SANSKRIT AND THE BRITISH DESIGN TO CONVERT HINDUS

The 1857 Rebellion Ended the Design

The East India Company, with the blessings of the British government, had chalked out a plan to convert Indians to Christianity, through Sanskrit. This was aimed especially at the upper strata of the Hindu society, and with this aim, the Boden Sanskrit professorship was established at Oxford University in 1832 with money bequeathed to the university by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Boden, a retired soldier in the service of the East India Company, to assist in the conversion. (1)

Colonel Boden served in the Bombay Native Infantry of the Company from 1781 until his retirement in 1807. He moved to Lisbon, Portugal, for the sake of his health, and died there on 21 November 1811. His daughter Elizabeth died in August 1827, and Boden's will provided that his estate should pass to the University of Oxford to establish a professorship in Sanskrit. His purpose, as set out in his will of 15 August 1811, was to convert the people of India (2) to Christianity "by disseminating a knowledge of the sacred scriptures among them". (3) Elizabeth was buried in a vault at Holy Trinity Church, Cheltenham, where a memorial stone carries an extract from Boden's will about the bequest, and records that Boden's estate was worth about £25,000 in 1827. (4) Oxford university accepted Boden's bequest in November 1827, and the first professor, Horace Hayman Wilson was elected in 1832. (5) Boden's bequest was also used to fund the Boden Scholarship, awarded "for the encouragement of the study of, and proficiency in, the Sanskrit Language and Literature". (6)

An editorial in The Times in 1860 said that the professorship was "one of the most important, most influential, and most widely known institutions at Oxford, not to say in the whole civilised world." (7) It paid between £900 and £1,000 per year for life. (8)

The first two Boden professors were elected by Oxford graduates, as the university's statutes instructed: Horace Hayman Wilson won by a narrow majority in 1832; there was a hotly contested election in 1860, as the rivals, Max Muller and Moniere- Williams, both claimed to be best at fulfilling Boden's intention of converting India to a Christian nation. They presented different views about the nature of Sanskrit scholarship. Reforms of Oxford implemented in 1882 removed mention of Boden's original purpose of conversion of Indians from the statutes. (9)

Horace Wilson

Four of the first five professors were born in British India or had worked there. Sir Monier Monier-Williams (professor 1860–99) held the chair the longest, and a deputy was appointed to carry out his teaching duties for the last 11 years of his life.

The first and second Boden professors were chosen by Convocation, the governing body, comprising all who had graduated with a master's degree or a doctorate. In 1832, the voters had a choice of two candidates: Horace Hayman Wilson and William Hodge Mill. Wilson, a surgeon by training, worked in India for the East India Company and was involved in scholarly and educational activities. (10) Mill had been the principal of Bishop’s College, Calcutta, since 1820. (11) 

William Hodge Mill (1792–1853) was an English churchman, to the core. He took deacon's orders in 1817, and the priest's in the following year and continued residence at Cambridge.  In 1820 he was appointed the first principal of Bishop’s College, Calcutta, then just founded, under the superintendence of Bishop Thomas Fanshawe Middleton. There he assisted in the publication of works in Arabic, of which he had already gained some knowledge, and addressed himself to the study of the Indian vernaculars and Sanskrit. He co-operated in the work of the Sanskrit and other native colleges. He was also a leading member of the Bengal Asiatic Society (vice-president 1833–7) and supported the society's Journal, which was then just founded. He also deciphered several inscriptions, then little understood, especially those on the pillars at Allahabad and Bhitari. Mill's health obliged him to return to Europe in 1838. He was appointed in 1839 chaplain to William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, and in the same year Christian Advocate on the Hulse foundation at Cambridge. In 1848 he became Regius Professor of Hebrew at the same university, with a canonry at Ely Cathedral. His lectures were chiefly on the text of the Psalms. His major work is Christa-saṅgītā (Calcutta, 1831, 8 vol; 2nd edition, 1837), a translation of the Gospel story into the metre and style of the Sanskrit purānas; it was originally suggested to Mill by a Hindu pundit, who was the main author of the first canto.  Other works of the same period are a Sanskrit translation of the Sermon on the Mount, and contributions to the Arabic translation of the Anglican prayer book. His Christian Advocate's publication for 1840–4, ‘On the attempted Application of Pantheistic Principles to the Criticism of the Gospel,’ appeared in two editions, and is mainly directed against David Strauss, German theologian.

In the 1832 contest, Wilson was seen by detractors as too close to Hindu leaders to be appointed to a post which had the purpose of converting India to Christianity, and his links to the theatre in Calcutta were considered unwanted. (12)

Nevertheless, he defeated Mill by 207 votes to 200 when the election was held on 15 March 1832. (13) Another candidate, Graves Haughton, a professor at the East India Company College, withdrew from the election in favour of Wilson, one of his former pupils, as he did not want to split the loyalties of the common circle. For his "candid and honourable conduct," he received a written address of appreciation signed by two hundred members of the university, including professors and the heads of seven of the colleges. (14)

Wilson died on 8 May 1860. The election for his successor came during the public debate about the nature of British missionary work in India,  after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The East India Company, which controlled the British territories until they were absorbed into the British Empire in 1858, had a general policy until 1813 of non-interference with Indian religion. Christian missionaries required a licence to proselytise. Most could operate without a licence, except for Evangelicals, who were too radical, when other Christians were chastened to be tolerant of other faiths. As the Evangelical movement grew in strength, it pressed for greater efforts to bring Christianity to India, and the Company relaxed its approach to missionaries in 1813. (15)

After 1858, the British government was reluctant to provoke further unrest by interfering with Hinduism. Still, many of the British rulers in India were themselves Evangelicals sympathetic to efforts to convert the country. As religious historian Gwilym Beckerlegge has said, "the furtherance of Christian mission had become inextricably bound up with attempts to define Britain's role in India and indeed to justify Britain's presence in India." (16) The issue was whether Britain was there simply to govern India or to "civilise" it and if the latter, whether to draw up or destroy India's existing culture and religion. (17) Many of those who supported increased missionary work in India, says Beckerlegge, regarded the events of 1857 as "nothing less than a divine judgment" on Britain's failure to bring Christianity to the country. (18)

There were two schools of thought on whether Sanskrit should be taught to help the administration and conversion of India, or for its own merits. The East India Company had instructed its employees in Sanskrit at its college at Haileybury, Hertfordshire, and the College of Fort William in Calcutta, to educate them in Hindu culture. For some, this led to an interest in Hinduism as revealed in the Sanskrit texts. This was in contrast to continental Europe, especially Germany, where scholars examined Sanskrit as the mother of all languages, as part of the "science of language", comparative philology, rather than for reasons of imperialism. Few European scholars visited India, but many British Sanskritists had lived and worked there. (19) According to American academic Linda Dowling, some uncivilised British scholars in other fields had strong doubts about Sanskrit, as a "crude linguistic forgery pieced out of Latin and Greek", or as proving little "except a thoroughly unwelcome kinship between Briton and Brahmin." (20)

Thus, the 1860 election for Boden professorship came at a time when opinions were divided on whether greater efforts should be made to convert India or whether to remain sensitive to Hinduism.

After Wilson's death, although five men indicated their intent to seek the chair or were proposed in their absence, there were only two candidates left in the race: Monier Williams and Max Müller. The candidacy of Edward Cowell, Professor of Sanskrit at the Government College in Calcutta, was announced in The Times on 28 May 1860. It said that Wilson had pronounced him "eminently qualified" to succeed him. (21) He later wrote from India refusing to stand against Müller. (22) Ralph Griffith, a former Boden scholar professor at the Government Sanskrit College in Benares, announced his candidacy in August 1860 but withdrew in November. (23) James R. Ballantyne, principal of the college in Benares, was proposed in June 1860 by friends based in England, who described him as the "chief of British Sanscrit scholars". (24)

Moniere Williams was an Oxford-educated Englishman who had spent 14 years teaching Sanskrit to those preparing to work in British India for the East India Company. (25) Müller was a German-born lecturer at Oxford specialising in comparative philology. (26)Williams laid great stress in his campaign on Boden's intention that the holder should assist in converting India through the dissemination of the Christian scriptures. (27) Müller's view was that his work was of great value to missionaries, and published testimonials accordingly, but was also a worthy end in itself. (28)

Müller was from the German duchy of Anhalt-Dessau and took up Sanskrit at university as an intellectual challenge after mastering Greek and Latin. (29) At this time, Sanskrit was a new subject of study in Europe, and its connections with the traditional classical languages attracted interest from those examining the history of languages. (30) He obtained his doctorate from Leipzig University in 1843, aged 19, and after a year studying in Berlin, he began work in Paris on the first printed edition of the Rig Veda. A brief visit to England for research in 1846 turned into a lifelong stay. The Prussian diplomat Baron von Bunsen and Wilson persuaded the directors of the East India Company to provide financial support for Oxford University Press to publish the Rig Veda. Settling in Oxford in 1848 Muller continued his Sanskrit research, becoming Taylorian Professor of Modern European Languages in 1854 and a fellow of All Souls College in 1858, (31) "an unprecedented honour for a foreigner at that time", according to his biographer, Nirad C. Chaudhuri. (32)

Williams, in contrast, worked on later material and had little time for the "continental" school of Sanskrit scholarship that Müller exemplified. Williams regarded the study of Sanskrit as a means to an end, namely the conversion of India to Christianity. In Müller's opinion, his own work, while it would assist missionaries, was also valuable as an end in itself.

