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Gustav Gebhard
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/19/20

Consul Gustav Gebhard (August 18, 1828, at Elberfeld to May 6, 1900 in Berlin) was a German Theosophist whose home was frequently visited by H. P. Blavatsky, Col. Olcott, and others.

See also Gebhard Family.

Personal life

Gustav Gebhard was the eldest son of Franz-Joseph Gebhard, President of the Board of Trade, at Elberfeld, Germany.

He owned a silk manufacturing factory in his native city, was co-founder of the German Bank and of the Bergisch-Märkische Bank, and Persian Consul. He acquired much of his business experience travelling abroad, lived in Paris and London, and made trips to the U.S.A., Constantinople and Asia Minor. On his first journey to America, he met in New York Mary L’Estrange whom he married on September 4, 1852.[1] The newly-married couple settled in Elberfeld, Germany, where their seven children were eventually born.[2]

Noted as a linguist, he spoke French and English without accent. A far-sighted business-man, he was also known for his warm hospitality, broad-mindedness, and readiness to help others, even when their views differed from his own.

Involvement with Theosophical Society

On July 27, 1884, the Germania Theosophical Society was organized at his home at Elberfeld, Platzhoffstrasse 12, with Dr. Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden as President, his wife Mary as Vice-President, and his son Franz Gebhard as Corresponding Secretary. All the members of the Gebhard family, except their daughter, joined the Theosophical Society.

On August 17, H. P. Blavatsky, Col. Olcott, Mohini Chatterjee and Babaji, who were in Europe, went to Elberfeld and stayed with the Gebhards until October. During this time their home became the center of Theosophical activities. While Gustav was of course the official host during these visits, the most dynamic personality of the household was Mary, who combined refinement and culture with rare capacities for occult studies. On August 25, 1884, Gustav received a letter from Master K.H.

A couple of years later, in May and June, 1886, Mme. Blavatsky stayed with the Gebhards again.

Online resources

• A Letter from Mahatma Koot Hoomi to Gustav Gebhard at Blavatsky Archives Online.

Notes

1. "Mary L'Estrange" in the New York City, Compiled Marriage Index, 1600s-1800s. This source gives the date as September 8.
2. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 19898), 434.

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Mary Gebhard
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/20/20


Mary Gebhard

Frau Mary Gebhard (née L’Estrangge) (1832 - December 15, 1892) was the wife of Consul Gustav Gebhard, and an active member of the Theosophical Society. The first Theosophical Lodge in Germany, the Germania Theosophical Society, was formed and met in her house, and H. P. Blavatsky stayed with her on two occasions. She received a few letters from the Masters of Wisdom and saw the astral form of Master M.

See also Gebhard Family.

Early Life

Mary was the only daughter of the British Major Thomas L’Estrange (of the 36th Reg.), who belonged to the Protestant branch of this old family, descending from Rollo, First Duke of Normandy. He had married a Catholic Irish lady, Sarah Egan, which brought about strained relations with his family. Mary never met any relatives on her father’s side. At the conclusion of the Spanish campaign against Napoleon, her father had gone to Paris, where Mary was educated at the Sacré Coeur, and presented at the Court. Having lost his property, her father left for Canada, where he bought some land near Montreal. After his death in 1850, her mother sold the land and went to the U.S.A. with Mary.[1]

She met Gustav Gebhard in New York, on his first journey to America, and married him on September 4, 1852, the ceremony being performed according to both the Catholic and the Protestant rites.[2] The newly-married couple settled in Elberfeld, Germany. They eventually formed a family of seven children.

Theosophical work

Mary Gebhard was not too happy living in a small town. Owing to the many business trips of her husband, she was left very much to herself. She had an inborn inclination towards philosophical and occult subjects, and studied Hebrew with a clergyman, to become fitted for independent research in the Kabbalah. She made the acquaintance of the Abbé Alphonse Louis Constant, who, under his pseudonym of Éliphas Lévi, wrote well-known occult works, and remained his pupil until his death in 1875. She visited him several times in Paris, and he visited the Gebhards twice in Elberfeld.[3]

After the death of Éliphas Lévi, Mary sought other occult connections. She heard of the Theosophical Society, and after an exchange of letters with Col. Olcott, became a member of the Society on February 10, 1883.[4]

In one of his letters of 1883, Master K.H. wrote about her:

Hers is a genuine, sterling nature; she is a born Occultist in her intuitions and I have made a few experiments with her — though it is rather M.'s duty than my own.[5]

On April 7, 1884, while in a meeting of the London Lodge, she saw the astral form of Master M. She later reported:

On the 7th of April last, being, at a meeting of the Theosophical Society at Mr. Finch’s rooms, Lincoln’s Inn, I had a vision, in which I saw the Mahatma M. At the moment I was listening attentively to Colonel Olcott’s opening speech to the Society. I saw standing on my right side, a little in front, a very tall, majestic-looking person, whom I immediately recognised to be the Mahatma, from a picture I had seen of him in Mr. Sinnett’s possession. He was not clad in white, but it seemed to me to be some dark material with coloured stripes, which was wound round his form. The vision lasted only a few seconds. As far as I could learn, the only persons besides myself who had seen the Mahatma were Colonel Olcott, Mr. Mohini, and, of course, Madame Blavatsky.[6]

On July 27, 1884, the Germania Theosophical Society was organized at their home at Elberfeld, Platzhoffstrasse 12, with Dr. Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden as President, Mary as Vice-President, and Franz Gebhard as Corresponding Secretary. All the members of the Gebhard family, except their daughter, joined the Theosophical Society.

On August 17, H. P. Blavatsky, Col. Olcott, Mohini Chatterjee and Babaji, who were in Europe, went to Elberfeld and stayed with the Gebhards until October. During this time their home became the center of Theosophical activities. While Consul Gustav Gebhard was of course the official host during these visits, the most dynamic personality of the household was Mary, who combined refinement and culture with rare capacities for occult studies.

Later that month, on August 30th, Mahatma Morya wrote a letter to Mrs. Gebhard challenging her to accept her destiny. It was published as Letter 72 in Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom Second Series. This is not the first letter she received. There were at least two related to Laura C. Holloway in 1882. Those have been published as Letter 25 and Letter 26 in Mrs. Holloway and the Mahatmas. Mrs. Gebhard may have received additional letters that remained private.

A couple of years later, in May and June, 1886, Mme. Blavatsky stayed with the Gebhards again.

Later years

Her sons Hermann and Walther were identical twins, and they both shot themselves: Hermann on March 16, 1881, and Walther on April 10, 1886. Regarding the death of the latter, Mme. Blavatsky wrote the following to Babaji:

ON Saturday — April the 10th, Walter Gebhard was found dead in his bed, having shot himself without any reason and no cause, his things packed up and ready to start home. The fiends of rage, of vindictiveness, malice, and hatred let loose by you in their home have fastened on the poor boy you boasted to influence so forcibly, and have done their work. It is not his twin brother who committed suicide five years ago who influenced him. Herman's astral form is in Deva Chan, sleeping to the day his natural death would have summoned him. It is a host of the Pisachas of murder and post mortem criminal impulses who, copying from the record in the astral light around him of his brother's kind of death, led him to shoot himself during a state of somnambulic unconsciousness and irresponsibility. He is the first victim of your wicked father's son, and your grandmother's worthy grand-son.[7]

Mary's vital strength was sapped as a result of the suicide of both of her twin-sons. After several strokes, she passed away on December 15, 1892. Her remains were cremated.

Notes

1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 19898), 434.
2. "Mary L'Estrange" in the New York City, Compiled Marriage Index, 1600s-1800s. This source gives the date as September 8.
3. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 19898), 434.
4. Theosophical Society General Membership Register, 1875-1942 at http://tsmembers.org/. See book 1, entry 1647 (website file: 1A/51).</
5. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 117 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 403.
6. A Casebook of Encounters with the Theosophical Mahatmas Case 43, compiled and edited by Daniel H. Caldwell
7. A. Trevor Barker, The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett Letter No. 152, (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1973), ???.

Online resources

Articles

• Mary Gebhard at Theosopedia.
• The Gebhard family published in the Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI
• A Short Letter from Mahatma Koot Hoomi to Mary Gebhard published by Blavatsky Study Center.

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Gebhard Family
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/20/20

The German Family played an important role in the history of the Theosophical Society. According to Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett:

Gebhard Family, a German family living in Elberfeld, quite prominent in the early history of the TS in Europe. The family consisted of Gustav Gebhard, Mme. M. Gebhard, and sons Franz and Arthur. For full description see biographical sketch by Boris de Zirkoff in HPB VI: 434 and D, p. 592. ML index; SH index. [1]

According to the Collected Writings vol. VI:

The Gebhard Family had six sons and one daughter:

1. Franz Gustav: b. July 1, 1853; d. April 29, 1940. Married Aline Jordan, by whom he had three daughters (no issue), and a son, Kurt Alfred Thomas (b. June 27, 1881), who died as lieutenant in France, 1914. His son, Dr. Torsten Friedrich Franz (b. March 12, 1909), is at present an art-historian in Münich, and is unmarried.

2. Fritz: b. July 15, 1854; d. July 6, 1855.

3. Arthur Henry Paisley: b. Dec. 29, 1885 (sic, 1855); d. at Newton-Abbot, England, Oct. 11, 1944. After an earlier marriage, he married a widow, Marie-Josephe von Hoesch, née von Carlowitz (b. Jan. 7, 1888; now residing in Germany), by whom he had two sons: Rollo, b. July 7, 1921, married to Hildegard Freyer (no issue); and Vidar Arthur Eward, b. Oct. 2, 1928, when his father was already 73 years of age. In 1913, Arthur Gebhard added officially to his own name that of his mother’s family, and became known as Gebhard-L’Estrange. He took out American citizenship in Boston, 1878. For some 25 years, he represented his father’s factory in New York, and was during part of that time on close friendly terms with Mohini M. Chatterjee and William Quan Judge, with whom he was in partnership for a while, publishing The Path magazine. He took active part in the Theosophical Movement, lecturing on Oriental philosophy. He frequently came to Europe to visit his relatives as well as H.P.B., and was one of the first patrons of Wagner’s musical dramas, at Bayreuth, Bavaria, recognizing their occult significance.

At one time, he fell under the influence of Mohini M. Chatterjee, who was then in a very critical mood, and drew up in collaboration with him what H.P.B. called a “Manifesto,” entitled, “A Few Words on The Theosophical Organization,” which contained a rather severe criticism of Col. Olcott for alleged despotism. H.P.B. wrote a powerful reply, embodying an outspoken defense of him, and a statement on the basic platform of the T.S. and its policies. For lack of any definite title, it has been called at some later date, “The Original Programme of The Theosophical Society,” which it unquestionably represents. Neither the challenging “Manifesto” nor H.P.B.’s Reply were published at the time. They were later issued in booklet form, with an Introduction by C. Jinarâjadâsa (Adyar: Vol. VII of the present Series), together with all pertinent historical data which form their background. As far as is known, this little “tempest in a tea-pot” eventually blew itself out, and nothing more was heard of it.

Much later in life, namely, in 1940, Arthur Gebhard published a little book entitled The Tradition of Silence, in which he paid tribute to H.P.B. and her work.

4. Rudolf Ernst: b. Dec. 31, 1857; d. In 1935. As a friend of T. Subba Row, stayed for a while in India, where he went with Col. Olcott, in October, 1884. His son, Wolfgang, is still living in the U.S.A.

5. Mary: b. Sept. 13, 1859; d. in June, 1944. Married to Paul von Ysselstein, but had no issue.

6 and 7. Hermann and Walther, identical twins, born Oct. 16, 1866. Both shot themselves: Hermann on March 16, 1881, and Walther on April 10, 1886. See in connection with these tragic events, and their occult background and implications, The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky to A.P. Sinnett, pp. 145, 299, 300-301.[2]

Notes

1. George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 231-232.
2. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 19898), 435-436.

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Frederick Eckstein
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/20/20

Of the Lodge of the Blue Star and the group around the enigmatic weaver, nothing further can be said. But the Viennese Theosophists who kept such vigilant watch over their younger brothers in mysticism and who directed them to their chosen guru merit closer attention. Their leading spirit was Friedrich Eckstein, a gray eminence of Viennese cultural life, who published almost none of his occult work but whose private lectures seem to have exercised considerable influence on those -- like Gustav Meyrink -- who heard them. [32]

Friedrich Eckstein was born about 1860, the son of a paper manufacturer near Vienna. His interest in mysticism and the occult began almost as early as was possible for Central Europe. At the age of twenty he met Dr. Oscar Simony, a Dozent at Vienna University, whose speciality was number theory.

Simony was concerned with the possibility of further mathematical dimensions and, accordingly, followed with interest the experiments of Professor Zollner of Leipzig, who postulated a fourth dimension of space. Zollner became ensnared by spiritualism through his keenness to prove the existence of his fourth dimension and interpreted the feats performed by the Spiritualist medium Henry Slade on the basis of spirits operating in this hypothetical area. In 1879 Zollner published the third part of his Scientific Essays embodying his experiments with Slade. The consequent furor naturally concerned Simony, who persuaded his old friend Lazar, Baron Hellenbach (a speculative metaphysician and the leading Austrian spiritualist) to bring Slade to Vienna so that he could test Professor Zollner's conclusions for himself. Hellenbach's proteges were notoriously unsuccessful: the baron had once had to undergo the ignominy of seeing the Archduke Johann unmask the medium Harry Bastian. [33] Simony had no luck with Bastian and little with Slade, who broke control during the seance, although apparently he succeeded temporarily in making a table vanish.

The mathematician -- who was chiefly interested in refuting Zollner's theory of the fourth dimension -- concocted a theory that mediums possessed abnormal muscular development and that the electrical energy in their peculiar muscular contractions could produce the phenomena attributed to the spirits. [34] According to their original project, Slade was to have stayed with Friedrich Eckstein during the period of Simony's experiments, but he refused to come unaccompanied, and as the object of the plan had been to prevent any possibility of confederacy, the scheme was dropped. Eckstein's first encounter with the miraculous was unfortunate. Shortly afterwards he and Simony visited the distinguished British scientist Lord Rayleigh, who was at that time living in Vienna, and recounted their experiences. Rayleigh claimed to have seen Indian ascetics move objects from a distance, and Simony asked how he explained this. Rayleigh answered that it was obviously the work of the spirits, and to the astonished query of his visitors he replied that he believed in spirits because he saw them. [35]

Eckstein determined that he would discover whether there were grounds for such belief and decided to join the newly founded Theosophical Society. He corresponded with Theosophists everywhere and traveled to England, where he met H. P. Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, A. P. Sinnett, and the retinue of Indian members who accompanied the leading Theosophists to Europe on their visit of 1884. He brought back with him a whole library of occult works. Meanwhile, it became clear to him and Simony that in order to test mediums satisfactorily they would have to become experts in sleight-of-hand rather than in esoteric philosophy. The mathematician's interest in the spirits waned after a substantial rebuff dealt his career when he had rashly expressed his misgivings about mediums at the dinner table of an influential Excellenz. Eckstein, on the other hand, although always circumspect in his occult dealings, progressed from primitive spiritualist phenomena to an abiding interest in occult philosophy. He visited H. P. Blavatsky at Ostend not long before her death, and in the early 1890s he went to live for a few months in London to carry out some business in connection with his profession as a chemist. He had a laboratory in the Victoria Docks, was appalled by the British habit of commuting -- he lived in South Kensington -- and was disgusted by bank holidays. At the same time he was closely in contact with Annie Besant and the "esoteric Christian" Edward Maitland; he became particularly friendly with Herbert Burrows and was able to soothe his disturbed nerves with a Theosophical vegetarian picnic near Maidenhead, at which Mohini M. Chaterji gave a talk on the Bhagavad Gita. It was largely through Eckstein's agency that the Vienna Theosophical Society came into existence and it was probably his directing hand that hovered over the Prague Lodge of the Blue Star. [36]

It is of great importance to understand the sort of circles in which Eckstein moved and in which his Theosophy found a ready welcome. With the alteration of time and place, these were very like the artistic coteries of Symbolist Paris, or the similar groups on the fringes of the English Decadence in which the occult revival found its earliest supporters. Instead of Baudelaire, however, the Grand Master of the idealistic Underground in the German-speaking countries was quite naturally Richard Wagner. The composer-playwright's handling of myth coincided with "esoteric" interpretations favored by the occultists. [37] His early setting of the occultist Bulwer Lytton's novel Rienzi gave an obvious clue to budding mystics. In 1880, just at the time when Eckstein became interested in spiritualism and belonged to the central clique of the Viennese idealists, the Bayreuth Master wrote an essay entitled Religion and Art which had the profoundest effect on the Progressive youth which sat at his feet, and particularly on Eckstein's immediate circle. [38]

Religion and Art is in many ways the synthesis of all the goals of the Progressive Underground in the period before the First World War. Wagner called for Art's return to its high vocation of symbolically expressing divine truth, and he announced his program to redeem the world from materialism by the practice of symbolically conceived music. He also praised the ecstatic rites of the American Shakers and gave expression to the underlying anxiety which afflicted many of his readers. "The deepest basis of every true religion we see now in the knowledge of the transitoriness of the world, and arising from this, the positive instruction to free oneself from it." The composer's vegetarianism and his opposition to vivisection place him directly in the category of the Progressive Underground, and his vision of the coming regeneration of man matched the apocalypses of the greatest enthusiasts. He castigated the hypocrisy rampant among his fellow vegetarians. There were those who "set the basic precondition of the problem of regenerating the human race firmly in view." But "from a few superior members is heard the complaint that their comrades have taken up abstaining from flesh merely from personal consideration of diet, and in no way coupled with it the great ideals of regeneration which they must approach if the organization wants to win power." [39] There was to be a league of noble spirits pledged to redeem mankind from its fall through the achievement of individual salvation. Of such spirits, Friedrich Eckstein was among the most possessed. For the first performance of Parsifal he made the journey to Bayreuth on foot; and there was a legend -- which was not in fact true -- that he had gone in sandals, like Tannhauser. [40]

At the end of the 1870s a favorite rendezvous of Eckstein's group of young Viennese idealists was a vegetarian restaurant on the corner of Wallnerstrasse and Fahnengasse. Here they met in a gas-lit cellar to talk of Pythagoras, the Essenes, the Neo-Platonists, therapeutics, and the evils of flesh eating. "Ever and again there swam before us the vision of Empedocles of a golden age in which the greatest sacrilege for men would be 'To take life and stuff onesself with noble elements.'" The group consisted of a typical collection of Bohemians. Eckstein's description of the scene gives substance to the rumors of his Wagnerian pilgrimage. "It was mostly young people who met there and took part in the collective exchange of views: students, teachers, artists and followers of the most diverse professions. While I myself, like several of my closest friends went summer and winter almost completely clad in linen, according to the theories of Pythagoras, others appeared clothed in hairy garments of natural coloring. And if you add to this that most of us had shoulder-length hair and full beards, our lunch-table might have reminded an unselfconscious spectator not a little of Leonardo's Last Supper." The spiritual descendants of this lunch-table are everywhere. To this circle belonged two later Staatsprasidenten as well as the young Hermann Bahr and the Polish poet Siegfried Lipiner, who was in correspondence with Nietzsche. Victor Adler, the founder of the Social Democratic Party, occasionally came. Gustav Mahler turned up, and Eckstein's future roommate, the composer Hugo Wolf, met the Pythagorean Theosophist at his vegetarian Stammtisch. For the first performance of Parsifal in the summer of 1882, the group met at Bayreuth. In Vienna, another rendezvous was the Cafe Griensteidl on the Michaelerplatz, known locally because of its clientele as Megalomania Cafe. The crowning success of these young irrationalists was their summer colony of the year 1888, when they took the Schloss Bellevue at Grinzing and filled it even fuller with eccentricity than the Cafe Griensteidl. [41]

To the Schloss came the feminist Marie Lang and her husband Edmund (both at the center of Theosophical gatherings and the protectors of Hugo Wolf). Friedrick Eckstein's friend from student days, Rosa Mayreder, who was to become another leading protagonist of women's rights, developed during the summer a friendship with Hugo Wolf that led to their collaboration on the opera Der Corregidor. Other visitors were Carl, Graf zu Leiningen-Billigheim, a young diplomat who had attached himself to Eckstein because of his acquaintance with H. P. Blavatsky, and the dubious Theosophist Franz Hartmann, who received unusual visitors from all parts of the world and had already presumed on Eckstein's hospitality for a whole year immediately after his return from India. Marie Lang cooked vegetarian meals. Wolf composed Lieder. Theosophy was the main topic of conversation. [42]

In Vienna, as in the rest of the world, the more occult aspects of Theosophy -- the elaborate cosmology, the miracles, the letters from Mahatmas -- went hand in hand with the "progressive" in social thought. Indeed, there was a necessary association between all idealistic forms of opposition to that which existed. As Leiningen-Billigheim saw it: "In the middle of the chaotic pattern of pleasure-seeking and covetousness, error, arrogance, self-deception, and cowardice, the idealistic point of view once more arises as a helpful and ultimately victorious force." [43] It is symptomatic of the climate in which he spoke that the title of the essay from which these general observations are taken is "What is Mysticism?" and that it was published in a Theosophical series. Against the common enemy all idealists united; and, some of those bent on restructuring the world would adopt some portion of Theosophy as a concession to their religious impulses. Theosophy was Progressively respectable; often Christianity was not.

