paṇḍits from a piṇḍa-brahmāṇḍa POV

The paṇḍits from a piṇḍa-brahmāṇḍa Point of View

“It is sad to see the number of great sastrīs, distinguished no less for their humility and modesty than for their learning and intelligence, diminish year after year, and to feel that with them there is dying away more and more of that traditional learning which we can so ill dispense with in the interpretation of the enigmatic works of Hindu antiquity, but it appears to me all the more to be the duty of both Native and European Sanskrit scholars to save as much as can still be saved, and to fix in writing what in less than half a century will otherwise be irreparably lost.”

Franz Kielhorn 1874:XXIV-XXV

Introduction

In Sanskrit poetry, when a poet wishes to convey a scene of battle, commotion, density etc., he frequently uses highly compounded language abounding in the repetition of certain sounds considered to be relatively harsh. The consonants n and d commonly find his favour in such contexts. Paņditarāja Jagannātha, for example, writes thus in praise of a hero who finds himself in the thick of a battle:

dor-danda-dvaya-kundalī-kr̥ta-lasat-kodaṇḍa-caṇḍa-dhvani dhvastoddaṇḍa-vipakṣa-maṇḍalam atha tväm vīksya madhye-raṇam/ valgad-gāṇḍīva-mukta-kāṇḍa-valaya-jvālāvali-taṇḍava bhraśyat-khāṇḍava-ruṣṭa-pāndavam aho ko naḥ kṣitāśaḥ smaret 11.!

“Two clublike arms, A big shining bow bent to a circle’s shape. A piercing pervading sound. A host of weapon-brandishing enemies devastated. Seeing you thus in the middle of the battle, which king will not think of the wrathful Arjuna: His swift Gāndiva bow, shooting forth a torrent of arrows.
Rings of flames dancing Siva’s dance of destruction.
The Khāṇḍava forest crumbling to the ground.”"

1 Rasagangādhara, anana 2, example of the figure of speech smarana. In Jagannātha’s Präņābharaṇa (also known as Jagadābharaṇa), the first quarter of the verse ends with caṇḍāśuga “terrifying arrows”; cf. paṇḍitarājakāvyasaṁgraha p. 114. 2 (a) Some commentators of the Rasagangadhara (Nāgesa p. 286, Kedāranātha Ojhā p.153) take valgat in the sense manohara “attractive” or sundara “beautiful”. Madanamohana Jhā takes it as meaning vācāla “making much sound, resounding”. The latter is appropriate to the context and can be supported by usage to some extent (cf. Monier Williams under valg). The other possibility which I have adopted in my translation above is based on the fact that the dictionaries associate valg more commonly with the sense “jump, spring, flutter”. This specification of meaning on their part agrees with the meaning gati"movernent" recorded for valg in the Cāndra Dhātupātha (the Pāniniya Dhātupātha lists valg without meaning), (b) In a verse like the following valg could mean either “sound” or “move”: kesämcid vāci šukavat, paresām hr̥di mükavat / kasyāpy ā hr̥dayād vaktre valgu valganti şüktayah // *They exist in speech, as of a parrot, in the case of some. They exist in the heart, as of a person who cannot speak, in the case of some others. Only in the case of a (rare) person here or there, do good sayings move (or resound) charmingly from the heart to speech." (Vallabhadeva, Şubhāsitāvali 143).

Although there is an alliteration of n and d in the title of this paper, my intention is not to present a battle. It recognizes that a crisis of survival of the paṇḍits, about which most of the world unfortunately does not seem to care, exists, but it does not go into a delineation of the crisis. Instead, it tries to address the underpinnings, mostly sociological and philosophical, of the paṇḍit phenomenon and to explain why they may resurface, although the possibility of their resurfacing appears remote at this stage.

The second clarification I should provide is about the expression piṇḍa brahmāṇḍa in the title; piṇḍa means “body”, and brahmāṇḍa stands for “all creation”. In Sanskrit religio-philosophical literature, piṇḍa and brahmāṇḍa are used as a pair to speak of everything from an individual to all the creation around him.4 Frequently, the thesis of the contexts in which the words are used is yat pinde tad brahmāṇḍe “what exists in the individual body (piṇḍa) exists also in cosmos (brahmāṇḍa)”, I am, however, using the expression only to suggest that my thoughts in the present essay will range from the paṇḍit’s body to what is viewed, at least by some thinkers, as fundamental to all creation. In other words, the intention behind using the phrase piṇḍa brahmāṇḍa is to suggest that I am going to be daring (or foolish) and to take a holistic (or sweeping) approach and consider the paṇḍit as an individual linked to the whole samsāra.

3 Jagannātha has been treated by some historians of Sanskrit literature as the last great or real representative of the classical period. It is true that the classical ideal of combining sharp śāstra scholarship with high poetic talent in oneself (kavyesu komala-dhiyo vayam eva nānye, tarkeṣu karkaśa-dhiyo vayam eva nānye “A delicate mind for poctic compositions, that’s me, no one else. An adamantine mind for logical compositions that’s me, no one else.”) is realised in Jagannātha in an impressive way. Although there have been others who have been called paṇḍitarāja “King of paṇḍits" or “Lord of scholars”, subsequent to him, no one has acquired the pan-Indian fame he has. Appropriate to the present context, one can also view him as the prime example of the predicaments the paṇḍits have faced and the weaknesses they have displayed when culturally alien rulers came to dominate significantly large parts of India.
4 However, piṇḍa and brahmäṇḍa do not seem to occur commonly as members of a dvandva or copulative compound as in my title.

