paṇḍita and paṇḍits in History

History of the term paṇḍita

Etymology

In the Indian tradition of word derivation, paṇḍita has been derived from the feminine noun paṇḍā, The paraphrase of paṇḍā given by Bhattoji Dīkṣita (Uņādisūtra 1.111) is buddhi “waking up, realisation, intellect, intelligence”.

The dictionaries compiled by traditional scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century, namely Sabdārthacintămani (p. IIA.25), Sabdakalpadruma (p. III.20) and Vācaspatya (p. V.4203), are more specific. They explain paṇḍā with tattva-visayinī buddhi ‘a mental state or cognition concerning reality, knowledge pertaining to truth”, tattvānugā buddhi “an intellectual state that follows (= seeks or is based on) reality”, nirṇāyatma-jñāna “a cognition in which a determination about the true nature of something) is made”, vedojjvalā buddhi “understanding illumined by the Veda”.

A Jain paraphrase quoted by Siddhāntashāstrī (p. II.657), on the other hand, is ratna-traya-pariṇatā buddhih “a mind or an intellect mature with respect to the three jewels (of Jainism, namely, jñāna ‘knowledge’, darśana ‘insight, correct view and cāritra ‘morally sound conduct’).” Although there are thus variations in the glosses, it is evident that paṇḍā is something like “wisdom”, “realisation (in the sense of coming to know what something really is)” or the faculty that makes such states possible, namely, the “intellectual faculty” or “intelligence”.

  • 1 Ascribed to Hemacandra in the specified entry of Sabdakalpadruma.
  • 2 Probably these dictionaries were following older sources, of which they have specified only Hemacandra.
  • 3 paṇḍ is given as paḍ or paḍi in certain Dhātupāthas as, for example, in Paniniya Dhātuparha 1,301: paḍi gatau, 10.74: paḍi nāšane. The difference is due to the derivation process presupposed, that is, due to technical reasons, rather than real; paḍ becomes paṇḍ at the appropriate stage in deriving forms from it; similarly, i of paḍi is dropped when the derivation is underway. Most other Dhātupāthas other than the Pāņinīya list the first root, namely 1.301, as paṇḍ (Palsule 1955:79). The reading of the second as paḍi is not uniform; the variations pasi and pasi are found. Probably the variations constitute the older or genuine reading; pas / pas seems to have existed in the sense nāšana, not pad. The paṇḍ - paṇḍa link is not stated by Panini but is attested in some commentaries on the Uņādisūtra, a supplement to Panini’s own rules. It is found under namantad dah, numbered variously as 1.107, 1.109, 1.113 and 1.114 in the available edns. śvetavanavāsin’s and Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita’s commentaries do not include paṇḍa, but Bhattoji Dīkṣita’s does.

As a noun paṇḍā is derived from the root paṇḍ, but it is possible that the root has not actually given rise to the noun and has been postulated only to account for the noun, since it is not independently attested. Even if we were to assume that not to be the case, the meanings gati “moving, accessing” etc. assigned to paṇḍ are too general to help us with a better understanding of paṇḍā, and, through it, of paṇḍita.

There are good grounds to suppose that the great Sanskrit grammarian Pänini (not later than 5th century B.C.) was familiar with the word paṇḍita, although the word itself or its common derivatives such as paṇḍitya “wisdom, scholarship” do not appear in his Aștādhyāyī. As will be established below, paṇḍita and paṇḍitya occur in literature that is usually viewed by specialists as coming from a pre-Pāņinian period. Moreover, the Gaṇapātha under Pāṇini 2.1.40 (saptamī śaundaih) and 5.1.123 (vama-drdhādibhyah şyañ ca) lists the word paṇḍita. It is unlikely that both listings could be later additions. Besides, they do not occur toward the end of the ganas, ‘lexeme classes’, as later additions generally do.4

The high probability that Pāņini derives paṇḍita from paṇḍā (in the sense “having the property called paṇḍā, possessing intelligence”) would further make it unlikely that Pānini was not familiar with paṇḍita. Astādhyāyī 5.2.36 (tad asya samjātam tārakādibhya itac) is usually cited as authority in the traditional derivation of paṇḍita. The tārakādi lexeme class mentioned in this sūtra includes paṇḍā. No valid reason has been put forward to cast doubt either on the authenticity of the sūtra with its attendant lexeme class or on the tradition’s view that this specific sūtra be pressed into service to derive paṇḍita.

The modern historically oriented linguistic approach has gone beyond Pāņini primarily in suggesting a connection of paṇḍita with a hypothesized prajñita (and thus of paṇḍā with prajñā “knowing ahead, insight, wisdom") or in suggesting a connection of paṇḍita with a hypothesized Indo-Iranian word paṇḍā (with dental n and d and hypothesized on the basis of New Persian paṇḍ meaning “counsel, good advice”). Under the first possibility, a process of prakritization which changed prajñita to paṇḍita (or, first, prajñā to paṇḍā) needs to be assumed, while, under the second, one needs to concede that spontaneous retroflexion has taken place. The first would take at least certain aspects of prakritization to a period not later than that of the Satapatha-brāhmaṇa (or Brhadāraṇyaka-Upanişad), while the latter would increase the probability that the word paṇḍita existed even in Old Indo-Aryan (cf. Burrow 1971:541-542).

  • 4 Given the evidence of sütra 5.1.123, Pāṇini was probably aware also of the abstract noun pänditya derived from paṇḍita.
  • 5 Other etymologies were proposed, and, at one time, a borrowing from the Dravidian family of languages was also suspected (cf. Mayrhofer vol. II/1963:196-198; vol. II/1996:70-71). However, the totality of evidence suggests that these other explanations of the origin of paṇḍita need not now be seriously entertained.

Neither of the consequences just mentioned would cause any fatal damage to the results of historical linguistics considered valid in our time. How ever, it should be recognized that both the modern etymologies of paṇḍita are not superior to Pānini’s probable etymology in logical strength. There is at least one unexplained factor and hence some leap of faith in all the three derivations. While in the Pāņinian derivation the non-occurrence of paṇḍa as an independent vocable leaves an element of uncertainty, in the explanation resting on prakritization the non-attestation of the “jñ : ṇḍ" change leaves a logical gap, and the explanation allowing “spontaneous” cerebralization contains an implicit admission that a requirement of historical linguistics, namely that the causes of a sound change be specified,+++(5)+++ cannot always be met. Yet, when it is noticed that there is a convergence in the three derivations (paṇḍita is traced to a word meaning “intelligence, discerning thought”), that the word has close relatives in separate sources of evidence (paṇḍa in Pāṇini’s lexeme classes, prajñā in Indo-Aryan and pand in New Persian) and that the early usage of paṇḍita intimates connection with the meaning associable with all the relatives, we may assure ourselves that we are on the right track. We do not get the satisfaction of having come up with a totally satisfactory etymology, but at least we do not do violence to the positive and mutually independent evidence that is available in our sources.

To the extent of the convergence mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the Pāņinian derivation has anticipated the modern etymologies. There are, however, subtle differences in the process of derivation which are interesting. Modern linguists have pointed out the similarity of the hypothesized prajñita with the attested word samjñita. There is a suggestion in their discussions that the common past participial suffix -ita behaves unusually in samjñita and that the base preceding -ita should be taken to be a denomi native root sam + jñā, rather than the feminine noun samjñā (Mayrhofer vol. II/1963:196-198; vol. II/1996:70-71). Pānini (5.2.36) may be said to have noticed the unusual semantics of the formation, although his manner of identifying the unusualness and accounting for it is different (his examples are also more numerous than those of modern linguists). He derives tārakita, puṣpita, paṇḍita, etc. from the nouns tārakā, puṣpa, paṇḍā etc., respectively. To that extent, his procedure is close to the modern procedure which operates with the denominative notion. However, he postulates a sep arate suffix -itaC(= -ita), distinct from the past participial suffix - K’ta (= -ta or -ita), and specifies that -itaC is attached to a noun in the tārakādi class, when what tārakā (“star”) etc. stand for happens to be, that is, becomes a feature of, another item (e.g., nabhas “sky”). Thus, tārakitam nabhah means “the sky in which stars have come about, the starry sky". It can be used as an adjectival phrase as the translation indicates, but its use even as a complete sentence (“The sky is starry”, “Stars have appeared in the sky") is possible, since in Sanskrit a complementation like asti (*is"), used as a copula, can always be supplied.

