Is no one thinking about our classical languages?

Excerpts from an article in The Hindu on how classical languages may forever be lost (emphasis mine)

…I have been observing with extreme bemusement the debate over the classical status of Indian languages, since the issue was first raised in these pages in 2006 in the case of Kannada. Yes of course, it is dangerous to introduce invidious distinctions among languages, and yes of course, the scholarship upon which these distinctions are founded is often empirically thin and theoretically weak. But with respect to the core problem of the debate, I am reminded of what the great poet Bhartrhari said: One should not wait until the house is burning to dig a well (sandipte bhavane tu kupakhananam pratyudyamah kidrsah). And the house of Indian classical language study is not only burning, it lies almost in ashes.

Who cares if language X, Y, or Z is given “classical” status if there is no one who can read it? And if the award of classical status is a means to ensure serious scholarship, then there are a dozen or more languages in India — indeed, the entire pre-modern literary past — that is in desperate need of this recognition.

At the time of Independence, and for some two millennia before that, India was graced by the presence of scholars whose historical and philological expertise made them the peer of any in the world. They produced editions and literary and historical studies of texts in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu — and in Apabhramsha,

Assamese, Bangla, Brajbhasha, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Persian, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Urdu — that we still use today. In fact, in many cases their works have not been replaced. This is not because they are irreplaceable — it is in the nature of scholarship that later knowledge should supersede earlier. They have not been replaced because there is no one to replace them.

Two generations of Indian students have been lost to the study of classical Indian languages and literatures, in part due to powerful economic forces no doubt, but in part due to sheer neglect. The situation is dire. Let me offer a few anecdotes. A great university in the United States with a long commitment to classical Indian studies sought for years to hire a professor of Telugu literature. Not one scholar could be found who commanded the tradition from Nannaya to the present; the one professor of Telugu literature in the U.S. who does have these skills will soon retire, and when he does, classical Telugu studies will retire with him. The same can be said of many other languages, such as Bangla, where the number of scholars who can actually read not just Tagore, but Vaishnav pads or the great seventeenth century biography of Caitanya, the Caitanyacaritamrta, are few and far between.

For several years I studied classical Kannada with T.V. Venkatachala Sastry of Mysore, a splendid representative of the kind of historically deep learning I have mentioned. During all my time in Karnataka I did not encounter a single young scholar who had command over the great texts of classical Kannada — Pampa, Ranna, Ponna — to say nothing of reading knowledgeably in the extraordinary inscriptional treasure house that is Karnataka.

Today, in neither of the two great universities in the capital city of India, is anyone conducting research on classical Hindi literature, the great works of Keshavdas and his successors. Imagine — and this is an exact parallel — if there were no one in Paris in 2008 producing scholarship on the works of Corneille, Racine, and Molière. Not coincidentally, a vast number of Brajbhasha texts lie mouldering in archives, unedited to this day.

This is even truer of Indo-Persian literature. Large quantities of manuscripts, including divans of some of the great court poets of Mughal India, remain unpublished and unread. When I ask knowledgeable friends about the state of the field, I hear them speak of great scholars in their 80s – and almost no one younger.

…Nine years ago, H.C. Bhayani, the great scholar of Apabhramsha, passed away. With his death, so far as I am able to judge, the field of Apabhramsha studies itself died in India. To my eyes, the situation with Apabhramsha is symptomatic of a vast cultural ecocide that is underway in this country. And not just language knowledge is disappearing but all the skills associated with it, such as the capacity to read non-modern scripts, from Brahmi to Modi to Shikhasta.

To be sure, I have not systematically canvassed every university in India, and there are undoubtedly some exceptions to the trend I am sketching. But by no means do I think it even remotely an exaggeration to suggest that within two generations, the Indian literary past – one of the most luminous contributions ever made to human civilisation – may be virtually unreadable to the people of India.

Related Post: The ridiculous extremes of pseudo-secularism

B Shantanu

Political Activist, Blogger, Advisor to start-ups, Seed investor. One time VC and ex-Diplomat. Failed mushroom farmer; ex Radio Jockey. Currently involved in Reclaiming India - One Step at a Time.

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7 Responses

  1. Kumar says:

    Quite a bit of exaggeration here. IMO, study of classical literature in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil is thriving in Indian universities. I am not sure what the esteemed US university did in order to find a Telugu professor. There are a few available in Hyderabad alone.Some of them may not want to relocate to the US, but one or two definitely would.In fact, I am a member of a Yahoo Group on Telugu literature and I can count atleast 3 Telugu profs on that list (from the US).Sheldon Pollock should focus on Sanskrit may be?

