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Morya
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 3/21/21

1879, Excerpt from Masters and Men: The Human Story in the Mahatma Letters (a fictionalized account)
by Virginia Hanson
The Theosophical Publishing House
Madras, India
c 1980 The Theosophical Publishing House

Most of the Letters are over the signature of the Mahatma Koot Hoomi, usually signed simply "K.H." A Kashmiri Brahmin by birth, at the time of the correspondence he was a Buddhist. Koot Hoomi is a mystical name which he instructed H.P.B. to use in connection with his correspondence with Mr. Sinnett. It is possible that his real name was Nisi Kanta Chattopadhyaya, as that seems to have been the name by which he was known when he was attending at least one European University. He was fluent in both English and French and was sometimes affectionally spoken of by the Mahatma Morya as "my Frenchified K.H."

Dayananda Saraswati

At one time, under special circumstances, the Mahatma Morya took over the correspondence temporarily. He too used only his initial as a signature. "He was a Rajput by birth," said H.P.B., "One of the warrior race of the Indian desert, the finest and handsomest nation in the world." He was "a giant, six feet eight, and splendidly built; a superb type of manly beauty." The Mahatma K.H. referred to him humorously as "my bulky brother." He was not proficient in English and spoke of himself as using words and phrases "lying idle in my friend's brain" -- meaning, of course, the brain of the Mahatma K.H.

In 1870, the same year that Keshub visited England, two other Indians took ship from England to America. They were a Bombay textile magnate called Moolji Thackersey (Seth Damodar Thackersey Mulji, died 1880) and Mr. Tulsidas. Josephine Ransom, an early historian of the Theosophical Society, writes that they were “on a mission to the West to see what could be done to introduce Eastern spiritual and philosophic ideas.” Traveling on the same boat was Henry Olcott, fresh from his experiences in London’s spiritualist circles. Olcott was sufficiently impressed by this shipboard meeting to keep a framed photograph of the two Indians on the wall of the apartment he was sharing with Blavatsky in 1877. It was one evening in that year that a visitor who had traveled in India (sometimes identified as James Peebles) remarked on the photograph. Olcott writes in his memoirs of the consequences of this extraordinary series of coincidences:

I took it down, showed it to him, and asked if he knew either of the two. He did know Moolji Thackersey and had quite recently met him in Bombay. I got the address, and by the next mail wrote to Moolji about our Society, our love for India and what caused it. In due course he replied in quite enthusiastic terms, accepted the offered diploma of membership, and told me about a great Hindu pandit and reformer, who had begun a powerful movement for the resuscitation of pure Vedic religion.

This reformer was Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1882). In 1870 he was still an eccentric traveling preacher with no aspirations to international influence: something that grew on him precisely after meeting the Brahmo Samajists. He met Devandranath [Debendranath] Tagore in 1870; in 1873 Keshub Chunder Sen gave him the advice (which he took) to stop wearing only a loincloth and speaking only Sanskrit. Indefatigably stumping round the subcontinent, Dayananda founded his “powerful movement,” the Arya Samaj, in 1875. This chronology suggests that in 1870 Thackersey was probably coming to America as a representative of the Brahmo Samaj, but that by the time Olcott got in touch with him again, he had transferred his allegiance to the Arya Samaj.

The Arya Samaj was more radical than any wing of the Brahmo Samaj, on which it was partially modeled. Dayananda was a monotheist who believed in the Vedas as the sole revealed scripture and the basis for a universal religion. The various gods addressed in the Vedic hymns (Agni, Indra, etc.), he explained as aspects of the One, and he was prepared to demonstrate how these ancient texts contained all possible knowledge of man, nature, and the means of salvation and happiness. Of the quarrels between the various religions, he wrote: “My purpose and aim is to help in putting an end to this mutual wrangling, to preach universal truth, to bring all men under one religion so that they may, by ceasing to hate each other and firmly loving each other, life in peace and work for their common welfare.” He had no respect whatever for Brahmanism: for their scriptures, rituals, polytheism, caste system, and discrimination against women. Unfortunately for his opponents, he was immensely learned and articulate, could out-argue most pundits, and had, in the last resort (which often seems to have occurred) the advantage of being 6’9” tall and broad to match.

From Dayananda’s point of view, the Brahmo Samajists had erred both in their failure to recognize the supremacy of the Vedas, and in their too-ready embrace of the errors of other religions. They were moreover too addicted to Brahmanic customs and privileges. Here is a contemporary summary of his social principles:

He says that no inhabitant of India should be called a Hindu, that an ignorant Brahmin should be made a Shudra, and a Shudra, who is learned, well-behaved and religious should be made a Brahmin. Both men and women should be taught Language, Grammar, Dharmashastras, Vedas, Science and Philosophy. Women should receive special education in Chemistry, Music and Medical Science; they should know what foods promote health, strength and vigour. He condemns child marriage as the root of the most of the evils. A girl should be educated and married at the age of twenty. If a widow wants to remarry, she should be allowed to do so. According to his opinion, there is no particular difference between the householder and the sannyasi.

It is not surprising that the Theosophists in New York took kindly to the Arya Samaj, at first through correspondence with Thackersey, then through the Bombay branch head, Hurrychund Chintamon, and lastly through Dayananda himself. The two societies were united for a time, though the Theosophists were disillusioned as soon as they discovered the strength of Dayananda's Vedic fundamentalism and his hostility to all other religions. On Dayananda's unexpected death, Blavatsky wrote a generous obituary in The Theosophist for December 1883. She appreciated him for defending what he saw as the best of his native heritage against the priestcraft of Brahmins and Christians alike, and for his leadership in an enlightened social policy of which she could only have approved.

As the Arya Samaj continued to flourish after Dayananda's death, it became a rallying point for that movement of Hindu nationalism that wanted neither to turn back the clock to Brahmanic theocracy, nor to embrace Western materialism along with the benefits of science and technology. What Rammohun Roy had set in motion, the Arya Samaj carried forward into the era of the Indian National Congress and the independence movement of the twentieth century. Dayananda himself died -- some said poisoned -- at the time when his mission was beginning to have real success among the North Indian rulers, but he had done enough to be celebrated as a father-figure by leaders of Indian independence such as [url]Jawaharlal Nehru[/url], Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, and Aurobindo Ghose.

-- The Theosophical Enlightenment, by Joscelyn Godwin

-- Swami Dayanand's Charges, by Colonel Henry S. Olcott

-- Dayananda Saraswati, by New World Encyclopedia

-- Dayananda Saraswati [Mul Shankar Tiwari], by Wikipedia

-- Chapter 6: Text-based Identity: Dayanand Saraswati's Reconstruction of the Aryan Self, from Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity, by Dorothy M. Figueira

-- Arya Samaj, by Wikipedia

Portrait by H. Schmiechen


Morya's initial from Mahatma Letter No. 36

Morya (frequently referred to simply as M.) was H. P. Blavatsky's Master and one of the Mahatmas that inspired the founding of the Theosophical Society. He engaged in a correspondence with two English Theosophists living in India, A. P. Sinnett and A. O. Hume, when Mahatma K.H. went into retreat for a few months. This correspondence was published in the book The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. In addition, letters to H. P. Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and others were published in Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom.

Personal features

Charles Johnston interviewed H. P. Blavatsky and asked her about the Masters. In the following excerpt Johnston describes his impression about Master M.'s handwriting as opposed to that of Master K.H., and then Mme. Blavatsky gives some information about her Master:

"The red [handwriting] . . . is fierce, impetuous, dominant, strong; it comes in volcanic outbursts, while the other [Master K.H.'s] is like Niagara Falls. One is fire, and the other is the ocean. They are wholly different, and both quite unlike yours. But the [red handwriting] has more resemblance to yours. . . ."

"This is my Master," she said, "whom we call Mahatma Morya. I have his picture here." And she showed me a small panel in oils. If ever I saw genuine awe and reverence in a human face, it was in hers, when she spoke of her Master. He was a Rajput by birth, she said, one of the old warrior race of the Indian desert, the finest and handsomest nation in the world. Her Master was a giant, six feet eight, and splendidly built; a superb type of manly beauty. Even in the picture, there is a marvellous power and fascination; the force, the fierceness even, of the face; the dark, glowing eyes, which stare you out of countenance; the clear-cut features of bronze, the raven hair and beard—all spoke of a tremendous individuality, a very Zeus in the prime of manhood and strength. I asked her something about his age. She answered:

"My dear, I cannot tell you exactly, for I do not know. But this I will tell you. I met him first when I was twenty,—in 1851. He was in the very prime of manhood then. I am an old woman now, but he has not aged a day. He is still in the prime of manhood. That is all I can say. You may draw your own conclusions."[1]

Portrait produced by Monsieur Harrisse at the "Lamasery" in New York

A Rajput (from Sanskrit raja-putra, “son of a king”) is a member of one of the patrilineal clans of western, central, northern India and some parts of Pakistan. They claim to be descendants of ruling Hindu warrior classes of North India. The Mahatma's clan was confirmed by him in a letter sent to A. P. Sinnett when he said: "My Rajput blood will never permit me to see a woman hurt in her feelings..."[2]

Master K.H., in another letter to Mr. Sinnett, describes Morya as follows:

You . . . will hardly if ever be able to appreciate such characters as Morya's: a man as stern for himself, as severe for his own shortcomings, as he is indulgent for the defects of other people, not in words but in the innermost feelings of his heart; for, while ever ready to tell you to your face anything he may think of you, he yet was ever a stauncher friend to you than myself, who may often hesitate to hurt anyone's feelings, even in speaking the strictest truth.[3]

Again, according to Master K.H., Morya "is better and more powerful than I"[4]

Master M. knew very little English and didn't like to write.

Mme. Blavatsky, in a letter to Mrs. Hollis Billings wrote:

Now Morya lives generally with Koot-Hoomi who has his house in the direction of the Kara Korum Mountains, beyond Ladak, which is in Little Tibet and belongs now to Kashmire. It is a large wooden building in the Chinese fashion pagoda-like, between a lake and a beautiful mountain.[5]

Relationship with Mme. Blavatsky

H. P. Blavatsky was a disciple of Master M. The Countess Constance Wachtmeister wrote in her Reminiscenses of H.P. Blavatsky how she met him:

During her childhood [Madame Blavatsky] had often seen near her an Astral form, that always seemed to come in any moment of danger, and save her just at the critical point. HPB had learnt to look upon this Astral form as a guardian angel, and felt that she was under His care and guidance. In London, in 1851, she was one day out walking when, to her astonishment, she saw a tall Hindu in the street with some Indian princes. She immediately recognized him as the same person that she had seen in the Astral. Her first impulse was to rush forward to speak to him, but he made her a sign not to move, and she stood as if spellbound while he passed on. The next day she went into Hyde Park for a stroll, that she might be alone and free to think over her extraordinary adventure. Looking up, she saw the same form approaching her, and then her Master told her that he had come to London with the Indian princes on an important mission, and he was desirous of meeting her personally, as he required her cooperation in a work which he was about to undertake. He then told her how the Theosophical Society was to be formed, and that he wished her to be the founder. He gave her a slight sketch of all the troubles she would have to undergo, and also told her that she would have to spend three years in Tibet to prepare her for the important task. HPB decided to accept the offer made to her and shortly afterwards left London for India.[6]

It is possible that Countess Wachtmeister confused the date with H. P. Blavatsky’s previous visit with her father to London in the '40s. Mme. Blavatsky wrote to Mr. Sinnett: "I was in London and France with Father in '44 not 1851." Though in this letter she explains that she does not remember well what happened in years past, she told Mr. Sinnett how she met the Master:

I saw Master in my visions ever since my childhood. In the year of the first Nepaul Embassy (when?) saw and recognised him. Saw him twice. Once he came out of the crowd, then He ordered me to meet Him in Hyde Park. I cannot, I must not speak of this. I would not publish it for the world.[7]

Blavatsky on the name "Morya"

The name Morya is the same as that of the Maurya clan, which ruled India from 322-185 BCE. The invincible Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Maurya Empire, united the Indian subcontinent, while his grandson, Ashoka the Great, adopted Buddhism and sent missions to other parts of Asia as well as the Mediterranean world. In the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, an early Buddhist text that records the end of Gautama Buddha’s life, the “Moriyas of Pipphalavana” are said to have “built a great stupa for the embers” that remained from the cremation.[8] This passage suggests that there was already a connection between the Maurya clan and Buddhism. Blavatsky claims that long after the fall of the Mauryan Empire, the Mauryas (or Moryas) continued to have a deep connection with Buddhism. In 436 CE an Arhat (Buddhist saint) named Kasyapa, who belonged to the Morya clan, left an Indian convent in Panch-Kukkutarama with the fifth of seven golden statues of the Buddha, which he carried to a lake in Bod-yul (Tibet), thereby fulfilling an ancient prophecy. Seven years later the first Buddhist monastery was established on that spot, although the conversion of the country did not begin in earnest till the 7th century. Most of the abbots of that monastery “were the descendants of the dynasty of the Moryas, there being up to this day three of the members of this once royal family living in India.”[9]

H. P. Blavatsky explicitly affirms a link between the Shakya clan, to which Gautama Buddha belonged, and the Moriya clan, stating that the former founded a town called Moriya-Nagara. She adds that the Rajput tribe of Mori owes its name to being “composed of the descendants of the first sovereign of Moriya, Nagari-Môrya,” and that the Moryas are Kshatriyas, unlike Master Koot Hoomi and the Rishi Koothumi who are “Northern Brahmans.”[10] The name Moriya probably derives from mayura or mora, which means peacock.[11] The peacock image connects this warrior clan with Karttikeya, the Hindu war god, whose vehicle is a peacock, and possibly with the Buddhist “Peacock Lord,” a Wisdom King (Kujaku-myoo in Japan, the female Mahamayuri in India).

Col. Olcott's meeting with the Master Morya

In a letter from Henry S. Olcott to Allan O. Hume about the Mahatmas, printed by Mr. Hume in his "Hints on Esoteric Theosophy":

One evening, at New York, after bidding H. P. B. good night, I sat in my bed-room, finishing a cigar and thinking. Suddenly there stood my Chohan beside me. The door had made no noise in opening, if it had been opened, but at any rate there he was. He sat down and conversed with me in subdued tones for some time, and as he seemed in an excellent humour towards me, I asked him a favour. I said I wanted some tangible proof that he had actually been there, and that I had not been seeing a mere illusion or maya conjured up by H. P. B. He laughed, unwound the embroidered Indian cotton fehta he wore on his head, flung it to me, and – was gone. That cloth I still possess, and it bears in one corner the initials ( ___ ) of my Chohan in thread-work.[12]

Letters written by M.

M. engaged in a correspondence with two English Theosophists living in India, A. P. Sinnett and A. O. Hume, when Mahatma K.H. went into retreat for a few months. This correspondence was published in the book The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. In addition, letters to H. P. Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and others were published in Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom.

For a complete list of Master M.'s letters that were published in these sources, see Category:ML from Morya.

Writing style

C. Jinarājadāsa commented on M.'s style of writing:

When reading the letters of Master M., we must not forget that He is of quite a different temperament to Master K.H. He is far more steeped in Indian atmosphere than His Brother. Both show a keen sense of humour, but while that of the Master K.H. is more akin to the French notion of wit, that of the Master M. is far more allied to what the Greek tragedians meant by “irony”. Irony excludes ridicule completely. It contrasts, with great dispassion, facts as they are with what they are supposed to be. Those who can appreciate the Master’s “irony” find great inspiration in the glimpses gained of things seen from His angle of vision.[13]

As for the handwriting, he wrote:

All the letters of the Master M., which Mr. Sinnett and others received from 1881 onwards, are in a script which the Master Himself has acknowledged as sometimes difficult to decipher. But before 1881, the Master used another script, a specimen of which is given in Letter 28. This earlier script is small and neat, easy to read. There is evidence that at this time He used a third script, though only once, and this is shown in the brief Letter 34.

There is a great mystery, not yet solved, as to the use of various scripts by the Masters and Their pupils. Not all the letters were precipitated by the Masters, as H.P.B. has clearly explained. Some were precipitated by Chelas, on general instructions from the masters. Some of the Masters knew European languages; others did not. The Master M. at this time knew no English at all, and when writing had to use the translation of His thought in the brain of some pupil, like H.P.B., Colonel Olcott and others. Sometimes he took the language from the brain of the Master K.H..[14]

Account by C. W. Leadbeater

In his book The Masters and the Path C. W. Leadbeater describes Master M as follows:

He is a Rajput King by birth, and has a dark beard divided into two parts, dark, almost black, hair falling to His shoulders, and dark and piercing eyes, full of power. He is six feet six inches in height, and bears Himself like a soldier, speaking in short terse sentences as if He were accustomed to being instantly obeyed. In His presence there is a sense of overwhelming power and strength, and He has an imperial dignity that compels the deepest reverence.[15]

Online resources

Articles

• Morya, Mahatma in Theosophy World.
• Colonel Henry S. Olcott's Testimony about His Meetings with the Master Morya in Blavatsky Study Center.
• Portrait of the Master Morya by J. D. Buck.
• In the Days of H.P.B. Master M.'s Visit to Madras in 1874 by G. Subbiah Chetty.

Notes

1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VIII (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1960) 399-400
2. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., ed., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequenceNo. 29 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 91. See Mahatma Letter No. 29, page 13.
3. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., ed., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequenceNo. 74 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 224. See Mahatma Letter No. 74, page 11-12.
4. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., ed., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequenceNo. 65 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 170. See Mahatma Letter No. 65.
5. Gottfried de Purucker, The Theosophical Forum Vol VIII, No. 5 (Point Loma, California, May 1936), 343-346.
6. Constance Wachtmeister, Reminiscenses of H.P. Blavatsky (Wheaton: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1976) 44.
7. A. Trevor Barker, (ed) The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett (London: 1925) 150-151, available at Theosophical University Press Online Edition
8. Maurice Walshe, trans., The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Digha Nikaya (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995) 276-277 (Mahaparinibbana Sutta 16.6.25-26.
9. “Shakyamuni’s Place in History” in H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings V 245-246
10. "The Puranas on the Dynasties of the Moriyas and the Koothoomi” in H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings VI 40-42.
11. P. Thankappan Nair, “The Peacock Cult in Asia,” in Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2 (1974), 124, Nanzan University.
12. A. O. Hume, "Hints on Esoteric Theosophy" No. 1 (Calcutta, Calcutta Central Press Co., 1882, 2nd Edition) 79.
13. C. Jinarajadasa, Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, Second Series (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1925), 140-141.
14. C. Jinarajadasa, Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, Second Series (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1925), 66.
15. C. W. Leadbeater, The Masters and the Path (Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1984), 24.


**************************

Morya (Theosophy)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/21/21

Morya is one of the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom" within modern Theosophical beliefs. He is one of the Mahatmas who inspired the founding of the Theosophical Society and was engaged in a correspondence with two English Theosophists living in India, A. P. Sinnett and A. O. Hume. The correspondence was published in 1923 by A. Trevor Barker, in the book The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett.

History


A portrait of Master Morya by Hermann Schmiechen

H. P. Blavatsky, originally described the existence of a spiritual master whom she considered her guru, and who went by, among other names, Morya. Blavatsky said that Morya and another master, Koot Hoomi, were her primary guides in establishing the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky also wrote that Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi belonged to a group of highly developed humans known to some as the Great White Brotherhood or the White Lodge (though this is not how they described themselves). Master Morya's personality has been depicted in some detail by various theosophical authors. A man "living on the earth, but possessed of developed senses that laughed at time and space." [1] On the other hand, author P. Jenkins challenges that there is little evidence that Blavatsky's Masters, including Morya, ever existed.[2] Author K. Paul Johnson wrote that Blavatsky gave conflicting versions of her meeting with Morya and suggests Blavatsky fictionalized the story, basing it on her encounter with an Italian political activist.[3][4] Blavatsky's published works have been praised by New York papers as exhibiting immense research, in referring to her book Isis Unveiled, the New York Sun[5] writes, "the strange part of this is, as I and many others can testify as eye witnesses to the production of the book, that the writer had no library in which to make researches and possessed no notes of investigation or reading previously done. All was written straight out of hand. And yet it is full of references to books in the British Museum and other great libraries, and every reference is correct. Either, then, we have, as to that book [referring to Isis Unveiled], a woman who was capable of storing in her memory a mass of facts, dates, numbers, titles, and subjects such as no other human being ever was capable of, or her claim to help from unseen beings is just."

After Blavatsky's death, theosophists and others continued claiming to have met Morya or to have received communications from him. William Quan Judge, the leader of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, stated privately that he had received letters from Morya and other Adepts. Annie Besant, head of the European Section and co-head of the Esoteric Section with Judge, made public statements supporting the genuineness of those letters; but she later accused Judge of falsifying them, asserting that her suspicions of him were confirmed by the visitation of a Mahatma, presumably Master Morya, to whom she was linked.[6] The ensuing controversy led to the break-up of the Society in 1895, but leaders in the increasingly fragmented movement continued making claims about having received communications and visitations from the Masters connected with the cause. Theosophical writings offered vivid descriptions of Morya, his role in the Brotherhood, and his past lives.[7]

Incarnations

Morya's earliest notable claimed incarnation is recorded by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater (from, the source states, their research into the "akashic records" at the Theosophical Society headquarters in Adyar (Tamil Nadu), India conducted in the summer of 1910) as having been the Emperor of Atlantis in 220,000 BC, ruling from his palace in the capital city, the City of the Golden Gates.[8]

According to the Ascended Masters teachings, some of the later incarnations that Morya is said to have had include:[9][10]

• Osho along with K.H(Devaraj)
• Melchior (one of the three wise men—the one who gave myrrh to Jesus)
• Abraham
• King Arthur of Camelot
• Thomas Becket (Archbishop of Canterbury)
• Thomas More
• Akbar (Mogul Emperor)
• Shams Tabrizi
• Thomas Moore
• Sergius of Radonezh

Ascension

Students of Ascended Master Activities believe that Morya ascended in 1898, becoming an Ascended Master and Chohan of the First Ray, and that his spiritual retreat is located at Darjeeling, India.[11][12][13]

References

1. "The sun. (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, September 26, 1892, Image 5". 1892-09-26. p. 5. ISSN 1940-7831. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
2. Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs, p.41-42. Oxford University Press, 2000, NYC
3. K. Paul Johnson, The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge (Albany: SUNY, 1994), 41.
4. Johnson, Paul K. Initiates of Theosophical Masters Albany, New York:1995 State University of New York Press
5. "The sun. (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, September 26, 1892, Image 5". 1892-09-26. p. 5. ISSN 1940-7831. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
6. Annie Besant, The Case Against W. Q. Judge (1895), p. 13. About Besant’s closeness to Morya, in a letter of 27 March 1891 to Judge, Blavatsky writes: “She is not psychic nor spiritual in the least—all intellect—and yet she hears the Master's voice when alone, sees His Light, and recognises His Voice from that of D____.”
7. Letters of the Masters of the Wisdom: Second Series Nos. 69 and 70; First SeriesNo. 19; Wachtmeister, op. cit., Chapter 5.
8. Besant, Annie and Leadbeater, C.W. Man: How, Whence, and Whither? Adyar, India:1913 Theosophical Publishing House Page 122 Note: On page xii of the introduction it is explained that the name Mars is used to refer to the reincarnating soul entity now known to Theosophists as Morya in his various incarnations.
9. Prophet, Mark L. and Elizabeth Clare Lords of the Seven Rays Livingston, Montana, U.S.A.:1986 - Summit University Press - "Morya - Master of the First Ray" pages 21 - 78
10. Prophet, Elizabeth Clare and Prophet, Mark (as compiled by Annice Booth) The Masters and Their Retreats Corwin Springs, Montana:2003 Summit University Press Pages 87-92 El Morya
11. Luk, A.D.K.. Law of Life - Book II. Pueblo, Colorado: A.D.K. Luk Publications 1989.
12. Schroeder, Werner Ascended Masters and Their Retreats Ascended Master Teaching Foundation 2004.
13. Booth, Annice The Masters and Their Retreats Summit Lighthouse Library June 2003.

Sources

• Besant, Annie and Leadbeater, C.W. Man:How, Whence, and Whither? Adyar, India:1913—Theosophical Publishing House
• Leadbeater, C.W. The Masters and the Path Adyar, Madras, India: 1925—Theosophical Publishing House
• Prophet, Mark L. and Elizabeth Clare Lords of the Seven Rays Livingston, Montana, U.S.A.:1986 - Summit University Press

Further reading

• Campbell, Bruce F. A History of the Theosophical Movement Berkeley:1980 University of California Press
• Godwin, Joscelyn. The Theosophical Enlightenment Albany, New York: 1994 State University of New York Press
• Johnson, K. Paul The Masters Revealed: Madam Blavatsky and Myth of the Great White Brotherhood Albany, New York: 1994 State University of New York Press
• Melton, J. Gordon Encyclopedia of American Religions 5th Edition New York:1996 Gale Research ISBN 0-8103-7714-4 ISSN 1066-1212 Chapter 18--"The Ancient Wisdom Family of Religions" Pages 151-158; see chart on page 154 listing Masters of the Ancient Wisdom; Also see Section 18, Pages 717-757 Descriptions of various Ancient Wisdom religious organizations
• Cranston, Sylvia HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1993

See also

• https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Agele ... _Teachings
• Ascended masters
• Ascended Master Teachings
• Alice A.Bailey
• Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
• Benjamin Creme
• Hodgson Report
• Initiation (Theosophy)
• Master K.H.
• K.H. Letters to C.W. Leadbeater
• Mahātmā
• Helena Roerich
• Theosophy

External links

• Theosophical Society, The originators of the Master concept (Before the term "Ascended" was used)

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The Indian Institute: Monier-Williams and Empire
by Gillian Evison
Indian Institute Librarian
December 2004
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-- Monier Monier-Williams, by Wikipedia

-- East India Company College [Haileybury], by Wikipedia

-- Vedanta, by Wikipedia

Dr Gillian Evison, Keeper (or Librarian) of Oriental Collections at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries, outlines the history of the Institute from its optimistic beginnings as a colonial centre of instruction about all things Indian to its disintegration under the pressures of battles for real estate and changes in the way that the University of Oxford thought about its teaching of Indian subjects.

The full text of Dr Evison's research paper is freely available through ORA (Oxford University Research Archive).


The Indian Institute, Broad Street, Oxford

The building of the old Indian Institute, now the home of the Oxford Martin School, is the surviving remnant of an ambitious research institution set up in 1884 by the Boden Professor of Sanskrit, Sir M. Monier-Williams dedicated to the learning and literature of India. Some traces of the former use of the building remain and both the Sanskrit inscription inside the front door and the elephant weather vane on the roof bear testimony to the Indian Institute’s former life as a centre for Indian studies. The majority of the rarest eighteenth- and nineteenth-century publications in the Bodleian’s South Asian collections have bookplates showing that they were originally part of the Institute’s library, giving some idea of the wealth of printed resources available to members of Sir Monier-Williams’ research institution before the dispersal of its library, museum and teaching staff to various other locations in the University in the 1960s.

The Indian Institute was the brainchild of the Boden Professor of Sanskrit Sir M. Monier-Williams. His appointment to the Boden Professorship was somewhat controversial. He was born in India in 1819, where his father was Surveyor General, but he returned to England as a child when his father died. He entered Balliol College but feeling no vocation for the church, for which his family had intended him, he left before taking his degree in order to enter Haileybury College and prepare for service with the East India Company as a writer. He trained for the service at the college from January 1840, and he passed out head of his year. It was whilst at Haileybury that he started to study Sanskrit little knowing that it was to form the substance of his future career. In 1843 he won the Boden Sanskrit scholarship and after graduating in 1844 was immediately appointed professor of Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindustani at Haileybury, a post that he held until 1858, when the college was closed in the wake of the Indian mutiny and the teaching staff were pensioned off.

In 1860, with the death of Horace Hayman Wilson, the prestigious and highly paid Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford became vacant. The Sanskrit Chair had been founded by Colonel J. Boden for “the conversion of the Natives of India to the Christian Religion.”[1] Boden Professors at this time were elected by all the M.A.s of the University3 and as Convocation had 3,786 members the election was contested as if the protagonists were prospective members of Parliament.[2] After a somewhat controversial campaign, in December 1860 Monier-Williams was elected with a majority of 223 out of a total of 1433 votes recorded.

At his inaugural lecture Monier Williams set out the evangelical agenda which had carried the day for him:

“A great Eastern empire has been entrusted to our rule, not to be the theatre of political experiments, nor yet for the sole purpose of extending our commerce, flattering our pride, or increasing our prestige, but that a benighted population may be enlightened, and every man, woman, and child ... hear the glad tidings of the Gospel.”[3]

In his view India, of all British possessions, was the most inviting and interesting for the missionary. It was not a country of savage tribes who would melt away before superior force and intelligence of Europeans but the home of a great and ancient people. These inhabitants traced back their origin to the same Aryan stock as the Europeans and had attained a high degree of civilization when Europeans were still barbarians. India had had a polished language and literature when English was unknown. It was for Europeans, indebted to this ancient civilization, to unearth the fragments of truth, buried under superstition, error and idolatry and to help India return to its former place amongst the foremost nations of the earth. He had to acknowledge that it was unlikely that missionaries would ever encounter Hindus who could understand Sanskrit but nevertheless, loyal to the beliefs of the Chair’s founder, stoutly maintained it was the key to understanding Hindu civilization.