Finally, three minor clarifications:

(a) To the extent the thoughts to be expressed in the essay will require, I will refer to the names of some paṇḍits and will also narrate briefly a few stories revealing how we think of the paṇḍits. These stories are intended mainly as illustrative of my observations and as suggesting that a particular line of thinking cannot entirely be wrong. I do not view them as substitutes for a comprehensive collection of evidence.
(b) The close and long-standing relation between the Brahmin and the paṇḍit makes it inevitable that many of my thoughts on the paṇḍit will be applicable to the Brahmin too. I will not, however, always mention the parallels explicitly. Also, several of the strengths the paṇḍits have and several of the problems they face are of a piece with those of Hinduism. I will leave this connection too to the imagination of the reader.
(c) The ground for my piṇḍa-brahmāṇḍa approach will be provided by three of our current dominant associations with the notion “paṇḍit”. As the other essay of mine in this volume will indicate, these associations have not always been there—at least not in exactly the same form, but they are fairly cominon in our times albeit not always explicitly stated. Their statements will be followed by discussions on the type of philosophy of individual life and the world which lies behind them, which made the paṇḍit phenomenon possible and which can be consigned to the junkyard of ideas only if we choose to think superficially.

Associations with “paṇḍit”

About the middle of the 1980’s, Professor Michael Hahn visited the University of British Columbia to deliver a lecture. During an informal exchange of thoughts over tea and coffee following the lecture, Professor Hahn presented before me and a few other colleagues his vision of what computers would do for Indology. Indologists had then just begun to evince sustained professional interest in computers. After describing how computers could be used to store several texts and retrieve information from them swiftly, Professor Hahn quipped “We will not need the paṇḍits’ help then!” A question popped out of my mouth even before I realised that I had opened it: “Will there be any paṇḍits left to help?”

In 1992, Professor Robert P. Goldman came to India with a video camera with the intention of filming the paṇḍits in action. When he asked me if I could suggest the names of some truly impressive paṇḍits whom he could interview and capture on the film, I could not come up with more than two or three names, all of them belonging to paṇḍits close to or beyond their seventies! This may be due to my limited knowledge of traditional scholarship in India.

5 In his e-mail of 9 July 1999, Professor Goldman kindly supplied the following information to me, which I reproduce with some abridgement: “The videorecording of paṇḍits that I did was done in various parts of India (Pune, Varanasi, Karnataka, and Calcutta) in 1992. I interviewed and recorded a variety of scholars in various disciplines and of various degrees of learning etc., asking them to speak (in Sanskrit) mostly about their own lives and the conditions under which they had entered the world of Sanskrit scholarship in their youth. These men, often quite elderly, included the late Pattabhirama Shastri, Baladeva Upadhyaya, Shivaji Upadhyaya, Herambanath Shastri, Pandharinath Galagali Shastri, the late Shrinivas Shastri and a number of others.”

After all, I have now spent most of my life outside India, visiting only a few small parts of it whenever I had the opportunity. It is also possible that the standard I was implicitly applying was too high, set by whatever little I was fortunate to observe of Pt. Rajeshwar Shastri Dravid (Varanasi/Kashi), Pt. Shivaramakrishna Shastri (Deccan College, Pune), and Pt. Shriniwasa Shastri (Deccan College, Pune), not to mention the paṇḍit teachers with whom I was fortunate enough to study a few basic texts. 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 paṇḍit is now an extremely endangered species.

In the account of my exchange with Hahn, in several floating stories and in the statements Indologists make about the paṇḍits, it is assumed that a paṇḍit is characterized by memorization or near-memorization of a num ber of traditionally valued texts, either of a particular branch or of several branches. If the latter is the case, a paṇḍit becomes more respectable as, for example, Raghunath Sharma of Varanasi, in recent memory was. We also expect a paṇḍit to be capable of teaching advanced students. If a paṇḍit further displays the capability to solve the problems of interpreting texts previously unsolved by specialists, to integrate the thoughts expressed in various texts, or to advance a received line of thought, he, understandably, becomes an especially respected member of his class.

6 My teacher Mr. N.N. Bhide was fond of telling the story of Bhaṭṭajī-sastrī Ghāṭe (also spelled “Bhatji Shastri Ghate”), a paṇḍit in Nagpur (who, I guess, lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Ghāṭe’s area of expertise was Papinian grammar. If someone asked him a question relating to grammar, Ghāṭe would almost always simply point to the books and handwritten copies stacked on wooden planks fixed to the walls of his agnihotra area and advise the inquirer to take down a particular volume and look up a particular part or page for the answer he (the inquirer) was sceking. He would not feel the need to consult the volumes before formulating his answer. If questions pertaining to śāstras other than grammar were put to him, Ghāṭe would most of the time modestly say, “I know only grammar.” Yet, when he was cajoled into writing a commentary on Bhavabhūti’s Uttararāmacarita, he wrote it without opening any book and by citing several authorities outside the grammatical literature. Ghāṭe’s commentary Bhāvabhūtārtha-bodhikā has been published as a commentary by Jayakr̥ṣṇa (probably Ghāṭe’s personal name), together with an English translation of the Uttararămacarita, notes and introduction by Vinayak Sadashiv Patvardhan. The Catalogue of the India Office Library, vol. II, part I (revised edition, 1957), p. 2831, lists the second edition under the call number 21.D.19 as published by the Induprakāśa Press of Bombay in 1909. I have so far not been able to consult the work for confirmation of any of the aspects of the story given above.
7 The more impressive among such paṇḍits may receive designations such as Mahāmahopadhyāya, sarvatantrasvatantra and paṇḍitarāja. They may also be ap pointed as āsthānavidvas “court paṇḍit”, sandhivigrahika “minister for peace and confict, minister for external relations” etc.