Williams was the son of an army officer and was born in India. He studied briefly at Balliol College, Oxford, before training at Haileybury for the civil service in India. The death of his brother in battle in India led him to return to Oxford to complete his degree. He also studied Sanskrit with Wilson before teaching it and other languages at Haileybury from 1844 until 1858, when it closed following the Indian rebellion of 1857. (33) He prepared an English–Sanskrit dictionary, at Wilson's prompting, which the East India Company published in 1851; his Sanskrit–English dictionary was supported by the Secretary of State for India. (34) According to Dutch anthropologist Peter van der Veer, Williams "had an Evangelical zeal" in line with the views that had inspired Boden to establish the chair. (35)

Both men battled for the votes of the electorate, the Convocation of the university, consisting of over 3,700 graduates, through manifestos and newspaper correspondence. Williams laid great stress in his campaign on the intention of the original founder of the chair, that the holder should assist in converting India through the dissemination of the Christian scriptures.

Müller announced his candidacy on 14 May 1860, six days after Wilson's death. (37) His submission to Convocation referred to his work in editing the Rig Veda, saying that without it missionaries could not fully learn about the teachings of Hinduism, which impeded their work. He, therefore, considered that he had "spent the principal part of my life in promoting the object of the Founder of the Chair of Sanskrit." (38) He promised to work exclusively on Sanskrit and said that he would provide testimonials from "the most eminent Sanskrit scholars in Europe and India" and from missionaries who had used his publications to help "overthrow the ancient systems of idolatry" in India. (39) He was able to provide a list of missionary societies that had requested copies of the Rig Veda from the East India Company, including the Church Missionary Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. (40)

Müller's view was that his work on the Rig Veda was of great value for missionary work, and published testimonials accordingly. He also wanted to teach broader subjects such as Indian history and literature to assist missionaries, scholars, and civil servants – a proposal that Williams criticised as not by the original benefactor's wishes. The rival campaigns took out newspaper advertisements and circulated manifestos, and different newspapers backed each man. while Müller was German, some of the newspaper pronouncements in favour of Williams were based on a claimed national interest of having an Englishman as a Boden professor to assist in converting India.

Williams declared his intention to stand for election on 15 May 1860, one day after Müller. (41) In his written submission to Convocation, he emphasised his suitability for appointment in light of Boden's missionary wishes. After giving details of his life and career, his experience in Sanskrit obtained at Haileybury, he stated that for the past 14 years "the one idea of my life has been to make myself thoroughly conversant with Sanskrit, and by every means in my power to facilitate the study of its literature." (42) He assured voters that, if elected, "my utmost energies shall be devoted to the one object which its Founder had in view;—namely 'The promotion of a more general and critical knowledge of the Sanskrit language, as a means of enabling Englishmen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion.'" (43) Unlike Müller, he regarded the study of Sanskrit "as chiefly a means to the missionary conversion of the Hindus rather than as an end in itself", as Dowling puts it. (44) In this way, Dowling says, he could attempt to deflect attention from his "modest abilities in classical Sanskrit" when compared to Müller's "internationally acknowledged achievements". (45) Moreover, the appeal to Boden's original intentions came during a period when Convocation tended to pay little attention to the expressed wishes of benefactors. (46)

In August 1860, Müller wrote to the members of Convocation about his plans to teach a broad range of topics in addition to Sanskrit, including comparative philology, Indian history, and literature. Simply teaching the language "would be but a mean return" for Boden's generosity, he wrote. (47) In this way, he would help to supply "efficient" missionaries, "useful" civil servants, and "distinguished" Boden scholars. (48)

Moniere Williams

In turn, Williams wrote that if Boden had left instructions that the man elected should be the one "most likely to secure a worldwide reputation for the Sanskrit Chair, I confess that I should have hesitated to prosecute my design." (49) However, this was not the case and it would be "unjustifiable" in terms of the statutes governing the chair if the professor were to lecture on wider topics. In his view, the Vedic literature was "of less importance" and the philosophical literature was "very mystical and abstruse", whereas "the classical or modern" period which includes the laws, two heroic poems, and the plays was the "most important". (49) Reminding his readers that he had edited two Sanskrit plays, he stated that the literature of the third period constituted the Sanskrit scriptures, not ("as has hitherto been believed") the Veda, "still less the Rig Veda". (50) He commented that Müller's edition of the Rig Veda was requiring "an expenditure of time, labour, money, and erudition far greater than was ever bestowed on any edition of the Holy Bible", adding that Boden did not intend to "aid in the missionary work by perpetuating and diffusing the obsolescent Vedic Scriptures." (51) He said his own approach to Sanskrit scholarship, with his dictionaries and grammar books, was "suited to English minds", unlike Müller's "continental" and "philosophical" approach, which dealt with texts no longer relevant to modern Hindus that missionaries would not benefit from studying. (52)

In a letter to The Times published on 29 October 1860, Müller took issue with Williams. To the claim that it would be unjustifiable to teach history, philosophy, and other subjects as a Boden professor, he quoted from one of Wilson's public lectures in which he had said that it had always been his intention to offer "a general view of the institutions and social condition, the literature, and religion of the Hindus." (53) He noted that he had published in all three areas into which Williams divided Sanskrit literature, and disputed Williams's views on the relative importance of Vedic literature concerning a review of one of his publications by Wilson. Williams, he said, "stands as yet alone" in asserting that the heroic poems and the plays, not the Vedas, were the real scriptures. (54) He refused to accept Williams's estimate of the labour involved in the edition of the Rig Veda, and said that to compare his little effort with that carried out on the Bible was "almost irreverent". (55) He rebutted the claim that Boden would not have wanted the Vedic scriptures to be supported. He said that the Bishop of Calcutta, George Cotton had written that it was of "the greatest importance" for missionaries to study Sanskrit and its scriptures "to be able to meet the Pundits on their own ground", and that the bishop's view was that nothing could be more valuable in this work than Müller's edition, and Wilson's translation, of the Rig Veda." (56)

After this letter, Williams complained about Müller conducting his campaign in the newspapers and misrepresenting what Williams was saying. (57) Müller asked three professors and the Provost of Queen's College to consider the accuracy of his letter, and they pronounced in his favour. (58) In Beckerlegge's view, all these replies and counter-replies did was "illustrate the increasingly heated tone of the exchanges" between the two men and their supporters. (59) It was "as if the protagonists were prospective members of Parliament". (60) Insults regarding the nationality of Max Müller and the proficiency of Monier Williams as a Sanskritist were being bandied back and forth by their supporters. (61) One of the Boden scholars at Oxford, Robinson Ellis, said Williams had not been able to prove that he could read a Sanskrit text. When challenged, he later amended this to a claim that Williams could only read a text when he could compare it to another one, describing this as "mechanical labour which is paid for at the public libraries at Paris and Berlin at the rate of half a crown a year." (62)

Each had a committee of helpers; Williams had two, one in London, the other in Oxford. (63) He spent over £1,000 on his campaign – as much as the Boden professor was paid in a year. (64) In June 1860, Müller complained in a letter to his mother about having to write to each one of the "4,000 electors, scattered all over England"; he said that sometimes he wished he had not thought of standing for election, adding "if I don't win, I shall be very cross!" (65)

The rival campaigns took out newspaper advertisements and circulated manifestos, and different newspapers backed each man. (66) A public debate raged about Britain's role in India particularly after the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58, whether to convert India or whether to remain sensitive to local culture and traditions. (67) Although generally regarded as superior to Williams in scholarship, (68) Müller had the double disadvantage of being German and having liberal Christian views. (69).