In addition to his evangelical agenda, Monier Williams had not forgotten his days as the Professor of Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindustani at Haileybury. He began to see the possibilities afforded by Oxford for filling the educational vacuum that had been left by the closure of the East India Company College. As he was later to describe in the lecture How can the University of Oxford best fulfil its duty towards India,[4] Indian Civil Service Probationers were selected by an annual competitive examination for 17 to 19 year olds. About forty were selected out of two to three hundred candidates and during two years of probation were expected to sit a number of examinations in London. During the period of probation they were expected to reside in one of eight Universities approved by the Secretary of State for India, namely, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, St. Andrew’s and Dublin. Whilst at the University, they were subject to University discipline but not under formal academic supervision of any kind. In Monier William’s view, the fact that they simply resided at University but did not take any University examinations meant that they gained little from their experience of University life. The unsatisfactory support for I.C.S probationers was particularly visible at Oxford as its proximity to London made it an extremely popular choice for residency.

In addition to the unsatisfactory support for I.C.S. probationers, Indian students had started coming to England and were mostly studying without supervision. Among those in Oxford about half had no College attachments and Monier Williams felt there was a grave risk that after being cast adrift in England Indian students would return home deteriorated in character rather than improved.

In 1875 he persuaded Congregation to pass three resolutions: first that arrangements be made for I.C.S. probationers to reside at the University; second that University teachers should be appointed in certain branches of training required by them: and third that the B.A. degree be brought within their reach.

Proposals

In order to provide a stable study environment for both I.C.S. probationers and Indian students, he formally proposed the foundation of an Indian Institute at a Congregation held on May 13th 1875. The purpose of the Institute was to form a centre of teaching, inquiry and information on all subjects relating to India and its inhabitants. It was to restore among the I.C.S. probationers the old community spirit of the East India Company's College at Haileybury and would promote the welfare of Indians in Oxford. In addition it would propagate a general knowledge of India among Oxford's ordinary students some of whom might go on to exercise control over India's destiny in Parliament. Before the advent of submarine telegraphy, district officials had a great deal of autonomy but with swifter communication channels, London government had an opportunity to interfere, for good or ill, as never before. As Monier Williams tactfully remarked in his speech at the opening of the new Institute “the interposition of an all-powerful Assembly, acting with the best intentions, but not always according to knowledge, is apt to cause administrative complications.”[5]

The new Institute was to have lecture rooms, staff rooms, accommodation for Indian students and visitors and a library which was to "offer for daily use a collection of Indian manuscripts, books, maps, and plans, many of them too rare and costly to be procurable by private means. Its Reading-room will be supplied with all kinds of Indian newspapers and periodicals, some of them in the native languages."[6] The Institute was also to have a Museum that was to present a typical collection of specimens which would give a concise synopsis of the country and its material products, its people and their moral condition. Monier Williams sought to reassure Congregation that the sole purpose of this Institute was to be the prosecution of Oriental research and not to attract “mere sight-seers, curiosity- hunters, and excursionists”.[7]


Indian Art Ashmolean photo 1898 CMS © Ashmolean Museum. The Indian Institute Museum with its original display, c. 1898-99

Monier Williams’ first trip to India was a success. He held meetings in the major cities in the north including Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, explaining his proposal and asking for aid. The Prince of Wales, who was at the time in India, pledged his support, along with Lord Northbrook, the then Governor-General, and many members of the Civil Service. A number of Indian princes were also persuaded to join the subscription list. A second trip in the South of India and Ceylon followed towards the end of 1876 in which he was to receive similar encouragement. In addition to official support and money, he also received gifts of books, manuscripts and objects for the proposed new museum and library. Monier Williams followed his two Indian trips with a series of lectures and addresses in London and Oxford. In these he promulgated his vision of Indian studies becoming part of every University curriculum and the creation of a number of Institutes devoted to the dissemination of correct information on Indian matters, of which Oxford’s proposed Indian Institute was to be but the first. The fund raising campaign received further momentum with the official approval and support of Queen Victoria and the royal princes.

In Oxford the Master and Fellows of Balliol were particularly sympathetic to Monier William’s great enterprise. It was Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol who offered every candidate who passed the I.C.S. examination a place in Balliol and it was Balliol College Library that provided a temporary home for the books and manuscripts that had been collected for the new Institute. Initially it was planned that the Institute itself would be part of Balliol but Jowett had made himself unpopular by attaching too many of the staff appointed by the University to his college and the idea was abandoned in favour of making it a University institution.[8] In his book Oxford and Empire, Richard Symonds suggests that the Indian Institute would have had a better chance of development had it been attached to Balliol.[9] Certainly it is likely that Balliol would have been prepared to make up some of the shortfall in running costs which quickly became apparent after its opening. A college-based Institute might also have received stronger academic direction, and been prevented from sliding into the government club about which Edward Thompson was to be so scathing in the 1930s.

The Institute began its life in rooms hired at no. 8 Broad Street, opposite to Balliol College but in 1880 Convocation approved the plan for an Indian Institute and granted a site in the Parks along with an Endowment of £250 per annum from the University Chest, payable from the date of its opening.

There was considerable opposition to the new Institute being built in the Parks and negotiations were then started with the Fellows of Merton College who consented to part with a site in Broad Street for the sum of £7,800. The Prince of Wales laid the foundation stone of the building in 1883, acting with full Masonic ritual, and the University statute governing the Institute was passed in 1884.

The Building


Elephant carving, Indian Institute

The building, consisting of lecture rooms, a library and museum, was not completed until 1896 since some of the site was held by leaseholders and the leases did not come up for renewal until 1892. Monier Williams had to raise more money to purchase this land from Merton College and managed to secure the £1,400 needed from Sir Bhagvat Sinhjee, Thakur of Gondal. The architect was Basil Champneys with the carving being executed by a Mr. Aumonier.

At the very first recorded meeting of the Indian Institute Curators on 5 Nov 1884 the third item on the agenda was a discussion about the insufficiency of endowment of £250 per year and the problem of under-funding appears with monotonous regularity in the minutes from then on.

A manuscript volume held in the Ashmolean lists the objects collected for Monier Williams between 1883 and 1885. They vary from the eccentric, such as the three blown crocodile eggs and granite stone for scrubbing elephants from Travancore to highly professional selections from the most knowledgeable experts of the day, such as the collection of several hundred examples of handicrafts chosen by the Madras Museum.

When the completed Indian Institute was finally opened the museum installation was carried out by Dr. H. Lüders assisted by Mr. Long of the Pitt Rivers Museum, with the aid of a grant from the University.[10] The Bodleian has a number of archival photographs, which must have been taken soon after and show a space crammed full of wooden cases, rugs on the floors and walls and costumed dummies. An entrance corridor contains several small stupas from Bodhgaya, a model of emperor Hamayun’s tomb and a couple of stuffed yaks.

As in so many other aspects of the Indian Institute, the lack of financial provision soon told. There was no money to support a full-time curator so its direction was left entirely in the hands of the Boden Professor of Sanskrit. Apart from the fact the Boden Professor had many other duties, appreciation of India’s linguistic and literary achievements rarely went hand in hand with an appreciation of Indian art. The minutes of the Indian Institute Curators show how the museum was from the first the poor relation of the Institute’s library. Apart from acceptance of donations from ex-I.C.S. officers and old India hands, there was little consistent policy concerning the museum in the years that followed Monier-William’s death in 1899.

While the founder of the Institute’s philological and literary interests ensured that the Library received more attention from the Curators than the Museum, its financial situation was no better and it relied on inadequate grants and donations. The two biggest donors of books to the library were Monier-Williams himself, who gave his own library of between 3 and 4,000 volumes, and the Rev. Solomon Caesar Malan who donated his collection of about 4,000 books to the Institute.

The lack of continuity in the Librarian's post and the haphazard acquisition of gifts did not help the development of the collection and one gets the impression that over time the Curators of the Indian Institute found management of the Library increasingly irksome. In the minutes of a meeting held on Nov. 13th 1924 the Keeper complains that although there is an assistant as well as a chief librarian, he often finds that neither of them are to be found in the library.

On Oct. 26th 1926 Dr. Cowley, Bodley's Librarian, approached the Curators of the Indian Institute with a proposal that the Bodleian should take over the management of the Indian Institute Library. Unfortunately the typewritten and printed papers which outline the proposal are missing from the minutes book so it is not clear what benefits that Dr. Cowley felt the Bodleian would gain from connecting itself with the Indian Institute. The Curators of the Indian Institute came to an agreement in which they paid the Bodleian £275 per annum to connect the Indian Institute Library with the Bodleian as a special department for Indian studies. Dr. Cowley took over management of the library in 1927 and while the Librarian remained to assist him, the assistant librarian was replaced with a Bodleian employee. The Curators of the Indian Institute seem to have done rather well out of the deal because by 1928 Dr. Cowley is complaining that the administration of the Indian Institute Library was by no means covered by their contribution and has involved a considerable expenditure from Bodleian funds. It is interesting that despite the early administrative take over by the Bodleian, it is the Library that seems to have come to symbolize the Indian Institute and form the substance of the 1960s dispute which is still remembered today.

The Institute

The academic programme for the Institute was initially ambitious and inclusive. In his the opening ceremony lecture of 1884 Monier Williams described how the Institute had already appointed a number of teacher in Indian subjects and was able to offer one Indian classical language, Indian Law, History, and Political Economy.[11] Oxford was still missing the Honour School of Oriental Studies that he had proposed in 1875 but this became a reality in 1886, the year in which he was also knighted, taking the name Sir Monier Monier-Williams (presumably because he thought it sounded more impressive than plain Sir Monier Williams). The Institute’s academic programme was intended to be the first step in a process whereby Oxford and other Universities would eventually take over the entire process of educating and examining Indian Civil Service Probationers. The teaching programme would also answer the needs of the future doctors, lawyers and missionaries of the university who would end up working in India. The academic programme was intended to go hand in hand with the interchange of knowledge that would naturally arise from mixing young Englishmen with Indians studying in England. Monier Williams saw the young Indians gaining active dynamic qualities such as courage and determination while the young Englishmen would learn passive qualities such as patience and obedience to authority.[12]

In the early days of the Institute, however, there were insufficient Indian students to provide the kind of counterbalance to the I.C.S. probationers that Monier William’s rosy vision of an East West interchange of moral qualities required. An attempt to secure six Government scholarships for visiting Indian scholars had failed because the Secretary for India overruled a promise made to Monier Williams by the Viceroy, being disinclined to single out Oxford University for special favour.[13] In an article that appeared in the Oxford and Cambridge undergraduate journal of May 10, 1883 the author knew of only three native Indians in Oxford and did not believe there could be more than a dozen.[14] On the other hand there were some 50 I.C.S. probationers at the time of the Institute’s foundation.

The Honours School in Indian studies was short-lived and came to an end in Monier-William's own lifetime. It failed to take off as a popular alternative to Classics for those contemplating careers in India and interest was confined to those had already decided to make India their career, namely the I.C.S. probationers. After a change in the age limits of the Indian Civil Service made it no longer possible for the I.C.S. probationers to stay in Oxford for more than a year, the Honours School was no longer viable.[15]

In 1955 the Hebdomadal Council passed a decree to establish the Oriental Institute, which was to include "full provision for Indian studies." In the Congregation debate, Mr. H.T. Lambrick, Fellow of Oriel College, spoke against the proposal. He did not object to an Oriental Institute but protested that the inclusion of Indian studies would mutilate the Indian Institute and that it would be the story of Naboth’s vineyard all over again.[16] G.R. Driver, Professor of Semitic Philology spoke for the motion. He suggested that the Indian Institute may have been responsible for the decline in Indian studies at Oxford in the last 20 years and assured Congregation that the successors of those who gave money to found the Institute had been consulted and were not unfavourable to the proposals for the Oriental Institute. The decree was passed. A further resolution was then passed to lift restrictions on the use of the Indian Institute and allow the University to make use of any spare accommodation in the Indian Institute exclusive of the library, galleries and rooms already occupied by persons whose work required proximity to the library.[17] The Indian Institute Library was to be allowed to remain because Bodley's Librarian and Curators had adamantly opposed the move of Bodleian material away from the central site and won general support for their position.

In 1964 the Hebdomadal Council started discussing a proposal with Curators of the Bodleian. The proposal was that the Bodleian, which was badly in need of further accommodation, should be offered the Proscholium, to serve as a main entrance and the Divinity School for an exhibition room. In addition the Indian Institute Library was to be moved from the Indian Institute building to a roof extension, which was to be built on the north range of the new Bodleian and joined to deck B, which would be used for open shelf Indian Institute material.

In June 1965 two contentious debates were held on the future of the Indian Institute site. K. Ballhatchet, Reader in Indian History, led the opposition. He argued that the Franks commission had yet to make its recommendations on future provision for the University's administrative requirements. It was therefore not sensible to make provision for administrative offices on the Indian Institute site when the future shape of the administration had yet to be decided. D. Pocock, the Reader in Indian Sociology said that treating India as a branch of Oriental studies failed to reflect equal numbers of research students from other disciplines such as Modern History, Anthropology, Geography and Agriculture and Forestry. He felt that to ally Indian studies so closely with Oriental studies gave a wrong impression to those outside Oxford of the University’s interests in South Asia. It was argued that the Indian Institute site should not only retain the library but also provide rooms to allow for the development of a proper South Asian Regional Studies centre, such as had just been set up by Cambridge.

At the close of the debate, Ballhatchet's amendment to the decree was rejected by 38 votes and the decree was carried by 55 votes. Since the decree had achieved a majority of less than two thirds it had to go to Convocation, the body of all the M.A.s of the University. The voting was again close and the decree was carried by a mere 18 votes.

Conclusion: The Orientalist, his Institute and the Empire

In the popular version of the history of the Indian Institute, the Institute takes a simplified form, just a building and a library, which together symbolize enduring British-Indian friendship and a golden age of Indian Studies in Oxford, brutally torn asunder by an uncaring University. As I hope I have shown, the real the story of the Institute is more complex and troubled. The seeds of its destruction, namely an over-ambitious vision, lack of money, and the focus on a narrow sector of the student population were present from the day it opened its doors. While its demise was not inevitable, it is not as surprising as it might seem to those who have only encountered the popular version of the Institute’s history. Monier-Williams would have been gratified to see the affection in which his expensive bricks and mortar are held today and one cannot but admire his achievement in creating a library, museum, and teaching centre from nothing. Had the Institute had more Keepers of his entrepreneurial flair it might still be in existence today serving students and researchers of the University where once it trained Civil Servants for the Empire.

_______________

Notes:

[1] The Times Wed Dec 22 1830. Notice of the election of the Professorship of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford.

[2]Nirad Chaudhuri Scholar extraordinary : the life of Professor the Rt. Hon. Friedrich Max Müller, P.C. London : Chatto & Windus, 1974 p. 221

[3] Monier Williams A study of Sanskrit in relation to missionary work in India; an inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Oxford, on April 19, 1861. London: Williams and Norgate, 1861, p. 59-60

[4] Monier Williams How can the University of Oxford best fulfil its duty towards Oxford? Lecture given at the opening of the Indian Institute and reported in the Oxford & Cambridge Undergraduates Journal, Oct 16 1884

[5] Monier Williams How can the University of Oxford best fulfil its duty towards Oxford? Lecture given at the opening of the Indian Institute and reported in the Oxford & Cambridge Undergraduates Journal, Oct 16 1884

[6] A record of the establishment of the Indian Institute in the University of Oxford : being an account of the circumstances which led to its foundation. Oxford : Compiled for the Subscribers to the Indian Institute fund, 1897 p. 4.

[7] A record of the establishment of the Indian Institute in the University of Oxford : being an account of the circumstances which led to its foundation. Oxford : Compiled for the Subscribers to the Indian Institute fund, 1897 p. 4

[8] Balliol College Minute Book (25 June 1878 and 9 Nov 1878)

[9] Symonds p. 109

[10] J.C. Harle & Andrew Topsfield Indian art in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1987) p. xii.

[11] A record of the establishment of the Indian Institute in the University of Oxford : being an account of the circumstances which led to its foundation. Oxford : Compiled for the Subscribers to the Indian Institute fund, 1897 p. 42.

[12] A record of the establishment of the Indian Institute in the University of Oxford : being an account of the circumstances which led to its foundation. Oxford : Compiled for the Subscribers to the Indian Institute fund, 1897 p. 42

[13] Symonds p.111.

[14] Oxford review: the Oxford & Cambridge Undergraduates review. May 10, 1883

[15] Symonds p. 111-112.

[16] Times Wed Jun 1, 1955.

[17] Oxford University Gazette 3 June 1955 p. 1003-4.

************************




Journal of the National Indian Association in Aid of Social Progress and Female Education in India

CHAPTER XV. THE SAME CONTINUED. THE HISTORY OF SAGAMONI BORCAN [SAKYA-MUNI] AND THE BEGINNING OF IDOLATRY...

NOTE 6.—The Pâtra, or alms-pot, was the most valued legacy of Buddha. It had served the three previous Buddhas of this world-period, and was destined to serve the future one, Maitreya. The Great Asoka sent it to Ceylon. Thence it was carried off by a Tamul chief in the 1st century, A.D., but brought back we know not how, and is still shown in the Malagawa Vihara at Kandy. As usual in such cases, there were rival reliques, for Fa-hian found the alms-pot preserved at Pesháwar. Hiuen Tsang says in his time it was no longer there, but in Persia. And indeed the Pâtra from Pesháwar, according to a remarkable note by Sir Henry Rawlinson, is still preserved at Kandahár, under the name of Kashkul (or the Begging-pot), and retains among the Mussulman Dervishes the sanctity and miraculous repute which it bore among the Buddhist Bhikshus. Sir Henry conjectures that the deportation of this vessel, the palladium of the true Gandhára (Pesháwar), was accompanied by a popular emigration, and thus accounts for the transfer of that name also to the chief city of Arachosia. (Koeppen, I. 526; Fah-hian, p. 36; H. Tsang, II. 106; J.R.A.S. XI. 127.)

Sir E. Tennent, through Mr. Wylie (to whom this book owes so much), obtained the following curious Chinese extract referring to Ceylon (written 1350): "In front of the image of Buddha there is a sacred bowl, which is neither made of jade nor copper, nor iron; it is of a purple colour, and glossy, and when struck it sounds like glass. At the commencement of the Yuen Dynasty (i.e. under Kúblái) three separate envoys were sent to obtain it." Sanang Setzen also corroborates Marco's statement: "Thus did the Khaghan (Kúblái) cause the sun of religion to rise over the dark land of the Mongols; he also procured from India images and reliques of Buddha; among others the Pâtra of Buddha, which was presented to him by the four kings (of the cardinal points), and also the chandana chu" (a miraculous sandal-wood image). (Tennent, I. 622; Schmidt, p. 119.)…

NOTE 7.—Fa-hian writes of the alms-pot at Pesháwar, that poor people could fill it with a few flowers, whilst a rich man should not be able to do so with 100, nay, with 1000 or 10,000 bushels of rice; a parable doubtless originally carrying a lesson, like Our Lord's remark on the widow's mite, but which hardened eventually into some foolish story like that in the text.

The modern Mussulman story at Kandahar is that the alms-pot will contain any quantity of liquor without overflowing.

This Pâtra is the Holy Grail of Buddhism. Mystical powers of nourishment are ascribed also to the Grail in the European legends. German scholars have traced in the romances of the Grail remarkable indications of Oriental origin. It is not impossible that the alms-pot of Buddha was the prime source of them. Read the prophetic history of the Pâtra as Fa-hian heard it in India (p. 161); its mysterious wanderings over Asia till it is taken up into the heaven Tushita where Maitreya the Future Buddha dwells. When it has disappeared from earth the Law gradually perishes, and violence and wickedness more and more prevail:

—"What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?
* * * * * If a man
Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once,
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to Heaven, and disappear'd."
—Tennyson's Holy Grail

...

-- The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition

With regard to Query No "V.", about the "Thor's hammer", the Scandinavian mystical symbol called the "Thor's Hammer", vizt, thus,



is, in its form, apparently identical with the Indian Swastika



(See sketch of the "Thor's hammer" and other mystic symbols, in Baring Gould's "Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas"!)

The mystical symbol of the "Thor's hammer" really bore reference to three things (or three natural phenomena), or had a triple signification; vizt:

1. The Sun's power and course;
2. The revolution of the four seasons; and of time
3. The four quarters of the compass.
1.a. Rising, striking, setting, absence.
2.a. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.
2.b. Morning, mid-day, evening, night.
3.a. East, South, West, North

Thus:





Top -- Rising. Spring, Morning, East. Birth & Youth. Beginning.
Right -- Striking. Summer. Mid-day. South. Manhood, Present.
Bottom -- Setting. Autumn. Evening. West. Old Age. End.
Left -- Absence. Winter. Night. North. Death. Past. Future. Chaos.
 
I myself have never seen "hammers" or "axes" worshipped in India!

Round a Linga, or Mahadeo, when it happened to be situated in the open air, I have very frequently seen many naturally smoothed or rounded, stones, and oval stones, and pebbles, collected, in a crowd; and I have sometimes seen so many, that the big "Mahadeo" appeared to be standing in the midst of a forest of little ones of all shapes and sizes! But I have never yet seen any genuine "celt", or axe, in that position!

-- Letter to Mr. Rivett-Carnac [Colonel John Henry Rivett-Carnac 1838-1923], by Archibald Campbell Carlleyle

Dominus Illuminatio Mea [Lord is my light]

[admin]

The Orientalist, his Institute and the Empire: the rise and subsequent decline of Oxford University’s Indian Institute
by Gillian Evison
Indian Institute Librarian
December 2004

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

The Indian Institute Library on the top floor of the New Bodleian and the building of the old Indian Institute, now the home of the History Faculty Library and the James Martin 21st Century School, are the surviving remnants of an ambitious research institution set up in 1884 by the Boden Professor of Sanskrit, Sir M. Monier-Williams dedicated to the learning and literature of India. Some traces of the former use of the building remain and both the Sanskrit inscription inside the front door and the elephant weather vane on the roof bear testimony to the Indian Institute’s former life as a centre for Indian studies. The majority of the rarest 18th and 19th century publications in the Bodleian’s South Asian collections have bookplates showing that they were originally part of the Institute’s library, giving some idea of the wealth of printed resources available to members of Sir Monier-Williams’ research institution before the dispersal of its library, museum and teaching staff to various other locations in the University in the 1960s.

The end of the Indian Institute was controversial and continues to be so to this day, as became clear not so long ago in the letters section the Michaelmas 2003 edition of the magazine Oxford Today.1 The previous issue had featured a brief article by Alastair Lack entitled India and Oxford which had described the Indian Institute building as an emblem of Oxford’s interest in the sub-continent. Clearly intended as a feel-good nostalgic article for Oxford alumni, it had left Ranjit Singh feeling anything but good or nostalgic. He wrote:

“If anything, the building is a symbol of the disgraceful betrayal of trust the University displayed towards its friends and supporters in India. My family was amongst the donors inveigled by the University and the then Boden Professor of Sanskrit, Sir Monier Monier-Williams, privately to raise funds in India to construct the Institute. It was to be, in Monier-William’s words, ‘an everlasting symbol of amity’ between Oxford and India.

Despite its undertakings, the University forced the Indian Institute out of its home in 1968 and into the sterile New Bodleian Library library to make way for University administrative offices. Even when the administration abandoned the building, instead of being returned to its rightful occupants it was turned over to the Modern History faculty, which of course focuses on European history.

That the University should act in this way is bad enough. That it should now proudly cite the Institute’s building as indicative of its attitude towards its supporters in India is simply appalling.”

In this paper I will be looking at the history of the Institute from its optimistic beginnings as a colonial centre of instruction about all things Indian to its disintegration under the pressures of battles for real estate and changes in the way that the University thought about its teaching of Indian subjects.

As Ranjit Singh’s letter states, the Indian Institute was the brainchild of the Boden Professor of Sanskrit Sir M. Monier-Williams whose portrait can be seen on the staircase leading to the present library on the top floor of the New Bodleian.

Sir M. Monier-William's appointment to the Boden Professorship was somewhat controversial. He was born in India in 1819, where his father was Surveyor General, but returned to England as a child when his father died. He entered Balliol College but feeling no vocation for the church, for which his family had intended him, he left before taking his degree in order to enter Haileybury College and prepare for service with the East India Company as a writer. He trained for the service at the college from January 1840, and he passed out head of his year. It was whilst at Haileybury that he started to study Sanskrit, little knowing that it was form the substance of his future career. When his youngest brother died in action in an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the beleaguered fort of Kahun in Sind, he acceded to his widowed mother’s request to stay in England and gave up his plans for a career in India. He returned to Oxford but Balliol would not take him back so he entered University College in 1841 to read Classics and Mathematics in which he only managed to obtain a double Fourth Class degree2. His degree results undoubtedly suffered from his continued pursuit of Sanskrit, which he studied under the first Boden Professor Horace Hayman Wilson. In 1843 he won the Boden Sanskrit scholarship and after graduating in 1844 was immediately appointed professor of Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindustani at Haileybury, a post that he held until 1858, when the college was closed in the wake of the Indian mutiny and the teaching staff were pensioned off.

The closure of Haileybury left him searching for another opening and the vacancy for prestigious and highly paid Boden Professor of Sanskrit after the death of Horace Hayman Wilson in 1860 proved providential. Boden Professors at this time were elected by all the M.A.s of the University3 and as Convocation had 3,7864 members the election was contested as if the protagonists were prospective members of Parliament. Monier Williams spent over £10005 on manifestos, handbills, letters to newspapers and personal canvassing in a closely fought election against the German scholar Max Müller.

The Sanskrit Chair had been founded by Colonel J. Boden for “the conversion of the Natives of India to the Christian Religion”6 and Max Müller felt himself well qualified for the post. He secured the support of leading scholars, including Edward Pusey and John Keble. Max Müller may have had the support of the majority of Oxford scholars but he unfortunately suffered from two major handicaps; he was a German on friendly terms with Oxford theologians of the liberal movement with “Germanist” tendencies, which made his theology suspect to the conservatives in the church. Monier Williams may not have had the reputation in the field of Sanskrit that Müller enjoyed but he had the important advantages of being English by birth and well known as a devout evangelical Anglican.

The battle for the Professorship was long and nasty. Supporters of Müller sought to raise doubts about William's competence as a Sanskrit scholar. One of the Boden scholars Robinson Ellis circulated a paper in which it was claimed that he could not read a Sanskrit manuscript7 and when evidence was produced to the contrary it was claimed that it merely proved that:

"Mr. Williams is able to recognize the letters of a Sanskrit MS when he can compare it with an existing text. This is a kind of mechanical labour which is paid for at the public libraries at Paris and Berlin at the rate of half a crown a year"8.

In retaliation Monier Williams claimed that Müller's area of speciality was a backwater and not relevant to the purpose for which the Boden Professorship had been set up. He claimed that his own area of speciality, the epics and sacred law, were the real Hindu scriptures while the Rig Veda, Müller's speciality, was a "curious monument of bygone worship, at which the missionary, more usefully engaged in studying the present condition of the Hindu mind would content himself with a rapid glance"9.

The support of scholars at Oxford was not enough to carry the vote for Müller when the Convocation was held on 7th December 1860. Large numbers of evangelical country clergy appeared in Oxford to cast their votes and Monier Williams was elected with a majority of 223 out of a total of 1433 votes recorded. The unfortunate Robinson Ellis, the Boden scholar who had questioned Monier William’s knowledge of Sanskrit was required by statute to attend lectures by the new Boden Professor. Monier Williams described their first encounter as one in which, “his whole demeanour was that of a person who would have welcomed an earthquake or any convulsion of nature which would have opened a way for him to sink out of my sight.”10 Monier Williams, however, was determined to be gracious in victory and was largely successful in winning his former opponents over, with the notable exception of Max Müller who resisted all efforts at reconciliation.

At his inaugural lecture Monier Williams set out the evangelical agenda which had carried the day for him.

“A great Eastern empire has been entrusted to our rule, not to be the theatre of political experiments, nor yet for the sole purpose of extending our commerce, flattering our pride, or increasing our prestige, but that a benighted population may be enlightened, and every man, woman, and child … hear the glad tidings of the Gospel.”11

In his view India, of all British possessions, was the most inviting and interesting for the missionary. It was not a country of savage tribes who would melt away before superior force and intelligence of Europeans but the home of a great and ancient people. These inhabitants traced back their origin to the same Aryan stock as the Europeans and had attained a high degree of civilization when Europeans were still barbarians. India had had a polished language and literature when English was unknown. It was for Europeans, indebted to this ancient civilization, to unearth the fragments of truth, buried under superstition, error and idolatry and to help India return to its former place amongst the foremost nations of the earth. He had to acknowledge that it was unlikely that missionaries would ever encounter Hindus who could understand Sanskrit but nevertheless, loyal to the beliefs of the Chair’s founder, stoutly maintained it was the key to understanding Hindu civilization.