Rajeshwar Shastri Dravid and Badrinath Shukla can be cited as recent examples. However, it can be seen that in all such gradations the ability to command the contents of texts without being required to consult the texts’ written or printed forms to any significant extent remains an irremovable part of our understanding of the paṇḍit.

A common misconception entertained even by some educationists who devise the teaching policies for our primary schools and highschools is that memorization is an impediment to creative thought. We occasionally also hear the talk of not burdening the students’ minds with the information they could easily get from printed and electronic sources when the need arises. It is presumed, without any real evidence as far as I know, that retention and creation of thought are causally unrelated activities. Besides the practical convenience of not having to consult the sources of one’s knowledge again and again, no significant benefit is usually attached to memorization. It is not clear to me why the possibility that the capabilities of the brain it self, particularly the grasping capabilities, may change through extensive memorization over a long period is discounted. Individuals who learn several languages frequently report that they found each succeeding language easier to learn. If this could scientifically be proved, it behooves us all the more that we take a kinder view of memorization.

8 In other words, an intimate and wide connection with the older Indian way of preserving knowledge, coupled with an ability to impart that knowledge, is at the core of what paṇḍita means to us. The use of the term in performing arts also points in the same direction. It is based on the elements (a) of study in the presence of a teacher outside the Western-style academic institutions that have become common in South Asia and (b) of oral retention. The above observation, however, does not imply that paṇḍits do not build personal libraries, do not prepare manuscripts and editions, or do not make a significant contribution to the preservation and deciphering of manuscripts. Their association with reading, writing and printing is also close. Their distinction from “Western” and “westernized” scholars consists in the manner in which they retate to these latter activities.
9 (a) Perhaps in the case of learning a language such a presumption is not made. In that context, specialists in language learning may have accepted that retention of vocabulary etc. is instrumental in the generation of thought. (b) Professor Wezler has kindly drawn my attention to Assmann 1999:11-13, in which a broad overview of Western attitudes to memory as an art or skill is found. He has also rightly emphasized in our discussions that the Western educational tradition has in the past shown awareness of the importance of memorization.
10 The Indian tradition was widely aware of the convenience in containing the information in mind and thus controlling it. One of the commonly repeated sayings is: pustakasthā tu ya vidyā para-hasta-gatam dhanam / karya-käle samutpanne, na să vidyā, na tad dhanam // “Knowledge existing in books and (one’s own) wealth in the hands of some one else—when the need arises, it is not knowledge, it is not wealth.”

Furthermore, as we do not find the phenomenon of biological inheritance the child acquiring certain instincts and capabilities from the parents-problematic, we should not discount “off-the-cuff” the possibility that a tradition of memorization maintained in a family over several generations may eventually lead to children with superior intellectual equipment. Also, if intelligence is primarily the ability to detect swiftly the structures present in a situation—to find the organizing principle, to see order in chaos, to make sense of something that was not presented to the senses with instructions for interpretation–does it not seem plausible that memorization, which forces one to concentrate on structures, will habituate a person to search for structures and gradually increase his ability to identify them? In our contemporary science and medical treatments etc., we try to find as many causes in matter—to ground our explanations in the material world–as we can, keeping the intractable and intangible “mental” out, but we do not seriously pay attention to the possibility that the mental may be changing the matter and that how the mental or brain of the present is developed may hold implications for the brain matter of the future. As Michele Demarais has kindly informed me, some Western scientists and philosophers (e.g. Patricia and Paul Churchland, Antonio Damasio, Paul Martin, Joseph LeDoux) have begun to probe the “mental vs. physical” distinction as a primary problem. However, the dominant tendency is still to confer upon the separation of mind and body, made for the sake of convenience in analysis and description, the status of an unchanging and unchangeable physical fact. The philosophy that gave rise to the paṇḍit does not seem to do so.12

11 Many instances of extraordinary scholarship continuing in the family line are recorded in accounts such as those in Upādhyāya 1983. The only account known to me in which the concepts “paṇḍit” and “genetic history” come together is Kalla 1985. However, in it, the term paṇḍit stands for Kashmiri Hindus. Because of this wider and exceptional meaning (see p. 26 of my other essay in the present volume), it does not deal with as controlled a sample as the testing of the possibility suggested here would require. Whether it is a valid study and can still be used to draw indirectly relevant conclusions is something I cannot decide, for I have no competence in the areas concerned.
12 The recommendation of memorization implicit in the preceding lines should not be construed as a recommendation of indiscriminate memorization. Services of the knowledgeable members of society should indeed be used to decide what the younger generations should memorize. The society also needs to develop the appropriate genres of literature. The Indian tradition developed them, especially in the form of the sūtra and kārika literature.
13 This broad sense of “Hindu” includes all religions of Indian origin. (Although it can be and has been used for unpleasant purposes, one cannot deny that it exists in historical records and has also served positive purposes.) In the present context, “Hindu" serves mainly to distinguish the paṇḍit from a Muslim learned man. Not all experts who have remained largely impervious to the influence of Western (particularly British and more recently American) education and who are engaged in the preservation and cultivation of traditional branches of learning are paṇḍits. Non-association with the Arabic-Persian heritage and association with the Sanskrit-Prakrit heritage constitute a widely recognized element in the notion of a paṇḍit.

In addition to memorization, a strong association with the “paṇḍit” concept is that a paṇḍit is a Hindu (in a broad sense of the term)13 scholar or expert who is primarily educated in non-Western or non-Western-style insti tutions of higher learning.14 A deeper layer in this parisamkhyā (“through exclusion”) understanding of the paṇḍit consists of a judgment regarding the presence of sense of history. It is frequently assumed that paṇḍits are not engaged in historical research as their Sanskritist-Prakritist counterparts in the Western and Western-style institutions are. In fact, one gets the impres sion that, according to some, the paṇḍits are incapable of carrying out true historical research. They are generally not expected to engage in the kind of teaching and research that professors of Sanskrit and other Indological subjects do - to account for things historically or to express themselves in a language other than Sanskrit. Something in their education is seen as preventing them from studying things diachronically or with a detachment expected of a historian. They are, at least implicitly, thought of as prone to cultivating knowledge with faith or in an eternalistic mode, 16.