According to Beckerlegge, there was a view held by many of those involved in the keenly fought struggle between Williams and Müller that more depended on the result than simply one man's career – missionary success or failure in India, "and even the future stability of British rule in this region," in the light of events in India in 1857, might depend on the abilities of the Boden professor. (70) Victory would depend on each side's ability to persuade non-resident members of Convocation to return to Oxford to cast their votes. (71)  Müller was backed by scholars of international merit, whereas Williams was able to call upon Oxford-based academics and those who had served in India as administrators or missionaries. (72) Both claimed support from Wilson – "as if the principle of apostolic succession was involved in the appointment", says Chaudhuri. (73) The Times reported on 23 May that friends of Williams placed considerable weight upon a private letter to him from Wilson, "indicating Mr Williams as his probable successor." (74) In return, Wilson was revealed to have said "two months before his death" that "Mr Max Müller was the first Sanskrit scholar in Europe". (75) The source of this information was W. S. W. Vaux, of the British Museum, who described his conversation with Wilson in a letter to Müller in May 1860. In reply to Vaux's comment that he and others wanted Wilson's successor to be "the finest man we could procure", Vaux quoted Wilson as saying that "You will be quite right if your choice should fall on Max Müller." (76)

The Times published a list of leading supporters for each candidate on 27 June 1860, noting that many people were not declaring support for either "since they wish to see whether any person of real eminence announces himself from India".(77) Müller was backed by Francis Leighton, Henry Liddell and William Thomson (the heads of the colleges of All Souls, Christ Church, and Queen's), Edward Pusey, William Jacobson and Henry Acland (the Regius Professors of Hebrew, of Divinity, and of Medicine) and others. Williams had the declared support of the heads of University and Balliol colleges (Frederick Charles Plumptre and Robert Scott), and fellows from ten different colleges. (78)

As Beckerlegge has stated, "voting for the Boden Chair was increasingly taking on the appearance of being a test of patriotism." (79)

On 5 December 1860, two days before the election, friends of Müller published an advertisement in The Times to list his supporters, in response to a similar record circulated on behalf of Williams. By then, Müller's list included the heads of 11 colleges or halls of the university, 27 professors, over 40 college fellows and tutors, and many non-resident members of the university including Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford and Sir Charles Wood, the Secretary of State for India. (80) A list published on the following day added the name of Charles Longley, Archbishop of York, to Müller's supporters. (81) The public supporters for each candidate were about the same in number, but while Müller was backed by "all the noted Orientalists of Europe of the age", Williams's supporters "were not so distinguished", according to Chaudhuri. (82)

One evangelical publication, The Record, contrasted the two candidates: Müller's writings were "familiar to all persons interested in literature, while they have destroyed confidence in his religious opinions"; Williams was described as "a man of sincere piety, and one who is likely, by the blessing of God on his labours, to promote the ultimate object which the founder of the Professorship had in view."(83) The Homeward Mail, a London-based newspaper that concentrated on news related to India (84) asked its readers whether they wanted "a stranger and a foreigner" to win, or "one of your own body". (85) A writer in The Morning Post said that voters should "keep the great prizes of the English universities for English students". (86) The Morning Herald said that it was "a question of national interest" since it would affect the education of civil servants and missionaries and therefore "the progress of Christianity in India and the maintenance of British authority in that empire". (87) It anticipated that Britain would be ridiculed if it had to appoint a German to its leading academic Sanskrit position. (88)

An editorial in The Times on 29 October 1860 called Muller "nothing more nor less than the best Sanscrit scholar in the world." (89) It compared the situation to the 1832 election when there had also been a choice between the best scholar (Wilson) and a good scholar "who was held to have made the most Christian use of the gift" (William Hodge Mill). (90) Williams, it said, appeared as "the University man ..., the man sufficiently qualified for the post, and, above all, as the man in whose hands, it is whispered, the interests of Christianity will be perfectly safe." (91) His proposal not to teach history, philosophy, mythology or comparative philology "seems to strip the subject very bare" and would, it thought, leave the post as "an empty chair". (92) It stated that Müller "best answers to the terms of Colonel Boden's foundation." (93) His field of study – the oldest period of Sanskrit literature – "must be the key of the whole position", whereas Williams was only familiar with the later, "less authentic, and less sacred" writings. (95) The editorial ended by saying that Oxford "will not choose the less learned candidate; at all events, it will not accept from him that this is the true principle of a sound Christian election." (96)

Max Muller

Edward Pusey, the influential "high church" Anglican theologian associated with the Oxford Movement, wrote a letter of support to Müller, reproduced in The Times. In his view, Boden's intentions would be best advanced by electing Müller. Missionaries could not win converts without knowing the details of the religion of those with whom they were dealing, he wrote, and Müller's publications were "the greatest gifts which have yet been bestowed" on those in such work. (97) He added that Oxford would gain by electing him to a position where Müller could spend all his time on work "of such primary and lasting importance for the conversion of India."(98) Beckerlegge finds Pusey's support noteworthy, since Pusey would not have agreed with Müller's particular "broad" approach to Christianity, and was thus providing a judgment on the academic abilities of the candidate best placed to advance missionary work in India. (99) One anonymous writer of a letter to the press in support of Müller, shortly before the election, expressed it thus: "A man's personal character must stand very high, and his theological opinions can afford but little ground for animadversion on either hand, when he unites as his unhesitating supporters Dr Pusey and Dr Macbride" (100) – a reference to John Macbride, "a profoundly religious layman of the 'old' evangelical school". (101) However, Dowling describes Müller as "impercipient of the subtle twists of theological argument, the fine shadings and compunctions of Victorian religious feeling" – a weakness that was held against him. (102)

The election was held on 7 December 1860 in the Sheldonian Theatre. (103) Special trains to Oxford were provided for non-resident members of the Convocation to cast their votes. Evangelical clergymen turned out in force to vote. (104) Over about five and a half hours of voting, 833 members of the Congregation declared for Williams, and 610 for Müller. (105) In the end, Williams won by a majority of over 220 votes. He helped to establish the Indian Institute at Oxford, received a knighthood, and held the chair until he died in 1899. Müller, although deeply disappointed by his defeat, remained in Oxford for the rest of his career, but never taught Sanskrit there. The 1860 election was the last time that Convocation chose the Boden professor.

Historians have advanced various views as to why, even though Müller was generally regarded as the superior scholar, he lost to Williams. (106) Beckerlegge suggests several possible factors: unlike Williams, Müller was known as a writer and translator rather than a teacher of Sanskrit, he did not have links to the East India Company or the Indian Civil Service, and he had not been educated at Oxford. (107) In his obituary of Müller, Arthur Macdonell (Boden professor 1899–1926) said that the election "came to turn on the political and religious opinions of the candidates rather than on their merits as Sanskrit scholars", adding that "party feeling ran high and large numbers came up to vote." (108) Similarly, Dowling has written that "in the less cosmopolitan precincts outside Oxford ... the argument that Müller was 'not English' told heavily against him" since "the argument was unanswerable." (109) She adds that Tories opposed him for his liberal political views, traditionalist factions within Oxford rejected "Germanizing" reform, and "the Anglican clergy ... detected unbelief lurking in his umlaut". (110) The American historian Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay takes the view that the three motives for people voting against Müller cannot be disentangled. (111) Those who supported Indian missionary work, Dowling writes, saw it as the key to continued British rule, and there was no need to take a chance by electing Müller, who had "a reputation for unsound religious opinions" since Williams was a scholar "of distinction known for his conservatism and piety." (112)

Müller attributed his defeat to his German background and suspicions that his Christianity was insufficiently orthodox, factors that had been used to influence in particular those voters who were no longer resident members of the university. (113) He had lost, he wrote, because of "calumnious falsehood and vulgar electioneering tactics." (114) Williams wrote in his unpublished autobiography that he had been "favoured by circumstances" and that, unlike Müller, he had been regarded as politically and religiously conservative. (115)

Müller wrote to his mother, on 16 December:

"The last days have been full of disturbance. You will have seen by the papers that I did not get the Sanskrit Professorship. The opposite party made it a political and religious question, and nothing could be done against them. All the best people voted for me, the Professors almost unanimously, but the vulgus profanum made the majority. I was sorry, for I would gladly have devoted all my time to Sanskrit, and the income was higher; but we shall manage. " (116)

Williams served as Boden professor until he died in 1899, although he retired from teaching, while retaining the title, in 1887 because of his health. (117) The subject for his inaugural lecture was The Study of Sanskrit about Missionary Work. As the East India Company had switched to using English rather than Sanskrit or Persian for its work, "a natural source of students had already dried up not long after the Boden Chair was inaugurated [in 1832]". (118) Williams helped establish the Indian Institute at Oxford, proposing the idea in 1875 and helping to raise funds for the project on his visits to India, and persuaded the university to add a degree course in oriental studies. His publications included translations of plays and grammatical works. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1887 when he changed his surname to become Sir Monier Monier-Williams. (119)

Robinson Ellis was required to attend Williams's lectures despite his low opinions of the new professor's abilities. Williams said Ellis's "whole demeanour was that of a person who would have welcomed an earthquake or any convulsion of nature which would have opened a way for him to sink out of my sight". (120) In the end, Williams won over most of those who had opposed his election, except Müller. (121)

For Müller, losing the election was "a decisive turning point in his scholarly and intellectual life", according to Chaudhuri. (122) It meant that Müller was never to teach Sanskrit at Oxford, although he remained there until his death in 1900; (123) nor did he ever visit India. (124) Greatly disappointed by not winning the chair, Müller "regularly avoided or snubbed Monier Williams and his family on the streets of Oxford", according to Williams. (125) He was appointed to a chair of comparative philology in 1868, the first Oxford professorship to be established by the university itself without money from royal or private donations. (126) He wrote a letter of resignation in 1875 when the university proposed to award an honorary doctorate to Williams, citing a reason that he wanted to spend more time studying Sanskrit. Friends attempted to talk him out of it, and the university appointed a deputy professor to discharge his duties. (127)

