SIR
WILLIAM JONES IN INDIA: AN ESTIMATE
Andhra
University
It
was in Calcutta that Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society in 1784 and
presided over its activities till 1794, the year of his premature passing away.
Jones had in mind the Royal Society and hoped that the Asiatic Society too
would, in the fullness of time, grow into a mighty lighthouse sending out rays
of knowledge in different directions. The blueprint for the functioning of
Society was given by him, and under his dynamic leadership Society explored
many areas of Asiatic knowledge and laid first few spans of the bridge of
Indo-British understanding, only boundaries were the geographical limits of
Asia and the Society included in its purview all the branches of knowledge
pertaining to this territory: ‘Man and Nature; whatever is performed by the
one, are produced by the other’. The ideal was translated into reality in more
than an adequate measure and Jone’s work during these eleven years testifies to
the notable part he played as of the great pioneering Orientalists.
Firstly,
as President of the Society, Jones, gave annual discourses and there are
addressed to different aspects of Asia–her history and geography, philosophy
and religion, art and literature. In first anniversary discourse Jones narrates
the circumstances under which he visualised the Society during his voyage to
India, and in the second, he defines the aims and objectives, and suggests true
mission of the Society: “...although we must be conscious of our superior
advancement in all kinds of useful knowledge, yet we ought not therefore to
condemn the people of Asia, from whose researches into nature, works of art,
and inventions of fancy many valuable hints may be derived for our own improvement
and advantage. If that, indeed, were not the principal object of your
institution, little else could arise from it but the mere gratification of
curiosity; and I should not receive so much delight from the humble share,
which you have allowed me to take, in promoting it”. He felt that a study of
the civil history of the various empires of Asia would be of value to the
Europeans and believed that an exploration of the vegetable systems and
mineral resources of these areas would serve the double purpose of utility and
research. He thought the Indian system of medicine too would
reveal several useful points to the Western student.
The
third anniversary discourse delivered in 1786 is a brief survey of the natural
history of the Hindus. He points out the vastness of the country and proceeds
to say that essentially the look and outlook of the Indian people remained
unchanged through the ages. He then praises the excellences of the Sanskrit
language: “The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful
structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more
exquisitely refined than either,” and affirms that these three languages must
have had a common source of origin. With regard to Indian philosophy Jones says
that ‘Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same
fountain with the sages of India;’ in the matter of religion too the deities
worshipped in India, Jones points out, were worshipped under different names in
old Greece and Italy. He then undertakes a discussion of the mythology of the
East and West with a view to determine the chronology of the Hindus. Indian art
is next dealt with by him and he convincingly establishes an affinity between
Egyptian and African art on the one hand and Indian art on the other. The
ancient legal system of the Hindus is later stressed by him–this was a field
dear to his heart which absorbed the best of his labours–and then he refers to
the Indian ethical tradition. He mentions the Hitopadesa of Vishnusarman
and says that ‘the first moral fables, which in Europe, were of Indian or
Ethiopian origin.’ He expresses the hope that if the numerous works in India in
the fields of grammar and logic, rhetoric and music were to be projected before
the world at large, the true inventive genius of India would be fully
appreciated and applauded. Jones finally refers to the affinity between the
Hindus and various other peoples–Persians and Ethiopians, Egyptians and
Phenicians, Greeks and Tuscans, Scythians and Celts, the Chinese and the
japanese–and conjectures that all these peoples proceeded from some central
country.
The
fourth discourse, delivered in 1787, was devoted to a discussion of the Arabs–their
chronology and history, language and culture. As regards
the religion of the Arabs, Jones remarks that till the time of the Mohammedan
revolution they were mostly theists, though among the lower classes a ‘stupid
system of idolatry’ prevailed. He adds that they did not have a philosophy
worth the name and that even their ethical system was quite depraved till the
time of Mohammed. Even their antiquities were not carefully preserved and
reliably described. As for arts and sciences, Jones continues, the Arabs did
not have the necessary background and climate for the cultivation of either.
They, however, excelled in poetry and rhetoric in some measure, and in military
prowess too they were redoubtable. Jones concludes the survey saying that the
Hindus and Arabs are two distinct races, although they were bound by ties of
trade and commerce from times immemorial.
The
fifth anniversary discourse, addressed to the Tartars, was delivered in 1788.
