The Story of H H Wilson
It was a British doctor, who translated the Rig Veda, first into English. Born in London, Horace Hayman Wilson (1786 – 1860) studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital in London and reached Calcutta in 1808 as an assistant surgeon on the Bengal establishment of the British East India Company. His knowledge of metallurgy caused him to be attached to the mint there, where he was for a time associated with John Caspar Leyden, Scottish Indologist.
Leyden (1775-1881) was born at Denholm on the River Teviot, not far from Hawick, in the Scottish Borders. His father, a shepherd, sent him to Edinburgh University to study for the ministry. In his first Greek class, the professor asked him to translate a passage but when he stood to read he was mocked. His broad Borders accent, rough manners and unfashionable dress made him a laughing stock. However, as he spoke, his tormentors were silenced, the class was captivated by his eloquence and when he finished, they applauded. The professor knew immediately that there was something special about his young student.
Leyden was a haphazard student, apparently reading everything except theology. Though he completed his divinity course, and in 1798 was licensed to preach from the presbytery of St Andrews, the pulpit was not his vocation.
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| H H Wilson |
With Scott’s help, Leyden found a job as an assistant surgeon in India although he needed a degree in medicine before he could take up his post. Building on the foundations of the previous study Leyden returned to university, this time to the University of St Andrews, to complete his training. With the immense application, he passed the necessary exams. Before departing for India John Leyden published The Scenes of Infancy, the poem he is best remembered for. Scot said of Leyden, “Perhaps he was the first British traveller that ever sought India, moved neither by the love of wealth nor of power…”
In 1803, he sailed for Madras and worked in a local hospital there. He was promoted to be a naturalist to the commissioners going to survey Mysore, and in 1807, his knowledge of the languages of India procured him an appointment as professor of Hindustani at Calcutta; this he soon after resigned for a judgeship, and that again to be a commissioner in the court of requests in 1805, a post which required familiarity with several Eastern languages. He translated some Punjabi works into English.
At the end of 1805, he left India and sailed for Malaysia where he befriended (Sir) Stamford Raffles a young Englishman who secured his place in history some year later when he became the founder of the British colony of Singapore. Leyden spent three months with Raffles and his wife Olivia, and he found himself falling in love. He later expressed his feelings for Olivia in a poem, The Dirge of the Departed Year.
With Leyden beside him in Calcutta, Wilson became deeply interested in the ancient language and literature of India and was the first person to translate the Rig Veda into English. It was published in six volumes during 1850-1888.
He acted for many years as secretary to the committee of public instruction and supervised the studies of the Sanskrit College in Calcutta. He was one of the staunchest opponents of the proposal that English should be made the sole medium of instruction in native schools and became for a time the object of bitter attacks. On the recommendation of Indologist Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Wilson was appointed secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in 1811. He was a member of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta and was an original member of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was director from 1837 up to the time of his death. He was interested in Ayurveda and traditional Indian medical and surgical practices. He compiled the local practices observed for cholera and leprosy in his publications in the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta. (1)
Back in London, in 1832 Oxford University selected Dr Wilson to be the first occupant of the newly founded Boden chair of Sanskrit: he had placed a column-length advertisement in The Times on 6 March 1832, giving a list of his achievements and intended activities, along with testimonials, including one from a rival candidate, as to his suitability for the post. In 1836 he was appointed librarian to the East India Company. He also taught at the East India Company College. (2) In April 1834, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. (3)
He married Frances Siddons, a granddaughter of the famous actress Sarah Siddons (4) through her son George. Wilson died on 8 May 1860. (5)
It is through his vast journeys in Indian classics and scriptures that he made an indelible mark in history. In 1813 he published the Sanskrit text with a free translation in English rhymed verse of Kalidasa's lyrical poem, the Meghadūta, or Cloud-Messenger. (6) He prepared the first Sanskrit–English Dictionary (1819) from materials compiled by native scholars, supplemented by his own research. This work was only superseded by the Sanskritwörterbuch (1853–1876) of German Indologist Rudolf Roth (1821-1895) and Russian German Indologist Otto von Böhtlingk (1815-1904), who expressed their obligations to Wilson in the preface to their great works.
