01 00

From Kaviśiṣya, B.ṀSrikantaiah’s Kannaḍa translation of Robert Southey’s poem The Scholar.

Document Outline

  • Contents

  • List of Plates

  • Acknowledgements

  • Translator’s Introduction

  • Transliteration and Punctuation Conventions

  • Biography of Sōsale Garaḷapurī Śāstri

    • Preface
    • Chapter One: The Narrative of Vijayanagara
    • Chapter Two
    • Chapter Three
    • Chapter Four
    • Chapter Five
    • Chapter Six
    • Chapter Seven
    • Chapter Eight
    • Chapter Nine
    • Chapter Ten: The Many Great Virtues of Garaḷapurī Śāstri

  • Biography of Cāmarājanagara Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri

      1. Birth and Childhood
      1. Formal Study
      1. The King’s Regard
      1. This Anguished World
      1. Śaṅkarānanda Sarasvatī
      1. A Mingling of Happiness and Sorrow
      1. Flowering of Scholarship and Authorship of Book
      1. Sorrows without End
      1. Grandchildren’s Progress. A Time of Change
      1. The King’s Favour
      1. Perseverance
      1. The Final Days
      1. His Many Virtues

  • Biography of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri

    • Preface
    • Chapter 1: Preamble
    • Chapter 2: Birth and Childhood
    • Chapter 3: Study in Rāmadurga
    • Chapter 4: Residence in Maisūru: The State of the Darbār
    • Chapter 5: Residence in Maisūru: A Wealth of Students
    • Chapter 6: Residence in Maisūru: The Śriyappācārya Episode
    • Chapter 7: Travels in the South (The First Time)
    • Chapter 8: The Minister Timmaṇṇaśāstri. Rāmaśāstri’s Scholarship
    • Chapter 9: Anugama Vāda. Sarvatōmukha Yāga
    • Chapter 10: The Situation in the Royal Court
    • Chapter 11: Southward Travels (The Second Time). Nārāyaṇa Shown to Mean Śiva. The King’s Regard
    • Chapter 12: Birth of Third Son. His Passing
    • Chapter 13: His Many Virtues (1)
    • Chapter 14: His Many Virtues (2)
    • Chapter 15: His Many Virtues (3)

  • Appendix A:

    • Summary Biographical Timelines for Sōsale Garaḷapurī Śāstri, Cāmarājanagara Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri, and Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri

    • Summary Timeline of Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s Life

      • Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s known work

    • Summary Timeline of Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri’s Life

      • Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri’s KnownWorks

    • Summary Timeline of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri’s Life

      • Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri’s KnownWorks

  • Appendix B: Vignettes from ḌV. Guṇḍappa’s Jñāpaka Citraśāle

    • The Lives of Vaidikas

      • Variety inWays of Living
      • Simplicity and Contentment
      • Puṇyaślōka Veṅkaṭarāmabhaṭṭa
      • Friendship and Support
      • Matching Brides and Bridegrooms
      • Knowledge of the Śruti
      • Students
      • Tippābhaṭṭa’s Income
      • Śivasaṅkara Śāstri
      • Daily Routine
      • The Bōdige Bank
      • The Afternoons
      • The Evenings
      • Good Will and Serenity
      • Sabhāpūje
      • Vaidika Beliefs
      • Empathy for All

    • Some Students of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri. Other Reminiscences

      • The Students of Vāsudēvaśastri
      • His Students
      • Doḍḍabele Nārāyaṇaśāstir
      • Dēvanagondi Nārāyaṇaśāstir
      • Subrahmaṇya Śāstir
      • Śivaśaṅkara Śāstri
      • Chappalli Viśvēśvara Śāstri’s Scholarship and Humility
      • The Tiger’s Jaws
      • Viśvēśvara Śāstri’s Occupation
      • Rāmaśēṣa Śāstri
      • The Right to Conduct Ritual
      • The Scholarly Assembly of Cāmarājapēṭe
      • The Assembly at Tiruvāḍi
      • An Incident
      • Rāmasvāmi Setti
      • Gōdāvarī Brāhmaṇas
      • Carefree Natures
      • Soṇṇēgauḍa’s Samārādhane
      • Dhātrīhavana
      • Abundance
      • Our Assembly
      • Our Afternoon Diversion
      • Some Hilarity

  • Appendix C: Biography of Sōsale Ayya Śāstri

    • The Late Āsthānamahāvidvān “Kavitilaka” Sōsale Ayya Śāstri
      • His Works

  • Appendix D: Reconstructed Family History of Sōsale Garaḷapurī Śāstri

    • Genealogical Account in Ayyā Śāstri’s Hand
    • Establishing a Basis for Analyzing the Genealogy

      • A Foundation for Further Inquiry

        • The Sugaṭūru and Ānēkallu Paḷeyagāras

      • Ānēkallu’s History and the Ānēkallu Kaifiyat

        • Evidence from the Ānēkallu Kaifiyat
        • Reflections on the Kaifiyat
          • Bijāpur and the Marāṭhās in the Kaifiyat

      • Tammaṇṇa Śāstri’s Arrival in Ānēkallu

        • Additional Questions About the Pāḷeyagāra Identity
          • Clues from the Maḷeyarāja Cāritra

      • The Identity of the Ānēgondi Saṁsthāna

        • Prelude to the Battle of Tāḷikōṭe

          • Aḷiya Rāma Rāya’s Ascent to Power

        • The Battle of Tāḷikōṭe (Rakkasa-Taṅgaḍi)

          • The Sequel to Tāḷikōṭe

        • The Situation at Ānēgondi After Tāḷikōṭe

          • The Royal Line of Ānēgondi

        • The Identity of the Ānēgondi Saṁsthāna

      • Other Clues Regarding Tammaṇṇa Śāstri’s Journey

        • The Gōlkoṇḍa and Bijāpur Campaigns of 1638 C.E
        • Some Speculations About Tammaṇṇa Śāstri’s Journey
          • The Timing and Course of the Journey

      • The Anantaśayana and Hoysaḷa Questions

        • A Possible Ānēgondi-Anantaśayana Link
        • The Hoysaḷa Antecedents of Tammaṇṇa Śāstri

  • Appendix E: Translations of Selected Verses

    • Various Verses
    • Citrakāvya Translations
    • Bhāgavatasaptāha Invitation and Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s Response

  • Bibliography

  • Index

    • Unknown
      • A
      • B
      • C
      • D
      • E
      • F
      • G
      • H
      • I
      • J
      • K
      • L
      • M
      • N
      • O
      • P
      • Q
      • R
      • S
      • T
      • U
      • V
      • W
      • Y
      • Z

contents

List of Plates

xii

Acknowledgements

xv

Translator’s Introduction

xvii

Transliteration and Punctuation Conventions

xxxiii

Biography of sōsale Garaḷapurī śāstri

1

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

Chapter One: The Narrative of Vijayanagara . . . . . . . .

4

Chapter Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

8

Chapter Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12

Chapter Four . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17

Chapter Five . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

22

Chapter Six . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30

Chapter Seven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

Chapter Eight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

Chapter Nine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65

Chapter Ten: The Many Great Virtues of Garaḷapurī Śāstri .

68

Biography of Cāmar ājanagara Śrīkaṇṭha śāstri

73

  1. Birth and Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

  1. Formal Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

  1. The King’s Regard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87

  1. This Anguished World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

90

  1. Śaṇkarānanda Sarasvatī . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93

  1. A Mingling of Happiness and Sorrow . . . . . . . . . .

97

  1. Flowering of Scholarship and Authorship of Book . . . .

102

  1. Sorrows Without End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

109

  1. Grandchildren’s Progress. A Time of Change . . . . . . .

114

  1. The King’s Favour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

119

  1. Perseverance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

130

  1. The Final Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

138

ix

x

sons of sarasvatī

  1. His Many Virtues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

153

Biography of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri

159

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

161

Chapter 1: Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

163

Chapter 2: Birth and Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

169

Chapter 3: Study in Rāmadurga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

175

Chapter 4: Residence in Mais ūru: The State of the Darbār .