First the geography is vividly described and then Jones proceeds to point out
that the Tartars did not have any written literature or continuous literary
tradition. In religion there were probably some similarities between them and
the Arabs but of philosophy they had hardly anything and even the laws, if they
existed, were not preserved. The conclusion of Jones is noteworthy: “...the far
greater part of Asia has been peopled and immemorially possessed by three
considerable nations, whom, for want of better names, we may call Hindus,
Arabs, and Tartars; each of them divided and subdivided into an infinite number
of branches, and all of them so different in form and features, language,
manners and religion, that, if they sprang originally from a common root, they
must have been separated for ages.”
The
sixth anniversary discourse, delivered in 1789, was a study of the Persians.
Again, the geography is first dealt with and then Jones discusses three
dialects of the country–the Parsi, the Pahlavi and the Zend. Even here Jones
makes the point that there was an original affinity between the peoples of the
different parts of Asia which is borne out by a close examination of the
languages. The religion of Iran, Jones adds, was such that it inculcated a firm
belief that One Supreme God made the world by his power continually governed it
by His providence. There was also due reverence towards parents and aged persons,
a fraternal feeling towards the whole human species and a compassionate
tenderness even for the brute creation. It is, however, a matter for regret
that the system was too perfect to have a long duration. Jones then
convincingly argues that the Mahabad of ancient Iran, who was their earliest
ruler and law-giver and who had thirteen descendants after his name, was no
other than Manu. In fact, the Persian Sufi cult is in many respects comparable
to the Bhakti cult in India, and this again strengthens the point that India
and Persia have an immemorial affinity, although the architecture of Persia
comes no where near its Indian version.
The
seventh discourse on the Chinese was delivered in 1790. As usual, Jones deals
with the geographical boundaries first and proceeds to say that the Chinese
were originally a particular martial race of the Hindus themselves. The Foe of
the Chinese, he argues, was no other than the Buddha of the Hindus. In racial
features and systems of ritual there might be differences because four thousand
years or more separated them.
The
eighth anniversary, dealing with the borderers, mountaineers and islanders of
Asia, was delivered in 1791. Here too Jones points to a common origin. Along
with several other historians of Indo-Aryan mythology, Jones too believed that
a close study–linguistic and historical–of the different systems of idolatry
would point to a common origin of all the racial and religious features of the
various Asiatic races. The preface to Jones’s hymns addressed to Hindu deities
contain perspicacious comments on the theme.
The
ninth discourse, delivered in 1792 and addressed to the origin of families and
nations, gathers into a single knot all the threads of the preceding essays.
Jones expresses his belief in the naturalistic theory that in the beginning
there must have existed a single pair created by God in some particular spot of
the globe and that eventually, in geometric progression, the human family
should have grown and afterwards migrated into different parts of the world. He
was also sure that this growth and migration must have taken place after
Christ, because there was no written evidence of any, certain monument, or even
probable tradition’ about still earlier periods. Jones supposed
that the history of Moses in Hebrew was more than human in its origin, and
consequently true and every substantial part of it, though possible expressed
in figurative language included that ‘the whole race of man proceeded from Iran
as from a centre, whence they migrated at first in three great colonies and
that these three branches grew from common stock, which had been miraculously
preserved in a general convulsion and inundation of this globe.’
The tenth anniversary discourse,
delivered in 1793, was concerned with Asiatic history–civil and natural. Jones
reiterates the authenticity of Mosaic history as a source of ‘revelation’ of
the primitive world and goes on to present ‘a few particular observations’ on
the history of India, which he considered the centre of their enquiries. The
very first sentence is a key beginning in metaphorical terms: “Our knowledge of
civil Asiatic history (I always expect that of the Hebrews) exhibits a short
evening twilight in a venerable introduction to the first book of Moses,
followed by a gloomy night, in which different watches are faintly discernible,
and at length we see a dawn succeeded by a sunrise more or less early according
to the diversity of regions.” Jones deplores the lack of any authoritative
history of the Hindus but feels that the Puranas and Itihasas contain
useful enough fragments of history. After a few remarks on history, Jones
passes on to geography and chronology, which, however, he leaves to two of his
colleagues–Lieutenant Wilford and Mr. Davis–for exhaustive treatment.