The word paṇḍita/prajñita may, then, be taken, at least in the present state of our knowledge, to have originally meant “one endowed with prajñā, one characterized by the ability to discern, that is, by intelligence".

A similar determination of the core meaning of paṇḍita is reflected in two types of statements coming from the paṇḍits themselves. In the first type, paṇḍita is paraphrased with śāstrajña, vidvas, vipaścit, dosajña, kovida, budha, manīşin, prājña, prajñila, samkhyāvat, kavi, dhira, vicaksana, düra darsin, dirghadaršin, visārada, vidagdha, krtsnil krsti.–all implying investigation, analysis etc. (cf. Sabdärthacintămani p. IIIA.25, Sabdakalpadruma p. III.20, and Vācaspatya p. V.4203). The other type of statements defines paṇḍita in verses or prose sentences. Examples of relatively well-known verses are:

nisevate praśastāni, ninditani na sevate /
anāstikah sraddadhāna etat paṇḍita-laksanam //

“He involves himself with recommended (actions). He does not in volve himself with (actions) that are censured. He is not a non believer (in a higher reality) and has faith (or trust in what he has learned). This is the mark (or definition) of a paṇḍita.”

na paṇḍitāḥ sāhasikā bhavanti.
śrutvāpi te saṁtulayanti tattvam/
tattvam samādāya samācaranti.
svārtham prakurvanti parasya cārtham // (Dhanamjaya, Dasarūpaka 4.26)

“paṇḍits do not act rashly. Even after hearing something, they weigh and determine the truth. Having accepted the truth, they act [and] accomplish their own interest as well as that of others.”

  • 6 Other less commonly encountered derivations recorded in the Sabdakalpadruma etc. are: paṇḍayā anugatah “followed by, that is, equipped with paṇḍā”; pāpad dinah “one who has swiftly distanced himself from pāpa or sin”; paṇḍyate tattvajñānam prāpyate ‘smāt - “the one from whom knowledge of reality is acquired”. The first is not different from the older Paninian derivation in essence. The second, having the appearance of a folk-etymology, should more appropriately be viewed as an attempt to capture the core of the meaning of the term rather than as an attempt to etymologize.
  • 7 The Sabdakalpadruma informs us that the verse comes from Cintamani, which should be the compiler’s abbreviation for Hemacandra’s Abhidhānacintāmani, but I have not been able to find the verse there.

Semantic drift

Over its long career, paṇḍita can be said to have undergone two interesting changes of meaning. On the one hand, it has moved from a meaning such as intelligent, one who knows (jña) ahead (pra) of most others" to developing a strong association with “a person with impressive memory, one who retains much in his mind or brain”. On the other hand, from a neutral meaning such as a person with prajñā, “a person capable of prognosis (in a literal sense)”, which could be reconciled with having spiritual insight, paṇḍita has come to mean “one who simply teaches or repeats the texts he has learned from others”, “one who lacks insight into the ultimate philosophical truth”, “one who is inferior to the sants and gyānīs (or jñänins)” 9

This latter development too emphasizes the memorization aspect and, to that extent, is not far removed from the first development. Alternatively, we could say that a deflation of the “intelligence” element has occurred in both the developments.

  • 8 The word sant can be explained in many ways. For our present purpose, a rendering like “a person who is absolutely devoted to God”, a devotional mystic" or “a saintly individual” would suffice.
  • 9 The gyānis or jñanins are those who have seen the ultimate truth, the self-realised ones. That paṇḍita initially stood for “one prone to investigation and making sense” is borne out, in addition to the etymological discussion above, by the earliest occurrences accessible to us:10

tasmad brāhmaṇaḥ paṇḍityam nirvidya bālyena tiṣṭhāset. bālyam ca paṇḍityam ca nirvidyātha munih. amaunaṁ ca maunaṁ ca nirvidyātha brāhmaṇaḥ 11 (Brhadaranyaka 3.5.1 = Satapathabrāhmaṇa 14.6.4.1)

  • 10 Like many early Upanisadic passages, the following passages can be translated variously. The intended meaning is not always so clear as to enable us to reject certain other translational possibilities with absolute certainty. I have tried to render the passages by taking the context into consideration and by consulting the better of the translations accessible in print, but I will not take up space by giving explanations of why I set certain translations aside. Olivelle 1998 contains succinct accounts of the variations,
  • 11 A variant paṇḍitah is found for this word in the Mädhyamdina recension. Although editors have generally preferred brāhmaṇah, probably as a lectio difficilior and as a reading accepted in the earliest available commentary, namely Samnkara’s, it should be noted that the structure of the passage favours paṇḍitah. The passage clearly advises that pāṇḍitya should give way to bālya. Therefore, paṇḍita should be the presumed starting point. Also, since to be a brāhmaṇa, a truly spiritual person, is envisaged as the outcome, brāhmaṇa should not be the starting point. One can, of course, accommodate brāhmaṇah as a reading in the first sentence by taking it to mean “brāhmaṇa in the worldly or conventional sense of the word, a person expected to pursue knowledge and spiritual progress”. However, there is no indication in the passage or its context to the effect that we should think of a lower brāhmaṇa initially and then of a higher or true brāhmaṇa. It is possible that brāhmaṇah paṇḍitah paṇḍityam… was the older reading, that some redundancy was perceived in the phrase brāhmaṇah paṇḍitah (a brāhmaṇa was generally a paṇḍita, and vice versa) and that while the Mādhyamdina recension eliminated the redundancy by dropping brāhmaṇah, the Kānva achieved the same result by dropping paṇḍitah. Samkara, in his commentary on the Br̥hadāraṇyaka, takes even the first brāhmaṇaḥ as standing for brahmavit, the higher or true brāhmaṇa, and consequently interprets the key words of the remaining sentences very differently from the way I have interpreted them: pāṇḍitya as ātma-vijñāna “knowledge of the true self”, nirvidya as nihsesam vid itva “having known thoroughly”, bālyena as jñāna-bala-bhāvena “with the strength of the knowledge (of the true self, which knowledge transcends the ordinary means-and result relationship)”, mauna as anātma-pratyaya-tiraskāraṇasya paryavasānam phalam ““the culmination resulting from excluding the experience of things that are not the true self”. While this interpretation is consistent in itself, it involves importation of a number of ideas not specifically stated in the context and assignment of an unusual meaning to nir+vid.

“Therefore, a brāhmaṇa (or paṇḍita; note 11), becoming disinterested in the state of a paṇḍita, should aspire to abide in a child’s (simple, nondiscriminating) state. Further, having become disinterested in both the state of a child and the state of a paṇḍita (i.e., when he is consciously cultivating neither state), [he becomes] a person given to silence (or quietening of the mind). Then, becoming disinterested in both silence and its opposite (i.e., when he is consciously cultivating neither the quietening nor the activațing of the mind), [he becomes] a [true] Brāhmaṇa.”