Despite his electoral defeat, Muller enjoyed a high reputation at Oxford and beyond: he "occupied a central role in the intellectual life of the nation", according to Beckerlegge. (128) In Beckerlegge's opinion, Müller's views about the nature of Christian missionary work showed the difficulty at that time for Christian academics "actively working to promote a more tolerant and even-handed study of other religious traditions". (129) Dowling considers that "[w]ithin his own lifetime, Müller was discredited as a linguistic scientist" and has "little relevance" to later models of the study of language. (130)

Of the other candidates, Cowell was elected as the first Sanskrit professor at the University of Cambridge in 1867, supported by Müller and others. (131) Griffith was the principal of his college from 1861 until 1878, succeeding Ballantyne; he carried out further work in India after his retirement and died there. (132) Ballantyne resigned as principal because of health problems and returned to England, where he served as librarian to the India Office, a position that Wilson had held in addition to the professorship until he died in 1864. (133)

Boden professors, till India attained freedom:

Horace Wilson (1832-1860)

Wilson trained as a surgeon and learnt Hindustani en route to India to work for the East India Company, where he studied Sanskrit and other languages. He published articles in the journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, of which he was secretary for 21 years. Opposing compulsory Christian tuition for Indian students, he favoured traditional Indian education mixed with studies of the English language and Western learning, although he regarded Indian culture as inferior to that of the Western world. He arrived in Oxford in 1833 after his election in 1832 but moved to London in 1836 to be a librarian at East India House, the company's headquarters, travelling back to Oxford as necessary to carry out his duties. He held both positions until he died in 1860.

Monier Williams (1860-1899)

Williams was born in India, the son of an army officer. Educated in England, he trained for the East India Company's civil service at the company's college. Still, news of the death of his brother in battle in India prompted him to return to Oxford and study Sanskrit with Wilson, winning the Boden scholarship. After graduating in 1844, he was a professor of Sanskrit, Persian and Hindustani at the company's college until 1858, when it closed after the Indian rebellion. As a Boden professor, he wanted to create stronger links between India and England with the creation of a specialist institute at Oxford. His advocacy and fundraising at home and overseas led to the Indian Institute opening in 1884 (completed in 1896), and he gave about 3,000 manuscripts and books to its library. He retired from teaching in 1887; Arthur Macdonell was appointed as his deputy in 1888 and succeeded him. 

Arthur McDonnel (1899-1926)

Macdonell was born in India, where his father was a colonel in a local regiment, and lived there until he was six or seven. He spent several school years in Germany before studying Sanskrit and comparative philology at Göttingen University. He studied literae humaniores (classics) at Oxford, also winning scholarships in German, Chinese and Sanskrit. After lecturing in German and Sanskrit at Oxford and obtaining his doctorate from Leipzig, he was appointed as deputy to Monier-Williams in 1888, succeeding him in 1899. Macdonell developed the library and museum of the Indian Institute, raised funds in India for a scholarly edition of the Mahābhārata, and helped the Bodleian Library acquire many Sanskrit manuscripts. His main scholarly interest was Vedic Sanskrit, producing books on its mythology and grammar, and editions of some Vedic texts. 

Frederick Thomas (1927-1937)

Thomas read classics and Indian languages at Cambridge and then spent six years teaching before becoming assistant librarian, later the librarian, of the India Office. After 24 years as a librarian, arranging and studying the many books and manuscripts the India Office had acquired, he spent 10 years as a Boden professor. His main scholarly interests were in philology, but he also studied Buddhism, Jainism, philosophy, logic and myth. He also helped produce the standard translation of Harshacharita, a 7th-century Sanskrit biography. 

Edward Johnson (1937-1942)

After winning the Boden scholarship, Johnston served in the Indian Civil Service from 1909 to 1924, acquiring knowledge of the Indian language and culture which he improved on his return to England. He also learnt some Tibetan and Chinese to use sources in those languages. His writings drew upon his practical knowledge of Indian life. His main work was an edition and translation of Buddhacarita ("Acts of the Buddha") by the 2nd-century author Aśvaghoṣa, published between 1928 and 1936. As a Boden professor, he helped to catalogue the Bodleian Library's Sanskrit manuscripts and to improve the Indian Institute's museum. 

Thomas Burrow (1944-1976)

Burrow studied classics and oriental languages at Cambridge, spending one year of his doctorate, on Prakrits, the later languages close to Sanskrit, in London. After two further years of research in Cambridge, he was an assistant keeper in the Department of Oriental printed books and manuscripts at the British Museum for seven years, where he studied Dravidian languages, which thereafter was his main area of research and publication. As a Boden professor, he taught Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit; according to his successor, Richard Gombrich, Burrow may never have set any of his students the task of writing an essay. On field trips to India, he helped to record previously unstudied Dravidian languages. Gombrich described him as "amiable but socially passive and taciturn", and as "a single-minded scholar of great learning". (134)

Christopher Minkowski was appointed in 2005 as the eighth Boden professor.

The End of the Project

After the Sanyasi Rebellion in India during 1770-1777, twenty years after the 1857 rebellion, the conversion project was shelved by the Britishers. It was evident that the project would lead to rebellion in India. So, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act 1877 implemented a process of reform imposed by Parliament that had begun in the middle of the 19th century and empowered a group of commissioners to lay down new statutes for the university and its colleges. The commissioners' powers included the ability to rewrite trusts and directions attached to gifts that were 50 years old or more. (135) 

The statutes governing the Boden chair were revised by the commissioners in 1882; there was no mention after that of Boden's original proselytising purpose. The professor was required to "deliver lectures and give instruction on the Sanskrit Language and Literature", to contribute towards the pursuit and advancement of knowledge, and to "aid generally the work of the University." He had to provide instruction to students for at least four days each week during at least twenty-one weeks each year, without further fee, and to deliver public lectures.  Instead of election by Convocation, the new statutes provided that the electors would be the Secretary of State for India, the Corpus Christi Professor of Comparative Philology, the Sanskrit Professor at the University of Cambridge, someone nominated by Balliol College and someone nominated by the university's governing body. Revisions by the commissioners to the statutes of Balliol College in 1882 provided that the Boden professor was to be a Fellow of the college from then onwards. (136)

Further changes to the university's internal legislation in the 20th and early 21st centuries abolished specific statutes for the duties of, and rules for appointment to, individual chairs such as the Boden professorship. The University Council is now empowered to make appropriate arrangements for appointments and conditions of service, and the college to which any professorship is allocated (Balliol in the case of the Boden chair) has two representatives on the board of electors. (137) In 2008, Richard Gombrich said that he had had to "fight a great battle" in 2004 to ensure that another Boden professor was appointed to succeed him on his retirement, and credited his victory to the university's realisation. His view was that Oxford retained the chair in Sanskrit because it was the last such position in the United Kingdom.

___________________

1. Chichester, H. M.; Carter, Philip (May 2005). "Boden, Joseph (d. 1811)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press.2. At this time, "India" described the area covered by present-day India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh

3. Chichester, H. M.; Carter, Philip (May 2005). "Boden, Joseph (d. 1811)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.

4. Ibid

5. Ibid

6. Ibid

Extract from Joseph Boden's will, 15 August 1811
"I do hereby give and bequeath all and singular my said residuary estate and effects, with the accumulations thereof, if any, and the stocks, funds, and securities whereon the same shall have been laid out and invested, unto the University of Oxford, to be by that body appropriated in and towards the erection and endowment of a Professorship in the Shanskreet [sic] language, at or in any or either of the Colleges in the said University, being of opinion that a more general and critical knowledge of that language will be a means of enabling my countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion, by disseminating a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures amongst them, more effectually than all other means whatsoever." ("Oxford". The Observer. 19 November 1827. p. 2.)

7. "Editorial". The Times. 29 October 1860. p. 6.

8. Chaudhuri, Nird, Scholar Extraordinary, Chatto and Windus (1974), p. 221

9. "Boden professor of Sanskrit - About". www.balliol.ox.ac.uk. 

10. Courtright, Paul B. (2004). "Wilson, Horace Hayman (1786–1860)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press

11. Bendall, Cecil; Loloi, Parvin (2004). "Mill, William Hodge (1792–1853)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.

12. Courtright, Paul B. (2004). "Wilson, Horace Hayman (1786–1860)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.

13. "University Intelligence". The Times. 17 March 1832. p. 4.

14. Goodwin, Gordon; Katz, J. B. (January 2008). "Haughton, Sir Graves Chamney (1788–1849)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press

15. Beckerlegge, Gwilym (1997). "Professor Friedrich Max Müller and the Missionary Cause". In Wolfe, John (ed.). Religion in Victorian Britain. Vol. V – Culture and Empire. Manchester University Press. p. 186

16. Ibid, p 187

17. Ibid, 201

18. Ibid, 202

19. Ibid, 188

20. Dowling, Linda (March 1982). "Victorian Oxford and the Science of Language". Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Modern Language Association. p. 165

21. "University Intelligence". The Times. 28 May 1860. p. 6.