In addition to his evangelical agenda, Monier Williams had not forgotten his days as the Professor of Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindustani at Haileybury. He began to see the possibilities afforded by Oxford for filling the educational vacuum that had been left by the closure of the East India Company College. As he was later to describe in the lecture How can the University of Oxford best fulfil its duty towards India12, Indian Civil Service Probationers were selected by an annual competitive examination for 17 to 19 year olds. About forty were selected out of two to three hundred candidates and during two years of probation were expected to sit a number of examinations in London. During the period of probation they were expected to reside in one of eight Universities approved by the Secretary of State for India, namely, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, St. Andrew’s and Dublin. Whilst at the University, they were subject to University discipline but not under formal academic supervision of any kind. In Monier William’s view, the fact that they simply resided at University but did not take any University examinations meant that they gained little from their experience of University life. The unsatisfactory support for I.C.S probationers was particularly visible at Oxford as its proximity to London made it an extremely popular choice for residency.

In addition to the unsatisfactory support for I.C.S. probationers, Indian students had started coming to England and were mostly studying without supervision. Among those in Oxford about half had no College attachments and Monier Williams felt there was a grave risk that after being cast adrift in England Indian students would return home deteriorated in character rather than improved.

In 1875 he persuaded Congregation to pass three resolutions: first that arrangements be made for I.C.S. probationers to reside at the University; second that University teachers should be appointed in certain branches of training required by them: and third that the B.A. degree be brought within their reach.

In order to provide a stable study environment for both I.C.S. probationers and Indian students, he formally proposed the foundation of an Indian Institute at a Congregation held on May 13th 1875. The purpose of the Institute was to form a centre of teaching, inquiry and information on all subjects relating to India and its inhabitants. It was to restore among the I.C.S. probationers the old community spirit of the East India Company's College at Haileybury and would promote the welfare of Indians in Oxford. In addition it would propagate a general knowledge of India among Oxford's ordinary students some of whom might go on to exercise control over India's destiny in Parliament. Before the advent of submarine telegraphy, district officials had a great deal of autonomy but with swifter communication channels, London government had an opportunity to interfere, for good or ill, as never before. As Monier Williams tactfully remarked in his speech at the opening of the new Institute “the interposition of an all-powerful Assembly, acting with the best intentions, but not always according to knowledge, is apt to cause administrative complications.”13

The new Institute was to have lecture rooms, staff rooms, accommodation for Indian students and visitors and a library which was to "offer for daily use a collection of Indian manuscripts, books, maps, and plans, many of them too rare and costly to be procurable by private means. Its Reading-room will be supplied with all kinds of Indian newspapers and periodicals, some of them in the native languages.14 "The Institute was also to have a Museum that was to present a typical collection of specimens which would give a concise synopsis of the country and its material products, its people and their moral condition. Monier Williams sought to reassure Congregation that the sole purpose of this Institute was to be the prosecution of Oriental research and not to attract “mere sight-seers, curiosity-hunters, and excursionists”.15

The Boden Professor was not alone in his vision of a centre that would combine teaching, a museum and library for the benefit of I.C.S. probationers and the educated classes in England and India. In the same year J. Forbes Watson, the Director of the India Museum, which was sharing cramped and unsatisfactory quarters in the attics of the India Office with the India Library, proposed the construction of a purpose built Indian Institute on a vacant site belonging to the India Office in Charles Street.

The London Indian Institute, however, never progressed beyond a proposal and in the 1880’s the India Museum was amalgamated with the growing collections of Indian craft objects at the South Kensington (later Victoria and Albert) Museum. While the London proposal was based on the solid foundation of existing library and museum resources, Monier Williams had nothing. Any fund raising campaign would have to cover museum and library stock and a place to put them well as suitable salaries for staff.

Monier Williams’ first trip to India was a success. He held meetings in the major cities in the north including Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, explaining his proposal and asking for aid. The Prince of Wales, who was at the time in India, pledged his support, along with Lord Northbrook, the then Governor-General, and many members of the Civil Service. A number of Indian princes were also persuaded to join the subscription list. A second trip in the South of India and Ceylon followed towards the end of 1876 in which he was to receive similar encouragement. In addition to official support and money, he also received gifts of books, manuscripts and objects for the proposed new museum and library. Monier Williams followed his two Indian trips with a series of lectures and addresses in London and Oxford. In these he promulgated his vision of Indian studies becoming part of every University curriculum and the creation of a number of Institutes devoted to the dissemination of correct information on Indian matters, of which Oxford’s proposed Indian Institute was to be but the first.

The fund raising campaign received further momentum with the official approval and support of Queen Victoria and the royal princes.

In Oxford the Master and Fellows of Balliol were particularly sympathetic to Monier William’s great enterprise. It was Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol who offered every candidate who passed the I.C.S. examination a place in Balliol and it was Balliol College Library that provided a temporary home for the books and manuscripts that had been collected for the new Institute. Initially it was planned that the Institute itself would be part of Balliol16 but Jowett had made himself unpopular by attaching too many of the staff appointed by the University to his college and the idea was abandoned in favour of making it a University institution. In his book Oxford and Empire Richard Symonds suggests that the Indian Institute would have had a better chance of development had it been attached to Balliol.17 Certainly it is likely that Balliol would have been prepared to make up some of the shortfall in running costs which quickly became apparent after its opening. A college-based Institute might also have received stronger academic direction, and been prevented from sliding into the government club about which Edward Thompson was to be so scathing in the 1930’s.

The Institute began its life in rooms hired at no. 8 Broad Street, opposite to Balliol College but in 1880 Convocation approved the plan for an Indian Institute and granted a site in the Parks along with an Endowment of £250 per annum from the University Chest, payable from the date of its opening.

Max Müller objected to the money that Monier-Williams had raised being spent on new buildings. He circulated a flyleaf to Congregation urging that premises could be found on existing University property and that the donations should fund research and fellowships. He later wrote:

"What all the Indians say is that rich Oxford University went around with a hat, promised to help Indian students, and all the money they subscribed in India was spent on bricks and stuffed animals18."

Max Müller’s general antipathy to Monier Williams was no doubt partly at the root of this campaign. Monier Williams had tried to invite Müller’s to join an Oxford committee for the Institute using as his intermediary, Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol, who remained friendly with both men, but this appeal had fallen on deaf ears.19 Leaving personal animosity aside, however, Max Müller had a valid point. When the building was finally been completed, of the £33,869 11 shillings that had been raised only £235, 7 shillings and 10 d remained to be handed over to the Curators for the continued running of the Institute. This was to provide woefully inadequate support and from the outset there was never going to be sufficient money to support a scholarship programme.

There was considerable opposition to the new Institute being built in the Parks and negotiations were then started with the Fellows of Merton College who consented to part with a site in Broad Street for the sum of £7,800. The Prince of Wales laid the foundation stone of the building in 1883, acting with full Masonic ritual, and the University statute governing the Institute was passed in 1884.

The building, consisting of lecture rooms, a library and museum, was not completed until 1896 since some of the site was held by leaseholders and the leases did not come up for renewal until 1892. Monier Williams had to raise more money to purchase this land from Merton College and managed to secure the £1400 needed from Sir Bhagvat Sinhjee, Thakur of Gondal. The architect was Basil Champneys with the carving being executed by a Mr. Aumonier.

The style was intended to suggest the purpose of the building by the introduction of Indian forms in the fauna and flora of the carvings and some richness of detail without departing from the type of the 17th century English Renaissance.

At the very first recorded meeting of the Indian Institute Curators on Nov 5th 1884 the third item on the agenda was a discussion about the insufficiency of endowment of £250 per year and the problem of under-funding appears with monotonous regularity in the minutes from then on.

Of the three components of Monier William’s Indian Institute, the museum was probably the least successful. In the words of John Harle and Andrew Topsfield’s book on Indian art in the Ashmolean museum, it is described as a story of “the high minded, even sanctimonious, late Victorian ambitions of its founder over-reaching themselves and being gradually nullified by the inertia or sheer lack of funds of his successor”.20 As a largely ethnographic museum of economic products and crafts, it was clearly inspired by the new Indian Museum in South Kensington, which had been formed through the amalgamation of the old East India Company Museum in Whitehall and the collections of Indian craft objects at the South Kensington Museum. In common with the prevailing opinion of the time, while Monier Williams held a deep regard for India’s literary tradition, he had scant regard for Indian art other than its craft traditions. In a third Indian fundraising tour undertaken in the winter of 1883-1884 he took time to visit the International Exhibition in Calcutta and secure some items as well as enlisting the help of various regional authorities to collect representative local objects and ship them to Oxford.

It was left to civil servants and museum officials to interpret this brief as they thought best. A manuscript volume held in the Ashmolean lists the objects collected for Monier Williams between 1883 and 1885. They vary from the eccentric, such as the three blown crocodile eggs and granite stone for scrubbing elephants from Travancore to highly professional selections from the most knowledgeable experts of the day, such as the collection of several hundred examples of handicrafts chosen by the Madras Museum.

When the completed Indian Institute was finally opened the museum installation was carried out by Dr. H. Lüders assisted by Mr. Long of the Pitt rivers Museum, with the aid of a grant from the University.21 The Indian Institute Library has a number of archival photographs, which must have been taken soon after and show a space crammed full of wooden cases, rugs on the floors and walls and costumed dummies.

An entrance corridor contains several small stupas from Bodhgaya, a model of emperor Hamayun’s tomb and a couple of stuffed yaks.

As in so many other aspects of the Indian Institute, the lack of financial provision soon told. There was no money to support a full time curator so its direction was left entirely in the hands of the Boden Professor of Sanskrit. Apart from the fact the Boden Professor had many other duties, appreciation of India’s linguistic and literary achievements rarely went hand in hand with an appreciation of Indian art. The minutes of the Indian Institute Curators show how the museum was from the first the poor relation of the Institute’s library. Apart from acceptance of donations from ex-I.C.S. officers and old India hands, there was little consistent policy concerning the museum in the years that followed Monier William’s death in 1899. In 1909, Lord Curzon, the Chancellor of the University, issued a confidential note, preserved in the Indian Institute archives, which recommended the ending of the museum. The collection was meagre and ill-assorted in comparison with that at South Kensington, and worse still was visited by more women than men, which he viewed as a sufficient grounds for closure and in his words, “a pathetic commentary upon Sir M. Monier-Williams’s assurance that it was not intended to attract “mere sight-seers, curiosity-hunters and excursionists”.22

The month following, the Curators resolved on a policy of gradual dispersal of the museum collections but, perhaps because of the effort involved in such a wholesale dispersal, little was done. In 1926 the museum was still in existence, the Curator’s minutes recording that the visitors were mainly school children and Americans. The stuffed animals, to which Max Müller had referred in his condemnation of the Indian Institute some thirty years earlier, were, however, disposed of in 1926, having been a regular committee item since the museum’s opening due to their poor state of preservation and bad smell, which by that time was being described as “positively injurious.” The Curators did later try and interest the Pitt Rivers in the entire museum collection but the proposal was refused due to lack of space. Some select items were accepted, however, including the collection of Jaipur arms and armour that had been gifted by the Maharajah. The museum rallied briefly under the Keepership of Prof. E.H. Johnston from 1937-42. By this time there was a greater appreciation of the Indian fine art tradition and Johnston was responsible for the purchase of some fine examples of Mathura sculpture including the beautiful head of Siva, now in the Ashmolean’s Eastern Art Museum. During the Second World War, however, the museum was closed and in 1945 the Curators were not inclined to re-open it. In 1946, a solution to the Indian Institute’s white elephant appeared in the form of Dr. William Cohn, a distinguished war-time refugee from Berlin, who suggested the amalgamation of the museum collections with the Ashmolean’s Chinese ceramic collections in a new Museum of Eastern Art. The Museum opened in the Indian Institute in 1949 and remained there until its move in 1962 to the Ashmolean’s newly established Department of Eastern Art. It seems that no one was sad to see it go. Aongst the many letters of protest I have read about the closure of the Indian Institute I have yet to find any opposition to the museum’s move to the Ashmolean site.

While the founder of the Institute’s philological and literary interests ensured that the Library received more attention from the Curators than the Museum its financial situation was no better and it relied on inadequate grants and donations. The two biggest donors of books to the library were Monier-Williams himself, who gave his own library of between 3 and 4000 volumes, and the Rev. Solomon Caesar Malan who donated his collection of about 4000 books to the Institute.

Much of Malan's library was inappropriate to a centre for Indic studies; his collection included works on Patristics, the history of the Eastern Church and grammars and dictionaries in over 100 languages. Although attempts were made to rehouse them the conditions of Rev. Malan's bequest made it difficult to do so and most remained in the Indian Institute until it became possible to disperse them among the Bodleian collections after the library came under Bodleian administration.

The first Indian Institute Librarian was a Dr. Schönberg, who was also to assist Prof. Monier-Williams in the preparation of his Sanskrit-English dictionary. He was appointed on Nov 11th 1884 at a salary of £50 a year besides living, lights and rooms. It was agreed that his duties should be to reside in the building, to take charge of the books in the library and objects in the museum. He was to sit in the library when engaged in work on the dictionary and he was to devote two hours a day to cataloguing books. His contract was terminated by March of the next year and from then on Indian Institute Librarians seem to have had very limited tenure. The longer a Librarian was in post the more likely it was that he would ask for an increase in wages. The Curators’ way of managing such requests can be demonstrated by the case of the unfortunate Mr. Hartley, Dr. Schönberg's successor, whose contract was abruptly terminated on Dec 15th 1885 after he had applied for an increase in salary.

The lack of continuity in the Librarian's post and the haphazard acquisition of gifts did not help the development of the collection and one gets the impression that over time the Curators of the Indian Institute found management of the Library increasingly irksome. In the minutes of a meeting held on Nov. 13th 1924 the Keeper complains that although there is an assistant as well as a chief librarian, he often finds that neither of them are to be found in the library. Then in 1925 there was the matter of 30 books from the Malan collection, which a Mr. A.S. Domiack from Wadham had removed from the library without signing for them. These books had subsequently been offered for sale to a book dealer who luckily noticed the Indian Institute stamp and returned them.

On Oct. 26th 1926 Dr. Cowley, Bodley's Librarian, approached the Curators of the Indian Institute with a proposal that the Bodleian should take over the management of the Indian Institute Library. Unfortunately the typewritten and printed papers which outline the proposal are missing from the minutes book so it is not clear what benefits that Dr. Cowley felt the Bodleian would gain from connecting itself with the Indian Institute. The Curators of the Indian Institute came to an agreement in which they paid the Bodleian £275 per annum to connect the Indian Institute Library with the Bodleian as a special department for Indian studies. Dr. Cowley took over management of the library in 1927 and while the Librarian remained to assist him the assistant librarian was replaced with a Bodleian employee. The Curators of the Indian Institute seem to have done rather well out of the deal because by 1928 Dr. Cowley is complaining that the administration of the Indian Institute Library is by no means covered by their contribution and has involved a considerable expenditure from Bodleian funds. It is interesting that despite the early administrative take over by the Bodleian, it is the Library that seems to have come to symbolize the Indian Institute and form the substance of the 1960’s dispute which is still remembered today.

The academic programme for the Institute was initially ambitious and inclusive. In his the opening ceremony lecture of 1884 Monier Williams described how the Institute had already appointed a number of teacher in Indian subjects and was able to offer one Indian classical language, Indian Law, History, and Political Economy23. Oxford was still missing the Honour School of Oriental Studies that he had proposed in 1875 but this became a reality in 1886, the year in which he was also knighted, taking the name Sir Monier Monier-Williams (presumably because he thought it sounded more impressive than plain Sir Monier Williams). The Institute’s academic programme was intended to be the first step in a process whereby Oxford and other Universities would eventually take over the entire process of educating and examining Indian Civil Service Probationers. The teaching programme would also answer the needs of the future doctors, lawyers and missionaries of the university who would end up working in India.

The academic programme was intended to go hand in hand with the interchange of knowledge that would naturally arise from mixing young Englishmen with Indians studying in England. Monier Williams saw the young Indians gaining active dynamic qualities such as courage and determination while the young Englishmen would learn passive qualities such as patience and obedience to authority.24 At Oxford the corrosive influence of Indian philosophy to treat action as a mistake leading to future rebirths would be eradicated and Indian students would learn that work was part of religion.

In the early days of the Institute, however, there were insufficient Indian students to provide the kind of counterbalance to the I.C.S. probationers that Monier William’s rosy vision of an East West interchange of moral qualities required. An attempt to secure six Government scholarships for visiting Indian scholars had failed because the Secretary for India overruled a promise made to Monier Williams by the Viceroy, being disinclined to single out Oxford University for special favour25. In an article that appeared in the Oxford and Cambridge undergraduate journal of May 10, 1883 the author knew of only three native Indians in Oxford and did not believe there could be more than a dozen.26 On the other hand there were some 50 I.C.S. probationers at the time of the Institute’s foundation.

The Honours School in Indian studies was short-lived and came to an end in Monier-William's own lifetime. It failed to take off as a popular alternative to Classics for those contemplating careers in India and interest was confined to those had already decided to make India their career, namely the I.C.S. probationers. After a change in the age limits of the Indian Civil Service made it no longer possible for the I.C.S. probationers to stay in Oxford for more than a year, the Honours School was no longer viable.27

Richard Symond’s in his book Oxford and Empire suggests that it was the strong I.C.S focus of the institute, coupled with a decline in interest in Sanskrit, the subject of its ex-officio Keeper, that was to prove its eventual undoing as a centre for Indian studies.28 I.C.S. probationers no longer studied Sanskrit and Classical studies, which had provided a steady stream of students attracted by the relationship of the language to Latin and Greek, started to decline from the 1920’s onwards. Between 1921 and 1930 only four candidates sat for honours in Sanskrit and in 1931 there had been no candidate for the Boden Sanskrit scholarship for six of the eight previous years. The opportunity offered by the growing status of Modern History as a subject was missed with a series of appointments to the Reader in Indian History who were distinguished by their propagation of the government line rather than by their original thought. Sir Geoffrey Corbett, appointed in 1932 actually continued in the I.C.S. during his first two years of appointment. Even E.H. Johnston the Boden Professor Sanskrit from 1937-42 was a retired I.C.S. man. It is small wonder that the Indian students who visited the Institute to read the newspapers saw it as a nest of I.C.S. spies.

An attempt to rejuvenate the Indian Institute was made by the Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, Lord Lothian, while he was Parliamentary secretary for India from 1931-32. He suggested that Edward Thompson, who had come to Oxford to teach Bengali to the I.C.S. probationers and who had undertaken a number of visits to India on behalf of the Rhodes Trust, use the Indian Institute as the base for some of his suggested initiatives. These included prizes and Fellowships for Indian writers and scholars that would encourage them to come and lecture at Oxford. Lord Lothian also suggested the appointment of an Indian administrator or deputy administrator to the Institute, whose prime role would be to arrange for eminent Indian scholars visit Oxford. Had this happened the subsequent history of the Institute might have been very different. Thompson’s response, however, was that the Institute was lost and damned beyond redemption its so called Indian studies being utilitarian and governmental and its appointments being mainly political.29 The only solution in his view was to close it all down, sell the building to a college and begin again with a new “Irwin House” which would house a library, accommodation for distinguished visiting Indians and provide lectures untainted by I.C.S. associations.30 Even with the prospect of money from the sale of the old Institute, it would have been a costly enterprise and nothing ever came of plans to raise funds for a new “Asia House” to be modelled on Rhodes House with library containing all the books from the Bodleian on the living East, a Warden, theatre and museum.

I.C.S. probationers ceased to come to Oxford after the start of the Second World War in 1939 and in the post-war years the Indian Institute came under unwelcome scrutiny from the University Chest, which was in need of further accommodation. The Indian Institute Curators in 1947 allowed the University Land Agent to take over three rooms on the ground floor, claiming that no more could be offered as all other accommodation was needed by the Institute for its own purposes. It is clear from the minutes of Curators' meetings, however, that Indian Institute rooms were being put to uses that had nothing to do with Indian studies. A Chinese lending library was set up in Indian Institute accommodation and the Institute was also storing Turkish books on behalf of the Faculty of Oriental studies.

The Oriental Faculty, as shown by its use of Indian Institute rooms, desperately needed further accommodation and it was proposed that a new Oriental Institute should be set up near the Ashmolean Museum. It was suggested that the Indian Institute should cease to exist and that the Indian Department and library should become part of the new Oriental Institute, much to the dismay of classical Indologists such as V. Raghavan who declared that such a move would be ruinous to Indian studies at Oxford31. In 1955 the Hebdomadal Council passed a decree to establish the Oriental Institute, which was to include "full provision for Indian studies." In the Congregation debate, Mr. H.T. Lambrick, Fellow of Oriel College, spoke against the proposal. He did not object to an Oriental Institute but protested that the inclusion of Indian studies would mutilate the Indian Institute and that it would be the story of Naboth’s vineyard all over again.32 G.R. Driver, Professor of Semitic Philology spoke for the motion. He suggested that the Indian Institute may have been responsible for the decline in Indian studies at Oxford in the last 20 years and assured Congregation that the successors of those who gave money to found Institute had been consulted and were not unfavourable to the proposals for the Oriental Institute. The decree was passed. A further resolution was then passed to lift restrictions on the use of the Indian Institute to University purposes any spare accommodation in the Indian Institute exclusive of the library, galleries and rooms already occupied by persons whose work required proximity to the library.33 The Indian Institute Library was to be allowed to remain because Bodley's Librarian and Curators had adamantly opposed the move of Bodleian material away from the central site and won general support for their position.

In 1956 the University obtained a High Court order allowing it to use the site and buildings of the Indian Institute as general property of the University in consideration of a fund of £20,000 set up as a permanent endowment for the promotion of Indian studies. To begin with it appears that the plan was to reconstruct part of the building and adapt it for the use of the University Chest at the same time extending library space by putting a floor in the Malan room and then allowing the library to take over the space to be vacated by the museum when it moved to the Ashmolean. However, it is clear from the minutes of the Indian Institute that after the 1956 court order the University Chest was exerting considerable pressure on the Curators to take over areas that were in use by members of the Indian studies department. In 1958 there was an attempt to take over the lecture room and the Curators decided at a meeting on Feb 20th that there was a need to maintain constant vigilance against further manoeuvres by the Chest.

In 1960 the plan seems to have become a more ambitious proposal to knock down the old building put up an entirely new structure on the Indian Institute site for the use of the University Offices.

It appears that accommodation for the Indian Institute Library did not figure as part of the plan and that the Indian Institute books were expected to be absorbed into the stacks of the Bodleian. On May 25th 1961 the Curators of the Indian Institute Library decided that the Keeper of the Indian Institute should write to the Registrar stating that they considered it most important that the Indian Institute Library should be maintained as a separate entity and not absorbed into the general collections of the Bodleian. A letter followed this to the editor of the Oxford Magazine pointing out that the library had been attracting an increasing number of students from many different faculties and arguing that it was imperative that the Library remained as a working unit.

In 1964 the Hebdomadal Council started discussing a proposal with Curators of the Bodleian, which was to result in one of the University's most notorious episodes of bloodletting in recent history. The proposal was that the Bodleian, which was badly in need of further accommodation, should be offered the Proscholium, to serve as a main entrance and the Divinity School for an exhibition room. In addition the Indian Institute Library was to be moved from the Indian Institute building to a roof extension, which was to be built on the north range of the new Bodleian and joined to deck B, which would be used for open shelf Indian Institute material.

The Indian Institute building would then be assigned to the Central Offices for redevelopment from the date of the completion of the roof extension. In return for the reduction of stack space that the Bodleian would suffer by incorporating Indian Institute material it was to be offered the underground area between the Clarendon Building and the Old Bodleian for excavation of new stack areas.

In June 1965 two contentious debates were held on the future of the Indian Institute site. K. Ballhatchet, Reader in Indian History, led the opposition. He argued that the Franks commission had yet to make its recommendations on future provision for the University's administrative requirements. It was therefore not sensible to make provision for administrative offices on the Indian Institute site when the future shape of the administration had yet to be decided. D. Pocock, the Reader in Indian Sociology said that treating India as a branch of Oriental studies failed to reflect equal numbers of research students from other disciplines such as Modern History, Anthropology, Geography and Agriculture and Forestry. He felt that to ally Indian studies so closely with Oriental studies gave a wrong impression to those outside Oxford of the Universities interests in South Asia. It was argued that the Indian Institute site should not only retain the library but also provide rooms to allow for the development of a proper South Asian Regional Studies centre such as had just been set up by Cambridge.

Bodley's Librarian J. Myres was in a difficult position. University procedure meant it was impossible for him to oppose the Indian Institute proposal without causing the whole decree to be rejected. He had suggested the plan for taking over the Proscholium and Divinity school himself and objected to the way that Council had tacked on to it a proposal which he considered totally unacceptable. If he supported Ballhatchet the Bodleian could lose space, which it desperately needed. He proposed to vote against Ballhatchet but only on the grounds that he did not wish to abandon his plans for the Proscholium and the Divinity school. He did, however, declare his intention, in open opposition to the Curators of the Bodleian, of voting for the deletion of the clauses concerning the Indian Institute at a later date.

When the decree was brought before Congregation on June 15th, Ballhatchet and Pocock proposed an amendment that the clauses concerned with the removal of the Indian Institute Library to the roof of the Bodleian be replaced with clauses stating that any redevelopment of the Indian Institute site should provide for the rehousing of the Library on the site with adequate room for expansion.

At the close of the debate, Ballhatchet's amendment to the decree was rejected by 38 votes and the decree was carried by 55 votes. Since the decree had achieved a majority of less than two thirds it had to go to Convocation, the body of all the M.A.s of the University. The voting was again close and the decree was carried by a mere 18 votes. A Times article of June 30 1965 suggested that the narrow victory was due to Hertford College, which hoping for a share in the site of the Indian Institute, had invited all its M.A.'s to come and vote in return for a free lunch.

Throughout the series of debates, the Boden Professor Thomas Burrows made no contribution although without a doubt he opposed the removal of the Indian Institute Library to the top of the Bodleian as his name appears on Ballhatchet's flysheet outlining the amendment for the debate on the 15th June. One cannot but speculate what effect he would have made, as Monier-William's direct successor, had he chosen to speak in support of the Reader in Indian History.

The press reaction in India was unfavourable and Mr. M.C. Chagla, the Indian Education Minister expressed official concern to the British High Comissioner in Delhi. The Reuter report of the meeting in the Times, suggests that the concern centred around the move of the library rather than the demolition of the building.34 On Dec 31st Bodley's Librarian J. Myres resigned and Ballhatchet and Pocock both left Oxford to take up posts at SOAS and Sussex University. Before giving his papers to the Bodleian, Myres unfortunately weeded them so no reference remains to this episode but his strong feelings on the matter can be guessed from an article, which appears in the March issue of the Oxford Magazine in 1968. For the supreme irony is that having fought so desperately for the use of the Indian Institute site the University decided to transfer the whole University Office complex to Wellington square. As Myres drily remarks:

"Had they reached this obvious conclusion two years ago, as they were strongly urged from many sides to do, it would have saved one or two of us, who found it impossible to reconcile Council's previous policy with the best interests either of the administration or of the Bodleian, some measure of inconvenience."

The obvious solution might have been to leave the Indian Institute Library where it was but as Myres writes:

"so innocent a notion is quite alien to our administrative proprieties. Money has been allocated for moving the Indian library out of the Indian Institute, and on this move, however, senseless, that money must now be spent".

The move went ahead as Myres predicted and the Indian Institute building became the Modern History Faculty. when the History Faculty moves from this site, it is interesting to speculate what battles may be re-fought for possession of the building. Not so long ago I had a phone call from a Hertford college representative seeking to verify whether there was any archival proof of a promise made to the college that it had first refusal on the building should it ever be vacated…

I will finish with the letter in Oxford Today with which I started this talk. It represents what could be described as the popular history of the Indian Institute and one that I have heard told by librarians and scholars from all over the world. In the popular version, the Institute takes a simplified form, just a building and a library, which together symbolize enduring British-Indian friendship and a golden age of Indian Studies in Oxford, brutally torn asunder by an uncaring University. As I hope I have shown, the real the story of the Institute is more complex and troubled. The seeds of its destruction, namely an over ambitious vision, lack of money, and the focus on a narrow sector of the student population were present from the day it opened its doors. While its demise was not inevitable, it is not as surprising as it might seem to those who have only encountered the popular version of the Institute’s history. Monier Williams would have been gratified to see the affection in which his expensive bricks and mortar are held today and one cannot but admire his achievement in creating a library, museum, and teaching centre from nothing. Had the Institute had more Keepers of his entrepreneurial flair it might still be in existence today serving students and researchers of the University where once it trained Civil Servants for the Empire.

Gillian Evison Indian Institute Librarian December 2004

_______________

Notes:

1 Oxford Today 15:3, Michaelmas 2003, p. 62

2. Richard Symonds Oxford and empire : the last lost cause? Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1986 p. 107

3. Richard Gombrich On being Sanskritic : a plea for civilized study and the study of civilization. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1978 p.8

4. Nirad Chaudhuri Scholar extraordinary : the life of Professor the Rt. Hon. Friedrich Max Müller, P.C. London : Chatto & Windus, 1974 p. 221

5. Symonds p. 107

6 The Times Wed Dec 22 1830. Notice of the election of the Professorship of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford.