Here the direct contrast with the state of a child and the indirect contrast with the state of a muni (a meditative person or sage) indicates that the paṇḍita envisaged in the statement is one who is capable of and involved in judgmental knowledge. This inference is further supported by the larger context of the statement. That context speaks of eṣaṇās “worldly aspirations”, which invariably involve judgment about what is good and what is bad, based on acquisition and analysis of much information.

atha ya icched duhitā me paṇḍită jāyeta, sarvam ayur iyād iti, tilaudanam pācayitvā sarpiş-mantam asnīyātām. Išvarau janayitavai.

atha ya icchet putro me paṇḍito vigītah samitimgamaḥ śuśrușitām vācam bhäsitā jāyeta, sarvān vedän anubruvīta, sarvam āyur iyād iti, māmsaudanam păcayitvā sarpişmantam aśnīyātām. īśvarau janayitavai // (Brhadāraṇyaka 6.4.17-18 = Satapathabrāhmaṇa 14.9.4.16-17)

“Now, one who wishes that a daughter be born to him who would be a paṇḍita and who would live a full span of life, should, having got rice with sesame seeds cooked, eat (that rice)—he and his wife should eat that rice along with clarified butter. (He and his wife are then) able to give birth to (such a daughter).

Now, one who wishes that a son be born to him who would be a paṇḍita, who would be variously praised, 12 who would be admitted to councils, 3 who would be a speaker of words (that others) would like to hear, who would recite all the Vedas (and] who would live a full span of life, should, having got rice with meat cooked, eat (that sice)—he and his wife should eat that rice–along with clarified butter, 14 (He and his wife are then able to give birth to (such a son).”

  • 12 That is, praised for many reasons or in diverse manners. Another possible translation: “especially praised, praised distinctively over and above the others”.
  • 13 Literally, “one who would go to councils–attend council meetings“. The connotation could be, as Samkara’s parapbrase with pragalbha suggests, of boldness or of not being shy with respect to public speaking.
  • 14 This may not mean that clarified butter be mixed with the rice prepared—be a part of the same morsel. In some parts of India milk products are not mixed with meat dishes.

Quick grasp, distinction in expressing thoughts, and sense of what is proper in society and the assemblies are evidently seen in the preceding citation as qualities one can expect from a paṇḍita. Thus, intelligence and discretion must have been viewed as parts of the meaning of paṇḍita. The passage prescribes two different rice preparations and connects a public profile with the paṇḍita status of only the son. Therefore, a difference between the understanding of a daughter as paṇḍitā and the understanding of a son as paṇḍita is likely to have existed. But, there is no indication that the difference pertained to intelligence or judgment.

sa grāmăd grāmam prcchan paṇḍito medhävi gandhärān evopasaṁpadyeta. evam evehācāryavān puruṣo veda // (Chandogya 6.14.2)

“That one (the man released away from Gandhāra, his place of residence), inquiring in one community after another, 6 being paṇḍita, [and] retentive (of the information given to him), will approach Gandhāra itself. Exactly thus does in this world a person having (the benefit of) a teacher come to know who he really is).”

The juxtaposition of paṇḍita with medhāvin “one with a retentive faculty of the mind” is especially worth noting in this last passage. In it, the person concerned is assumed to be intelligent enough to inquire properly or in an informed way (with a clarification of what has happened to him, where he wishes to go etc.) and to understand the advice given to him.17 In other words, resourcefulness and ability to see through a situation reasonably quickly are most likely to be the qualities the author of the passage had at the back of his mind when he used the word paṇḍita.

That the meaning component “intelligence” implicit in paṇḍita was neutral as to which kind of knowledge it would lead to, academic or spiritual, and could easily be associated with spiritual knowledge is borne out by the following Bhagavadgītā statements:

gatāsün agatāsūms ca nănușocanti paṇḍitäh/ (2.11cd):

“The paṇḍitas do not mourn either the dead or the living.”
yasya sarve samārambhāḥ kāmasamkalpavarjitāḥ/
jñänägni-dagdha-karmánam tam āhuh paṇḍitam budhah // (4.19):

“The knowledgeable ones call him a paṇḍita whose undertakings are in their entirety free from desire and purpose and whose actions have been burnt up in the fire of knowledge.”

  • 15 Commentator Samkara’s clarification of how a daughter could be viewed as paṇḍita is: duhituh paṇḍityaṁ grha-tantra-visayam eva, vede ’nadhikārät. “A daughter’s being a paṇḍita is possible only with respect to the technique of (running a) household, since she would be ineligible to study the Veda”. The state of affairs articulated by Samkara may or may not go back to the Vedic times.
  • 16 Alternatively, the phrase could mean “inquiring in the earlier community he encounters what the next village in the direction of his destination would be”.
  • 17 Samkara paraphrases paṇḍitah with upadeśavan “one who possesses–holds on to the instructions” and medhavi with paropadista-grāma-praveśa-mārgāva dhārana-samarthan “capable of understanding the way of entering (his own) village/community—the way taught by others”. This is a reversal of the meanings I have assigned to the two words, but it too retains the distinction of meanings.

samkhya-yogau prthag bālāh pravadanti, na paṇḍirāh / (5.4ab):
“Only the simpletons put forward the view that Samkhya and Yoga are separate, not the paṇḍitas.”

vidyā-vinaya-sampanne brähmane gavi hastini/
suni caiva svapäke ca paṇḍitäh samadarsinah// (5.18):

“The paṇḍitas see the same thing in a Brahmin endowed with wisdom and education, in a cow, in an elephant, in a dog and in a person eating the most polluting food.”

One should also recall in this context the Jain tradition of using the term paṇḍitamaraṇa “death of a paṇḍita” when the occasion is to speak of the voluntary nonviolent death of a spiritually excelling person (cf. Settar 1989: 95, 97, 101-102, 118-120, 130-131, 140-141). The Jain definitions and grammatical derivations of paṇḍita also leave no doubt about the presence of knowledge, enlightenment and ethical behaviour as components of the meaning of paṇḍita (cf. Siddhāntashāstrī p. II.657).

18 As other relatively early occurrences of paṇḍita the following may be cited with the help of Vishva Bandhu’s Vaidikapadānukramakośa: Sankhalikhitadharmasūtra 219: usnam annam dvi-jātibhyah sraddhayā vinivedayet / anyarra phala-puspebhyah pänakebhyaś ca paṇḍitah //. Apastambadharmasūtra 1.23.3 (= 1.8.23.3 on p. 40 in Bühler’s edition); dosānām tu vinirghāto yoga-mula iha / mūlo hi?) jūvite / nirrtya bhutadāhīyān kşemam gacchati paṇḍitah ll. Visnudharmasūtra 82.30: brāhmanäpasadā hy ete kathirah pankti-düşakah / etān vivarjayed yatnāc.chrāddha karmani paṇḍitah //. Māndiikiśikṣā 16.13: ācāryāh samam icchanti, pada.cchedam tu paṇḍirah / striyo madhuram icchanti, vikrustam itare janāḥ 11. Näradīyaśikṣā 1.3.13 (= Māndūkīšiksa 16.13 as above), 2.3.11; svaryuvo devayuvas cārati de vatātaye / cikitis cukrudham caiva nāvagrhnanti paṇḍitah II. (Vishva Bandhu also lists Hiranyakesidharmasūtra 1.6.11 and Yājñavalkyaśikṣā 2.84. The former should be şimi lar to the Apastambadharmasötra passage. The latter I have not been able to locate.) These passages presume the same understanding of paṇḍita as the passages translated above, namely that a paṇḍita is primarily a discriminating and informed person, which qualities may enable him to make spiritual progress. For this reason, as well as because they are relatively late. I will not explicate them further.

Last 1k years

In the last one thousand years, however, two seemingly contradictory phenomena, despiritualization and desecularization, have occurred in the case of paṇḍita. The medieval and modern occurrences of paṇḍita do not place spiritual qualities centre-stage. They place academic or academic type of proficiency at the core of its meaning. This is borne out both by the attempts to remind people about what the word paṇḍita should mean, as well as by statements sharply distinguishing a paṇḍit from a bhakta “devotee” or a gyāni (jñānin) *(true) knower, a person who has realised who he really is”. A paṇḍit’s academic expertise is viewed as not only useless for enlightenment and release from samsāra but also as an impediment to the latter two. Disapproval is expressed of his wasting time on pursuits that bring no spiritual benefit. We read in Kabīra, for example:

Dohā: pothī padhi padhi jagamu.ā
paṇḍita bhayā na koya/
eka ākhara pi.kā padhe
sa paṇḍita hoya //

“Reading a book again and again, no one becomes a paṇḍit in this world. He is (truly) a paṇḍit who reads (even) one syllable of (God’s) love.”