14 (a) This element in our understanding obviously holds good only for the last 250 years or so, but primarily for the last 150 years—roughly from the time of the founding of the University of Calcutta in 1858 when Western-style education began to be directly available to Indians.
- (b) Out of practical necessity, the element identified here rests on not attaching much value to indirect and non-formal exposure to Western education–on not taking seriously the possibility that the traditional scholars who came into contact with the early Europeans beginning with the seventeenth century AD, learned some new ways of handling knowledge. Is it not likely, for example, that Kavindrācārya Sarasvati’s pānditya was affected, however minutely, by his meetings with Burnier (Gode 1945, 1954; Upādhyāya 1983:75-76)? Of course, it is. But we generally play down the inroads the exposure to the West has been making in the paṇḍit territory and pretend as if there is no gradation in the change the paṇḍit has undergone over the centuries. For the sake of simplicity, we posit the paṇḍit as an un-Western scholar occupied with the business of handed-down knowledge in India.
- (c) A similar consideration should be extended to paṇḍits in the pre-Western days of Indian history. They too must have changed over the course of time and geography,
15 (a) Creativity or originality, if expected of a paṇḍit, is primarily expected in terms of exposition, unearthing of information, and piecing together of related statements and indications in various texts (including the kośas). In exposition, the novelty is not expected to arise out of a text-critical activity based on manuscript research or out of a delineation of historical change, although it may occasionally so arise. The implicit assumption is that novelty will come about synchronically and without a change in the text which receives the explanation.
- (b) In addition to absence of training in the method of historical research, it is possible that the rendering of the term “research paper” with śodha-nibandha, samsodhana nibandha etc. in Sanskrit and other Indian languages had a delimiting effect on the kind of papers paṇḍits read in Indological conferences or contribute to volumes of Indological research. Since the primary association of sodha is with “cleaning, purification”, the paṇḍit participants might have thought that restating the thought of ancient texts in a clear or defensible manner constitutes research and thus the historical dimension of the Indological enterprise might have eluded them.
16 (a) The phenomenon is related to colonialistic assumptions, to the creation of tagged “paṇḍit” positions in Indian colleges and universities and to the holding of separate paṇḍita-parisads in the sessions of the All-India Oriental Conference, World Sanskrit Conference ctc., but it is probably not fully explained by all these things taken together.
- (b) I should not be understood as holding that Western scholars, as a rule or almost always, handle the historical method well. Some of the objections to their way of re constructing history expressed or indicated in Bhashyāchārya (1905:25-29) still remain valid (although, ironically, the same publication is also a clear instance of a paṇḍit’s very imperfect grasp of the complexities of carrying out historical research and of his proclivity to faith).

It is not that exceptions to this general understanding are not admitted, but it is also ac curate to say that the general understanding just stated very much prevails.

17 (a) There is unlikely to be any disagreement that the following scholars, for example, first trained in the paṇḍitic tradition, have given evidence of being able to handle the historical method: S. Kuppuswami Sastri, S.D. Joshi, K.S. Arjunwadkar, Parameswara Aithal, and Rewa Prasad Dviwedi. Their research does go beyond sodha or pariskära of what is stated in the sāstras etc. Particularly impressive is the case of Kuppuswami Sastri. He provided instruction in historical linguistics and ultimately became such a prominent figure in reconstructing the histories of Kāvya-śāsıra, Vedānta etc. that an institute dedicated primarily to historical research was justifiably given his name.
- (b) One can easily detect various degrees of success in historical research in the scores of introductions contributed by paṇḍits to the editions of Sanskrit and Prakrit texts and in the papers in Sanskrit written by paṇḍits in journals, conference proceedings etc.
18 Notable exceptions exist. Recently, acknowledgements have become more common, although one cannot be certain that all the help received from the paṇḍits is unreservedly acknowledged
19 Occasionally, paṇḍits have responded to the devaluation of their learning by pointing out the lack of “real” learning in modern university-fostered scholarly publications, The modern poet Rudradeva Tripathi, for example, is said to have written; bhumikā pandītāḥ kecit kecit phuṭ-nota-paṇḍitah / repharans-pandītāḥ kecid bhavanty evam tu daktarah // “Some are introduction-scholars (they simply write introductions to vol umes consisting of research papers written by other scholars). Some are footnote scholars (they create an aura of scholarship by giving one footnote after another). Some are reference-scholars (they attach a long list of titles of books). Thus, they become doctors (Ph.Ds and D.Litts).”

In our academic world and cultural life obsessed with history, the association just outlined leads to a devaluation of the paṇḍit’s scholarship, consciously or unconsciously, just as some other things associated with traditional India are devalued. It cannot be a coincidence or merely a sign of the low economic status of the paṇḍits that when non-Indian scholars or Indian scholars producing Indological works in the non-paṇḍitic, Western mode acknowledged the help they received in the completion of their research projects or books, the paṇḍit was overlooked or got a short shrift, especially in the early days of Indology. At the hands of a Whitney, he would also become an object of criticism if he happened to have written a commentary giving a non historical explanation of something for which a historical explanation was possible. He was thought to be good only as an informant or as an exponent of the traditionally received explanation. A greater affinity was felt with someone who could operate on the historical plane or wave-length. The contribution a scholar with a historical bent of mind made to a scholarly undertaking was more readily appreciated.