7 Monier Williams. Notes of a long life’s journey Unpublished memoir (copy held in the Indian Institute Library, p. 379

8. Chaudhuri p. 228

9. Chaudhuri p. 223

10 Monier Williams. Notes of a long life’s journey Unpublished memoir (copy held in the Indian Institute Library, p. 379

11 Monier Williams A study of Sanskrit in relation to missionary work in India; an inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Oxford, on April 19, 1861. London : Williams and Norgate, 1861, p. 59-60

12 Monier Williams How can the University of Oxford best fulfil its duty towards Oxford? Lecture given at the opening of the Indian Institute and reported in the Oxford & Cambridge Undergraduates Journal, Oct 16 1884

13 Ibid.

14 A record of the establishment of the Indian Institute in the University of Oxford : being an account of the circumstances which led to its foundation. Oxford : Compiled for the Subscribers to the Indian Institute fund, 1897 p. 4

15 Ibid.

16 Balliol College Minute Book (25 June 1878 and 9 Nov 1878)  

17 Symonds p. 109

18. Symonds p. 110

19 Monier Williams. Notes of a long life’s journey Unpublished memoir (copy held in the Indian Institute Library, p. 498

20 J.C. Harle & Andrew Topsfield Indian art in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1987) p. x

21 Ibid. p. xii

22 Lord Curzon The Indian Institute printed confidential note, 25 March 1909, bound in Minutes, v. 2

23 A record of the establishment of the Indian Institute in the University of Oxford : being an account of the circumstances which led to its foundation. Oxford : Compiled for the Subscribers to the Indian Institute fund, 1897 p. 42

24 Ibid.

25 Symonds p.111

26 Oxford review: the Oxford & Cambridge Undergraduates review. May 10, 1883

27. Symonds p. 111-112

28 Symonds p. 121

29 Rhodes House Archive, File 2844 Indian lectureship. Lord Lothian to Thompson (10 June 1932); Thompson to Lothian (23 May 1933)

30 Ibid. Lothian to Thompson (17 May 1933); Thaompson to Lothian (23 May 1933)

31. V. Raghavan (ed.) Sanskrit and allied indological studies in Europe. Madras : University of Madras, 1956 p.68

32 Times Wed Jun 1, 1955

33. Oxford University Gazette 3 June 1955 p. 1003-4

34 Times 15th July 1965

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Horace Hayman Wilson
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/21/21

-- Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus, Translated from Original Sanskrit in Two Volumes, by Horace Hayman Wilson, Volume II, 1871

-- The Mudra Rakshasa, or The Signet of the Minister. A Drama, Translated from the Original Sanscrit. Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus, Translated from Original Sanskrit, by Horace Hayman Wilson

-- Works by The Late Horace Hayman Wilson, M.A., F.R.S., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, of the Asiatic Societies of Calcutta and Paris, and of the Oriental Society of Germany; Foreign Member of the National Institute of France; Member of the Imperial Academies of St. Petersburgh and Vienna, and of the Royal Academies of Munich and Berlin; Ph.D. Breslau; M.D. Marburg, etc.; and Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford, Vol. IX, 1868, The Vishnu Purana: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, translated from the Original Sanskrit, and Illustrated by Notes Derived Chiefly From Other Puranas, by the Late H.H. Wilson, M.A., F.R.S., Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford, etc., Etc., Edited by Fitzedward Hall, Vol. IV, 1868

-- An Essay on the Hindu History of Cashmir [Raja Taringini of Calhana Pandit], by Horace Hayman Wilson, Esq., Sec. A.S.

Meantime, Professor Wilson—always a cold, hard man, unable to enter readily into the difficulties and engagements of other people where they were contrary to his own views—became very impatient for his return, and wrote to him as follows:—

Oxford, Feb. 26, 1850.

'My dear MULLER,—I had hoped to have seen you in Oxford on the occasion of my visit there, but it is now drawing to a close, and I understand there is no prospect of your early arrival. I regret this much, as unless we can proceed a little quicker than we have done with the printing of the Rig-veda, I fear I shall scarcely live to see it finished, in time at least to finish the translation; unless I do as Langlois has done, and go to work upon the MSS. only. In that case I should have to walk off with all the India House copies, and leave you to the Bodleian alone. The only other expedient I can think of is to summon some other Vaidik—Roth, for instance—to your help; but seriously I wish you would soon resume your labours. It is high time to put a stop to all the wild fancies that a partial knowledge of the light and a reliance upon such equivocal guides as the Brahmanas and Sutras seem likely to engender. I want you also to help in the distribution of the copies. I have the Court's sanction to the presentation of above 100 copies to different public bodies and eminent individuals both here and abroad. If I cannot expect your assistance in carrying this sanction into effect, I must do as well as I can without it, but it is a task that will give me some trouble. I have finished the translation, and printed about half of it. It will be completed, I hope, in about six weeks. Trithen and your other Oxford friends are all well, and will be glad to see you again amongst them. Yours sincerely,

'H. H. Wilson.'...

Knowing the general ignorance in England at that time as to the value and meaning of the Rig-veda, Max Muller had been busy in writing a full and explanatory preface to the first volume. This, when finished, he gave to Wilson, who corrected and praised it, and had nothing to object to, but when Max Muller on June 1 showed him a letter he had written on the subject to the Directors, he suddenly turned round and seemed determined it should not be printed, and also told Max that he, Wilson, would never hear of his returning to live in Germany till the whole of the Rig-veda was finished. Though Max Muller had kept to his bargain and prepared his fifty sheets a year, Wilson, whose translation depended on his edition, scolded him like a schoolboy, telling him he might do more if he chose. The next day Wilson seemed to repent of his ill humour, and said he would like to see the preface printed as a separate work, not with the Veda. Max Muller concludes his account of the whole scene with these words, 'I cannot make that old man out. He is honest and straight-forward, of great power and energy, but nothing to grease the wheels.'

-- The Life and Letters of The Right Honourable Friedrich Max Muller, Edited by His Wife [Georgina Adelaide Grenfell Muller]

Watercolour by James Atkinson, 1821

Horace Hayman Wilson (26 September 1786 – 8 May 1860) was an English orientalist who was elected the first Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University.[1]

Life

He studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital, and went out to India in 1808 as assistant-surgeon on the Bengal establishment of the British East India Company. His knowledge of metallurgy caused him to be attached to the mint at Calcutta, where he was for a time associated with John Leyden.

He acted for many years as secretary to the committee of public instruction, and superintended the studies of the Sanskrit College in Calcutta. He was one of the staunchest opponents of the proposal that English should be made the sole medium of instruction in native schools, and became for a time the object of bitter attacks. In 1832 Oxford University selected Dr. Wilson to be the first occupant of the newly founded Boden chair of Sanskrit: he had placed a column length advertisement in The Times on 6 March 1832 p 3, giving a list of his achievements and intended activities, along with testimonials, including one from a rival candidate, as to his suitability for the post. In 1836 he was appointed librarian to the East India Company. He also taught[2] at the East India Company College.

On the recommendation of Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Wilson was in 1811 appointed secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He was a member of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta and was an original member of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was director from 1837 up to the time of his death. Wilson is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.

Works

Wilson became deeply interested in the ancient language and literature of India, and was the first person to translate the Rigveda into English. In 1813 he published the Sanskrit text with a free translation in English rhymed verse of Kalidasa's lyrical poem, the Meghaduuta, or Cloud-Messenger.[3]

He prepared the first Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1819) from materials compiled by native scholars, supplemented by his own researches. This work was only superseded by the Sanskritwörterbuch (1853–1876) of Rudolf Roth and Otto von Böhtlingk, who expressed their obligations to Wilson in the preface to their great work.

He was interested in Ayurveda and traditional Indian medical and surgical practices. He compiled the local practices observed for cholera and leprosy in his publications in the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta.[4][5]



In 1827 Wilson published Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus, which contained a very full survey of the Indian drama, translations of six complete plays and short accounts of twenty-three others. His Mackenzie Collection (1828) is a descriptive catalogue of the extensive collection of Oriental, especially South Indian, manuscripts and antiquities made by Colonel Colin Mackenzie, then deposited partly in the India Office, London (now part of the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library) and partly at Madras (Chennai). He also wrote a Historical Sketch of the First Burmese War, with Documents, Political and Geographical (1827), a Review of the External Commerce of Bengal from 1813 to 1828 (1830), a translation of Vishnu Purana (1840), and a History of British India from 1805 to 1835, (1844–1848) in continuation of James Mill's 1818 The History of British India.

Publications

• 1827 Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus Volume 1
• 1827 Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus Volume 2
• 1828 Mackenzie Collection: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Manuscripts, co-authored with Colin Mackenzie
• 1828 Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus, in ASIATIC RESEARCHES, Volume XVI, Calcutta.
• 1840 The Vishnu Purán : a system of Hindu mythology and tradition Volume 1
• 1840 The Vishnu Purán : a system of Hindu mythology and tradition Volume 2
• 1840 The Vishnu Purán : a system of Hindu mythology and tradition Volume 3
• 1840 The Vishnu Purán : a system of Hindu mythology and tradition Volume 4
• 1840 The Vishnu Purán : a system of Hindu mythology and tradition Volume 5 Part 1
• 1840 The Vishnu Purán : a system of Hindu mythology and tradition Volume 5 Part 2
• 1841 Ariana Antiqua: A descriptive account of the antiquities and coins of Afghanistan
• 1841 An Introduction to the Grammar of Sanskrit Language for the Use of Early Students
• 1846 Sketch of the religious sects of the Hindus (An expanded version of the 1828 version of the book by the same title.)
• 1852 Narrative of the Burmeses war, in 1824-25
• 1855 A glossary of judicial and revenue terms and of useful words occurring in official documents relating to the administration of the government of British India
• 1860 The Hindu History of Kashmir
• 1864 Essays Analytical Critical, and Philological on Subjects Connected with Sanskrit Literature
• The Megha dūta, or, Cloud messenger by Kālidāsa
• 1861 Essays and lectures on the religions of the Hindus Volume 1 (The first portion of this work appeared in the Asiatic Researches for 1828, and the second, from p. 188, in the volume for 1832. Some eight Essays and Lectures were selected for the second volume of this work.)
• 1861 Essays and lectures on the religions of the Hindus Volume 2
• Principles of Hindu and Mohammedan Law
• Rig-veda Sanhitá : a collection of ancient Hindu hymns Volume 1
• Rig-veda Sanhitá : a collection of ancient Hindu hymns Volume 2
• Rig-veda Sanhitá : a collection of ancient Hindu hymns Volume 3
• Rig-veda Sanhitá : a collection of ancient Hindu hymns Volume 4
• Rig-veda Sanhitá : a collection of ancient Hindu hymns Volume 5
• Rig-veda Sanhitá : a collection of ancient Hindu hymns Volume 6
• Puranas: An account of their contents and nature
• The history of British India from 1805-1835 Volume 1
• The history of British India from 1805-1835 Volume 2
• The history of British India from 1805-1835 Volume 3
• Metaphysics of Puranas

Notes

1. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1900). "Wilson, Horace Hayman" . Dictionary of National Biography. 62. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
2. Men and Events of My Time in India by Sir Richard Temple, John Murray, London, 1882 p. 18, accessed 9 Oct 2007
3. Truebner & Co. (1872) publisher's catalogue entry for Megha-Duta (The), accessed 9 Oct 2007
4. Wilson, H. H. (1825), "Kushta, or leprosy, as known to the Hindus", Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, 1, 1-44
5. Wilson, H. H. (1826), "On the native practice in cholera, with remarks", Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, 2, 282-292

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Wilson, Horace Hayman". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Further reading

• The Vishnu Purana: Book 4 of 6, 1840, Forgotten Books, ISBN 1-60506-660-5.
• Wilson, Horace Hayman (tr. from the Original Sanskrit) (1827). Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus. V.Holcroft at The Asiatic Press, Calcutta.

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Shukra-Niti [Sukraniti]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/22/21

ShukraNiti (शुक्रनीति–Śukranīti) also known as ShukraNitisara (शुक्रनीतिसार–Śukranītiśāstra) is a part of Dharmasastra and considered as Shukracharya's System of Morals. It is a treatise on the science of governance, structured towards upholding the morals through implementing theories of political science. The code is authored by Shukracharya also known as Usanas and claimed to be originated during Vedic period. However, modern historians claim, the composition dating as early as the 4th century AD Gupta period and some have even claimed it to be a forgery from as recent as a 19th-century.[1] The term Niti is derived from the Sanskrit word which, in English translates to To Lead implying proper guidance. ShukraNiti focuses on morality, which it stresses is necessary for the overall well being of the people and the state (Rajya). Thus, attempts to regulate the economic, social, and political aspects of human activity.[2] According to ShukraNiti, the main responsibilities of the king should be towards the protection of his subjects and punishment of the offenders, and such actions cannot be enacted without a guideline (Niti). According to Shukracharya: a person can live without grammar, logic, and Vedanta but cannot do in absence of Niti, and describes it as an essential aspect required for maintaining social order in the society.[3]

History

Claims of much later period of origin

Lallanji Gopal cites many authorities and disputes the origin of ShukraNiti to the Vedic period and claims the work to be originated at a much later date. The claims of this theory is based on the mention of guns, gunpowder, and cannons in the work. [The Śukraniti: a Nineteenth-Century Text, by Lallanji Gopal] Modern historians argue, though some incendiary arrows were used in ancient India, and there is no mention of fire-arms using gunpowder in those texts. Since guns were introduced to India by the Portuguese in the early 16th century and later used in the first Battle of Panipat. Hence, according to them, the origin of the ShukraNiti is attributed to the 16th century AD. Similarly, J C. Ray places the origin to 11th century AD based on the use of the word Yavana and Mleccha in the ShukraNiti. According to him, the term Yavana or Mleccha's is referred to Greeks and Muslims respectively during the 11th century, by this time Mlecchas had spread in most parts of India, he concludes relating them to Yemini Turks, that is to Mahmud of Ghazni. Some historians, based on the reference made to various classifications of punishment meted out to the offenders and on other regulations mentioned in the ShukraNiti, conclude that the work was modern in approach, hence a nineteenth-century composition.[4]

Claims of origin from Vedic period

Dr. Gustav Oppert, who was the first to compile and edit the original work of Shukracharya's ShukraNiti in Sanskrit and placed the origin of the work to the Vedic period.

Gustav Solomon Oppert, (30 July 1836 – 1 March 1908) was a German Indologist and Sanskritist. He was a professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Presidency College, Madras, a Telugu translator to government, and a curator in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library. He was a professor in Madras from 1872 to 1893. He was also editor of the Madras Journal of Literature and Science from 1878 to 1882....

He obtained a PhD in 1860, having attended four universities - Bonn, Leipzig, Berlin and Halle - and in 1866 became an assistant librarian at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. He also took a similar post at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria.

In 1872, Oppert was appointed professor of Sanskrit at the Presidency College in Madras. He stayed in that post until 1893, when he left to conduct a tour of north India, China, Japan and the United States before returning to Berlin to become privat-docent in Dravidian languages at the university...

Oppert used extensive philological research to support the idea of the Dravidians as the original inhabitants of India.

-- Gustav Solomon Oppert, by Wikipedia

According to some scholarly interpretations, the ShukraNiti is frequently mentioned in Hindu epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata and was originally written by Bramha in a voluminous 100,000 chapters, which later was reduced to a readable one thousand chapters by Shukracharya.[5][6] Dr. Oppert in his other work on ancient India further elaborates on the much contentious issue on the mention of the use of firearms in ShukraNiti. He provides archaeological evidences from the ancient temple carvings in India, where soldiers are depicted carrying or in some cases firing the firearms. Thus, proving his claim on the use of firearms in ShukraNiti as authentic and establishing the use of firearms, gunpowder was known in India since the ancient Vedic period.[7] This theory is further supported by some modern historians, in which the use of gunpowder, firearms, and cannons are described as weapons used in warfare in some Vedic literature.[8][9][10] On the issue of antiquity, R. G Pradhan observes, as the more recent work Kamandaka Nitisara praises and quotes extensively from the ShukraNiti and he further asserts, the age of the ShukraNiti should be much earlier than the former. Similarly, other historians, on the basis that Kautilyas Arthashastra opens with salutations to Shukracharya and Brhaspati, in accordance with that, Shama Shastri concludes that the ShukraNiti has to be older than the Arthashastra and placed the origin of Shukracharya's work to be of 4th-century BC.[11]

Overview

The ShukraNiti as a comprehensive codebook lays out guidelines in both political and non-political aspects required in maintaining social order in the state. The political part of the book deals with guidelines relating to a king, the council of ministers, the justice system, and international laws. Whereas, the non-political part deals with morals, economics, architecture, other social, and religious laws. These laws are elaborately enshrined into five chapters in this epic.[12]

• The first chapter deals with the duties and functions of the king.
• The second elaborates on the duties of the crown prince and other administrators of the state.
• The third chapter puts forth the general rules of morality.
• The fourth is the largest chapter in the work, which is divided into seven parts.
• The first subsection describes the maintenance of the treasure.
• The second on social customs and institutions in the kingdom.
• The third subsection details about the arts and sciences.
• The fourth lays out the guidelines for the characteristics required in the friends of the king.
• The fifth subsection describes the functions and duties of the king.
• The sixth on maintenance and security of forts.
• The seventh subsection lays out the functions and composition of the army.
• The concluding chapter seven deals with miscellaneous and supplementary rules on morality as laid down in Shastras to promote the overall welfare of the people and the state.[13]

Relevance

Though the book has centuries of history attached to it, the contents of it are still relevant in current-day politics, especially in the Indian context. Shukracharya lays out the virtues and qualities required in the king and crown prince, which would make a liberal and democratic leader. Most of the verses of chapter I and II are considered relevant in current day administrations of any democratic state in the world. For example, in chapter 2 the codebook says, the king should not take any policy decisions unilaterally without consulting his council of ministers and a ruler who arbitrarily makes the decision, shall be alienated from his kingdom and the people.[14] Similarly, the ShukraNiti places people as the ultimate source of the power. In chapter-I it states; the ruler is placed as the servant to the people.[15] One of the most discussed topics relevant to current times is the stress given on Karma in ShukraNiti. Shukracharya states, one does not become a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or a Shudra by his Jati or by mere birth, but he asserts these are derived from much fundamental concepts like ones character (Guna) and deeds (Karma).[16] Thus, dismissing the general view that caste is derived by birth, and equating it to the merit and qualities in a person. The book further advises the king to appoint his subordinates in any post irrespective of his caste.[17]

References

1. Gopal 1962, p. 524.
2. Nagar 1985, pp. 3-6.
3. Varma, Vishwanath Prasad (December 1962). "Some Aspects of Public Administration in The Sukraniti". Indian Journal of Political Science. 23 (1/4): 302–308. JSTOR 41853941.
4. Gopal 1962, pp. 524-549.
5. Oppert 1880, pp. 35-36.
6. Nagar 1985, p. 6.
7. Oppert 1880, pp. 58-81.
8. Romesh C. Butalia (1998). The Evolution of the Artillery in India: From the Battle of Plassey (1757) to the Revolt of 1857. Allied Publishers. pp. 17–18. ISBN 978-81-7023-872-0.
9. Revill, James (2016). "From the Gunpowder Revolution to Dynamite Terrorism". Improvised Explosive Devices. p. 1. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-33834-7_1. ISBN 978-3-319-33833-0.
10. Brenda J. Buchanan (2006). Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A Technological History. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 43–44. ISBN 978-0-7546-5259-5.
11. Nagar 1985, p. 8.
12. Nagar 1985, p. 9.
13. Sarkar 1913.
14. Sarkar 1913, pp. 54-55.
15. Nagar 1985, p. 11.
16. Sarkar 1913, p. 8.
17. Nagar 1985, p. 12.

Bibliography

• Gopal, Lallanji (1962). "The Śukraniti— a Nineteenth-Century Text". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 25 (3): 524–556. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00069494. ISSN 0041-977X.
• Sarkar, Benoy Kumar (1913), Sukra-niti-sara.
• Oppert, Gustav Salomon (1880), On the Weapons, Army Organisation, and Political Maxims of the Ancient Hindus: With Special Reference to Gunpowder and Firearms, Higginbotham, p. 162
• Nagar, Vandana (1985), Kingship in the Śukra-nīti, Pushpa Prakashan

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Gustav Solomon Oppert
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/22/21

Dr. Gustav Oppert, who was the first to compile and edit the original work of Shukracharya's ShukraNiti in Sanskrit and placed the origin of the work to the Vedic period.

According to some scholarly interpretations, the ShukraNiti is frequently mentioned in Hindu epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata and was originally written by Bramha in a voluminous 100,000 chapters, which later was reduced to a readable one thousand chapters by Shukracharya. Dr. Oppert in his other work on ancient India further elaborates on the much contentious issue on the mention of the use of firearms in ShukraNiti. He provides archaeological evidences from the ancient temple carvings in India, where soldiers are depicted carrying or in some cases firing the firearms. Thus, proving his claim on the use of firearms in ShukraNiti as authentic and establishing the use of firearms, gunpowder was known in India since the ancient Vedic period. This theory is further supported by some modern historians, in which the use of gunpowder, firearms, and cannons are described as weapons used in warfare in some Vedic literature.

-- Shukra-Niti, by Wikipedia

Gustav Solomon Oppert

Gustav Solomon Oppert, (30 July 1836 – 1 March 1908) was a German Indologist and Sanskritist. He was a professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Presidency College, Madras, a Telugu translator to government, and a curator in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library. He was a professor in Madras from 1872 to 1893. He was also editor of the Madras Journal of Literature and Science from 1878 to 1882. After traveling in north India from 1893 to 1894, he returned to Europe in 1894.

Early life

Oppert was born in Hamburg on 30 July 1836 and counted Julius Oppert and Ernst Oppert among his eleven siblings.[1] He obtained a PhD in 1860, having attended four universities - Bonn, Leipzig, Berlin and Halle - and in 1866 became an assistant librarian at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. He also took a similar post at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria.[2]

Orientalist

In 1872, Oppert was appointed professor of Sanskrit at the Presidency College in Madras. He stayed in that post until 1893, when he left to conduct a tour of north India, China, Japan and the United States before returning to Berlin to become privat-docent in Dravidian languages at the university.[2]

Oppert's significant writings are On the classification of languages (1879), On the weapons, army, organisation and Political Maxims of the ancient Hindoos (1880), Lists of Sanskrit manuscripts in Southern India (2 Vol. 1880-1885), Contributions to the history of Southern India (1882), and On the original inhabitants of Bharatavarsha of India (1893).

In the last of these, Oppert used extensive philological research to support the idea of the Dravidians as the original inhabitants of India. Among popular Dravidians, Oppert counts Thiruvalluvar, who wrote the Thirukkural, and Avvaiyar, the Tamil poet saint.

He edited the book entitled Ramarajiyamu or Narapativijayamu written in Telugu by Venkayya,[3] when he was working ay Presidency College. It was published by Vavilla Ramaswamy Sastrulu and Sons in 1923.[4]

Death

Oppert, who was unmarried and childless, died in Berlin on 1 March 1908. He was buried there at the Weissensee Jewish cemetery.[1]

References

1. Pelger, G.: Deutsch-jüdische Gelehrte zwischen Tradition und Emanzipation: das Beispiel des Indologen Gustav Salomon Oppert, University of Halle, Germany. In German. URL last accesSinger, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Oppert, Gustav Solomon". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
3. Ramarajiyamu (1923). Ramarajiyamu. Madras: V. Ramaswamy Sastrulu and Sons. Retrieved 16 September 2017.
4. Venkayya (1923). Ramarajiyamu or Narapativijayamu (PDF). Chennai: Vavilla Ramaswamy Sastrulu and Sons. pp. 10–13. Retrieved 18 August 2020.

Further reading

• Pelger, Gregor (2002–2003). "A Longing for India: Indophilia among German-Jewish Scholars of the Nineteenth Century". Studia Rosenthaliana. 36: 253–271. doi:10.2143/SR.36.0.504926. JSTOR 41482653.

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John Woodroffe [Arthur Avalon]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/22/21

--A Juridical Fabrication of Early British India: The Mahanirvana-Tantra, by J. Duncan M. Derrett

-- Kularnava Tantra, Introduction by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe); Readings M.P. Pandit; Sanskrit Text Taranatha Vidyaratna

-- Mahanirvana Tantra: Tantra of the Great Liberation, Translated by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe)

Sir John Woodroffe
In 1928. Portrait by Lafayette
Born: 15 December 1865, Calcutta, British India[1][2]
Died: 16 January 1936 (aged 70), Beausoleil, Alpes-Maritimes, France[3]
Nationality: British
Other names: Arthur Avalon
Citizenship: United Kingdom
Alma mater: University College, Oxford
Occupation: Lawyer; Orientalist
Known for: The Serpent Power
Parent(s): James Tisdall Woodroffe, Florence Woodroffe

Sir John George Woodroffe (15 December 1865 – 16 January 1936), also known by his pseudonym Arthur Avalon, was a British Orientalist whose extensive and complex published works on the Tantras, and other Hindu traditions, stimulated a wide-ranging interest in Hindu philosophy and yoga.[3]

Life

Woodroffe was the eldest son of James Tisdall Woodroffe and his wife Florence, daughter of James Hume. James Woodroffe was Advocate-General of Bengal and Legal Member of the Government of India, a Justice of the Peace, and a Knight of St. Gregory [one of the five orders of knighthood of the Holy See]. John was educated at Woburn Park School and the University College, Oxford, where he took second classes in jurisprudence and the Bachelor of Civil Law examinations. He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1889, and in the following year was enrolled as an advocate of the Calcutta High Court. He was soon made a Fellow of the Calcutta University and appointed Tagore Law Professor. He collaborated with Ameer Ali in a widely used textbook, Civil Procedure in British India. He was appointed Standing Counsel to the Government of India in 1902, and in 1904 was raised to the High Court Bench. He served there for eighteen years, becoming Chief Justice in 1915. After retiring to England he served as Reader in Indian Law to the University of Oxford. He died on 18 January 1936 in France.[3]

Sanskrit Studies

Alongside his judicial duties he studied Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy and was especially interested in Hindu Tantra. He translated some twenty original Sanskrit texts and, under his pseudonym Arthur Avalon, published and lectured prolifically on Indian philosophy and a wide range of Yoga and Tantra topics. T.M.P. Mahadevan wrote: "By editing the original Sanskrit texts, as also by publishing essays on the different aspects of Shaktism, he showed that the religion and worship had a profound philosophy behind it, and that there was nothing irrational or obscurantist about the technique of worship it recommends."[4]

The Serpent Power and The Garland of Letters


Symbolic depiction of the Ajna chakra, from Woodroffe's The Serpent Power, 1918

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Woodroffe's The Serpent Power – The Secrets of Tantric and Shaktic Yoga, is a source for many modern Western adaptations of Kundalini yoga practice. It is a philosophically sophisticated commentary on, and translation of, the Satcakra-nirupana ("Description of and Investigation into the Six Bodily Centres") of Purnananda (dated c.AD 1550) and the Paduka-Pancaka ("Five-fold Footstool of the Guru"). The term "Serpent Power" refers to the kundalini, an energy said to be released within an individual by meditation techniques.[5]

Woodroffe's Garland of Letters expounds the "non-dual" (advaita) philosophy of Shaktism from a different starting point, the evolution of the universe from the supreme consciousness. It is a distillation of Woodroffe's understanding of the ancient Tantric texts and the philosophy. He writes: "Creation commences by an initial movement or vibration (spandana) in the Cosmic Stuff, as some Western writers call it, and which in Indian parlance is Saspanda Prakriti-Sakti. Just as the nature of Cit or the Siva aspect of Brahman [Supreme Consciousness] is rest, quiescence, so that of Prakrti [matter] is movement. Prior however to manifestation, that is during dissolution (Pralaya) of the Universe Prakrti exists in a state of equilibrated energy.... It then moves... [t]his is the first cosmic vibration (Spandana) in which the equilibrated energy is released. The approximate sound of this movement is the mantra Om."[6]

Mahānirvāṇatantraṃ

Woodroffe translated the Mahānirvāṇatantraṃ from the original Sanskrit into English under his nom-de-plume of Arthur Avalon: a play on the magical realm of Avalon and the young later-to-be, King Arthur, within the story-cycle of tales known generally as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; specifically according to Taylor (2001: p. 148), Woodroffe chose the name from the noted incomplete magnum opus, the painting 'Arthur's Sleep in Avalon' by Burne-Jones.[7]


The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, by Edward Burne-Jones

Moreover, Taylor (2001: p. 148) conveys the salience of this magical literary identity and contextualises by making reference to western esotericism, Holy grail, quest, occult secrets, initiations and the Theosophists:

"This is quite important to know, for here we have a writer on an Indian esoteric system taking a name imbued with western esotericism. The name at any rate seems to hint at initiations and the possession of occult secrets. The Arthurian legends are bound up with the story of the Holy Grail and its quest. This was a symbol of esoteric wisdom, especially to Theosophists who appropriated the legend. Anyone who named himself after King Arthur or the mystic isle of Avalon would be thought to be identifying himself with occultism, in Theosophists' eyes."[7]

The Mahānirvāṇatantraṃ is an example of a nondual tantra and the translation of this work had a profound impact on the Indologists of the early to mid 20th century. The work is notable for many reasons and importantly mentions four kinds of Avadhuta.[8]

Journal of the National Indian Association in Aid of Social Progress and Female Education in India, by Sir Monier Monier-Williams

NOTE 6.—The Pâtra, or alms-pot, was the most valued legacy of Buddha. It had served the three previous Buddhas of this world-period, and was destined to serve the future one, Maitreya. The Great Asoka sent it to Ceylon. Thence it was carried off by a Tamul chief in the 1st century, A.D., but brought back we know not how, and is still shown in the Malagawa Vihara at Kandy. As usual in such cases, there were rival reliques, for Fa-hian found the alms-pot preserved at Pesháwar. Hiuen Tsang says in his time it was no longer there, but in Persia. And indeed the Pâtra from Pesháwar, according to a remarkable note by Sir Henry Rawlinson, is still preserved at Kandahár, under the name of Kashkul (or the Begging-pot), and retains among the Mussulman Dervishes the sanctity and miraculous repute which it bore among the Buddhist Bhikshus. Sir Henry conjectures that the deportation of this vessel, the palladium of the true Gandhára (Pesháwar), was accompanied by a popular emigration, and thus accounts for the transfer of that name also to the chief city of Arachosia. (Koeppen, I. 526; Fah-hian, p. 36; H. Tsang, II. 106; J.R.A.S. XI. 127.)