RamainT 34:19 padhi padhi paṇḍita karai caturāī
jina mukti mohi kahu samujhāī//
kahaṁ base purusa kauna so gāūm/
so paṇḍita samujhāvahu nāūm //
cări veda brahmai nijа ṭhānā /
mukti ke marma unahu nahim jānā //

“Read, read, paṇḍit, make yourself clever. Does that bring freedom? Kindly explain Where does the supreme being dwell? In what village? paṇḍit, tell his name. Brahmā himself made the Vedas, but he doesn’t know the secret of freedom.”

Sabda 40:
paṇḍita bāda badai so jhūṭhā /…
nara ke saṁga suvā hari bolai,
hari pratāpa nahiṁ jānai/
jo kabahiṁ udi jäya jaṅgala ko,
tau hari surati na ānai//
binu dekhe binu darasa parasa binu,
nāma liye kā hoī/
dhana ke kahe dhanika jo hovai,
tau niradhana rahata na koī//

The paṇḍits’ pedantries are lies, …
The parrot gabbles “God” like a man
but doesn’t know God’s glory.
When he flies off to the jungle,
he’ll forget God.
If you don’t see, if you don’t touch, what’s the use of the name?
If saying money made you rich,
nobody would be poor. …"

Sabda 53:
kahaiṁ kabīra hama dāti pukārā,
paṇḍita hoya so la.i bicārā //
Kabīra says, I go on shouting and the paṇḍits go on thinking."

  • 19 The following translations from the Ramaini and Sabda sections of Kabīra’s Bījaka are quoted from Hess-Singh 1983.26

A verse quoted in Sabdärthacintämani (p. IIIA.25), furthermore, reads:

nātah parataram loke
kvacid āścaryam adbhutam/
putra-dāra-gr̥hāsaktah
paṇḍitah parigīyate !
“There is no greater, unprecedented, miracle in the world than the phenomenon) that a person attached to progeny, wife and house is praised around as a paṇḍita.“20

  • 20 (a) The source of the verse is not specified. The word silhake which appears after the verse does not give its source but adds another meaning of paṇḍita (through confusion with pindáta which also means “incense, olibanum”?).
    (b) Mr. Narhari Narayan Bhide (= Narahari Nārāyaṇā Bhiḍe) was the Sanskrit tēacher who may be said to have changed my life. Once, after I had become aware of how much precious knowledge he had given to me, there was some reason why I had to get in touch with him by writing a letter, Thinking that the ordinary honorific śrī or śrīyuta was inadequate in the case of such a knowledgeable person constantly in pursuit of knowledge, I wrote “paṇḍit N.N. Bhide” in the address section of my letter. I received a reply by return post in which Bhide sternly advised me not to attach the label “paṇḍit” to his name. Quoting a line from Sant Tukārām, he asserted that paṇḍits were fuccha “of no consequence, worthy of neglect” and what mattered was development of the self. Note that this came from a person who knew the Gītā passages quoted above by heart, who learned German and French, struggling with the hard life of an Indian highschool teacher and with several family problems, although receiving a diploma in German or French was not going to bring any worldly benefit to him. Nor was Bhide’s dislike of the title “paṇḍit” for himself based on a dislike of any person bearing that title and known to him.

Some evidence of despiritualization is furnished also by the employment of paṇḍita in the context of performing arts such as music and dancing. In asserting this, I do not wish to imply that performing artists do not have spiritual experiences or cannot make spiritual progress through their art. Some of them do practise art as yoga, worship etc. and do seem to get results that are at least similar to those of what we principally understand as activities of yoga, worship etc. However, in the field of performing arts paṇḍita is not reserved only for such artists. It is commonly applied to all artists who aim at entertaining and earning a living. To that extent, a despiritualization of the word may be said to have occurred. Sometimes this is revealed by the fact that if a performing artist comes to be known primarily for his spiritual stature, the epithet paṇḍita appearing before his name is replaced by epithets such as sant or svāmin.

A distancing of paṇḍita from spiritual wisdom may be said to have oc curred also in the use of the term to refer

  • (a) to vaidikas or vedapāthakas *those who specialize only or primarily in reciting the Vedas”,
  • (b) to arcakas or pujārīs those who are engaged in temple service, particularly image worship”, and
  • (c) to almost any propagator of Sanskrit.

The extreme of the apparently opposite change to desecularization is seen in the use of paṇḍit for the Hindus of Kashmir. This use covers all Hindus regardless of whether they can be considered to have distinguished themselves from their co-religionists in being proficient in some branch of knowledge.21 Its coming into being is exceptional. Nothing similar to it is known to have occurred with respect to other parts of India. It represents a strong association of paṇḍit with a specific religious group.

In the earlier period, however, a paṇḍit could be Brahmanical, Jain or Buddhist in persuasion.22 Evidence that learned Buddhists were included in the paṇḍit category is furnished by the attestation of “paṇḍita Jitāri”, “paṇḍita Durvekamiśra”, “paṇḍita Asoka” etc. in the colophons of manuscripts. Among the Jains, paṇḍita has been used as an honorific, freely and naturally, in print as well as speech, before the names of Sukhlal Sanghavi, Nathuram Premi, Pannalal Soni, Mahendra Kumar etc, in modern times. Because almost all the surviving early Jain works have been written by monks, who had other designations with which the use of paṇḍita would have been either superfluous or awkward, could expect it to be difficult to find early examples. Yet one finds them at least from the 12th century A.D. (paṇḍitayati, paṇḍitārya etc. in Settar 1989:59 fn 77, 89-90). Moreover, the (relatively recent?) practice of attaching panyāsa before the names of monks indicates that the use of the related word paṇḍita could not have been unusual in the earlier times.

  • 21 The explanations I have been able to get of how this development came about are not as complete as I would have liked them to be. Basically, they are two, implicit and explicit in Sender 1988:43 and Madan 1989:xxii-xxii:
    • (a) Due to historical developments, the major among which was conversion to Islam through coercion, only learned Brahmins, who, on the whole, offered stiffer resistence, were left as Hindus in Kashmir. Since they were already known as paṇḍitas, the term paṇḍita became co-extensive with the term Hindu.
    • (b) One of the Brahmins who had einigrated, Jai Ram Narain Bhan, reportedly asked the Mughal ruler Muhammad Shah (1719-49), whom he served with distinction, that the honorific paṇḍit be used for his compatriots. The ruler granted the request. The honorific, originally used appropriately for learned persons, came to be applied to all Kashmiri Hindu emigrés.
    • Explanation (a) expects us to imagine either that most of the emigration from Kashmir took place after only the Brahmins were left unconverted or that the designation current in Kashmir was somehow later extended to those who had already left Kashmir. On the other hand, explanation (b) requires that an assumption be made that the title paṇḍita was somehow carried back from the emigrés to the Hindus (= Brahmins) who had remained in Kashmir.
    • See Madan 1989:16-20 and Sender 1988:9-46 for an historical overview of the situation of Hinduş in Kashmir.
  • 22 Surprisingly, panyāsa (variations: pannyāsa, pamyasa) is not recorded in the Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi and Gujarati dictionaries I could consult. It is, however, attested as the following randoinly collected citations will establish: asya samsodhane jaināgama pravīṇānām muni-vara (painnyása) śrīmad-ananda-sägara-mahāśayānām … (p. 5 of the Upodghāta written by Muni Lalitavijaya to his edition of Haribhadra’s Samyaktattvasaptati, vol. 35 of Śresthi Devacandra Lālabha.I Jaina-pustakoddhāra Series, Mumbai, 1916), [Hindi:) … muni-rāja (samprati panyasa-pravara) sri Subhaṅkara-vijayaji mahārāja ke satha …in the Prakāśakīya (publisher’s preface) by Bháīlāla Ambālāla Sa to the edition of Hemacandra’s two Dvātrimsikās under the title Dvātrimšíkıdvayī, probably published somewhere in Gujarat in Vikramasamvat 2015.