Franz Kielhorn was one of the early European scholars who had an extensive contact (1866-1881) with the paṇḍits at a young age and in an area (Pune-Mumbai) which had many excellent paṇḍits specializing in a śāstra of which very few Europeans had any command at that time. He wrote the memorable remarks quoted at the beginning of this essay. One cannot see any exploitative colonialist attitude in them or fault them for lacking feeling. Just before making them, Kielhorn also wrote the following:

“But with all the valuable help afforded by these works [= the commentaries of the Paribhāṣendu-sekhara], I should hardly have been able to accomplish my task, had I not been assisted in it by my learned friends and colleagues, Cintamani Šāstrī Thatte, Ananta Sastrī Pendharkar and the late Vitthala Răva Ganesa Patavardhana. There is not a page, I might almost say, not a line in my whole translation the contents of which have not been submitted again and again to their criticism, and though I have honestly tried to form my own opinion and to judge independently in every difficulty, though I am ready to bear the blame for any errors and inaccuracies which I cannot hope to have escaped altogether, yet it would be wrong not to acknowledge here the great and invaluable benefit which I have derived from the learning and intelligent discussion of my fellow-teachers.”

But even with the collegial attitude, great regard, sympathy and historical imagination he had in the case of the paṇḍits, individually the paṇḍits were not at as high a position in Kielhorn’s eyes as someone who was more proficient in the historical approach than in śāstraic learning. As we have seen, he does mention by name the traditional scholars who were well-established in the public eye as his teachers, but he does not feel the need to mention individually his assistants in the demanding project of editing Patañjali’s Vyākaraṇamahābhāsya. Because he returned to Germany in 1881 before the second and third volumes of his Mahābhāşya edition were published (re spectively in 1883 and 1885), the paṇḍits might not have helped him all the way, but it is hardly likely that at least the first drafts of these volumes were not ready when Kielhorn left India.20 His work could scarcely have been possible without their initial assistance and explanations. Furthermore, they had to be learned at least to the extent of being able to understand the advanced texts of the intricate Paninian grammatical tradition. Yet in the prefaces of the first two volumes of Kielhorn’s edition, there is no mention of any assistants. The first is dedicated to Albrecht Weber and the second to the principal and professors of Deccan College.

20 The Preface to the first volume of the first edition leads one to conclude that most of the text to be printed was ready with Kielhorn in some form and he was waiting mainly for it to be published. The second edition of 1892 contains no change in the Preface.

Toward the end of the preface to the third volume, we find the following statement:

“The Mahābhāsya may be said to be composed in the form of a series of dialogues, and there can be no doubt that its meaning is best brought out by oral discussion among scholars versed in the science of grammar. For this reason I have often regretted that I was obliged to prepare the greater portion of the text of this edition far away from those friendly paṇḍits, to whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude for all they have taught me; but most of all do I regret that I have not been able to discuss my difficulties with that Indian scholar who has contributed more than any other towards a right understanding of the Mahābhāşya, and to whom I dedicate this volume as a small token of my sincere admiration and friendly regard.”

Kielhorn’s that Indian scholar’ was Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar. One can doubt Bhandarkar’s greatness as a scholar only at the risk of being ridiculed. However, his published contribution toward understanding the Mahābhāsya itself is relatively small- considerably smaller than his contributions to other areas of Indology.21 It helps us in determining the historical context of the Mahābhāsya (specifically the author’s date, place). It is important for this reason and as evidence of Bhandarkar’s keen eye and good judgment. But it can hardly equal what Ananta-shastri Pendharkar and others must have contributed by explicating the text of the Mahābhāsya (Bhandarkar too had learned grammar from Pendharkar). Yet, Kielhorn was clearly more impressed by Bhandarkar, who approached Sanskritic studies with a historical bent of mind, than by any of his śāstrīs. He dedicated the third volume to Bhandarkar and suggested that the way Bhandarkar explored the Mabhābhāsya was the right way. He did not feel the need to state specifically that there were others who helped him in the Mahābhāşya project or to name them individually.

Also revealing is the phenomenon that once a paṇḍit becomes reasonably known as a researcher writing in a language other than Sanskrit and on historical themes, the honorific “paṇḍit" preceding his name generally falls off and is replaced by “Doctor”, “Professor” etc, as may be possible.22

21 Kielhorn’s wording “who has contributed more than any other towards a right understanding of the Mahābhāsya” rules out the possibility that he intended to refer to the help he privately got from Bhandarkar in understanding the Mahābhāsya. The wording presupposes that Bhandarkar’s contribution is public knowledge.
22 In the recent past, it has become common for paṇḍits appointed in Indian institutions of higher learning to teach, almost exclusively, in the language of their region. More and more paṇḍits in north India are doing their writing in Hindi, albeit of a highly Şanskritic kind: In the latter respect, the gap between paṇḍits and professors is smaller in northern India than in some other parts of India.

Our reaction

Now, what should be our reaction to this situation? Just as it would be better if more and more paṇḍits acquired the capability to write as histori ans (without losing their existing strengths), we need to rethink–we need to adjust our glasses with respect to—the importance we attach to history. Historical truth needs to be brought down by a few notches in our scheme of values.+++(4)+++ The high status we have accorded it, as if it were the same as scientific or philosophical truth, is contributing to creation of much misery in the world. Ancient Indians may not have had a word for “history” in our sense of the term, but they were obviously wise when they created a trend that played down past factual differences. Without a devaluation of historical knowledge as a norm for conducting the affairs of society, there would not have emerged in India a transcendence of names of individual gods, religious practices etc., and a generally tolerant composite culture would not have come into existence at an early date. Social harmony seems to have carried greater weight for the thinkers of ancient India. +++(5)+++ They seem to suggest, pursuit of happiness as a more important value than pursuit of historical truth.