192

Chapter 5: Residence in Mais ūru: A Wealth of Students . . .

199

Chapter 6: Residence in Mais ūru: The Śriyappācārya Episode 206

Chapter 7: Travels in the South (The First Time) . . . . . .

213

Chapter 8: The Minister Timmaṇṇaśāstri. Rāmaśāstri’s

Scholarship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

220

Chapter 9: *Anugama Vāda. Sarvatōmukha Yāga *. . . . . .

226

Chapter 10: The Situation in the Royal Court . . . . . . . .

237

Chapter 11: Southward Travels (The Second Time). Nārāyaṇa

Shown to Mean Śiva. The King’s Regard . . . . . . .

250

Chapter 12: Birth of Third Son. His Passing . . . . . . . . .

259

Chapter 13: His Many Virtues (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

264

Chapter 14: His Many Virtues (2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

273

Chapter 15: His Many Virtues (3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

278

Appendix A: Summary Biographical Timelines for

sōsale Garaḷapurī śāstri, Cāmar ājanagara

Śrīkaṇṭha śāstri, and Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri

285

Summary Timeline of Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s Life . . . . . . . .

287

Summary Timeline of Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri’s Life . . . . . . . .

290

Summary Timeline of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri’s Life . . . . . .

293

Appendix B: Vignettes from ḌV. Guṇḍappa’s Jñ āpaka

Citraś āle

295

The Lives of *Vaidikas *. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

297

Some Students of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri. Other Reminiscences

310

Appendix C: Biography of sōsale Ayya śāstri

333

The Late ¯

Asthānamahāvidvān

*“Kavitilaka”*Sōsale Ayya Śāstri . . . . . . . .

335

contents

xi

Appendix D: Reconstructed Family History of sōsale

Garaḷapurī śāstri

343

Genealogical Account in Ayyā Śāstri’s Hand . . . . . . . . .

344

Establishing a Basis for Analyzing the Genealogy . . . . . .

346

A Foundation for Further Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . .

347

The Sugaṭūru and Ānēkallu *Paḷeyagāras *. . .

348

Ānēkallu’s History and the ¯

*Anēkallu Kaifiyat *. . . . . . . .

351

Evidence from the ¯

*Anēkallu Kaifiyat *. . . . . . . . .

354

Reflections on the *Kaifiyat *. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

356

Bijāpur and the Marāṭhās in the *Kaifiyat *. . .

358

Tammaṇṇa Śāstri’s Arrival in Ānēkallu . . . . . . . . . . .

362

Additional Questions About the Pāḷeyagāra’sIdentity 363

Clues from the *Maḷeyarāja Cāritra *. . . . . .

364

The Identity of the Ānēgondi *Saṁsthāna *. . . . . . . . . .

367

Prelude to the Battle of Tāḷikōṭe . . . . . . . . . . . .

367

AḷiyaRāma Rāya’s Ascent to Power . . . . .

368

The Battle of Tāḷikōṭe (Rakkasa-Taṇgaḍi) . . . . . . .

372

The Sequel to Tāḷikōṭe . . . . . . . . . . . .

374

The Situation at Ānēgondi After Tāḷikōṭe . . . . . . .

375

The Royal Line of Ānēgondi . . . . . . . . .

376

The Identity of the Ānēgondi *Saṁsthāna *. . . . . . .

378

Other Clues Regarding Tammaṇṇa Śāstri’s Journey . . . . .

380

The Gōlkoṇḍa and Bijāpur Campaigns of 1638 C.E. . .

381

Some Speculations About Tammaṇṇa Śāstri’s Journey

383

The Timing and Course of the Journey . . . .

385

The Anantaśayana and Hoysaḷa Questions . . . . . . . . .

387

A Possible Ānēgondi-Anantaśayana Link . . .

388

The Hoysaḷa Antecedents of Tammaṇṇa Śāstri . . . .

390

Appendix E: Translations of Selecte2 Verses

393

Various Verses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

394

CitrakāvyaTranslations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

398

BhāgavatasaptāhaInvitation and Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s Response 410

Bibliography

417

Index

437

list of plates

Plate 1

Portraits of ṀṢPuṭṭaṇṇa and Cāmarājanagara

Veṇkaṭaramaṇa Śāstri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xxvii

Plate 2

Transliteration scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xxxiv

Plate 3

Portrait of Sōsale Garaḷapurī Śāstri . . . . . . . . . .

2

Plate 4

S.aḍaracakrabandhacomposition in the

*Kr̥ṣṇabhūpāḻīyam *. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

Plate 5

Nāgabandhacomposition in the *Kr̥ṣṇabhūpāḻīyam *.

28

Plate 6

Views of the old Mais ūru Palace . . . . . . . . . . .

32

Plate 7

Portraits of C.V. Raṇgācārlu and P.ṆKr̥ṣṇamūrti . .

45

Plate 8

Portraits of Basappa Śāstri and Cāmarājanagara

Rāmaśāstri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

54

Plate 9

Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s family tree . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

Plate 10

Portrait of Cāmarājanagara Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri . . . . .

74

Plates 11–27 Gallery Starts on Page 109

Plate 11

Portraits of Kr̥ṣṇarāja Voḍeyar III

Plate 12

Map of Mais ūru north, 1876 C.E.

Plate 13

Map of Mais ūru south, 1876 C.E.

Plate 14

Interior of the Sōsale Vyāsarāja Maṭha, 2010 C.E.

Plate 15

The Parakāla Maṭha in Maisūru

Plate 16

Traditional house in Mais ūru’s Katvāḍipura Agrahara

Plate 17

Some luminaries at the court of Kr̥ṣṇarāja Voḍeyar III

Plate 18

Some musicians at the Mais ūru court

Plate 19

Portrait of Perīsvāmi Tirumalacārya

Plate 20

Portrait of AḷiyaLiṇgarājē Arasu

Plate 21

Portrait of Bhāgavata Subba Rāv

Plate 22

Portrait of DīvānP ūrṇayya

Plate 23

Portrait of Three Princesses from Mysore

Plate 24

The Cāmarājeśvara temple at Cāmarājanagara

Plate 25

Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri, Tryambaka Śāstri, Kāśī Śeśa

Śāstri

Plate 26

Elder son and younger son of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri

Plate 27

The Abhinava Śaṇkarālaya Maṭha in Maisūru

xii

list of plates

xiii

Plate 28

Veṇkaṭaramaṇa Śāstri’s second wedding, 1909 C.E. . .

116

Plate 29

Portraits of Kr̥ṣṇarāja Voḍeyar IV, Kaṇṭhīrava

Narasiṁharāja Voḍeyar, and Mirza Ismail . . . . . .

123

Plate 30

New Mais ūru palace and the *Karīkallu Toṭṭi *. . . . .

124

Plate 31

Portraits of Sōsale Garaḷapurī Śāstri and

Veṇkaṭasubbamma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

136

Plate 32

Portrait of Ayyā Śāstri with Lakṣmīdevamma . . . .

142

Plate 33

Genealogy of Cāmarājanagara Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri . . . .

152

Plate 34

Portrait of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri . . . . . . . . . . .

160

Plate 35

Royal bathing *ghāt.*at Paṣcimavāhiṉī . . . . . . . . .

256

Plate 36

Academic genealogy of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri . . . .

266

Plate 37

Portrait of Sōsale Ayyā Śāstri . . . . . . . . . . . . .

334

Plate 38

Example Sugaṭūru genealogies . . . . . . . . . . . .

349

Plate 39

Narapati genealogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

369

Plate 40

Āravīḍu genealogy, continued from Plate 39 . . . . .