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| Leyden |
Rig Veda in English
Wilson's translation of Rig Veda follows the interpretation of Sayana, a renowned Indian Vedic scholar. Wilson followed the Sanskrit text printed by Muller, from a collation of manuscripts. Sayana was the brother of Madhava Acharya, the prime minister of Vira Bukka Raya, who was the king of Vijaya Nagara, in the 14th century. Both brothers were scholars.
It was the best way to do it then. It is a prose translation, not a metrical one. It is not exhaustive in notes. The first edition of the first volume of Wilson's translation of Rig Veda Sanhita, published by Allen and Co in London in 1850, was reprinted by H R Bhagavat of Pune, in 1925, with slight changes-Bhagavat followed the system of dividing the Rig Veda into Mandalas, Anuvakas and Suktas, a system generally adopted. Another edition was published by The Bangalore Printing and Publishing Company in 1946, of which C Ramanuja Aiyangar was secretary.
A German translation of Rig Veda by Max Muller was published in 1856, the birth year of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and two copies of this rare book came to Bhandarkar Institute, Pune in 2014. Max Muller was instructed by the British to conduct a study on the Vedas, as they wanted to rule India. So, Muller began his research and then translated the Vedas into English. Max Muller has written more than 64 books on the Vedas in his lifetime.
In the introduction to his English translation, Wilson records: "When the liberal patronage of the Court of Directors of the East India Company enabled Dr Max Muller to undertake his invaluable edition of the Rig Veda a wish was expressed that its appearance should be accompanied or followed by, with all convenient despatch, by an English translation. As I had long contemplated such a work and had made some progress in its execution, even before leaving India, I readily undertook to complete my labours and publish the translation." (7)
So, such translation projects were not very innocent and they were funded by the Company. Wilson also mentions in his introduction that an edition of the Vajasaneyi portion of the Yajur Veda was done by Dr Albrecht Weber in Berlin, liberally aided by the Company. The text of the Sanhita of the Sama Veda and a translation by Rev John Stevenson were published by the Oriental Translation Fund and a German translation of the same by Professor Benfey of Gottingen was also published. M Langlois produced a translation of Rig Veda in French, and Dr Friedrich August Rosen in Latin. T H Griffith published a translation of the Rig Veda in 1896.
The early 1800s saw several competing projects of opening the hitherto guarded textuality of the Veda to a wider public, both in Europe and in India. Apart from those animated by the spirit of imperial control or allegedly pure academic interest, others situated themselves within the broader goals of the new wave of missionary work in India. Among the Protestant missionaries to take an active part in projects of that sort, the figure of Rev. John Stevenson of the Church of Scotland stands out. Stevenson did pioneering work in editing and translating of the Veda, especially his work titled The Threefold Science which appeared in 1833 in Bombay.
Before Wilson's venture, the first ashtaka of Rig Veda, Ogdoad or Eighth Book of the Rig Veda had been already translated partly into English by Rev John Stevenson and Dr Roer, and fully into Latin by Dr Rosen. A translation in French by Par M Langlois (1850) extending through four ashtakas, or half the Veda, had been published in Paris. But Wilson was not aware of its existence. (8) He felt that their existence of them does not preclude the use of an English version. The work of Stevenson extends only to the first three hymns of the third section, out of the eight, which the first book, or ashtaka, consists of. Dr Roer's translation is equally limited, stopping with two sections, or 32 hymns. Both translations were printed in India.
Friedrich August Rosen (1805-1837) was a German Orientalist, brother of German Orientalist Georg Rosen and a close friend of German pianist Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He studied in Leipzig, and from 1824 in Berlin under linguist Franz Bopp. He was briefly a professor of oriental literature at the University of London and became secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1831.