In response to the point of the preceding paragraph, the following objection may be raised. Since Brahmanical, Jain or Buddhist traditions did not think of themselves as religions in that early period 23 the secular nature of the early use of paṇḍita is not proved by the fact that the word was applied to scholars in all three traditions.

The secular nature, it is, true, is not directly or positively proved by the specified usage. However, we can at least deduce that the kind of religious (in our sense of the term) organization, mode of religious practice and body of authoritative texts a person preferred had no bearing on whether paṇḍita would be used as an honorific for him if he happened to be a learned intellectual. He was not denied that honorific and considered fit for some other honorific because of such “religious” considerations. The probability that terms related to paṇḍita were current even in the Iranian community (see above) would also indicate that the dominant considerations in the appli cation of paṇḍita were non-religious. Later, however, distinctions such as ustād for a Muslim specialist and paṇḍita for a Hindu specialist emerge. The evidence clearly suggests that paṇḍita was not thought to be appropri ate for a learned man who did not follow Brahmanical, Jain or Buddhist mode of religious life. To this extent, the neutrality with respect to religious aspects that the earlier usage had is lost. Of this loss, the Kashmiri application represents an extreme in the sense that it removes even the requirement of scholarship or expertise from paṇḍita without taking a similar step with respect to terms like ustād.24

  • 23 The notion “religion” is a relatively recent importation in Indian life, despite the prob ably unsurpassed variety of (what we would call) religious activities in that life.
  • 24 It is interesting that in modern India when both Muslimhood and proficiency in Sanskrit can be attached to a person, there is no resistence at least no resistence of which I am aware–to considering the person a paṇḍit. In contemporary Maharashtra, paṇḍit Gulam Dastgir Birajdar (Mumbai) is reasonably well-known. I have heard his speeches in Sanskrit rarely but I have heard them from his student days to his middle age. The organizers of Sanskrit Day ceremonies etc. nowadays routinely introduce him as a paṇḍit, and the audiences not only do not mind but welcome such an introduction. This indicates that at present association with the Sanskrit heritage is a weightier criterion of paṇḍithood than affiliation with Hindu religion, The trend toward such a development can be traced at least to the beginning of the twentieth century, when paṇḍita Ramabai was not deprived of her title paṇḍita even after she converted to Christianity. It is still too early to conclude, however, that a Muslim scholar of Sanskrit is commonly referred to as paṇḍit. The fact that the number of such scholars is very small and most of them teach in Western-style educational institutions makes it almost impossible to have an adequate sample to test the possibility.

In the present context, it should also be noted that the “ustad : paṇḍit” distinction in the field of performing arts is nowadays occasionally deliberately ignored in the efforts to promote Hindu-Muslim harmony and the more well-known title “paṇḍit” is applied even to a Muslim performing artist. This phenomenon has not as yet become as widespread as the phenomenon of referring to a Parsee or Zoroastrian musician or dancer as paṇḍit.

The despiritualization-desecularization development, probably an indirect result of the arrival of Islam on the Indian subcontinent, has increasingly created the image of the paṇḍit as a diehard conservative. His effort to save what he thought was his dharma (“cultural duty”) largely took place in a context in which he was unable to display the sense of a larger mission that characterized many Brahmins of an earlier period of Indian history. He became increasingly incapable (a) of explaining why his mode of thinking and behaving was what it was and (b) of adapting to the new circumstances with out losing the philosophy behind his mode. As an actor without articulation, so to say, he was perceived more and more as an oddity—a relic from the past. To quote Kabīra again, we have statements like the following (Sabda 41);

paṇḍita dekhahu mana ineṁ jāni/
kahu dhauṁ chūti kahām se upají,
tabahiṁ chūti tuma mānī/
nāde bindu rudhira ke saṅgai,
gharahī meṁ ghaṭa sapanai/
asta kamala hoya puhumī āyā,
chūti kahām se upajai //

“paṇḍit, look in your heart for knowledge.
Tell me where untouchability came from,
since you believe in it.
Mix red juice, white juice and air a body bakes in a body.
As soon as the eight lotuses are ready,
it comes into the world,
Then what’s untouchable?”

However, there were exceptions among (the Brahmins and hence) among the paṇḍits. Also, they were the ones who usually had the necessary learning and, therefore, the means to think through the changing world. So we see a phenomenon that appears contrary to conservatism. Most of the attempts at adjustment with alien religions or at social reform were either initiated or carried out by the paṇḍits. Many of them took seriously the widely known remark yah kriyāvān sa paṇḍitah contained in Mahābhārata Vanaparvan, appendix 32.47:

pathakah pathakaś caiva ye canye śāstra-cintakāh/
sarve vyasanino mūrkhā, yah kriyavān sa paṇḍitah //
“Readers, preachers and any others thinking about the śāsirasall are excessively attached fools. He who is a man of action is (alone) a (real) paṇḍita.":25

  • 25 There was regional variation in the matter, with the paṇḍits of Varanasi generally tend ing to be conservative in matters of social reform (cf. Upādhyāya 1983:138-142) and those of Bengal generally displaying liberal tendencies in the same sphere (cf. Sinha 1993:v-vi). However, prominent paṇḍits at neither place remained uninvolved in social and political issues. They could have possibly done more, but one should not forget that the changes that came with Islam and the Europeans were very different in nature, speed and magnitude from any changes that might have come about because of the arrival of the Yavanas, Hūnas, Sakas etc. Life and livelihood had become precarious. Older organizations had been destroyed or weakened. Earlier channels of communication had been eliminated or disrupted.

Pāņditya today

After these historical observations which have a sense of certainty about them because they are grounded in philology and examination of literary evidence, I will offer a few observations that are impressionistic in nature, based on my general reading in Indology. The main intention in offering them is to provoke discussion and help in the process of bringing greater specificity to the research on paṇḍits.

Very soon after the possibilities to make a living through learning, teach ing etc., shrank considerably for the paṇḍit in the Islamic period26 of Indian history, the “Macaulay” policy of imparting higher education in English was instituted (1835 A.D.). That so much of the paṇḍitic tradition still survives despite nearly a thousand years of (first) largely hostile and (then) largely indifferent environment in many parts of India is mainly an indication of how strong and widespread the tradition must have been at one time. It would be unjustifiable (and insensitive) to infer from the tradition’s survival that the paṇḍit’s suffering was not long and serious.27