Jones
then proceeds to the domain of ‘nature’, as distinguished from ‘man’, and this
he divided into three areas: the other animals, the mineral substances, the
vegetables. In zoological investigation, Jones was one of those who believed
that the animals should not be treated mercilessly and reduced to
‘guinea-pigs’. With regard to metals and minerals, Jones makes a reference to
the ancient Asiatic knowledge preserved both in Persian and Sanskrit. Asiatic
botany, he finally says, would provide ample scope of fruitful exploration to
the European and adds that a study of all these aspects of Asiatic knowledge
should be adequately illumined a proper appreciation of the literatures of the
various countries.
The
eleventh and last discourse, devoted to the philosophy of the Asiatics, was
delivered by Jones in 1794 in the month of February and after a few weeks he
passed away. Philosophy, according Jones, is that which is created by the
reasoning power of man, and so Asiatic philosophy is divided into five categories:
physiology and medicine, metaphysics and logic, ethics and jurisprudence,
natural philosophy, and mathematics. All these diverse branches of knowledge
are ably surveyed by Jones and he recommends a close and interested study of
all these aspects of Asia to the Westerner.
Besides
the eleven anniversary discourses which were delivered before meetings of the
Society, Jones also published several ‘dissertations’ in the volumes of Asiatic
Researches of which he was the editor from 1789 to 1794. These learned
essays are no less noteworthy for their rare versatility and rich
informativeness.
The
first of his notable dissertations was the Orthography of Asiatic Words in
Roman Letters, finished in 1786. The essay is a unique linguistic
contribution. Jones felt that there was need for a fool-proof and scientific
system of transliteration which was based on a close acquaintance of Hindu
phonemics. He filled the inadequacy of the Roman orthography, which was
incapable of representing all the English sounds, especially the vowel sounds,
by using the French diacritical marks over the vowels. Thus, “he had devised a
miniature, first International Phonetic Alphabet for four languages,
specifically ruling out the representation of Chinese dialects by his system.”
The
second dissertation, On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India, first
written in 1784 and revised subsequently, is again a perceptive essay on
Indo-Aryan mythology. Jones suggests four principal sources of all mythology:
historical or natural, truth perverted into a fable by ignorance, imagination,
flattery or stupidity; a wild admiration of the heavenly bodies, and the
systems and calculation of astronomers; the creation of divinities by the magic
of poetry; and ethics and metaphysics that tend to objectify metaphors and
allegories as deities. Jones is struck by the concept of ‘three’ as common to
both Hindu and Western systems of pantheism and tries to suggest quite a few
parallelisms. He succeeds in convincingly establishing a common source of
polytheism for the Indian, Italian and Greek systems. Although the prefaces to
the nine hymns to Hindu deities throw suggestive hints, it was through this
essay that Jones gave the Westerner a first idea of the fascinating subtleties
of Indo-Aryan mythology.
Another
important theme which attracted the attention of Jones is the chronology of the
Hindus. He was the first European scholar to turn to this subject. He
establishes, in his essays, a plausible consistency between the Western and
Eastern concepts of chronology. He identifies the Sandrocottus referred to by
Megasthenes and other Greek historians as chandragupta Maurya, and this was a
useful hint which prompted several historians to revise their notions and see
Indian history in proper perspective.
On
the Musical Modes of the Hindus, written in 1784 and
later enlarged, is a fascinating treatise on Indian music. In this Jones
expounds the philosophy of music and analyses its technique with a rare
critical acumen. The last sentence–“I must now with reluctance bid farewell to
a subject, which I despair of having leisure to resume” –is eloquent about his
intense love for the subject of Indian music.
An
Essay on the Poetry of the Eastern Nations, written during
the same period, is alike remarkable for the brilliant exposition of Arabic
poetry. He expresses his belief that if Eastern poetry–Arabic poetry in
particular–is studied by the Westerners, “a new and ample field would be opened
for speculation; we should have a more extensive insight into the history of
the human mind, we should be furnished with a new set of images and
similitudes; and a number of excellent compositions would be brought to light,
which future scholars might explain, and future poets might imitate.” This is
indeed more than generous praise of Eastern poetry; it is as well a fervent
plea for a literary cross-fertilisation.
