He Targetted James Mill
It was not Caldwell, but Francis Whyte Ellis (1777–1819) who classified the Dravidian languages as a separate language family, first. (1) Becoming a writer (junior clerk) in the East India Company's service at Madras in 1796, Ellis scaled heights as an assistant undersecretary, deputy-secretary, and secretary to the board of revenue, till 1802. Four years later, he was appointed judge of Machilipatnam and the collector of land customs in the Madras presidency in 1809, and he became the collector of Madras in 1810. He died at Ramnad mysteriously on 10 March 1819. (2)
Robert Caldwell, who is often credited as the first scholar to propose a separate language family for South Indian languages, acknowledges Ellis's contribution, in his preface to the first edition of A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages: (3)
"The first to break ground in the field was Mr Ellis, a Madras civilian, who was profoundly versed in the Tamil language and literature, and who interesting but very brief comparison, not of the grammatical forms, but only of some of the vocables of three Dravidian dialects, is contained in his introduction to Campbell's Telugu Grammar."
Ellis first published his notion about the South Indian languages forming a separate language family in a Note to Introduction for his protege Alexandar Duncan Campbell's Telugu Grammar in 1816. (4)
He wrote three books: A Grammar of the Teloogoo Language, Commonly Termed the Gentoo (1816), A Dictionary of the Teloogoo Language, Commonly Termed the Gentoo, Peculiar to the Hindoos of the North Eastern Provinces of the Indian Peninsula (1821), and two papers, “On the state of Slavery in Southern India”, MJLS 1, 1834, 243-255; and “On the state of Education of the Natives in Southern India”, MJLS 1, 1834, 350-359.
Ellis was a member of the Madras Literary Society and the founder of the College of Fort St. George at Madras - an institution which had both British and Indian members. (5) Pattabirama Shastri, Muthusami Pillai, Udayagiri Venkatanarayanayya, Chidambara Vadhyar and Syed Abdul Khadar were among the Indian scholars who worked in the college. The college was founded in 1812 and the next year Ellis also helped set up the College Press by supplying it with a printing press and Tamil types. Telugu types, printing ink and labour for the venture was supplied by the Superintendent of Government Press at Egmore. The Madras Government supplied the paper. The press commenced publishing in 1813, and its first work was Constanzo Beschi's (Veeramamunivar) Tamil grammar Kodum Tamil. Before Ellis's death in 1819, the press published a Tamil grammar primer Ilakkana Surukkam, a Tamil translation of Uttara Kandam of Ramayana (both by Chitthambala Desikar), Ellis' own translation and commentary of Thirukkural and five Telugu works - Campbell's grammar (with Ellis' Dravidian Proof), Tales of Vikkirama, a translation of Panchatantra and two more grammars. The press continued publishing books into the 1830s including works in Kannada, Malayalam and Arabic. (6)
Ellis and his friends William Erskine and John Leyden were oriental scholars interested in learning the various aspects of Indian life and publishing works on Indian languages. Ellis maintained a good relationship with the Indians, even adopting their customs and way of dressing.
In addition to the "Dravidian Proof", Ellis wrote three dissertations - in Tamil, (20) Telugu, and Malayalam. (21)
It has been suggested that Ellis worked with others to promote vaccinations to prevent smallpox. To reduce resistance from Indians, he is thought to have helped craft a Sanskrit verse that was then claimed to have been discovered and described, showing that the European form of vaccination was in fact just a modification of something known in ancient India. The publication of the letter first inserted into the Madras Courier, (22) in 1819 under the pseudonym "Calvi Virumbom" was widely propagated. (23)
When Ellis died in Ramnad, he left some of his papers — philological and political — to Sir Walter Elliot, on whose death they passed to G. U. Pope, who had them placed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. According to Sir Walter, many of Ellis' unpublished works were lost when they were burned by the cook of the Madurai collector Rous Petrie. (24) Ellis did not publish them earlier because he wanted to do so only after becoming a "ripened scholar at forty years". (25) As an administrator, Ellis was well-liked by his Indian subjects. (26) His grave at Dindigal bears two inscriptions - one in English and the other in Tamil. (27) The English inscription reads:
"Uniting activity of mind with the versatility of genius, he displayed the same ardour and happy sufficiency on whatever his varied talents were employed. Conversant with the Hindoo languages and Literature of the Peninsula, he was loved and esteemed by the Natives of India, with whom he associated intimately. "(28)
Ellis' Dravidian Proof is a step-by-step attempt to establish the non-Sanskritic origins of Telugu. Ellis first compared the roots of Sanskrit and Telugu. Parallel columns of the roots were presented to show the difference between the two languages. For Sanskrit, the roots were taken from Dhatupatha and for Telugu, they were taken from a list compiled by Pattabhirama Shastri. In the second step, Ellis used a more complex comparative table of Tamil, Telugu and Kannada roots to show that the languages shared cognate roots. In the third and final step, Ellis used a comparative table of words made from the roots of the three languages to show their relationship as well. Ellis made use of Telugu scholar Mamadi Venkayya's Andhradipaka as a source for different types of Telugu words. In conclusion, Ellis disproved the prevailing theory that though roots and words might be common to South Indian languages, the difference in their idioms was great. He accomplished this by translating the same passages from Sanskrit and English into Tamil, Telugu and Kannada and analysing the sentence structures of the translations. (30)
Around 1800, Ellis delivered a lecture on Hindu Law, at the Madras Literary Society: (31)
He began the speech by attacking the European mindset, as it reflected by East India Company historian, James Mill, who wrote History of British India. Ellis said: "One of the greatest, but not the most obvious defect of human reason, is the incapacity of regarding things from more than one point of view. Enlightened as the European now is, severe as is his reasoning, accurate generally as is his judgment, this is a defect which strongly marks his character, and may even be attributed, perhaps, to that which ought to have corrected it, the extent of his acquirements; for, knowing the value of these, he is well content not to look beyond them, and holds others in contempt, because he has never taken pains duly to appreciate their qualities, and cannot, therefore, he acquainted with the motives which actuate them".
