Sanskrit and The Morning After

Sanskrit and the morning after:
The metaphorics and theory

of intellectual change
Brian A. Hatcher
Department of Religion, Illinois Wesleyan University
This article offers critical reflection on the work of Sheldon Pollock and Sudipto Kaviraj in
connection with the project, Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems on the Eve of Colonialism. While
both Pollock and Kaviraj have written of the death of Sanskrit, this article advises against
metaphors of historical rupture. If we wish to make sense of the fate of Sanskrit intellectuals
under colonial modernity, we should attend to processes of cultural convergence and the
concrete choices made by Sanskrit scholars. A selection from the reformist writings of
varacandra Vidysgara is examined to demonstrate one pandits ongoing engagement with
Sanskrit intellectual tradition.
Es hatte damals gerade eine neue Zeit begonnen (denn das tut sie in jedem
Augenblick),...
Robert Musil
When is the old day done? How should we understand the new? Does newness
announce itself with a bang or a drawn-out sigh? Such are the questions that come
to mind when reading through the wide range of material that has been written in
conjunction with the scholarly project entitled Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on
the Eve of Colonialism (hereafter SKSEC). Under the leadership of Sheldon Pollock,
now of Columbia University, SKSEC offers to bring sophisticated hypothesizing
to bear on some serious empirical work regarding the practice and fate of Sanskrit
intellectual life between 1550 and 1750.1 It is an ambitious undertaking, and has
1
Pollock, Introduction: Working Papers on Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems, p. 438.
The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 44, 3 (2007): 33361
SAGE Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore
DOI: 10.1177/001946460704400303
Downloaded from ier.sagepub.com at NTNL INST ADVANCE STDS on June 1, 2015
334 / BRIAN A. HATCHER
already yielded a great deal of significant scholarship.2 It has also provoked a variety of critical responses.3 The present article provides further opportunity for critical reflection on the SKSEC project, focusing in particular on the problem of
intellectual change as it has been understood by Pollock, and more recently, Sudipto
Kaviraj.
One way to begin is by noting that while Pollock promises us sophisticated
hypothesising, what he often delivers is evocative metaphor, not least the very
image enshrined in the project title, viz., the eve of colonialism. The resonances
here, whether intentional or not, are striking. For earlier generations of historians,
the eve of colonialism would have been understood in relation to the following
morning, the morning of Indias rebirth, her glorious renaissance. Indeed, the dawn
of modern India is by now a hackneyed and highly suspect trope that resonates
throughout the literature.4 As just one example, we may note that Benoy Ghosh
chose to open his widely-read study of varacandra Vidysgara with an impressionistic image of the sun setting over the Sarasvat River in the west, only to rise
anew in the east over the Bhagrath (or Hooghly) River in Calcutta at the start of
the nineteenth century.5 What he meant to conjure, of course, was the awakening
of modern India.
Clearly this and related metaphors have done a lot of work in the narration of
modern Indian history. Images of twilight, dawn and awakening have all been
invoked to make abstract notions of change, newness and historical periodisation
more concrete and compelling. But we know now that such metaphors have very
real limitations. Even Benoy Ghosh, after taking advantage of the standard trope
of Indias new dawn, went on in the passage cited above to build a bit more theory
around his metaphor:
In history, just as one age sets, another rises. The newly risen age is not free of
the remnants and traditions of the former age. Today and tomorrow are born
in the womb of yesterday. This is how we should understand the development
of the modern era [dhunika kla] or new age [navayuga] in Bengal.6
In the end, Ghosh uses the metaphor against itself, imagistically suggesting a radical dawn only to issue the disclaimer that new eras dont pop up overnight; they
emerge gradually over time.
See the project website at <www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pollock/sks/>.
For example, see Hanneder, On the Death of Sanskrit; Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and
National Culture; and Bronner and Shulman, A Cloud turned Goose: Sanskrit in the Vernacular
Millennium. I regret that the latter essay came to my attention too late to be included in the present
discussion.
4
See Hatcher, Great Men Waking, pp. 13563.
5
Ghosh, Vidysgara o Bngl Samj. p. 1.
6
Ibid., p. 1; my translation. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
2
3
Sanskrit and the morning after / 335
There is no getting around the fact that we do our thinking in, through and with
metaphors. This has been wonderfully demonstrated by George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson in their widely-read work, Metaphors we Live by. We cant banish metaphors from our thinking and we shouldnt wish to. There are times when metaphors
can make a theory more palpable, or provide a preliminary foundation upon which
to begin constructing a superstructure of theory. But it does pay to keep an eye on
our imagery. Not only do metaphors sometimes work to enshrine simplistic views
of historical change, they also often encode problematic normative judgements.
If it is always darkest before the dawn, and if India awoke on the dawn of British
rule, then what does this say about pre-British India? If the sun set on the eve of