His Rigvedae Specimen, excerpts from the Rig Veda based on manuscripts brought back from India by Colebrooke, were enthusiastically received by European academia as the first authentic evidence of the archaic Vedic Sanskrit language. His most important work was an edition of the entire Rig Veda, left incomplete at his premature death shortly after his 32nd birthday. His translation of the first book of the Rig Veda appeared posthumously in 1838. The remaining books remained unedited for another five decades, until the Editio Princeps of Max Müller in 1890-1892.
Dr Rosen's translation of the first book is complete in the text, but his premature death interrupted his annotations. Although executed with profound scholarship and scrupulous exactitude, Sanskrit is converted into Latin with such literal fidelity that the work is scarcely useful for the layman and could be used as a reference. The translation, according to Wilson, is subordinate to the Sanskrit text on the same page. (9)
The principle followed by M Langlois is the converse of that adopted by Dr Rosen and he avowedly sought to give to the mysterious passages of the original, a simple interpretation. He succeeded in it. At the same time, he has not been cautious in his rendering of the text sometimes and has diverged from the original phraseology. The Sanskrit Rig Veda is more than a literary composition; it supplies the most ancient Hindu value system of religious worship and social organization. If its language is not preserved erroneous views of primitive Hinduism may be produced. Langlois has made his translation from manuscript copies of the Veda and its commentary, which would be less accurate than a final edition.
The oldest authoritative texts of the Hindus are the four Vedas: Rig, Yajur, Sama and Adharva. Many passages are found in Sanskrit, some in the Vedas themselves, which limit the number to three. (10) The fourth, Atharva, though it borrows from Rig, has little in common with others. Its language is of a later era. So, it is regarded as a supplement to the other three.
The Rig Veda consists of metrical prayers, and hymns termed Suktas, addressed to different divinities, each of which is ascribed to a Rishi, a holy author. The hymns have no methodical arrangement, and there is not much connection in the stanzas. (11) Sometimes, the same hymn is addressed to different divinities. In the Veda, there are no directions for the application of Sutras, no mention of the occasions on which they are to be employed, or the ceremonies at which they are to be recited. For all this, we are indebted to an Anukramanika or index, accompanying each Veda.
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Of the Brahmana portions of Rig Veda, the most important is the Aitareya Brahmana, in which several remarkable legends are detailed. The Aitareya Aranyaka, another Brahmana of this Veda, is more mystical, of a third, the Kausitaki, little is known. The Brahmana of Yajur Veda, the Shatapatha, partakes more of the character of Aitareya. The Brahmanas of the same and Atharva are few and little known. The supplementary portions of these two Vedas are the metaphysical treatises termed Upanishads. Connected with the Vedas also are the treatises on grammar, astronomy, intonation, prosody, ritual, and the meaning of obsolete words called the Vedangas. Besides these, there are Prathisakhyas, or treatises on the grammar of Vedas, and the Sutras or aphorisms inculcating its practices.
In the Rig Veda, the number of Suktas is above a thousand, containing more than ten thousand stanzas. They are arranged in two methods: one divides them into eight Khandas (portions) or Ashtakas (eighths)., each of which is again subdivided into Adhyayas or chapters. The other plan classifies the Suktas under the Mandalas or circles, subdivided into more than a hundred Anuvakas or sub-sections. A further subdivision of the Suktas into Vargas, or paragraphs of five stanzas each is common to both classifications.
The hymns are composed in a great variety of metres, several of which are peculiar to Vedas, the richness of which evince an extraordinary cultivation of rhythmical contrivance. A large number of hymns are dedicated to Agni and Indra., the deities of fire and the firmament. For instance, of the 121 hymns contained in the first ashtaka of Rig Veda, 37 are addressed to Agni and 45 to Indra. Of the rest, 12 to Maruts or Winds and 11 to Ashwinas or sons of the Sun. Four to the personified dawn, four to the Viswadevas and the rest to inferior divinities.