"A striking instance of this blot in the escutcheon of our race, nobly emblazoned as it is, is afforded by a recent work which had I then seen it I should have particularly noticed at the commencement of these readings. I allude to Mill's "History of British India". Endowed with great powers of reasoning, and, to judge from the information he has accumulated from a variety of sources with great assiduity of research, the abilities and the usefulness of this writer are neutralised by the supercilious contempt he invariably manifests towards everything for which he cannot find a criterion in his own mind, or which he cannot reconcile to some customary standard of thought.
"He has subjected the Hindu system to a comparison with an abstract standard of his own erection, and, as might have been expected, has condemned it as being found wanting. It is possible that his ideas of perfection are not the most correct, but admitting them to be such, the comparison is not fair. No work of man can be or is expected to be absolute, though it may be relatively perfect; and this process, therefore, is more tyrannical than the bed of Procrustes. But let the legal system of the Hindu be compared, as we have compared some parts of it, and as in justice it ought to be, not with the theories or it may be with the reveries of ultraperfectionists, but with the practical codes of other nations, and it will not be found wanting. It is to this comparison I should challenge Mr Mill... There are no doubt many points in the Hindu law which, to the preconception of a European, appear exceptionable; many there are also, for its authors were men, that are really so, and for which better provisions have been made by other legislators ancient and modern, but where is the code to which similar imperfection may not be imputed. To our own, we are attached from habit, and prepossession, therefore, makes us overlook many that perhaps exist, and we endure many that are apparent for the sake of the whole. Mr Mill's microscopic eye, however, overlooks none of them, for he seems to entertain at least as bad an opinion of the English as of the Hindu Law."
Then, Willis went on to deduce from Mill's Indian history, a few instances of the short-sightedness of mill's mind, and of the wide distance nature he has interposed between fact and speculation.
First Instance: A contemplation of the Hindu government. As the powers of government consist (ie, according to European notions) of three great branches, the legislature, the judiciary and the administrative, it is requisite to enquire in what hands these several powers are deposited, and by what circumstances their exercise is controlled and modified. As the Hindu believes that a complete and perfect system of instruction which admits of no addition or change, was conveyed to him from the beginning by the divine being for the regulation of his public as well as private affairs, he acknowledges no laws but those which are contained in the sacred books. From this, it is evident that the only scope which remains for legislation is confined within the limits of the interpretations which may be given to the holy text.
"To this pitch of civilisation, the Hindu had not attained. The administration of justice by the King in person stands in the sacred books as a leading principle of their jurisprudence, and the revolution of ages has introduced no change in the primaeval process."
The text of Brihaspati, as quoted in the Madhavaviyam, respects the four superior courts, the authorities there cited relative to the fifteen inferior courts of the Hindus. Legal definitions are also there. "These", Ellis says, "are to be sought in the Siddhanta of the Digests and commentators, where it is as perfect as human reason can make them. Mr Mill, ignorant of this, and careless as ignorant, ventures on this subject".
Then, Ellis exposes the third instance of dishonesty in Mill:
"Concerning definitions, the Hindu Law is in a state which requires a few words of elucidation. Before the art of writing, laws can have little accuracy of definition; because, when words are not written, they are seldom exactly remembered; and a definition whose words are constantly varying is not, for the purpose of the law, a definition at all. Notwithstanding the necessity of writing to produce fixed and accurate definitions in law, the nations of modern Europe have allowed a great proportion of their laws to continue in the unwritten, that is, the traditionary state, the state in which they lay before the art of writing was known. Of these nations, none have kept in that barbarous condition so great a proportion of their law as the English. From the opinion of the Hindus that the Divine Being dictated all their laws, they acknowledge nothing as law but what is found in some one or other of their sacred books. In one sense, therefore, all their laws are written. But as the passages which can be collected from these books leave many parts of the field of law untouched, in these parts the defect must be supplied either by custom or the momentary will of the judges.