Sir E. Tennent, through Mr. Wylie (to whom this book owes so much), obtained the following curious Chinese extract referring to Ceylon (written 1350): "In front of the image of Buddha there is a sacred bowl, which is neither made of jade nor copper, nor iron; it is of a purple colour, and glossy, and when struck it sounds like glass. At the commencement of the Yuen Dynasty (i.e. under Kúblái) three separate envoys were sent to obtain it." Sanang Setzen also corroborates Marco's statement: "Thus did the Khaghan (Kúblái) cause the sun of religion to rise over the dark land of the Mongols; he also procured from India images and reliques of Buddha; among others the Pâtra of Buddha, which was presented to him by the four kings (of the cardinal points), and also the chandana chu" (a miraculous sandal-wood image). (Tennent, I. 622; Schmidt, p. 119.)…

NOTE 7.—Fa-hian writes of the alms-pot at Pesháwar, that poor people could fill it with a few flowers, whilst a rich man should not be able to do so with 100, nay, with 1000 or 10,000 bushels of rice; a parable doubtless originally carrying a lesson, like Our Lord's remark on the widow's mite, but which hardened eventually into some foolish story like that in the text.

The modern Mussulman story at Kandahar is that the alms-pot will contain any quantity of liquor without overflowing.



This Pâtra is the Holy Grail of Buddhism. Mystical powers of nourishment are ascribed also to the Grail in the European legends. German scholars have traced in the romances of the Grail remarkable indications of Oriental origin. It is not impossible that the alms-pot of Buddha was the prime source of them. Read the prophetic history of the Pâtra as Fa-hian heard it in India (p. 161); its mysterious wanderings over Asia till it is taken up into the heaven Tushita where Maitreya the Future Buddha dwells. When it has disappeared from earth the Law gradually perishes, and violence and wickedness more and more prevail:

—"What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?
* * * * * If a man
Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once,
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to Heaven, and disappear'd."
—Tennyson's Holy Grail

...
-- The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition

-- The Indian Institute: Monier-Williams and Empire, by Gillian Evison, Indian Institute Librarian

Bibliography

His writings (published under his own name, as well as Arthur Avalon) include:

• Introduction to the Tantra Śāstra, ISBN 81-85988-11-0 (1913).
• Tantra of the Great Liberation (Mahānirvāna Tantra), ISBN 0-89744-023-4 (1913).
• Hymns to the Goddess (1913).
• Shakti and Shâkta, ISBN 81-85988-03-X (1918).
• The Serpent Power, ISBN 81-85988-05-6 (1919).
• Hymn to Kali: Karpuradi-Stotra. Luzac & Co., London. 1922.
• The World as Power, ISBN 1-4067-7706-4 (1922).
• The Garland of Letters. ISBN 81-85988-12-9 (1922).
• Principles of Tantra (2 vols) ISBN 81-85988-14-5.
• Kularnava Tantra (Introduction by John Woodroffe). ISBN 81-208-0972-6 (1965).
• Kamakalavilasa by Puṇyānanda.
• Bharati Shakti: Essays and Addresses on Indian Culture.
• India: Culture and Society.
• Is India Civilized? Essays on Indian Culture.

See also

• Kali
• Mantra
• Yantra

References

1. India, Select Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947
2. 1881 England Census
3. "Obituary: Sir John Woodroffe". The Times. The Times Digital Archive. 18 January 1936. p. 14.
4. T.M.P. Mahadevan, foreword to; Arthur Avalon, Garland of Letters, Ganesh and Company Madras, 6th ed. 1974 p iii.
5. Sir John Woodroffe. The Serets of Tantric and Shaktic Yoga. Dover Publications NY 1974. p 313
6. Sir John Woodroffe. The Garland of Letters. Studies in the Mantra-Sastra Ganesh and Company 6th ed Madras 1974 pp12-13.
7. Taylor, Kathleen (2001). Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal: 'an Indian soul in a European body?'. SOAS London studies on south Asia. Illustrated edition. Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1345-X, 9780700713455. Source: [1] (accessed: Monday 3 May 2010), p.148
8. Woodroffe, Sir John (2007). Mahanirvana Tantra. NuVision Publications. ISBN 1-59547-911-2, ISBN 978-1-59547-911-2. Source: [2] (accessed: Monday 3 May 2010), p.175

Further reading

• Shakti and Shakta, by John Woodroffe, Published by Forgotten Books, 1910. ISBN 1-60620-145-X.
• Hymn to Kali:Karpuradi Stotra, by Sir John Woodroffe. Published by Forgotten Books. 1922. ISBN 1-60620-147-6.
• Hymns to the Goddess, Translated by John George Woodroffe, Ellen Elizabeth (Grimson) Woodroffe, Published by Forgotten Books, 1952 (org 1913). ISBN 1-60620-146-8.
• Mahanirvana Tantra, By Arthur Avalon, 1913,ISBN 1606201441.
• Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra And Bengal- An Indian Soul In A European Body?, by Kathleen Taylor. Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0-7007-1345-X.

External links

• Sir John Woodroffe's representations of Hindu Tantra Colorado University
• Woodroffe
• Works of sir John Woodroffe Sacred texts

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Part 1 of 3

A Juridical Fabrication of Early British India: The Mahanirvana-Tantra
by J. Duncan M. Derrett
D C L. (Oxon.), LL.D., Ph.D. (Lond.). of Gray’s Inn, Barrister; Professor of Oriental Laws in the University of London
Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law
Volume 2: Consequences of the Intellectual Exchange With the Foreign Powers
1977

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Mahanirvana Tantra: Tantra of the Great Liberation, Translated by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe)

-- John Woodroffe [Arthur Avalon], by Wikipedia

-- Kularnava Tantra, Introduction by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe); Readings M.P. Pandit; Sanskrit Text Taranatha Vidyaratna

A Juridical Fabrication of Early British India: The Mahanirvana-Tantra  

This is a story of a well-intentioned fraud which may interest students of the interaction of cultures. The Mahanirvana-tantra (referred to below as MNT) is very well known as a religious treatise, especially revered in Bengal. It is described as “one of the original and most revered tantras"1), and readers will be astonished to learn that, if it is a fabrication of any kind, it is a juridical fabrication. Naturally it is much more than this. It is a work on a vast scale in which an old religious tendency is refurbished and re-presented comprehensively, with reformist motives. The large number of editions, both in the original Sanskrit and in Bengali and English translations, which has appeared is an additional proof of its popularity. It would be impossible to contend that the purchasers of these books had any interest in the legal as opposed to the religious elements. But the whole is made up of its parts, and it would be incorrect to appraise the MNT without scrutinising its highly deceptive legal portions.

In an important article Lallanji Gopal [The Śukraniti: a Nineteenth-Century Text, by Lallanji Gopal] showed that there was every likelihood that the Sukraniti, which was until then supposed to be an ancient Hindu treatise on statecraft, was in fact a fabrication of the first half of the nineteenth century2). It is unlikely, if not impossible, that his contention will be refuted: the only important refinement we can look for is a more precise location of the work in place and time. In an earlier article3) [Sanskrit Legal Treatises Compiled at the Instance of the British, by J. Duncan M. Derrett, 1961] the present writer discussed a number of works which were certainly, and others which were possibly, written in response to British suggestion or request. The light which this throws upon the cultural interactions of the two civilisations is somewhat novel. The picture could not be completed without a discussion of the MNT, and the writer regrets that he did not suspect its correct historical location at that time. To his chagrin he finds that he discussed the MNT in connection with the topic of pre-emption, realising that the work stood apart from the dharmasastra tradition represented in earlier treatises of an orthodox description, but failing to grasp why this was so4).

This discussion must go further than the previous article in two respects. The MNT [Mahanirvana-Tantra] belongs to the border-land between the pre-British and the settled British system of judicial administration, and therefore throws a lot of light on the hopes and fears of the native population at that time and the capacity of the indigenous civilisation to react to them. In a further respect the MNT exemplifies a traditional quality of the Hindu mind, which must be probed. A psychological point of general interest arises. Credulity and make-believe have a special place in Indian intellectual, or para-intellectual life. It is by no means certain that an alteration in the content of fairy-tales told to Hindu children will remove the tendency towards these manifestations for the future. However that may be, it will be found that we cannot discuss our present ‘fabrication’ without approaching this Indian phenomenon more than once. History often repeats itself, and a similar folly in the recent past may throw light on a certain intellectual inadequacy in an unexpected quarter, a century before.

The Mahanirvana-tantra text

The work exists in very few manuscripts. Every one of them is on paper in modern Bengali script5). Manuscripts with the bare text of the verses are the majority (if the word majority has any meaning where the total is so small) and it is not clear whether the text with the commentary of Hariharananda Bharati (or Hariharananda Tirthasvami) is preserved in more than two manuscripts. This speaks at once for the work’s being modern, or rather, very modern. No trace of it is found in any work dealing with tantric religion prior to the eighteenth century6). Students of tantras either ignore this work7), or declare that its peculiarities do not quite fit it for the Bengali climate of thought8), in which it must obviously be placed historically and geographically.

It has been printed with and without commentary and in Bengali translation many times9): and several rumoured editions have not been traced. The popularity of the work is shared by its two English translations. That by Manmatha Nath Datta10) has been stigmatised as insufficient by the author (or supposed author)11) of the second, Arthur Avalon12). Avalon's edition of the text with the commentary has been printed at least twice, and his translation has gone into so many editions that Ganesh & Co. (Madras) who publish Avalon's many works on tantrism, evidently have a stable market. The popularity  may in some measure be accounted for by the subtle appeal that the work has to the twin strands of modern Hindu thought, the mystic and antiquarian on the one hand and the yearning for cosmopolitan values on the other.

The tantra is regarded as a religious work, and purports to have been composed by the god Siva. It is in terms addressed to the goddess Parvati. There is no trace of the author’s identity (naturally), for that would have interfered with the illusion: so that the work is anonymous. At one time it was believed13) that the MNT was written by Raja Rammohun Roy or by Hariharananda Bharati himself. The first is highly improbable, as we shall see, and the second is unlikely, since in one place at least he seems not to have understood his text14). But, as we shall also see, it is very probable that the author’s work’s emergence was owed to Hariharananda.

Our special task is to examine the tantra with especial reference to the legal portions, for without these we cannot determine the mental climate in which the author wrote, and so we cannot establish its approximate date or conjecture how it came to be written. Having drawn conclusions from this material we can determine inferentially the relations towards this book on the part of Hariharananda, of Rammohun Roy, of the Brahma Samaj (which accorded the MNT considerable importance), and lastly of Arthur Avalon. This also is necessary, as it is not sufficient to establish how and where and when the book came to be written, but we must understand how it came to light, why it came into the prominence it did, and why, in the legal sphere, it did not come into greater prominence.

The Mahanirvana-tantra and Caste

It is generally known that Hinduism traditionally concerned itself with varna and asrama, that is to say with the hierarchical classification (or, commonly, ‘caste’) in which the individual was born, and the 'stage of life’ which he occupied at different periods of his life. In regard to both he was taught traditionally the merit or otherwise of observances, occupations, actions and abstentions, both those of a strictly religious nature and those with an ethical or moral significance. Contact with persons of other castes, the relationships which are allowed with them, the relations between the castes themselves in religious and purely secular contexts: all these were within the purview of the dharma-sastra (hereinafter called the Sastra), the traditional Hindu ‘science of righteousness'. This last is evidenced in an abundance of native literature, not to speak of discussions by non-Indians. It is generally possible to tell what the Sastra teaches on almost every problem that can arise in life.

The widest variety of opinions and psychological needs, felt over two millennia at the least, has provided in the sastra itself at various levels so wide a latitude for personal behaviour, always within the framework of caste, that until European influence began to be felt widely the weight of sastric sanction was not felt to be more of a hindrance than a privilege. The rise of European power produced reactions. It is a fact that Indians have a special, and perhaps unique faculty for adjusting themselves to foreign ways without themselves ceasing to be characteristically Indian. Acculturations are known the world over, but the ease with which Indians — for all their distinctive and pervasive civilization — from at least as early as the time of Alexander the Great, picked up foreign languages and became masters of foreign ideas about which they were curious, whilst still remaining nothing other than Indians, is not rivalled anywhere. The choice between assimilation or fossilization (as elsewhere) has not apparently presented itself. The characteristic Indian response to a new idea is not that it is wrong, but that Indian teachers must have said the same, or virtually the same, already. Outrageously novel notions are received in this constructively tolerant spirit, provided they arrive from a prestige-bearing quarter. The assumption is that Hindu learning and experience is exhaustive, and a new idea is merely one which was fallen temporarily out of view. It will then be re-expressed in Indian terms, perhaps distorted in the process, but none the less effectively absorbed. The acceptance of the Common Law with so many of its technicalities into India is only a single, though a very striking, example of this process. One might have expected that in order to be an expert practitioner in this very foreign and esoteric science one must forsake and repudiate traditional Hindu learning: but on the contrary many of the most successful practitioners at the Indian Bars have been brought up in the traditional way and have been great Sanskrit scholars in their own right. The late K. V. Venkatasubramania Iyer was not only the best Hindu law scholar of his day but taught the Madras High Court constitutional law, the newest and most foreign of legal manifestations India has known. And he was merely on outstanding recent example of an intellectual type. These general reflections have an intimate bearing on the MNT, which, whilst being extremely popular and highly revered, contains ideas unique in Hinduism.

Caste seems to be the pivot of this paradox. Hindus have long been aware of the absence of varna [social classes] outside India, and must have sought to justify caste to themselves. Many of the elaborate native expositions of the varna-theory may well owe their existence to this self-consciousness. When first Muslims and then Europeans ruled Bengal and gave promotion and lucrative appointments to Hindus of whom they approved, it could not be for long doubtful whether Hindu social and political theory would come under critical examination from Hindus aiming at desirable employment. Both Islam and Christianity being proselytising religions, many Hindus were brought to face the alleged merits of monotheism and a caste-less (or apparently caste-less) society: even if they had not been invited to do so by missionaries, their natural curiosity would have inspired them to investigate the reasons, if any, for the non-Hindu dharmas. The natural reaction would be to make a choice; either a non-Hindu dharma must be rejected because the alleged justification did not in fact support the practice, or because it could not be accommodated with prevailing Hindu concepts which already occupied the field; or, on the other hand, the justification being non-repugnant to Hinduism, the foreign dharma could be added to the spectrum of Hindu behaviours. A great help in this process was the natural, innate, ambivalence towards caste, especially in some areas of India where caste seems never to have had a firm hold, where Buddhism lingered long, and where in some senses and for some purposes people were anxious to pretend that it did not exist. An exaggerated respect for Brahmins (sometimes addressed as devata, ‘deity’, not always in fun?), and a desire to creep out from under the caste system, might well reside in the same head. Likewise tantric religion, which consists fundamentally of magical practices undertaken under the impression that worship of, for example, the goddess Kali, in esoteric ways would bring supernatural benefits to the worshipper, sought to supply to Brahmins and non-Brahmins alike a religious experience in which horror and awe might be combined, and in which the appetite for the marvellous and the secret, hitherto confined to Brahmins trained in the laborious methods known only to the orthodox, could be spread amongst persons whose only link was a common ritual. A boost was given to tantric performances and literature by the dominance of the Muslims, who possessed common rituals as, apart from tantrism, Hinduism did not; and the coming of Christianity to Bengal will have had an even greater effect. The common rituals of the sects of Christianity were much more elaborate and had, especially in the case of Roman Catholics, a strongly mystical and awesome element.

On this we may dwell for a moment. The drinking of spirits and wines was until the arrival of Europeans the privilege of the very lowest classes of Hindus, with the special exception of the numerically insignificant princely caste. In Bengal the unorthodox ways of the Punjab and Sind will have had no effect. The Brahmin ethic which still remained the dominant ethic of Bengali Hindu society, eschewed liquor. Islam purported to reject wine. Christians believed that drinking wine and eating flesh in the shape of bread, properly consecrated, was a great communion with the Divine. Persons of all sorts, once admitted to the church, could and should partake of this communion. From a Hindu point of view the horrid aspects of this act might be its chief virtues, provided one saw them in a tantric light. The things hated by orthodox Hinduism turned up in 'left-handed' worship by sects meeting in secret: eating meat, drinking liquor, committing incest. Tantrism had made these psychological aberrations almost respectable14a).

To the three otherwise reprobated acts commencing with the syllable ma known to older tantrism the MNT added two more, and we have the panca-makara, the five (otherwise questionable) entities commencing with ma, in which the tantric adept was entitled and expected to indulge during the ritual15). Some of the curiosities of the MNT are most easily explained if one assumes an attempt by the author to admit into relatively old tantric usages, such as are found in the Kularnava-tantra, notions derived from a comparative study of Christian, especially Roman Catholic, doctrine. The priest, the consecration of elements, the partaking of elements after initiation16), and in particular the notion of a wedding which is a religious communion as well as or indeed rather than a carnal copulation17), all appear in this tantra. The effect is, like so much Hindu teaching of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not excluding the Hindu contribution (at times heavy) to the Theosophical Society's work, to draw what appears to be the foundation out from under the feet of the rival religion, leaving it with no exclusive merits which might claim converts from Hinduism. The present writer is impressed by the indebtedness of the MNT to Catholic Christianity, especially when we read that a kula-sannyasi or avadhuta (the kaula or tantric priest: avadhuta means literally ‘one who has shaken off, repudiated’, ‘a philosopher') can make Yavanas (i.e. even Muslims) pure (XIV. 177): in other words the merits of what corresponds to baptism belong to tantric Hinduism in no less an amplitude than to Christianity — for if a Muslim can be initiated a fortiori a Christian can be; that a kaula teacher must initiate a Candala (out-caste) or a Yavana who approaches him with a prayer for admission to the sect (XIV. 187); and that men of all the different dharmas in the world (thus explicitly including Christians) can be kaulas (ibid., 189); and when we note the mystic communion which all these people of different races and castes can enjoy together in common eating (III. 76—82) — a thing otherwise abhorrent to orthodox Hinduism. The great merits of Islam and Christianity, viz the absence of caste and the presence of communion, are no longer their peculiar gifts: Hinduism possesses them in full measure within the rather doubtful sphere of tantrism.

Nor is the matter left there. Caste and sect are often similar notions and sometimes popularly synonymous. The identity of the caste is often detected from the deity or deities worshipped in common. If one intends to abolish caste, whether out of desire to imitate or excel non-Hindus or from political motives, one automatically emphasises a monotheistic approach: the deities are in reality all one. The MNT does exactly this. The worship to be undertaken by the kaula, the member of this sect which is to be open to people of all religions, is that of Brahma, a deity who seldom plays in traditional Hinduism the role of a devata for the purposes of puja. It is quite justifiable to assert that the tantra is devoted to the worship of the Supreme Being and that the polytheistic traces, which remain numerous throughout the work, as well as the heaps of ‘mumbo-jumbo' which one expects to find in any tantric work, are superfluities which can be ignored if one wishes. The work is evidence that one very learned Sanskrit scholar believed that monotheism and a casteless society belonged to Hinduism and that the god Siva could be believed to have taught the details to the goddess Parvati17a). These details imitate the range of the dharma-sastra, with initiation, worship, class occupations, and installation of deities, the special rituals of the kaulas' chakra (or congregation under the direction of the avadhuta), and, last but not least, law.

The legal element in the tantra is very curious. First of all it is ample and more extensive in scope than genuine sastric works allow; next it is spread throughout the work in a manner hostile to any suggestion that the legal provisions are interpolations18. Further, the author expected the religious sanction attributed to the work as a whole to operate in a sastric fashion upon the conscience of the king. The occupations of the varnas are by no means missing from this treatise, because the social value of caste is not forfeited while the religious merit of castelessness is being introduced. As a result the king is expected to do his duty of protecting the people exactly as under the orthodox scheme. The author thus depicts the god Siva instructing kings to administer law according to his directions: and it is the religious sanction which is operative. The ‘king' whom the author has in mind cannot for long remain in doubt [King William the Third?]. The author must have been a Bengali — there is no evidence suggesting that he was a non-Bengali: the work did not exist while Hindus exercised royal powers over more than relatively small fragments of Bengal. The author must have wanted, therefore, to provide guidance for Muslim or European administrators. Which? This we must try to establish.

The Mahanirvana-tantra’s legal provisions

The legal portions of the tantra can be classified into three categories: (1) those more or less compatible with the sastra, though couched in language which an adept in the sastra might not have chosen (these it is neither convenient nor necessary to discuss); (2) those that are foreign to the sastra; finally (3) those which are not merely foreign but also evidently compatible with English law or legal ideas, whether in tone, origin, or even language.

It will be convenient to deal first with those which are foreign to the Sastra. This is easily detected, since the rules of the sastra may be found out in MM. Dr. P. V. Kane’s History of DharmaSastra, which, though in English, is copiously supplied with references to the original Sanskrit. Another useful work is MM. Dr. Sir Ganganatha Jha’s Hindu Law in its Sources. Foreignness to the sastra may take various forms. First, the rule as expressed may have no counterpart in any sastric text; next, though some counterpart may be found, the approach and language reveal an independent outlook, a different origin for the idea expressed. The last, and perhaps most important distinction is where the rule appears to be sastric in style and approach, but has a significant variation, as if to operate as an amendment of the sastra. It will not be convenient to subdivide the material exactly in accordance with these differences, partly because the categories overlap, and partly because those who wish to compare the original sources would find it advantageous to check the miscellaneous examples in the order in which they occur in the work.  

A. Rules foreign to the sastra

The two great spheres of differences between the MNT and the sastra are marriage and inheritance. It will be noticed at once that these are the two main spheres of Anglo-Hindu law as first defined by the celebrated regulation of 1772 19). That regulation indicated that the law of the sastra should be applied to Hindus, but it did not indicate precisely what texts were to be consulted — nor indeed could such a provision have been made with any hope of success, even if many of the East India Company's officials time had comprehended what was meant. The MNT’s attention to these two topics could be read as an attempt to make up for the diffuseness and lack of clarity in the genuine sastric material.

IV. SOURCES OF LAW

In 1772 Hastings (acting on a proposition put up by the Committee of Circuit at Cossimbazar, 15 Aug. 1772)46 secured that indigenous systems should be applied, and that the judges of law should be specialists in those systems. The responsibility for the judgment should be shared between the official and the native jurist, both signing the final document. At this stage the first misconception obtrudes itself. The relationship between custom and the dharmasastra was taken for granted. Instead of using the native referees as sources of customary law, as Hastings might have done, and in a special case was later done,47 he directed that reference should be made only as to what the dharmasastra provided. The words of the provision, which later acquired the force of legislation, are not obscure: "In all suits regarding inheritance, marriage, caste and other religious usages or institutions, the laws of the Koran with respect to Mohamedans and those of the Shaster with respect to the Gentoos shall invariably be adhered to." The passage became law in the strict sense as s. 27 of the Regulation of 11 April 1780 and the word "succession" appeared in 1781, when, acting upon the advice of Sir Elija Impey, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Calcutta, the Governor-General in Council enacted the Administration of Justice Regulation, of which it is s. 93.48 Impey's scheme introduced a further element which must have been suggested by the scope of the original "plan". Following the practice of early Charters of the East India Company, and acknowledging the need to supply a fundamental law which would guide judges where regulations and personal laws failed, secs. 60 and 93 of the Regulation of 5th July 1781 referred the judges to Justice, Equity and Good Conscience, about which more will be said below.49

It is evident, however, that Hastings' original selection of topics, not materially affected by Impey's supplementation, cannot possibly have been intended to exclude from the Company's courts the two indigenous systems of law so far as they concerned evidence, for example, or commercial topics, contract in general, or civil wrongs. The evidence against this from the views and activities of students of Hindu law of the period circa 1795-1830 is overwhelming. Taking a pragmatic view of the matter lawyers in the last century have inclined to suppose that that was in fact the intention as well as the effect of the legislation.50 It has even been assumed that India possessed no law on these topics -- strange ignorance has perpetuated baffling misconceptions. What Hastings really intended appears to have been this: -- in the listed matters51 the dharma-sastra must be the standard, and the sastris, or as they were honorifically called, "Pandits", must be consulted. In those spheres, he had been told (it seems), "unseen" considerations were paramount and the sastra was a universal criterion. In the non-listed matters the sastra need not be consulted, and the award of an arbitrator or the customary rule might be enforced without explicit reliance upon the classical jurisprudence. Proof of custom, where not agreed between the parties, would be taken according to the prevailing law of evidence, which must have been the Hindu law, for the judges knew nothing of the English law on the subject. This is the basis for Impey's larger addition: the practice, as English judges became more confident, was for them to assess the equitableness of the rules applied outside the listed subjects, and where they were satisfied that the customary rule was inappropriate or insufficient, the matter was not referred to the sastri (who was relieved of responsibility in such cases), but dealt with out of hand.52

When the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court came to be reviewed, regard was had to the actual practice of Hindus resident within the territory in question. Concerned not so much with the source of the laws to be administered as with the topics upon which it would be administered, the Regulating Act of 1781 provided that "inheritance and succession to land rent and goods and all matters of contract and dealing between party and party" should be determined in the case of Hindus by their own laws and where only one party was a Hindu "by the laws and usages of the defendant".53 Marriage, caste and other religious institutions had not in fact been commonly dealt with in the Supreme Court, but contract, inheritance, especially testamentary succession, had been normally within the business of the Mayor's Court and later the Supreme Court,54 and succession to land was thought to be exclusively within the competence of the local court.

Both in the mufassil courts, and their chief appellate court, the Sadr Diwani 'Adalat at Calcutta, and in the Supreme Court the Hindu law occupied a large place. The law was to be found out from the Pandits, and not by reference, for example, to a jury or any equivalent.

Meanwhile the ruler's responsibilities with regard to caste matters were by no means abandoned. The Company retained the right to superintend the administration of temples,55 and the management of places of pilgrimage.55 But in course of time a definite disinclination to interfere in matters of Hindu religion emerged, and even a distaste for cases involving claims to dignities and honours of a religious character and claims relating to ceremonies in idol worship "for the benefit merely of the few who profit by them".57 There was a definite withdrawal from responsibility. Castes were left to manage their own affairs; their decisions were, if otherwise unobjectionable, treated as valid, but they were not supported by state power. The rulers dissociated themselves from any mechanism tending either to maintain or to modify the existing caste structure.58 Jurisdiction to supervise castes was very early forbidden in Bombay Presidency; elsewhere the "law" laid down in caste tribunals was never enquired into unless some civil and proprietary right was alleged to have been violated. Any caste decision which was within the caste rules and arrived at without violating any rule of natural justice was immune from review.59 Belief that the caste was some sort of private association within the state upon an analogy with an English club was responsible for this considerable deviation from the pre-British position.60

-- The Administration of Hindu Law by the British, by J. Duncan M. Derrett, University of London; former Tagore Professor of Law, University of Calcutta

We may commence with VIII. 150-1 (numbered 151-2 in the translation of A. Avalon.

sarve varnah sva-sva-varnair brahmodvaham tatha 'sanam
kurviran bhairavi-cakrat tattva-cakrad rte sive.
ubhayatra mahesani saivodvaha prakirttitah
tatha 'dane ca pane ca varna-bhedo na vidyate.