370

Plate 41

Hypothetical routes for Tammaṇṇa Śāstri’s journey .

384

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgementsaredue,fiirstandforemost,tomymother,who

has long been an understated and subtle force shaping my intellectual and personal development. She surely deserves the most direct credit for my having undertaken this work. My numerous discussions with her, even in childhood, have piqued and maintained my interest in a variety of matters, including such as form the substance of this work. She has also played a direct role in this work, collecting material for me, and helping me clarify my thinking on numerous points. She has always been, and continues to be an inspiration.

Thanks are due next to Professor ṬV. Venkatachala Sastry of Mysore, with whom I have had the privilege of discussing this work on several occasions. Each time, I was enriched by copies of relevant material as well as engaging conversation. The breadth and depth of his scholarship, his generosity, and his encouragment were all reasons for me to look forward to our meetings with anticipation. Half a world happens to intervene between our locations, making our meetings rare but precious. I am grateful that no such distance has existed between his enthusiasm and mine for the substance of these efforts.

Many of the Sanskrit verses appearing in this volume were of such quality and subtlety that I did not feel I could do them justice as a translator.

I am indebted to several individuals who have helped me with this task.

VidvānḤV. Nagaraja Rao, formerly of the Oriental Research Institute of Mysore, and a well-known scholar of Sanskrit literature and grammar, translated the verses appearing on pages 44–51. Dr Shankar Rajaraman of Bangalore undertook to translate many other verses, including the citrakāvya in this volume. Apart from being a psychiatrist with a busy practice, he is also a researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, an accomplished Sanskrit poet who composes and publishes *citrakāvya,*and among the handful of individuals today who are up to the challenges of the classical art of *aṣṭāvadhāna.*Mr Naresh Keerthi of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, has also provided invaluable assistance. He undertook a reading of the full manuscript, made numerous suggestions for improvement, and checked and recast my original transliterations in punctuated form.

xv

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sons of sarasvatī

I am grateful to Professor Sheldon Pollock of Columbia University for his encouragement and for his early affiirmation of the value of this effort.

It was at his suggestion that I began to enlarge this work beyond the param-eters I had originally envisioned. I found his support especially valuable as this work neared publication.

Finally, I want to thank my wife Aruna for her patience, understanding, and support; the list of things deferred on account of this work is not inconsiderable. My daughters Tara and Leena, both sources of unending delight for me, have long been bemused by the sight of their father’s poring over books and manuscripts in strange scripts. They deserve my thanks for periodically enquiring how the work was coming along, and suggesting that I get it done. Now, they might see the results of those efforts, and perhaps some day, even read it.

translator’s introduction

Traditional *pāṇḍitya,*or scholarship acquired in the traditional Indian fashion, through intense study under the academic tutelage and personal nurture of an accomplished guru, is an ancient institution with a distinguished history. Sadly, it is practically extinct in modern India. Its decline is remarkably recent; it flourished in its full glory even in the 19th century, and traditionally trained scholars were numerous well into the 20th century. To a degree, the political changes that occurred in India during and after the 19th century contributed to this decline. Such changes caused the loss of many traditional sources of scholarly patronage, such as the numerous kings, princes, and feudal lords who had long been primary centres of political and economic power in India. These notables generally upheld the traditions of rājadharma, or princely duties, which valued scholarly patronage highly.1 Its subtleties, however, were entirely lost on the British overlords of India, who disdained such patronage as wasteful indulgence and focused instead on ensuring peace in their empire and on its effiicient administration. To this end, they instituted a system of indirect rule, keeping in power numerous kings and princes to serve as the nominal rulers of their respective states. Happily, such rulers often continued their traditions of patronage [Ikegame 2007, Price 1996, Ramusack 2004]. As these traditional institutions diminished, however, scholars were increasingly forced to depend on erratic support from indifferent government institutions.

While the decline of traditional pāṇḍityais a complex phenomenon, its proximal cause is surely the move to Western education, and away from traditional learning, by the last three generations of brāhmaṇa families.2 These 1 Rājadharma, as dharma, defiined the essence and meaning of kingship; the ruler’s very legitimacy flowed from it. Its obligations, detailed even in the Mahābhārata’s Śāntiparvan, lay beyond any soverign immunity from laws. The manner of its practice by the king set the tenor of the times. See *Mahābhārata *( Udyogaparvan130.15): “kālo vā kāraṇam rājño rājā *vā kālakāraṇam | iti te saṁśayo mā bhūd rāja kālsya kāraṇam ∥”*Also see Aiyangar [1941].

2This trend owes much to Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s infamous Minute on Education persuading William Bentinck, then Governor General, to establish English as the sole medium of higher education in India [Sharp and Richey 1920]. Things may well have been different. Bentinck’s action reversed the policies of his predecessor Warren Hastings, who saw far greater value in British administrators becoming familiar with Indian scholarship and traditions. Outstanding scholars like James Prinsep and Horace Wilson, themselves xvii

xviii

sons of sarasvatī

latest heirs to an unbroken line of tradition reaching back four or more millennia would otherwise have been the standard bearers for this rich and venerable heritage of scholarship. Sadly, this break has inevitably resulted in the loss of connection not just with Sanskrit, in which are fiirmly embedded the roots of the rich scholarly values and traditions of India, but also with many subtle aspects and insights of Indian culture. Pollock [2009, 2008b]

has even argued urgently that several millennia of accumulated scholarly heritage is at risk of becoming irrecoverably lost in the next generation or two, and that entire fiields of Indian scholarship may already be defunct, or at best represented by one or two octagenarians.3 Compounding this decline are the many dominant actors in modern Indian politics who associate such scholarship with Brahminic traditions, with which they neither identify nor empathize. Uncertain, at best, are any prospects of governmental initiatives in India aimed at buttressing the walls of this crumbling edifiice.

Dimmer still, are the prospects for such initiatives by Indian society at large, or by the brāḥmaṇa community, whose members stand justly accused of having frittered away their scholarly patrimony through utter neglect.

Indifference to scholarship is widespread, whether in India or elsewhere, and such indifference would be no surprise in the absence of an intellectual tradition.4 Yet, among the brāhmaṇas, erstwhile custodians of the Indian products of Hastings’s policies, strongly opposed Macaulay, but to no avail. As Cutts [1953]

shows, Macaulay’s evangelical background had much to do with his antipathy to Indian scholarship and tradition. In his Minute, Macaulay derides Hinduism as a “false religion”, Indian scholarship as “an incumbrance and blemish”, and “useless”, and proudly proclaims his ignorance of Sanskrit and Arabic. The irony of the contrast between this declared ignorance and the certitude of his judgments on the value of Indian learning appears to have been lost on him and his superiors.

3Aklujkar makes this same point [in Michaels 2001, p. 43]: “In 1992 Professor Robert O.

Goldman came to India with a video camera with the intention of fiilming the pandits in action. When he asked me if I could suggest the names of some truly impressive pandits whom he could interview and capture on fiilm, I could not come up with more than two or three names, all of them belonging to pandits close to or beyond their seventies! This may be due to my limited knowledge of traditional scholarship in India. . . It is also possible that the standard I was applying was too high. . . However, in view of what I hear from many of my knowledgeable colleagues, I am inclined to discount these possibilities. I consider it almost certain that a true pandit is now an extremely endangered species.”

4There is a long-established and politically powerful tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, for example. Also see AAAS [2013], where the Humanities and Social Sciences Commission of the AAAS, the leading academy for these disciplines in the nation with the strongest economy in history, is obliged to make the case for a liberal education in economic terms, the only language that contemporary American society readily relates to.