It is worth examining some of these associates of Eckstein. Hugo Wolf was a composer of the Wagnerian school; Eckstein, who had private means and musical interests -- he was the continual companion and unofficial private secretary to the aging Bruckner -- offered to finance the publication of Wolf's Lieder. This proved not to be necessary; but the Theosophist and the composer lived together for a period. Wolf's biographer has described their friendship: "Eckstein's knowledge was encyclopaedic: his rooms were lined from floor to ceiling with books and scores. They discussed Parsifal together in relation to German and Spanish mysticism, Palestrina's masses, freemasonry, vegetarianism, and various oriental subjects." After the summer colony at Grinzing, Wolf and Eckstein left once more for Parsifal at Bayreuth on the Wagner-Verein's special train. Together they hunted all the way through Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia for the sources of Berlioz's Hellish language in the Damnation of Faust.

With Hermann Bahr, the leading critical exponent of Expressionist theories, Eckstein maintained a relationship through discussions on metaphysics -- often in a three-handed commerce with Hugo von Hoffmansthal. Bahr had arrived in Vienna in 1887 direct from a Paris in which the mystical was rampant and Rosicrucian Orders revived. As he wrote, "every student made himself out a Paracelsus in front of his grisette; seriously or half in fun there was everywhere an anxious yearning vers les au-dela-mystiques." He found a home from home in the Cafe Griensteidl. Bahr gave thanks that he had gone to Paris when he did; for there, he thought, the spirit of the 18th century was finally being overturned. In the Socialist Victor Adler, whom he had known from Berlin, he saw something of the same process of "spiritualization" -- the Marxist was becoming an idealist. [44] Even the feminist Rosa Mayreder displayed what has seemed to at least one commentator her own sort of mysticism in which theories of the respective roles of the sexes can be compared to the alchemical fusion of opposites. [45]

This milieu will become of crucial importance when we come to consider the origins of psychoanalysis and the early work of Freud.

-- The Occult Establishment, by James Webb

Frederick Eckstein

Frederick Eckstein (February 17, 1861 in Perchtoldsdorf, Lower Austria – November 10, 1939 in Vienna) was an Austrian polymath, [Industrialist], theosophist and a friend and temporary co-worker of Sigmund Freud. Emil Molt states: 'He was the benefactor of Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf, indeed the right arm of Bruckner, taking care that affairs went smoothly. He was a world traveller, had mastered Jui-jitsu and taught himself all sorts of difficult tricks. The story went around that he had trained himself to jump off a fast moving train without getting hurt. He too, was a highly gifted mathematician and a learned man in many respects.'

Also the husband of fellow theosophist and writer Bertha Diener, Eckstein's penchant for occultism first became evident as a member of a vegetarian group which discussed the doctrines of Pythagoras and the Neo-Platonists in Vienna at the end of the 1870s. His esoteric interests later extended to German and Spanish mysticism, the legends surrounding the Templars and the freemasons, Wagnerian mythology and oriental religions. In 1889, in the week after the tragedy at Mayerling, in which Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, and his mistress were found dead in mysterious circumstances, he and his friend, the composer Anton Bruckner (for whom he also served as private secretary) traveled to the monastery of Stift Heiligenkreuz to ask the abbot there for details of what happened.[1]

Eckstein's book on Anton Bruckner was published in 1923.[2]

References

1. Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (1992). The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 0-8147-3054-X.
2. Erinnerungen an Anton Bruckner by Friedrich Eckstein, 1923, republished by Severus, 2013 ISBN 3863474961
Emil Molt 'The life and times of Rudolf Steiner'

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Bertha Eckstein-Diener [Helen Diner] [Ahasvera] [Sir Galahad]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/20/20


Bertha Eckstein in 1902

Bertha Eckstein-Diener (March 18, 1874, Vienna – February 20, 1948, Geneva), also known by her American pseudonym as Helen Diner, was an Austrian writer, travel journalist, feminist historian and intellectual. Her book Mothers and Amazons (1930), was the first to focus on women's cultural history. It is regarded as a classic study of Matriarchy.[1]

She was a member of the "Arthurians," a group of European intellectuals active in the 1930s, each of whom adopted a name from Arthur's Round Table (Diner was Sir Galahad). Each member undertook to research an area of knowledge hitherto little known to Western culture. Diner set out to document a feminist history of women, and infused her book Mothers and Amazons (Mütter und Amazonen) with lyrical and poetic language.[1]

Life

Bertha Diener came from a middle-class family and received a higher education. Against the will of her parents, she married the polymath Friedrich Eckstein, a Viennese scholar and industrialist, in 1898. Like her husband, she was a member of the Vienna Lodge of the Theosophical Society Adyar (Adyar-TG). The couple received in their home at this time such notables as Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, and Peter Altenberg. In 1904 Bertha left her husband and her son Percy (born 1899) and began her travels which took her to Egypt, Greece, and England. The couple finally divorced in 1909 and Frederick Eckstein died in 1939 at the age of 78.

Her 2nd son, Roger (born 1910) was fathered by Theodore Beer, but was placed with a foster family and did not make contact again with his mother until 1936 by letter and in person only in 1938 in Berlin. From 1919 Diener lived in Lucerne, Switzerland. Diener initially wrote under the pseudonym Ahasvera (roughly translated as "Perpetual traveler").[2] Her best-known works were published under the name Sir Galahad, from the knights of King Arthur. Besides her books, she wrote a series of articles for newspapers and magazines and translated three works of American journalists and the esoteric writer Prentice Mulford.

Between 1914 and 1919 she wrote Kegelschnitte Gottes, about the situation of women during that period. From 1925 to 1931, she worked on Mütter und Amazonen, a women-focused cultural history, based on the work of Johann Jakob Bachofen.

She died aged 73 on 20 February 1948 in Geneva, five weeks after an operation. Her last work, a cultural history of England, remained unfinished.

Works

Unless otherwise indicated, the works first appeared under the pseudonym Sir Galahad.

• Im palast des Minos (In the Palace of Minos), Munich: Albert Langen, 1913. 118 pp. 2nd ed., 1924.
• (tr.) Der Unfug des Sterbens: ausgewählte Essays by Prentice Mulford. Munich: Langen, [1920].
• Die Kegelschnitte Gottes; Roman (The Conic Sections of God: Novel), Munich: Albert Langen, 1921. 546 pp. 2nd ed., 1926; 3rd ed., 1932.
• (tr.) Das Ende des Unfugs: ausgewählte Essays by Prentice Mulford. Munich: Albert Langen, 1922.
• Idiotenführer durch die russische Literatur (Idiot's Guide to Russian literature). Munich: Albert Langen, 1925. 163 pp.
• Mütter und Amazone: ein Umriss weiblicher Reiche (Mothers and Amazons: an outline of female empires), Munich: Albert Langen, 1932. 305 pp. Various later eds., from 1981 by Ullstein in paperback, with the subtitle Liebe und Macht im Frauenreich (love and power in the rule of women). ISBN 3-548-35594-3. Translated into English by John Philip Lundin as Mothers and Amazons: the first feminine history of culture, New York: Julian Press, 1965. Introduction by Joseph Campbell.
• Byzanz; von kaisern, engeln und eunuchen (Byzantium. Of emperors, angels and eunuchs), Leipzig and Vienna: Tal, 1936. 318 pp. Translated into English by Eden and Cedar Paul as Emperors, angels, and eunuchs: the thousand years of the Byzantine Empire, London: Chatto & Windus, 1938. US edition published as Imperial Byzantium, 1938.
• Bohemund: ein Kreuzfahrer-Roman (Bohemond: a Crusader novel), Leipzig: Goten-Verlag Herbert Eisentraut, 1938. 291 pp.
• (as Helen Diner) Seide : eine kleine Kulturgeschichte (Silk: a small cultural history), Leipzig: Goten-Verlag H. Eisentraut, 1940. 259 pp. 2nd ed., 1944; 3rd ed., 1949.
• Der glückliche Hügel; ein Richard-Wagner-Roman (The lucky hill: a Richard Wagner novel), Zürich: Atlantis, 1943. 366 pp.

Notes

1. Brooklyn Museum Dinner party database
2. Collection of essays published Munich,1924, by Albert Langen Verlag für Literatur und Kunst, as Der Unfug des Sterbens : ausgewählte Essays, von Prentice Mulford ; bearbeitet und aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Sir Galahad, authors: Mulford, Prentice, 1834-1891. ; Eckstein-Diener, Bertha Helene, (pseudonyms, "Ahasvera", "Sir Galahad", "Helen Diner"), 1874-1948.[1]

References

• Helen Diner Entry at the Brooklyn Museum Dinner Party database of notable women. Accessed March 2008
• Works at the German National Library Index[permanent dead link]
• Eckstein, Bertha at the Aeiou Encyclopedia, Austria. Accessed March 2008
• Sibylle Mulot-Déri: Sir Galahad. Porträt einer Verschollenen, Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt 1987, 283 S. (vergriffen) ISBN 3-596-25663-1

[admin]

Bertram Keightley
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/20/20


Bertram Keightley


Crest on letterhead in 1938

Bertram Keightley (April 4, 1860 in Birkenhead, England – October 31, 1944 in India) was an English Theosophist best known for assisting H. P. Blavatsky in preparing The Secret Doctrine for publication. His coworker in that work was his nephew Dr. Archibald Keightley.

Mr. Bertram Keightley, one of the General Secretaries of the Indian Section, is an Englishman by birth, son of a Liverpool solicitor, and was born April 4, 1860. He was liberally educated and took the degree of Master of Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. He came into Theosophy through the study of mesmerism and the reading of Esoteric Buddhism. Early in 1884 he joined the Society, in company with Dr. A. Keightley and Mr. and Mrs. Cooper-Oakley, and during that year he was much with H. P. B. , in England, France, and Germany. In 1887, he joined with Dr. Keightley and the Countess Wachtmeister in organizing the Lansdowne Road household where H. P. B. lived for a long time, and he also assisted in the work of preparing the Secret Doctrine for the press. He visited America in 1890, and later went to India, where he was chosen General Secretary, which office he has since held.[1]

In a February 5, 1938 letter to Boris de Zirkoff, Mr. Keightley said:

Your letter of December 30th 1937, has just reached, having been forwarded from Adyar to the address at Benares where I lived for many years, and thence to me here, at Allahabad, whither I removed permanently in March last (1937), as above [Villa Italiana, 15 City Road 15, U. P. Allahabad, India]. This will now be my permanent address in India.[2]

His death was reported by The American Theosophist:

Through an English Theosophical paper we learn of the death of Mr. Bertram Keightley, a member of The Theosophical Society from its very early days and a close associate of Madame Blavatsky in the publication of The Secret Doctrine. He once visited America as H.P.B.'s special messenger, and he helped to found the Indian Section, of which he was the first General Secretary. Himself finely educated and a Barrister at Law, he helped Dr. Besant found the Central Hindu College 46 years ago. he died peacefully in Cawnpore at the age of 84.[3]

The crest on the letter has the motto "Possunt quia posse videntur," which means "They can because they think they can."

Notes

1. "Some of Our Friends",The Theosophic Messenger 2.2 (November 1900), 27.
2. Bertram Keightley letter to Boris de Zirkoff. February 5, 1938. Boris de Zirkoff Papers. Records Series 22. Theosophical Society in America Archives.
3. "Bertram Keightley," The American Theosophist 33.2 (February, 1945), 48.

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

Archibald Keightley
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/20/20



Archibald Keightley was an English Theosophist who was very close to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky during her later years in London.

Personal life

Archibald Keightley was born on April 19, 1859. His uncle, Bertram Keightley, was a year younger, having been born on April 4, 1860. He married Julia van der Planck, known as "Jasper Niemand," and they were active in the Theosophical Society in America, later renamed Theosophical Society, which was headed by Ernest Temple Hargrove in New York. He died on November 18, 1930.

Theosophical Society involvement

Archibald was one of the regular attendants at Mme. Blavatsky's meetings in London, and witnessed the appearance of Adepts or chelas on occasion. He wrote:

Sometimes there would be unseen visitors, seen by some but not by others of us. Results were curious. Mme. Blavatsky felt the cold very much and her room was therefore kept very warm, so much so that at the meetings it was unpleasantly hot very often. One night before the meeting time, I came downstairs to find the room like an ice-house, though fire and lights were fully on. I called H.P.B.’s attention to this, but was greeted with a laugh and "Oh, I have had a friend of mine here to see me and he forgot to remove his atmosphere." Another time I remember that the rooms gradually filled until there was no vacant seat. On the sofa sat a distinguished Hindu, in full panoply of turban and dress. The discussion proceeded and apparently our distinguished guest was much interested, for he seemed to follow intelligently the remarks of each speaker. The President of the Lodge arrived that night very late, and coming in looked around for a seat. He walked up to the sofa and sat down — right in the middle of the distinguished Hindu, who promptly, and with some surprise, fizzled and vanished![1]

In August, 1890, he became a member of H. P. Blavatsky's Inner Group in London.

Writings

Archibald Keightley wrote over 50 articles that the Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals names in this list. Some are available online:

• "From Ostende to London. A Turning Point in the T. S." at Blavatsky Study Center. Reprinted from The Path 7.8 (November 1892), 245-248.
• "The Natural Law of Altruism" at Theosophical University Press online. Reprinted from The Path 6.8 (November 1891), 240.
• "Reminiscences of H.P. Blavatsky" at Blavatsky Study Center. Reprinted from The Theosophical Quarterly (October 1910), 109-122.

Notes

1. A Casebook of Encounters with the Theosophical Mahatmas Case 59, compiled and edited by Daniel H. Caldwell

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Hermann Oldenberg
by Encyclopedia.com
Accessed: 8/21/20

-- Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order, by Dr. Hermann Oldenberg

T. W. Rhys Davids’s interest in Pāli began while he was serving in the Ceylon Civil Service (1864–72). His association with Buddhism at this time was incidental—to learn Pāli he had to study with a bhikkhu. His first translation, typical of the historical bias of his time, was in numismatics and epigraphy, an outcome of his posting to the archaeologically rich area of Anuradhapura, and led in 1877 to his Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon, which contained the first attempt to date the death of the Buddha.9 He did not write on Buddhism until after his return to Britain, and a modest comment on how little he knew about Buddhism at that time, which is quoted by Ananda Wickremaratne, suggests that he was invited to do so because of popular interest in Buddhism.10 His first book, the highly influential Buddhism: A Sketch of the Life and Teachings of Gautama, the Buddha (1878), was compiled from the material then available in translation.11 This book established his reputation as a Buddhist scholar. It was followed by his translations Buddhist Birth Stories and Buddhist Suttas, both published in 1880.12 During the influential Hibbert Lectures of 1881, he announced the founding of the Pāli Text Society, confidently predicting the publication of the whole of the texts of the Sutta and Abhidhamma Pitakas in “no very distant period.”13 The inaugural committee of management included, among others willing to undertake translation, the Pāli scholars Victor Fausboll, Hermann Oldenberg, and Emile Senart. There was clearly a growing interest and activity in Pāli translation by this time. The formation of the Pāli Text Society institutionalized the study of Buddhism and the interpretation of it, which had begun much earlier. It is necessary therefore to look briefly at the earlier period.

-- Defining Modern Buddhism: Mr. and Mrs. Rhys Davids and the Pali Text Society, by Judith Snodgrass

OLDENBERG, HERMANN (1854–1920), German Sanskritist, Buddhologist, and historian of religions. Born in Hamburg on October 31, 1854, the son of a Protestant clergyman, Hermann Oldenberg completed doctoral studies in classical and Indic philology in 1875 at the University of Berlin with a dissertation on the Arval Brothers, an ancient Roman cult fraternity.

Arval Brethren
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/21/20


Priesthoods of ancient Rome
Flamen (250–260 CE)
Major colleges: Pontifices · Augures · Septemviri epulonum
Quindecimviri sacris faciundis
Other colleges or sodalities: Fetiales · Fratres Arvales · Salii
Titii · Luperci · Sodales Augustales
Priests: Pontifex Maximus · Rex Sacrorum
Flamen Dialis · Flamen Martialis
Flamen Quirinalis · Rex Nemorensis
Curio maximus
Priestesses: Virgo Vestalis Maxima
Flaminica Dialis · Regina sacrorum
Related topics: Religion in ancient Rome · Imperial cult
Glossary of ancient Roman religion
Gallo-Roman religion

In ancient Roman religion, the Arval Brethren (Latin: Fratres Arvales, "Brothers of the Fields") or Arval Brothers were a body of priests who offered annual sacrifices to the Lares and gods to guarantee good harvests.[1] Inscriptions provide evidence of their oaths, rituals and sacrifices.

Origin

Roman legend held that the priestly college was originated by Romulus, first king of Rome, who took the place of a dead son of his nurse Acca Laurentia, and formed the priesthood with the remaining eleven sons. They were also connected originally with the Sabine priesthood of Sodales Titii who were probably originally their counterpart among the Sabines. Thus it can be inferred that they existed before the founding of the city.[2] There is further proof of the high antiquity of the college in the verbal forms of the song with which, down to late times, a part of the ceremonies was accompanied, and which is still preserved.[3] They persisted to the imperial period.

Structure and duties

Arval Brethren formed a college of twelve priests, although archaeologists have found only up to nine names at a time in the inscriptions. They were appointed for life and did not lose their status even in exile. According to Pliny the Elder, their sign was a white band with the chaplet of sheaves of grain (Naturalis Historia 18.2).

The Brethren assembled in the Regia. Their task was the worship of Dea Dia, an old fertility goddess, possibly an aspect of Maia or Ceres. On the three days of her May festival, they offered sacrifices and chanted secretly inside the temple of the goddess at her lucus the Carmen Arvale. The magister (master) of the college selected the exact three days of the celebration by an unknown method.

The celebration began in Rome on the first day, was transferred to a sacred grove outside the city wall on the second day and ended back in the city on the third day.[4] Their duties included ritual propitiations or thanksgivings as the Ambarvalia, the sacrifices done at the borders of Rome at the fifth mile of the Via Campana or Salaria (a place now on the hill Monte delle Piche at the Magliana Vecchia on the right bank of the Tiber). Before the sacrifice, the sacrificial victim was led three times around a grain field where a chorus of farmers and farm-servants danced and sang praises for Ceres and offered her libations of milk, honey and wine.