This Avalon translates as follows: “Except when in the Bhairavichakra or Tattva-chakra 19a), persons of all castes should marry in their caste according to the Brahma form, and should eat with their own caste people. O Great Queen!, in these two circles, however, marriage in the Shaiva form is ordained, and as regards eating and drinking no caste distinction exists.” It is important to recognise at the outset that the MNT, admitting that sexual intercourse is a feature of tantric ritual, speaks of udvaha, “marriage”, and gives us to understand that a woman (presumably an unmarried woman or a widow) with whom intercourse is had, subsequent to the ceremony to be described, is wife to the man who enjoys her, whether or not he already has or had a caste wife. The Saiva marriage, which was an abortive attempt to reform the Hindu law of marriage from within, in partial imitation of Muslim and Christian freedom to contract marriages outside the religion, is thus seen as a development of the existing tantric ritual or orgy in which intercourse without any question of marriage played some role. The next relevant text is too long to set out here at length, seeing that it occupies IX. 267 to 284 in Avalon’s text, that is to say IX. 266-283 of Jivananda’s text. Avalon’s translation is to be found at his pp. 302-304. The verses follow a description of a Brahma marriage which has an orthodox or sastric air about it, and form the climax of book IX. But they are in some kind of contrast to the Brahma marriage, and since the rules follow the former and are at the climax the reader is left with the impression that this innovation (totally unknown to the sastra) is more important to the author than the material which introduces it. The content of the passage may be summarised thus: having said that another Brahma marriage should not be undertaken without the permission of the first Brahma wife (266), the author adds rather abruptly, “if the children of the Brahma wife or any of her family (vamsa) be living the children of the Saiva wife shall not inherit” (267). They are however entitled to food and clothing and the heir is bound to maintain the Saiva wife. There are two Saiva marriages: one is terminated with the chakra (the relationship ends — one hopes — when the congregation disperses), while the other is lifelong (this was the principal innovation, evidently) (269). The marriage is arrived at by mutual consent (parasparecchaya) and is performed by the male (called here viva). But he must first obtain the consent of the assembled congregation (anumanyatam) (271). He then asks the woman to accept him as husband (pati-bhavena vrnu) (273). The presiding priest utters a mantra invoking the protection of the tantric deities (276) and the congregation say Amen (svasti). The priest sprinkles the couple with wine or sacred water. They bow to him and then “carefully carry out whatever they have promised” (278). The author says that in Saiva marriage there are no restrictions of caste or age, but the woman must have no husband and not be within the prohibited degrees (this is evidently intended to lay a foundation for a respectable marriage) (279). But if this Saiva wife has a menstrual period thereafter, the husband, if he desired a son, may abandon her (tyajet). The offspring of a Saiva marriage is of the same caste as the mother should she be of the lower caste, but if the order of castes is reversed he has the status of samanya ('equal', 'commoner '). Such sons would have no status in the funeral rites under the sastra; but since the kaulas, or tantric adepts, have allowed the marriage, naturally from their point of view the issue are legitimate: therefore at a time when a legitimate son would according to the sastra perform orthodox rituals, the Saiva son must feast the kaulas only (and not Brahmins, qua Brahmins) (282).

The general tone of the MNT on sexual matters is puritanical. The author evidently hopes to elevate his Saiva marriage into a respectable institution, a means of liberalising Hindu society, providing tantrism itself becomes more respectable as well as more widely patronised, and this latter could certainly be hastened if tantrism were to be cleansed of merely libidinous elements. It is important to note that at 283-4 the author attaches religious sanction both to the desire for intercourse and to the saiva-dharma, an expression which means both the laws promulgated (here) by the god Siva, and the system of Saiva (i.e. Siva’s) marriage just set out. The tendency is confirmed by a verse in the section dealing with sexual misbehaviour (XI. 46):

parinitas tu ya naryo brahmair va saiva-vartmabhih
ta eva dara vijneya anyyah sarvah para-striyah.

Avalon translates (p. 346): "A man should consider as wife only that woman who has been married to him according to the Brahma or Shaiva form. All other women are the wives of others.” It is a sin to look lustfully on the wife of another (47).

A further statement that the children of a Saiva marriage are not to inherit in the presence of either issue of a Brahma marriage or close relatives (sapindas) of the deceased’s father or mother is followed by the rule that the Saiva wife and children are entitled to maintenance. To confirm the married status of this woman he continues with a rule (XII. 60) that she cannot look to her father or other relations for her maintenance: her Saiva husband must support her, provided she behaves herself. “Therefore, the father who marries his well-born daughter according to Shaiva rites by reason of anger or covetousness will be despised of men (61)” (Avalon p, 368). But the issue of the Saiva marriage inherit before all remote relations and strangers (62). Thus the novel institution is settled into the law not merely of marriage but, quite practically, those of maintenance and inheritance as well. The warning not to give away a daughter in the Saiva form without due reason (for the Brahma form will entitle the girl to ornaments and other prestige-bearing expenditure, whereas the Saiva form avoids all the conspicuous consumption dear to the Hindu) is supported by a further rule (at XII. 125) that an only daughter should not be given away in this form, and it is possible to read the verse in such a way as to include a prohibition of a man who has one wife giving away that wife in a Saiva marriage ceremony (Avalon, p. 376).

The inheritance provisions of the MNT have two characteristics that mark them out from all sastric works. First the detail is very elaborate. It is far more explicit than would be required in a native law book. The explicit provisions of the Vivadarnava-setu [Anglo-Hindu law] (1773 to 1775) are a rough parallel, and this is very significant20). Secondly, the language is markedly un-sastric. Words occur which are unknown to the sastra, and which are evidently translations into Sanskrit of technical English expressions. The passages in question are XII. 19, 21, 25, 26-28, 30-40, 42-63. A summary will serve our purpose. A son's son is entitled to the property rather than a wife or a father (this would be correct in Sastric law) ‘by reason of his being a descendant’ (adhastaj janma-gauravat, literally, because of the importance of downward, or lower, birth). This extraordinary expression (Avalon, p. 364) betrays not so much the hand of the novice as that of one who intends to communicate Hindu ideas in a foreign diction (though the medium is Sanskrit). Avalon’s note to this verse (XII. 19) shows no sign of his having grasped how strange the expression is in view of the fact that Hindu law is well equipped with discussions of inheritance and never contemplates this way of putting it. He says “property primarily descends", unaware that the metaphor of descent, so well embedded in English legal language, is by no means universal. There is a privilege for males (21) and that is why a grandson will exclude daughters, though they are very near. There is a definition of stridhanam (woman’s peculiar property)21), and we are told that all of this passes to the svami (svami need not mean husband here) and “then” (presumably in his absence) the nearest will take her estate adha urdhva-kramad, “according to the order of down and up”, or rather, “by reason of the going down or up”, i.e., literally, “according to descent and ascent”(!). This is a very comical attempt to translate an English portmanteau phrase. If an English student of Sanskrit had been trying to turn an English legal idea into that language he might have produced a similar result. The inheritance of the widow depends on her good behaviour (27) in the care of her husband’s family. Even suspicion of misbehaviour will prevent her inheriting (28): this is emphatically contrary to Sastric law and naturally to Anglo-Hindu jurisprudence22). There is a very extraordinary expression at verse 30. It is an endeavour to explain what in subsequent periods of Anglo-Hindu law was worked out in detail, but was naturally obscure on the footing of the texts of the Bengal school (usually called the Dayabhaga school) of Hindu law Avalon translates (p. 365): ‘'If the woman who inherits her husband’s property dies leaving daughters, then the property is taken to have gone back to the husband and from him to the daughter.” Correctly he should have written “a daughter” for “daughters”, but the slip is trivial. The property goes to the daughter, says the text literally, punah svami-padam gatva, i.e. “having reverted to the husband (owner)”. Is it assumed that the husband is already dead, but the property was originally his? If the widow took it subject to what is now called the “limited estate”23), one of the incidents thereof was that on the widow’s death (or surrender) the next heir of the last male holder (svami) took it as if he had died when the widow died. Verse 31 explains further: “So, property which has gone to the widow of a son during the lifetime of a maiden (daughter), on her (the widow’s) death it must revert to the ‘owner’ (here svami means the last male holder’s father) and from (her) father-in-law it will go to his daughter.” This is incorrect Dayabhaga law put in very unconventional language. Nowadays we should express the thing by saying that if P died leaving a son S and a son’s wife SW and a daughter D, and then S died leaving SW and D, and then SW died, the estate which had formerly belonged to P would not pass to the personal heirs of SW but would pass to the nearest heir of S as if S had died when SW died and the nearest heir of S must be sought through P, his father: but we should not choose D as the reversionary heir, because D is not the nearest heir of S, as the sister is never an heir at Dayabhaga law24). Thus the author of the MNT, seeking to combine the native notion of the limited estate with a foreign notion of nearness of blood and the search for the descendant of the previous owner (see below), puts what is in fact an innovation into language at least comprehensible to a foreigner. In verse 32 we read “Likewise, property which has passed to a mother in the lifetime of the father’s father (namely the mother’s father-in-law) must, on her death, go to her father-in-law by reason of her son, by reason of her husband. In other words the last male holder's (her dead son’s) line’s nearest representative, namely her husband s father, must take the property. This would be correct at Dayabhaga law. The rules which follow bear out both points, namely the effect of the limited estate and the claim of the reversioner, and the concept of “descent”, etc. At v. 35 we are told “In the absence of descendants (adhastananam virahat), when the estate cannot descend (literally, go down’), then it must ascend (literally, go up’) only by means of him through whom a descendant was readied”. Avalon’s translation seems incorrect. The property, it seems, goes by the way it came, and the illustrations bear this out. Many intricate questions of inheritance are now handled, and there is a general conformity with the Dayabhaga law. The way in which the rules are set out has nothing in common with conventional Dayabhaga exposition25). But striking divergences from that law are found. Half-brothers and full brothers inherit together: v. 39.26) Daughter's sons cannot inherit in the lifetime of daughters (which is correct), but daughters inherit after sons (40-41). Stridhanam (cf. v. 25) inherited from others than the husband reverts to the source from whence it came (42): this seems new26a). There is an odd phrase at 43: preta-labdha-dhana, “property obtained from a dead man (i.e. deceased’)”. Verse 46 has much interest:

pitrvyat sannikarse ’tra tulyau bhratr-pitamahau
dhanam pitr-padam gatva prayatur bhrataram bhajet.

It is perfectly true that, as he says, “in point of propinquity both brother and father’s father are to be preferred to the fathers’s brother”. From the western standpoint the number of degrees is the same in the case of the brother and the grandfather, whereas in the case of the uncle three steps have to be taken. He continues, “the property, having reverted to the father should resort to the deceased’s brother”. The word for ‘deceased’ is a neologism [a newly coined word or expression], prayatr, a literal translation surely of ‘predecessor’, much better than the preta noticed above. This conception of property passing through relations (whether living or dead) fits English concepts of descent of real property27), but is quite foreign to Hindu law as generally understood.

More foreign still is verse 52, according to which the well-behaved son's daughter whose parents are dead and who has no brother may share her father’s father's property along with her father’s brothers, i.e. females have a right of representation. This is unknown to Hindu law, but follows the English, or at any rate a western, pattern28). To our author the son’s daughter seems a more worthy heir than even the deceased’s own daughter (v. 53): this is most irregular from a traditional Hindu standpoint. On the whole the scheme of inheritance is a peculiar one, being neither what the Dayabhaga law required nor what English law suggested, but a curious amalgam of the two expressed constantly in terms of ascent and descent, such as would occur only to one who had viewed Hindu customs through western eyes. To him two principles stand out throughout the scheme: that males should have priority over females, that property should descend rather than ascend, and that where descent is not possible the property ascends and descends through senior relations (cf. 57). This has an undeniable and peculiar affinity with the old English law of descent of real property, and seems comical in a Hindu setting.

Passing from the important topics of marriage and inheritance we may continue with rules foreign to the sastra. It may be convenient to proceed in the order of the book. At VIII. 125 we are given a rule about the distribution of prize amongst soldiers. Shares are to be given according to merit. Included in prize may be items conceded under the peace-treaty. This has no counterpart in the sastra29). At VIII. 141 we are told that the interest on barley, wheat or paddy is 25 per cent per annum, whereas in the case of metals the interest is 12-1/2 per cent. The last is novel. There is no means of knowing whether any actual usage in Bengal corresponded to it30). A rule rather like the allegation of 'superior orders’ appears at XL 80: “The man who kills another in obedience to an imperative order is not guilty of killing, for it is the master’s killing. This is the command of Siva.” This appears at Avalon’s translation, p. 350, but I have very slightly amended his version. There is nothing in the sastra to correspond to this, nor, it would seem, to XI. 91: After punishing them severely the king should banish (niryapayet, an unexpected word) from his country those mortals who give false evidence or who, as arbitrators, are partial (paksapatinah)". On the number of witnesses, a strange rule also appears, at v. 92: six, four or three are enough, but so is the evidence of two witnesses of well-known righteousness31). The means whereby evidence may be taken from blind and deaf-and-dumb witnesses, at v. 94, is supplementary to the sastra. The punishment of forgers (double that of false witnesses) is also new: v. 96 32). A completely un-sastric rule about eating appears at XI. 132: there is nothing wrong in eating on the bade of an elephant, on a large block of stone, on a very heavy piece of wood etc. A further foreign passage is that dealing with maintenance at XI. 58-63. Very comprehensive rules are given about guardianship of a child without parents or paternal grandfather. At 62-3 the rules about maintaining relatives are wrongly translated by both Avalon (p. 348) and Datta. The correct translation appears to be, “O Ambika! The king, considering the wealth of a man, should force him to give clothing and food to his father, mother, father’s father, father’s mother, likewise a woman (i.e. concubine), to an illegitimate son and to a sonless maternal grandfather and to a maternal grandmother, if they are poor.” The list is of great interest, as it differs from the sastric provisions33), but the expression for illegitimate son (ayo-gya-sunu) is highly curious: the notion “illegitimate” can be translated “what is not proper according to law”, and this might well be rendered ayogya. Needless to say, the concept “illegitimate” as such (in contrast to ‘bastard’)34) is unknown to the native Hindu law.

The list can be brought to a rapid close with a series of striking rules, all unknown to the sastra as they stand. XII. 83—5, 87 deals with the man who disappears, XII. 94 deals acutely with the administration of charities35), and XII. 97-101 has a treatment of the thorny problem of earnings, exempt from partition. The disqualifications from inheritance at XII. 102-4 go, in part, beyond what the sastra provides36). So does XII. 105-6 which deals with title to property which has been found. The king takes a tenth of unowned property and the finder takes nine tenths37). The curious word prapta, which would translate the English word ‘finder’, should be noticed in passing. There is a new rule on cultivation (XII. 113), on the building and use of tanks (115-117). XII. 118-123 contain miscellaneous rules. The pledge of an undivided interest is forbidden. When animals are pledged and the pledgee works them with the owner’s consent, the pledgee (dharta, literally ‘supporter’ or ‘undertaker’) must feed the animals. The present writer has a suspicion that dhartr is used in the sense of ‘person liable’. ‘Liable’ (verpflichtet), a term so well known in English law, is difficult to explain, let alone translate. The context is purely Hindu38), but the word is unexpected. XII. 121 is foreign in that it requires definiteness in all loans, whether in point of duration  or rate of interest: a definiteness that must often have been wanting in such contracts between Hindus. Verse 123 is highly curious:

krama-vyatyaya-mulyena dravyanam vikraye sati
nrpas tad anyatha kartum ksamo bhavati Parvati.

“O Parvati! The king is entitled to set aside (render of no effect) a transaction when there has been a sale of objects, the price being contrary to (or in breach of) the order laid down.” This suggests (pace Avalon, whose guess is recorded in his footnote to p. 376) that a scale of prices must have been fixed for certain commodities, and krama must here mean ‘scale’. The notion of setting aside a sale, not the notion of fixed prices, is novel to Hindu law of the pre-British period. The curious phrase ksamo bhavati, ‘is able to’ is quaint in view of the normal sastric diction, which commands or authorises the king to do innumerable acts in the potential mood of the main verb. But if ksamo bhavati translates ‘has jurisdiction to’, it is quite comprehensible. Finally, at XII 126-7 we have some very general particulars about agents (who do not figure prominently in sastric law), including a Sanskrit word for “principal”, niyantr, which we have never seen before in this sense. It is in fact quite apt for the purpose.

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Part 2 of 3

B. Rules of Possibly English Provenance

So far we have seen instances of Hindu rules differing from the traditional Hindu law in content, style and language. We have come across words which seem like attempts to translate English terms. This might be a question of style or mannerism. But further evidence reveals that the juxtaposition of Hindu and entirely foreign rules was more complex than a mere contamination of the one by the other. The author wanted to add and to change, as we have seen, and we shall now see whether his source is not English law in some shape or form.

But first we must mention specially the peculiar case of pre-emption. Pre-emption is an ancient customary rule whereby certain classes of persons connected with the owner of property have the right to buy it from him if he shows conclusive signs of selling it to someone in an inferior class from this point of view, or to a total stranger. In a careful study of the provisions of the MNT relative to pre-emption, at a time when this writer was unaware of the probable age of the work39), it became obvious that the Hindu writer was not influenced by the much older Hindu works which do deal with preemption. It also became obvious that his inspiration was customary law. It was suggested that the law which he was intent on fixing in written form was very close, in some respects, to the Islamic law. This is quite understandable as at the time, which we now surmise to be late eighteenth century, the Islamic law of pre-emption (shufa) was the only written law on the subject available. It is therefore far from unlikely that in this case the true source was not English law (which did not have any rules on the subject) but the law of the pre-British sovereigns, the Muslims.

The first example of apparently English-inspired rules comes from the Eighth Book. At VIII. 135, 137-140 we have a set of rules to deal with the sale of goods. Where goods are sold by description the sale is voidable if they fail to answer to the description40). There is a one-year period within which latent defects may appear and upset the transaction41). Especially foreign and notably English is the rule in VIII. 140:

dharmartha-kama-moksanam bhajanam manavam vapuh
atah kulesi tat-krayo na siddhen mama sasanat.

To paraphrase this, the god Siva forbids the sale of the human body which is the vessel of the four aims of man according to the scriptures. The enlightened author of the MNT was clearly opposed to slavery, or at least to traffic in slaves, and was determined to offer what means lay in his power to cut the knot which prevented the suppression of such traffic42). That English philanthropists and even others with more mundane interests to pursue were against slavery and hesitated to suppress it out of fear of running counter to the native laws, must have been well known in Bengal in the last decades of the eighteenth century. The rule which appears in the same passage, to the effect that sale is completed when buyer and seller are agreed on the object and the price, is purely English43). Our text relating to slavery comes at the end of the section on sale.

At XI. 68 we are given an interesting rule regarding the presumption of legitimacy. No such rule appears in the sastra. A child is not legitimate (yogya) if born within the twelfth fortnight after marriage or later than one year following the husband’s death44). A careful distinction is made between intentional and unintentional homicide  (XI. 71-2) 45). Punishment is provided for the attempted suicide (XI. 73) 46). There is no guilt in killing in a duel or in self-defence (XI. 74) 47). The death penalty is prescribed for those who commit treason, subverting the government or comforting the king’s enemies, creating disaffection amongst the troops, waging war against the king, and also for armed highwaymen (pantha-pidaka is an excellent translation of 'highwayman') — XI. 78-9: —

rastra-viplavino rajyam jihirsun nrpa-vairinam
raho hitaisino bhrtyan bhedakan nrpa-sainyayoh.
yoddhum icchuh praja rajna sastrinah pantha-pidakan
hatva narapatis tv etan naiva kilbisa-bhag bhavet.

The language shows an attempt to translate from English, and the law, of course, agrees with English law of the period48). The law of defamation, that is to say as a criminal offence, appears at XI. 85-6, but it is specifically added that the defamer should be made to pay damages to the injured party49). The expression for 'injured party’ is anista-bhagi jana, which is rather clumsy Sanskrit, revealing an attempt at literal translation.

At XI. 97 we are told that an admission of a party (to litigation) is worth more than the evidence of witnesses. This clearly refers to English judicial procedure 50 ). The word for ‘admission’, then known as ‘confession’ (ahgikaranam) is correct Sanskrit, but evidently used in a technical and here purely English sense. Avalon foolishly renders the word ‘oath’, though Datta’s translation is correct. XI. 100-1 deals with oaths, both oaths to be taken by witnesses and oaths taken to secure actions. Our author is very hostile to misuse of liquor. Naturally, since liquor plays a part in tantric ritual and he is keen to make tantrism respectable. Hence the English law relating to the power of the magistrate to chastise those incapable through drink51) is called upon at XI. 113, 115, 118, 119. The provision that first offenders should be punished lightly (XI. 24) is consistent with English usage and with sastric principles. The subject of treason, which we have already encountered, appeared for the first time actually at XI. 27-30. It is important to notice that the English crime of petty treason52) appears at 29-30, and the duty of the subject to maintain loyalty to the king is stated at 28. Alone of Hindu writers the author of the MNT gives details of incest. The English law being part of the canon law of the Church was well armed on this subject53): the Hindu law much less so 53a). At XI. 31 the death penalty for incest appears. Perhaps this was severe by any standard. Then in vv. 32-4, 35 the relations are listed with whom intercourse amounts to incest. But a lesser (and Hindu) penalty is provided for those who have intercourse with women not within the strictest limits of incest. Here an amalgam of Hindu and English ideas is to be found. Nullity of marriage is provided in clear terms (a notion wanting in the smrti literature)54) when the marriage is between close relations (XI. 36), and on account of impotence (XI. 66) 55). Sodomy56) and rape57) are stated as crimes bearing the death penalty, at XI. 44 and 45 respectively. There is some doubt as to whence the rule comes which is stated at XI. 53. This is the husband’s virtual privilege of putting to death an adulterer caught in the act57a). Indecent exposure as a crime57b) appears at v. 50, but curiously no punishment, only an expiation is prescribed.

At XII. 12, 15-17 a jurisdiction is given to the king to compel partitions and to decree partitions in disputes between co-partners in family property. This was one of the innovations introduced into Hindu law by the British judicial administration. Previously, of course, sharers had the right to divide and to compel one another to make the property available: but the jurisdiction in Equity to compel disclosure of assets and to attach and appoint receivers, to order payment out to creditors and to make such other consequential orders as are clearly referred to in this passage was something relatively recent in Hindu experience; from which we may judge that our author saw the Hindu law adapting itself under the new administration.

C. Conclusion as to the legal rules

Our author was not ignorant of sastra, and many of his rules have a sastric flavour. He refers to custom, such as the custom of primogeniture (XII. 10), in a manner that no sastric writer does. He was evidently writing for those who wanted a practical guide for legal as well as spiritual life, and we have seen that both in the context of marriage and that of inheritance he introduced elements which were previously recognized neither in custom nor in the sastra. His language is deliberately alien to that of the sastra. His verses are so simple and pellucid that the commentators commentary is no more than a literal and undistinguished paraphrase. He aims to be understood by anyone knowing Sanskrit. His Sanskrit translations of what must have been English terms are in some places awkward: but would his newly part-anglicized litigant public object to this?

What was his motive? Did he hope to effect a revolution in Hindu law? Was he aiming to satisfy English judges and ease their difficulties in administering Hindu law? It is very difficult to be sure. The amount of sheer labour involved in preparing such a large work, and the scale of the enterprise, certify that it must have taken not less than two years to write, and it could not have been undertaken without high hopes of its being treated seriously. The legal portions are part and parcel of the whole, and had they been unsatisfactory the whole would have suffered. It may be safer to assume that his motives were mixed, and we can return to the possibilities when we have ascertained the probable date of the work.

The date can be fixed by reference to certain reasonably definite chronological points. English law became of importance to the population of Bengal as a whole only after 1765, but no one knew for certain that English law would be administered to Bengalis generally until the grant of the Diwani from the Mughal Emperor in that year had been followed by the decision on the part of the East India Company to stand forth as Diwan and perform the judicial functions of that officer in their own persons. By 1772, when Warren Hasting’s Regulation preserved marriage and inheritance and the laws of caste as topics to be determined solely by reference to the sastra58) it became evident that English law would be called upon slowly and indirectly in the non-listed subjects, though not necessarily, nor conclusively. Knowledge of how this would work must have dawned very slowly, even in the quick minds of Bengalis. To make the Hindu law capable of being understood and applied the Gov.-General caused the Vivadarnava-setu to be compiled, the material to be set out in an order and with reference to topics settled by or for himself. While this was progressing — a scheme in which the minimum of interference in the Hindu law was to be made by English lawyers, as the result shows — the English Parliament, dissatisfied with the behaviour of the East India Company’s servants in Bengal, set up a new system, and enabled the Supreme Court to be created. The unhappy history of this court need not detain us here58a). What matters is that within a very few months of its being established in 1774 the general public of Bengal came to believe that English rules would be enforced throughout the Presidency and with reference to any kind of topic. The relatively clear distinctions between the listed and the non-listed topics of the Regulation of 1772, were for a while obscured. The whole question of law and jurisdiction was in the air. No one knew what would happen. Would the rulers apply native rules at all and if so in which spheres? The Supreme Court and the East India Company’s servants were at loggerheads. The appellate jurisdiction of the Company’s chief court at Calcutta was suspended59). The year 1775-6 was the year of peak anxiety. Several different theories were propounded at Calcutta. The supremacy of the Supreme Court in matters of law led to a belief that English rules would be resorted to, or should be resorted to, in any litigation60). The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Sir Elijah Impey60a), was not always of the same mind in this respect. At times he inclined to the view that English law should be relied upon to supplement, and at times amend, as it were by judicial legislation, the native laws61). Ultimately the fundamental hypotheses of Warren Hastings triumphed and the East India Company’s courts were reestablished by the Company’s own government on a footing agreeable to English lawyers. The listed topics were not enlarged. Thus, in the Company’s own courts, the Hindu religious sources could still, and indeed must still be resorted to in those areas. And they might still be resorted to for guidance in others. The criminal law was still basically Islamic, as pandits regretted. It did not cease to have this character until Lord Cornwallis’s time, nearly twenty years later, and even then it was only modified, not abrogated 62). But the Supreme Court was administering English law, including English criminal law, and the case of Nandakumar, in 1775 assured everyone that English ideas could be applied to Hindus who had never envisaged such a misfortune63). Uncertainty as to the scope of reference to native laws, and certainty that far more English law would be applied to the people than they had wished, prevailed beyond 1780. All this time the Company’s judges who wished to apply Hindu law in the listed topics experienced every kind of difficulty in ascertaining what the law was. The litigants put in certificates of the law signed by numerous pandits, and the 'new sastra‘63a) as well as the ‘old’ was relied on. The pandits who were actually employed to expound the law did so in ways which at times excited suspicion. Forgeries of texts were not unknown64 [The suspicions about the Dattaka Chandrika are the most celebrated example]). But the theory was generally accepted that the Hindus were entitled to have administered to them the laws of their religion. And at least two schools of law, apart from custom, were known in Bengal.

By 1782 the situation had changed. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court was curbed. The Company’s courts, especially in revenue contexts, were less open to interference. The Hindu law itself would be administered in the Supreme Court, according to a list differing from that of Warren Hastings, in fact a little wider, but much more definite. The Hindu law of contract, for example, was part of the law of that court. There was no question that the East India Company (who represented the Hindu 'king’) would administer the English criminal law. But under ‘justice, equity and good conscience’ there was every possibility that their country judges would consult Hindu books of a suitable character for aid in non-listed matters.

It is difficult to be precise. The writing of the MNT took time. It could not have commenced until English legal ideas and English legal terms came to the knowledge of the author. How soon could that have been? By 1773 this was already possible. Did an English attorney consult with the pandit? Or did some attorney’s clerk supply what was needed, who had familiarised himself with whatever library was then available? The present writer thinks this much more likely. The years of maximum anxiety and maximum need for information would be the years in which curiosity about English law would be at its height. On the whole 1775 is the best year in which to conjecture that a start was made on the MNT. If it was finished by 1777 the whole project would be over long before the Regulating Act of 1781 set limits to the scope of English law in the Supreme Court, and allowed the Company’s courts to proceed in their own way, and to develop their own balance between the native and the imported laws. But it is difficult to be so exact. The date of the Mahanirvana-tantra may thus be put conjecturally at 1773-1780.

Our provisional conclusion is that the author wanted to purify the tantric religion, and thereby to make it more popular, and to enable tantric Hinduism, which was more real to many Hindus than Vedic Hinduism, to resist the inevitable confrontation with Christianity. Here he may have been gifted with foresight, because the impact of missionary endeavour had still to be felt: the presence of Christian clergy did not amount to a mission prior to 1793 65). The tantric religion, thus advanced, could be called upon as a law for a religious community which would embrace more than the caste Hindus. Under the Juridical schemes of 1772 and 1781 the members (whom he calls kaulas) could claim that their laws of marriage, inheritance,  etc., were regulated by a sacred book composed by the god Siva. The English administrators would welcome a book which could easily be read and the tone and much of the contents of which would be familiar to them. And the new community would have the advantage of an up-to-date atmosphere so far at least as its legal awareness was concerned.