There
are quite a few other essays of Jones relating to such a variety of fields as
archaeology and zoology, botany and medicine. They too exemplify Jones’s
many-sided intellectual activity as President of the Society. In his own
professional field as a jurist, Jones tried his best to preserve the legal
tradition of the Hindus, and the fact that he could not complete The
Ordinances of Manu–the Indian law digest–on which he was working with such
tenacity and vigour till the time of his passing away, is only a cruel decree
of fate.
The
eleven discourses delivered before the Asiatic Society and the very many notes
and dissertations included in the volumes Asiatic Researches constitute
a valuable part of Jones’s work are remarkable both for the variety of the
subjects discussed or introduced and for the clues and cues thrown out.
Whatever he touched upon, whether it is music or mathematics, science or
religion, literature or history, he brought an open and zealous mind to bear
upon the work. Whatever the subject, it is always a labour of love and there is
never the taint of dogma. They evidence a true spirit of inquiry and appropriately
show in action the ideals of the Society of which Jones was the distinguished
President. Campbell’s praise that “in the course of a short life Sir William
Jones acquired a degree of knowledge which the ordinary faculties of man, if
they were blessed with antediluvian longevity, could scarcely hope to surpass,”
is no formal tribute but rather the just description of the reality, for in a
short span of forty-six years Jones encompassed so wide a spectrum of
knowledge.
During
the period 1784-89, Jones published his translations from the Sanskrit, and the
nine hymns to Hindu deities and The Enchanted Fruit. This marks a yet
different stage in Jones’s Oriental work, for here his critical appreciation of
Asiatic culture matured into creative communion. He was the first Westerner to
render Kalidasa’s Sakuntalam into English and even his translations of Hitopadesa
and Gitagovinda, parts of the Veda and Bhajagovinda are
equally notable. They all reveal the work of a great pioneer and deserve
attention for their fidelity and viability, and compare very favourably with
later renderings.
The
Enchanted Fruit is an impressive poem about the five
Pandavas and their consort, Draupadi. It is, however, the nine hymns to Hindu
deities that mark the culmination of Jones’s work as an Orientalist. These
hymns are addressed to Kamadev, the Hindu god of love, Prakriti–as Durga and as
Bhavani–Indra, Surya, Lakshmi, Narayana, Saraswati and Ganga. Each hymn is
preceded by an argument which throws light on the relevant aspect of Indian
mythology. Though the hymns demand separate attention, even a rapid survey is
not full without a reference to A hymn to Narayana, which is rightly
regarded as the best of the hymns. Here is beauty of form and thought doubled
by an imaginative identification on the part of the poet. The poem is an
ineluctable vivification of the story of creation. The hymn begins with an
address to the Spirit of Spirits:
Spirit
of spirits, who, through ev’ry part
Of
space expanded and of endless time,
Beyond
the stretch of lab’ring thought sublime,
Badst
uproar into beauteous order start,
Before
Heav’n was, Thou art!
It
was only at His bidding and through His ‘mystic love’ that things in
creation sprang to life. This ‘illusive operation’ is performed by Him through
the agency of Brahma. Whatever exists and is visible is only a manifestation of
God but is not real. It is this transcendental sense of the One that
makes Jones’s poetic emotion reach a point of sublimity:
My
soul absorb’d One only Being, knows,
Of
all perceptions One abundant source.
Poetry here blazes with
pure incandescence and feeling rises to climatic heights. The hymn stands out
in the entire series as the most convincing. East and West do seem to draw
closer, and the fusion of Eastern and Western poetic traditions that Jones
throughout his critical writings wanted his countrymen to attempt, he so ably
accomplished in the hymns. The dry neo-classical tradition is richly
revitalised and one even discerns the shadows of the coming Romantic Movement.
On a total view, one finds that the Indian period of
Jones from 1783 to 1794 in Calcutta was purposive though short. It was not only
the best part of his life, but the most glorious period in the history of the
Asiatic Society. As commentator and critic, translator and poet, administrator
and jurist, he strove to bring his native and adopted countries together for
mutual benefit. He was a true linguist in employing language as an instrument
of cultural dissemination. He translated from such a variety of Asiatic
languages, enriched English literature and orientalised many an English poet.
Fully human and richly humanistic, he trusted India and was accepted by it. It
is men like him that imparted a higher purpose to the British rule in India,
and the Indians too are grateful because he initiated the phenomenon of the Indian Renaissance.