Sheldon Pollock’s nausea
Per his words in this video snippet: TW.
Per his words in this video snippet: https://twitter.com/pvaal2/status/1301890398407856128
Also interesting are his views at https://twitter.com/pvaal2/status/1301913079563812866 :
“Inheritors of a past that they did not create themselves have an obligation to share it … "
The premise is wrong, of course. I find it very striking that one does not see oneself as an extension of one’s forefathers (sagely or otherwise). Perhaps this comes from not feeling gratitude towards and revering them (via tarpaNa type rituals). Quite ahistorical an attitude for one so obsessed with it.
2008 exchanges
Archiving some classic emails by some “western” Indologists for future reference (with emphasis on “interesting” parts), since the urls have shifted (https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/2008-August/thread.html seems ok).
First by this lady who can be seen here being welcomed by our Canada diplomat -https://twitter.com/AkhileshIFS/status/639608306835849217 .
Stella Sandahl
Wed Aug 13 03:49:54 EDT 2008
In the current debate about “spoken Sanskrit” I believe we are talking about two different things. It is one thing when for example a Bengali pandit speaks to Telugu pandit in Sanskrit in order to debate finer points in a text, or a philosophical issue, a literary allusion and so forth. Sanskrit is then their common language, a language of learning, of elegance and wit. And this is quite wonderful.
It is an entirely different matter to try to revive and ‘modernize’ Sanskrit. Lying on a table in our university library I found a typical example of the latter. There were new-fangled “Sanskrit” words for money order, check-out counter, bus station, bank draft - as if one finds these things in classical Sanskrit texts! These manuals are quite ridiculous: I found a sentence like ahaM sevaphalAni khAdAmi which was supposed to mean ‘I eat apples’. First, as far as I know there were no apples in classical India (weren’t they brought in by Babur?), second the word seva is obviously modeled on Hindi seb ‘apple’ from the Persian sib with the same meaning. This is exactly in line with the examples given by Professor Nair: “adya kati iddali bhakshitam?” “adya chayam piitam kim?”, equally ridiculous. My niece in Delhi once asked to help her with her Sanskrit homework. She had to translate the sentence “Kings live in palaces” into Sanskrit. The word given by the teacher for palace was ‘mahala’ !!! I tried to convince the little girl that there was no such word in Sanskrit. In vain. The girl said :“teacher says it is mahala”, and that was what it had to be.
It is very sad to se how the ignorant Hindutva forces demean and make the wonderful classical language into something trivial and ridiculous. How do we stop them? How can we rescue Sanskrit from these vandals? I doubt that the sevaphalAni-eating student in his mahala can read and understand even one line by Kalidasa or Bana or Jayadeva. But he can cut the throat of those who cannot speak his so called Sanskrit. When he is not busy demolishing mosques and raping nuns.
Stella Sandahl Professor Stella Sandahl Department of East Asian Studies 130 St. George St. room 14087 Toronto, ON M5S 3H1 Tel. (416) 978-4295 Fax. (416) 978-5711
Maheswaran Nair
Thu Aug 14 11:00:55 UTC 2008
Dear list, I agree that Sanskrit teachers and students should surely learn to fluently communicate in Sanskrit. The present state (especialyy in Kerala)is deplorable.
