp., 1997),27.

52 Biographical details can be found in Lala Lajpat Rai, Pandit Guru Datta Vidyarthi, Lifeand Work, ed. Ram Prakash (New Delhi: Arya Book Depot 2000; first published 1891).

53 Guru Datta Vidyarthı, “The Terminology of the Vedas and European Scholars”, 28–37.

54 Ibid., 37–8.

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Vidyarthı noted that orientalists had “flooded their interpretations of the Vedaswith forged or borrowed tales of mythology, with stories and anecdotes of historicor pre-historic personages”.55

At least part of this fundamental error Vidyarthı also attributed to a Europeanpreoccupation with the commentary of Sayan. a, which despite orientalistassertions to the contrary, he felt had been produced largely without aproper understanding of the analytical techniques of the Nirukta.56 Sayan. a’scommentary, he noted (echoing Bohtlingk and Roth), was deeply flawed by virtueof the fact that it reflected only “popular prejudice” at the time of its writing. Assuch, he argued that all the terms in his commentary were understood in theirlaukika (worldly) sense.57 Indeed, that the “true” meaning of the Vedas had longbeen lost by the time of Sayan. a’s mythologically based interpretations of the textswas reflective of the general principle of degeneration in religious knowledge; justas religious practice “designed to meet certain real wants” inevitably degeneratesinto meaningless ritual, Vidyarthı argued, the high philosophy of the Vedas waslost over time to a dominant mythological, Puran. ik age, in which a “pantheism”reigned supreme.58 In this way Vidyarthı also implied that it was orientaliststhemselves who, by virtue of the fact that many consulted Sayan. a, must havelacked a sufficient historical consciousness to understand the development (ordegeneration) of Sanskritic intellectual production.

In “Terminology of the Vedas”, Vidyarthı was not only making an authorityclaim by reference to his specifically Indian knowledge of the nirvacanasastra. Bysanctioning the abandonment of any reference to the customary or traditionallyaccepted meanings of words through commentaries such as that of Sayan. a, andby recommending in its place a revisiting of the etymological method of theNirukta (and other, related texts), he was in effect also unleashing the substantialsemantic possibilities afforded by the very structure of Sanskrit itself, and withit the possibility of rewriting the meaning of the Vedas through translation.The breadth of interpretation this strategy afforded can be seen in the followingexample, R. g i, 162, 2, which is most often understood as describing the asvamedha(horse sacrifice). Max Muller’s version reads thus:

When they lead the horse, which is decked with pure gold ornaments, the offering [rati],

firmly grasped, the spotted goat [aja] bleats while walking onwards; it goes the path

beloved by Indra and Pushan.

55 Ibid., 38.

56 In fact, Yaska’s comments on the Vedas are invariably quoted and analysed by Sayan. a.

57 Guru Datta Vidyarthı, “The Terminology of the Vedas and European Scholars”, 70–3.

58 Ibid., 46–7, 71.

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Vidyarthı, in contrast, rendered the same verse this way:

They who preach that only wealth earned by righteous means should be appropriated

and spent, and those born in wisdom [aja], who are well-versed in questioning others

elegantly, in the science of forms and in correcting the unwise, these and such alone drink

the potion of strength and of power to govern.59

Vidyarthı argued that Max Muller’s translation of aja, for example, as “goat”was laukika, for etymologically (or in its yaukika interpretation) it means “beingnever born again”, from the conjunction of a (a prefix of negation) and ja (fromthe verbal root jan, meaning “to be born”). From this basic meaning Vidyarthıwent on to translate aja as “a man born in wisdom”. Similarly, Max Muller issaid to understand rati (from root ra, “to give”) as an “offering”, rather than thesimple act of giving, in the process giving it a specifically contemporary religiousinflection.60