Ellis correctly points out that the Institutes of Manu, in the actual administration of Hindu jurisprudence, especially in later times, had never ranked higher than a mere textbook, which the Indian jurists considered of little authority unless accompanied by some commentary, or incorporated into some Digest. Then Ellis points out:
"The definitions of the Hindu Law are not to seek in the textbooks from which chiefly Mr Mill would seem to have derived his notion of them, his references in this part of his work being confined to Manu and "Halhead's Gentoo Code", which is scarcely anything more than a collection of texts. These it may be conceded to him leave many parts of the field of law untouched, "which however, are neither supplied by customs nor the momentary will of the judge" but by the conclusions or decisions of a succession of writers, ancient and modern, belonging to various schools as deduced, not from the ordinances only, but the principles of the textbooks, by reasoning, and which varied by the tenets of their respective schools, have become the actual definitions of practical law. Further, Mr Mill prefers written definition to the concurrent authority of previous decisions, the degree of certainty concerning them being, he says, infinitely inferior to that which is the necessary result of good definition rendered unalterable by writing; and he adds, "but such as it is, the Hindus are entirely deprived of it. Among them, the strength of the human mind has never been sufficient to recommend effectually the preservation by the writing of the memory of judicial decisions.
"The first to break ground in the field was Mr Ellis, a Madras civilian, who was profoundly versed in the Tamil language and literature, and who interesting but very brief comparison, not of the grammatical forms, but only of some of the vocables of three Dravidian dialects, is contained in his introduction to Campbell's Telugu Grammar."
Ellis first published his notion about the South Indian languages forming a separate language family in a Note to Introduction for his protege Alexandar Duncan Campbell's Telugu Grammar in 1816. (4)
Alexander Duncan Campbell (1786/1789-1857) was a British (Scottish) Civil Servant in India, who was interested in Telugu. He joined in Madras Civil Service in 1806, was a member of the Board of Superintendence for College of Fort St. George (1816), and became the Collector and Magistrate in Bellary (1821), then in Tanjore (1827), and remained in India at least until 1835, when his son, the future Major-General Alexander C. was born in Madras. Later probably retired, and his will is written in Middlesex. His grammar was written for the young I.C.S. recruits learning Telugu at College Fort St. George.
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| Ellis |
Ellis was a member of the Madras Literary Society and the founder of the College of Fort St. George at Madras - an institution which had both British and Indian members. (5) Pattabirama Shastri, Muthusami Pillai, Udayagiri Venkatanarayanayya, Chidambara Vadhyar and Syed Abdul Khadar were among the Indian scholars who worked in the college. The college was founded in 1812 and the next year Ellis also helped set up the College Press by supplying it with a printing press and Tamil types. Telugu types, printing ink and labour for the venture was supplied by the Superintendent of Government Press at Egmore. The Madras Government supplied the paper. The press commenced publishing in 1813, and its first work was Constanzo Beschi's (Veeramamunivar) Tamil grammar Kodum Tamil. Before Ellis's death in 1819, the press published a Tamil grammar primer Ilakkana Surukkam, a Tamil translation of Uttara Kandam of Ramayana (both by Chitthambala Desikar), Ellis' own translation and commentary of Thirukkural and five Telugu works - Campbell's grammar (with Ellis' Dravidian Proof), Tales of Vikkirama, a translation of Panchatantra and two more grammars. The press continued publishing books into the 1830s including works in Kannada, Malayalam and Arabic. (6)
Ellis and his friends William Erskine and John Leyden were oriental scholars interested in learning the various aspects of Indian life and publishing works on Indian languages. Ellis maintained a good relationship with the Indians, even adopting their customs and way of dressing.