Archaic traits of the rituals included the prohibition of the use of iron, the use of the olla terrea (a jar made of unbaked earth) and of the sacrificial burner of Dea Dia made of silver and adorned with grassy clods.


Portrait of Lucius Verus as an Arval Brother (ca. 160 AD)

Restoration of the priesthood

The importance of Arval Brethren apparently dwindled during the Roman Republic, but emperor Augustus revived their practices to enforce his own authority. In his time the college consisted of a master (magister), a vice-master (promagister), a priest (flamen), and a praetor, with eight ordinary members, attended by various servants, and in particular by four chorus boys, sons of senators, having both parents alive. Each wore a wreath of corn, a white fillet and the toga praetexta. The election of members was by co-optation on the motion of the president, who, with a flamen, was himself elected for one year.[3]

After Augustus' time emperors and senators frequented the festivities. At least two emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Elagabalus, were formally accepted as members of the Brethren. The first full descriptions of their rituals also originate from this time.

It is clear that, while the members were themselves always persons of distinction, the duties of their office were held in high respect. And yet no mention of them occurs in the writings of Cicero or Livy, and that literary allusions to them are very scarce. On the other hand, we possess a long series of the acta or minutes of their proceedings, drawn up by themselves, and inscribed on stone. Excavations, commenced in the 16th century and continued to the 19th, in the grove of the Dea Dia, yielded 96 of these records from 14 to 241 AD.[3] The last inscriptions (Acta Arvalia) about the Arval Brethren date from about 325 AD. They were abolished along with Rome's other traditional priesthoods by 400 AD.

References

1. "Arval Brothers on Britannica". Retrieved August 20, 2012.
2. Aulus Gellius VII 7, 7; Pliny XVII 2, 6.
3. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Arval Brothers". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 711.
4. Chisholm 1911.

Further reading

Piganiol, André. Observations sur le rituel le plus récent des frères Arvales. In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 90ᵉ année, N. 2, 1946. pp. 241-251. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/crai.1946.77986]; http://www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536 ... 90_2_77986

He submitted his habilitation thesis at Berlin in Sanskrit philology in 1878, going on to become professor at the University of Kiel in 1889, and then at Göttingen from 1908 until his death on March 18, 1920.

Publishing an edition and translation of the Śāṅkhayana Gṛhyasūtra in 1878, the young Oldenberg then turned his attention to the Pali Buddhist texts; and it is due to him as much as to any single scholar that serious inquiry into these materials was begun. Previous decades of nineteenth-century European Buddhist research had focused on Mahāyāna Sanskrit (and Tibetan) texts, through which the historical Buddha and the early history of Buddhism were only dimly apparent. Oldenberg edited and translated into English the important Pali chronicle, the Dīpavaṁsa, in 1879; he also edited the Vinaya Piṭaka ("discipline basket") of the Pali Tipiṭaka (1879–1883), then published English translations of these texts (1881–1885) with T. W. Rhys Davids, founder of the Pali Text Society. The signal publication of this period of intense research on Buddhism is his Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde (1881), written when he was only twenty-six, and "perhaps the most famous book ever written on Buddhism" (J. W. de Jong, Indo-Iranian Journal 12, 1970, p. 224).

While Oldenberg's active interest in Buddhist studies never flagged, Buddhism was for him one dimension of what was to be his Lebenswerk: nothing less than the systematic examination of India's earliest religious history. Indeed, his achievements in Vedic studies are—if this is possible—even more consequential than his contributions to Buddhist studies. Taken together, his Die Hymnen des Rigveda (1888), Die Religion des Veda (1894), and Ṛgveda: Textkritische and exegetische Noten (1909–1912) constitute a triptych of enormous and continuing importance for research on the form, meters, and textual history of the Ṛgveda Samhitā. Further, his translations of several Vedic Gṛhyasūtras (sutras on domestic religious ceremonies), his book-length studies on the Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads, and his numerous articles on Vedic topics complete an imposing legacy of meticulous scholarship.

Through Hermann Oldenberg's efforts, the sustained historical and literary inquiry into Vedic and Buddhist religions attained maturity. His concern to penetrate to the historical foundations of Buddhism and Vedism, which was representative of contemporary trends of German historical scholarship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, may seem somewhat naive to scholars today. Oldenberg died little more than a year before the first productive season of archaeological investigations in the Indus Valley, work destined to alter decisively many then-prevailing conceptions of the earliest stages of Indian civilization and religion. One can only conjecture how he would have responded to these discoveries.

The invention of an Aryan race in nineteenth century Europe was to have, as we all know, far-reaching consequences on world history. Its application to European societies culminated in the ideology of Nazi Germany. Another sequel was that it became foundational to the interpretation of early Indian history and there have been attempts at a literal application of the theory to Indian society. Some European scholars now describe it as a nineteenth century myth. [1] But some contemporary Indian political ideologies seem determined to renew its life. In this they are assisted by those who still carry the imprint of this nineteenth century theory and treat it as central to the question of Indian identity. With the widespread discussion on 'Aryan origins' in the print media and the controversy over its treatment in school textbooks, it has become the subject of a larger debate in terms of its ideological underpinnings rather than merely the differing readings among archaeologists and historians.

I intend to begin by briefly sketching the emergence of the theory in Europe, in which the search for the Indian past also played a role. I would like to continue with various Indian interpretations of the theory which have been significant to the creation of modern Indian identities and to nationalism. Finally, I would like to review the major archaeological and literary evidence which questions the historical interpretations of the theory and implicitly also its political role. [2]

It was initially both curiosity and the colonial requirement of knowledge about their subject peoples, that led the officers of the East India Company serving in India to explore the history and culture of the colony which they were governing. The time was the late eighteenth century. Not only had the awareness of new worlds entered the consciousness of Europe, but knowledge as an aspect of the Enlightenment was thought to provide access to power. Governing a colony involved familiarity with what had preceded the arrival of the colonial power on the Indian scene. The focus therefore was on languages, law and religion. The belief that history was essential to this knowledge was thwarted by the seeming absence of histories of early India. That the beginnings of Indian history would have to be rediscovered through European methods of historical scholarship, with an emphasis on chronology and sequential narrative, became the challenge.

These early explorations were dominated by the need to construct a chronology for the Indian past. Attempts were made to trace parallels with Biblical theories and chronology. But the exploration with the maximum potential lay in the study of languages and particularly Sanskrit. Similarities between Greek and Latin and Sanskrit, noticed even earlier, were clinched with William Jones' reading of Sandracottos as Candragupta. Two other developments took place. One was the suggestion of a monogenesis or single origin of all related languages, an idea which was extended to the speakers of the languages as well. [3] The second was the emergence of comparative philology, which aroused considerable interest, especially after the availability of Vedic texts in the early nineteenth century. Vedic studies were hospitably received in Europe where there was already both enthusiasm for or criticism of, Indian culture. German romanticism and the writings of Herder and Schlegel suggested that the roots of human history might go back to these early beginnings recorded in Sanskrit texts. [4] James Mill on the other hand, had a different view in his highly influential History of British India, where he described India as backward and stagnant and Hindu civilisation as inimical to progress. [5]

Comparative philologists, such as E. [Eugene] Burnouf and F. [Franz] Bopp were primarily interested in the technicalities of language. Vedic Sanskrit, as the earliest form of Sanskrit, had primacy. Monogenesis was strengthened with the notion of an ancestral language, Indo-Germanic or Indo-European as it came to be called, as also in the origins of some European languages and their speakers being traced back to Iran and India or still further, to a central Asian homeland. Europe was on the edge of an Oriental Renaissance for it was believed that yet another Renaissance might follow, this time from the 'discovery' of the Orient, and thus taking knowledge into yet other directions. [6] The scholars associated with these studies and therefore with interpreting the Indian past, were generally based in Europe and had no direct experience of India.

The latter part of the nineteenth century witnessed discussions on the inter-relatedness of language, culture and race, and the notion of biological race came to the forefront. [7] The experience of imperialism where the European 'races' were viewed as advanced, and those of the colonised, as 'lesser breeds', reinforced these identities, as did social Darwinism.

Prominent among these identities was Aryan, used both for the language and the race, as current in the mid-nineteenth century. [8] Aryan was derived from the Old Iranian arya used in the Zoroastrian text, the Avesta, and was a cognate of the Sanskrit arya. Gobineau, who attempted to identify the races of Europe as Aryan and non-Aryan with an intrusion of the Semitic, associated the Aryans with the sons of Noah but emphasised the superiority of the white race and was fearful about the bastardisation of this race. [9] The study of craniology which became important at this time began to question the wider identity of the Aryan. It was discovered that the speakers of Indo-European languages were represented by diverse skull types. This was in part responsible for a new turn to the theory in the suggestion that the European Aryans were distinct from the Asian Aryans. 10 The former were said to be indigenous to Europe while the latter had their homeland in Asia. If the European Aryans were indigenous to northern Europe then the Nordic blonde was the prototype Aryan. Such theories liberated the origins of European civilisation from being embedded in Biblical history. They also had the approval of rationalist groups opposed to the Church, and supportive of Enlightenment thinking.

Our [Theosophical] Society is on the basis of a Brotherhood of Humanity. I might admit that it also is a league of religions against the common enemy -- Christianity.

-- Letter to Dodanduwa Sri Piyaratana Tissa Mahanayake Thero, by Henry Steel Olcott, from Theosophists and Buddhists, Excerpt from White Sahibs, Brown Sahibs: Tracking Dharmapala, by Susantha Goonatilake

The application of these ideas to Indian origins was strengthened by Max Mueller's work on Sanskrit and Vedic studies and in particular his editing of the Rigveda during the years from 1849 to 1874. He ascribed the importance of this study to his belief that the Rigveda was the most ancient literature of the world, providing evidence of the roots of Indo-Aryan and the key to Hinduism. Together with the Avesta it formed the earliest stratum of Indo-European.  

Max Mueller maintained that there was an original Aryan homeland in central Asia. He postulated a small Aryan clan on a high elevation in central Asia, speaking a language which was not yet Sanskrit or Greek, a kind of proto-language ancestral to later Indo-European languages. From here and over the course of some centuries, it branched off in two directions; one came towards Europe and the other migrated to Iran, eventually splitting again with one segment invading north-western India. [11] The common origin of the Aryans was for him unquestioned. The northern Aryans who are said to have migrated to Europe are described by Max Mueller as active and combative and they developed the idea of a nation, while the southern Aryans who migrated to Iran and to India were passive and meditative, concerned with religion and philosophy. This description is still quoted for the inhabitants of India and has even come to be a cliche in the minds of many.

The Aryans, according to Max Mueller were fair-complexioned Indo-European speakers who conquered the dark-skinned dasas of India. The arya-varna and the dasa-varna of the Rigveda were understood as two conflicting groups differentiated particularly by skin colour, but also by language and religious practice, which doubtless underlined the racial interpretation of the terms. The Aryas developed Vedic Sanskrit as their language. The Dasas were the indigenous people, of Scythian origin, whom he called Turanians. The Aryan and the non-Aryan were segregated through the instituting of caste. The upper castes and particularly the brahmanas of modern times were said to be of Aryan descent and the lower castes and untouchables and tribes were descended from the Dasas. Max Mueller popularised the use of the term Aryan in the Indian context, arguing that it was originally a national name and later came to mean a person of good family. As was common in the nineteenth century, he used a number of words interchangeably such as Hindu and Indian, or race / nation / people / blood / — words whose meanings would today be carefully differentiated. Having posited the idea of a common origin for the languages included as Indo-European and among which was Indo-Aryan, common origin was extended to the speakers of these languages. Aryan therefore, although specifically a label for a language, came to be used for a people and a race as well, the argument being that those who spoke the same language belonged to the same biological race. In a lecture delivered later at Strassburg in 1872, Max Mueller denied any link between language and race. In spite of this, he continued to confuse the two as is evident from his description of Raja Ram Mohan Roy in an Address delivered in 1883.

Ram Mohan Roy was an Arya belonging to the south-eastern branch of the Aryan race and he spoke an Aryan language, the Bengali. . . We recognise in Ram Mohan Roy's visit to England the meeting again of the two great branches of the Aryan race, after they had been separated so long that they had lost all recollection of their common origin, common language and common faith. [12]

The sliding from language to race became general to contemporary thinking. An equally erroneous equation was the identification of Dravidian languages with a Dravidian race. [13]

This reconstruction of what was believed to be Aryan history, supercedes the initial Orientalist search for Biblical parallels or connections with early Indian history. There was now a focus on common origins with Europe, untouched by the intervention of the Semitic peoples and languages. As an Aryan text the Rigveda is said to be free from any taint of Semitic contact. Nor do the Puranas which were significant to Orientalist reconstructions of the past, enter Max Mueller's discourse for whom they were not only later but were in comparison, second order knowledge. The Puranas, in their descriptions of the past, do not endorse an arya-dasa separation in a manner which could be interpreted as different races. There was also an exclusion of anything Islamic in Max Mueller's definition of the Indian. He refers to the tyranny of Mohammedan rule in India without explaining why he thought it was so.

The theory of Aryan race became endemic to the reconstruction of Indian history and the reasons for this are varied. The pre-eminence given to the role of the brahmanas in the Orientalist construction of Indology was endorsed by the centrality of the Vedas. The Aryan theory also provided the colonised with status and self-esteem, arguing that they were linguistically and racially of the same stock as the colonisers. However, the separation of the European Aryans from the Asian Aryans was in effect a denial of this status. Such a denial was necessary in the view of those who proposed a radical structuring of colonial society through new legislation and administration, and in accordance with the conversion of the colony into a viable source of revenue. The complexities of caste were simplified in its being explained as racial segregation, demarcating the Aryans from the others.14 And finally, it made Indian origins relevant to the current perceptions dominating European thought and these perceptions were believed to be 'scientific' explanations...

These views coincided with the emergence of nationalism in the late nineteenth century in India, articulated mainly by the middle class, which was drawn from the upper caste and was seeking both legitimacy and an identity from the past. Origins therefore became crucial. To legitimise the status of this middle class, its superior Aryan origins and lineal descent was emphasised. It was assumed that only the upper caste Hindu could claim Aryan ancestry. This effectively excluded not only the lower castes but also the non-Hindus, even those of some social standing. Aryanism therefore became an exclusive status. In the dialogue between the early nationalists and the colonial power, a theory of common origins strengthening a possible link between the colonisers and the Indian elite came in very useful. For early nationalism, Aryan and non-Aryan differentiation was of an ethnic and racial kind, but was also beginning to touch implicitly on class differentiation.

Sympathetic to nationalism in India were the views of the Theosophical Society which changed the theory to suit its own premises. A prominent member of the Society, Col. Olcott [22] maintained that not only were the Aryans (equated with the Hindus) indigenous to India but that they were also the progenitors of European civilisation. Theosophical views emerged out of what was believed to be an aura of oriental religions and particularly Hinduism, as also the supposed dichotomy between the spiritualism of India and the materialism of Europe. The romanticising of India included viewing its civilisation as providing a counter-point to an industrialising Europe obsessed with rationalism, both of which were seen as eroding the European quality of life.

The theosophical reading of the Aryan theory was echoed in the interpretation of the theory by Hindu nationalist opinion. A group of people, close to and involved with the founding of the R.S.S. (Rashtriya Svayamsevaka Sangha) and writing in the early twentieth century, developed the concept of Hindutva or Hinduness and argued that this was essential to the identity of the Indian. [23] Since Hinduness in the past did not have a specific definition, the essentials of a Hindu identity had to be formulated. The argument ran that the original Hindus were the Aryans, a distinctive people indigenous to India. Caste Hindus or Hindu Aryas are their descendents. There was no Aryan invasion since the Aryans were indigenous to India and therefore no confrontation among the people of India. The Aryans spoke Sanskrit and were responsible for the spread of Aryan civilisation from India to the west. Confrontations came with the arrival of foreigners such as the Muslims, the Christians and more recently, the Communists. These groups are alien because India is neither the pitribhumi — the land of their birth — the assumption being that all Muslims and Christians are from outside India, nor the punyabhumi — their holy land. Hindu Aryas have had to constantly battle against these foreigners. Influenced by European theories of race of the 1920's and 1930's, parallels were drawn between the European differentiation of Aryans and Semites with the Indian differentiation of Hindus and Muslims. Justifying the treatment of the Jews in Germany, the threat of the same fate was held out to the Muslims in India.

-- The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics, by Romila Thapar

It seems altogether certain, however, that he would have dealt with them in that same clear-sighted, unsentimental, and critical fashion that characterized all his scholarly work. His persisting efforts to unveil the earliest stages of India's religious thought and history, his rigorous philological method, and the degree to which he integrated insights from other disciplines, stand as important monuments that will continue to inform and guide research.

Bibliography

Unhappily, the direct impact of Oldenberg's scholarship on investigations in the English-speaking world has been limited by the paucity of translations. English editions of Oldenberg's works include William Hoey's translation of Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde as The Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order (London, 1882), which should be consulted alongside the thirteenth German edition, annotated by Helmuth von Glasenapp, as well as the following books, each of which is accompanied by a valuable introduction: The Dīpavaṃsa (London, 1879); Vinaya Texts (Oxford, 1881–1885); The Gṛhyasūtras: Rules of Vedic Domestic Ceremonies, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1886–1892); and part 2 ("Hymns to Agni") of Vedic Hymns (Oxford, 1897). Also, three of his general essays have been published together as Ancient India (Chicago, 1898). Of inestimable value is Klaus Janert's careful two-volume edition of Oldenberg's Kleine Schriften (Wiesbaden, 1967), which includes not only full texts of more than one hundred articles but also an exhaustive bibliography.

************************************
Translator's Preface, Excerpt from Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order
by Dr. Hermann Oldenberg, Professor at the University of Berlin, Editor of the Vinaya Pitakam and the Dipavamsa in Pali

Translator's Preface

This book is a translation of a German work, Buddha, Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, by Professor Hermann Oldenberg, of Berlin, editor of the "Pali Texts of the Vinaya Pitakam and the Dipavamsa." The original has attracted the attention of European scholars, and the name of Dr. Oldenberg is a sufficient guarantee of the value of its contents. A review of the original doctrines of Buddhism, coming from the pen of the eminent German scholar, the coadjutor of Mr. Rhys Davids in the translation of the Pali scriptures for Professor Max Muller's "Sacred Books of the East," and the editor of many Pali texts, must be welcome as an addition to the aids which we possess to the study of Buddhism. Dr. Oldenberg has in the work now translated successfully demolished the sceptical theory of a solar Buddha, put forward by M. [Emile Charles Marie] Senart. He has sifted the legendary elements of Buddhist tradition, and has given the reliable residuum of facts concerning Buddha s life: he has examined the original teaching of Buddha, shown that the cardinal tenets of the pessimism which he preached are "the truth of suffering and the truth of the deliverance from suffering:" he has expounded the ontology of Buddhism and placed the Nirvana in a true light. To do this he has gone to the roots of Buddhism in pre-Buddhist Brahmanism: and he has given Orientalists the original authorities for his views of Buddhist dogmatics in Excursus at the end of his work.

To thoughtful men who evince an interest in the comparative study of religious beliefs, Buddhism, as the highest effort of pure intellect to solve the problem of being, is attractive. It is not less so to the metaphysician and sociologist who study the philosophy of the modern German pessimistic school and observe its social tendencies. To them Dr. Oldenberg s work will be as valuable as it is to the Orientalist.