22. "University Intelligence". The Times. 31 October 1860. p. 4.

23. "University Intelligence". The Times. 17 August 1860. p. 7.

24. Boden Sanscrit Professorship". The Observer. 3 June 1860. p. 3.

25. Kochhar, Rajesh (March–April 2008). "Seductive Orientalism: English Education and Modern Science in Colonial India". Social Scientist. 36 (3/4): 54.

26. Beckerlegge, pp. 334–335
27. ibid, pp. 333–334
28. ibid, pp. 334–335

29. Fynes, R. C. C. (May 2007). "Müller, Friedrich Max (1823–1900)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.

30.Beckerlegge, p. 180

31. Fynes, R. C. C. (May 2007). "Müller, Friedrich Max (1823–1900)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

32. Chaudhuri, p. 220

33. Macdonell, A. A.; Katz, J. B. (October 2007). "Williams, Sir Monier Monier– (1819–1899)". In Katz, J. B (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.

34. Kochhar, Rajesh (March–April 2008). "Seductive Orientalism: English Education and Modern Science in Colonial India". Social Scientist. 36 (3/4): 54

35. Van der Veer, Peter (2001). Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton University Press p. 109

36. "University Intelligence". The Times. 16 May 1860. p.9

37. ibid

38. Beckerlegge, pp. 334–335

39. ibid

40. ibid, 203

41. "University Intelligence". The Times. 16 May 1860. p. 9

42. Beckerlegge, pp. 333–334

43. ibid

44. Dowling, p. 165

45. ibid

46. Beckerlegge, p. 197

47. ibid, p. 198

48. ibid, p 199

48. Chaudhuri, p. 223

49. "University Intelligence". The Times. 22 October 1860. p. 7

50. ibid

51. ibid

52. Beckerlegge, p. 199

53-56: Müller, Max (29 October 1860). "Sanskrit Professorship". The Times. p. 7

57: ibid

58. ibid

59. Beckerlegge, p. 201

60. Evison, Evison, Gillian (December 2004). "The Orientalist, his Institute and the Empire: the rise and subsequent decline of Oxford University's Indian Institute" p. 2

61. Thomas, Thomas, Terence (2000). "Political motivations in the development of the academic studies of religions in Britain". In Geertz, Armin (ed.). Perspectives on Method and Theory in the Study of Religion: Adjunct Proceedings of the XVIIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Mexico City, 1995. Brill Publishers. p. 85

62. Evison, p. 3.

63. Chaudhuri, p. 222

64.  Evison, p. 2

65. Müller, p. 238

66. Van der Veer, p. 108

67. Chaudhuri, p. 220

68. "University Intelligence". The Times. 28 May 1860. p. 6

69.  "University Intelligence". The Times. 31 October 1860. p. 4.

70. Beckerlegge, p. 178.

71. ibid193

72. ibid

73. Chaudhuri, p. 226

74. "University Intelligence". The Times. 23 May 1860. p. 9

75. ibid

76. Müller, p. 236

77.  "University Intelligence". The Times. 27 June 1860. p. 12

78. ibid

79. Beckerlegge, p. 180

80.  "Boden Professorship of Sanskrit at Oxford". The Times. 5 December 1860. p. 6

81.  "Boden Sanskrit Professorship". The Times. 6 December 1860. p. 8

82. Chaudhuri, p. 221

83. Quoted in Beckerlegge, p. 196

84. Kaul, Chandrika (2003). Reporting the Raj: The British Press and India C. 1880–1922. Manchester University Press. pp. 87–88

85-88. Quoted in Beckerlegge, p. 196

89-96.Editorial". The Times. 29 October 1860. p. 6

97.  Pusey, Edward (11 June 1860). "The Boden Professorship of Sanskrit". The Times. p. 9

98. ibid

99. Beckerlegge, p. 203

100. Müller, pp. 241–242

101. Simpson, R. S. (2004). "Macbride, John David (1778–1868)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press

102. Dowling, p. 164

103.  "University Intelligence". The Times. 8 December 1860. p. 9

104. Evison, p. 3

105.  "University Intelligence". The Times. 8 December 1860. p. 9

106. Tull, Herman W. (June 1991). "F. Max Müller and A. B. Keith: 'Twaddle', the 'Stupid' Myth and the Disease of Indology". Numen. Brill Publishers. 38 (3): 31–32

107. Beckerlegge, p. 195

108. Macdonell, Arthur Anthony (1901). "Obituary: Max Müller". Man. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 1: 18–23.

109. Dowling, p. 164.

110. ibid

111. Beckerlegge, pp. 202–203

112. ibid

113. ibid, 195

114. Dowling, p. 164

115. Beckerlegge, p. 195

116. Thomas, p. 86

117. Evison, p. 2

118. Thomas, p. 86

119.  Macdonell, A. A.; Katz, J. B. (October 2007). "Williams, Sir Monier Monier– (1819–1899)". In Katz, J. B (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.

120.  Evison, p. 3

121. ibid

122. Chaudhuri, p. 222

123. Kochhar, Rajesh (March–April 2008). "Seductive Orientalism: English Education and Modern Science in Colonial India". Social Scientist. 36 (3/4): 54

124. Beckerlegge, p. 188

125.  ibid, p. 183

126. Tull, Herman W. (June 1991). "F. Max Müller and A. B. Keith: 'Twaddle', the 'Stupid' Myth and the Disease of Indology". Numen. Brill Publishers. 38 (3): 31–32

127. Chaudhuri, pp. 232–234

128. Beckerlegge, p. 179

129. ibid

130. Dowling, p. 160

131. Beckerlegge, p. 173

132.  Macdonell, A. A.; Katz, J. B. (2004). "Griffith, Ralph Thomas Hotchkin (1826–1906)". In Katz, J. B (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press

133. Simpson, R. S. (2004). "Ballantyne, James Robert (1813–1864)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University

134. Gombrich, Richard F. (2004). "Burrow, Thomas (1909–1986)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press

135.  "University Intelligence". The Times. 22 November 1860. p. 10

136.  "University Intelligence". The Times. 15 May 1860. p. 9

137. Beckerlegge, pp.203, 334–335

© Ramachandran

ROTH PREPARES THE FIRST SANSKRIT GRAMMAR

Eurocentrism Is a Fad

According to folklore, Kalidasa, though handsome, was a complete dunce. When some wise men saw him sitting on the wrong end of the branch of a tree while trying to see it off, they conspired that he was the perfect match to teach the haughty princess Vidyottama a lesson. She took great pride in her intellect and vowed she would only marry someone who could defeat her in Shastrartha (scholastic debate). 

King Vikramaditya statue at Ujjain

Kalidasa was presented as a learned man who had undertaken a maun vrata (vow of silence) and would communicate only using sign language. During their exchange, the princess showed him one finger (to mean shakti is one). He thought she meant to poke his eye out, so he showed her two fingers to indicate he would poke both her eyes out. The wise men interpreted his response to mean shakti is the reflection of duality. Vidyottama then showed him her outstretched palm, to indicate the world is made of five elements. He thought she was going to slap him, and responded by showing his fist. She accepted it as a response that the five elements constitute the whole body.

The two were married, but soon after, the princess realized the truth and threw him out. Distraught, he came to the temple of Kali in Ujjain and offered to cut off his infernal tongue as a sacrifice. The goddess was appeased and granted him profound wisdom, and he took on the name Kalidasa (servant of Kali). When he returned home, Vidyottama asked in chaste Sanskrit, “Asti kashchit vaag-vishesha” (Do you have anything special to say?). In response, Kalidasa is said to have used her words to write three poems of exceptional literary beauty. He began his epic poem Kumarasambhavam with the words “asti-uttarasyaam dishi”. The lyrical poem Meghdootam began with“kashchit-kaantaa” and “vaag arthaaviva” were the opening words of Raghuvamsam.

More than twenty centuries later, the epic poet of Germany, Goethe was fascinated by Kalidasa. While Sanskrit and the Indian civilization conquered Europe culturally, two venomous ideologies made their destructive facade visible- Eurocentrism and Marxism. The religious colonizing zeal of Europe hasn't disappeared forever.

On 3 June 2022, In an interactive session at a conference in the Slovakian capital Bratislava, Indian external affairs minister S Jaishankar said: "Europe has to grow out of the mindset that its problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems."

The strong comments by Jaishankar came amid persistent efforts by the European countries to convince India to take a tough position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the argument that New Delhi may face a similar challenge from China in the future.

“In terms of the connection you are making, we have a difficult relationship with China and we are perfectly capable of managing it. If I get global understanding and support, obviously it is of help to me,” Jaishankar said.

“But this idea that I do a transaction – I come in one conflict because it will help me in conflict two. That’s not how the world works. A lot of our problems in China have nothing to do with Ukraine and have nothing to do with Russia. They are predated,” he said.

Jaishankar was asked why he thinks anyone will help New Delhi in case of a problem with China after it did not help others for Ukraine.

“Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems. That if it is you, it’s yours, if it is me it is ours. I see reflections of that,” he said.

“There is a linkage today which is being made. A linkage between China and India and what’s happening in Ukraine. China and India happened way before anything happened in Ukraine. The Chinese do not need a precedent somewhere else on how to engage us or not engage us or be difficult with us or not be difficult with us,” he said.

Jaishankar said Europe was also silent on many developments in Asia.

“If I were to take Europe collectively which has been singularly silent on many things which were happening, for example in Asia, you could ask why would anybody in Asia trust Europe on anything at all,” he said.

It was a bold attack on Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism has been defined as an attitude, conceptual apparatus, or set of empirical beliefs that frame Europe as the primary engine and architect of world history, the bearer of universal values and reason, and the pinnacle and therefore model of progress and development. (1)

In Eurocentric narratives, the superiority of Europe is evident in its economic and political systems and the quality of life enjoyed by its societies. But for Indians, Eurocentrism is more than banal ethnocentric prejudice, as it is intimately tied to and constituted in the violence and asymmetry of colonial and imperial encounters. Eurocentrism is what makes this diabolism not only possible but also acceptable or justifiable.

Significant critiques of Eurocentrism emerged in the context of post-World War II shifts in geopolitical power, including anticolonial and anti-imperial movements. Even so, institutional practices that privilege Eurocentric epistemologies continue to haunt the third world in disturbing ways. Thus, India is reinventing itself, realizing the heinous designs Europe had unleashed on India. At the same time, there were several Indologists in Europe, who had realized that India is the cradle of civilization.

Max Muller and Ralph Griffith translated the Vedas. Monier Williams wrote Hinduism and its Sources. Maurice Bloomfield prepared the monumental Vedic Dictionary, A Vedic Concordance. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the poem, Brahma. German scholars translated the Upanishads. The great German poet Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866) wrote a six-volume monumental maha kavya, Brahma Jnanam. (Die Weisheit des Brahmanen, The Wisdom of the Brahmins). Rückert, who had been an expert on Arabic and Persian, also made a name for himself with the translation of the "Mahabharata" legends.

Goethe was fascinated by Kalidasa's Abhijñānaśākuntalam.

The German poet, philosopher and Indologist, Friedrich Von Schlegel (1772-1829), published an epoch-making book in 1808, On the Language and Wisdom of India. (Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier). In the book, he argued that people originating from India were the founders of the first European civilizations. He pointed out, “India is superior in everything — intellectually, religiously, even Greek heritage seems pale in comparison.” In 1818 he became the first professor of Indology at Bonn University.

German philosopher and literary critic Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) remarked: “‘Mankind’s origins can be traced to India where the human mind got the first shapes of wisdom and virtue.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), the great German philosopher was amazed by the wisdom of the Vedas and reflected: “In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and as elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life and will be the solace of my death. They are the product of the highest wisdom. Vedas are the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world.”

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), German Romantic poet, essayist and journalist, said: “The Portuguese, Dutch and the English have been for a long time, year after year, shipping home the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.”

August Wilhelm Schlegel, professor of Sanskrit in Continental Europe produced a Latin translation of the Bhagavad Gita in 1823. It was the first Sanskrit book printed in Europe. This was the first of a self-financed, self-published series known as ‘The Indian Library’, which also included translations of the Ramayana and the Hitopadesha.

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), a Prussian philosopher and diplomat, on reading the Bhagavad Gita, said, “I read the poem for the first time today. I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having let me be acquainted with this work. It must be the most sublime thing to be found in the world.”

German Indologist and Philosopher Paul Jakob Deussen (1845-1919) was strongly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer. He was a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche and Swami Vivekananda, and even gave himself a Sanskrit name, Deva-Sena, as a mark of his admiration for Hinduism.

Werner Heisenberg (1901- 1976), Nobel Prize winner and co-founder of quantum physics, found revelations in Indian philosophy, and once articulated that “after the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of quantum physics that had seemed crazy suddenly made much more sense”.

But It was the British, who formally created the subject of Indology at the end of the 18th Century when the English scientist William Jones (1746-1794) founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Kolkata in 1784. But before that, there was a market for Sanskrit, albeit a small one.

The real beginnings of Sanskrit studies did not really kick off in Germany until the beginning of the 19th century – making Germany the first European country after the British to introduce the subject at universities, where scholars devoted themselves to translating antique religious texts and poetry.

Some of Germany's first Sanskrit scholars were famous personalities, like Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt corresponded with the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, with whom he discussed the Bhagavad Gita.

Some works by German philosophers and poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche also mention Sanskrit works and are thus proof of the attraction Sanskrit had in Europe.

Academic pursuits of the Germans were focused on the Indian traditional knowledge systems: Metaphysics, Astronomy, Mathematics, Ayurveda, Theosophy, Literature, and Folk traditions. German scholars and missionaries promoted the Indian language with translations and transliterations. The role of the Basel mission in promoting Indian languages like Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil, was tremendous.

The contribution of German missionaries to the study of Indian languages, customs, cultural identities and religious practices was part of a European agenda and unsurpassed in the thorough methodology and meticulous documentation. Even though the inadvertent religious bias was always present in their scholastic background, the academic identity they created for Indian languages was highly pedagogic. The German writers had no colonial interest in exploring classical Indian Sanskrit, and their interest in Indian classical literature was purely academic, though it was not the case with missionaries.

The Jesuit agenda

The very first Jesuit mission with the aim of Christianizing India started with the arrival of Francis Xavier (1506–52) in 1542. The Portuguese were the patrons of the Jesuit missions and they called their historiographies on India Estado da Índia. As a new religious order specifically available for overseas missions by a special vow to the pope, the Jesuits were aware of the need to produce and show the results of their engagement and to publish them, as the use of the printing press was gaining ground, for their European sponsors and benefactors.

The absence of literature on Indian civilization in European languages stimulated the production of historiography. These histories were meant to be read widely to edify European audiences and entice new recruits and provide the template for missionary action. They were both apologetic and factual, since each detail, whether about missionary successes, obstacles, or martyrdoms, was seen as a step forward to the ultimate triumph. This teleological colouring of the historiographical account was also closely interwoven with Catholic providentialism.

The earliest publications of missionary letters from India, such as the famous Copie d’une lettre missive envoyée des Indes (Paris, 1545) by Francis Xavier, can be taken as the first Jesuit historiographical effort at printing primary sources. (2)
Letters by the missionaries in India, working exclusively under the Portuguese Padroado (the royal patronage of the missions), appeared in print in the sixteenth century, often simultaneously in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, French, and Latin. What the Portuguese publications called simply Cartas (Letters), written mostly in Portuguese by the Jesuit missionaries with first-hand knowledge, were renamed histories when translated. The New Historical Reports (Nova relatio historica or Newe Historische Relation) or New Indian Relations (Indische Newe Relation) signal a transitional genre between letters (a witness report) and history. The printing press was therefore accelerating the process of making recent present events into fixed past, controlled by the Jesuit imprimatur. (3)

An unpublished history by a missionary in India is História do Malavar (History of Malabar) by Diogo Gonçalves (d.1640). The manuscript that Joseph Wicki dated to around 1615 is not simply a history of the Society of Jesus but a combination of geography and an ethnography of Kerala. (4) It seems to have been written for the Portuguese colonial administration in order to provide strategic advice for a possible conquest of or at least an attack on one of the rich temples. It was also directed at the Jesuit missionaries, offering them information and instructions on how to respond to Indian idolatry and customs.

Jesuit Indian early modern historiography reached its apogee in Daniello Bartoli’s (1608–85) multivolume oeuvre on the History of the Society of Jesus, published in Rome in Italian and Latin between 1650 and 1673 and republished many times over in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His Asian history, separate from those of Japan and China, included Xavier’s life and travel all the way to the mission at the Mughal court by Rodolfo Acquaviva (1550–83) and his martyrdom in Salcette in 1583. The Jesuits in France were bracing for a fight against articulate enemies at home, some of whom came straight from the Jesuit colleges and who were eventually associated with the Enlightenment. (5)

To win over the French literary public, the missionaries in India produced erudite and descriptive texts and letters in which distant peoples and their histories were variously portrayed as congealed in ancient (European) times or as people who “forgot” (or were tricked into forgetting) their own "Christian origins". Jesuit speculations about connections between Brahmins and Jews and many other conjectures were incorporated into some of the most important Enlightenment projects such as Bernard and Picard’s, Cérémonies et coutumes. (6)

As the opposition to the Society of Jesus grew, everything the Jesuits wrote from the missions was used against them in Protestant historiography. From the early years of the eighteenth century, a rival Christian mission in India, that of the German Pietists from Halle in Tranquebar (Tharangambadi in Mayiladuthurai district of Tamil Nadu), a Danish enclave on the Coromandel Coast, started producing their own missionary historiography. Their letters and reports were published from 1708 onwards as Hallesche Berichte and some of them were translated into English and published in Propagation of the Gospel in the East that started appearing in 1709 by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and in various other histories. (7)

The acerbic tongue among the Protestant historians of the early eighteenth century was formerly been Catholic, Mathurin Veyssière de la Croze (1661–1739). He wrote Histoire du christianisme des Indes, a history in which Jesuits, Portuguese and French, figure very prominently side by side with other Portuguese ecclesiastical actors. Croze established a very long history of Christianity in India, preserved by the St. Thomas Christians in Kerala, while he portrayed the Jesuits and the Portuguese as those who came to pervert and corrupt the pristine message and this ancient community that had originally resembled a Protestant sect.