Among Ellis's contributions to oriental scholarship are his works on South Indian property ownership, Hindu law, and commentary on Thirukkural. In 1814, he wrote an account of the Mirasi land proprietary system of South India with the help of his Sheristadar (chief of staff), the Indian scholar Shankarayya. (7)
As his reputation for oriental scholarship grew, he was requested by Alexander Johnston to research the origins of a French work titled Ezour Vedam, which was claimed as a translation of a Sanskrit work and a Veda by Jesuits. Ellis proved that the "Vedam" was not a translation but an original work of the Jesuit priest Roberto de Nobili, written in 1621 for converting Hindus to Christianity. His monograph on the Ezour Vedam was published posthumously in the Asiatic Journal in 1822. (8)
He delivered a series of lectures on Hindu law at the Madras Literary Society, which was published after his death. Enchanted by Tamil poet-saint Tiruvalluvar and his Thirukkural, (9) translated 18 chapters of the Aratthupaal, one division of Thirukkural dealing with law and virtue, into English in a non-metrical verse. Thirteen chapters were published by the College press during Ellis' lifetime. (10)
Ellis was also the first scholar to decipher and explain the first century CE "Cochin Grants" given to the Anjuuvannam Jewish community in Cochin. (11) The Jewish copper plates of Cochin, also known as Cochin plates of Bhaskara Ravi-varman, is a royal charter issued by the Chera Perumal king of Kerala, south India to Joseph Rabban, a Jewish merchant magnate of Kodungallur. (12) The charter shows the status and importance of the Jewish colony in Kodungallur (Cranganore) near Cochin on the Malabar Coast. The charter is engraved in Vattezhuthu script with additional Grantha characters in the vernacular of medieval Kerala on three sides of two copper plates -28 lines. (13) It records a grant by king Bhaskara Ravi Varma (Malayalam: Parkaran Iravivanman) to Joseph/Yusuf Rabban (Malayalam: Issuppu Irappan) of the rights of merchant guild Anjuman (Malayalam: anjuvannam) along with several other rights and privileges. (14) Rabban is exempted from all payments made by other settlers in the city of Muyirikkode (at the same time extending to him all the rights of the other settlers). These rights and privileges are given perpetuity to all his descendants. The document is attested by several chieftains from southern and northern Kerala. (15)
Anjuvannam, the old Malayalam form of Hanjamana/Anjuman was a south Indian merchant guild organised by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic merchants from West Asian countries. (16) The document is dated by historians to c. 1000 CE. (17) It is also evident from the tone of the copper plates that the Jews were not newcomers to the Malabar Coast at the time of its decree. (18) The plates are carefully preserved in an iron box, known as the Pandeal, within the Paradesi Synagogue at Mattancherry (Cochin). (19)
Anjuvannam, the old Malayalam form of Hanjamana/Anjuman was a south Indian merchant guild organised by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic merchants from West Asian countries. (16) The document is dated by historians to c. 1000 CE. (17) It is also evident from the tone of the copper plates that the Jews were not newcomers to the Malabar Coast at the time of its decree. (18) The plates are carefully preserved in an iron box, known as the Pandeal, within the Paradesi Synagogue at Mattancherry (Cochin). (19)
It has been suggested that Ellis worked with others to promote vaccinations to prevent smallpox. To reduce resistance from Indians, he is thought to have helped craft a Sanskrit verse that was then claimed to have been discovered and described, showing that the European form of vaccination was in fact just a modification of something known in ancient India. The publication of the letter first inserted into the Madras Courier, (22) in 1819 under the pseudonym "Calvi Virumbom" was widely propagated. (23)
When Ellis died in Ramnad, he left some of his papers — philological and political — to Sir Walter Elliot, on whose death they passed to G. U. Pope, who had them placed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. According to Sir Walter, many of Ellis' unpublished works were lost when they were burned by the cook of the Madurai collector Rous Petrie. (24) Ellis did not publish them earlier because he wanted to do so only after becoming a "ripened scholar at forty years". (25) As an administrator, Ellis was well-liked by his Indian subjects. (26) His grave at Dindigal bears two inscriptions - one in English and the other in Tamil. (27) The English inscription reads:
"Uniting activity of mind with the versatility of genius, he displayed the same ardour and happy sufficiency on whatever his varied talents were employed. Conversant with the Hindoo languages and Literature of the Peninsula, he was loved and esteemed by the Natives of India, with whom he associated intimately. "(28)
While stationed at Madras, Ellis became interested in the history and languages of India The event which outlined in motion the writing of the "Dravidian Proof" of Ellis, was the report of the Committee of Examination of Junior Civil Servants issued in 1811. The committee, chaired by Ellis, wanted the civil service officers to learn the basic structure of the South Indian languages so that they can function effectively wherever they were stationed in South India. It noted the common features of five South Indian "dialects" - High Tamil, Low Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada and recommended the teaching of Tamil as a representative of all five. The College of Fort St. George in Calcutta and its press were given the task of creating grammar and other textbooks for language training. As a part of this effort, Campbell, then the secretary to the Board of Superintendents of the college, prepared a work on Telugu grammar in 1816. Two years before, another work of Telugu grammar had been published by William Carey, an orientalist missionary from Calcutta, at the Serampore press, in which he described Sanskrit as the source of all South Indian languages. In his grammar, Campbell set out to disprove Carey and other Calcutta orientalists like Charles Wilkins and Henry Thomas Colebrooke, proponents of the "all Indian languages are derived from Sanskrit" school of thought. Ellis wrote a note to introduction for Campbell's book in which he offered his "Dravidian Proof". (29)
Ellis' Dravidian Proof is a step-by-step attempt to establish the non-Sanskritic origins of Telugu. Ellis first compared the roots of Sanskrit and Telugu. Parallel columns of the roots were presented to show the difference between the two languages. For Sanskrit, the roots were taken from Dhatupatha and for Telugu, they were taken from a list compiled by Pattabhirama Shastri. In the second step, Ellis used a more complex comparative table of Tamil, Telugu and Kannada roots to show that the languages shared cognate roots. In the third and final step, Ellis used a comparative table of words made from the roots of the three languages to show their relationship as well. Ellis made use of Telugu scholar Mamadi Venkayya's Andhradipaka as a source for different types of Telugu words. In conclusion, Ellis disproved the prevailing theory that though roots and words might be common to South Indian languages, the difference in their idioms was great. He accomplished this by translating the same passages from Sanskrit and English into Tamil, Telugu and Kannada and analysing the sentence structures of the translations. (30)
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| Jewish copper plate of Cochin |
He attacked Mill, and William Jones, who translated Manusmriti:
"In the eyes of those who are the objects of this contumely, and who are not infrequently actuated by a similar spirit, it has the appearance of envy, a wish to depreciate from the despair of excelling; this however is an inaccurate judgment of it, for it certainly proceeds, concerning the European, simply from that confidence in himself and his attainments which, in great actions, is often overweening, and sometimes degenerates to arrogance and even to insolence. The supercilious spirit proceedings from this mental imperfection led the egoistic Greeks to the use of the word Barbarians (?) which they liberally bestowed on all nations but their own. In this, little worthy of praise as it is, we have not been backwards imitating them, and we now constantly apply the term barbarian to all usage differing from our own, seldom deigning to enquire, provided they are strange, whether they are founded in right reason or not.