  • 26 By the phrase “Islamic period” I mean to convey only that there was an influential political presence of powers subscribing to Islam-that Islam became a factor to reckon with in many walks of Indian life. I do not mean to imply that Islam prevailed over all of India or that non-Muslims did not shape the cultural processes.
  • 27
    • (a) In the otherwise useful accounts contained in Shukla 1969 and Sharma 1976, there is no attempt to determine what the condition of Sanskrit learning was before the impact of the East India Company rule began to be felt on the channels of education. The former begins with the assumption that Sanskrit did not face any decline and its condition was as robust as in ancient India. This assumption is not only made without offering adequate justification, it is extremely unlikely to be correct, given the many clear accounts of political upheavals that we have from both Hindu and Muslim sources and the fact that almost all the centres of Sanskrit learning that Shukla lists were either relatively small or belonged to areas relatively free from Muslim domination. Sharma, too, does not see the need to determine particularly the nature of Sanskrit learning surviving in spheres of direct Muslim political influence in order to be able to evaluate properly the ideas of Indians and Europeans concerning education. As already indicated, I prefer to take into account what was probably lost along with what survived and do not see any need to doubt that the custodians of Sanskrit learning suffered extensive losses for several centuries in succession over large areas of India, both as individuals and in terms of learning resources such as manuscripts.
    • (b) One day my teacher Professor S.D. Joshi was telling me about his teachers. When he came to mentioning Shankarshastri Marulkar, he suddenly choked up with tears. For several minutes he could not speak. The reason was that he suddenly remembered Marulkar’s last days and could not control his grief. Through Vasudevshastri Abhyankar, Ramshastri Godbole, Bhaskarshastri Abhyankar, Nilakanthashastri Thatte and Vaidyanath Paygunde, paṇḍit Marulkar belonged to the vidyāvamsa of the great Nägeśabhatta (cf. Abhyankar 1954:101, 1960:Preface pp. 6-7). He was versatile to the extent of being entrusted with the responsibility of editing several texts for the Anandāśrama Sanskrit Series. He was a dedicated and skilled teacher. Yet during the last few years of his life he had nothing but two small pots left in his possession, which he used to cook rice and dal. What occurred to Joshi as he thought of Marulkar was that one day even these pots were stolen and Marulkar had no means left even to prepare his food.
    • In Varanasi, I have heard the story of a paṇḍit who was so frustrated with the devaluation his great learning had suffered that on his death bed he told his wife to make his funeral pyre out of the manuscripts he had inherited and collected. It is probable that this disturbing directive was at least partially carried out as it expressed one of his last wishes.
    • Stories according to which manuscripts are offered to Gangā on the death anniversaries of scholars may also owe their origin, in part, to such feeling of rejection felt by the paṇḍits.

To say this is not to deny that some patronage to paṇḍitic learning continued even under the Muslim and European governments or that there were no pragmatic and/or genuinely liberal Muslim and European rulers. The loss the paṇḍits had suffered was, however, on the whole, so serious that they could not recover from it successfully even in the respites and opportunities they got in between.

As a consequence of Islamic and European dominations of parts of India, among possibly other things, the paṇḍits, as a group, have lost their earlier ability to be innovative and to influence the course of society on a large scale, although their situation in the periods of European domination was, on the whole, much better than their situation in the periods of Islamic domination, although they were the ones who tried most to regain the lost ground and although they fared better than most other groups in Hindu society. They succeeded in getting jobs and progressing materially than most other Indians, but in the process they ceased to be paṇḍits, either totally or to a significant extent. Their education gave them a head-start in a rapidly and profoundly changing world that the industrial revolution an expansion brought about. They also contributed much to the new world, but the process ultimately left them ineligible to claim the old descriptive designations.

  • 28 I do not wish to leave the impression that the situation summed up in this sentence has come about suddenly. There is evidence to the effect that paṇḍits have fought back, at least in some parts of India, valiantly, diplomatically and by pooling their resources together. That they did not succeed in Sultanate Kashmir or that their success in Vijayanagara did not last beyond approximately 130 years does not mean that they have always been unable to come together and settle upon a course of action appropriate to the times.

One striking piece of evidence of loss of leadership ability as a paṇḍit in the earlier or full sense of the term is that even after so many centuries of retreat there is no forum of paṇḍits which is mindful of the new political and economic realities and which has a feasible strategy for turning things around.28 Yes, the paṇḍit is found to some extent in Indian national politi cal parties, national religious organizations and national learned societies, as well as in regionally active agencies created for specific purposes such as preservation of pathaśālās or creation of Sanskrit universities. The efforts of various governments within India to preserve Sanskrit may also be due to his participation in these bodies. Yet, as far as I know, there is no organization of paṇḍits which has a pan-Indian basis, which has periodically taken stock of the “new world” with a sense of realism, and which has discussed possible strategies. Some Sanskrit and Prakrit scholars are making valiant, dedicated and innovative efforts to solve the general and specific problems of Sanskrit and Prakrit studies. Yet no non-governmental or widely effective structures- structures going beyond the individuals and individual organizations, working in unision for the paṇḍit up to the national level have emerged. Whether it was the effect of policies carried out under the name of Islam or of the stroke of Macaulay’s prejudiced pen, the traditional scholars in India have been suffering from the effect without having an opportunity to assess it collectively and on a sustained basis. They have been responding to it in a piecemeal fashion and on the basis of a limited perception of the change. Even the findings of the Sanskrit Commission, appointed by the Government of India in 1956, have reached very few of them. They are not known to have demanded follow-up studies. They are still dependent on government initiative and sponsorship of religious bodies and the increasingly weaker Brāhmaṇa-Sabhās (or samghas). There has been no “collective psycho-analysis” that may enable them to see widely and repeatedly where they are and why they are where they are even as a special group among the Hindus or Brahmins. They have generally remained in a reactive mode and not attempted to become masters of their destiny in a collective way.

For the last several hundred years, incisive and creative paṇḍitic scholarship has mainly survived in those areas of India which were not strongly affected by Islam.29 In the areas dominated by Islam, the paṇḍitic tradition has largely lost the cutting edge and has been reduced to a retaining or preserving role. South India (including Maharashtra), Rajasthan, Nepal and parts of Bengal have produced the largest number of creative paṇḍits.30

  • 29 These areas, it should be remembered, do not correspond to the provinces of modern India. Generally, they were much smaller. Politically and culturally, they aligned with Islam to differring degrees and in different ways. One should not be unmindful of the internal variation in Indian Islam.
  • 30 One interesting indication of the emphasis on creativity in south Indian scholarship is found in Narayana Pillai (1951:Introduction p. 14). Pillai mentions the custom in the Payyūr family that for the father’s śrāddha the sons were expected to bring a new work of theirs dealing with Mímāmsā. The Payyūr family of Kerala made significant contributions to the śāstras from the fourteenth century onwards.

In addition to the easily accessible evidence in the works produced during the Yadava and Vijayanagara dynasties and in the works of Mallinātha, we have many instances of impressive original scholarship in Rajasthan, south India and Bengal that one comes to know only after a study of scattered research publications. To mention only the few that I can easily recall, Nagarājarāva 1995 contains an excellent illustration of what the calibre of south Indian scholarship was even in the late 19th century; Gode 1944 adds much to the information that Bhattacharya 1944 gives on Anandapūrna Vidyāsāgara, a Goa scholar who attempted textual criticism of the Mahābhārata in the 14th century.

Even in Varanasi, the most well-known centre of Sanskrit scholarship in north India, the area noticeably but not uniformly affected by Islam, the invigorating paṇḍitya has mainly come from south Indian and Bengali paṇḍits. In effect, Varanasi has functioned both as a magnet attracting some of the best paṇḍits from all parts of India (especially if they were inclined toward devotion and/or asceticism) and as an island preserving traditional Hindu learning in a sea of Muslim political influence. Upadhyāya 1983 is the most extensive account of Varanasi’s Sanskrit scholarship that is available to us in a published form. In reading it, one does not fail to notice the preponderance of paṇḍits from Maharashtra, from further south (especially Andhra) and from Bengal, among those who have written works that strike us as extraordinary because of the learning evident in them or because they give a different direction to a particular śāstra or line of religious thinking. Just to cite a few examples, the following figure in pp. 25-74 of Upādhyāya’s account as residents of Kashi/Varanasi:

  • (a) from Maharashtra: Rāghavabhatta, the extent of whose amazing learning is well-captured in Gode 1936, Nīlakantha, the most well-known commentator of the Mahābhārata, Nāgesabhatta (also known as Nāgojibhatta), a polymath known particularly for his command of Paninian granimar, and Nandapaṇḍita, an authority in Dharmaśāstra;

  • (b) from Gujarat: Bhāskararāya, without whom the deeper significance of devotional Tantric texts would have been lost to us;

  • (c) from Andhra: Rāmacandra, author of the first known Brahmanical rearrangement of Pāṇini’s Astādhyāyī that extends the Aştādhyāyi’s applicability to cover some new usages, and Bhattoji Dikșita, author of Siddhāntakaumudī that changed the way of studying Pāṇini for centuries to come; and

  • (d) from Bengal: Madhusūdana Sarasvatī, a formidable defender of Advaita Vedänta. In Upādhyāya’s pages dealing with the British period of Indian history there are even more examples, suggesting that the ratio of extraordinary paṇḍits who hailed from outside Uttar Pradesh to those who belonged to Uttar Pradesh probably went up.33

  • 31 It seems plausible that several Hindu political powers of late medieval India made a deliberate effort to maintain Varanasi as a statement of what they valued in their culture.