Translating volume 1 of Rig Veda, Wilson concludes that the Hindus were not nomads, which is evident from the repeated allusions to fixed dwellings, villages and towns. (13) They were never behind their barbarian enemies the overthrow of whose numerous cities is so often spoken of. A pastoral people they might have been to some extent; but they were also an agricultural people to a great degree as is evidenced by their supplications for abundant rain and for the fertility of the earth, and by the mention of agricultural products, particularly, barley. (I.5.6.15). They were manufacturing people; for the art of weaving, the labours of the carpenter, and the fabrication of gold and of iron mail, are alluded to; and what is more remarkable, they were a maritime and mercantile people. (14)
Not only are the Suktas familiar with the ocean and its phenomena, but merchants have been mentioned pressing earnestly to board ship, for the sake of gain. (I.10.6.2); and there is a naval expedition against a foreign island, or continent (dwipa), frustrated by a shipwreck. (I.17.1.3-5). They must have made advances in astronomical computation, such as the adoption of an intercalary month, to adjust the solar and lunar years to each other, is made mention of. (I.6.2.8)
Civilization must have therefore made considerable progress, and the Hindus must have spread to the sea coast, possibly along the Sindhu or Indus into Kutch and Gujarat, before they could have engaged in navigation and commerce. That they had extended themselves from a more northern site, or that they were a northern race, is rendered probable from the peculiar expression used, on more than one occasion, in soliciting long life, when the worshipper asks for a hundred winters (himas), a boon not likely to have been desired by the natives of a warm climate. (I.11.7.14).
They also appear to have been a fair-complexioned people, and foreign invaders of India (I.15.7.18) Indra divided the fields, it is said, among his white-complexioned friends, after destroying the indigenous barbarian races. The expression Dasyu often recurs which is defined to signify one who not only does not perform religious rites but attempts to disturb them and harass their performers. The latter is the Aryas, the respectable, or Hindu, Aryan race. Dasyu signifies a thief, a robber. (15)
Wilson's interpretation may not be correct since the terms are used in the text as contrasted with each other, as expressions of religious and political antagonists. But Wilson infers that no violence or conjecture is required to identify Dasyu as the indigenous tribes of India, refusing to adopt the rituals of the civilized Aryas. He suggests that the political condition of the Hindus is not known except for the names of some princes. The geography of the Hindus remained the same, which it continued to be until the Muslim conquest.
Wilson, fortunately, finds that the distinctions of caste were not there. Whenever collectively alluded to, mankind is said to be distinguished into five sorts, Pancha Kshitaya. There is the term Brahmana, which doesn't have a caste sense. They are the priests. Viswamitra, who is said to be a Kshatriya by birth, exercises the functions of the priesthood, at the sacrifice of Shunashepas. There is one phrase which is in favour of considering the Brahmana as a member of a caste, as distinguished from the military caste: "If you, Indra and Agni, have ever delighted in a Brahmana or a Raja, then come hither." (I.16.3.7). But Wilson asserts that this is not decisive. But Colebrooke has translated a subsequent part, specifying the four castes. He quotes a verse from the eighth Ashtaka in the Purusha Sukta: "His mouth became a Brahmana, his arm was made a Kshatriya, his thigh was transformed into a Vaisya, from his feet sprung the Sudra." (16)
Without subscribing to Colebrooke, Wilson leaves his introduction, recommending further research.
So, who are the Dasyus in the Rig Veda?