"A striking instance of this blot in the escutcheon of our race, nobly emblazoned as it is, is afforded by a recent work which had I then seen it I should have particularly noticed at the commencement of these readings. I allude to Mill's "History of British India". Endowed with great powers of reasoning, and, to judge from the information he has accumulated from a variety of sources with great assiduity of research, the abilities and the usefulness of this writer are neutralised by the supercilious contempt he invariably manifests towards everything for which he cannot find a criterion in his own mind, or which he cannot reconcile to some customary standard of thought.
"He has subjected the Hindu system to a comparison with an abstract standard of his own erection, and, as might have been expected, has condemned it as being found wanting. It is possible that his ideas of perfection are not the most correct, but admitting them to be such, the comparison is not fair. No work of man can be or is expected to be absolute, though it may be relatively perfect; and this process, therefore, is more tyrannical than the bed of Procrustes. But let the legal system of the Hindu be compared, as we have compared some parts of it, and as in justice it ought to be, not with the theories or it may be with the reveries of ultraperfectionists, but with the practical codes of other nations, and it will not be found wanting. It is to this comparison I should challenge Mr Mill... There are no doubt many points in the Hindu law which, to the preconception of a European, appear exceptionable; many there are also, for its authors were men, that are really so, and for which better provisions have been made by other legislators ancient and modern, but where is the code to which similar imperfection may not be imputed. To our own, we are attached from habit, and prepossession, therefore, makes us overlook many that perhaps exist, and we endure many that are apparent for the sake of the whole. Mr Mill's microscopic eye, however, overlooks none of them, for he seems to entertain at least as bad an opinion of the English as of the Hindu Law."
Then, Willis went on to deduce from Mill's Indian history, a few instances of the short-sightedness of mill's mind, and of the wide distance nature he has interposed between fact and speculation.
First Instance: A contemplation of the Hindu government. As the powers of government consist (ie, according to European notions) of three great branches, the legislature, the judiciary and the administrative, it is requisite to enquire in what hands these several powers are deposited, and by what circumstances their exercise is controlled and modified. As the Hindu believes that a complete and perfect system of instruction which admits of no addition or change, was conveyed to him from the beginning by the divine being for the regulation of his public as well as private affairs, he acknowledges no laws but those which are contained in the sacred books. From this, it is evident that the only scope which remains for legislation is confined within the limits of the interpretations which may be given to the holy text.
"The Brahmans however enjoy the undisputed prerogative of interpreting the divine oracles, for though it is allowed to the two classes in the degree to give advice to the king in the administration of justice, they must, in no case, presume to depart from the sense which it has pleased the Brahmans to impart upon the sacred text. The power of legislation therefore exclusively belongs to the priesthood. The exclusive right also of interpreting the laws necessarily confers upon them in the same unlimited manner as the judicial powers of government. The king, though the ostensibly supreme judge, is commanded always to employ Brahmans as councillors and assistants in the administration of justice, and whatever construction they put upon the law, to that his sentence must conform. A decision of the king contrary to the opinion of the Brahmans would be absolutely void; the members of his own family would refuse its obedience. Whenever the king in person discharges not the office of judge, it is a Brahman, if possible who must occupy his place; the king, therefore, is no far from possessing the judicative power, that he is rather the executive officer by whom the decisions of the Brahmans are carried into effect.