My aim in this translation has been to reproduce the thought of the original in clear English. If I have done this, I have succeeded. Dr. Oldenberg has kindly perused my manuscript before going to press: and in a few passages of the English I have made slight alterations, additions, or omissions, as compared with the German original, at his request.1

I have to thank Dr. [Reinhold] Rost, the Librarian of the India Office, at whose suggestion I undertook this work, for his kindness and courtesy in facilitating some references which I found it necessary to make to the India Office Library.

Rhys Davids was home schooled by her father and then attended University College, London studying philosophy, psychology, and economics (PPE). She completed her BA in 1886 and an MA in philosophy in 1889. During her time at University College, she won both the John Stuart Mill Scholarship and the Joseph Hume Scholarship. It was her psychology tutor George Croom Robertson who "sent her to Professor Rhys Davids",[5] her future husband, to further her interest in Indian philosophy. She also studied Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy with Reinhold Rost.

Reinhold Rost (1822–1896) was a German orientalist, who worked for most of his life at St Augustine's Missionary College, Canterbury in England

St Augustine’s College in Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom, was located within the precincts of St Augustine's Abbey about 0.2 miles (335 metres) ESE of Canterbury Cathedral. It served first as a missionary college of the Church of England (1848-1947) and later as the Central College of the Anglican Communion (1952-1967).

The mid-19th century witnessed a "mass-migration" from England to its colonies. In response, the Church of England sent clergy, but the demand for them to serve overseas exceeded supply. Colonial bishoprics were established, but the bishops were without clergy. The training of missionary clergy for the colonies was “notoriously difficult” because they were required to have not only “piety and desire”, they were required to have an education “equivalent to that of a university degree”. The founding of the missionary college of St Augustine’s provided a solution to this problem.

The Revd Edward Coleridge, a teacher at Eton College, envisioned establishing a college for the purpose of training clergy for service in the colonies: both as ministers for the colonists and as missionaries to the native populations...

-- St Augustine's College, Canterbury, by Wikipedia

and as head librarian at the India Office Library, London.

He was the son of Christian Friedrich Rost, a Lutheran minister, and his wife Eleonore Glasewald, born at Eisenberg in Saxen-Altenburg on 2 February 1822. He was educated at the Eisenberg gymnasium school, and, after studying under Johann Gustav Stickel and Johann Gildemeister, graduated Ph.D. at the University of Jena in 1847. In the same year he came to England, to act as a teacher in German at the King's School, Canterbury. After four years, on 7 February 1851, he was appointed oriental lecturer at St. Augustine's Missionary College, Canterbury, founded to educate young men for mission work. This post he held for the rest of his life.

In London, Rost met Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, and was elected, in December 1863, secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society, a post he held for six years.

Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, GCB FRS (5 April 1810 – 5 March 1895) was a British East India Company army officer, politician and Orientalist, sometimes described as the Father of Assyriology. His son, also Henry, was to become a senior commander in the British Army during World War I...

Rawlinson was appointed political agent at Kandahar in 1840. In that capacity he served for three years, his political labours being considered as meritorious as was his gallantry during various engagements in the course of the Afghan War; for these he was rewarded by the distinction of Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1844.

Serendipitously, he became known personally to the governor-general, which resulted in his appointment as political agent in Ottoman Arabia. Thus he settled in Baghdad, where he devoted himself to cuneiform studies. He was now able, with considerable difficulty and at no small personal risk, to make a complete transcript of the Behistun inscription, which he was also successful in deciphering and interpreting. Having collected a large amount of invaluable information on this and kindred topics, in addition to much geographical knowledge gained in the prosecution of various explorations (including visits with Sir Austen Henry Layard to the ruins of Nineveh), he returned to England on leave of absence in 1849.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in February 1850 on account of being "The Discoverer of the key to the Ancient Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Inscriptions in the Cuneiform character. The Author of various papers on the philology, antiquities, and Geography of Mesopotamia and Central Asia. Eminent as a Scholar".

Rawlinson remained at home for two years, published in 1851 his memoir on the Behistun inscription, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He disposed of his valuable collection of Babylonian, Sabaean, and Sassanian antiquities to the trustees of the British Museum, who also made him a considerable grant to enable him to carry on the Assyrian and Babylonian excavations initiated by Layard. During 1851 he returned to Baghdad. The excavations were performed by his direction with valuable results, among the most important being the discovery of material that contributed greatly to the final decipherment and interpretation of the cuneiform character. Rawlinson's greatest contribution to the deciphering of the cuneiform scripts was the discovery that individual signs had multiple readings depending on their context. While at the British Museum, Rawlinson worked with the younger George Smith.

An equestrian accident in 1855 hastened his determination to return to England, and in that year he resigned his post in the East India Company. On his return to England the distinction of Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath was conferred upon him, and he was appointed a crown director of the East India Company.

The remaining forty years of his life were full of activity—political, diplomatic, and scientific—and were spent mainly in London. In 1858 he was appointed a member of the first India Council, but resigned during 1859 on being sent to Persia as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary. The latter post he held for only a year, owing to his dissatisfaction with circumstances concerning his official position there. Previously he had sat in Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Reigate from February to September 1858; he was again MP for Frome, from 1865 to 1868. He was appointed to the Council of India again in 1868, and continued to serve upon it until his death. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar.

Rawlinson was one of the most important figures arguing that Britain must check Russian ambitions in South Asia. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar. He argued that Tsarist Russia would attack and absorb Khokand, Bokhara and Khiva (which they did – they are now parts of Uzbekistan) and warned they would invade Persia (present-day Iran) and Afghanistan as springboards to British India.

He was a trustee of the British Museum from 1876 till his death. He was created Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1889, and a Baronet in 1891; was president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1874 to 1875, and of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1869 to 1871 and 1878 to 1881; and received honorary degrees at Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.

-- Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, by Wikipedia

Through Rawlinson he became on 1 July 1869 librarian at the India Office, on the retirement of FitzEdward Hall, and imposed order on its manuscripts.

Fitzedward Hall (March 21, 1825 - February 1, 1901) was an American Orientalist, and philologist. He was the first American to edit a Sanskrit text, and was an early collaborator in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) project...

He graduated with the degree of civil engineer from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy in 1842, and entered Harvard in the class of 1846. His Harvard classmates included Charles Eliot Norton, who later visited him in India in 1849, and Francis James Child. Just before his class graduated but after completing the work for his degree he abruptly left college and took ship out of Boston to India, allegedly in search of a runaway brother. His ship foundered and was wrecked on its approach to the harbor of Calcutta, where he found himself stranded. Although it was not his intention, he was never to return to the United States. At this time, he began his study of Indian languages, and in January 1850 he was appointed tutor in the Government Sanskrit College at Benares. In 1852, he became the first American to edit a Sanskrit text, namely the Vedanta treatises Ātmabodha and Tattvabodha. In 1853, he became professor of Sanskrit and English at the Government Sanskrit College; and in 1855 was appointed to the post of Inspector of Public Instruction in Ajmere-Merwara and in 1856 in the Central Provinces.

In 1857, Hall was caught up in the Sepoy Mutiny. The Manchester Guardian later gave this account:[2] "When the Mutiny broke out he was Inspector of Public Instruction for Central India, and was beleaguered in the Saugor Fort. He had become an expert tiger shooter, and turned this proficiency to account during the siege of the fort, and afterwards as a volunteer in the struggle for the re-establishment of the British power in India."

In 1859, he published at Calcutta his discursive and informative A Contribution Towards an Index to the Bibliography of the Indian Philosophical Systems, based on the holdings of the Benares College and his own collection of Sanskrit manuscripts, as well as numerous other private collections he had examined. In the introduction, he regrets that this production was in press in Allahabad and would have been put before the public in 1857, "had it not been impressed to feed a rebel bonfire."

He settled in England and in 1862 received the appointment to the Chair of Sanskrit, Hindustani and Indian jurisprudence in King's College London, and to the librarianship of the India Office. An unsuccessful attempt was made by his friends to lure him back to Harvard by endowing a Chair of Sanskrit for him there, but this project came to nothing. His collection of a thousand Oriental manuscripts he gave to Harvard...

In 1869 Hall was dismissed by the India Office, which accused him (by his own account) of being a drunk and a foreign spy, and expelled from the Philological Society after a series of acrimonious exchanges in the letters columns of various journals.

-- Fitzedward Hall, by Wikipedia

He secured for students free admission to the library. He retired in 1893 after 24 years of service at the age of 70. His successor as head librarian of the India Office Library became the Orientalist and Sanskritist Charles Henry Tawney (1837-1922).

Rost gained many distinctions and awards. He was created Hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1877, and a Companion of the Indian Empire in 1888. He died at Canterbury on 7 February 1896.[1]

-- Reinhold Rost, by Wikiedia

-- Caroline Rhys Davids, by Wikipedia

W. HOEY.

BELFAST, October 21, 1882.

[admin]

Reinhold Rost
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/21/20

[Caroline Rhys Davis] studied Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy with Reinhold Rost.

-- Caroline Rhys Davids, by Wikipedia

I have to thank Dr. [Reinhold] Rost, the Librarian of the India Office, at whose suggestion I undertook this work, for his kindness and courtesy in facilitating some references which I found it necessary to make to the India Office Library.

-- Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order, by Dr. Hermann Oldenberg, Professor at the University of Berlin, Editor of the Vinaya Pitakam and the Dipavamsa in Pali, Translated from the German by William Hoey, M.A., D.Lit., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, Asiatic Society of Bengal, etc., of Her Majesty's Bengal Civil Service

Orientalist Reinhold Rost (1822-1896), headlibrarian to the India Office Library, about 1890

Reinhold Rost (1822–1896) was a German orientalist, who worked for most of his life at St Augustine's Missionary College, Canterbury in England ...

St Augustine’s College in Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom, was located within the precincts of St Augustine's Abbey about 0.2 miles (335 metres) ESE of Canterbury Cathedral. It served first as a missionary college of the Church of England (1848-1947) and later as the Central College of the Anglican Communion (1952-1967).

The mid-19th century witnessed a "mass-migration" from England to its colonies. In response, the Church of England sent clergy, but the demand for them to serve overseas exceeded supply. Colonial bishoprics were established, but the bishops were without clergy. The training of missionary clergy for the colonies was “notoriously difficult” because they were required to have not only “piety and desire”, they were required to have an education “equivalent to that of a university degree”. The founding of the missionary college of St Augustine’s provided a solution to this problem.

The Revd Edward Coleridge, a teacher at Eton College, envisioned establishing a college for the purpose of training clergy for service in the colonies: both as ministers for the colonists and as missionaries to the native populations...

-- St Augustine's College, Canterbury, by Wikipedia

and as head librarian at the India Office Library, London.

Life

He was the son of Christian Friedrich Rost, a Lutheran minister, and his wife Eleonore Glasewald, born at Eisenberg in Saxen-Altenburg on 2 February 1822. He was educated at the Eisenberg gymnasium school, and, after studying under Johann Gustav Stickel and Johann Gildemeister, graduated Ph.D. at the University of Jena in 1847. In the same year he came to England, to act as a teacher in German at the King's School, Canterbury. After four years, on 7 February 1851, he was appointed oriental lecturer at St. Augustine's Missionary College, Canterbury, founded to educate young men for mission work. This post he held for the rest of his life.[1]

In London, Rost met Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, and was elected, in December 1863, secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society, a post he held for six years.

Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, GCB FRS (5 April 1810 – 5 March 1895) was a British East India Company army officer, politician and Orientalist, sometimes described as the Father of Assyriology. His son, also Henry, was to become a senior commander in the British Army during World War I...

Rawlinson was appointed political agent at Kandahar in 1840. In that capacity he served for three years, his political labours being considered as meritorious as was his gallantry during various engagements in the course of the Afghan War; for these he was rewarded by the distinction of Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1844.

Serendipitously, he became known personally to the governor-general, which resulted in his appointment as political agent in Ottoman Arabia. Thus he settled in Baghdad, where he devoted himself to cuneiform studies. He was now able, with considerable difficulty and at no small personal risk, to make a complete transcript of the Behistun inscription, which he was also successful in deciphering and interpreting. Having collected a large amount of invaluable information on this and kindred topics, in addition to much geographical knowledge gained in the prosecution of various explorations (including visits with Sir Austen Henry Layard to the ruins of Nineveh), he returned to England on leave of absence in 1849.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in February 1850 on account of being "The Discoverer of the key to the Ancient Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Inscriptions in the Cuneiform character. The Author of various papers on the philology, antiquities, and Geography of Mesopotamia and Central Asia. Eminent as a Scholar".

Rawlinson remained at home for two years, published in 1851 his memoir on the Behistun inscription, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He disposed of his valuable collection of Babylonian, Sabaean, and Sassanian antiquities to the trustees of the British Museum, who also made him a considerable grant to enable him to carry on the Assyrian and Babylonian excavations initiated by Layard. During 1851 he returned to Baghdad. The excavations were performed by his direction with valuable results, among the most important being the discovery of material that contributed greatly to the final decipherment and interpretation of the cuneiform character. Rawlinson's greatest contribution to the deciphering of the cuneiform scripts was the discovery that individual signs had multiple readings depending on their context. While at the British Museum, Rawlinson worked with the younger George Smith.

An equestrian accident in 1855 hastened his determination to return to England, and in that year he resigned his post in the East India Company. On his return to England the distinction of Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath was conferred upon him, and he was appointed a crown director of the East India Company.

The remaining forty years of his life were full of activity—political, diplomatic, and scientific—and were spent mainly in London. In 1858 he was appointed a member of the first India Council, but resigned during 1859 on being sent to Persia as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary. The latter post he held for only a year, owing to his dissatisfaction with circumstances concerning his official position there. Previously he had sat in Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Reigate from February to September 1858; he was again MP for Frome, from 1865 to 1868. He was appointed to the Council of India again in 1868, and continued to serve upon it until his death. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar.

Rawlinson was one of the most important figures arguing that Britain must check Russian ambitions in South Asia. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar. He argued that Tsarist Russia would attack and absorb Khokand, Bokhara and Khiva (which they did – they are now parts of Uzbekistan) and warned they would invade Persia (present-day Iran) and Afghanistan as springboards to British India.

He was a trustee of the British Museum from 1876 till his death. He was created Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1889, and a Baronet in 1891; was president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1874 to 1875, and of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1869 to 1871 and 1878 to 1881; and received honorary degrees at Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.

-- Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, by Wikipedia

Through Rawlinson he became on 1 July 1869 librarian at the India Office, on the retirement of FitzEdward Hall, and imposed order on its manuscripts.

Fitzedward Hall (March 21, 1825 - February 1, 1901) was an American Orientalist, and philologist. He was the first American to edit a Sanskrit text, and was an early collaborator in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) project...

He graduated with the degree of civil engineer from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy in 1842, and entered Harvard in the class of 1846. His Harvard classmates included Charles Eliot Norton, who later visited him in India in 1849, and Francis James Child. Just before his class graduated but after completing the work for his degree he abruptly left college and took ship out of Boston to India, allegedly in search of a runaway brother. His ship foundered and was wrecked on its approach to the harbor of Calcutta, where he found himself stranded. Although it was not his intention, he was never to return to the United States. At this time, he began his study of Indian languages, and in January 1850 he was appointed tutor in the Government Sanskrit College at Benares. In 1852, he became the first American to edit a Sanskrit text, namely the Vedanta treatises Ātmabodha and Tattvabodha. In 1853, he became professor of Sanskrit and English at the Government Sanskrit College; and in 1855 was appointed to the post of Inspector of Public Instruction in Ajmere-Merwara and in 1856 in the Central Provinces.

In 1857, Hall was caught up in the Sepoy Mutiny. The Manchester Guardian later gave this account:[2] "When the Mutiny broke out he was Inspector of Public Instruction for Central India, and was beleaguered in the Saugor Fort. He had become an expert tiger shooter, and turned this proficiency to account during the siege of the fort, and afterwards as a volunteer in the struggle for the re-establishment of the British power in India."

In 1859, he published at Calcutta his discursive and informative A Contribution Towards an Index to the Bibliography of the Indian Philosophical Systems, based on the holdings of the Benares College and his own collection of Sanskrit manuscripts, as well as numerous other private collections he had examined. In the introduction, he regrets that this production was in press in Allahabad and would have been put before the public in 1857, "had it not been impressed to feed a rebel bonfire."

He settled in England and in 1862 received the appointment to the Chair of Sanskrit, Hindustani and Indian jurisprudence in King's College London, and to the librarianship of the India Office. An unsuccessful attempt was made by his friends to lure him back to Harvard by endowing a Chair of Sanskrit for him there, but this project came to nothing. His collection of a thousand Oriental manuscripts he gave to Harvard...

In 1869 Hall was dismissed by the India Office, which accused him (by his own account) of being a drunk and a foreign spy, and expelled from the Philological Society after a series of acrimonious exchanges in the letters columns of various journals.

-- Fitzedward Hall, by Wikipedia

He secured for students free admission to the library. He retired in 1893 after 24 years of service at the age of 70.[1] His successor as head librarian of the India Office Library became the Orientalist and Sanskritist Charles Henry Tawney (1837-1922).

Rost gained many distinctions and awards. He was created Hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1877, and a Companion of the Indian Empire in 1888. He died at Canterbury on 7 February 1896.[1]

Works

Rost was familiar with some twenty or thirty languages in all. His own works were:[1]

• Treatise on the Indian Sources of the Ancient Burmese Laws, 1850.
• A Descriptive Catalogue of the Palm Leaf MSS. belonging to the Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg, 1852.
• Revision of Specimens of Sanscrit MSS. published by the Paleographical Society, 1875.

Rost's India Office Library catalogue of Sanskrit works was a significant bibliographic advance.[2] He edited:[1]

• Horace Hayman Wilson, Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and on Sanscrit Literature, 5 vols. 1861–5;
• Brian Houghton Hodgson, Essays on Indian Subjects, 2 vols. 1880;
• Miscellaneous papers relating to Indo-China and the Indian Archipelago (Trübner's "Oriental Series", 4 vols. 1886–8);
• The last three volumes of Trübner's Oriental Record; and
• Trübner's series of Simplified Grammars.

He contributed notices of books to Luzac's Oriental List, articles on "Malay Language and Literature", "Pali", "Rajah", and "Thugs" to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and published in The Athenæum and The Academy.[1]

Family

Rost married, in 1863, Minna, daughter of late Chief-justice J. F. Laue, of Magdeburg; they had seven children, two of whom died in childhood.[3] Son Ernst (Ernest) Reinhold Rost (born 1872) became Major of the Indian Medical Service (IMS), led newly founded Yangon General Hospital in Rangoon (Burma) and was active in the propagation of Buddhism in England.[4]

Biography

• Oskar Weise: Der Orientalist Dr. Reinhold Rost, sein Leben,und sein Streben. Leipzig : Teubner 1897. 71 p. (Mitteilungen des Geschichts- und Altertumsforschenden Vereins zu Eisenberg).

Notes

1. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Rost, Reinhold" . Dictionary of National Biography. 49. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
2. Katz, J. B. "Rost, Reinhold". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/24144. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. Weise 1897, p.55
4. Weise 1897, 55

External links

Attribution

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Rost, Reinhold". Dictionary of National Biography. 49. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

[admin]

Dodanduwa Sri Piyaratana Tissa Mahanayake Thero
by Memories of Weerasooriya Clan
June 28, 2010
Source: The Island - 6th August, 2005

I pass among ignorant Western people as a thoroughly well informed man but in comparison with the learning possessed by my Brothers in the oriental priesthoods, I am as ignorant as the last of their neophytes. What I call wisdom is the thorough knowledge of the real truth of the Cosmos and of man. Where in Christendom can this be learnt? Where is the University? Where the professor? Where the books from which the hungry student may discover what lies behind the shell of physical natures? That divine knowledge is in the keeping of the temples and priests and ascetics of the East -- of despised heathendom. There alone the way to purification, illumination, power, beatitude can be pointed out234.