  • 32

    • (a) I learned from Prof. Bettina Bäumer that a survey of paṇḍits in Varanasi prepared by Vaidyanātha Sarasvati exists in an unpublished form. I do not know what its scope and approach are. Although Upādhyāya’s work is not as precisely worded as one would have liked (it could have used the services of a good editor) and shows a tendency to be emotional and hyperbolic (sometimes quite understandable, given that the memories of some of the paṇḍits still shape the thinking of paṇḍits in Varanasi), it contains a mine of information collected with much effort. We are fortunate that Upadhyāya saw so many generations of paṇḍits in Varanasi and decided to write down the information that would, otherwise, have been lost.
    • (b) A short but important contribution on Bengali scholars at Varanasi is Bhattacharya 1945.

With the large-scale loss of political and religious patronage, the pāṇḍitya in those śāstras which have a greater need of material resources and empirical observation has been waning for many centuries.+++(5)+++ Architecture, metallurgy, dramaturgy etc. have been losing ground at least from the beginning of the second millenium A.D. Even grammar has survived mainly in the field of Sanskrit and, to a much lesser extent, in the field of Prakrit and Pāli. The tradition that created many Sanskrit and Prakrit grammars shrank after the production of a few Apabhramsa grammars to such an extent that it could produce only skeletal and isolated descriptions of the early phases of modern Indian languages. Scholarship concentrated on only those śāstras, such as philosophy, grammar and poetics, which did not need the regional languages or anything more than pen and paper and which could be cultivated in a relatively changeless context. Of the traditions of knowledge with a significant empirical element, Dharmaśāstra and Ayurveda fared relatively better because of their immediate practical utility (one could not simply stop using them), but they too do not give the impression of having prospered through experimentation and innovation to the same extent as in the earlier period. Compendia and digests came to dominate the scene, except where the British sought the input of the paṇḍits and other educated Hindus on social issues (sati, widow remarriage, child marriage etc.) and possibly health issues.

  • 33 In addition, Upadhyāya mentions several prominent authors of late medieval Sanskrit literature, who stayed in Varanasi while completing specific works.
  • 34 The paṇḍits themselves have been acutely aware of the loss of quality. Modern Sanskrit literature, in particular, contains several poems and essays bemoaning the loss. One short example wouid be the following composition attributed to Rudradeva Tripāṭhi:
    gatā veda-vidyā, gatam dharma-śāstram, gatam re, gatam re, gatam re, gatam re/
    idānintanānām janānām pravr̥ttiḥ subante tiṅante kadācit kr̥dante //
    “Gone is the knowledge of the Vedas, Gone is Dharmaśāstra. These things have indeed gone– definitely disappeared. What the people nowadays work at is declension or conjugation, (maybe) once in a while, primary derivates!”

At present, the best paṇḍitic scholarship and the strongest lines of transmission of traditional śāstra knowledge probably survive among the Jain sādhus, in whose case the older patronage and protection pattern has been preserved more than in the case of Brahmanical and Buddhist scholars and the dependence on governments has never been as important a factor as in the case of the latter two. Brahmanical pāṇḍitya is in the doldrums. Attempts to maintain it have been made and are being made, but there has been a very serious decline in its quantity as well as quality.34 Traditional Buddhist scholarship, after having been increasingly pushed to the East and the South of the subcontinent by the advent of Islam, has virtually disappeared from the Indian heart lands after the fourteenth century. It survives in certain respects in Tibet and Sri Lanka and, in a form frequently difficult to separate from the channels of Brahmanism, in Nepal. The Jain paṇḍitic tradition too has shrunk in terms of magnitude and variety, but it seems, on the whole, to be faring much better than its Brahmanical counterpart. Jainism still makes it possible for its sādhus to devote themselves almost exclusively to scholarly pursuits. It does not require of them that they deliver sermons or participate in communal religious activities. Unlike the contemporary Brahmin paṇḍits, the Jain sādhus do not have to attempt acquisition of knowledge while seeking the means to support themselves, although, because of their frequent movement from one place to another, they do not have easy access to libraries. However, the stronger resolve that a monk’s life requires also makes the sādhus generally more resolute in studying, editing etc., particularly, the important texts of their own rich tradition.

Until a few decades ago, Indian scholarship in śästra texts excelled. It was as impressive as Western35 achievements in setting the Veda in a larger historical context. One did not find many Western scholars who could comprehend a Sanskrit philosophical or grammatical text with the ease with which a paṇḍit comprehended it.36 In the last thirty years or so, however, the gap in comprehension has been narrowed to a point at which its elimination seems a distinct possibility. The production of better learning resources (more translations, more specialized dictionaries, concordances, indices etc.) and increase in the number of bright youths who have studied with paṇḍits have taken place in the West at about the same time India has been increasingly failing to attract bright students to humanities in general and to Sanskrit-Prakrit studies in particular and has been letting its libraries deteriorate. It would not be false to say that at present more original, sound and helpful work in Indian philosophy is being done outside India than in India.

  • 35 I use the term “Western” for want of a more convenient term and without making a value judgment. I should not be understood in a very rigid geographical or temporal sense.
  • 36 Bhashyachārya 1905:28 contains one of the early statements finding the preparation of Western professors of Sanskrit good enough for handling Purāņic Sanskrit, but not for the Šāstra Sanskrit of the Sābarabhāṣya, Sankarabhāṣya, Tattvacintāmaņi etc. The statement is made on the basis of a lecture of R.G. Bhandarkar delivered in Bombay in 1878 after his return from Europe. Without Professor Albrecht Wezler’s chance discovery of Bhashyachārya’s 29-page booklet and thoughtful procuring of a copy of it for me, I would not have been able to discover this piece of information. The title of the booklet, The Age of Patanjali, is incapable of revealing that it contains a paṇḍit’s criticism of Western scholarship.

Even the Japanese, who, because of the peculiarities of their language, have a serious handicap in mastering a language like Sanskrit and the Western languages in which most of the research concerning Sanskrit takes place, are now successfully tackling traditions such as that of Navya Nyāya on the basis of the original Sanskrit texts - an impressive and wel come achievement that could not have been predicted even three decades ago. On the other hand, more and more Indian philosophers are writing about Indian philosophy on the basis of English translations and without adequate knowledge of Sanskrit and without access to the latest research in the field.

What the paṇḍits accomplished has, on the whole, been a glorious achievement in preserving access to the past, in effecting social change through evolutions rather than disruptive revolutions and in making contributions to the development of human ideas. Yes, there were (and there are) a few false paṇḍits, narrow-minded paṇḍits, short-sighted paṇḍits, even socially harmful paṇḍits. Nor is it the case that the paṇḍits have always made decisions that served the interests of the community that supported them and thus improved the chances for their long-term survival. But the paṇḍit as an institution has, on the whole, rendered invaluable service to humanity. Wihout them, the great treasure of human experience and wisdom that San skrit and Prakrit literature is would not have come down to us. Without letting us know, they have made available to us a channel of globalization by preserving past heritage and the ways of enriching it. That is why their disappearance is being noticed even outside India with a sense of concern, which was generally not the case five or six decades ago.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank Professor Madhav M. Deshpaṇḍe, whose comments led me to improve this essay in light of BUITOW 1971, Professor Albrecht Wezler and Mr. Michael Dodson, who read the semi-final draft carefully, and the authorities of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, which supported my research during 1998-99.