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scholarly tradition, it is common today for even the best-educated descendants of the fiinest scholars of just two generations ago to be entirely ignorant of their own scholarly heritage.5

This sudden decline in traditional Sanskrit scholarship presents a stark contrast to the remarkable flowering it witnessed between the 15th and 18th centuries C.E. This efflorescence brought about major innovations across a diverse collection of fiields, including grammar, logic, literary theory, philosophy, and mathematics. The ideas and theories produced during this period are often judged as having been unprecedented in their quality and quantity (see, for example, Pollock [2001]).6

The precipitous decline of traditional pāṇḍityathat immediately followed hence presents a major paradox, and is the subject of much ongoing research.7 This institution, after all, had remained robust in the face of very adverse circumstances, such as a full millennium of Muslim rule. We can, however, point to some factors in the waning of traditional scholarship.

The 19th century is of exceptional signifiicance in the intellectual history of India. During this time can clearly be seen the decline of traditional 5This is a dispiriting but common impediment faced by the intellectual historian. Sharma

[1981, p. 545], for instance, laments after listing numerous scholars of Navya Nyāyalogic:

“The lack of historical material, for which the indifference of their descendants is not a little to blame, prevents a fuller account of these celebrities.” More direct is the distinguished littérateurGuṇḍappa [1970, v. 1, p. 25]: “The tradition of preserving biographical materials is rare among our people. Our worthies have failed to exert themselves to collect and preserve materials or memories relating to the lives of no small a number of preeminent and esteemed individuals. I can myself attest to having approached many notables, saying to them, ‘Your father was an illustrious man. I plan to write about him. I would be grateful for any relevant documents, letters, or notes in your possession,’ and on being told that no materials were available, coming away empty handed. I have been disappointed on many occasions.

It is hard for us to obtain materials concerning even such luminaries as Sir ṬMuttusvāmi Ayyar or Sir K. Śēṣādri Ayyar. Their very own descendants, who now enjoy the wealth bequeathed by these ancestors, show them little esteem. An interest in preserving the prestige and acclaim of forebears and fiilial piety both appear to be lacking among our people.”

6A small sample of the luminaries it produced would include Raghunātha Śiromaṇi and Gadādhara Bhaṭṭācārya in logic, Jagannātha Paṇḍita in literary theory, Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita and Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa in grammar, Madhusūdana Sarasvatī in philosophy, and the astonishingly prolifiic Appayya Dīkṣita. In mathematics, this flowering may have begun even by the 14th century, as the dates ascribed to the Keralite mathematician Mādhava of Saṇgamagrāma suggest, but this too was a tradition of excellence. It had, for example, obtained infiinite series expansions of circular functions two centuries before the calculus was invented.

7See, for example, Pollock [2008a], Kaviraj [2005], and the “Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonization” project [Columbia 2001].

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ways, and the wholesale intrusion of Western-style modernity into Indian society, and thence into the domain of scholarship. If we look specifiically at the example of Mais ūru, we see the classical traditions of rājadharmasurviving more or less intact till 1868, the year of Kr̥ṣṇarāja Voḍeyar III’s death.

The British had allowed him free rein in such matters, but undertook a reorganization of his practices of scholarly and religious patronage upon his death. Perhaps for the fiirst time, economic considerations overrode traditional criteria for royal patronage. Cāmarāja Voḍeyar X, the successor, was given a Western-style education, and while he continued traditional patronage, under him began a process of economic and social transformation that reached its zenith under his son and successor Kr̥ṣṇarāja Voḍeyar IV. By the fiirst quarter of the 20th century, Mais ūru’s social and economic fabric had been transformed, and with it, the traditions of learning and scholarship.

As the traditions of rājadharmadeclined, scholars lost not just their traditional sources of economic support, but more signifiicantly, a major source of social status and prestige. Support of pāṇḍityawas a deeply held societal value, but high regard from the monarch for scholarship affiirmed this value through his high-profiile example.8 Patronage of paṇḍitas, whose lives were dedicated to learning and dhārmicobservances, flowed from the universal obligation to sustain dharma, which in turn sustained order and well-being in kingdom and society. This relationship between patron and paṇḍita, however, was never transactional, since the paṇḍita’sdevotion to learning and observance arose from his own dharma, whose obligations he discharged regardless of patronage.9

In contrast, this relationship became entirely transactional with the British, who saw the paṇḍitaas economically unproductive, unless as teacher.

Work for wages offiicially supplanted sustenance of dharma, and given policies that devalued traditional learning, such wages were always meagre. Traditional scholars lost both social and economic standing, which were now to be attained primarily through such means as Western education, knowledge of English, and government employment.10

8The greatest scholars were granted even the insignia of royalty. See footnotes 1 and 562.

9See page 167 and footnote 457 for an extraordinary instance of dedication to observance.

10See page 317: *“śāstribhāvamapākr̥tya mēstribhāvamupākr̥tah.” *. Salaried work was essential in a cash economy. For cash’s role in earlier times, see page 301. Western education brought wealth and prestige, and traditionalists fell behind. See page 315: Kāśīpati Śāstri was both a paṇḍitaand an engineer. Also see page 321. Such conflicts play out even to this day.

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Their very devotion to learning may have nudged brāhmaṇas away from traditional pāṇḍitya, and even amplifiied their unfortunate indifference to their own intellectual heritage. Modern European thought arrived in India mature, its transition to scientifiic empiricism complete, and all the technical prowess it engendered on full display. Earlier invaders, such as Muslims, had learned more from Indian paṇḍitasthan they had taught them. In contrast, Western thought brought entirely new approaches to knowing, and offered new, secular, and practical knowledge. There was no equivalent in traditional pāṇḍitya.11 With no doctrinal prohibitions standing in their way,12

their scholarly traditions led brāhmaṇas inevitably to Western education.13

What they gained in the process is clear, but what they lost is less obvious. The loss of the traditions of debate and innovation integral to traditional scholarship, for instance, has resulted in a broad decline in the standards of all scholarly activity in contemporary India.14 This loss, sadly, is not 11Though Navya Nyāya’stechnical and analytical rigour far exceeded what the West then had to offer, its powerful tools had yet to be applied to understanding or mastering Nature.

12Even taboos on associating with those without caste were observed mostly in the personal and ritual spheres. High-caste Hindus had even long served in Muslim courts and armies. Dilemmas did arise, however, as with the incident involving J.G. Tait on page 318.

13The value of modern education was readily recognized even by some of the most traditional scholars. See the views expressed by Viśvēśvara Śāstri on page 320. At this time, western-educated scholars did not always abandon or look down upon traditional learning.

14The tradition of debate, which remained intact till quite recently, has long shaped Indian society’s outlook and sensibilities. See Sen [2013]. Scholarly debates were consequen-tial in public and popular culture. The laity often attended, drawn by interest, the event’s import, or the social value of attendance; debates had prominent sponsors, such as kings, from Upaniṣadictimes down to the 19th century. For examples, see pages 203, 218, 255, 316

of the present volume, and Ganeri [2012], who notes: “Public acts of reason were a defiining feature of the intellectual world of ancient India.” Also see Staal [2008, p. 185]: “If I were asked to point at the greatest contributions of the Upaniṣads and Vedānta… The fiirst is public discussions and rational dialogues without restraints (e.g., ‘political correctness’). . .

In India, they continued to exist in religious contexts, at least until half a century ago in Kanchipuram, when I looked up at the leaders of the two main Viśiṣṭādvaita schools or sects, arguing with each other, high above me on elephant back and surrounded by throngs of followers. The name of one was Prativada Bhyaṁkaram, ‘Terrible Refutation’. Logic and reason combined in one fantastic spectacle. What a lesson for the twenty-fiirst century!” Prativādi Bhayaṇkarameans “fearsome refuter of argument”, and is typical of titles given to one who excels at scholarly debate. Staal surely witnessed a debate involving Prativādi BhayaṇkaraAṇṇaṇgarācārya (1891–1983), a distinguished scholar and descendant of the 14th-century namesake Śrīvaiṣṇavascholar Prativādi BhayaṇkaraAṇṇa, whose scholarly and dialectic reputation were so treasured that descendants have preserved the title as a family name for seven centuries.