To you and as you must we turn, and say: "Fathers, brothers, the Western world is dying of brutal sensuality and ignorance, come and help, rescue it. Come as missionaries, as teachers, as disputants, preachers. Come prepared to be hated, opposed, threatened, perhaps maltreated. Come expecting nothing but determined to accomplish every thing!235

If you will persuade a good, pure, learned, eloquent Buddhist to come here and preach, you will sweep the country before you ... I have spoken a little myself on the subject and written and caused to be written much more. But I am so ignorant. We are all so ignorant that I do not dare set myself up as a teacher236. Our [Theosophical] Society is on the basis of a Brotherhood of Humanity. I might admit that it also is a league of religions against the common enemy -- Christianity.

-- Letter to Dodanduwa Sri Piyaratana Tissa Mahanayake Thero, by Henry Steel Olcott, from Theosophists and Buddhists, Excerpt from White Sahibs, Brown Sahibs: Tracking Dharmapala, by Susantha Goonatilake

After a two-year correspondence with Ven. Piyarathne Thissa, [Olcott] and Blavatsky arrived in the then capital Colombo on May 16, 1880.

-- Henry Steel Olcott, by Wikipedia

A quaint stillness permeates the seaboard that was devastated in the tsunami six months ago. Away from the hustle and bustle of the towns, the villages Rathgama and Dodanduwa exude an aura of distinct quietude with men and women going about their daily work. Around the village the abundance of the Rathgama lagoon, a sprawling sheet of shimmering aquatic delight rich in its biodiversity, brings a comforting breeze to the locality. It is like an ancient giant silently watching over the poor villages where women spin coconut fibre strings or make loose strands of fibre the difficult way, beating hard on the coconut husks soaked in the lake with wooden machetes, till the sinews of their hands ache from sheer physical exertion day in, day out. All that labour for a mere pittance, in a country with a milieu virtually adulating the so-called market economy and the "level playing field". The product of incessant labour drips from their hands and faces in the form of drops of sweat, which the celebrated Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote was where God made his abode.

When one passes the Dodanduwa bridge on the Galle Road ancient single storey buildings that line the road among the newly built markets or kiosks seem to beckon one to an age of prosperity and bygone resurgence towards the latter half of the 19th century when Buddhist leaders like the Most Ven Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Nayake Thera attracted Western intellectuals like the American theosophist Col. Henry Steele Olcott. Olcott came here to learn the rich cultural and religious heritage of this country and unlearn some of the pseudo-intellectual teachings and beliefs of the newly civilized Western world.

Less than a kilometre from the Dodanduwa Bridge is a turnoff to the left that leads to interior hamlets of the main village and a special school. A memorial complete with a statue of another bhikku, Ven Sasanalankara Vinayacharya Siri Piyaratna Tissa Nayake Thera (known as Dodanduwe Piyaratana Nayake Thera), who placed Dodanduwa in the annals of the country’s education history can be seen at the turn. He was pious and erudite monk whose efforts made this school a reality one and a half centuries ago. A name board stands opposite the statue, Dodanduwa Piyaratana Vidyalaya, the first Buddhist school established in the colonial era after the British introduced their system of school education replacing our own system of education that was thousands of years old.

Chapter Nine: Education

9.1 British Educational Policy, 1796-1867

The history of education in nineteenth century Ceylon is closely linked with several other aspects of British policy in the island. In the first place, the state of the government revenue – that itself depended heavily on the fortunes of the plantation industry -- set up the financial framework, within which colonial educational policy could be realised. As the propagation of education has never been a preference of the British administration throughout the nineteenth century, expenditure on educational facilities has often been the first to suffer during times of financial difficulties. Second, the British approach to the education of the Crown's 'native subjects' was only partly based on humanitarian thoughts. Practical considerations constantly influenced education policies. The want of English-speaking clerks for the lower ranks of the administration, for instance, led to an emphasis on English education in the wake of the Colebrooke-Cameron report. Later, the policy was reversed. The administrative machinery could not absorb the newly created English-educated class anymore. Third, the competition of the various religious bodies and groups in Ceylon played a significant role in the development of education in Ceylon. At first, the struggle for predominance in the field of education was mainly a struggle between different Christian missionary societies. Later -- in the course of the so-called 'religious revivals’ that will be discussed in detail in a later chapter -- the representatives of the indigenous religious faiths joined the competition as well.

Until the implementation of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms in the early 1830s, the propagation of education was largely neglected by the colonial government. When the British took over the Dutch possessions on the island, two separate school system existed. The Dutch had established a network of Christian parish schools that had been under central government control. Outside this system there existed a fairly large number of traditional Buddhist schools. These pansala schools were attached to Buddhist monasteries and managed by the clergy.1 Most of the pansalas were located in the Kandyan highlands (and, therefore, came under British authority only in 1815). The pansala network was less tight in the Maritime Provinces. During the administration of the East India Company from 1796 to 1798, education was not considered particularly important and the Dutch parish schools fell into complete neglect. Only with the arrival of Governor Frederick North in 1798 these schools were revived again and soon stood at the centre of the government's education policy. North -- who is said to have been influenced by religious motives more than by educational ones -- appointed the Colonial Chaplain Rev. James A. Cordiner as Principal of Schools. North and Cordiner showed a keen interest in the establishment of a network or vernacular schools, but in 1803 their ambitions were put to a stop by the Colonial Office's retrenchment policy. The parish schools were abolished on financial grounds and only the English Academy -- established by North as the first English school in Ceylon in 1800 -- survived the cutting back of funds.2

North's successors, Thomas Maitland and Robert Brownrigg, did not revive the parish schools. While Maitiand showed no interest in the propagation of education at all, Brownrigg's Governorship saw the arrival of four important missionary societies on the island. In 18 12, the Baptist Missionary Society came to Ceylon and started to set up missionary schools. The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society followed in 1814, the American Mission in 1816 and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1818.3 The Wesleyans, the CMS and – on a smaller scale -- the Baptists immediately started to establish schools in the centres of the maritime regions -- preferably in and around Colombo.4 Due to political reasons, the American Mission was not allowed into Colombo and, thus, concentrated solely on missionary activity in the Jaffna peninsula.

The missionary societies regarded education as the principal vehicle of conversion and mainly established vernacular schools to reach the mass of the 'heathens.’ In these schools the local languages -- i.e. Sinhala or Tamil -- were used for the instruction of the pupils.5 Under Brownrigg, the colonial government's education policy confined itself to supporting the activities of the missionary bodies. In 1817, an Archdeaconry (subordinate to Calcutta) was established in Ceylon and the Church of England became the official church of the state. The remaining government schools came under the supervision of the Church of England and its Ecclesiastical Establishment.6

The missionaries were admitted to the Kandyan regions in 1820. After the conquest of Kandy in 1815, the Kandyan Convention had assured British protection to Buddhism, but with the suppression of the Kandyan Rebellion in 1818 a new proclamation was issued that limited government support to Buddhism. Moreover, Brownrigg officially extended government protection to all religions and, therefore, found it possible to open the Kandyan regions to the missionary bodies.7

Thanks to Brownrigg's support, the missionary societies soon occupied a more important position than the government in the spread of education. Under Brownrigg's successor Edward Barnes, the role of the missionaries became even more pronounced as Barnes showed interest only in the economic progress of the island. He did not actively support the missionary societies, but, due to government neglect, he left educational matters almost completely to the churches. Jayaweera states that Barnes "discouraged educational enterprise, state or private, and all but killed state schools; the latter were reduced to four English and ninety parish schools by 1830.”8 When Colebrooke arrived in Ceylon in 1829, the missionary bodies practically controlled the educational system of the island -- partly due to the active support of Brownrigg, partly due to Barnes' indifference.

As he did on most matters of colonial administration, Colebrooke also commented on the prevalent system of education. Sumathipala points out that, when Colebrooke investigated educational matters on the island, only about 800 pupils (out of a total of 26,970) received an English education. About half of those attended the five existing government English schools.9 As Colebrooke occupied a more practical viewpoint concerning the future of education in Ceylon,10 he recommended to discontinue any government activity in the spheres of vernacular education and laid additional emphasis on the importance of English education on the island. In his opinion, the intended opening of the lower ranks of the CCS to the Ceylonese required English-educated personnel. The spread of Western -- i.e. British – ideas and values would unify the island and foster local participation in the administration and judicature.11 Consequently, Governor Horton -- whose task it was to implement most of Colebrooke's recommendations -- closed all government vernacular schools. Furthermore, government English schools were closed in many locations where missionary schools already taught English. Thus, the missionaries were given an additional inducement to engage in English education12 as Colebrooke objected to the missionaries' preference for vernacular education.13 The Archdeacon of the Church of England became the head of the first School Commission in 1834. This commission implemented Colebrooke's recommendations almost to the letter and concentrated entirely on the establishment of English schools.14 The missionary societies soon followed the government policy and laid their emphasis on the foundation of English schools as well.15 The School Commission managed to expand educational facilities (primarily for the teaching of English) in the next years. However, the government schools constantly lost more ground to the rapidly spreading missionary schools.

The School Commission and its policy exclusively represented the Church of England -- the Anglicans. No members of other religious instruction was made a compulsory subject in government schools. Only in 1841 Governor Stewart Mackenzie reorganized the mission and created the Central School Commission. In the new commission Presbyterians, Roman Cathoiics, Wesleyans and Anglicans were all given a voice -- but none of the indigenous religious faiths was represented.16 The creation of the Central School Commission triggered several changes in the educational policy of Ceylon. From 1841 on, government schools were open to children of all Christian denominations. Furthermore, the first grant-in-aid system for nongovernment English schools was introduced and enabled missionary English schools to receive a government grant (provided that they allowed inspection and examination by the commission). As they had a long tradition of English teaching, schools in Jaffna made particular use of the grant-in-aid system and, consequently, several government schools in the peninsula were closed down.17

The Wesleyan Rev. William Gogerly presided the commission from 1843 onwards and implemented a comparatively progressive policy. Together with Governor Colin Campbell he introduced several new schemes. In 1843, the Central School Commission made provisions for vernacular education in elementary schools. In 1845, a Native Normal School for the training of teachers in vernacular education was established. Two years later, 30 vernacular schools were opened.18 As a consequence, government expenditure on education rose from £2,999 in the year 1841 to £11,4-15 in 1847 19 (i.e. from 0.8% to 2.2% of the total expenditure).20

In the course of the first serious coffee crisis in 1848 and the following financial depression, government expenditure on education was drastically reduced. Vernacular education suffered hardest. Although most government vernacular schools continued to exist, the introduction of fees and the closing down of the Native Normal School prevented further progress in vernacular education.21 The neglect of education policy continued when the depression had been overcome and the coffee mania of the 1850s had set in. Economic advance and the improvement of the infrastructure were the sole interest of the administration during that time. Without government guidance the policy of the Central School Commission changed almost every year during the 1850s -- laying emphasis on English education in one year and promoting vernacular instruction in the next.22 Education, therefore, remained largely the domain of the missionary bodies. The Christian supremacy in the field was underlined by the Central School Commission's policy to give grants exclusively to schools run by Christian institutions.23 No pansala or other non-Christian school had ever received a grant so far.

In the 1860s, the Roman Catholic community -- led by the Archbishop of Colombo Christopher Bonjean -- put up first resistance to the prevailing system. When the Tamil MLC Muttu Coomaraswamy (backed by the Burgher MLC Martenz) requested the creation of a special committee to investigate the matter, a Subcommittee of the Legislative Council was eventually appointed to conduct inquires about the state of education in Ceylon.24 In 1865, the Morgan Committee -- named after its president, Queen's Advocate Richard F. Morgan -- took up its work.

9.2 The Morgan Committee and the Department of Public Instruction

The Morgan Committee presented its final report in 1867. The implementation of its proposals not only placed the administration of education on a sound institutional footing but also led to a reversal of government educational policy on the island. Of the various changes advocated by the Committee only three major points shall be discussed here: the establishment of the Department of Public Instruction, the emphasis on vernacular education and the introduction of the so-called Denominational System based on a revised grant-in-aid system. Governor Hercules Robinson said in an address to the Legislative Council in 1870:

I have to announce to you the adoptions of a distinct policy the tendency of which will be to extend the operations of government in the direction of establishing village schools as yet unprovided with the means of instruction, but gradually to contract its operations in respect of English schools in the lawn districts where an effective system of grant-in-aid will enable the government to employ its funds to much greater advantage than in maintaining schools of its own.25

From 1869/70 onwards, the Committee's proposals were gradually realised. The Morgan Report expressed the opinion that the government had an obligation to spread (vernacular) education in the entire island. It has been said that the Committee's views had not so much been shaped by the needs of the population but "by the current trends in England and India which favoured some form of state responsibility for education."26 Accordingly, vernacular education gained new momentum with the implementation of the Report's proposals. The number of government vernacular schools increased from 64 in 1869 to 347 in 1881.27 The report also proposed the abolition of government English elementary schools on the assumption that superior (i.e. English) education was only required by a small minority of the population. Superior Central schools -- already existent in some of the population centres -- and Anglo-vernacular schools28 [28. In Anglo-vernacular schools English was not the medium of instruction, but merely a subject. The pupils learned English with explanations and instructions given in the vernacular.] should provide the necessary facilities for those who could afford an English education. All school fees for vernacular education were abolished, whereas superior English education was only available against the payment of substantial fees.29 Wickremeratne even holds that it was one of the main goals of the colonial government's educational policy after 1867 to retain the growing educational gap.30

The inefficiency of the Central School Commission was demonstrated by its last report of the year 1867. The report showed that since 1840 only 86 new schools had been established.31 The Morgan Committee decided to do away with the Commission and create the Department of Public Instruction. The Governor, the Executive Council and the School Commission suggested the additional creation of an advisory board -– consisting of representatives of all races and denominations -– to control and assist the Director of Public Instructions. But Morgan opposed this view, and, on his advice, the Legislative Council voted against the establishment of such a board.32 Consequently, the Director of Public Instruction was directly and solely responsible for the implementation of the government's educational policy.

After 1867 the management of many government English schools was handed over to the missionary societies. Other schools were simply closed when missionary English schools existed in the vicinity. The government followed this policy without consideration of the religious feelings of the population.33 The measures of the Morgan Report provided no conscience clause that could exempt Buddhist or Tamil pupils from the compulsory attendance of religious instruction. Due to the government's gradual retreat from English education and the promotion of missionary English schools, everybody with a desire to learn English was exposed to the proselytising ambitions of the missionaries. Sumathipala quotes Ponnambalam Ramanathan who in 1884 presented a memorial of several Jaffna Hindus to the Legislative Council, in which the petitioners complained about the religious intolerance in the missionary schools:

[C]hildren who are obliged to go to these missionary schools are forced by the missionaries, under pain of fines and expulsion, to read the Bible whether they liked it or not [ ... ] Hindu boys who, for want of their own English schools, resort to the missionary schools, have learnt to make mental reservations and are getting skilled in the art of dodging. The holy ashes put on at home during worship are carefully rubbed off as they approach the Christian school and they affect the methods of Christian boys while at school. [ ... ] There is a great deal too much of hypocrisy in Jaffna in the matter of religion, owing the fact that the love of the missionaries for proselytes is as boundless as the love of the Jaffnese to obtain some knowledge of English at any cost. […] If there is no conscience clause in the grant-in-aid code, I think the sooner a clause of that kind is introduced the better it will be for religious freedom in Ceylon.34

While religious instruction was not a subject in government schools anymore, the private grant-receiving schools were free to teach the subject. Almost all of the grant-aided schools were under Christian management and, thus, held compulsory religious instruction lessons (mostly held in the first school hour). Throughout the nineteenth century, the pupils were compelled to attend these lessons. No conscience clause existed.

The government's gradual retreat from English education gained momentum, when the plantation economy experienced first signs of the coffee crisis in the late 1870s. Government coffers suffered from a lack of funds. Thus, the Legislative Council's Retrenchment Committee proposed in 1883 to hand over local Anglo-vernacular and English schools to the Municipal and Local Boards. Ordinance 33 of 1883 was passed and made provisions for the transfer of English and mixed schools located within the limits of municipalities to the local authorities. But only in Puttalam such a transfer was successful. Most other Municipal and Local Boards lacked the financial means to assume control over the government schools. The missionaries stepped in and took over the management of the schools. Therefore, 21 government English schools were either handed over to the missionary bodies or closed until the end of 1884.37 The Colombo Academy (renamed the Royal College in 1881) remained the only government English school within the boundaries of a municipality.38 The government's vernacular education policy was more successful. Between 1873 and 1900, the number of government vernacular schools increased from 241 to 484. Still the government was outperformed by the missionaries who increased the number of their schools from 237 to 1,186.39 Jayasuriya states that on several recorded occasions government vernacular schools were also handed over to the missionaries or closed, if a missionary school of the same type was near.40

The government relied heavily on the grant-in-aid system introduced by the Morgan Report and considered it a practicable way to outsource educational responsibility to the missionaries. The allocation of such grants was based on the principal of payment by results. Officials of the Department of Public Instruction conducted examinations in the schools. The results of these examinations decided whether a school was eligible for a grant and, if so, for what grant category. The grant in-aid system did not place any restriction on religious instruction in the grant-aided schools -- although examinations were conducted in secular subjects only. Grants were given in the categories A, B and (since 1872) C -- in descending order of the allocated sum. Grants for C schools were small and awarded only for three years. During that time the C school had to qualify for an A or B grant. The distinction in A, B and C schools was applied to every type of school. Among those types English schools received the highest grants, followed by Anglo-vernacular and, finally, vernacular schools.41

The working of the grant-in-aid system was tightly connected with the financial state of the colony. Initially comparatively generous grants were made. The coffee plantations' prosperity had reached new heights and the government coffers were filled up to the rim. The missionary societies seized the opportunity and most missionary schools applied for a grant. In 1870, the first year of the new scheme, 223 schools received a grant. Six year later the number of eligible schools had increased to 697.42

The government and the Department for Public Instruction were both pleased with the working of the grant-in-aid system from its very inception. More and more educational responsibility was passed to the private missionary bodies that competed fiercely for grants and constantly established more schools. The missionaries were the main beneficiaries of the system -- even though, in theory, all private schools (i. e. not just missionary schools) could apply for a government grant since the revisions of the Morgan Committee. Although the indigenous religious groups quickly realised the potential of the grant-in-aid system, they could not make full use of the scheme due to several hindrances. Unlike their Christian counterparts, the Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims had not participated in the field of education prior to the 1870s on any significant scale. The considerable number of Buddhist pansala schools had existed outside the official educational system of the island since the arrival of the British. The pansalas contributed to the spread of literacy in the vernacular and were very valuable for the villagers, but they worked on different principles than government or missionary schools. Therefore, they could not serve as a training ground in (Western) educational management. Apart from the Buddhist pansalas, the indigenous communities had little experience in the management of schools, although every now and then a local school was set up and run on private funds.