This does make the work of persons like us difficult and inconvenient, for, one way or the other, we, as Indologists, are reconstructing history or contributing to its reconstruction. However, our selfish professional considerations should not be allowed to get the better of our sense of social responsibility and our awareness of the historian’s limitations. We should see that while we may not imitate the paṇḍit’s disinterest in history (which, incidentally, is not total or unqualified), we can at least meet him half-way by distancing ourselves from the persons who read more than justified certainty in our reconstructions and make history the overriding consideration in dealing with social divisions and areas of tension.

We should also acknowledge that devaluation of history as a factor in our life is conducive to assigning a more important role to myths, which add colour to literature, ritual etc. and which, if properly used, can be very helpful in maintaining good social institutions.+++(5)+++ Rationality and attachment to facts is not meant for and cannot indeed be maintained for all aspects of life.23

Restrained, self-sacrificing behaviour is the third element we commonly associate with the kind of paṇḍit I have in mind here. Restraint in food (what, when and how he eats it) and restraint in sexual relations are pre scribed for and are usually practised by the traditional scholar of Sanskrit, Prakrit etc.

23 This, however, necessitates, that those charged with the responsibility of conveying truth must not feel tempted to take liberties with it for the sake of personal gain. (The constant exhortations to the Brahmins to free themselves from considerations of personal gain may, among other things, be due to this factor in the intellectual atmosphere of ancient India.) Secondly, the devaluation of historical truth should not be understood as absence of a sense of history. Although little historical information has been preserved in India in some respects, I am not convinced that there were no attempts in early India to preserve what we would call historical information. Absence of historical awareness in the sense of denying what actually happened is also not a part of my suggestion that history not be assigned the importance that is assigned to it at present in many societies of the world.

The general reaction of a modern Western or Westernized individual to this kind of behaviour-if at all he thinks about it-is to treat it as a kind of quaint relic left over from a superstitious period of human history. “One of these days these men will progress from religion to true scientific, rational thinking, just as they progressed from nature worship to religion” is the hope his anthropology inspires in him in his moments of intellectual generosity. Here too, he does not realise the irony that, while he has been trying to locate the bases for behaviour in something that can be handled impersonally-in matter or material objects, the paṇḍits’ behaviour is sending a signal of close relation between matter and mind and between matter and society and that this signal could be good for human beings, possibly all creatures.

In the modern “scientific” man’s compartmentalization of life and insist ence that a specific correlation be proved between factor f1 and its conse quence c1 in such a manner that everybody could verify the correlation if he or she wished to, a large chunk of human behaviour is either left out of investigation or consigned to the realms of religion, sociology, history etc. in such a way as to obscure its probable relevance for life here and now. The “scientific” man may admit that a paṇḍit provides a good model for society, just the way a minister or priest provides in many religions, when he does not behave as he wishes or demonstrates the benefits of reducing consumption. Many medical practitioners and psychologists nowadays even translate specific self-imposed behaviours of religious or spiritual practitioners in general secular terms and recommend their acceptance, if not fully in a qualified way or in certain situations. Yet our scientific community has not, as yet, displayed, at least on a large scale, the open-mindedness of investigating specifically the elements in the restrained behaviour of a paṇḍit or Brahmin. The benefits that may accrue from determining, even in probabilistic terms, the relationship between this behaviour and its effects are thus lost. That a sportsman or boxer is advised to refrain from sexual contact in the days preceding his day of performance is reported as lore from the field of sports, but because we may not be able to establish a relation between retention of semen and superior performance in the arena in such a manner that some other “objective” person may be able to verify it because we have become reluctant to run the business of society on the basis of probability (see pp. 54 below)—we do not allow this lore and the thinking that may be behind it to become a basis of our social policy. 24

24 With this may be contrasted the following observation about pre-modern India made by Gopinath Kaviraj (1987:67-68): “It is an article of universal acceptance in this country that Bindu (essence of the physical body in the form of Virya, Sukra, or seminal fluid), Vāyu (the intra-organic vital currents) and Manas (mind or the principle of thinking) are closely related to one another, so that by restraining any one of them the remaining two may be easily held in check.”

If we do not ridicule it, we are content to leave it as a matter of individual preference or interesting ethnological curiosity. Again, we do not realise the irony that, on the one hand, we try to provide more and more material basis for things of the mind, but, on the other hand, prevent a probable material basis from being linked with a thing of the mind.25

Reading through the lives of Jain monks of recent times, I have been struck by the intellectual achievements many of them registered subsequent to their initiation and after long periods of restrained behaviour, even though they did not come from a highly educated family, did not belong to the Brāhmana varṇa or evince a particular attachment to pursuit of knowledge in pre-initiation days. I admit I cannot prove it to everyone’s satisfaction, but I do suspect a correlation between their paṇḍitic perforinance and their acceptance of a mode of living that at least partially resembles the one recommended for a Brahmin paṇḍit.

Consider also the practical advantages to society, other than the ones coming through growth of knowledge, of the restrictions enjoined upon the paṇḍit. The restrictions bring the paṇḍit close to a yogin or a religious figure.26 He is seen by the society as making a sacrifice of the comforts and pleasures that commonly attract men. The society, in turn, becomes more inclined to sacrifice some of its resources for him.+++(5)+++ The burden on the government treasury is reduced. Pursuit of knowledge does not depend entirely on the personal preferences of some administrator or minister. Objectives that seem to have little or no practical or immediate benefit to society can be pursued. Search for academic knowledge and search for spiritual knowledge are not artificially kept apart.27 A scholar need not contend with a “publish or perish” mentality or feel inhibited by department labels and walls.+++(5)+++ He can carry out his inquiry as far as his capabilities and resources allow him, without feeling overly constrained by compartmentalization of knowledge.