Objection is against utilising Sanskrit for “other” purposes. Hindutvavadins have specific agenda behind popularising Sanskrit. They have brought out many books among which a small one entitled “Samskrtam vada aadhuniko bhava”(published from Aluva, Kerala) contains their sectarian approach.They consider Sanskrit only as the cultural language of India which is far from truth. They paste everywhere a poster which reads “Samskrtam bharatasya samskrtikabhasha”. What about other Indian languages? Making use of Sanskrit in place of Ramakshetra for demolishing Babrimasjid is objectionable. You know what happened in Gujarat. First the poster containing AUM was pasted in front of houses of Hindus as a distinguishing mark for the convenience of Hindu rioteers before “action”. My humble doubt and fear is that Sanskrit will be used as a “marker” in the coming years.Let it not happen. Regards K.Maheswaran Nair
Maheswaran Nair
Wed Aug 13 06:42:17 UTC 2008
Hello,
In Malayalam, my native tongue, 60 to 70 percent words of the language of an educated Malayalee are Sanskrit. In many Indian languages the state of this affair will slightly change. Such people need not make Sanskrit their spoken language. There is hidden agenda behind popularising spoken Sanskrit. Hindu revivalists and communalists are popularising it. They have organizations for the same. At times of mass murders of people belonging to other religions there is need to distinguish them. “Interested parties” have plans to make Sanskrit the national language of India. A time may come when during purposely created communal riots, the question will be put “bhavaan samskrtam janaati kim?” Those who reply in the affirmative in Sanskrit will be spared and others will be butchered. I am also fluent in Sanskrit and have evolved an easy method for teaching Spoken Sanskrit, not the spoken Sanskrit popularised by the revivalists which is like “adya kati iddali bhakshitam?” “adya chayam
piitam kim?”. Regards K.Maheswaran Nair Professor of Sanskrit University of Kerala India
hhhock
Wed Aug 13 15:31:11 UTC 2008
The thread on spoken Sanskrit has been very interesting, and some points strike me as quite a propos. First, I don’t see any problems with neologisms. Even if we ignore the sometimes controversial examples of supposed Dravidian borrowing in early Vedic and the much less controversial ones in later Vedic and post-Vedic (such as niira-), or the late borrowings from North Indian languages in late Sanskrit texts, there is evidence for borrowing at many other stages, and in many different spheres (consider e.g. (tri-)koNa, horaa and the like, from Greek). Moreover, if Sanskrit is to be used in a modern context, not only to discuss fine points of philosophy or grammar, it has to be modernized to make it possible to talk about trains, apples, and the like (and hybrids like relayaana strike me as much more felicitous than words such as agniratha(…)yaana). There is a problem, however, as far as the lexicon goes, namely the whole- scale importation of Sanskrit-derived Hindi, Marathi, etc. words into Sanskrit, with their modern meanings, rather than the use of established Sanskrit words (consider the use of aarambha instead of utsava in the Hindi-speaking area). While Sanskrit needs to be modernized, it does not need to be intellectualized, thank you; it always has been perfectly capable to deal with intellectual issues.
Second, I agree that the kind of spoken Sanskrit that is being propagated by Hindutva organizations is grammatically, lexically, and intellectually without merit, not far removed from a pidgin form of the language. The fact that it does not provide a useful entry to the full form of the language, as found in the philosophical, religious, and literary tradition of India (not to speak of the vast range of technical literature), supports the view that the motivation for this enterprise is not to connect modern Indians with their traditions but to give Hindus (or better: Hindutvavaadins) a false, manufactured sense of identity. (I should add that the founders of this movement, such as Krishna Shastri, had a much fuller grasp of the language and spoke it very well.)
Best wishes, Hans
adheesh sathaye
Wed Aug 13 10:33:20 UTC 2008
Dear Profs. Hart, Nair, and Sandahl, and colleagues,
With all due respect, I find it hard to accept that the construction of neologisms like ‘seva-phala’, ‘iDDali’ or even misuses like ‘mahAla’ are in any way indicative of ‘ignorant Hindutva forces’. It is not at all uncommon to see vernacular words or forms used within medieval Sanskrit manuscripts, and particularly when the concept does not occur in classical Sanskrit. Certain MSS of zivadAsa’s or jambhaladatta’s vetAla-paJcaviMzati, for example, appear to be replete with north Indian vernacular ’loan-words’ and shoddy, Hindi- or Marathi-based grammatical forms. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Moreover, contemporary spoken Sanskrit is quite obviously and self-consciously a simplification of classical Sanskrit, and this has been done in order for the language to be more accessible and appealing to young, twenty-first century students, who WOULD like to express their thoughts about riding the bus, eating apples, using computers, and other modern-day activities. It’s actually quite a fun thing to do.