The indigenous religion groups' ambitions to secure government grants did not only suffer from their lack of experience in schools management. The often also lacked the money to set up schools in the first place. And when they managed to do so, they faced the fierce opposition of the missionary bodies, the partiality of the British officials and -- the most formidably -- provisions of the so-called Distance Rule as introduced in 1874. Thus, only four Buddhist and one Hindu school were registered for a grant in the year 1880 (ten years after the introduction of the revised scheme) -- as against a total of 833 grant-aided schools in that year.43

The missionary societies with their headquarters in Europe or America had much larger financial resources at their disposal than the local Buddhist or Hindu communities. This gave the missionaries a distinct advantage over their native competitors, as the initial investment to set up and run a school was considerable and grants were only given to schools already up and running. Furthermore, the opposition of the missionaries and their influence on the European officials often delayed or prevented the registration of Buddhist and Hindu schools for a grant. Jayasuriya gives several examples for this practice and both Jayasuriya and Sumathipala quote the Director of Public Instruction on one particular case in the Northern Province:

During the last two years some applications were considered for the registration of schools under Sivite [Hindu] managers. They were large schools, had existed for many years, and fulfilled every condition required by the existing regulations. The case of one of the schools was submitted to my particular attention by the Tamil members of the Legislative Council. The protests of one of the Managers against the registration of such schools has been of a very determined kind, and he directly claims for the Society he represents the 'exclusive possession' of the district in which his schools are situated. Indeed with reference to a school which had been in existence for nearly twenty years, he says,

'If it can be made plain that the school is really needed, the teacher should be required to accept Mission management as the sole condition to receiving government aid.'44

Only rarely did such cases reach the Director of Public Instruction -- and even then it seems that little has been done to keep the Christian missionaries from interfering. The school in the referred case did not receive the grant.45 Christian lobbying slowed down the development of native schools and, above all, increased the lead of the missionary societies in the educational field. And with the introduction of the Distance Rule in 1874 an additional and crucial advantage in the competition for grants was given to those bodies with a large number of already registered schools -- i.e. the Christian missionary societies. The new rule made provisions for the refusal of grants for schools established within three miles of an existing government or grant-in-aid school of the same type -- except in special circumstances.46 Taking into account that the missionary schools had right from the introduction of the grant-in-aid scheme seized the opportunity and established numerous schools, it becomes clear that such a rule prevented the registration of new schools in many localities. The existence of a government or missionary grant-aided school in a village (or in the vicinity thereof) made the allocation of a grant for another school in that area impossible. This served a severe blow to the Buddhist and Hindu schools that explicitly aimed at providing indigenous educational facilities as alternative to the already established missionary institutions. With 595 grant-in-aid schools in 1874 47 (and the number rapidly increasing) it was hard enough to find a suitable place for a school with no other grant-in-aid school already existent. In the important population centres, where numerous missionary schools competed for pupils, the registration of a grant-aided school was almost impossible. The working of the Distance Rule satisfied both the secular authorities (for financial considerations) and the Protestant missionaries (whose educational supremacy it safeguarded). The Distance Rule was, therefore, included in Bruce's Revised Code of 1880. And in 1891, the even more restrictive quarter-mile rule was introduced.

-- Ceylon's Department of Public Instruction, 1868 [Excerpt], From Coffee to Tea Cultivation in Ceylon, 1880-1900: An Economic and Social History, by Roland Wenzlhuemer

WHEREAS the said theosophists, perceiving the need for the upliftment of the people’s self-esteem in collaboration with Most Ven. Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala, Ven. Migettuwatte Gunananda, Anagarika Dharmapala and other Buddhists Leaders founded the Colombo Buddhist Theosophical Society for the purpose of fostering education, traditional culture and national heritage and protecting Buddha Sasana and consequently the Society has managed as many as 420 public schools.

-- Colombo Buddhist Theosophical Society, by Colombo Buddhist Theosophical Society

Like a lone sentinel, the saffron robe clad image of this illustrious son of mother Lanka seems to be patiently watching what has become of his noble dreams today. Though thousands of people pass the image on Galle Road daily, only a handful of people of even the locality are aware of his great service today.

A hundred yards from the turnoff are a set of walled-in school buildings on either side of the road. When this school was opened in 1869 it was in a background of the British colonial rulers discouraging and stifling efforts of indigenous leaders and intellectuals to resurge their own cultural heritage and civilization, the preservation of their very birthright.

British policy

One has to go back to 1812, when Robert Brownrigg, the notorious British governor who was recalled to England in disgrace after his scorched earth suppression of the Kandyan peasantry’s rebellion of 1817-18, wrote to his superiors in England that it would be a useless exercise to open any more schools in this country as the local children do not come to these schools. They go to the Buddhist temples, sit under the Bo tree and learn under Buddhist monks who wield tremendous influence over laymen. Unless the strong bond between the Buddhist monks and the lay society was broken it would be useless to open any more schools in this colony, Brownrigg wrote to his government in August 1812. Thus did the work of "educating and converting the pagans" begin in a country that had a flowering literature, art, sculpture, architecture and the world’s most advanced irrigation systems and well planned cities with running water supplied via underground conduits.

In pursuance of Brownrigg’s policy of discouraging the Buddhist clergy from playing their traditional key role in education, more and more missionary schools were being opened up under the patronage of the British government and a number of laws were enacted to discourage the Buddhists. Dodanduwe Piyaratana Thera, the founder of Dodanduwa Piyaratana Vidyalaya started the Dharmarthasiddha Society with the express intent of starting Buddhist schools as far back as 1869, the year in which the school was opened.

Port of call

An inlet formed along an outcrop of rocks at Dodanduwa, adjacent to the Rathgama lagoon was a small port of call for sailing vessels in past centuries even before the Portuguese set foot in the country that had brought prosperity to the two villages. The fisher folk of Dodanduwa were famous for their salted fish, which found a ready market all along the western seaboard. Local, Indian and Maldivian sailing vessels called over at this port as well as at Beruwala, Weligama, Devinuwara, Colombo, Chilaw, Mannar and even as far away as Trincomalee and Batticaloa.

There was trade with vessels that came from Trichinapoly, Nagapattanam and Kaveripattanam and the goods that changed hands ranged from the famous salt fish of Dodanduwa to clay roof tiles, clay pottery, and handloom textiles. People of the area were prosperous and most fish caught in the locality were salted or sold fresh. When the sea became rough, they sailed to fish in the seas off the east coast during the South West Monsoon. The sailing craft were as large as 60 or 70 feet long, a veritable fishing and trading fleet sometimes drawn up on the beach after sailing like the wall of a fortress.

Religious resurgence

With the prosperity reached by the people religious resurgence and the penchant for learning among these enterprising people also grew. Dodanduwa port became the centre that helped to establish the Sri Kalyaniwansa Maha Nikaya sect of the Buddhist clergy that led to the national resurgence.

The Mahā Nikāya (literal translation: "great order") is one of the two principal monastic orders, or fraternities, of modern Thai and Cambodian Buddhism. The term is used to refer to any Theravada monks not within the Dhammayuttika Nikaya, the other principal monastic order. The Maha Nikaya is the largest order of Theravada Buddhism in Thailand and Cambodia, in Thailand taking up over 90% of the Buddhist monks in the country.

After the founding of the Dhammayuttika Nikāya by the then-monk Prince Mongkut in 1833, decades later all recognized monks not ordained in the Dhammayuttika order were considered to be part of the maha nikāya, the "great collection" of those outside the new Dhammayuttika fraternity. As such, most monks in Thailand belong to the Maha Nikāya more or less by default; the order itself did not originally establish any particular practices or views that characterized those adhering to its creed. There were in reality hundreds of different Nikayas throughout the Thai areas that were lumped together as the "Maha Nikāya".

In Cambodia, a similar situation exists. The Dhammayuttika Nikāya was supposedly imported from Thailand in 1855, and those monks remaining outside the Dhammayuttika order were recognized as being members of the Maha Nikāya (Khmer: មហានិកាយ Mohanikay). A separate supreme patriarch for the Dhammayuttika Nikāya was appointed by King Norodom. The previous national supreme patriarch then became the titular head of the Cambodian Maha Nikāya.

In Thailand, a single supreme patriarch is recognized as having authority over both the Maha Nikāya and the Dhammayuttika Nikāya. In recent years some Maha Nikāya monks have campaigned for the creation of a separate Maha Nikāya patriarch, as recent Thai supreme patriarchs have invariably been drawn from the royalty-supported Dhammayuttika Nikāya, despite Dhammayuttika Nikāya monks making up only six percent of the monks in Thailand.

-- Maha Nikaya, by Wikipedia

In 1808 the Most Ven Kathaluwe Gunaratana Tissa Nayake Thera and his lay followers set sail from Dodanduwa in a local vessel for Myanmar to bring the Upasampada, higher ordination from that country as Buddhism and ecclesiastical development under continuous onslaughts of the Portuguese, Dutch and later the British had continued to suffer and decline. There was an even earlier visit to Myanmar by the Ven Kapugama Dhammakkanda Thera from Dadalla, Ven Bopagoda Sirisumana Thera of Rathgama who also left by a sailing vessel from Dodanduwa in 1786. These devoted theras set up a vihara in Dodanduwa in 1802. Legend has it the theras, seeing a luxuriant ginger plant, when uprooting it found a ginger tuber the size of a parasol and decided to build their temple on that spot. Some years later a marble image of the Buddha was found at Kaveripattanam in India and the French Governor of the district, who was approached by the Ven Sasammatha Dhammasara Thera, chief incumbent of the temple at Dodanduwa, gifted the statue to the temple. A second image of the Buddha that was found at the same site that was smaller in size was offered to the temple by the residents of this Indian port town.

Of this temple’s past, history and legend is interwoven. Named Shailabimbaramaya, the two marble images of the Buddha can be seen in the temple today. More importantly, the valiant and tenacious efforts of the Buddhist clergy of the Southern Province, especially Rathgama and Dodanduwa is an epic forgotten by people whose pursuit of overtaking their neighbour has made most of them rats in a meaningless race.

National heritage

The school had a complete lab, one of the first labs in the Southern Province that was started by the Ven Dodanduwe Piyaratana Thera and fully equipped by Colonel Henry Steele Olcott himself after he visited the school in 1880. Today the lab lacks proper facilities and equipment and science education at the school has lagged behind other schools in the area.

The number of students on roll today is 191 with classes from grade one to eleven. Some classes have only seven or eight children. The principal, Ms. Y. Seelawathie says children of the locality go to other schools, as they are popular and that this school has been neglected for sometime, especially during the past decade. Some of the buildings have collapsed while most others are in a neglected state. The education department or the ministry are probably unaware of the historical significance of this school, which has been named a National Heritage by the former minister of Cultural Affairs Vijitha Herath very recently.

One wonders whether the president who is herself the Minister of Education is aware of the existence of this school as no educational dignitary or plenipotentiary has ever visited it or taken notice of it.

There are various Buddhist societies and organisations in the country like the ACBC [All Ceylon Buddhist Congress] and even political parties that claim to fight for the rights and privileges of the Buddhist society and religion but the first Sinhala Buddhist School has not received their attention for decades. In fairness to the Buddhist Theosophical Society, it has to be said that they thwarted a recent attempt of the Southern Provincial Council to convert the school to a temporary shelter for tsunami victims last year. The Theosophical society official objected to the school being used as a camp for tsunami displaced but a part of the school’s land has been given to an NGO that has been criticized in certain quarters as an anti-Buddhist organisation to put up tents for the displaced.

Best library

The school had one of the best libraries in the south that Col. Olcott and many other Buddhist leaders helped to develop but surreptitious hands had been at work and most of the invaluable books have gone missing. There is no librarian. One of the objects of historical value and significance, an 8mm film projector gifted by Col. Olcott to the school has been sold by the Education Department to a person of the area for 400 rupees. The department has acted under the Financial Regulations and had condemned this artefact as an "unserviceable item" and sold it to the highest bidder! Just how stupid could red tape really become?

Olcott

Col. Olcott visited the school and Sri Shailabimbarama Dodanduwa where the Piyaratana Nayake Thera lived. The thera advised Olcott to help open Buddhist schools, not in competition with the Christian missionary schools but to give an opportunity to rural Buddhists who could not get the recognition of the colonial authorities if they had received their education in the Buddhist temples or Pirivenas.

Col. Olcott took this advice, as he had known the thera with whom he had corresponded since 1878. Though many writers have written that Olcott's visit to Sri Lanka was inspired by learning about the religious debate at Panadura it is the correspondence he had with the Ven Piyaratana Nayake Thera that brought Olcott to our shores.

In the archives, Olcott's diary still exists. He has written that he came to this country from the port of Galle and visited the temple of Piyaratana Thera after addressing a gathering of about 2000 that came to Galle to greet him. He said the temple was one of the most well organised and orderly temples. He spent ten days at the temple discussing the future of Buddhist education in this country and formulating the concept of the Buddhist Theosophical Society (BTS) schools that changed the colonial education map of this country.

History sits like an unseen but ubiquitous reality here. Even the Tibetan born Ven S. Mahinda who adopted this country as his motherland and became the poet laureate of the freedom struggle was also ordained in the temple of Ven Dondaduwe Piyaratana Nayake Thera in 1911. At present, we have stepped into an era of spurning history, especially after 1977. When one visits the school one is really treading on hallowed ground, still held close to their hearts by persons of the locality.

The principal proudly shows the shrine room with a Buddha image completed recently by two well-wishers. This new shrine in spotless white is perhaps the only feature that has been added on by the present generation.

The promontory projecting into the lagoon from the adjoining Rathgama rises above the waters as one goes on a village road to the hamlet Moraththuduwa. Here atop its crest hiding under the lush canopy of areca, bamboo, jak, and coconut trees is a middle class home where a lone campaigner Amarajeeva de Silva Rajakaruna shows old documents, meticulously kept records of dates and events which he values as the most precious of all his worldly possessions. His father, octogenarian and retired principal D. D. de S. Rajakaruna, and his own father had been students of the Dondaduwa school. They have both campaigned for the revival of this school to its past glory.

However, has our nation been cured of the ailment of the open economy that disdained this country’s national heritage preferring to count dollars while the people were told to earn money, money and more money and make merry, even if you had to commit the vilest calumny on the sacred treasures of this nation?


A stamp released in honour of Rev Dodanduwa Sri Piyaratana Tissa Mahanayake Thero

source : The Island - 6th August, 2005

[admin]

Emile Senart [Emile Charles Marie Senart ]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/21/20

T. W. Rhys Davids’s interest in Pāli began while he was serving in the Ceylon Civil Service (1864–72). His association with Buddhism at this time was incidental—to learn Pāli he had to study with a bhikkhu. His first translation, typical of the historical bias of his time, was in numismatics and epigraphy, an outcome of his posting to the archaeologically rich area of Anuradhapura, and led in 1877 to his Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon, which contained the first attempt to date the death of the Buddha.9 He did not write on Buddhism until after his return to Britain, and a modest comment on how little he knew about Buddhism at that time, which is quoted by Ananda Wickremaratne, suggests that he was invited to do so because of popular interest in Buddhism.10 His first book, the highly influential Buddhism: A Sketch of the Life and Teachings of Gautama, the Buddha (1878), was compiled from the material then available in translation.11 This book established his reputation as a Buddhist scholar. It was followed by his translations Buddhist Birth Stories and Buddhist Suttas, both published in 1880.12 During the influential Hibbert Lectures of 1881, he announced the founding of the Pāli Text Society, confidently predicting the publication of the whole of the texts of the Sutta and Abhidhamma Pitakas in “no very distant period.”13 The inaugural committee of management included, among others willing to undertake translation, the Pāli scholars Victor Fausboll, Hermann Oldenberg, and Emile Senart. There was clearly a growing interest and activity in Pāli translation by this time. The formation of the Pāli Text Society institutionalized the study of Buddhism and the interpretation of it, which had begun much earlier. It is necessary therefore to look briefly at the earlier period.

-- Defining Modern Buddhism: Mr. and Mrs. Rhys Davids and the Pali Text Society, by Judith Snodgrass

Émile Senart
Born: Émile Charles Marie Senart, 26 March 1847, Reims
Died: 21 February 1928 (aged 80), Paris
Occupation: Indologist

Émile Charles Marie Senart (26 March 1847 – 21 February 1928) was a French Indologist.

Besides numerous epigraphic works, we owe him several translations in French of Buddhist and Hindu texts, including several Upaniṣad.

He was Paul Pelliot's professor at the Collège de France.

He was elected a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1882, president of the Société asiatique [Asiatic Society] from 1908 to 1928 ...

The Société Asiatique (Asiatic Society) is a French learned society dedicated to the study of Asia. It was founded in 1822 with the mission of developing and diffusing knowledge of Asia. Its boundaries of geographic interest are broad, ranging from the Maghreb to the Far East. The society publishes the Journal asiatique [1822-1936]. At present the society has about 700 members in France and abroad; its library contains over 90,000 volumes.

The establishment of the society was confirmed by royal ordinance on April 15, 1829. Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy was the first president.

Notable people

• Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat
• Jacques Bacot
• Jean Berlie
• Eugène Burnouf
• Jean-François Champollion
• Henri Cordier
• Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès
• Julius Klaproth
• Louis Finot
• Jean Leclant
• Sylvain Lévi
• Abdallah Marrash
• Gaston Maspero
• Paul Pelliot
• Joseph Toussaint Reinaud
• Ernest Renan
• Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin
• Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy
• İbrahim Şinasi
• Charles Virolleaud

List of the presidents of the Société

• 1822–1829: Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy
• 1829–1832: Jean-Pierre Abel Rémusat
• 1832–1834: Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy
• 1834–1847: Amédée Jaubert
• 1847–1867: Joseph Toussaint Reinaud
• 1867–1876: Julius von Mohl
• 1876–1878: Joseph Héliodore Garcin de Tassy
• 1878–1884: Adolphe Régnier
• 1884–1892: Ernest Renan
• 1892–1908: Barbier de Meynard
• 1908–1928: Émile Senart
• 1928–1935: Sylvain Lévi
• 1935–1945: Paul Pelliot
• 1946–1951: Jacques Bacot
• 1952–1964: Charles Virolleaud
• 1964–1969: George Coedès
• 1969–1974: René Labat
• 1974–1986: Claude Cahen
• 1987–1996: André Caquot
• 1996–2002: Daniel Gimaret
• 2002–present: Jean-Pierre Mahé

-- Société Asiatique [Asiatic Society], by Wikipedia

and founder of the "Association française des amis de l'Orient" in 1920.

Selected works

• 1875: Essai sur la légende du Bouddha - Paris.
• Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi - Paris
• 1881: Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi / 1 / Les quatorze édits.
• 1886: Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi / 2 / L.édits détachés. L'auteur et la langue des édits.
• 1882–1897: Le Mahāvastu: Sanskrit text. Published for the first time and accompanied by introductions and commentary by E. Sénart. - Paris : Imprimerie Nationale, 1882-1897, Volume 1/ 1882, Volume 2/ 1890, Volume 3/ 1897
• 1889: Gustave Garrez
• 1896: Les Castes dans l'Inde, les faits et le système - Paris (Caste in India. Translated by E. Denison Ross. London 1930)
• 1901: Text of Inscriptions discovered at the Niya Site, 1901 / Transcr. and edited by A. M. Boyer, E. J. Rapson and E. Senart. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1920 (Kharosthi Inscriptions discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan ; 1)
• 1907: Origines Bouddhiques
• 1927: Text of Inscriptions discovered at the Niya, Endere, and Lou-lan Sites, 1906-7 / Auguste M. Boyer; Edward James Rapson; Émile Charles Marie Senart. - Oxford.
• 1930: Chāndogya Upaniṣad Translated and annotated by Émile Sénart, Société d'édition: Les Belles Lettres, Paris.

Sources

• This article contains text from a document on the La vie rémoise site.