Only Jesuit authors wrote about their own history, although in the seventeenth century, some Jesuits extended their contributions to other literary, scholarly, and historiographical projects. As Jesuit and European interest in other people’s pasts grew, although diachrony was often collapsed into ethnography, the Society of Jesus itself became increasingly subject to negative criticism. The apogee of negative assessments occurred in the years leading to and after the suppression of the order. The Jesuit historiography of the Indian Jesuit missions resumed after the restoration of the Society of Jesus and the first missionaries, who all came from France, first to Bengal (1834) and then to Tamil Nadu (1837), and who had to deal with the changed political situation in India, in France, and within the Catholic Church.

However, Jesuits’ obsessive control of their own history was compromised by other historical actors in India in the eighteenth century, in particular by information-hungry British administrators-cum-orientalists. The life of the Jesuit Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi (1680–1747) had been written in Tamil before being translated into English and published in 1840. The British were not interested as much in Beschi’s life as in his work since he was recognized by the budding British orientalists as having been an extraordinary Tamil scholar, grammarian, and poet.

The Jesuit missionary to South India, Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656) claimed that he was a Brahmin, with an agenda to convert the brahmins. He came to Cochin and went to Madurai where he behaved like a Brahmin. He wore a white dothi, sandals and a three-stringed thread across his chest. He didn't call the thread poonool, but he said it represented the holy trinity. He encouraged shaving the head and the crest of hair on the head, kudummai.

Nobili

Nobili was an Italian Jesuit who believed local customs are not contrary to Christianity. Born in Tuscany, he came to Goa in 1605. After a short stay in Cochin, he reached Madurai in November. Claiming Brahmin parentage, he approached Brahmins. From a teacher, Shivadharma, he learned Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. He applied Tamil equivalents to specific Christian terms: Kovil for Church, Arul/prasadam for Grace, Guru for the priest, Vedam for Bible and poosai for mass. Fellow Jesuit and the Arch Bishop of Goa, Cristovao de Sa e Lisboa didn't like his methods and there was a huge controversy. Pope Gregory XV stepped in and settled it-dothi, sandals and the thread got the nod of approval. Nobili died in Mylapore. Though his mission was not a success, he was later acclaimed by Max Muller, as the "first European Sanskrit scholar, a man who could quote from Manu, from the Puranas, and even from the works such as the Apastamba-sutras, which are known even at present to only a few Sanskrit scholars." There is no basis for Muller's assertion, though. It is claimed that he wrote many Sanskrit books, which perished in a fire that burned down his little hermitage when the soldiers came to seize him in 1640. He was imprisoned for two years.

Based on Nobili's Apology (1615), Dr W Caland asserts that Nobili knew the "Sanskrit in Grantha, not in Devanagari characters." (8)

Roth Writes a Sanskrit Grammar book

The first German scholar of Sanskrit was the Jesuit missionary Heinrich Roth (1620-1668). He became fluent during his stay in India. Roth became the first to write a grammar on the language, which, according to history, was never published, as Roth never managed to find the time to oversee the printing process.

Roth won a name in the west as the author of the first Sanskrit Grammar ever written in a European language. He is also known to have done preparatory work for a Sanskrit-Latin Dictionary based upon Veni Datta's Pancha Tattva Prakasa (CE 1664) and to have drawn up a preliminary system of reproducing Hindi words in Roma characters.

He was born in Germany, but died in Agra in India; also known as Henricus Rodius or Henrique Roa, (9) he was a missionary. Having been born in Dillingen and raised in Augsburg, where his father Konrad Roth (died 1637) worked as a lawyer for the Prince-Bishopric, from 1635 to 1639. His mother Maria Susanna was a homemaker.

Roth studied Rhetoric and Humanities at the University of Dillingen and Philosophy at the Jesuit college in Innsbruck. In 1639, he became a Jesuit in Landsberg, and from 1641 to 1645 taught at the grammar schools of Munich, and Ingolstadt, where he served as a master in the lower grades. After that, he returned to Dillingen to start theological studies, which he completed in Ingolstadt in 1649. The same year, he was ordained priest in Eichstätt, in minor orders by the Suffragan Bishop of Freising, Johann Fiernhamer in 1642 and in holy orders by the Prince Bishop of Eichstatt, Marquard II Schenk von Castell, in 1649.

On behalf of Francesco Piccolomini, in 1649 Roth was assigned to the so-called Ethiopian mission to India. (10) Travelling by the land route via Smyrna (1650) and Isfahan, he arrived in Goa by 1652. He worked first on the Island of Salsette off Goa, where from time to time he acted as a Portuguese interpreter. He was then sent to an embassy by one of the native princes, and via Uttarakhand finally reached the Mughal Empire and its residence in Agra in 1654. Acting as rector of the Jesuit residence in Agra since 1659, he was involved in the persecution under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb.

Next to learning Persian, Kannada and Hindi, Roth at Agra for several years also acquired a profound knowledge of classical Sanskrit grammar and literature from local pandits. The French explorer and philosopher Francois Bernier, who got acquainted with Roth in these years, got to appreciate him as one versed in expert knowledge of the culture and philosophy of religions in India. (11)

In 1662, joined by fellow Jesuit Johann Grueber, who was on his way back from China, Roth revisited Europe by the land route via Kabul and arrived in Rome in February 1664. Athanasius Kircher, in his monumental work China Illustrata, published their itinerary, Roth’s description of the Sanskrit alphabet, and some short excerpts of Roth’s other works. (12) Travelling north to Germany, Roth held some public lectures in Neuburg on the history and culture of the Mughal Empire, excerpts of which subsequently appeared in print. (13) In Vienna, Roth succeeded in gaining financial support from emperor Leopold I to have his Sanskrit grammar – the first such work ever compiled by a European, which Roth had completed in Agra by 1660 (14) – appear in print, but the project was stopped by the Jesuit Superior General Giovanni Paolo Oliva.

Ordered by Oliva to set up a Jesuit mission in Nepal, Roth travelled back via Constantinople and Surat, (15) returning to Agra by 1666, where he died in 1668 before he could embark on the Nepalese mission. His gravesite is still visible at the Padri Santos chapel in Lashkarpur, a suburb of Agra.

Heinrich Roth's Sanskrit grammar, which he had completed by 1660 in the Latin language under the title Grammatica Linguae Sanscretanae Brachmanum Indiae Orientalis (the manuscript of which is preserved today at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome) and that was augmented by preliminary studies for a complete Sanskrit-Latin dictionary, made him a pioneering scholar in modern Sanskrit studies in Europe. Further works include studies on Hindi and Devanagari alphabets, on Vedanta and on Vishnu. Also, a total of 35 letters, written by Roth from India and during his travel back to Europe, survive at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels.

                                        Gadhkalika Mandir where Kalidasa received the blessings of Kali

Apart from Roth, several other European scholars contributed to the symbiosis. They include,

Edward Roemer (1805- 1866): was a student of philosophy who learnt Sanskrit and entered the services of East India Company and came to Calcutta in 1839. By 1842 he became the librarian of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and secretary of the linguistic Department of Bengal in 1847. He became the editor of Bibliotheca Indica, a publication of the Asiatic society. He published Ten Upanishads by 1853 with original transliterations.

Hermann Brockhaus (1806 - 1877): His father had a printing house in Leipzig. He studied oriental languages and took interest in Indian mathematics. He translated the Katha Sarit Sagara into German. It was published in 1839 in Leipzig and Paris. He wanted to know the technical details of mechanically printing Sanskrit in Leipzig.

Being from a family with a publishing and printing background, he was interested in printing Sanskrit books. In 1841 he wrote a treatise on how to print Sanskrit works with Latin alphabet letters.

He studied Oriental languages at the Universities of Leipzig, Göttingen and Bonn where he was a student of August Wilhelm von Schlegel, the founder of German Indology. Afterwards, he spent several years in France and England. In 1839 he was appointed associate professor of oriental languages at the University of Jena, teaching Sanskrit and Hebrew beginning in the summer term of 1840. In 1841 Brockhaus followed an appointment to Leipzig, where in 1848 he was appointed a full professor of ancient Indian language at the university.

Herman Grassman (1809- 1877): A linguist who laid a firm foundation for Rig Vedic studies. He brought out the first German translation of the Rig Veda and the Dictionary of the Vedic Language with 2000 pages. After becoming a member of the American Orientalist Society, he became further involved in deep studies of Indian classical Literature.

Theodor Benfrey (1809-1881): He studied Panchatanthra, the Indian book of fables. It was released in 1859 and became very popular. Motifs and ideas taken from these Indian legends and fables were incorporated into several German and European folk stories.