  2. Bharat says:

    Samskrit (or anglicised Sanskrit) is the mother of all the Bharatiya bhasa/languages, except Tamil. Even todays Tamil, there are enormous amount of tat-bhava words of Samskrit (some scholars say around 50%). In fact, I experienced by talking to friends from Tamilnadu.

    In case of Telugu, there are around 70-75% words of Samskrit (tat-sama and tat-bhava). Same with Malayalam. In Bangla, more than 95% words of Samskrit (tat-sama and tat-bhava). Bangla, Telugu and Malayam are more samskrit-moy (samskritised) language than any other Bharatiya language, except Hindi (I mean Hindi which was constitutionally accpeted as language of the union, that is samskrit-moy Hindi with devnagari lipi/script).

    Now, my point is that if Telugu is a classical laguage, why not Bangla (and several other Bharatiya languages)? In fact, Bangla language has produced a great many stalwarts, including Nobel Prise winning Shri Ravindra Nath Thakur/Tagore. He has also given National Anthem of Bharat/India and even Bangladesh. Bankim Chandra has give patriotic song/slogan of the freedom movement with Vande Mataram, which is our National Song (with same status as National Anthem Jana-Gana-Mana). In termas of number of speakers, it is only second to Hindi. Nearly 250 million peoples mother tongue is Bangla (West Bengal, Tripura states of Bharat, sizable numbers in Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand Asom) and Bangladesh. And today, Bangla has become world language with ISKCON. Many writings of Gaudiya Vaishna (of Chaitanya Mahaprabu) are in Bangla.

    Its time, we promote all the Bharatiya languages without discrimination and playing language-politics. Every language is dear and sweet to the speakers and have unique place. That is why Swami Vivenanda said (originally in Bangla), “Je kona bhasa, je kona dharma, ghrinya o ashradar noy” which means, whatever language, whatever dharma, it is not detasteful or disrespectful.

  3. Kumar says:

    Bharat,

    I think you have liguistic facts wrong here.Tamil has evolved from Proto-Dravidian (South Dravidian tree).Telugu has evolved from Central Dravidian tree, and languages like Brahui (spoken by Pashtuns in Afghanistan) have evolved from North Dravidian tree.Sanskrit has influenced Dravidian languages and has in turn been influenced by them as well.Reason for Telugu having large number of Tatsama words is because of the Telugus being rulers of South India for a long time, and preferring the usage of sanskrit roots for many words related to science, governance and state craft.

    It will need a very long post to debate, discuss all these points. But if you want Classical language status for Bangla, you need to show a 1000-year literary history of the language, usage of the language in inscriptions etc even before the literary texts came, and so on.

    I feel this whole classical language status thingy has become very politicised, thanks to the DMK and UPA.

  4. Bharat says:

    @Kumar:

    First, there is nothing called Dravidian. Do we find this word before European colonisers fabricated it? They fabricated Dravidian-Aryan theory to divide Hindus/Bharatiya and rule Bharat/India. Nowhere it is mentioned in any vedic sastras that Arya word means a language group. Arya word means people who are noble, cultured. We must come out of colonial traps and try to see things as it was in our sastras and civilization.

    Regarding years for classical language status, who made the 1000 years a standard? If someone made it 1000 years, we can make it 5 years or 5 months or 5 days. I would like 5000 years as standard. And why not. In that case, other than Samskrit, no languages in the world would qualify.

    To me, other than Samskrit and to some extent Tamil, no other language should be considered (or qualify to be) as classical in Bharat. Else, all languages of Bharat should be considered classical. That ends my debate.

  5. B Shantanu says:

    Kumar, Bharat: Thanks for sharing your thoughts…Am stil traveling but will respond in detail later this week or early next week…

    thanks.

  6. Suhas says:

    This is a massive portal for Sanskrit.

    sanskrit.inria.fr/portal.html –

    Very interesting aites are there in it.

  7. Sanjay Anandaram says:

    Slightly off-topic but interesting:

    From Shishupala Vadha

    The poem is noted for its intricate wordplay, and textual complexity. The 19th canto contains the following stanza which is an example of what has been called “the most complex and exquisite type of palindrome ever invented”[1]. It was devised by the Sanskrit aestheticians, who termed it sarvatobhadra, that is, “perfect in every direction” – it yields the same text if read forwards, backwards, down, or up