External links

• Émile Sénard on Wikisource
• SENART Émile, Charles, Marie on Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
• Obituary on Persée

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

Obituary Notices: Emile Charles Marie Senart
by F.W. Thomas
The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
No. 3, pp. 751-760
July 1928

The greatest part of M. Senart’s productivity as a scholar was concerned with Buddhism. In 1871, at the age of 24, he made his debut, in the Journal Asiatique (vi. xvii., pp. 193-540), by a publication of Kaccayana’s Pali Grammar, sutras and commentary, a work of great difficulty; the translation and notes betrayed no signs of immaturity and manifested a familiarity with the Sanskrit grammarians, whose model Kaccayana had followed. Next, published likewise as a series of articles in the Journal Asiatique, 1873-5, and issued as a volume in 1875, came the celebrated Essai sur la legend du Buddha, a book which has always been provocative to the more literal Buddhologists. No one can doubt that the story of Buddha, largely miraculous, is also in part mythological. The speciality of M. Senart’s theory was that the person of Buddha had absorbed not merely isolated mythological factors, but a fairly compact body of conceptions, originally solar. The case would be parallel to a well-known illustration accompanying one of Thackeray’s essays and showing three designs: (1) Rex (an imposing royal costume, standing by itself), (2) Ludovicus (a mere man), and (3) Ludovicus Rex, the combined awe-inspiring figure. It seems rather clear that the idea of the cakravartin was pre-Buddhistic and ultimately solar: the events preceding the abandonment of home are at least highly poetical, the detailed incidents of the illumination and the defeat of Mara are surely mythology, and, even if the Bodhi-tree was an actuality, it was a conventional adjunct of ascetics, and, as such, symbolical too – though the symbolism need not have been solar. M. Senart may not have gone too far in suggesting a doubt whether Maya is a fictitious name for Buddha’s mother or even that of Suddhodana for his father; but clearly it was imprudent to doubt the existence of Kapilavastu. How much can be retained of the theory of the Visnuite or Krsnaite character of the legend it would not be easy to say. But, in fact, the legendary part of the Buddha story would hardly now be seriously considered by scholars, who are more concerned to discover what views were propounded by the person who figures in the Pali dialogues and why both he and Mahavira founded not schools, but sects.

In 1877, M. Senart published a short article, entitled Sur quelques termes buddhiques, wherein he took note of certain forms of words occurring in the Buddhist texts, such as upadisesa, which seemed to point to an earlier canonic dialect more developed (plus altere, plus prakritisant) than appears in their surroundings. His preoccupation with the dialects was also evidenced by a long and suggestive review of Cunningham, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, 1877. The articles containing his own edition of the Inscriptions de Piyadasi began to appear in 1880.1 The completed work (1881) was translated by Sir George Grierson in the Indian Antiquary (xviii, 1889-xxi, 1892). M. Senart was able in some instances to make use of new facsimiles furnished by Dr. Burgess. But the great advance in the interpretation was due mainly to his own insight and his familiarity with the Pali language and literature. The concluding chapters are devoted to a study of the date and chronology of the inscriptions and the general questions of Buddhist chronology so far as connected therewith; the author of the inscriptions, his faith and his measures; the language and the several dialects, whereof full grammatical sketches are given; the linguistic chronology of India and the interrelations between Sanskrit, Mixed Sanskrit, the Prakrits, and Pali. Almost all the conclusions at which M. Senart arrived (including his acceptance of the date A.D. 319 for the commencement of the Gupta era) still hold good. But there is one great matter which seems in his argument to retain some of its previous obscurity. He holds that the alphabets show by their inadequacy that they could not have been used for writing Sanskrit (or, we may add, Pali). The first Sanskrit to be written was the Mixed Sanskrit of certain inscriptions, which had been known as the Gatha dialect and for which M. Senart had himself previously proposed the name Buddhist Sanskrit. This ceased to exist at the moment when the philological exactitude of the old Brahman schools extended its influence. The Prakrits and the Pali also assumed a definite form when controlled by a similar influence. The process may have begun about A.D. 100 and have been completed before the Gupta period. The matter is certainly puzzling, and it is clear that the Asokan alphabets must have been developed in certain points before they could be fitted for the writing of Sanskrit. But the inference that at the time there was no written Sanskrit, and in fact no worldly Sanskrit at all, seems inadequately grounded. The influence of the learned language upon the popular speech did not commence with Panini: it must have begun from the moment when the vernacular began to diverge from the language of the texts (Brahmanas, Upanisads, and so forth). What Panini discriminated was the correct language of the sistas, the scholars. We know from the early references in the Chandogya-Upanisad and elsewhere that there were whole classes of writings of a worldly character, and these must have been composed in fairly popular speech. Thus in principle the Mixed Sanskrit must go back many centuries B.C., and we cannot doubt that stages of it existed at the time of Buddha and in that of Asoka. The character of the Buddhist Sanskrit was, of course, fully recognized by M. Senart, and his divergence from the view of Burnouf that it was a language of persons who, with inadequate competence, were trying to write the literary language is a little hard to seize. The Mixed Sanskrit is Sanskrit with faults, a variety of that “bad Sanskrit” which we find in Vedic Parisistas, manuals of crafts, arts, etc. Its only excuse for existence was its actual currency, and it was no doubt the spread of grammatical training that ultimately expelled it from all higher literature. To this extent we cannot but subscribe to M. Senart’s view. But, then, for the Mixed Sanskrit the Asokan alphabets are no less inadequate than for the scholarly form; so that we should have to deny that the Mixed Sanskrit itself was written prior to the use of double consonants, differentiation of the sibilants, the nasals and so forth. We must, it seems, stop short of this and hold (1) that writing was first employed in connection with popular speech, for business purposes, and so forth, (2) that the Sanskrit, like the Mixed Sanskrit, may at first have made shift with the imperfect alphabets as used in the Asoka inscriptions (possibly writing double consonants with viramas and so forth), (3) that the inscriptions themselves, being written in merely popular and official dialects, may have been content with alphabetic practice less developed than that which at the time was in actual use for literary purposes – this last proposition is in fact maintained by Buhler. M. Senart’s discrimination of the different dialects represented in the Edicts, his recognition of the Magadhi as official over an area wider than its currency and of its particular intrusions in the texts of the other dialects have been generally confirmed; and his detailed accounts of the features of the several dialects have been merely amplified in later works.

M. Senart’s study of the early inscriptions in the Brahmi and Kharosthi alphabets continued throughout his life as a scholar. New materials and new discoveries were regularly referred to him, and they gave occasion to a long series of articles, for the most part published under the running title Notes de’Epigraphie Indienne,2 always characterized by the most scrupulous examination of the copies and the most penetrating explanation of the texts. His editions of the Karle and Nasik inscriptions (Epigraphia Indica, vol. vii., pp. 47-74; viii, pp. 59-96) brought those texts up to the level of modern scholarship. When the time came for a republication of volume I of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, his preoccupations did not allow him to undertake the task, which was discharged in a thorough manner by that very sound, careful and fair-minded scholar, Professor Ernst Hultzsch. The last articles by M. Senart on these subjects were his discussion (1916) of the new Asoka edict found at Maski in Hyderabad and – in collaboration with the Abbe Boyer and Professor Rapson – an examination (1918) of a poem inscribed on a Kharosthi tablet from Chinese Turkestan.

We have still, however, to take account of an analogous task of great difficulty, wherein M. Senart collaborated with the same two scholars. The materials consisted of documents, chilefly wooden tablets, discovered by Sir A. Stein in the course of his three expeditions to Chinese Turkestan. The general features of the script and language, as well as some tentative transliterations and translations, were the subject of a communication by Professor Rapson to the Algiers Congress of 1905. But the developed form of the Kharosthi alphabet, including unprecedented combinations of signs, and the mixed character of the vocabulary, which comprises a large number of local proper names and titular designations, entailed a long period of joint manipulation: two fascicule, containing the bulk of the material, were published, under the title Kharosthi Inscriptions, in 1920 and 1927.

The Mahavastu is a Sanskrit Buddhist text, which with its apparatus criticus fills in M. Senart’s edition more than 1300 pages octavo. It is a work of great importance, belonging to the Vinaya of one of the old Buddhist sects, that of the Mahasanghikas. It is a mine of old Buddhist story, observation, reflections, and wit in unlaboured prose and flowing verse: a book which in another literature might be made a life’s study. Unfortunately, it is but a drop in the ocean of Buddhist literature, which we must somehow encompass as a whole if we are not to be engulfed in it. Still more unfortunately, perhaps, it is written in the Mixed Sanskrit, a text presenting at every step irregularities, and even regularities, which may have been imported into it at any stage in its long history. The MSS., of modern date and all from Nepal, have by their discrepancy involved the editor in an enormous labour of collation. If we had copies of older date or of different provenance (say from Central Asia), we should be confronted (as many analogies show) with divergences far more numerous and in many cases on a much larger scale. A definitive text is hardly to be hoped for. The difficulty, however, is in the main a matter only of grammar or language. M. Senart has given us an important canonical text of one of the most influential early sects. Its further study cannot fail to yield continual fruit, and M. Senart’s closely printed commentary of about 400 pages is itself a mine of new and valuable observations upon textual and linguistic matters and upon Buddhist thought and terminology. Still a different dialect appears in the MS. Dutreuil du Rhins, the Kharosthi Dhammapada, concerning which M. Senart read a paper before the Paris Congress of 1897, and which he edited in the Journal Asiatique.3 Among the papers of the ill-fated traveler some birch-bark fragments were noted by M. Sylvain Levi as inscribed in Kharosthi characters. The fragments were for the most part small, in many cases minute; but M. Senart had no difficulty in recognizing a version of the celebrated collection of moral and religious verses known in Pali under the title Dhammapada. The formidable task of decipherment was thus lightened, and M. Senart was able to find Pali equivalents for most of the verses and fragments. It was unfortunate that another part of the same MS. (the Ptrovsky fragments), which had found its way to St. Petersburg, was not fully available for incorporation. The MS. did not originate in Chinese Turkestan: it had been brought from noth-western India, and it furnished a new early Prakrit dialect, which has yet to be fully explored.

There remains for commemoration only one extensive work by M. Senart. This is his monograph on caste (Les Castes dans l’Inde, 1895, reprinted without change in 1927), a subject in regard to which the examination of prior views is almost more onerous than the direct study of the facts. M. Senart’s three chapters are devoted respectively to the present, the past, and the origins, including a criticism of the traditional Brahmanic theory and the conclusions of Nesfield, Ibbetson, and Risley. The main originalities of his own view are (1) the distinction between the original classes, varna, of Brahman, Ksatriya, Vaisya and Sudra, at first two “colours”, varna, namely Aryan and Sudra, and the specific endo-exogamic groups properly denoted by the word jati “caste”, (2) the tracing of the latter organizations to an Aryan source in a gentile constitution of society such as existed in early Greece and Rome. It must be admitted that for gentes in the required sense we do not find much evidence in early India (that is by no means conclusive) and that among the castes mentioned by Manu and other ancient writers (we need not take into account the castes of modern times, after a development of about 2,500 years) we find designations professional, genealogical, tribal, and local, but hardly any of a gentilician import. Also we ought to be able to point to Brahman and Ksatriya gentes: can this be done? Yet M. Senart’s view does account for two main features of caste, namely the endogamic principles and the rules as to common meals. It remains possible that a gentilician constitution of society did leave these features as a legacy to new divisions of very various origins, developing in the complex Indian people.

Besides the works which we have cited we owe to M. Senart a number of studies of less extent. Such are his striking little work on Buddhism and Yoga, his papers on the Abhisambuddha-gathas of the Pali Jataka, on the Vajrapani in early Buddhist art, on Rajas and the theory of the three Gunas in the Samkhya philosophy. In 1922 he published an elegant translation of the Bhagavad-gita. All his writings are distinguished by a refined linguistic sense and a clear unbiased judgment. There is also nothing second-hand or compilatory in his work; on the contrary, his tendency was always towards new and vital conceptions. Considering the combined brilliance and solidity of his work, it cannot be said that in the qualities of a scholar he was surpassed by an Indianist of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

It is well known that M. Senart possessed advantages of fortune which might have proved an obstacle to a strictly scholarly career. Fortunately science and letters can point to not a few instances of men of means who were not merely thinkers or amateurs, but specialist investigators whose work would not have been modified by being professional. M. Senart was always counted among the Indianist circle of the University of Paris, and not only of the Societe Asiatique (Asia Society), in which he was successively member of Council (1872), Vice-President (1890), and President (1908). After the death of M. Barth, to whom in 1914[4] he paid a touching tribute, he was, so to speak, the father of the Paris Indianists. In the Academie des Inscriptions he was the outstanding representative of oriental studies. In such matters as the foundation of the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient, the Pelliot mission to Central Asia, the Commission Archeologique of the Academy his was usually the directing influence. When the time came for celebrating the centenary of the Societe Asiatique (Asia Society) the full burden of organization and leadership in the splendid succession of ceremonies and festivities recorded in the published record was unflinchingly borne by him. Nor could anything surpass the patience, the courtesy, and the distinguished eloquence and dignity with which at the age of 75 he carried out the whole programme.

From the time of the Paris Congress of 1897, M. Senart was regarded outside France as the leading French orientalist. He was a prominent figure in the gatherings at Rome (1899) and Algiers (1905). He was a member of the permanent international committee, and he also represented the Institute at the international conferences of Academies. In 1917, in order to meet the situation created by the war, and also in view of certain features of the pre-war Congresses, he made formal proposals, on behalf of the Societe Asiatique (Asia Society), providing for mutual privileges, annual gatherings, and joint enterprises. The agreement, to which also the American Oriental Society, the Senola Orientale of the University of Rome, and the Asiatic Society of Japan became parties, is fully recorded in this Journal (1918, pp. 186-97). The first Joint Session was held in London on September 3-6, 1919, and the proceedings are reported in the Journal for 1920, pp. 123-62. There were further meetings at Paris in 1920 and at Brussels in 1921. From the gathering in 1919 four new Orientalist societies directly or indirectly originated, namely in Belgium, Holland, Norway, and Sweden, of which the second, the Oostersch Genootschap in Nederland, has since held annual assemblies of a partly international character. In 1923 the centenary of the Royal Asiatic Society was honoured by M. Senart’s presence as a representative of France. When in 1926 the question of resuming the old series of international gatherings assumed a practicable aspect, M. Senart and his colleagues of the Societe Asiatique (Asia Society) were consenting parties in the negociations and approved the outcome. Shortly afterwards, in march, 1927, M. Senart’s eightieth birthday was made an occasion for messages of congratulation from friends and colleagues both in France and abroad. A critical illness prevented any formal presentation; but the messages did not fail to receive an individual and gracious acknowledgment. Ever scrupulous in the minor offices of social life, a punctual correspondent, a delightful host, and a loyal friend, he realized an ideal of urbane unselfishness, in which only the winning exterior disguised a renunciatory quality. His increasing frailty was naturally as perceptible to himself as to others; but he anticipated its denouement, which took place on February 21 of the present year, without either satisfaction or refret.

He was born at Rheims on March 26, 1847. His relations with the Societe Asiatique (Asia Society] have already been particularized. In 1882 he was elected a member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. He was also at various times chosen as a member of the Academies of Belgium, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, and Russia, of Berlin, Gottingen, and Munich, and an Honorary Member of numerous societies. In this country the Royal Asiatic Society paid him that tribute in 1892, and the India Society in 1922 elected him a Vice-President; in 1923 he received the Honorary Doctorate of the University of Oxford. The death of his wife evoked many expressions of sympathy from orientalists who had enjoyed her hospitality at Paris in 1897; it left M. Senart without descendants.’

_______________

Notes

1. Journal Asiatique, VII, XV, pp. 287-347-VIII, viii, pp. 384-478.

2. Journal Asiatique, VIII, ix (1888), pp. 498-504; xi (1888), pp. 504-33; xii (1888), pp. 311-30; xiii (1889), pp. 364-75; xv (1890), pp. 113-63; xix (1892), pp. 472-98; ix, iv (1894), pp. 332053, 504-78; vii (1906), pp. 132-6; xiii (1899), pp. 526-37; xv (1900), pp. 343-60; x, vii, pp. 132-6; xi, iv (1914), pp. 569-85; vii (1916), pp. 425-42; JRAS, 1900, pp. 335-41.

3. IX, xii (1898), pp. 192-308.

4. On the occasion of the presentation recorded in the then collected edition of M. Barth’s writings, pp. vii-xii.

[admin]

Eugène Burnouf
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/21/20

-- Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism, by Eugene Burnouf, 1801-1852

-- Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism, by Eugene Burnouf, 1801-1852 (Rough English Version)

-- Eugene Burnouf, by Wikipedia

Max Muller's first visit to Burnouf was paid on March 20, and was the beginning of a friendship to which he looked back with affectionate gratitude to the last year of his life.

Diary.

Translation.

'Went to Burnouf. Spiritual, amiable, thoroughly French. He received me in the most friendly way, talked a great deal, and all he said valuable, not on ordinary topics but on special. I managed better in French than I expected. "I am a Brahman, a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian; I hate the Jesuits " — that is the sort of man. I am looking forward to his lectures.'

Max Muller describes his teacher as

'Small, his face decidedly German, only lighted up with a constant sparkle which is distinctively French. I must have seemed very stupid to him when I tried to explain what I really wanted to do in Paris. He told me afterwards that he could not make me out at first. His lectures were on the Rig-veda, and opened a new world to me. He explained to us his own researches, he showed us new MSS. which he had received from India, in fact he did all he could to make us fellow workers.'...

It was the influence of Burnouf that decided him to take up the Hymns of the Rig-veda, with the great native commentary of Sayana, as his distinctive work. 'Either study Indian philosophy or study Indian religion and copy the Hymns and Sayana,' said Burnouf. To the youth of only twenty-one, knowing hardly half a dozen people, living alone up five flights of stairs, often not speaking to a soul for twenty-four hours round, life may well have seemed dreary; and yet he never for one moment really regretted the choice he had made...

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

Eugène Burnouf
Born: April 8, 1801, Paris, France
Died: May 28, 1852 (aged 51)
Occupation: Orientalist

Eugène Burnouf (French pronunciation: ​[øʒɛn byʁnuf]; April 8, 1801 – May 28, 1852) was a French scholar, an Indologist and orientalist. His notable works include a study of Sanskrit literature, translation of the Hindu text Bhagavata Purana and Buddhist text Lotus Sutra. He wrote an introductory text on Buddhism and also made significant contributions to the deciphering of Old Persian cuneiform.

Life

He was born in Paris. His father, Professor Jean-Louis Burnouf (1775–1844), was a classical scholar of high reputation, and the author, among other works, of an excellent translation of Tacitus (6 vols., 1827–1833). Eugène Burnouf published in 1826 an Essai sur le Pali ..., written in collaboration with Christian Lassen; and in the following year Observations grammaticales sur quelques passages de l'essai sur le Pali [Google translate: Essay on the Pali..., written in collaboration with Christian Lassen; and in the following year Grammatical observations on some passages from the essay on Pali.].[1]

The next great work he undertook was the deciphering of the Avesta manuscripts brought to France by Anquetil-Duperron. By his research a knowledge of the Avestan language was first brought into the scientific world of Europe. He caused the Vendidad Sade, to be lithographed with the utmost care from the manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and published it in folio parts, 1829–1843.[1]

From 1833 to 1835 he published his Commentaire sur le Yaçna, l'un des livres liturgiques des Parses [Google translate: Commentary on the Yaçna, one of the liturgical books of the Parses.].[1]

At about the same time in his life, Eugène Burnouf made significant contributions to the deciphering of Old Persian cuneiform. Copies of cuneiform inscriptions from Persepolis had been published by Carsten Niebuhr many years earlier in 1778 and some preliminary inferences had already been made by other scholars such as Georg Friedrich Grotefend about these Persian inscriptions. In 1836, Eugène Burnouf discovered that the first of the inscriptions contained a list of the satrapies of Darius. With this clue in his hand, he was able to identify and publish an alphabet of thirty letters, most of which he had correctly deciphered.[2][3][4]

A month earlier, Burnouf's friend Professor Christian Lassen of Bonn, had also published a work on "The Old Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions of Persepolis".[4][5] He and Burnouf had been in frequent correspondence, and his claim to have independently detected the names of the satrapies, and thereby to have fixed the values of the Persian characters, was in consequence fiercely attacked. However, whatever his obligations to Burnouf may have been, according to Sayce, Lassen's "contributions to the decipherment of the inscriptions were numerous and important."[3]

A year later in 1837, Henry Rawlinson had made a copy of the much longer Behistun inscriptions in Persia.