One must, it is true, engage in this linguistic practice knowing full well that what one is speaking is a hybridized and simplified form of the classical parole, and this I think is where some of the Hindu nationalist ideological projects are indeed harmful, as Prof. Nair points out, in representing spoken Sanskrit to the Indian public as being both authentic and Hindu. What’s most disturbing to me about the Hindu spoken Sanskrit movement is not how the language is treated, but how many textbooks attempt to naturalize (and nationalize) upper-caste, puritanical Hindu practices through language teaching.
On the other hand, may I respectfully suggest that the idea that the ancientness of Sanskrit somehow debilitates this language from accepting neologisms, or makes it useless for expressing modern ideas, itself might be construed as an act of intellectual violence on par with ‘cutting throats’, ‘demolishing mosques’, or ‘raping nuns’? Clearly, as scholars of classical Sanskrit, we have an obligation to continue to teach students how to read and understand kAlidAsa, bANa, or perhaps even the magisterial ZrIharSa–but can this teaching not occur side-by-side with an acceptance of a consciously different register of the Sanskrit language, albeit contrived and manufactured, for contemporary, everyday usage? Perhaps the latter might serve as a kind of gateway for the former?
with best regards,
Adheesh
Dr. Adheesh Sathaye Department of Asian Studies University of British Columbia 408 Asian Centre 1871 West Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 604.822.5188
George Hart
Wed Aug 13 14:27:43 UTC 2008
Years ago, the late highly learned Sanskrit scholar Dr. Janaki stayed at our house. She showed me a column she had written in Sanskrit about the McEnroe - Borg tennis competition. Her command of the language was awesome – she was capable to expressing just about anything, using the full resources of the language. I still remember getting up one morning about 6:00 and encountering a bright-eyed Janaki chattering away in fluent (and extremely rapid) Sanskrit, and struggling with little success to process what she said in my still numbed state. The problem, I feel, with the kind of spoken Sanskrit we’re talking about is not that it borrows Hindi words or Tamil syntax. As Adheesh says, Sanskrit has been borrowing or innovating since the beginning (many of its most common words are Dravidian). The problem is that spoken “Sanskrit” is incapable of expressing a complex thought – “How many Idlis did you eat today” is not exactly a profound idea. Real languages are highly complex because they need to be used to express complex ideas. Sanskrit is no exception. As Prof. Nair notes, languages such as Malayalam can make use of the entire Sanskrit vocabulary to express thoughts that are extremely complicated (one might also remark that Malayalam, which was a dialect of Tamil 1000 years ago, also retains a huge inherited Dravidian vocabulary). If one goes to a village and encounters the (rare) illiterate Malayali, one would discover that while that person might not know all the Sanskrit words used in a scholarly essay, he or she can still use the language for expressing quite complicated ideas. **Sadly, neo- Sanskrit seems incapable of being used this way. It is a consciously dumbed-down language that eschews its own grand tradition. If people enjoy learning it in a rudimentary way to express simple things, obviously there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem as I see it lies in the fact that these “Sanskrit” speakers often think that just because they use the language in a rudimentary way, they are somehow connecting with the great intellectual tradition that the language contains. Or, worse, that they are embodiments of some “Hindu-ness” that is inherent in the language. Their rudimentary use of the language fosters a kind of arrogance and sense of superiority that is unwarranted. ** I remember reading the Rasagangadhara with Pandit Seshadrinathan and remarking on the breathtaking boldness of the beginning verses. When I suggested that Jagannatha seemed a bit arrogant and overbearing, Seshadrinathan remarked “sthaane.” Yes, if someone knows Sanskrit 5% as well as Jagannatha, then he or she is entitled to be proud. Saying “How many idlis did you eat today?” in neo-Sanskrit may be fun, but it’s hardly grounds for the sort of overweening pride that such speakers often seem to project.
George Hart