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just intellectual, but also deeply cultural. Indian tradition reveres scholars not merely as learned men, but as embodiments of certain moral and human ideals. The ascetic practices of the traditional Brahminic way of life and the strict discipline required for extensive mastery of a subject intersected in a traditional scholar, each complementing and contributing to the other’s intensity.15 The highest measure of respect was thus paid to vaidika brāhmaṇas, who devoted themselves to scholarship and to upholding traditions, relying for sustenance on societal patronage or honoraria from students upon completing their studies.16 Indian society is the poorer for the decline of the true paṇḍita, who personifiied traditional ideals, living a life of the intellect, driven by precept and purity, and serving as a point of reference for the understanding and interpretation of these ideals.17 He was a visible and familiar exemplar of their meaning and attainability in practice.

Such lives are lived even now in India, but far less commonly than they were even fiifty years ago. Practices, norms, and attitudes that were prevalent and widespread are now uncommon and unappreciated.18 The intellectual output of traditional scholars continues to be studied, and has indeed become more available than previously. However, relatively little material exists on the personal lives of such individuals, who were the very embodiments of scholarly, cultural, and societal traditions. Their lives are rich in reference markers that help understand transformations in these traditions.

15This point is elaborated by Michaels [2001, p. 3]: “The functions of a pandit in the traditional sense are manifold. He is a scholar, teacher, adviser, spiritual master, specialist, and legal expert. He is a symbol of purity and identity for Sanskrit scholarship. . . In India, it is believed that a traditional pandit should have a deep commitment to learning and teaching, a special charisma, and sometimes even a sectarian initiation ( *dīkṣā. . . *) …a pandit quite often has an ascetic way of life, with restraints on food or sexual relations aiming at a balance between knowledge and personality similar to the life of holy men. . . ”

16See footnotes 73 and 75. An illustration of society’s commitment to the patronage of vaidikabrāhmaṇas appears on page 323.

17See page 297 *ff.*for an account of the lives of vaidikasand how they discharged these roles in society. At a deeper level, society had long relied on paṇḍitas, whether as individuals or as councils, to set norms and resolve controversies involving subtler points of both custom and dharma, the understanding and practice of which was seen as integral to pāṇḍitya. For recent examples, see the account of the Tiruvāḍi council on page 320, and Gode [1956, p. 19], who records a caste dispute at the time of Pēśva Bāji Rao II resolved by a scholarly council.

The title of Dharmādhikāriwas often given to the most distinguished scholars.

18For instance, references to various subtle aspects of the Indian world-view appear frequently in the Sanskrit quotations within these biographies. The educated reader of the time was clearly assumed to be capable of understanding them in their original context, and appreciating the various associated subtleties. That assumption would not be valid today.

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The biographies in this volume are about a century old, and were written precisely to provide such signposts. Their subjects are three of the fiinest scholars of the time, representing exceptional examples of traditional pāṇd.-

itya. These works also yield valuable insights into contemporary society and into the traditions of royal patronage in 19th-century Mysore, whose kings emerged as the greatest patrons of the arts and scholarship in India following the decline of the Marāṭhas, and after four decades of diminished patronage during the usurpation by Haider ‘Ali and his son T.ippu.

If an understanding of scholarly lives was important a hundred years ago, it is surely even more so today, given our greater remove from the tradition. Scholarly activity is a cultural process; its vitality derives from cultural and societal context. The dynamics of scholarly activity, however, are not discernible in its end products. There are even fiields (grammar and logic, say, in our context), where the scholarly end product must be cast in culturally inert terms. A scholar’s legacy can hence be impersonal and static, and open to imputations of cause long after the fact. Motivations aside, such imputations are dangerous to make in the absence of proper context, which of course, our modern sensibilites and perspectives could never provide.

For instance, the lively ongoing debate in India on its cultural and scholarly heritage and what it means to be Indian is not always well-informed by historical context, not least because Indian tradition has long been oblivi-ous to its value, and indifferent to its preservation.19 The Indian and Western intellectual traditions are both deeply indebted to classical thought.20

The intellectual self-confiidence of the West, however, does not obtain from an effort to reach back to these ancients, but from a sense of connection to intellectual antecedents of the proximate past, a recognition among intellectuals that many of the greatest fiigures of their tradition lived within just 19See footnotes 5 and 6. The resulting disconnect from historical context may well underlie the anxieties discernible in this debate. It is the disconnect with the recent, rather than the remote past, that may be the cause of greater detriment; it leaves the false impression that the glories of the Indian intellectual tradition largely belong to the distant past, promoting a sense of enduring injustice and insecurity on the one side, and disdain on the other. On the other hand, a knowledge of the major achievements of the proximate past would reassure, illuminate, and quicken a sense of agency. It would pave the way for a more dispassionate and analytical understanding of how the Indian intellectual tradition has evolved.

20Consider, for instance, the famous quote from Whitehead [1978]: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” The high regard in India for ancient learning, of course, needs no repeating.

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the last six hundred years, and a sense of pride and privilege in keeping this tradition alive.21 The past is within easy reach. The context for interpreting text and tradition has been painstakingly preserved and elucidated.

Some of the very greatest fiigures in the Indian intellectual tradition too, flourished in the immediate past. Just a couple of generations ago, Indian scholars enjoyed the same sense of connection to their intellectual forebears as do modern Western scholars. Moreover, the Indian tradition, unlike that of the West, represented a continuum of intellectual heritage, reaching back to the most ancient of times. Recent forebears of the tradition embodied ancient traditions not just in spirit, but even in the specifiics. Scholars surely derived great intellectual assurance from being rooted in an ancient tradition whose scholarly acomplishments were on par with those of any other.

Today, this sense of connection or proximity to this tradition seems to have been lost. We live, as it were, on the wrong side of a high wall dividing us from this precious intellectual heritage. Over the top of this wall, we may catch glimpses of towering but distant peaks, the presumed abode of the mighty ancients. Nothing is visible of what lies just across the wall, however, except to those who would exert themselves to scale it.22

Many do succeed in this effort, but the loudest and most strident voices in the debate alluded to above, so full of sound and fury, often belong to those who appear to just discount the possibility of much value lying across this metaphorical wall, and to others who make extravagant claims based on 21Whitehead [1925] observes the following of the 17th century, a remarkable epoch in the intellectual history of the West: “A brief, and suffiiciently accurate, description of the intellectual life of the European races during the succeeding two centuries and a quarter up to our own times is that they have been living on the accumulated capital of ideas provided for them by the genius of the seventeenth century.”

22Scaling this wall involves no small effort. Pollock [2001] observes: “The fiirst and foremost problem is the complexity of the discourses themselves that they produced. In idiom and subject matter, these surely represent some of the most sophisticated and refiined known to human history. And this complexity is redoubled by the fact that the seventeenth-century intellectuals were the legatees of two millennia of brilliant thought, whose most important representatives, from the earliest among them onward, always remained partners in argument. Understanding anything later, therefore, always presupposes understanding everything earlier. A second obstacle pertains to the greater social world within which these discourses were produced, and, more particularly, to the relationship between them and other forms of intellectual production, whether Persianate or vernacular. For most of the key thinkers in question, we are confronted with what is virtually a total absence of contextuality. In many cases not a shred of documentary evidence is available to help us give life to their writings, which we can only vaguely situate in time and place. . . ”

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fanciful reconstructions of a venerable but inaccessible past atop those remote peaks. One side may suffer from a lack of imagination and the other from a surfeit of it, but more information would surely be helpful everywhere.23 Fortunately, just across the wall lies a wealth of textual artifacts, whose exploration can reveal much about who we are and how we got here.