The Mahanirvana-tantra and Rammohun Roy

The Rajah Rammohun Roy possessed a copy of the MNT, which he may or may not have copied for himself. He used the book and had a high opinion of it. His followers likewise used it. What was his relation to it? The chronology of his life must first be recapitulated68). He was born 22 May 1772. He was educated principally in an Islamic atmosphere, and was later self-educated in Hinduism. He was married twice in the orthodox style and since his third wife, who died in 1858, was treated in every respect as a regular Hindu widow from the Rajah’s death in 1833, we may presume that she also was married in the orthodox style, i.e. she was not a Saiva wife. His two sons, Radha Prasad Roy and Rama Prasad Roy were both unquestionably legitimate sons, and neither can have been a Saiva son. The statement of Avalon (who ought to have known better) that Rammohun Roy had a Saiva wife and child67) turns out to be without foundation. The boy taken with him to England (Raja Ram) was a foster child, as was well known in Calcutta68), and not a Saiva son of the Rajah’s. Rammohun’s complicated and unusual education completed, he entered the East India Company’s service, from which he retired a wealthy man. Indeed the sources of his wealth are known to have been various and we cannot accuse him of any particular degree of corruption in office, notwithstanding the habits of the time. The most significant period from our point of view was between 1809 and 1814, when he was serving at Rangpur. There he studied “modern Tantric works” with the aid of Hariharananda, “a Bengali Tantric mendicant whose acquaintance he made there ...”69). Within two years of leaving Rangpur he had published a work on the Vedanta-sutra and founded the Atmiya Sabha, the first of his societies with a religious object, upon an analogy with a Christian church. The year 1816 sees him making his first reference to the MNT 69a). By this time he cites tantras along with Upanishads and other traditional Hindu scriptures as if there were no great difference between them. In his first work tantras are defended as sastric works 70). The MNT is quoted or paraphrased by him in 1817 71) 1820 71a), 1821 72), 1822 72a), 1827 73), 1828 73a), 1829 74). He shows himself well aware of false tantras and the possibility of forgery75). He says himself, "... those Poorans and Tuntrus only which have been commented upon or quoted by respectable authors are to be regarded.” Rammohun was greatly interested in the Kularnava-tantra, which he frequently quotes and is supposed to have edited76). The date of this is doubtful. But how he can have reconciled his general caution with the use of the MNT which had only the commentary of his own teacher, and that too a poor apology for a commentary, it is difficult to see.

Rammohun certainly taught that the Saiva marriage, which he could support only from the MNT (which he cites), was as good as a Vaidic marriage. His radical reformist propositions in the realm of marriage were based on the MNT77). In his attack on sati78 ) he was supported also by the MNT, which was against the practice79). In a short form of worship published in Bengali by Rammohun the hymn beginning Namaste Sate (III. 59) was set out, but it seems the form was not actually used in the services of the Brahma Samaj founded by the Raja80). Texts from the MNT do however appear in the Brahma Dharma Grantha compiled by Debendra Nath Tagore, Rammohun’s successor in the Brahma Samaj.

There cannot be the slightest doubt but that Rammohun regarded the MNT as a genuine, i.e. old work. He knew a great deal of dharma-sastra, as is shown in his legal works81), so that he must have detected the curious Anglo-Indian tone of the MNT’s legal portions: but this did not deter him from relying on the work even for the extremely controversial Saiva marriage project. Were others imposed  upon as well as Rammohun? In fact it was cited to no less a critic than W. H. Macnaghten in about 1820 by a pandit, to whom he applied for information in a pre-emption matter (a non-listed topic). So that in the interval between Rammohun’s contact with Hariharananda (1809-1814) and this occasion the book was believed by others than Rammohun himself to be a genuine Hindu scriptural work82). Lately, of course, the authority of the MNT for this purpose has been denied82a), but the suspicions of the Indian Supreme Court do not take us any further forward, as their information is no better than ours.

Rammohun Roy was the most gifted Indian of his time, perhaps the most talented and accomplished of all time. With the exception of Swami Vivekananda, whose educational opportunities may have been slightly better, no one has equalled him. His main interest was religion, and he was far ahead of his time in projecting a monotheistic version of Hinduism, based on original sources, whilst at the same time admitting the virtue of aspects of Islam and Christianity. For fear of losing his property, and out of a lack of sympathy with the narrow views of missionaries in Calcutta, he never actually became a Christian, though while in Britain he allowed himself to be supposed a Unitarian 82b). He is the supreme example of the shrewd, yet idealistic, practical yet visionary, supple and diplomatic yet personally inflexible, adaptable and curious yet resolutely patriotic and faithful son of India: characteristics often repeated, yet never so dramatically and effectively as in the first great example. He was ever in the midst of controversy, especially from his own countrymen. And he was never at a loss for arguments, with which he sustained his character and reputation all through a life spent in walking an intellectual tight-rope. Such a man was imposed upon by the Maha-nirvana-tantra, which may well have been written by Hariharananda’s guru (who can conceivably have died by 1809), or some other brilliant mind which can easily have approached the great Rammohun through Hariharananda.

Why was he imposed on by it? Because of its brilliance, obviously, because it said what he wanted to read, and also, we must add, because of the credulity of the hard-headed practical man where spiritual matters are concerned. The man who learnt enough Greek and Hebrew to quote extensively from the Holy Scriptures, and anticipated many a critical line of attack upon apostolic Christianity (whether accurately or not is another matter) was himself the dupe of a brilliant almost contemporary fabricator on his own doorstep. How can this happen, and what is the nature and power of this credulity?

Credulity and the Mahanirvana-tantra

The MNT told Rammohun Roy what he wanted to believe and wanted to pass on to his countrymen. No one challenged him when he relied upon it exclusively, though this has happened since82c). That he was not challenged may to some extent be explained by the lack of an agreed check-list of tantras. There was no means of determining which of the vast number of them were genuine, no agreed criteria. If an anonymous tantric work by an unknown author were found who could determine its pedigree? The British judicial world was all too aware of the dangers of opening the flood-gates, and swamping the public with any and every text calling itself a religious treatise83). But the native public had no means to secure itself against fabrications, and the sastris, the orthodox professors, as distinguished from tantric teachers, confined themselves to the treatises in dharma-sastra, themselves susceptible to additions as time went on.

Rammohun was a man of means, and subsequently a man of considerable wealth. He was a patron of letters, patron of scholarship, patron of religion; the difference between him and many counterparts throughout India was simply that he did much more himself and published much more in his own name than most such patrons did. He was in government service and it required little skill to guess that he would be influential. He actually advised the British government on how to administer the Presidency, judicially and otherwise84). So the instinct of the fabricator or {if he were already dead) his medium (probably Hariharananda) was sound, though the plan did not mature as soon as they had expected. The pattern to which Rammohun belonged already existed, and has been repeated frequently.

The individual is occupied with purely business affairs, in the course of which many decisions of questionable morality are taken. In his leisure he cultivates spiritual interests, partly to off-set this. He wishes to retire and devote himself to spiritual exercises and activities, partly as an atonement for his previous occupations. He is a natural prey for pandits and sanyasis, spiritual guides whom the victim imagines he has himself chosen and patronised, though they in fact manipulate him. Naturally there is an exchange. They have his money, and the prestige of advising the great; and he has the satisfaction of being ultimately true to his native culture. The process of duping such a person is not confined to Indians! Numerous western readers and travellers have fallen into similar situations. It is sufficient if we take one example from the western and one from the Indian world. Our westerner shall be no other than Arthur Avalon himself.

Sir John George Woodroffe was the eldest son of J. T. Woodroffe, formerly Advocate-General of Bengal and sometime Legal Member of the Government of India. Woodroffe was therefore acquainted with India in his childhood and especially with Bengal. He was born in 1865 and was educated in England, taking a second class in the Honour Scool of Jurisprudence and the B. C. L. at Oxford. He was called to the Bar in 1889, and in 1890 was enrolled as an advocate of the Calcutta High Court. He was made a Fellow of Calcutta University and appointed Tagore Professor of Law there. He collaborated with Mr. Ameer Ali, later a member of the Privy Council in London, in a widely used text-book, Law of Evidence, besides a work on Receivers. In 1904 he became a Judge of the High Court at Calcutta. He served on that Bench until 1922, and in 1915 he officiated as Chief Justice. He retired to Britain to become Reader in Indian Law in the University of Oxford, then a responsible as well as a distinguished post, from 1923 to 1930. He died in 1936.

His hobby was Hindu philosophy with especial reference to tantras. Under the name of Arthur Avalon he published numerous texts and translations, a complete list of which will be found in any of the recently published reprints. No one who approaches his work can come away without two strong impressions: (1) that he was driven by an emotionally-based obsession to contribute to the scope and prestige of Indian studies; and (2) that this obsession operated upon him in a manner inconsistent with his judicial and indeed practical  avocations. This was a clear case of schizophrenia. Slips in his law can easily be accounted for on this basis 85 ). The absurdities and mystifications of tantrism should have repelled a man of disciplined mind. But Avalon-Woodroffe did more to publicise them than anyone. It is noticeable that as a judge he made few or no contributions to Hindu law. True he had as a colleague the utterly formidable Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee. But if his interest in Sanskrit were compatible with his judicial work surely he would have specialised in Hindu law cases, at that time requiring attention to Sanskrit texts as well as case-law. No use of the MNT is made by Woodroffe from the Bench, whereas his contemporaries, Chief Justice Jenkins and Sir Ashutosh do actually cite it once85a). The present writer’s view is that an infantile  connection with Bengal gave birth, despite an English University education, to an emotional attachment to the characteristically Bengali religious enthusiasm, tantrism. And in the course of the help he must have received from tantric guides and scholars he must have been practised upon by native enthusiasts. And there was a publisher, in Madras, who knew the market for such trash. Not that ‘Avalon’ knew any more of the panca-makara than Woodroffe did, or than Rammohun could have done. The emotional attachment to these treatises, however, is evidenced by his desperate attempts to show that the MNT was an ancient, or at any rate mediaeval work. As a judge he must have realised that this could not be so. As a judge he could not have uttered or printed such puerile impostures. But as ‘Arthur Avalon’ he could wish to believe that what he was handling was ancient and genuine, and he could put forward whatever he chose without shame or fear of being refuted86).

Our second example of a practical man displaying credulity in the context of a bogus spiritual work with legal content is an Indian who performed the feat of adjustment to western standards more faithfully than Rammohun Roy himself. In Madras Presidency, during the second half of the nineteenth century, progress such as could be claimed for Bengal itself was made towards the unattainable goal of assimilating western techniques and standards whilst not ceasing to be rooted in the ancient tradition. Against some opposition and much indifference three Indian lawyers of various backgrounds and not highly privileged adolescence, without the aid of foreign training or patronage, reached the High Court Bench. This test of endurance, character, personality and learning is at all times severe, but was particularly so when the demands of the law were greater than they are now {the sources being much more open to debate), and when European lawyers and judges had no partiality for recruiting their numbers with the aid of local talent. One of the great successes in this exceptionally hard trial of strength was S. Subramania Iyer87). He came from Madura to Madras in 1885, and became a formidable rival to the great V. Bhashyam Iyengar. He was the first Indian to be made a Government Pleader. He was renowned for integrity and charm of manner: a scrupulous man. Here we may need to emphasise his ability to pierce complicated conundrums such as constantly arise in Indian litigation, and his intuitive sense of the correct answer to problems raised by evidence88). His interest in the scholarly aspects of law is proved by his house being used for the ‘Saturday Club’ at Mylapore (Madras) where cases were critically discussed. These meetings were held from 1889 until 1890 or 1891, when Subramania Iyer was made an acting Judge of the High Court. He was then the seniormost leader of the High Court Vakil Bar89). He succeeded the first Indian to shine on the Madras High Court Bench, Sir Muthuswamy Iyer, because he was three years senior to Bhashyam Iyengar, who eventually joined him. He remained on the Bench until 1907, when he resigned due to fears about a decline in his health, particularly some nervous disorder, not apparently severe in other people’s estimation90). He held at other times very responsible positions. He was a member of the Malabar Land Tenure Committee (1885), a difficult task. He was also trustee of at least one important public temple91). The post of Acting Chief Justice was occupied by him in 1899, 1903, and 1906. He was Vice-Chancellor of Madras University in 1904. Lord Ampthill said of him, It seemed to me that in his life and conduct he effected an ideal compromise between adherence to the Indian ways and the requirements of European  methods. Neither too conservative nor too progressive he remains the perfect model of an Indian gentleman..." A seated statue of him is to be seen in a prominent place near Madras University, and a fine portrait is to be seen in the High Court and at Adyar, where also a marble replica of the statue is to be seen, and where also an avenue (of no great importance, however) is named after him.

During his tenure as Judge it was known that his real interests lay in spiritual matters. Immediately after his retirement, which we have seen was premature, he joined the Theosophical Society as Vice-President. He was by that time an LL.D., and had been gazetted K.C.I.E. Sir S. Subramania Iyer was one of the first figures in Madras and it was an honour for the Theosophical Society to have him so highly placed between 1907 and 1911. Dr. Annie Besant thought so highly of him that she continued to publish matter of his writing even when it ceased fully to agree with her own notions. His contributions to The Theosophist occurred already in 1915. He disapproved of the Government of India’s behaviour and communicated with America in a manner disapproved of in turn by that Government. He resigned his knighthood in protest. Integrity marked his public life throughout. His interest in the Buddha Dharma Mandala, or Pure Religion Society’, which he founded, brought some rift between him and the Theosophical Society, for, as we shall see, he aimed to provide a rival world leader to the theosophists’ J. Krishnamurthy. But it is rumoured that when he died in December 1924 he was reconciled to the senior organization of which he had once been a prominent member.

Between 1915 and 1918 he published a series of nine articles91a) which were subsequently republished under the title An Esoteric Organization  in India (Madras, ?1919). The commencement of this work goes curiously as follows, “Never since the day when the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society were transferred from America to Bombay, in 1879, have the founders of that Society escaped the charge of fraud with reference to their assertion of the existence of Mahatmas, of Initiates, and of the possession by them of occult powers and the like.” But at the time Sir Subramania was learning from Mrs. Besant spurious archaeology, fraudulent presentation of scripture, and practical organization. In 1917 he published the Sanatana Dharma Dipika, which is of interest to us, since it takes us to a point where credulity, being a willing dupe, interest us in our search for the origins, purpose and early history of the MNT.

The prime movers of the Suddha Dharma Mandala (which survived until as late as 1952) were principally Sir Subramania, now well over 70 years of age, and a Pandit K. T. Sreenivasachariar of Madras. It is evident that the former lent his name and did most of the English writing (which often has a legal flavour) for the Mandala's series of publications. In more than one publication a photograph of Sir Subramania appears, dressed as a sanyasi, with his name and titles added, in order to give prestige to this bogus organization. The Sanatana Dharma Dipika purports to be a purana. It is full of mock puranic material. In Part I, .chapter 1, sec. 181 we are told that the deity said “I will re-establish the organization named Suddha dharma-mandala: it is as old as time, excellent and makes its appearance with each kalpa (era)." At sec. 289 we are told that all people will have one faith, one caste, in the Kali-yuga (the present age); at secc. 292-4 that all dharmas will be unified. At ch. 2, secc. 76-8 we are told that women will choose their own husbands. Social reform is evidently within the scope of the spurious literature which is now put forth.

In 1918 the Yoga Dipika of Bhagavan Narayana was published in the same series, purporting to be a work of the deity, with a commentary by Hamsa Yogi. In 1922 the Bhagavad Gita was published also with the commentary of Hamsa Yogi, but we are told at p. 7 that Hamsa Yogi is not anyone’s name, but the title of an office. Evidently ‘Hamsa Yogi’ was the Madras pandit himself. By this time the public is invited to supply money to subsidize the publication of commentaries on the entire Vedas in the sense of the S. D. Mandala, and so the enterprise which had started as an intellectual aberration takes on the form of a criminal conspiracy. The works published were bogus, but presented as if they were genuine. The author is also non-existent. Religious and social regeneration is the aim, and no doubt the conspirators were pioneers in some respects, hiding however under the garb of restorers of a lost literature. In 1923 appeared the Avatara of Bhagavan Mitra Deva (Madras, 1923). The sanity of Sir Subramania is here placed in grave doubt. The ‘Bhagavan Mitra Deva’ was supposed to be aged six, and to have had a miraculous birth and to have delivered many sermons. He was the world leader to be: at the moment in close retirement in the Himalayas. That this folly remained alive well into the 1950’s shows that the organizers were not without some success, but whether any money was made for the pandit is not clear. Sir S. Subramania Iyer died in 1924 before the elaborate affair (which strikes the reader, misleadingly, as a hoax) could progress further, and nothing more of the kind was published after him.

Why was it necessary to suppose that ancient works were brought to light, while at the same time circumstances made it evident that the compositions were recent, indeed contemporary? What mental process allows this self-deception to occur? Firstly as the Sanatoria Dharma Dipika shows, and evidence of the conditions of thought in the 1770’s confirms, Hindu scholarship is wedded to the notion that all authoritative scripture is part legislation and part prophecy and is located, actually or ideally, in the first years of the Kali-yuga92), except for works of even greater prestige which must be located earlier than all yugas. The conception that living persons can lay down law, even in committees of public gatherings, is foreign to Hindu thought. If a thing is right, it must be enshrined in Hindu scriptures. The notion that Hindu conceptions of right can vary from generation to generation within the Kali-yuga is not accepted. The converse is obviously correct also. No one who proposes to persuade others can hope for success unless he shows that what he teaches is not his own but the common heritage of the race. In an amusing but characteristic passage the Manu-smrti puts the point admirably (XII. 95—6): traditional texts other than the Vedas are not authoritative; “those others (i.e. other smrtis ) that spring up and fade away are all without fruit and false, because they are of recent date Rammohun Roy’s own scepticism of recent tantras is of the same origin. They may or may not have useful matter in them. But as for the MNT, the great truths about monotheism, about caste, about sati, about marriage, etc., which suited the age so well, cannot, almost by definition, have presented themselves in a recent work. And as there was no means whereby the author could be traced, granted that Hariharananda (if he was not himself in the dark) had his pupil within his grasp, the famous Hindu scholar and public man was deceived.

The deception practised on Arthur Avalon was largely of his own seeking. The deception practised on Sir S. Subramania Iyer was partly of his own seeking and partly of his own making. In all three cases the public man and the pandit cooperate to perpetrate a fraud. In Rammohan Roy’s case the fraud did no harm, and it is a curiosity of Indian legal history. In Avalon’s case the fraud was more serious in that people bought, for genuine, works which are (and perhaps always were) intellectually worthless. Avalon was himself duped in order that others might be duped. His obituary in The Times (and obituaries are kind) shows a man who lived in a world of his own. His writings show his disappointment at the lack of sympathy which his effusions evoked in his intellectual contemporaries. Sir Subramania Iyer’s yearnings for spirituality and for the spiritual regeneration of his country rendered themselves real through the otherwise unemployed skills of a compatriot pandit, who evidently knew his man.

As for the Mahanirvana-tantra, its author is not likely to be traced. We know the names of many of the court pandits of the time, but it is most doubtful whether it is the work of any of them. Could any of them have written in this barbaric style? His notions never materialised as he wished. The kaulas never became a sect known to law. Their scriptures were never taken seriously. The judges began to insist upon the production of authentic ancient works to certify any legal proposition. For fear of fraud they (wisely) stretched behind the present and forced the Bengalis of the nineteenth century to be governed by the writings of the eleventh, the fifteenth and the seventeenth. In order to make sure that authentic sastric learning would be available in modem garb, Sir William Jones planned and H. T. Colebrooke saw to completion (1795) the great Digest written by Jagannatha Tarkapanchanana93). This was made during Rammohun Roy’s lifetime and completely ignored the MNT. Jagannatha in fact responded to many English legal ideas in his own way: but that is another story.

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Part 3 of 3

ADDITIONAL ANNOTATIONS

p. [197], n 1 Shyama Charan Sarkar Vidyabhusana vigorously defended the authenticity and holiness of the MNT in his Vyavastha-chandrika II (Calcutta 1880), 551. Similarly at his Vyavastha Darpana, 3rd edn. (Calcutta 1883) 643-649. The MNT is said to be equal to the Vedas (!) (p. 647) and superior to all law-books of the Dayabhaga school. The MNT is appreciatively mentioned by Justice S.C. Mitra at his ‘Origin and development of the Bengal school of Hindu law’, (1905) 21 L.Q.R. 380-392 at 391-2, continued at (1906) 22 L.Q.R. 50-63 (extracts are printed at pp. 61-2). S.S. Sellur replied at (1907) 23 L.Q.R. 202-219 (MNT referred to at 211-13).

p. [198], n, 3. Now at Derrett, R.L.S.I., ch. 8.

p. [198], n. 4. S. next n., inf.

p. [199], 1, 8. It is significant that in the Durga-mahattva (Colebrooke, Essays II, 165 n, I) the principal tantras are enumerated and a ‘Nirvana-tantra’ appears but not our MNT. The MNT does not figure amongst the tantras read in Bengal according to W. Ward, Account of the Writings, Religion , and Manners of the Hindoos II (Serampore, 1811), 2-3.

p. [200], n. 9. The text, ed. Grey Street, Calcutta, 6th edn., 1902; by Upendra Nath Mukhopadhyaya, 12th edn., Vasumatir Sahitya Mandir, Calcutta. 1948. Beng trans. Kaliprasanna Vidyaratna, 4th edn., Calcutta, B.S. 1304.

p. [208], n. 19. Now s. Derrett, R.L.S.I., ch. 9.

p. [210], n. 20. Now s. ibid., ch, 8.

p. [212], 1. 13. S. inf,, pp, 347-52 for a Madras view on this.

p. [216], n. 32. Now s. inf.

p. [220], n. 42. It is important to see this case in perspective and not to overrate its importance for overseas territories. W. M. Wiecek, 'Somerset: Lord Mansfield and the legitimacy of slavery...', Univ. Chicago L.R. , XLII/1 (1974), 86-146.

p. [227], I. 17. The notion that sects could have their own laws is fully borne out by Sonaluxmi v. Vishnuprasad (1903) 28 Bom. 597. The idea is of great antiquity since the Sanatkumara-samhita (see sup., vol. I, 119 n. to p. 116, col. ii) of the Pancaratra-s took advantage of it.

p. [231]. n. 82, 1. I. The same passage is solemnly cited as authoritative by S.C. Sarkar Vidyabhusana (sup.) at Vy.Ch. II, 626-7. On the preemption problem s. inf., p. 393, n. 5, pp. 395-6, 399.

n. 82, 11. 6-7. However it was cited and used in S.D.A. Cal. Mar. 19, 1827 and relied on there on Oct. 28 1830 (Sarkar Vidyabhusana, Vy.Ch. 11, 547-9; S.D.A. Rep,, vol. 5, pp. 85-6: Sarkar, Vy.Dar., 648-9).

p [234], 1 17. His foreword to B. Guru Rajah Rao's Ancient Hindu Judicature (Madras, Ganesh, 1920) was an opportunity to show off his learning, but it is nugatory.

p. [234). 1. 28. Sir John was assisted by a notable lawyer and Vedantist called Byomkesh Chakravarti (1861- 1929): Law Quarterly (Cal.). VI/4 (1969), 269-70.

p. [236], 1. 26. P.R. Gunapathi Iyer dedicated to him his Law Relating to Hindu and Muhomedan Endowments (Madras, 1905). Not long after he left the Bench he is seen writing an introduction and appreciation in more than 56 pages to India's Claim for Home Rule. Fifty Speeches by Indian Leaders (Madras. 1917). See ‘Unveiling the portrait of Dr. S. Subramania Iyer'. [1964] 1 M.L.J., J., 11.

p. [236], n. 88. Now Trans, of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, Oct 1970, II (Madras. 1970). 159.

p. [238]. I. 27, F. O. Schrader, who knew Madras, was obviously deceived by the imposture: at J. v. Negelein, ed., Festgahe Garhe (Erlangen 1927) 173 n. 1.

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Notes:

1) Hrishikesa Sastri and S. C. Gui, Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Library of the Calcutta Sanskrit College, vol. 5 (Calcutta, 1903), 54. M. N. Dutt, Mahanirvana Tantram (Eng. trans.) (Calcutta, 1900), Preface, i, ii. Agehananda Bharati (Leopold Fischer) calls it "one of the oldest Sakta works”; The Tantric Tradition (London, 1965), p. 171.
 
2) “The Sukraniti — A Nineteenth-century text”, B. S. O. A. S„ vol 25, pt. 3 (1962), 524—556. There is no attempt in this text to incorporate law with religion, nor to expound the laws of a religious sect, as with our MNT.
 
3) “Sanskrit legal treatises compiled at the instance of the British", Z. V. R., vol. 63 (1961), 72-117.
 
4) “The Hindu law relating to preemption,” Adyar Library Bulletin, vol. 25 (1962), 13-27. The argument that the MNT belongs to the period circa 1780 was put forward in Delhi in January, 1964, by the present writer: “The Mahanirvanatantra and Modem Indian Law,” Summaries' of Papers [Presented to the XXVIth International Congress of Orientalists, New Delhi, 1964], ed. R. N. Dandekar, New Delhi, 1964, paper no. 47, pp. 92—4. P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasdstra, vol. 5, pt. 2 (1962) (see Index, p. 115), refers frequently to the MNT, which he allots to the eighteenth century (p. 1090).
 
5) The manuscript once located in Oudh (Th. Aufredit, Catalogus Catalogorum, I. 298)) is no longer available. As for the rest see Rajendralal Mitra, Notices of Sanskrit Manuscripts (Calcutta, 1871), p. 159, no. 289: in the possession then of Jatindra Mohan Tagore of Calcutta (son of P. C. Tagore, a young friend of Raja Rammohun Roy); without commentary. Sastri and Gul (above), pp. 53—57: no commentary. Haraprasada Shastri, Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit Mss. in the Collection of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, ed. Chintaharan Chakravarti, vol. 8, pt. 1 (Calcutta, 1939), p. 229, no. 6039. A, Avalon says (Introduction to his edition of the Text of the MNT), over the dating “Oxford, 21st September, 1928”, that the manuscript which was with him contained text and commentary, and was throughout in Rammohun Roy's handwriting (p. viii.). How are we to account for small discrepancies between his text and the text of which Rammohun printed fragments? And where is that copy now? N. C. Salisbury, Keeper of Oriental Books, Bodleian Library, Oxford, informed the present writer on 11th May, 1966 that there was no trace of any Sanskrit manuscript having been given or bequeathed by Sir John Woodroffe (see pp. 174-175 below) to the Bodleian. An appeal to Prof. V. Raghavan of Madras for information on further copies of the MNT produced no further evidence. The India Office Library possesses no material relevant to this enquiry, but the Librarian told the present writer that P. N. Mukhopadhyaya, one of Woodroffe’s collaborators, was alive as recently as 1963 — but he has not been traced.
 
6) For the opinion of Kane, see previous note. The modernity of the work is recognised by Chintaharan Chakravarti, Tantras ... (Calcutta, 1963), 24, and previously by M. Wintemitz, History of Indian Literature, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1927), 592—598. It is said to be mentioned in the Mahasiddhisdra, an “old” copy of which belonged to Radhakant Deb (1783 1867), the bibliophile contemporary of Rammohun who opposed him in matters of religion. It is said also to be quoted in the Pranatosanilata, a modem tantric nibandha. The origin of the former work is unknown. The MNT is barely mentioned by M. Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdom4 (London, 1893), p 525.
 
7) No reference is made to it by Krisnananda, a fellow student of Chaitanya. P. C. Bagchi, Studies in the Tantras , pt. 1 (Calcutta, 1939) ignores it (therefore it was not available in 1929 in Nepal?). Likewise . Bhattacharyya (son of Haraprasada Sastri) in "Materials for a chrono ogica study of the Tantras”, Bulletin of the Rama Varma Research Institute, vol. 10, pt. 2 (1942), 77-91; also K. C. Pandey, Abhinava Gupta, 2nd edn. (Banaras, 1963). ch. 7. A. Bharati (n. 1 above) attributes the MNT to the 7th cent, at p. 194, but says it is “usually ascribed to the 11th cent. A. D.” at p. 66 (1).
 
8) Haridas Mitra, “Sadasiva worship in early Bengal ...", J. A. S. B. NS. XXIX, 1933, at p. 189.
 
9) First published with commentary by Adi Brahma Samaj in 1876 by Anandadiandra Vidyavagisa who used three Mss., those at the library of the Samaj, of Duradasa Chaudhuri, and of the library of Rammohun Roy. The text with Hindi translation: Jwala P. Misra (Bombay, 1896). The text with a commentary attributed to Sarikaracharya (!) was printed by the Danda Sabha of Manikamaka Ghat, Banaras, in 1886. The text with the commentary of Krisna Gopala Bhakta appeared in (?) 1886, 1888. The text with a Bengali translation: by Jaganmohan Tarkalarikara (1886, 3rd edn. 1914); by Shri Prasanna Kumara Sastri in 1888, also 1896; by Gopaladasa Mukhopadhyaya in 1901, 1927 and 1928. Pt. Jivananda Vidyasagara’s edition of text and commentary (of Hariharananda) without translation was published at Calcutta in 1884 (the writer saw a presentation copy at Adyar). The text and commentary were edited by A. Avalon (Tantrik Texts Ser., vol. 13) from Madras in 1929, reissued with translation in 1953. See P. N. Natha and J. B. Chaudhuri, ed. C. J. Napier, Catalogue of the India Office Library, vol. 2, pt 1. Sanskrit Books, sec. 3, pp. 1521-3.
 
10) Otherwise Dutt See n. 1 above. The first edition appeared in 1892.
 