Ellis said the interpretation of exemption to Brahmans from capital punishment in Hindu law, by Europeans is founded on a misconception. Ellis recorded that this is one of the innumerable misconceptions of their situation in Hindu society which has been obtained among foreign nations from the earliest times. He explained:
Ellis said the interpretation of exemption to Brahmans from capital punishment in Hindu law, by Europeans is founded on a misconception. Ellis recorded that this is one of the innumerable misconceptions of their situation in Hindu society which has been obtained among foreign nations from the earliest times. He explained:
"Not the least gross of these is that which ascribes to the whole body a sacerdotal character, and which Sir William Jones has unaccountably countenanced by translating in the institutes of Manu the words used to designate an individual of the fist caste Brahmanah and Viprah, priest, and the feminine of them Brahmin and Vipra, priestess; the latter mistake is particularly remarkable, as the wives of Brahmans, though they assist in the private devotion of their family, not only never officiate as priestesses, but have no part in the public ceremonies of religion, except as spectators. The truth is, the first caste of Hindus, though from their birth eligible to the priesthood, are not priests ipso facto; the conduct of religious ceremonies, though the first, is only one of their many duties; they are also professionally, the savants or men of letters, to whom the interests of science and literature are committed in all its branches; the hereditary teachers of the other classes, both in sacred and profane learning and especially, the lawyers. To these different occupations and their subordinate divisions they applied themselves as to so many distinct professions the respective members of which never interfered with each other, any more than our divines do with our physicians, or either of them with our jurists. And hence has proceeded the several distinctions actually obtaining among the Brahmans in southern India: there are first Vaidica Brahmana sub-divided into Sastrias, men of science; Acharya, teachers; and Pujarie, priests; the two formers of these may perform the higher offices of religion in the solemn sacrifices &c. or act as Purohita, domestic chaplains etc. but the last only conduct the public worship in the temples, and are considered an inferior class. Secondly, Lougica or Niyogi Brahmana, secular Brahmanas, gain their livelihood through the several worldly occupations permitted to the caste. These distinctions now become hereditary, but as this, if founded solely on custom, and not on law, the restriction is more nominal than real as any Niyogi family may become Vaidica if the head of it qualifies himself by the study of the sciences, and vice Versa any Vaidica may betake himself to worldly pursuits, sinking thereby perhaps in the estimation of his fellows, but not forfeiting his privileges and distinctions as a Brahman."
After delineating the various courts provided for the administration of justice by the Hindu laws, the respective jurisdiction of these courts and the precision with which the powers of the king or presiding magistrate and the assessors or judges are distinguished, Ellis turns to another passage in Mill's work, to show a second instance of misconception about Hindus. Ellis continues:
"After the care of protecting the nations from foreign aggression or from internal tumult, the distribution of justice was the next duty of the king. In the first stage of society, the leader in war is also the judge in peace, and the legal and judicial functions are united in the same person. Various circumstances tend to produce this arrangement. In the first place, there are hardly any laws; and he alone is entitled to judge who is entitled to legislate since he must make a law for every occasion; in the next place, rude people, unused to obedience would hardly respect inferior authority. In the third place, the business of judicature is so badly performed as to interrupt but little the business or pleasures of the king, and a decision is rather an exercise of arbitrary will and power, than the result of an accurate investigation. In the fourth place, the people are so accustomed to terminating their own disputes, by their own cunning or force, that the number of applications for judicature is comparatively small. As society advances, a set of circumstances, opposite to them, are gradually introduced; laws are made which the judge has nothing to do but apply, the people learn the advantage of submitting to inferior authority, a more accurate administration of justice is demanded, and cannot be performed without a great application both of attention and of time; the people learn that it is for the good of the community that they should not terminate and that they should not be allowed to terminate either by force or fraud, their own disputes. The administration of justice becomes then too laborious to be either agreeable to the king or consistent with the other services which he is expected to render and the exercise of judicature becomes a separate employment, the exclusive function of a particular order of men.
After delineating the various courts provided for the administration of justice by the Hindu laws, the respective jurisdiction of these courts and the precision with which the powers of the king or presiding magistrate and the assessors or judges are distinguished, Ellis turns to another passage in Mill's work, to show a second instance of misconception about Hindus. Ellis continues:
"After the care of protecting the nations from foreign aggression or from internal tumult, the distribution of justice was the next duty of the king. In the first stage of society, the leader in war is also the judge in peace, and the legal and judicial functions are united in the same person. Various circumstances tend to produce this arrangement. In the first place, there are hardly any laws; and he alone is entitled to judge who is entitled to legislate since he must make a law for every occasion; in the next place, rude people, unused to obedience would hardly respect inferior authority. In the third place, the business of judicature is so badly performed as to interrupt but little the business or pleasures of the king, and a decision is rather an exercise of arbitrary will and power, than the result of an accurate investigation. In the fourth place, the people are so accustomed to terminating their own disputes, by their own cunning or force, that the number of applications for judicature is comparatively small. As society advances, a set of circumstances, opposite to them, are gradually introduced; laws are made which the judge has nothing to do but apply, the people learn the advantage of submitting to inferior authority, a more accurate administration of justice is demanded, and cannot be performed without a great application both of attention and of time; the people learn that it is for the good of the community that they should not terminate and that they should not be allowed to terminate either by force or fraud, their own disputes. The administration of justice becomes then too laborious to be either agreeable to the king or consistent with the other services which he is expected to render and the exercise of judicature becomes a separate employment, the exclusive function of a particular order of men.