Such philological explorations are most meaningful if done by the light of proper historical, social, and intellectual context. Well-documented biographies of individuals defiining historical, social, and intellectual traditions can provide some of this missing context. Their importance goes far beyond their value to scholars. They can contribute to the evolution of a nation’s self-image by informing ongoing debate.

Such considerations apply beyond societal discourse; indeed, our argument elicits resonant echoes within the domain of scholarship. Humanist scholarship is centrally the project of placing ideas into context to foster their fuller understanding.24 Theory defiines the terms of discourse, methods, and vocabulary. When scholarship applies these tools, it is always with context as backdrop, the frame of reference within which all is measured and all meaning construed.

The value of context is well illustrated for the domain of political philosophy by work such as that of Skinner [2002], which approaches textual artifacts as illocutory interventions in a contemporaneous debate or polemic. This approach is hard to apply to Indian texts, however, since societal and individual context are entirely absent from Indian texts [Pollock 2001]. Not only is biographical information uniformly lacking in the original texts, it is missing even from the extensive corpus of commentaries.

23Uninformed contention is rejected in Indian tradition, which used sophisticated systems for logic and debate. See Ganeri [2012] for a discussion. In Europe, thinkers of the 17th century, such as Bacon and Descartes, clarifiied empiricism’s role in scientifiic thought, set modern science apart from traditional philosophy, and led Western ideas away from the Rennaissance’s nostalgia, even reverence, for classical antiquity. In Indian tradition too, high esteem for innovation overrides regard for the ancients. Thus, of the revered munitrayaof grammar—Pāṇini, Kātyāyana, and Patañjali—precedence goes to Patañjali, the most recent, a trend continued with later fiigures such as Bhartr̥hari, down to Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita and Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa of the 17th and 18th centuries. Navya Nyāyatoo bestows greater regard on later in-novators, whose work supercedes that of predecessors. Given Indian thought’s openness to foreign ideas, and its vigour till the 18th century, it is fair to ask if the Indian intellectual tradition too might have led major innovations in thought in recent times, had it not squandered precisely the sort of accumulated intellectual capital Whitehead refers to in footnote 21.

24At least, so it seems to me. I trust this will not be seen as a controversial position.

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Some have therefore suggested a shift of focus to the extraordinary wealth of available textual material, arguing that when authors deliberately omit au-tobiographical, social, and political context to avoid distracting from their intended illocutionary acts, conclusions drawn from these omissions are valid even in Skinnerian terms, and suggest inter-textual analysis as a partial solution to these diffiiculties [Ganeri 2008]. Such alternatives, however, are no substitutes for context derived from primary source material. Others have thus called for more biographies of Indian scholars to be brought to light, perhaps as translations from vernaculars [Minkowski 2014].

The needs of scholars aside, a greater availability of such biographies in languages other than those of the originals would be of value to Indian society, and even to the descendants of these scholars. ṀṢPuṭṭaṇṇa, even in his 1910 biography of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri (see page 163) laments the lack of such biographies, and the consequent inability of Indian society to view itself in the context of its own accomplishments.

I was therefore excited to receive a biography of Sōsale GaraḷapurīŚāstri, a leading 19th-century scholar of literature in the kingdom of Mais ūru, from his great-granddaughter Sarōjā Veṇkaṭarām, who had obtained it through her brother, ṢR̥Śivasvāmi. This work is a detailed narrative of Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s life and contains the family’s own account of its antecedents and history. Its information comes directly from Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s son Ayyā Śāstri, himself a great scholar, and the last family member to have had close associations with Sōsale, home to his ancestors for four generations.

I spent four very fulfiilling days in Mysore (Dec. 24–Dec. 27, 2008), two of them sorting through a disorganized and musty pile of manuscripts and books belonging to Garaḷapurī Śāstri and Ayyā Śāstri, restoring some order to the collection.25 As far as I know, these materials had lain in neglect for around seven or eight decades. Kavitāvilāsa, the house Ayyā Śāstri and his descendants had lived in since 1894, had recently been demolished and replaced with commercial property. Ayyā Śāstri’s books and manuscripts had been put away in a steel closet. Time and neglect had taken their toll, but I was able to locate and identify many manuscripts in Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s 25This was possible due to the help of the late Mr ṢK. Dwarki, whose father Sōsale Kr̥ṣṇa-svāmi Śāstri was the second of Ayyā Śāstri’s sons. See footnote 780.

(a) Mais ūru S ūryanārāyaṇabhaṭṭa Puṭṭaṇṇa. (1854–1930).

(b) Cāmarājanagara Veṇkaṭaramaṇa Śāstri (1888–1945).

Image courtesy Mr C.R̥Venkataramu.

Plate 1: Portraits of ṀṢPuṭṭaṇṇa and Cāmarājanagara Veṇkaṭaramaṇa Śāstri

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meticulous, calligraphic hand. I was unable to complete my task of cataloguing the manuscripts before my departure, but they were stored in plas-tic bags, preliminary to their fuller rehabilitation.

Immediately thereafter, they entered into the possession of Ayyā Śāstri’s great-grandson Mr Sandeep Sastry, whose father Mr ṢK. Dwarki inherited Kavitāvilāsa. Access to these materials has since not been possible.

At the time, Mr Sandeep Sastry indicated his intention to digitize these documents. Hopefully, these efforts will proceed before too many more years, to ensure the preservation and accessibility of these precious documents.

I was also fortunate to have obtained manuscripts of Ayyā Śāstri’s will and a genealogy, both in Ayyā Śāstri’s own hand, from his grandson Mr ṢR̥Śivasvāmi. In his will, Ayyā Śāstri made the care, maintenance, and propagation of the books and manuscripts he left behind in Kavitāvilāsa, and the body of work they represent, a common charge for the family, not designating any one person as their custodian. I see my work as constituting substantial headway in this direction. I have found immense satisfaction in having rendered this small service in fulfiillment of the intentions of a great scholar, a simple act that had sadly been overdue for three generations.

My original purpose had been to undertake a straightforward translation of Garaḷapurī Śāstri’s biography, to make it more widely available as a record of a scholarly life, and provide some insight into the ways of those times, including a glimpse of life at the Mysore Royal Court. I later added the biographies of Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri and Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri, which have served to round out the original biography of Garaḷapurī Śāstri. This tril-ogy covers three of the leading scholarly disciplines of the time, namely, literature, grammar, and logic.

I also included a handful of excerpts from ḌV. Guṇḍappa’s Jñāpaka Citraśāle, a priceless collection of short biographies and reminiscences by an outstanding littérateurwho seemed to know everyone who mattered in the nearly nine decades of his life. These excerpts bring us into the fiirst half of the 20th century, a time when traditional and modern mores coexisted, and highlight some contradictions and challenges traditional scholars confronted in a society looking increasingly to Western education and norms.

The biographies in this volume are also works of literary signifiicance.

ṀṢPuṭṭaṇṇa’s biography of Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri was the fiirst major biographical work in Kannaḍa, and became the model for many later works,

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including the two by Veṇkaṭaramaṇa Śāstri that appear here. These three works have served as primary source material for almost everything that has since been written about their subjects, and about many topics relating to the period. Puṭṭaṇṇa was a major literary fiigure of the time, and the author of numerous literary and historical works. He had excellent facility in Kannaḍa, English, Marāṭhi, Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, and Sanskrit. His deep knowledge of and respect for Indian tradition clearly shows through in his work. Yet, his outlook was thoroughly modern. He held a B.A. in logic and political science earned in 1885, and brought a Western analytical sensibility to his work.26

Veṇkaṭaramaṇa Śāstri’s literary stature may be lower, but his contributions to the cause of Kannaḍa are substantial. Even in the face of crippling adversity, he maintained publication of his Kādambarī Saṇgraha Granthamālāseries, in which appeared many novels, literary works, and biographies, much of which was his own work. He is also known to have often printed material himself, page by grueling page, on a manual press he maintained at home.27 Sadly, the Kādambarī Saṇgrahaseries survives only in fragments. What survives, however, is now invaluable.