In London, [Reinhold] Rost met Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, and was elected, in December 1863, secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society, a post he held for six years.

Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, GCB FRS (5 April 1810 – 5 March 1895) was a British East India Company army officer, politician and Orientalist, sometimes described as the Father of Assyriology. His son, also Henry, was to become a senior commander in the British Army during World War I...

Rawlinson was appointed political agent at Kandahar in 1840. In that capacity he served for three years, his political labours being considered as meritorious as was his gallantry during various engagements in the course of the Afghan War; for these he was rewarded by the distinction of Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1844.

Serendipitously, he became known personally to the governor-general, which resulted in his appointment as political agent in Ottoman Arabia. Thus he settled in Baghdad, where he devoted himself to cuneiform studies. He was now able, with considerable difficulty and at no small personal risk, to make a complete transcript of the Behistun inscription, which he was also successful in deciphering and interpreting. Having collected a large amount of invaluable information on this and kindred topics, in addition to much geographical knowledge gained in the prosecution of various explorations (including visits with Sir Austen Henry Layard to the ruins of Nineveh), he returned to England on leave of absence in 1849.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in February 1850 on account of being "The Discoverer of the key to the Ancient Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Inscriptions in the Cuneiform character. The Author of various papers on the philology, antiquities, and Geography of Mesopotamia and Central Asia. Eminent as a Scholar".

Rawlinson remained at home for two years, published in 1851 his memoir on the Behistun inscription, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He disposed of his valuable collection of Babylonian, Sabaean, and Sassanian antiquities to the trustees of the British Museum, who also made him a considerable grant to enable him to carry on the Assyrian and Babylonian excavations initiated by Layard. During 1851 he returned to Baghdad. The excavations were performed by his direction with valuable results, among the most important being the discovery of material that contributed greatly to the final decipherment and interpretation of the cuneiform character. Rawlinson's greatest contribution to the deciphering of the cuneiform scripts was the discovery that individual signs had multiple readings depending on their context. While at the British Museum, Rawlinson worked with the younger George Smith.

An equestrian accident in 1855 hastened his determination to return to England, and in that year he resigned his post in the East India Company. On his return to England the distinction of Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath was conferred upon him, and he was appointed a crown director of the East India Company.

The remaining forty years of his life were full of activity—political, diplomatic, and scientific—and were spent mainly in London. In 1858 he was appointed a member of the first India Council, but resigned during 1859 on being sent to Persia as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary. The latter post he held for only a year, owing to his dissatisfaction with circumstances concerning his official position there. Previously he had sat in Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Reigate from February to September 1858; he was again MP for Frome, from 1865 to 1868. He was appointed to the Council of India again in 1868, and continued to serve upon it until his death. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar.

Rawlinson was one of the most important figures arguing that Britain must check Russian ambitions in South Asia. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar. He argued that Tsarist Russia would attack and absorb Khokand, Bokhara and Khiva (which they did – they are now parts of Uzbekistan) and warned they would invade Persia (present-day Iran) and Afghanistan as springboards to British India.

He was a trustee of the British Museum from 1876 till his death. He was created Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1889, and a Baronet in 1891; was president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1874 to 1875, and of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1869 to 1871 and 1878 to 1881; and received honorary degrees at Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.

-- Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, by Wikipedia

Through Rawlinson he became on 1 July 1869 librarian at the India Office, on the retirement of FitzEdward Hall, and imposed order on its manuscripts.

-- Reinhold Rost, by Wikipedia

Carved in the reign of King Darius of Persia (522 BC–486 BC), the inscriptions consisted of identical texts in the three official languages of the empire: Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. Rawlinson sent a translation of the opening paragraphs to the Royal Asiatic Society. Before this paper was published, however, the works of Lassen and Burnouf reached him, prompting a series of revisions and a delay in publication. In 1847 the first part of Rawlinson's Memoir was published, followed by the second part in 1849.[6] The task of deciphering the Persian cuneiform texts was virtually accomplished.[3]

Eugène Burnouf received many Sanskrit texts from Indologist and anthropologist Brian Houghton Hodgson.[7] He published the Sanskrit text and French translation of the Bhagavata Purana ou histoire poétique de Krichna [Google translate: Bhagavata Purana or poetic story of Krichna] in three folio volumes (1840–1847). His last works were Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien [Google translate: Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism] (1844), and a translation of Le lotus de la bonne loi (The Lotus Sutra, 1852).[1][8] According to Jonathan Silk, Burnouf can be regarded as "the founding father of modern Buddhist scientific studies."[9]

He had been for twenty years a member of the Academie des Inscriptions and professor of Sanskrit in the Collège de France. "Introduction à l'Histoire du Bouddhisme Indien" [Google translate: Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism] [1] is recognized as an introduction to Buddhist metaphysics which influenced many French occultists in the nineteenth century for whom indianism and Sanskrit texts were a source of inspiration.

See a notice of Burnouf's works by Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, prefixed to the second edition (1876) of the Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien; also Naudet, Notice historique sur MM. Burnouf, père et fils, in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions [Google translate: Historical notice on MM. Burnouf, father and son, in Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions.]. A list of his valuable contributions to the Journal asiatique and of his manuscript writings, is given in the appendix to the Choix de lettres d'Eugène Burnouf [Google translate: Choice of letters by Eugène Burnouf] (1891).[1]

His cousin Emile-Louis Burnouf (1821–1907) continued his work on Sanskrit language.

Works

• Essai sur le Pali (1826)
• Vendidad Sade, l'un des livres de Zoroastre (1829–1843)
• Commentaire sur le Yaçna, l'un des livres liturgiques des Parses (1833–1835)[1]
• Mémoire sur les inscriptions cunéiformes (1838)
• Bhâgavata Purâna ou histoire poétique de Krichna (3 volumes, 1840–1847)[1]
• Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien (1844 ; 1876)[1]
• Le Lotus de la bonne loi,[1] traduit du sanscrit, accompagné d'un commentaire et de vingt et un mémoires relatifs au buddhisme (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1852). Reprint: Librairie d'Amérique et d'Orient A. Maisonneuve, Paris, 1973.
• Eugène Burnouf (in French) .

See also

• L'Inde française
• List of works by Eugène Guillaume

Notes

1. Chisholm 1911, p. 855.
2. Burnouf, Eugène (1836). Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions Cunéiformes trouvées près d'Hamadan et qui font partie des papiers du Dr. Schulz [Memoir on two cuneiform inscriptions [that were] found near Hamadan and that Sayce, Rev. A. H., Professor of Assyriology, Oxford, "The Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions", Second Edition-revised, 1908, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, Brighton, New York; at pp 9–16 N Prichard, James Cowles, "Researches Into the Physical History of Mankind", 3rd Ed., Vol IV, 1844, Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, London, at pages 30-31
5. Lassen, Christian (1836). Die Altpersischen Keil-Inschriften von Persepolis. Entzifferung des Alphabets und Erklärung des Inhalts [The Old-Persian cuneiform inscriptions of Persepolis. Decipherment of the alphabet and explanation of its content.] (in German). Bonn, (Germany): Eduard Weber.
6. Rawlinson Henry 1847 "The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, decyphered and translated; with a Memoir on Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions in general, and on that of Behistun in Particular", The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol X. It seems that various parts of this paper formed Vol X of this journal. The final part III comprised chapters IV (Analysis of the Persian Inscriptions of Behistunand) and V (Copies and Translations of the Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions of Persepolis, Hamadan, and Van), pp. 187-349.
7. Davidson, Ronald M. (2008). "Studies in Dhāraṇī Literature I: Revisiting the Meaning of the Term Dhāraṇī". Journal of Indian Philosophy. Springer Nature. 37 (2): 97–147. doi:10.1007/s10781-008-9054-8.
8. Akira Yuyama (2000), Eugene Burnouf: The Background to his Research into the Lotus Sutra, Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica, Vol. III, The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Tokyo 1998, pp. 61-77. ISBN 4-9980622-2-0
9. Silk, Jonathan (2012). Review: "A Missed Opportunity: Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism by Eugene Burnouf. Translated by Katia Buffetrille and Donald Lopez. University of Chicago Press 2010." History of Religions 51 (3), 262

References

• Delisle, Laure Burnouf: Choix de lettres d'Eugene Burnouf. Suivi d'une bibliographie, Paris: H. Champion (1891) Internet Archive
• Burnouf, Eugène (trad.): Le lotus de la bonne loi traduit du sanscrit, accompagné d'un commentaire et de vingt et un mémoires relatifs au buddhisme. Paris : Maisonneuve frères 1925. Internet Archive (PDF 34,9 MB)
• Burnouf, Eugène: Legends of Indian Buddhism; New York, Dutton 1911. Internet Archive
• Burnouf, Eugène: Introduction à l'histoire du buddhisme indien, Paris: Imprimerie royale1844. Internet Archive

Attribution:

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Burnouf, Eugène". Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 885.

External links

• Media related to Eugène_Burnouf at Wikimedia Commons
• Notice sur les travaux de M. Eugène Burnouf (in French).

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Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/21/20

Rhys Davids was home schooled by her father and then attended University College, London studying philosophy, psychology, and economics (PPE). She completed her BA in 1886 and an MA in philosophy in 1889. During her time at University College, she won both the John Stuart Mill Scholarship and the Joseph Hume Scholarship. It was her psychology tutor George Croom Robertson who "sent her to Professor Rhys Davids",[5] her future husband, to further her interest in Indian philosophy. She also studied Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy with Reinhold Rost.

In London, Rost met Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, and was elected, in December 1863, secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society, a post he held for six years.

Through Rawlinson he became on 1 July 1869 librarian at the India Office, on the retirement of FitzEdward Hall, and imposed order on its manuscripts.

He secured for students free admission to the library. He retired in 1893 after 24 years of service at the age of 70. His successor as head librarian of the India Office Library became the Orientalist and Sanskritist Charles Henry Tawney (1837-1922).

Rost gained many distinctions and awards. He was created Hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1877, and a Companion of the Indian Empire in 1888. He died at Canterbury on 7 February 1896.[1]

-- Reinhold Rost, by Wikiedia

-- Caroline Rhys Davids, by Wikipedia

Sir Henry Rawlinson GCB FRS
President of the Royal Geographical Society
In office: 1871–1873; 1874–1876
Preceded by: Sir Roderick Murchison
Succeeded by: Sir Henry Frere
Member of Parliament for Frome
In office: 1865 – 1868
Preceded by: Lord Edward Thynne
Succeeded by: Thomas Hughes
Member of Parliament for Reigate
In office: February – October 1858
Preceded by: William Hackblock
Succeeded by: William Monson
Personal details
Born: Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 5 April 1810, Chadlington, England
Died: 5 March 1895 (aged 84), London, Middlesex, England
Resting place: Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey
Political party: Liberal Party
Relatives: George Rawlinson (brother)
Employer: British East India Company
Awards: Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal (1840); Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (1889)
Military service
Allegiance: United Kingdom
Branch: British Army
Rank: Major-general
Wars: First Anglo-Afghan War

Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, GCB FRS (5 April 1810 – 5 March 1895) was a British East India Company army officer, politician and Orientalist, sometimes described as the Father of Assyriology. His son, also Henry, was to become a senior commander in the British Army during World War I.

Early life and army service

Rawlinson was born on 5 April 1810, at the place now known as Chadlington, Oxfordshire, England.[1] He was the second son of Abram Tyack Rawlinson, and elder brother of the historian George Rawlinson. In 1827, having become proficient in the Persian language, he was sent to Persia in company with other British officers to drill and reorganize the Shah's troops. Disagreements between the Persian court and the British government ended in the departure of the British officers.

Rawlinson began to study Persian inscriptions, more particularly those in the cuneiform character, which had only been partially deciphered by Grotefend and Saint-Martin. From 1836 he was in the vicinity of the great cuneiform inscription at Behistun, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran, for two years. He was the first Westerner to transcribe the Old Persian portion of the trilingual inscriptions in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian (a later form of Akkadian) written by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in the summer of 522 BC and his death in autumn of 486 BC.

Political career

Rawlinson was appointed political agent at Kandahar in 1840. In that capacity he served for three years, his political labours being considered as meritorious as was his gallantry during various engagements in the course of the Afghan War; for these he was rewarded by the distinction of Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1844.

Serendipitously, he became known personally to the governor-general, which resulted in his appointment as political agent in Ottoman Arabia. Thus he settled in Baghdad, where he devoted himself to cuneiform studies. He was now able, with considerable difficulty and at no small personal risk, to make a complete transcript of the Behistun inscription, which he was also successful in deciphering and interpreting. Having collected a large amount of invaluable information on this and kindred topics, in addition to much geographical knowledge gained in the prosecution of various explorations (including visits with Sir Austen Henry Layard to the ruins of Nineveh), he returned to England on leave of absence in 1849.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in February 1850 on account of being "The Discoverer of the key to the Ancient Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Inscriptions in the Cuneiform character. The Author of various papers on the philology, antiquities, and Geography of Mesopotamia and Central Asia. Eminent as a Scholar".[2]

Rawlinson remained at home for two years, published in 1851 his memoir on the Behistun inscription, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He disposed of his valuable collection of Babylonian, Sabaean, and Sassanian antiquities to the trustees of the British Museum, who also made him a considerable grant to enable him to carry on the Assyrian and Babylonian excavations initiated by Layard. During 1851 he returned to Baghdad. The excavations were performed by his direction with valuable results, among the most important being the discovery of material that contributed greatly to the final decipherment and interpretation of the cuneiform character. Rawlinson's greatest contribution to the deciphering of the cuneiform scripts was the discovery that individual signs had multiple readings depending on their context.[3] While at the British Museum, Rawlinson worked with the younger George Smith.

An equestrian accident in 1855 hastened his determination to return to England, and in that year he resigned his post in the East India Company. On his return to England the distinction of Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath was conferred upon him, and he was appointed a crown director of the East India Company.

The remaining forty years of his life were full of activity—political, diplomatic, and scientific—and were spent mainly in London. In 1858 he was appointed a member of the first India Council, but resigned during 1859 on being sent to Persia as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary. The latter post he held for only a year, owing to his dissatisfaction with circumstances concerning his official position there. Previously he had sat in Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Reigate from February to September 1858; he was again MP for Frome, from 1865 to 1868. He was appointed to the Council of India again in 1868, and continued to serve upon it until his death. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar.

Attitudes concerning Russia


"Our Eastern Policy", a caricature by "Spy", published in Vanity Fair, July 1873

Rawlinson was one of the most important figures arguing that Britain must check Russian ambitions in South Asia. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar. He argued that Tsarist Russia would attack and absorb Khokand, Bokhara and Khiva (which they did – they are now parts of Uzbekistan) and warned they would invade Persia (present-day Iran) and Afghanistan as springboards to British India.[3]

Later life

He was a trustee of the British Museum from 1876 till his death. He was created Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1889, and a Baronet in 1891; was president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1874 to 1875, and of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1869 to 1871 and 1878 to 1881; and received honorary degrees at Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.

He married Louisa Caroline Harcourt Seymour, daughter of Jane (née Hopkinson) and Henry Seymour, on 2 September 1862, with whom he had two sons: Henry and Alfred. He was widowed on 31 October 1889 and died in London of influenza six years later. He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.

Published works


Rawlinson's grave at Brookwood Cemetery

Rawlinson's published works include four volumes of cuneiform inscriptions, published under his direction between 1870 and 1884 by the trustees of the British Museum; The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun (1846–1851) and Outline of the History of Assyria (1852), both reprinted from the Asiatic Society's journals; A Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylon and Assyria (1850); Notes on the Early History of Babylonia (1854); and England and Russia in the East (1875). He also made a variety of minor contributions to the publications of learned societies. He contributed articles on Baghdad, the Euphrates and Kurdistan to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, together with several other articles dealing with the East; and he assisted in editing a translation of The Histories of Herodotus by his brother, Canon George Rawlinson.

Works

• Rawlinson, H. C. (1848). "The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, Decyphered and Translated; With a Memoir on Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions in General, and on That of Behistun in Particular". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 10: i–349. ISSN 0035-869X. JSTOR 25581217.

References

Footnotes

1. Goldsmid, Frederic J. (1895). "Major-General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Bart., G. C. B., etc". The Geographical Journal. 5 (5): 490–497. JSTOR 1773861.
2. "Library and Archive Catalogue". The Royal Society. Retrieved 4 October 2010.
3. Meyer, Karl Ernest; Brysac, Shareen Blair (1999). Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. New York: Counterpoint. p. 154. ISBN 978-1-58243-028-7.

Bibliography

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Rawlinson, Sir Henry Creswicke". Encyclopædia Britannica. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 928–929.
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir Henry Rawlinson
• Adkins, Lesley (2003). Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-712899-0.
• Rawlinson, George (1898). A Memoir of Major-General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson. London: Longmans, Green and Co – via Internet Archive.

External links

• Media related to Henry Rawlinson (Sir), 1st Baronet at Wikimedia Commons

Further reading

• Adkins, Lesley (2003). Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon. Thomas Dunns Books. pp. 440+. ISBN 9781466838383.
• Rawlinson, Henry (1841). The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, Deciphered... Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 10. pp. 400+ – via Internet Archive.

[admin]

Charles Henry Tawney
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/21/20

Charles Henry Tawney
Born: 1837
Died: 1922
Occupation: Indologist, librarian

Charles Henry Tawney CIE (1837–1922[1][2]) was an English educator and scholar, primarily known for his translations of Sanskrit classics into English. He was fluent in German, Latin, and Greek; and in India also acquired Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, and Persian.[3]

Biography

Tawney was the son of Rev. Richard Tawney, and educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge; where he was a Cambridge Apostle and worked as a Fellow and Tutor for 4 years, until he moved to India for health reasons. He married Constance Catharine Fox in 1867 and had a large family.[3] One of his children, born 30 November 1880 in Calcutta, was Richard Henry or R. H. Tawney. From 1865 to his retirement in 1892 he held various educational offices, most significantly Principal of Presidency College for much of the period of 1875-1892.[3] His translation of Kathasaritsagara was printed by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in a small series called Bibliotheca Indica between 1880 and 1884.

After retirement, Tawney was made Librarian of the India Office.

Translations from Sanskrit

Tawney translated the Mālavikāgnimitra of Kālidāsa whose first edition was published in 1875 and second edition in 1891.[4]

His other works include:

• Bhavabhūti: Uttara-rāma-carita (1874) — a play
• Two Centuries of Bhartṛihari (1877) — two collections of ethical and philosophico-religious stanzas (online)
• Somadeva: Kathā Sarit Sāgara (1880-1884) — the massive collection of legends and tales (Vol I online) (Vol II online)
• Kathākoça (1895) — Jain stories (online)
• Merutunga: Prabandhacintāmaṇi (1899-1901) — Jain stories (online)

Notes

1. Thomas, F. W. (January 1923). "Charles Henry Tawney, M.A., C.I.E.". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1): 152–154. JSTOR 25210014.
2. "C. H. Tawney". Folklore. 33 (3): 334. September 30, 1922. JSTOR 1256118.
3. Penzer 1924, pp. vii-x
4. Schuyler, Jr., Montgomery (1902). "Bibliography of Kālidāsa's Mālavikāgnimitra and Vikramorvaçī". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 23: 93–101. doi:10.2307/592384. JSTOR 592384.

References

• Penzer, N. M. (1924), "Charles Henry Tawney", The Ocean of Story, being C.H. Tawney's Translation of Somadeva's Katha Sarit Sagara, I, London: Chas. J. Sawyer

External links

Charles Henry Tawneyat Wikipedia's sister projects

• Texts from Wikisource
• Online HTML ebook of The Ocean of Story (kathasaritsagara), volume 1-9, proofread, including thousands of notes and extra appendixes.
• Works by Charles Henry Tawney at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Charles Henry Tawney at Internet Archive