German Indologist Hermann Oldenberg states that no distinction between historical events and mythology existed for the Vedic poets. For them, the conflict between the Aryans and Dasas extended into the realms of gods and demons with the hostile demon being on the same level as the hated and despised savages. (17)
The three words Dasa, Dasyu and Asura (danav) are used interchangeably in almost identical verses that are repeated in different Vedic texts, such as the Rig Veda, the Saunaka recension of Atharva Veda, the Paippalada Samhita of the Atharva Veda and the Brahmanas text in various Vedas. Scholars interpret Dasa and Dasyu may have been synonyms of Asura (demons or evil forces, sometimes simply lords with special knowledge and magical powers) of later Vedic texts. (18)
Kautilya's Arthashastra dedicates the thirteenth chapter on dasas, in his third book on law. This Sanskrit document from the Maurya Empire period (4th century BCE), has been translated by several authors. Shama Sastry's translation in 1915, R P Kangle's translation in the 1960s and Rangarajan's translation in 1987 all map dasa as a slave. However, Kangle suggests that the context and rights granted to dasa by Kautilya, such as the right to the same wage as a free labourer and the right to freedom on payment of an amount, distinguish this form of slavery from that of contemporary Greece. (19)
According to Arthashastra, anyone who had been found guilty of nishpatitah (ruined, bankrupt, a minor crime) may mortgage oneself to become dasa for someone willing to pay his or her bail and employ the dasa for money and privileges. (20)
British Anthropologist Edmund Leach points out that the Dasa was the antithesis of the concept of Arya. As the latter term evolved through successive meanings, so did Dasa: from "indigenous inhabitant" to "serf," "tied servant," and finally "chattel slave." He suggests the term "unfreedom" to cover all these meanings. (21)
According to historian Tony Ballantyne, Rig Veda depicts the cultural differences between the Aryan invaders and non-Aryans of the Indus valley. He states that although the inter-Aryan conflict is prominent in its hymns, a cultural opposition is drawn between Aryans and the indigenous people of North India. According to him, it depicts the indigenous tribes such as the Pani and Dasas as godless, savage and untrustworthy. Panis are cattle thieves who seek to deprive Aryans of them. He states Dasas were savages, whose godless society, darker complexion and different language were culturally different from Aryans. They are called barbarians (rakshasa), those without fire (anagnitra) and flesh-eaters (kravyada). The Aryas were on the other hand presented as noble people protected by their gods Agni and Indra. He adds that their names were extended beyond them to denote savage and barbarian people in general. He concurs that this continued into later Sanskritic tradition where dasa came to mean a slave while Arya meant noble. (22)
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1. Wilson, H. H. (1825), "Kushta, or leprosy, as known to the Hindus", Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, 1, 1-44, Wilson, H. H. (1826), "On the native practice in cholera, with remarks", Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, 2, 282-292
2. Men and Events of My Time in India by Sir Richard Temple, John Murray, London, 1882 p. 18
3. The Record of the Royal Society of London for the promotion of Natural Knowledge (Fourth ed.). London: Printed for the Royal Society. 1940.
4. Crawford, D.G. (1930). Roll of the India Medical Service. London: W. Thacker & Co. p. 58.
5. The Record of the Royal Society of London for the promotion of Natural Knowledge (Fourth ed.). London: Printed for the Royal Society. 1940.
6. Truebner & Co. (1872) publisher's catalogue entry for Megha-Duta
7. Wilson, The Rig Veda Sanhita, The Bangalore Printing and Publishing Company,1946, Introduction, p iii
8. Ibid, p ii
9. Ibid, p iv
10. Colebrooke, Henry Thomas, On the Vedas, Asiatic Researches, vol viii, p 370
11. Wilson, The Rig Veda Sanhita, The Bangalore Printing and Publishing Company,1946, Introduction, p vi
12. As in the Yanjna paribhasha of the Apasthambha, quoted by Sayana, "the name Veda is that of both Mantra and Brahmana." Sayana Acharya, Introduction, Muller's edition, p 4
13. Wilson, The Rig Veda Sanhita, The Bangalore Printing and Publishing Company, 1946, Introduction, p xxxiv
14. Ibid, p XL
15. Ibid, p XL1
16. Colebrooke, Asiatic Researches, Vol VII, p 251
17. Hermann Oldenberg (1988). The Religion of the Veda. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 81.
18. Wash Edward Hale (1999), Ásura- in Early Vedic Religion, Motilal Barnarsidass, pages 157–174
19. Kangle, R. P. (1997) [first published 1960], The Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra (Part III), Motilal Banarsidass, p. 186
20. Ibid
21. Leach, Edmund (1962), "Slavery in Ancient India by Dev Raj Chanana (Book review)", Science & Society, 26 (3): 335–338
22. Ballantyne, Tony (2016). Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire. Springer Publishing. p. 170
© Ramachandran