My work has gone considerably beyond my original purpose. In its course, I have interpolated many details missing from the source texts, and supplied footnotes to help readers relate to these events of a long time ago.

What was evident to the educated reader a hundred years ago may not be so evident today. Some footnotes provide dates for the events described, as reliable dates are sparse in the original biographies. Other footnotes of 26Puṭṭaṇṇa also had enormous administrative experience, having served as Amaldārin the tāl ūksof Nelamaṇgala, Bāgēpalli, Cāmarājanagara, Muḷabāgilu, and Hosadurga. He was notoriously independent-minded, and insisted that he himself and others around him observe strict norms of propriety and rectitude in all matters, meticulously avoiding even the appearance of wrongdoing. See Sujātā [2001] for a list of episodes illustrating this point. In one case, as Amaldār, he summoned to court and levied a fiine of Re. 1 on his own wife for taking a few curry leaves ( Murraya koenigii) from a tree in an adjacent yard to season her cooking. The neighbouring house had been vacant, but had belonged to the government, so she was technically guilty of misappropriating public property. Since the summons had been urgent, she had arrived with no money on her person. As the administrative offiicer who had levied the fiine, and who was still on duty, he did not give her the money to pay the fiine. She was obliged to borrow money from her household servants, who were later reimbursed by Puṭṭaṇṇa.

27See the reference to “our own” Bhuvanēśvarī Press on page 73. A press by the name of Śrīkaṇṭhēśvara Press still operates out of the home where he lived.

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mine provide cultural, geographic, and historical context, or correct errors in the original, of which there are a few. The footnotes are almost exclusively mine, but I have been careful to distinguish between my footnotes and those appearing in the source texts. I have presumed little cultural or contextual knowledge on the reader’s part, so some annotations may seem superfluous to those who have such knowledge. Placing annotations in end-notes would have maintained the narrative flow of the originals, but would have made the annotations accessible only through a substantial amount of page-turning. Since I do expect these annotations to be frequently used, I have chosen to make them footnotes intead. Whimsically, I note that this approach is not so alien to the Indian tradition. A traditional Indian vyākhyāor gloss also tracks its source page by page, and is presented directly below it, precisely as I have done with my footnotes.

The images appearing in this volume should provide additional context with regard to the individuals and situations described. Of these, only Plates 10 and 34 appear in the originals. Some of the others may have already appeared elsewhere, but it is likely that many appear here for the fiirst time.

I have supplied dates for most of the signifiicant events described in the source texts, placing them within boxes inset next to margins. Some of these dates are derived from the source texts, but most are based on inferences from contextual material I have discovered inside and outside these texts.

The genealogical document by Ayyā Śāstri was of special interest, as it records the memory of the migration of a scholarly family after a watershed event in South Indian history. I have examined this account in some detail, as such migrations are of intrinsic interest to intellectual historians as means and markers for the flow of ideas (see Datta [1989], for example). The stories of many such migrations are preserved in family folklore, but are hard to verify. I have found, not surprisingly, that the context for this family’s move was likely different from that handed down by its oral history.

I have tried to preserve the style, sentence structure, and wherever possible, word meanings of the Kannaḍa sources. Such fiidelity to the original is atypical in translations, but I have chosen to respect the originals as source material. These are almost contemporaneous accounts; Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri’s biography is a fiirst-hand account by the biographer, and in the other cases, the informants had intimate and fiirst-hand knowledge of the subjects of the biographies.

translator’s introduction

xxxi

From a literary standpoint as well, I hope such fiidelity will convey to the modern reader a sense of the sometimes archaic style of the Kannaḍa originals. Puṭṭaṇṇa’s is the easier and more direct style; despite the breadth of his erudition, he valued simplicity. He was also an independent thinker, and among the fiirst Kannaḍa authors to make contemporary issues central to his novels and other works. Veṇkaṭaramaṇa Śāstri’s skills as a writer are evident from his fluent and moving biography of Cāmarājanagara Śrīkaṇṭha Śāstri.

His biography of Garaḷapurī Śāstri, however, is in a less even style, often switching its thematic horses midstream, and mixing short sentences with others running the entire length of a paragraph. These elaborate sentences are strung out across a scaffolding of gerunds, a style that creates a certain sense of flow in the formal, highly inflected and Sanskritized Kannaḍa of the original. In English, sadly, it comes across as stilted and ungainly. My attempts to preserve the textures of the originals have no doubt come at the cost of readability.

Preserving the character of the original has also meant retaining inconsistencies that arise naturally in the source texts, which were composed at various times by various individuals. While consistency is desirable, I have chosen to pay more regard to the voice of the source than to the stylistic sensibilities of the modern reader. Imposing an artifiicial uniformity also risks censoring the source writer’s intent. For instance, one sees “Mais ūru” and

“Mahis ūru” within a single original biography. “Mahis ūru” is correct but more archaic, but the speaker in this case being an older person, this usage may reflect a generational variant that the source was trying to preserve. English sources frequently use anglicized forms (“Bangalore”) that are inconsistent with the forms appearing in Kannaḍa sources (“Beṇgaḷūru”). Dif-ferences between Kannaḍa and Sanskrit phonology (see page xxxiii) also result in variant transliterations for the same word. Thus, we see ēkōand eko, ślōkaand śloka, maṇgaḷaand maṇgala, and so on. Indian proper names may also have context-dependent spellings. The Kannaḍa original, for instance, refers to a DīvānS ūrappa, but a footnote references a street in Bangalore, surely named for this same individual, but spelled “Dewan Surappa Street”, causing an apparent inconsistency. I have preserved the original spellings when quoting sources in footnotes. For example, while I use “Rāv” in both the main text and the footnotes, variants spellings, such as “Rao”, “Rāo”, or “Ráo” may appear within a quote, depending on the source quoted. In

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some cases, imposing uniformity may even risk altering meanings. For instance, variants such as *tāluk, tāluka,*and tāll ūkappear in the source to refer to administrative zones, reflecting local usage. Insisting on uniformity would require me to decree a standard. But what standard? The term had different meanings at different times and places. Substituting some modern equivalent would be as misleading as reverting to the Arabic original *t‘alluqa,*which referred in Mughal times to a certain type of land tenure.

With me rests the blame for any shortcomings in the typesetting of this book and the compilation of the index; both have been the result of my own modest efforts, with the versatile yet inconstant LATEX at my side.28 I have relished the pleasure of its company when it has been compliant, as well as the triumph of bending it to my will when it has chosen intransigence. The index, especially, falls well short of the standards I had hoped to achieve, but I hope readers will at least fiind it serviceable. Building a better index is a task I have chosen to defer to the future.

Finding a humanist font suitable for this work turned out to be harder than I had expected; commercial fonts do not typically support the profu-sion of diacritical signs needed to accommodate the several languages en-contered herein. I fiinally compromised on Georg Duffner’s EB Garamond interpretation of the classic Garamond font. Although this font is still under development, it is based on the Egenolff-Berner typography specimen, and at least to my eye, has succeeded in retaining an old-world feel that suits the archaic feel of the language of the originals.

The effort involved in this work has been rather greater than I had anticipated, and not merely due to my professional responsibilities. I have lacked access to much of the material I have required, whether manuscripts in the family’s possession, government records, authoritative historical sources, or frequently, standard bibliographic material. Such frustrations notwith-standing, I have greatly enjoyed this modest foray into new territory.

Despite all efforts to correct mistakes in this book, many surely remain.

I am responsible for all errors. I would be grateful to all who trouble themselves to bring these errors to my notice.

Irvine, CA, U.ṢA.