25 The discussion of extraordinary capabilities of cognition mentioned in Yoga frequently takes place on the assumption that such capabilities are a matter of faith (instances of God’s or guru’s grace) or are mysterious (inexplicable) psychic phenomena. Such discussion rightly leads to rejection of the very notion of extraordinary capabilities or to strong scepticism regarding them on the part of “rational” or “scientifie” thinkers. But it should be noted that the explanation for such capabilities given in the theoretical works of yoga is, to a considerable extent, quite down-to-carth and basically materialistic: (a) Repeated effort enables an aspirant to perceive what he could not perceive before, just as a person aspiring to be a jeweller learns to see, through apprenticeship, the positive and negative features of jewels which he could not see before. (b) A particular mode of living, including yama-niyama-āsana-prānāyāma etc, and dominated by samyama “restraint” heightens the abilities of the senses.
26 There seems to have prevailed in India a world view according to which any activity that involved restraint of the senses was seen as enhancing the spiritual stature of a person. The Bhagavadgita (4:28) lines dravya-yajñās tapo-yajñā yoga-yajñās fathapare/ svādhyāya-jñāna-yajñaś ca yatayah samsita-vratā// (“Some sacrifice with substances, some with abandonment of comforts, some with discipline (of body and mind), some with study of the scriptures and some with knowledge. Men practising restraint have strict vows.”) have helped in creating such an ethos in India, particularly among the Brahmins, for centuries. The widened notion of sacrifice, therefore, prob ably played a significant role in running the business of society. The Bhagavadgītā praise of jñāna-yajña has been understood as a praise of dispassion ate pursuit of worldly knowledge as it has been understood as a praise of spiritual, liberating, knowledge. Teachings like brāhmanena niskāranam sadango vedo ‘dhyeyo jñeyas ca (“A Brahmin should study and come to know the Veda with its six ancillaries with no (worldly) motive in mind”) are naturally seen as conforming to the Gītā pre scription of karmayoga and hence as leading to spiritual enhancement. Upādhyāya (1983:26-27, 68, 70-716 etc.) gives several examples of paṇḍits who were thought of as special persons in spiritual terms and who, in turn, tried to live up to such reputations.

A subpoint in what I have observed above regarding the restrained, self sacrificing behaviour of paṇḍits should be explored further, for it leads us, I believe, to a deeper understanding of what made the paṇḍit phenomenon possible. In speaking of reluctance to run the business of society on the basis of probability, I was obviously not asserting that we do not at all run the business of society on the basis of probability. Much of our management of social issues and processes is, in fact, determined by considerations of probability: we set up a curriculum because we think it will probably be useful to most students, we do not allow certain offenders to come out of jails because we think they will probably repeat the offences, and so on. My point rather is that the area between what is amenable to laboratory testing and that which, because of its very nature, cannot be tested in a laboratory or can be tested only to a limited extent, remains an unutilized or severely underutilized territory in our present outlook of the world. The dominant attitude toward an item falling in this intermediate area is “wait until it is verified in the laboratory” (cf. the state of affairs in psychology), effort to separate the variables present in a situation and to split a problem into several subproblems that can be individually studied for specific correlations is fine in itself. That is what a scientific approach should attempt. However, the effort tends to be construed in such a way as to overlook (a) the possibility that the discovery of scientific truth could be a process rather than a fixed destination to reach and (b) the possibility that it may not be desirable to postpone all decisions until the destination is reached.+++(5)+++ Furthermore, in the area with which we are concerned, the experiments, if carried out rigorously, do not ultimately take us beyond a relationship be tween two material entities, regardless of the expressions the authors of the experiments may employ to describe them.

27 Thus, the incentive to scholarship comes in terms of social recognition–a special social status not economic in nature. Educational establishments have to earn their support from the government as well as the citizenry, but not by demonstrating that they are making direct contributions to the material welfare of the society. It is enough for the society to know that they are providing models of limited consumption and pursuit of knowledge and are creating positive forces for the natural and cosmic order.

(They leave the larger question of “mind” unexplored, unless the researcher thinks of mind as nothing but a complex of material entities, as is essentially the case in psychiatry in which specific mind-substances are controlled by specific physical substances.) Alternatively, if the experiments are not carried out so rigorously and an intrusion of other variables is allowed, they do not yield results that other researchers can universally replicate and accept. Consequently, very little is actually achieved beyond what natural sciences achieve in the lab oratories, and the attitude of uncertainty regarding the in-between area is not dislodged. The in-between area remains open for claims and counterclaims arising out of different experiments. As probabilities suggested by reasonably controlled and reasonably large samples do not inspire confidence because such probabilities are not thought to be good enough, making recommendations based on them that would apply to the entire society or to specific groups within it is considered inappropriate. The choice is left to the individual, and, until he becomes a member of a group as a consequence of his behaviour, the recommendations are generally not proffered.

Traditional indian situation

The situation in traditional India was very different in this regard. An individual was primarily considered to belong to a group (we do not have to get into the issue of how this belonging was determined). Generalizations regarding groups were freely and frequently aired (we do not have to get into the issue of how these generalizations were arrived at). The notions of varṇa, karman and punar-janman (“reincarnation, rebirth”) were almost universally accepted.