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| James Mill |
"To this pitch of civilisation, the Hindu had not attained. The administration of justice by the King in person stands in the sacred books as a leading principle of their jurisprudence, and the revolution of ages has introduced no change in the primaeval process."
The text of Brihaspati, as quoted in the Madhavaviyam, respects the four superior courts, the authorities there cited relative to the fifteen inferior courts of the Hindus. Legal definitions are also there. "These", Ellis says, "are to be sought in the Siddhanta of the Digests and commentators, where it is as perfect as human reason can make them. Mr Mill, ignorant of this, and careless as ignorant, ventures on this subject".
Then, Ellis exposes the third instance of dishonesty in Mill:
"Concerning definitions, the Hindu Law is in a state which requires a few words of elucidation. Before the art of writing, laws can have little accuracy of definition; because, when words are not written, they are seldom exactly remembered; and a definition whose words are constantly varying is not, for the purpose of the law, a definition at all. Notwithstanding the necessity of writing to produce fixed and accurate definitions in law, the nations of modern Europe have allowed a great proportion of their laws to continue in the unwritten, that is, the traditionary state, the state in which they lay before the art of writing was known. Of these nations, none have kept in that barbarous condition so great a proportion of their law as the English. From the opinion of the Hindus that the Divine Being dictated all their laws, they acknowledge nothing as law but what is found in some one or other of their sacred books. In one sense, therefore, all their laws are written. But as the passages which can be collected from these books leave many parts of the field of law untouched, in these parts the defect must be supplied either by custom or the momentary will of the judges.
"Again, as the passages which are collected from these books, even where they touch upon parts of the field of law, do so in expressions to the highest degree vague and indeterminate, they commonly admit of any of several meanings and very frequently are contradicted and opposed by one another. When the words in which laws are couched are, to a certain degree, imperfect, it makes but little difference whether they are written or not; adhering to the same words is without advantage when these words secure no sameness in the things which they are made to signify. Further, in modern Europe, the uncertainty adhering to all unwritten laws, that is, laws the words of which have no certainty, is to some degree, though still a very imperfect one, circumscribed and limited, by the writing down of decisions. When, on any particular part of the field, several judges have all, with public approbation, decided in one way; and when these decisions are recorded and made known, the judge who comes after them has strong motives, both of fear and hope, not to depart from their example. The degree of certainty, arising from the regard for uniformity, which may thus be produced, is, from its very nature, infinitely inferior to that which is the necessary result of good definitions rendered unalterable by writing; but such as it is, the Hindus are entirely deprived of it. Among them, the strength of the human mind has never been sufficient to recommend effectually the preservation, by writing, of the memory of judicial decisions. It has never been sufficient to create such public regard for uniformity, as to constitute a material motive to a judge; and as kings, and their great deputies, exercised the principal functions of judicature, they were too powerful to be restrained by a regard to what others had done before them. What judicature would pronounce was, therefore, almost always uncertain, almost always arbitrary."
Ellis correctly points out that the Institutes of Manu, in the actual administration of Hindu jurisprudence, especially in later times, had never ranked higher than a mere textbook, which the Indian jurists considered of little authority unless accompanied by some commentary, or incorporated into some Digest. Then Ellis points out:
"The definitions of the Hindu Law are not to seek in the textbooks from which chiefly Mr Mill would seem to have derived his notion of them, his references in this part of his work being confined to Manu and "Halhead's Gentoo Code", which is scarcely anything more than a collection of texts. These it may be conceded to him leave many parts of the field of law untouched, "which however, are neither supplied by customs nor the momentary will of the judge" but by the conclusions or decisions of a succession of writers, ancient and modern, belonging to various schools as deduced, not from the ordinances only, but the principles of the textbooks, by reasoning, and which varied by the tenets of their respective schools, have become the actual definitions of practical law. Further, Mr Mill prefers written definition to the concurrent authority of previous decisions, the degree of certainty concerning them being, he says, infinitely inferior to that which is the necessary result of good definition rendered unalterable by writing; and he adds, "but such as it is, the Hindus are entirely deprived of it. Among them, the strength of the human mind has never been sufficient to recommend effectually the preservation by the writing of the memory of judicial decisions.
"Indeed, the Hindus do not at present possess the advantage of the record of previous judicial decisions, nor is this to be wondered at, for, admitting it to be possible that the operation of the courts in Westminster Hall was suspended for two centuries what, notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject, would become of the nicer distinctions and minuter definitions, now well known and observed in practice, but which are to be found in the head of the sound lawyer, rather than in any written record? What would really become of them may be inferred from the doubts and difficulties that attended the proceedings when the obsolete mode of trial by judicial combat was lately about to be restored in the appeal of murder against Richard Ashton. But though the Hindus have not now the advantage of recorded judicial decisions, they must, in a certain degree have had it when their courts were in full operation; and with them, as with us, it must in many respects have from its nature been oral rather than written; and they actually have that to which the author states this to be infinitely inferior, they have "good definitions rendered unalterable by writing."