July 5, 2018

28Subject, of course, to the publisher’s specifiications and requirements.

transliteration and punctuation conventions

The transliterations in this volume use a variant of IAST, as shown in Plate 2. The language of the source biographies is modern Kannaḍa, whose phonology includes the long vowels ēand ōand the retroflex consonant *l.,*all absent in Saṁskr̥ta. Old Kannaḍa also had two other consonants, shown as ˆrand *z.*in Plate 2, which no longer appear in Kannaḍa speech, but survived in the written language till recently. Words in which they appeared are now written using ror *l. *, and pronounced accordingly.29 The Kannaḍa of these biographies does not use them, but ˆrmakes an appearance on page 365 within a quotation from an archaic source, and *z.*appears in Tamiz. words.30 Both l¸and l˛are Saṁskr̥taborrowings, and appear as diacritics in Devanāgarī and other Indic scripts. They are rare (indeed, even in Saṁskr̥ta), and needed in only a couple of places within this volume.31

Varṇamālācharts such as that shown in Plate 2 customarily omit the prolif-eration of conjunct digraphs and trigraphs commonly seen in Indic scripts.

Saṁskr̥tawords are pronounced, and by convention, written to match Kannaḍa phonology, distinguishing efrom ē, ofrom *ō,*and often changing the alveolar lto the retroflex *l. *(thus, naḷiṉīdaḷa, not naliṉīdala). I have hence tried to stay faithful to the originals in my transliterations.

My use of *c.*in place of cfor the fiirst of the palatal consonants is non-standard, but is motivated by my observation that non-specialists had dif-fiiculty reading ccorrectly, tending from habit to associate it with either the ksound or the ssound. The eye does not read letter by letter, but takes in entire words at a time, particularly in the case of Roman orthography. I was persuaded that cāmarawas rather more likely to evoke photographic associations than cāmara, and caṇḍīmore likely to evoke confectionery than caṇḍī. I will regard this liberty as justifiied if it spares the reader a moment’s perplexity upon reading that Kuṇigala Rāmaśāstri took along on his travels in 1840 a cāmarahe was given by Kr̥ṣṇarāja Voḍeyar III (see page 213).

29The common Kannaḍa words *hēru *(“carry, raise up”) and *hēḷu *(“speak, narrate”), for example, are in fact hēˆruand hēz.u, respectively.

30We will write Tamiz. instead of the more conventional but less accurate Tamil..

31In one case, the Kannaḍa source is content to simply write kluptain place of kl¸pta. I have reverted to the Saṁskr̥taform since the phrase is a defiinition from Navya Nyāya.

xxxiii

Plate 2: Transliteration equivalents in Roman, Indic, and Arabic scripts. The column corresponding to *z.*shows Kannaḍa and Tamiz. equivalents.

transliteration and punctuation conventions

xxxv

I have stayed faithful to the original Kannaḍa in my transliterations, but have made a few concessions to convention, the most conspicuous being my use of “Voḍeyar” instead of the more accurate “Oḍeyaru”.32

In the translated text, I follow the English convention of using initial capitals for proper nouns, regardless of their source language. I do not use capitals in sentences or phrases quoted in the original Sanskrit or vernacular. I italicise Sanskrit and vernacular words and expressions which are not typically used in English, the names of books and other works, as well as formal titles or ranks. I do not italicize Anglicised versions of Indian words, such as “Sanskrit” (but would italicise Saṁskr̥ta), or proper nouns constituted from Sanskrit or vernacular words. Thus, I write “Parakāla Maṭha”, since this is the actual name of the institution, making it identi-fiiable without the constituent words having to be interpreted, but would write “Sōsale maṭha”, since this is a reference to a maṭhaqualifiied by its location in Sōsale. Its actual name, of course, would be written as “Sōsale Vyāsarāya Maṭha”. Apparent anomalies should resolve upon further analysis. The proper name Śrīnivāsācārya, for instance, would appear in Roman with an initial capital, but this individual may also be referenced as ¯

Acārya,

where the fiirst part of the name has been elided. This form would take both italics and an initial capital, since Śrīnivāsācārya is just the compound Śrīnivāsa- Ācārya, which is the semantic equivalent of ĀcāryaŚrīnivāsa, in English. It is now apparent that the word ¯

Acāryais a title or honorifiic.

The following honorifiics commonly used in Karṇāṭaka appear in abbreviated form in the original sources; I have retained their abbreviated forms in the translations: Maabbreviates Mahārājaśrī, Vēabbreviates *Vēdabrahma *(or Vēdam ūrti), Brabbreviates Brahmaśrī, Gauabbreviates Gauravānvita, and Sauabbreviates Saubhāgyavatī.

Punctuation Conventions

Most (but not all) Sanskrit verses in this volume have been punctuated as an aid to the non-expert but interested reader. Sanskrit is traditionally written not as a sequence of words, but as a euphonic cascade of the syllables constituting these words. The language has mandatory saṁyoga, saṁhitā, and 32In Kannaḍa, “Oḍeyaru” is the respectful plural form of “Oḍeya”, which means “lord”

or “master”. The forms “Voḍeyar” and “Oḍeyar” may betray the influence of Tamiz., which would use “Oḍeyar” as the respectful plural of the singular “Oḍeyan”.

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sandhirules of euphony which may conjoin adjacent words and transmute the syllables at their boundaries, making it hard to identify the words.33

A framework of samāsacompounds commonly overlays this substructure, whether in prose or poetry.34 Parsing Sanskrit requires practice and sound knowledge of the language.

Our punctuation conventions are as follows. Interpuncts (centred dots) separate the words within samāsacompounds. An apostrophe appearing in a Sanskrit phrase marks either a sandhithat has caused a phonological transformation of adjacent syllables, or a saṁyogaor saṁhitāthat has merged adjacent words with no concomitant phonological transformation. As an example, what might have conventionally been written as

naliṉīdalagatajalamatitaralaṁ tadvajjīvitamatiśayacapalaṁ would appear with punctuation as

naliṉī·dala·gata·jalam’ati·taralaṁ tadvaj’jīvitam’atiśaya·capalaṁ Here, the words constituting the two *samāsas “naliṉī·dala·gata·jalam”*and

*“ati·taralaṁ”*are separated by interpuncts. The fiirst apostrophe marks a saṁhitābetween these samāsas, and the second marks the sandhibetween

*“tadvat”*and *“jīvitam” *, which has changed the fiinal tof *“tadvat”*to *j. *

An underscore _ marks an avagraha, the euphonic elision of an initial asound. For example, a sandhibetween the words *sah.*and ahamwould change *sah.*to soand elide the initial aof aham, thereby introducing an avagraha, so that this sandhiwould be rendered as so_ham.

33Interestingly, despite the central importance of sandhirules, the Aṣṭādhyāyīdoes not use the term sandhi; it elaborates sandhirules as operational considerations within saṁhitā instances. See Aṣṭādhyāyī1.1.7: *“halo_nantarāḥsaṁyoga” *(adjacent consonants constitute saṁyoga), Aṣṭādhyāyī1.4.109: *“paraḥsannikarṣa saṁhitā” *( saṁhitāis maximal proximity), and sections designated *“saṁhitāyām” *, namely 6.1.72–157, 6.3.114–139, and 8.2.108.

34 Saṁskr̥tapoetry, especially, revels in constructions that permit multiple meanings to be construed by grouping or associating syllabic sequences in different ways. This is not mere gimmickry but subtle art; skilled practitioners use this device in very sophisticated ways to add depth and dimension to their compositions. A number of poetic examples appear following page 55. A rather playful example appears on page 61: *“pramadōrasikaśśētē” *. By sandhirules, this may be parsed either as *“pramadā·urasi kaḥśētē”*or as *“pramadaḥrasikah. *

*śētē” *, to get two meanings, the fiirst of which is a question, and the other its answer.

**śrī