Perhaps the most striking example of Vidyarthı’s translational scheme,however, can be found in his attempt to show that some of the verses of theR. g Veda imparted a knowledge of modern chemistry. Indeed, he argued that theword R. g itself signified the “expression of the nature, properties, and actions andre-actions produced by substances”. The R. g Veda, therefore, was intended to bea compendium describing the “physical, chemical and active properties of allmaterial substances”, in addition to the “psychological properties of all mentalsubstances”.61 In this regard, the comparison of H. H. Wilson’s translation of R. gi, 2, 7 with that of Vidyarthı is notable:

I invoke Mitra, of pure vigour, and Varuna, the devourer of foes,—the joint accomplishers

of the act bestowing water (on the earth). [H. H. Wilson]62

Let one who is desirous to form water by the combination of two substances take pure

hydrogen and gas highly heated, and, oxygen gas possessed of the property rishadha, and

let him combine them to form water. [Vidyarthı]

Here mitra is rendered as “hydrogen” rather than its laukika meaning of“friend” or as a proper name, and in a similar manner varun. a becomes “oxygen”.Mitra was described etymologically by Vidyarthı by reference to Pan. ini’s ancientgrammar as meaning “one that measures, or stands as a standard of reference”,

59 Ibid., 59–62.

60 Ibid., 61.

61 Guru Datta Vidyarthı, “Composition of Water”, in Wisdom of the Rishis, 98; originalemphasis.

62 H. H. Wilson, transl., Rig-Veda-Sanhita. A Collection of Ancient Hindu Hymns, Constitutingthe First Ashtaka, or Book, of the Rig-Veda, 2nd edn (London: N. Trubner & Co., 1866), 7.

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from root mi (or ma) “to measure”, with the instrumental suffix tra. This basicmeaning is then interpreted as referring to “hydrogen” given that it is the lightestelement known (i.e. the first of the elements), as well as being monovalent(and thus a standard of reference). Taking his cue from philological comparison,Vidyarthı further noted that mitra was often found to be synonymous in the Vedaswith udana, one of the vital airs, which is “well characterised by its lightness orby its power to lift up”.

More difficult to account for etymologically was varun. a, which does notappear in the grammar of Pan. ini. This term was described by Vidyarthı as beingcomposed of the suffix unan (which is an un. adi suffix),63 together with the verbalroot vr. , which carries several distinct meanings (it is, in fact, two different roots).Interestingly, the Sanskrit commentary on un. adi suffixes, the Dasapadyun. adivr. tti,which deals specifically with the formation of varun. a, identifies the root vr. (in5.52) as meaning “to cover” or “is covered”. Vidyarthı, however, made use of thealternative root, meaning “to choose”, or even “to like”, and so interpreted varun. aas indicating “that which is acceptable to all or seeks all”. This, Vidyarthı argued,was a natural depiction of oxygen, given that all living beings require that elementin order to live.64

While Vidyarthı very often strained the signifying capability of Sanskrit’s verbalroot–prefix–suffix structure, while also engaging in nearly wilful misreadings ofthe texts of Sanskrit grammar and Vedic exegesis, the etymological methodhe adapted clearly allowed him to attribute to the Vedas a wholly scientificcharacter, which pointedly challenged European translations of these ancienttexts as representative of a “primitive” religion. It is but the most colourful,and inventive, example of the diverse ways in which Indian Sanskrit scholarsengaged with European translation–interpretations of Sanskrit texts. Additionalresearch into the variety of forms this engagement took will serve to furtherdemonstrate that European orientalist representations of “Hinduism” did notwholly displace other interrogations of the constitution of “Hindu tradition”during the nineteenth century, thereby renewing a sense of historical polyvocalityand the presence of disputed “authenticities”. In addition, such research will alsoemphasize that the Indian engagement with orientalism upon distinctive—yetinterconnected—intellectual and cultural grounds was also an implicitly politicalact, ultimately directed by India’s Sanskrit-speaking elites towards the elaborationof similarly complex visions of modernity.

63 From the Dasapadyun. adivr. tti, a commentary which deals with word formation outsidethe purview of Pan. ini’s grammar.

64 Guru Datta Vidyarthı, “Composition of Water”, 100–1.