Ellis then declares that there are innumerable instances in Hindu laws that prove his position. This means the kinds of James Mill and Colebrooke were ignorant manipulators.
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1. Trautmann, Thomas. R. (2006). Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras. Yoda Press, pp 75-76
2. The Dictionary of National Biography mentions Cholera as the cause of his death. But Trautmann writes he died of accidental self-poisoning.(Trautmann 2006, p. 76). An obituary published in the London Literary Gazette and Journal in 1820 says "a fatal accident terminated his life."3. Trautmann 2006, p. 74
4. Blackburn, Stuart (2006). Print, folklore, and nationalism in colonial South India. Orient Blackswan. pp. 92–95.5. Trautmann 2006, p. 73
6. Blackburn, Stuart (2006). Print, folklore, and nationalism in colonial South India. Orient Blackswan. pp. 92–95
7. Trautmann, Thomas. R. (2006). Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras. Yoda Press, pp 151-170
8. Rocher, Ludo (1984). Ezourvedam: a French Veda of the eighteenth century. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 18–20
9. A stone inscription found on the walls of a well at the Periya Palayathamman temple at Royapettai indicates Ellis' regard for Thiruvalluvar. It is one of the 27 wells dug on the orders of Ellis in 1818 when Madras suffered a severe drinking water shortage. In the long inscription, Ellis praises Thiruvalluvar and uses a couplet from Thirukkural to explain his actions during the drought. When he was in charge of the Madras treasury and mint, he also issued a gold coin bearing Thiruvalluvar's image. The Tamil inscription on his grave makes note of his commentary on Thirukkural.Mahadevan, Iravatham. "The Golden coin depicting Thiruvalluvar -2". Varalaaru.com (in Tamil).
10. Zvelebil, Kamil (1992). Companion studies to the history of Tamil literature. Brill. p. 3.
11. Narayanan, M. G. S., "Further Studies in the Jewish Copper Plates of Cochin." Indian Historical Review, Vol. 29, no. 1–2, Jan. 2002, pp. 66–76.
12. Noburu Karashmia (ed.), A Concise History of South India: Issues and Interpretations. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. 136, 144. Narayanan, M. G. S. (2013), Perumāḷs of Kerala. Thrissur (Kerala): CosmoBooks, pp 451-52
13.Fischel, Walter J. (1967). "The Exploration of the Jewish Antiquities of Cochin on the Malabar Coast". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 87 (3): 230–248
14.Narayanan, M. G. S., "Further Studies in the Jewish Copper Plates of Cochin." Indian Historical Review, Vol. 29, no. 1–2, Jan. 2002, pp. 66–76.
15. ibid
16. Noburu Karashmia (ed.), A Concise History of South India: Issues and Interpretations. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. p. 139
17. ibid, 146-47
18. M.G.S. Narayanan (2002), Further Studies in the Jewish Copper Plates of Cochin, Indian Historical Review, Volume XXIX, Number 1-2 (January and July 2002), pp. 67–68
19. Fischel, Walter J. (1967). "The Exploration of the Jewish Antiquities of Cochin on the Malabar Coast". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 87 (3): 230–248.
20. Burnell, Arthur Coke (2008). Elements of South-Indian Palabography. BiblioBazaar. p. 35.
21. Trautmann 2006, p. 156
22. Mahadevan, Iravatham. "The Golden coin depicting Thiruvalluvar -2". Varalaaru.com (in Tamil)
23. Wujastyk, Dominik (1987). "A pious fraud: the Indian claims for pre-Jennerian smallpox vaccination.". In G J Meulenbeld; D Wujastyk (eds.). Studies on Indian medical history. Groningen: Egbert Forsten. pp. 131–167
24. Trautmann 2006, pp. 80–81
25. The Asiatic journal and monthly register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australia Vol 26. Parbury, Allen, and Co. 1828. p. 155.
26. The London literary gazette and journal of belles lettres, arts, sciences, etc. The London Literary Gazette. 1820. pp. 12.
27. Mahadevan, Iravatham. "The Golden coin depicting Thiruvalluvar -2". Varalaaru.com (in Tamil).
28. Burnell, Arthur Coke (2008). Elements of South-Indian Palabography. BiblioBazaar. p. 35
29. Trautmann 2006, pp. 151–170
30. ibid
31. From Lecture on Hindu Law by Francis W Ellis Esq. IOR: MSS European D 31: Indian Jurisprudence and Revenue, Dharampal, compiled, Sanskrit and Christianization and Ellis on Hindu Law, Ashram Prathishtan, Sevagram, 2000, pp 30-36
© Ramachandran
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