REFERENCES

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

The publications in which a focus on collecting historical information about the paṇḍits can be said to exist are the following and the ones mentioned in them: Abhyankar 1954, Upadhyāya 1983, Sinha 1993, and Bhatt 1995. Of these, Upadhyāya’s and Sinha’s are the most informative books from the point of view of lives of paṇḍits (although they concentrate, understandably, on the regions Kashi-Varanasi and Bengal, respectively). In addition, there is much more information about the paṇḍits scattered in prologues and epilogues of the works written by the paṇḍits, in Sanskrit periodicals, and in hundreds of research articles written on individual scholars–practically in all of Indological literature. To the extent the thoughts expressed in the essay required, I have added to this information, but without making such addition my major aim. The stories I have told of the paṇḍits incidentally serve also to preserve for posterity some paṇḍitic lore that is not, as far as I know, recorded in books.

Kalla 1985. Madan 1965 and 1989, and Sender 1988 deal with Kashmiri pandits. The aim of Bhatt 1995 is the same to a considerable extent. However, it also contains many accounts of the paṇḍits in the sense primarily intended here: “traditionally trained Sanskrtists and Prakritists adept in belles lettres (kävya) and literature of knowledge (sastra, Veda etc.)”. Sharma 1976 discusses what happened to these paṇḍits in a particular period but does so as an overview only, not by recon structing the lives of individual paṇḍits or their communities. A few generalizations concerning the situation of paṇḍits in a specific period are indirectly present also in Shukla 1969.

Refs

  • Abhyankar, Kashinath Vasudev. 1954. Prastāvanākhanda [seventh volume added to the six volumes of Vasudevaśästrī Abhyankar’s Marathi translation of Patan jali’s Mahābhāṣya). Poona; Deccan Education Society.
  • [Marathi], Bhatt, S. (general ed.). 1995. Kashmiri paṇḍits: a Cultural Heritage. New Delhi: Lancers Books.
  • Bhashyachārya, N. 1905. The Age of Patanjali. Madras: The Theosophist Office, Adyar.
  • Bhattacharya, Dinesh Chandra. 1944, “ Vidyāsāgara’s commentary on the Mahā bhārata”, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 25:99-102. 1945. “Bengali scholars at Benares”, Indian Historical Quarterly 21:91 97.
  • Bhattoji-Dīkṣita. Vaiyakaranasiddhantakaumudi with VasudevaDīkṣita’s Bālamano ramā commentary and Inānendrasarasvati’s Tattvabodhini commentary. (eds.) Caturvedi, Giridhara-sarman; Parameśvarānanda-sarman. Vols. 4. Second edn. 1949-51. Delhi etc.: Motilal Banarsidass. Brhadāraṇyaka Upanisad: see Olivelle.
  • Burrow, T. 1971. “Spontaneous cerebrals in Sanskrit”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 34:538-559. Chandogya Upanisad: see Olivelle. Dhanamjaya. The Dasarūpaka of Dhanamjaya with the Conimentary Avaloka by Dhanika and the Sub-commentary Laghutīkā by Bhattanrsimha. (ed.) Venkat acharya, T. Madras: Adyar Library and Research Centre. 1969. Gode, P.K. 1936. “Date of Rāghavabhatta, the commentator of Kālidāsa’s Abhijñāna Sākuntala and other works-last quarter of the 15th century (1475 1500 A.D.)”, The Calcuita Oriental Journal 3.6:177-184. Reprinted in Studies in Indian Literary History, pp. I. 429-436. Bombay: Singhi Jain Shastra Sik shapith, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. 1953. - 1944. “New light on the chronology of the commentators of the Mahā bhārata”, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 25: 103-108. a: Sukhdev Singh. 1983. The Bījak of Kabir. San Francisco: North Point Press, [Hindi. See Simha below.) Kalla, Aloke K. 1985. Kashmiri paṇḍits and Their Diversity (a Socio-demo-genetic Profile). Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation. Madan, TN, 1965. Family and Kinship. A Study of the paṇḍits of Rural Kashmir. London: Asia Publishing House. Second enlarged edition 1989. Delhi, etc.; Oxford University Press. Mayrhofer, Manfred. 1956, 1963, 1976, 1980. Kurzgefasstes Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen, Vols. 4. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Univer sitätsverlag. Indogermanische Bibliothek. II. Reihe. Wörterbücher. , 1992, 1996. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, Heidel berg: Carl Winter Universitäts Verlag.
  • Nägarājarāva, H.V, 1995. “Paingānādu Ganapatiśāstriviracitā ‘Guru-rāja-saptatih”, in: Ananda-bharati: Dr. K. Krishnamoorthy Felicitation vol., Samskrtavibhāga, pp. 15-20. (eds) B. Channakeshava; H.V. Nagaraja Rao. Mysore: D.V.K. Murthy for the Dr. K. Krishnamoorthy Felicitation Committee. Mysore:
  • Krishnamurthipuram. Narayana Pillai, P.K. (ed.) 1951, Jaiminīyasütrārthasamgraha of Rsiputra Paramesvara. Trivandrum: University of Travancore.
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  • Rādhākäntadeva (or Rādhākāntadeva Bāhādura) et al. 1886-1893?. Sabdakalpa druma. Vols. or kāndas 5. Calcutta: [Probably published by Rādhākāntadeva himself). Publication years for the vols are specified as Saka 1808, 1811, 1813, 1814, 181 (the last digit was not printed in the copy of the original edition accessible to me). Photographic reprint 1; Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office. 1961.
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  • Sender, Henny, 1988. The Kashmiri paṇḍits. A Study of Cultural Choice in North India. Delhi etc.: Oxford University Press.
  • Settar, S. 1989. Inviting Death. Indian Attitude towards the Ritual Death. Leiden etc.: E.J, Brill
  • Sharma, Narinder Kumar. 1976. Linguistic and Educational Aspirations under a Colonial System. A Study of Sanskrit Education during British Rule in India. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. Shukla, Hira Lal. 1969. Macaulay and Sanskrit Education. Raipur, M.P.: Alok Prakāshan. Siddhantashastri, Balchandra, 1972-79. Jainalaksanavali, Jaina Pāribhasika Sabdakośa (an Authentic Descriptive Dictionary of Jaina Philosophical Terms), Vols. 3. Delhi: Vir Sewa Mandir, Simha, Sukadeva, Kabirabījaka. Iähābāda: Nīlābha Prakāśana. 1972. Sinha, Samita1993. paṇḍits in a Changing Environment: Centres of Sanskrit Learning in Nineteenth Century Bengal. Calcutta: Sarat Book House, Sukhānandanātha, Brāhmāvadhūta. 1864-1885, Sabdarthacintamani. Vols 8 (= 4 bhāgas, each divided into a and ba). Udaya-pura: Sajjana-yantrālaya/Vājapeyi Bamsidhara. Reprint 1991-92. Jaipur: Printwell. The reprint gives the date of the original publication as 1860, which must be approximate. The first volume, bhāga la, gives the date of its publication as Vikramasamvat 1921 (= 1863/1864 A.D.) and p. 1040 of the last volume, bhāga 4ba, informs us that the printing was finished in Vikramasamvat 1942 (1884-85 A.D.). Tārānātha Tarkavācaspati. 1873-1884. Väcaspatyam / Vāchaspatyam. Photo graphic reprint 1962. Vols. 6. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office. Upādhyāya, Bala-deva. 1983. Kaśī ki pāņditya paramparā: kāśīstha samskrta vidvänom ke jivana-carita evam sāhityika avadānom kā prāmünika vivarana. Vārānasī: Viśvavidyalaya Prakāśana. Hindi.