11) Avalon referred to his “informants” and "Indian Pandits under my general editorship”. Occasional indianisms of language which eluded his editorial eye still attest their part in the undertaking.
 
12) The Great Liberation (Madras, 1st edn. 1913, 2nd. edn. 1927, 3rd edn., reprint, 1953), at p. v: “an inaccurate version rendered in imperfect English".  
 
13) M. N. Datta (Dutt), translation (above), p. xi. Avalon, Introd. to his Text (above), p. vii. That Rammohun published under pseudonyms is certain.  But this work seems to be not merely beyond even his considerable powers as a Sanskritist: it contains masses of tantric follies which he frequently ridiculed, and for which he could not possibly have found adequate patience, even as a pseudonymous writer. For other reasons negativing the possibility of his authorship see below.
 
14) XI. 132 is an adequate example.
 
14a) The remarks of P. V. Kane on the hypocrisy and evil influence of eighteenth-century tantric doctrines are just, and the information at his History of Dharmasastra, vol. 5, p. 1087 and n, 1761 relevant.
 
15) v. 21—24; cf. VIII. 171—174. Kane, op. cit., vol. 5, pp. 1051—1077, considers the makaras against the background of Indian thought with an evaluation which reflects a modern outlook.
 
16) VIII. 169-170, 175-177. While eating food that has been consecrated to Brahma no caste-rules  (against “inter-dining ) may be observed: III, 82, 91-3. On consecration see XIV. 146.
 
17) VIII. 178. It is to be understood that the chakras or congregations may last for several (days and) nights.
 
17a) The MNT itself professes to be the means of knowledge of Brahma: XIV. 123-5, 203, 211.
 
18) This suggestion was made by Prof. Dr. N. N. Choudhari, Head of Department of Sanskrit, Delhi University, in Jan. 1964 on the occasion referred to above, p. 139 n. 4.
 
19) Communicated in a letter to the Court of Directors, 3rd Nov. 1772 (London, ?1773). See Derrett, "The administration of Hindu law by the British,” C.S.S.H., vol. 4, no. I (1961), at pp. 24-5.
 
19a) The chakra is a congregation in which the five elements are present (see n. 15 above).
 
20) See ch. 2, esp. pp. 23-64 of the 1777 edn. For the circumstances  of the composition of this work see Z.V.R., vol. 63 (cited above), 85-8.
 
21) The classical definition, of Katyayana, lists what is given before the nuptial fire (adhyagni), at the time of the procession to the bridegroom’s house (adhyavahanika), given by the father- or mother-in-law, and when showing reverence to elders (priti-datta), sulka, and post-nuptial gifts from the family of the husband or her own kinsmen (anvadheya). Kane, op. cit., vol. 3, 774. Jha, II. 529 ff. The MNT mentions only gifts from the father or father-in-law, etc., and whatever is earned by her personal efforts — which Katyayana and the other smritis actually exclude from the definition of stridhanam. Kane, ubi cit., 776-7; Jha, II. 544.
 
22) All the authorities on disqualification for unchastity are discussed in Moniram Kolita v. Keri Kolitani (1873) 13 Bengal L. R. 1, FB, and subsequently in (1880) I. L. R. 5 Cal. 776 — L. R. 7 Ind. App. 115. It is of interest that F. W. Ellis, who was not a Bengal civil servant, believed that a female lost property already vested in her by reason of her unchastity, whereas H. T. Colebrooke, who was a Bengal civil servant and, equally with Ellis, a contemporary of the period in which the MNT claimed attention, was against such divesting. The author evidently made his choice between two possible indigenous view-points.
 
23) Kane, op. cit., Ill, 708-711. B. D. Sirvya, Hindu Woman’s Estate (Calcutta, 1913).
 
24) Kane, op. cit.. Ill, 748. The sister’s son is an heir at that law. The sister was a remote heir in Bombay and Madras (ibid., 748), but this can have had no bearing on the MNT.
 
25) For which see Kane, op. cit.. III, 736-742. The leading exposition is at R. Sarvadhikari, Principles of the Hindu Lew of Inheritance, 2nd. edn. (Madras, 1922), lecture XIV.
 
26) This is flatly contrary to the Dayabhaga, see there XI, v, 9. It will he remembered that Raghunandana and other jurists of the Bengal school did not depart from the Dayabhaga propositions in such radical respects. Kane, op. cit., III, 739.
 
26a) A very vague analogy could somehow be sought with Katyayana's last verse on the subject, also Yajnavalkya II. 145, but commentators do not take the texts in this sense in view of the majority of texts: Jha, II, 572, 576.
 
27) The MNT emphatically explains a conception of inheritance totally foreign to Hindu law, yet congruent with English notions of descent of land. These were peculiar even in Europe. The basic doctrine was haereditas nunquam ascendit. The propositus might die leaving a feudum maternum and/or a feudum paternum, Thus if the propositus died without issue of his own it must pass through the intervening ancestor to the issue of that ancestor who was last seised (legally possessed) of that feudum. Thus an elder brother can succeed to a nephew, though the nephew’s father could next take, by succession to his own brother. The principles are set out very briefly in W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, II, 208 ff. (the pagination agrees in the numerous editions of this standard work which was certainly known in Bengal at all relevant times), Blackstone will be cited constantly below because he was known in Bengal: but for the purposes of the present reference, the reader may compare the language of the MNT with the careful and clear exposition of the English law of descent of land at F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law, 2nd. edn. (Cambridge, 1952), II, 260-307. Incidentally we note a characteristic of the MNT. The English law totally excluded half-blood from succession to land. We have seen that the MNT classed half-blood and full-blood together. His great fondness for the scheme of seeking the heir through the ancestor, as if the propositus’ heir were the ancestor’s heir, which is the essence of the English system as at that time, did not commit him to accept all the consequences of this. So elsewhere an English rule appears, but not with all its technicalities, refinements or concomitants; the rules appear rather eclectically and sporadically.
 
28) Blackstone, op. cit., II, 216 f (as to land the representative of the male took all by primogeniture); as to chattels, ibid., 515-517 (a rule like that of the MNT).  

29) Kane, op. cit, III, 212, refers to Gautama’s and Manu's rules on distribution of booty. Distribution of booty brought by robbers is dealt with by Brihaspati and Katyayana (foll. by the Sukraniti) discused by R. C. Hazra at Our Merit, vol. 11, pt. 2 (1963), pp. 96-8.
 
30) The basic difference between this and the sastra is not the figures as such, but the statement in terms of an annual interest. For information see R. S. Sharma, “Usury in early mediaeval India (A. D. 400-1200)," C.S.S.H., vol. 8, no. 1 (1965), 56-77. Derrett, at Z.V.R., vol. 65, pt. 2 (1963), at p. 181, shows that Jagannatha Tarkapanchanana testified to 30 per cent as the usual interest on grain, and states that 25 per cent has been evidenced in mediaeval and modem times. The MNT is a piece of such evidence.
 
31) The sastric provisions on the number of witnesses required are summarised at Kane, op. cit., III, 330-332, The texts require three witnesses. Brihaspati says that there may be nine, seven, five, four or three, or even two if these are learned Brahmins. But Visnu and Brihaspati are in conflict with Yajnavalkya, Visnu (elsewhere), Narada, and Manu (VIII. 77) on the question of a single witness. Vyasa allows a single witness, and the majority are in favour of a single witness if he is especially or generally qualified. Thus the MNT is against the current in requiring two witnesses. But the English ecclesiastical courts required two witnesses for full proof.
 
32) The statute of 2 Geo. II., c. 25 was believed to be applicable in Calcutta (by the Supreme Court), wrongly. Nandakumar was hanged for forgery within that statute. A summary of the position is given at Derrett, “Nandakumar's Forgery,” English Historical Review, April, 1960, at pp. 23011. The death-penalty for forgery was entirely un-Indian, and the MNT certainly does not adopt it. Nandakumar’s trial took place in 1775, and reaction against the law set in soon afterwards. The Act itself was doubted applicable in R. v. Collipersaud (1786) Morton 357, 1 I. D. (O. S.), 1110.
 
33) The Sastric law on maintenance is summarised at Kane, op. cit.. Ill, 803-804. It bears little resemblance to this list. The personal legal obligation extended to the minor son, the wife, and the aged parents. The concubine certainly had no legal right to sue for maintenance; nor either pair of grandparents. The illegitimate son’s right depended on his being a dasi-putra, which is a restricted category of illegitimate son. Kane, ibid., 808.
 
34) The words kunda and golaka refer to special classes of illegitimate children. The word for ‘bastard’ is jaraja, literally “born of an adulterer."
 
35) mulam va tad-upasvatvam yatha-sankalpam Ambike
svayam va tat pratinidhir dharmartham viniyojayet.
 
The verse does not sound sastric. The principle was that the corpus or property deriving from it (upasvatva [literally “inferior property"] is a strange word possibly meaning here “profit”, instead of the correct word aya), should be employed (viniyojayet seems to translate literally “employ”, or perhaps rather “apply”) by the man himself (the dedicator) or his deputy (pratinidhi means “substitute”, “deputy”, instead of the technical term for “trustee”, which was the [less general] Bengali shebayat ) according to the intention (sankalpa is correct for “intention , but rather in the sense of the law of charities, intention of the founder, than in its true sense of proposition by dedicator prior to religious dedication) for the purposes of dharma (righteousness). This sounds like an Anglo-Indian jurists notion of what the Hindu law of charities should be.
 
36) The sastric material is thoroughly set out at Jha, II, 84-108 Kane, op. cit., III, 610 ff. The persons normally excluded were impotent men, outcastes, those born blind or deaf, the insane, idiots, the dumb or those deficient in an organ or sense. It is curious that the killer is not explicitly excluded by any Hindu law text, though he is inferentially excluded, a point which Anglo-Indian judges have missed. Anglo-Hindu law naturally excluded the killer. He appears expressly at MNT XII. 103. At verse 102 the author would exclude even those who "lift the hand" against any senior. Mother, father, guru (which can mean teacher or senior), paternal and maternal grandparents are mentioned.
 
37) According to the sastra the finder is entitled to a quarter and the king to three-quarters, where the true owner does not claim the property. Kane, op. cit., III, 176. In treasure the king normally took five-sixths, the finder one-sixth. J. W. Spellman, "Ownership of treasure trove in ancient Indian polity.” J. Num. S. Ind. 23 (1901), 133-136.
 
38) See Jha, I, 159-163. The rule about feeding pledged animals is  nowhere found, however. It is common sense.
 
39) See p. 139 n. 4 above.
 
40) A contemporary authority for this is difficult to trace, since the old law has been codified in the Sale of Goods Act, 1893 ( Halsbury's Laws of England, 3rd edn., vol. 34, §§ 74, 77). But this common-sense rule must have existed in the 18th century. The period of one year stated in the MNT looks like the author’s invention. ,
 
41) Neither here nor in the previous rule can a counterpart be found in the Hindu law of sale, which is expounded conveniently in Jagannatha's Digest (Colebrooke, Digest of Hindu Law vol. I). because the general principles of sale are not set out in the smriti-texts. The topic "sale without ownership”, as its title suggests, does not deal with breaches of any warranty other than that of title. Periods of rescission were certainly allowed, precisely to cope with latent defects: Kane, op. cit ., III, 490-491. But the general period is ten days, not one year!
 
42) Somersett’s case. Loft’s Reports 1 (see Blackstone, op. cit., I, 425) was decided by Lord Mansfield in 1772: England did not know the status of slavery and an American’s slave was automatically freed by being brought to England. The efforts on the part of English officials and others in Bengal to persuade the indigenous jurists to eliminate slavery from their own laws are discussed and illustrated in Dr. A. K. Chattopadhyay’s doctoral thesis on Slavery in Bengal (London, 1963).
 
43) Blackstone, op. cit, II, 447. No such rules appear in the sastra.
 
44) Islamic law sets much longer periods. The English rule is that a child is a bastard if born before marriage or so long after the death of the husband that by the usual course of gestation, he could not have been begotten by him. The law is not exact as to the days. The ancient English land law knew a period of 40 weeks for the purpose of allowing a female to give birth to a legitimate heir who would divest the heir presumptive: Blackstone, I, 456. R. Burn, Justice of the Peace, tit. Bastards.
 
45) Cf. Blackstone, IV, 182, 191. This distinction is not on the surface of the sastric rules: Kane, op. cit.. III, 513 ff. General rules would imply it.
 
46) Suicide was not necessarily a crime at Hindu law: on the contrary many sorts of suicide were meritorious. See the concept of committing a felony against oneself at Blackstone, IV, 189-190; M. Hale, History of the Pleas of the Crown, I, 412.
 
47) The sastra limits the discussion to the problem of the atatayin (desperado, assailant): Kane, III, 517. It was not settled upon the mere footing of self-defence. In English law duelling was murder, if the blood had had time to cool: but in practice the law winked at it. Blackstone, IV, 199. Burn, J. P., tit. Homicide, §. 5. Self-defence is a defence to a charge of murder: Blackstone, ibid., 183-4.
 
48) For High Treason, etc., see Blackstone IV, 81-2. Highwaymen are dealt with at ibid., 242 ff. The statute especially concerning them is that of 4 W. III, c. 8. Burn, J. F., tit. Robbery, §. 7. Disaffection amongst troops: the crime of incitement was given statutory shape in the statute 37 Geo. 3, c. 70 (1797), but the items listed in the MNT can be traced back to the statute of 25 E. 3, st. 5, c. 2 (de proditionibus) (1352) which is traced forward through Tudor, Stuart, and later legislation by M. Hale (above), I, chh. 14, 15, and pp. 339-341. Mann IX. 232, 275 may be compared.
 
49) Burn, J. P., tit Libel; Blackstone, III, 125 ff.
 
50) Blackstone, III, 303, 310. G. Crompton, Practice Common-placed... (London, 1780) I, 303-308 (judgement by confession). G. Gilbert, Law of Evidence, 4th edn. (London, 1777), 137 (“The voluntary confession of the party is the best evidence.")
 
51) Burn, J.P,, tit. Alehouses, § 11, 12. Blackstone, IV, 64.
 
52) Blackstone, IV, 75, 203.
 
53) The prohibited degrees are set out in the Book of Common Prayer which had Parliamentary authority (13 & 14 Ch. II, c. 4). Definition was therefore no problem. On the court's powers see R. Bum, Ecclesiastical Law, 3rd edn. (London 1775), II, 362, 439. Blackstone, I, 434-5, IV. 65. The death penalty for incest was a short-lived innovation of the Commonwealth period.
 
53a) Compare Manu XI. 171-2 (an illustrative list).
 
54) The texts and their want of clarity on this subject (the bride within the prohibited degrees for marriage being kept as a quasi-servant in the house) are discussed at length by Dr. S. K. Tewari in his doctoral thesis (London, Ph. D., 1965). The subject of sapindaship is handled by Kane, op. cit., II, 452 ff. At pp. 497-499 the consequences of a void marriage are dealt with. The concept of nullity in the modem sense was missing. The penis was to be cut off for intercourse with close relations and others: Narada cited by Kane, II, 533.
 
55) For the English law on prohibited degrees and impotence reference should be made to Burn, Eccl. L. (cited above). The position in western canon law is sufficiently well known. At Hindu law in very ancient times a woman might leave an impotent husband and take another husband, but it is doubtful whether the second husband was husband in the dharma- sastra sense, he may have been merely a de facto husband. But if the wife were still a kanya (maiden) she could theoretically undergo the religious marriage ceremony again: Kane, II, 609 ff.
 
56) Blackstone, IV, 215-216. According to Manu (XI. 174-5) sodomy, whether with a male or a female, was a ground only for penance. The Vivadarnava-setu recommended the death penalty for bestiality if the offender were a Sudra. A sexual offence without violence is normally treated
by the sastra as matter for penance, but cf. Ramay., Kishk. XVIII. 20 f.
 
57) Blackstone, IV, 210 ff. Rape was certainly a crime according to sastra, but the death penalty would be reserved for offenders of low caste. Kane III, 532.
 
57a) He is to be gently burnt in the hand: Blackstone, IV. 191-2. The sastra only allowed such killings when the ends of justice could not be met by more regular means.
 
57b) See the case I Sid. 168 cited at Blackstone, IV, 65, n. 12.
 
58) See p. 148 n. 19 above.
 
58a) See J. F. Stephen, The Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey, 2 vols. (London, 1885). B. N. Pandey, Sir Elijah Impey in India ... (London, 1967).
 
59) Proceedings of the Governor-General-in-Council, Revenue Dept., Fort William, 9th Aug. 1776. Cited by Phanindra Nath Banerjee, Thesis (unpubl.), D. Phil., Calcutta, 1965.
 
60) Ibid., 1st Nov. 1775 (same thesis, p. 78).
 
60a) See p. 165 n. 58a above.
 
61) The abortive Plan of January-March 1776, on which the bibliography is supplied at C.S.S.H., vol. 4, 1961, p. 52.
 
62) T. K. Banerjee, Background to Indian Criminal Law (Calcutta, Orient Longmans, 1963).
 
63) Derrett, "Nandakumar’s Forgery," cited p. 157 n. 32 above.
 
63a) T. C. Morton’s Decisions of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal... 1774-1841, 2nd. edn. by W. A. Montriou (Calcutta, 1851), at 1. Ind. Dec. (reprint) (O. S.), 390 ff., 396.
 
64) The suspicions about the Dattaka Chandrika are the most celebrated example: Golap Chandra Sarkar Sastri, Treatise on Hindu Law, 3rd. edn. (1907), 30. W. H. Macnaghten speaks of the "venality of pandits at his Principles and Precedents of Hindu Law ..., vol. I (Calcutta. 1829). iv-v. His confidence may be due to a specific incident: see Nundram v. Kashee Pandee (1822) 3 Sel. Rep., 232 referred to at (1869) 3 Beng. L. R., 41.
 
65) J. W. Kaye, Christianity in India (London, 1859); J. C. Marshman, The Life and Times of Carey ... (London, 1859). Missionary endeavour after the turn of the century was chiefly protestant and narrowly protestant at that. The author of the MNT had information deriving ultimately if not directly from a Roman Catholic source (another reason why Rammohun Roy, who was affected towards Socinianism, could not have been the author).
 
66) The best work is S. D. Collet, Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy (London. 1900), 3rd. ed., D. K. Biswas and P. C. Ganguli (Calcutta, 1982). Equally valuable is M. Carpenter, The Last Days in England of the Rajah Rammohun Roy (London/Calcutta, 1866). A work entitled Raja Ram Mohun Roy, his Life, Writings and Speeches was published by Natesan & Co., Madras (?1925). D. N. Ganguli, Memoir of Rajah Ram Mohun Roy (Calcutta, 1884); M. C. Parekh, Rajarshi Ram Mohan Roy (Rajkot, 1927) and R. N. Samaddar, Raja Ram Mohun Roy (Calcutta, 1911) are minor works. S. N. Hay, Dialogue between a Theist and an Idolater ( Calcutta, 1964), introduction, is minor in size but important for our purposes. R. Chanda and J. K. Majumdar, Selections from Official Letters and Documents Relating to the Life of Raja Rammohun Roy, I (1791-1830) (Calcutta, 1938) have contributions which will be cited below under F. M. I. A short appreciation appeared in A Ram Mohun Roy Symposium (Reprinted from “The Queen") (Calcutta, 1896). U. Ball, Rammohan Roy: a study ... (Calcutta, 1933).
 
67) Introduction to the Text, p. vii. The rumour is traced in Collet, op. cit., p. 115. Collet’s work appeared not too late to have warned Avalon against believing the malicious story. The present writer, supposing that Avalon, as a Calcutta judge, must have verified his facts, incautiously believed him at the paper cited above, p. 139 n. 4.
 
68) M. Carpenter, 254. Raja Ram, p. 57. pt. 2, 65.
 
69) Pt. Sivanatha Sastri, in F.M.I., p. 11.  
 
69a) Translation of the Ishopanishad, in J. C. Ghose’ edition of the English Works, I, 73 ff. This corresponds to Vrajendranatha Vandyopadhyaya and Sajanikanta Dasa, edd., Rama-mohangranthabali (Sanskrit and Bengali text) (Calcutta, 1943—1952), pt 1, p. 196. This collection is referred to below as “Bengali Works”. The translation given in the English version is different from the translation of the same verse cited at Brahmunical Magazine ... (Calcutta, 1821), no. 2, p. 186, corresponding to Bengali Works , pt. 5, p. 14. The citation has not been identified. In 1816-17 he cited XIV. 202 at p. 38 of Bengali Works, pt. 2, the original work being entitled Utsavananda Vidyavayiser sahit Vichar.
 
70) Ishopanishad, p, 73.
 
71) A Second Defence of the Monotheistical System of the Veds, J. C. Ghose ed., p. 130. The passages cited are in order XIV 113, 119.
 
71a) Dialogue between a Theist ... (ed. Hay), pp. 150/1. The passage cited is XIV. 118.
 
72) The Brahmunical Magazine . .., no. 2, J. C. Ghose, ed., 186, 190. In the 1906 edition this appears at pp. 161-2. The citation is untraced (above, n. 69 a).
 
72a) Answers to Four Questions, Chari Prasna Uttar; Bengali Works, pt 6, pp. 19-20. Saiva marriage passage.
 
73) A Translation into English of a Sunsknt Tract inculcating the Divine Worship ..., J. C. Ghose ed.. pp. 99-100. This is the passage in the original entitled Gayatrya Brahropasanavidhanam, Bengal, Works, pt. 4 p. 40. In English the source is called Muha Nirvan Tuntru, in Skt. Mahanirvana-prade tantre. The eleven verses cited do not appear in the MNT as we have it. Were they interpolated in R.M.R.'s copy?
 
73a) Brahmopasana, also in the Bengali Works pt 4, pp. 52-3. The passage III. 59-63 is called Tantroktastava. 63 is altered and other portions are slightly varied.
 
74) The Universal Religion. Religious Instructions founded on Sacred Authorities, J. C. Ghose, ed., p. 162. In the Bengali version (Bengali Works, pt 4, p. 71) the work is called Anusthan. The citations are in order III. 9 and II. 45. Slight but signification changes are made in the text of each, compared with Avalon’s and Jivananda's text.
 
75) J.C. Ghose (1901), II. 190 f. n. The same caution is apparent in Dialogue (ed. Hay), pp. 115-117. The test should have ruled out the MNT, but did not.
 
76) Reported in D. N. Ganguli, Memoir (1884).
 
77) No. 8 of the Sambad Kaumudi, ed, Harihar Datta, as it would appear from Ramananda Chatterjee in F.M.I., pt, 2, 71 ff., at 75. The Answers to Four Questions, (Q. 4) undoubtedly has the point.
 
78) English Works (1901), 11, 113-192. There were three works, Translation of an Conference ... (1818), Second Conference ... (1820), Abstract of the Arguments ... (1830).
 
79) X. 79, 80, cited by U. Thakur, The History of Suicide in India (Delhi, 1963), 140. It is curious that the Raja does not rely specifically on this. The explanation seems to be that as in the same context he abuses those who rely on spurious tantras, and warns readers against texts which have no solid traditional foundation, he found it more discreet not to drag in a work which he might securely rely upon in other contexts. But this caution did not operate in the Dialogue, where as we have seen he speaks of false scriptures and cites the MNT.
 
80) Pt- Sitanath Tattvabhushan, F.M.I., pt. 2, 377. For the Brahma Samaj see G. S. Leonard, History of the Brahmo Samaj (Calcutta, 1879), Sivanatha Sastri, History of the Brahmo Samaj (Calcutta, 1911).
 
81) His Sanskrit was very good. All the works on Sati emphasise his grasp of law, likewise his Brief Remarks regarding ...the Ancient Right of Females according to the Hindoo Law of Inheritance (1822); Essay on the Rights of Hindoos over Ancestral Property ... (1830).
 
82) The undated story is told by Macnaghten at his Principles and Precedents of Moohummudan Law... (Calcutta, 1825), xvii—xiv (see Z.V.R. vol. 63, p. 76, n. 9). Macnaghten comments on the '‘interminable and troubled ocean of Hindoo jurisprudence”, and advises compulsory restriction of citation to "works of notorious authority". This was in effect done. The MNT is not cited by the pandits in the opinions published in Dharmasastriya- vyavastha-samgraha (Allahabad, 1957) and belonging to the years 1824 to 1836.
 
82a) Shri Audh Behari Singh v. Gajadhar Jaipuria [1955] Supreme Ct. Rep. 70, 74, per B. K. Mukherjea, J.
 
82b) For a concise summary of the three views of Rammohun's religion see Muhammad Mohar Ali, The Bengali Reaction to Christian Missionary Activities 1833-1857 (Mehrub, Chittagong, 1965), 9, n. 3. A helpful appreciation is S. N. Hay, "Western and indigenous elements in modem Indian thought: the case of Rammohun Roy”, in M. B. Jansen, ed„ Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization (Princeton, 1965), pp. 311-328.
 
82c) Nareschandra Sen-Gupta, at F.M.I., 319-28, esp. 325-6. The author had no information of actual existence of Shaiva marriages, which we may conclude may have been a speculative invention of the author of the MNT.
 
83) Macnaghten, cited above, p. 172 n. 82.
 
84) “Questions and Answers on the Judicial System of India in Exposition of the Practical Operation of the Judicial and Revenue Systems of India (1832).
 
85) His translation of XI. 97. XII. 95-6 is also inaccurate. XII. 78 is  too strong. XII. 120 may be inaccurate. At 126 he gives "employer”, when  “principal” would have been correct.
 
85a) Bhupati Nath Smrititirtha v. Ram Lai Maitra (1909) I.L.R. 37 Cal. 128, at pp. 137, 157. At the first place the translation is made direct from the Sanskrit; at the second Mookerjee, J. appears to have confused the reference. The text was almost certainly cited by that authority on Hindu Law, Babu Golapchandra Sarkar Sastri, who appeared for the respondents.
 
86) The comments on Avalon's work in M. Winternitz's "Die Tantras und die Religion der Saktas", Ostas. Z. 1916, no. 3 (see Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta, 3rd edn., 1929, 4th edn., 1951, ch5) is appreciative, but the present writer prefers the approach of J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India (N.Y. 1919), 305. Kane was not taken in by Avalon. Avalon's pretence that he had seen a copy of the complete MNT, containing the second part, about 500 years old in the possession of a Nepalese pandit (see his translation introd., p. viii, also at Shakti and Shakta, p. 124) is an insult to the reader's intelligence. There was nothing to prevent his making a copy of all the text for his own use; that he did not do so suggests that the whole story is a fabrication of an unbalanced mind. A. Bharati (n. 1 above) is polite to Avalon, whose "work can hardly stand scholarly scrutiny", at p. 9.
 
87. V. C. Gopalratnam, A Century Completed (A History of the Madras High Court) 1862-1962 (Madras, 1962), 149-153; Madras High Court 1862-1962 Centenary Volume (1962), I, 36, 44-5, 47, 75, II, 79, 88. A portrait appears opp. p. xxviii of the Madras Law Journal Golden Jubilee No., 1941.
 
88) References in the High Court, Madras, 8th Dec. 1924, Hindu Law Journal, vol. 7, pt. 6 (Dec. 1924), pp. 71-78. He is mentioned significantly by C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyar (who knew him) at [1962] 2 Mad. L. J., Journal, p. 4.
 
89) P. S. Sivaswami Aiyar, “The Madras Law Journal: its early years," Madras Law Journal Golden Jubilee Number, 1941, p. 4.
 
90) (1907) 17 Mad. L. J., Journal, 441-4. So Gopalratnam (above); so Kumaraswami Sastriar, J., at H.L.J., vol. 7 (cited above).
 
91) See T. Sitharama Chetty v. Sir S. Suhramama Iyer (1915) I.L.R. 39 Mad 700. His knowledge of Hindu law and custom in relation to religious endowments is well, and copiously, illustrated at Nallayappa v. Ambalavana (1903) 27 Mad. 465 F. D., 473-4.
 
91a) “An esoteric organization in India (in four parts), The Theosophist,  vol. 36, pt. 2, pp. 407, 499, 614; vol. 37, pt. 1, pp. 196-206 (the  material was advertised for sale c/o one Ramalinga Mudali, Beach House,  Mylapore). He wrote on the (imaginary) “Trimurtis and the Seven Rays",  ibid., vol. 38, pt. 2, pp. 314-322; and “Some parallel thoughts from Theosophy  and Shuddha Dharma Mandala”, ibid., vol. 38 (1917), pt. 2, pp.  625-634; vol. 39 (1917), pp. 52-60 (the Mandala already had "a large  body of literature in its custody” and 200 members (?)) For this bibliographical  information and reminiscences of Dr. Besant's relations with Sir  Subramania thanks are owed to Mr. P. M. Advani (Adyar).  
 
92) See MNT I, 37, 60, 69. Halhed found his Bengali contemporaries  pretending that the sastra was compiled about the beginning of the Kali  Yuga (Gentoo Code, p. XXXVIII). The Malayalam Vyavaharamala was  alleged to have been composed at the same period, though its contents  plainly belong to recent centuries. Enquiries about it were made in the  first decade of last century.
 
93) Article cited at n. 3 above, at pp. 90 ff.