The paṇḍits are usually placed in those social classes (Brahmin, monk) which are expected to engage in ascetic actions. It is thought that good karman of past lives, particularly disciplined behaviour, gives them superior minds.28 They are expected to behave in accordance with the norms for their social class, if they wish to go ahead in that class or to attain the still higher varṇa-less (mōkṣa or nirvāṇa) state. Thus, varṇa “social class (defined in a specific way)”, karman “action”, and punar-janma “rebirth” are the asso ciations related to the surface-level associations I have discussed. They are especially related to my first and third dominant associations: memory and restrained behaviour..

28 Good deeds or observance of religious vows on the part of parents is frequently indicated to be the cause; cf, the accounts of the birth of Abhinavagupta (Pandey 1963:6-8), Nārāyanabhatta (the author of Tristhalīsetu etc.; Benson in this volume) etc., which are widely separated in time and region but agree in attaching special importance to ideal religious conduct on the part of the parents. The number of cases in which the authors of surviving works praise their fathers (sometimes the mothers too) for learning as well as conduct is also quite high. But such good karman on the part of parents does not rule out past good karman on the part of the paṇḍit to be born, for it is that karman which should logically make him (and not someone else) eligible to be born as a child of a particular couple. A paṇḍit is thus similar to a yogabhrasta (Bhagavadgitā 6.40-44).

Conclusions

The preceding exploration suggests that the kind of paṇḍit I have been discussing here is possible only under a philosophy of human body and mind and of the world that is significantly different from the dominant philosophy of our times. A logical consideration of the notion of reincarnation I have at tempted elsewhere (Aklujkar 2000) further suggests that the “reincarnation karman-varṇa” complex existing in this “body-mind-world” philosophy has not been vanquished for ever and its re-emergence is not impossible, al though it seems improbable at present.

The Sanskrit universities and colleges and the religious establishments in the Indian subcontinent are trying to keep the paṇḍit alive, but the odds are heavily against his gaining the necessary political and economic clout and against the governments and religious establishments success in stopping the forces that may ultimately eliminate him. He has come to be too closely associated with a minority, whose value is not only being questioned and challenged but which is seen as an oppressor in several parts of India (with some truth in the allegation).+++(4)+++ To make matters more difficult, through the centuries of Muslim and British rule and nearly two centuries of an educa tionalsystem that inculcates a different (not necessarily bad) way of looking at the affairs of the world, the minority itself has lost contact with its past. In particular, it is generally incapable of reactivating the devices that enabled it to manage change and challenges in the past and to be able to lead the com munity in such a manner as to preserve traditional religious and educational institutions. There is thus the serious problem of whether the present-day Brahmins will be able to lead the society, even if they were given a chance, in such a manner as to create an environment in which paṇḍitic knowledge would survive and prosper.

It also needs to be realised in this context that the problem of the survival of the paṇḍit has a global dimension. Society still needs individuals having the paṇḍit minds in the sense that it will always require the guidance of scholars and experts. But apart from this general global dimension, there is a specific global dimension that is more immediately related to the issue of the paṇḍits’ continuance as an institution in our social life. Unless the value of humanistic research, particularly of the philological component of it, is increasingly recognized in the rich countries of the world, not only the paṇḍits of the Sanskritic-Prakritic tradition, but the paṇḍits of many other traditions of the world, as well as the modern specialists of languages, literatures etc. stand in danger of serious diminution, if not extinction.

All this means that, unless there is a fundamental rethinking of the dominant ideas of our time—unless there is a change in the philosophy of life dominant in our age, any efforts made to maintain the paṇḍitic type of scholarship will be “band-aid” solutions.+++(4)+++ The paṇḍit is possible as a phenomenon only on the background of a host of other factors that extend from human body to how creation is viewed. A true paṇḍit can be a product of only a certain kind of piṇḍa-brahmāṇḍa theory. The elements of that theory generally find no favour with the influential theoreticians of our time.

If our current and otherwise laudable ideas of equality, individual freedom, justice, historical truth and scientific proof are circumscribed or modified by common consensus in practice if they do not come in the way of recognition of excellence and of granting qualified and balanced privileges to certain classes of individuals and if the separation of body and mind dominant in our present educational, medical, scientific etc. practices is reduced, we might have a new paṇḍit class.+++(5)+++ It may not be confined to Sanskrit or India. It may be global in its spread. Until such a class emerges, however, the paṇḍit will primarily live in the twinkle seen in the eyes of a Sanskritist when he meets a Sanskritist from a culturally different part of the world and finds that he can discuss a very subtle problem of textual interpretation or philosophy with this other “being” despite the differences in their upbringing that unbeknownst to them, a bond exists between them; that they stood on the same platform even before they turned to each other and their eyes met.

29 Democracy brings several advantages to society, but it also has a levelling effect and potential to kill the growth of excellence. Even the political cultures that took the ideal of equality in the strongest possible form had to make provision of special privileges to scientists, doctors, professors etc, in order to maintain and promote excellence.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank Professor Robert P. Goldman of the Uni versity of Califomia (Berkeley) for the specifics he promptly provided of the video recordings he made of the speeches and teaching sessions of certain prominent paṇḍits (see note 5). Professor Madhav M. Deshpande’s comments brought home to me the need to consult Kielhorn 1874. This consultation has resulted in a significant improvement of the parts in which the justly esteemed scholar is mentioned. Further help in this respect came from Dr. Roland Steiner. He obliged me much by providing the publication details of Kielhorn 1874 with impressive precision and fullness, when I had access only to the 1960-62 reprint of that publication. I am also thankful to the authorities of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for their support during 1998-99, the year in which this essay was written. Like many of my other research writings in that year, this one too has benefitted much from Profes sor Albrecht Wezler’s “Rat und Tat”. Finally, it is my pleasure to acknowledge the help I received from Michele Desmarais, Michael Dodson and Muktak Aklujkar in catching typographical errors and realising the possibilities for better wording.

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