Benfey was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Nörten, near the city of Göttingen. At the age of 16, Benfey began his studies at the University of Göttingen, where he studied Greek and Latin languages. Benfey started his teaching career that year in the city of Frankfurt, where he worked and lived for two years. He then took up a position in Heidelberg, where he remained for two years as well. These were to be the last paid teaching position that Benfey would have for nearly 14 years. In 1834, he returned to take up a position at his alma mater, the University of Göttingen.

During his first few years lecturing at the University of Gottingen, he had also begun work on a lexicon of Greek roots. It was actually by chance that Benfey was first introduced to Sanskrit: There was a wager made that Benfey could not teach himself Sanskrit in time to review a new translation of a Sanskrit book, a mere four weeks. But Benfey did teach himself the language and was able to review the Latin-Sanskrit edition of the Markandeya Purana for an academic journal. This feat of learning is made all the more impressive by the fact that the only books on Sanskrit available at the time were H. H. Wilson's Sanskrit-English Dictionary, and Monier Monier-Williams's Sanskrit grammar, neither of which were particularly helpful, as they only superficially covered Vedic Sanskrit. The much-deserved promotion to a paid, entry-level "assistant professor" did not come until 1848, and only when Benfey and his family had converted from Judaism to Christian Protestantism.

From this time Benfey's attention was principally given to Sanskrit. In 1848 he became an assistant professor, and published his edition of the Samaveda; in 1852–1854 his Handbuch der Sanskritsprache ("Manual of Sanskrit"), comprising a grammar and chrestomathy; in 1858 his Practical Sanskrit Grammar, afterwards translated into English; and in 1859 his edition of the Panchatantra. At length, in 1862, the growing appreciation of foreign scholars shamed it into making him a full professor, and in 1866 Benfey published the laborious work by which he is on the whole best known, his great Sanskrit-English Dictionary.

Hermann Otto (1815 -1904): German linguist. He brought out the Dictionary of the Sanskrit Language.

Theodor Aufrecht (1821- 1907): He was known for his great compilation of all Sanskrit manuscripts published by 1902. (16) He was the first Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at the University of Edinburgh and subsequently spent two decades as a Professor of Indology at the University of Bonn. Aufrecht was born in Leschnitz, Prussian Silesia, into a Jewish family; he later adopted Christianity. He was educated at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin, graduating in 1847, in which year he also published a treatise on Sanskrit accent (De Accentu Sancritico, Bonn, 1847), originally his dissertation.

In 1852 he moved to Oxford to assist Max Muller in preparation of his edition of Rig Veda with Sāyaṇa's commentary. He studied at the Bodleian Library and prepared a catalogue of its collection of Sanskrit manuscripts. From 1862 until 1875, he was a professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where he occupied the newly established chair of Sanskrit and comparative philology. In 1875, Aufrecht was appointed to the chair of Indology at the University of Bonn and remained in that post until 1889. Between 1891 and 1903, he published a three-volume alphabetical catalogue of all Sanskrit manuscript collections known at the time, in a work titled, Catalogus Catalogorum. This was the first such attempt to catalogue all Indian manuscripts, built on Aufrecht's previous catalogues of Sanskrit manuscripts of libraries of Trinity College, Cambridge (1869), Florence (1892), Leipzig (1901), and München (1909).

George Buhler (1837-1898): He is known for the translation of Manusmriti, published in 1886. Born in Hanover, he studied at Gottingen and received a doctorate in eastern languages, in 1856. That same year he went to Paris to study Sanskrit manuscripts, and from 1859 onwards to London, where he remained until October 1862. This time was used mainly for the study of the Vedic manuscripts at the India Office and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

He was a nominated professor of oriental languages at Elphinstone College, Mumbai, and became an education inspector of Gujarat and Sanskrit manuscripts at Bombay presidency. He spent his free time deciphering the edicts of Asoka. He wrote books on Jainism in 1887 which were published in Vienna. (17) He was interested in learning Brahmi script. He published the oldest Prakrit books in Germany. His most significant work was on the origin of the Kharoshthi script. Another publication was Digest on Hindu Laws, which contained several types of law citations. His monumental work of translations of the Apasthambha Dharma Sutra appeared in the Sacred Books of the East compiled by Max muller.

In 1880 he returned to Europe and taught as a professor of Indian philology and archaeology at the University of Vienna, where he worked until the end of his life. On 8 April 1898 Bühler drowned in Lake Constance, under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Contemporary accounts mostly attributed it to an accident, but it has been speculated that it was a suicide motivated by Bühler's connections to a scandal involving his former student Alois Anton Führer. (18)

In Germany, a Sanskrit chair was established in 1816 as Franz Bopp propounded the theory of common ancestry for Sanskrit, Greek and Latin languages. This theory led to the evolution of common Philology theory.


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1. J. Sundberg, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2009
2. For the full list of these early letters see John Correia-Afonso, Jesuit Letters and Indian History: A Study of the Nature and Development of the Jesuit Letters from India (1542–1773) and Their Value for Indian Historiography (Bombay: Indian Historical Research Institute, St. Xavier’s College, 1955)
3. Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume III: A Century of Advance (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 1986–93
4. Diogo Gonçalves, História do Malavar, ed. Joseph Wicki (Münster: Aschenforffshe Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1955. Quoted in The Jesuit Historiography of the Jesuit Missions in India by Ines G. Županov, https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/jesuit-historiography-online/the-historiography-of-the-jesuit-missions-in-india-15001800-COM_192579
5. Sylvia Murr, L’Inde philosophique entre Bossuet et Voltaire: L’indologie du père Coeurdoux, vol. 2 (Paris: EFEO, 1987), quoted in G Supanov's article.
6. Amsterdam: J.F. Bernard, 1723–37, quoted in Supanov
7. Propagation of the Gospel in the East: Being an Account of the Success of Two Danish Missionaries, Lately Sent to the East-Indies for the Conversion of the Heathens in Malabar (London: J. Downing, 1709)
8. Acta Orientalia,3 (1926) pp.38-51

9.Vogel, Clause, Heinrich Roth, NDB 22, 2005, p. 106.

10.Instructio A.R.P. Generalis Francisci Piccolomini pro P(atre) Henrico R(oth) Ingolstadio ad missionem Aethiopicam profecturo (1639); cf. Anton Huonder, Deutsche Jesuitenmissionare des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Freiburg, 1899, pp. 213 sq. (German)

11. Bernier mentions Roth several times in his Voyage dans les États du Grand Mogol, Paris, 1671 (cf. the English translation in Travels in Hindustan, new ed., Calcutta, 1904, pp. 109.)

12. Athanasius Kircher: China monumentis qua sacris qua profanis nec non variis naturae et artis spectaculis aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata. Amsterdam 1667; pp. 91 sqq. (Iter ex Agra Mogorum in Europam ex relatione PP. Joh(anni) Gruberi et H(enrici) Roth) and pp. 156-162 (Itinerarium St. Thomae Apost. ex Judaea in Indiam and Dogmata varia fabulossissima Brachmanorum); cf. also Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, London, 1866, p. 277.

13. Relatio rerum notabilium Regni Mogor in Asia, Straubing, 1665, and Aschaffenburg, 1668 (which contains the first information concerning Kabul to reach Europe)

14. Arnulf Camps, Studies in Asian Mission History 1956-1998, Leiden/Boston/Köln, 2000, pp. 75-104 (partly German).

15. Claus Vogel, An old letter from Surat written by German Jesuit Heinrich Roth. In: Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 58, 1987, pp. 609-619.

16. Heather Jane Sharkey - Cultural Conversions: Unexpected Consequences of Christian Missionary in Middle East Africa & South Asia, 2013. 

17. Missionary Pedagogy and Christianization of the Heathens: The Educational Institutions Introduced by the Basel Mission in Mangalore. German Contributions to the Study of Indian regional languages and Sanskrit official website 2014.

18. Charles Allen (2010), The Buddha and Dr Führer: An Archaeological Scandal, Penguin Books India, pp. 173–176

Other references:

1. Hosten, Jesuit Missionaries in Northern India, 1580-1803 (Calcutta, 1906), p 30

2. Balfour, Encyclopedia of India (London, 1885)

3. Ravi N C, Linking Languages Through Missions: The German Scholarship Towards Indian Pedagogy, International Journal of Academic Research, vol 2, issue 2 (5), April -June 2015

4. German Contributions to the Study of Indian regional languages and Sanskrit official website 2014.

5. Arnulf Camps, The Sanskrit Grammar and Manuscripts of Father Heinrich Roth S. J. (1620–1668). Introduction. The History of his Sanskrit Manuscripts. in Arnulf Camps- Studies in Asian mission history, 1956-1998, Leiden/Boston/Koln, 2000

6. Missionary pedagogy and Christianization of the heathens: The educational institutions introduced by the Basel Mission in Mangalore, Indian Economic & Social History Review December 2008 45: 509-551.

© Ramachandran