colonialism, what did it illuminate on the morning after? Even Ghosh, who apparently wishes to question any simple dichotomy between world ages, nevertheless
vitiates his argument, not merely by conjuring twilight and dawn, but by so plainly
linking those moments to the cultural compass-points, East and West.
What do we find, then, when we examine the historiographical programme of
the SKSEC? The members of the SKSEC working group deserve credit for calling
attention to the changing fortunes of late medieval Sanskrit intellectual culture, a
period often overlooked by Indologists, who have something of a long-standing
preference for texts and thinkers from the ancient and classical periods. However,
the SKSEC may wish to keep a close watch on some of the metaphors they have
put into playand not merely in their working title. I think here especially of
Sheldon Pollocks several programmatic essays on Sanskrit intellectual traditions,
the process of vernacularisation, and the fate of Sanskrit in the modern era. A
noted scholar and prodigious writer, Pollock is also rarely at a loss for a metaphor.7
Thinking about Sanskrit and colonial modernity, he can conjure the image of late
medieval Sanskrit culture melting like so much snow in the light of a brilliant,
pitiless sun.8 There is no better illustration of his passion for metaphorics than
the title of his essay, The Death of Sanskrit. If one wanted to know what Pollock
thought of the fate of Sanskrit in the wake of European colonialism, one need
hardly read on.9 Certainly by the third paragraph of this widely-read essay, the
case is pronounced: most observers would agree that... Sanskrit is dead.10
Its a bit odd, then, that Pollock himself should go on in the same essay to remark that the very metaphor of a language being dead is deeply flawed.11 What
For a rare exception, see Pollock, Language of the Gods in the World of Men, p. 577.
Pollock, New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-Century India, p. 24.
9
The essay commences with an epigram from Paul Valry that works to wring a bit more romance
from the theme: Toutes les civilisations sont mortelles.
10
Pollock, Death of Sanskrit, p. 393. Elsewhere in the same essay, Pollock likens the bulk of
Sanskrit intellectual activity in the colonial period to the dry sediment of religious hymnology
(ibid., p. 417).
11
Ibid., p. 393.
7
8
are we to make of such claims and disclaimers, especially as they touch upon or
provide running commentary on Pollocks attempt to theorise the history of Sanskrit
intellectual life up to around 1800? How seriously are we to take the metaphor of
death? A responsible scholar in the grip of his own prose, it seems that at times
Pollock struggles against the implications of his own language. In a response to
The Death of Sanskrit, J. Hanneder accused Pollock of deploying his strong
metaphor in an elegantly suggestive but nonetheless arbitrary manner. Hanneder
wondered whether it wouldnt help to modify the death metaphor into a description of change.12 I share Hanneders discomfort with Pollocks metaphorics,
but I also wonder what Hanneder means by modifying the metaphor. Certainly
we need to think through the problem of change, but rather than revising the
metaphor, I would ask whether it is even appropriate. And even if we do decide
wed like a better metaphor, I shall suggest later on that there seem to be equally
good reasons for speaking of the life of Sanskrit during the colonial, and even
postcolonial, era.
Beginnings and Endings
Pollock has been writing for nearly a decade on the theme of Sanskrits fate from
roughly 1000 to 1800 CE. He has published numerous important essays, and now
a major tome, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men (2006). His prolific
and dense writings testify both to his erudition and deep commitment to this topic.
Regarding our understanding of historical change, he has commented wisely that
when it comes to periodisation, it is difficult to argue for any sharp discontinuity
and true innovation; he warns us not to get hooked on ideas of mistaken novelty.13
And yet in the same essay he also rather matter-of-factly speaks of vernacularisation
replacing the world of Sanskrit discourse during what he calls the vernacular
millennium.14 Such language makes it sound as if what went on was a mechanical
substitution rather than a complex convergence of norms and practices.
We shall return to the problem of conceptualising the dynamics of Sanskrit
and vernacularisation below. For now, I would like to ask whether Pollocks verdict
that Sanskrit culture had ceased to make history after 1750 doesnt sound like a
claim of historical discontinuity.15 Certainly, in some cases Pollock makes no
bones of announcing a radical break, as in an earlier essay when he argued that
vernacularisation began in South Asia around 1000 CE. It is important to notice
12
Hanneder, On the Death of Sanskrit, pp. 293 and 298. Hanneder does give Pollock credit for
owning up to the pitfalls of the language he employs (see ibid., p. 294).
13
See Pollock, Transformation of Culture-Power in Indo-Europe, pp. 249 and 253.
14
Ibid., p. 264; see also his essay India in the Vernacular Millennium, pp. 4174.
15
Pollock, Death of Sanskrit, p. 393.
that on that occasion he added unapologetically, I say began emphatically.16

Lately he has reaffirmed this conviction, arguing that some breaks are profound;
indeed, sometimes there are true caesuras.17
In his essays and in his new book, Pollock has not shied away from searching
for macro-historical kinds of analysis that will allow us to consider the development
of South Asian culture and polity in relation to developments elsewhere in the
world (notably in the imperium romanum). In fact, he suggests that a comparative
turn is imperative if we are to develop an adequate history and theory of linguistic
and cultural change in South Asia.18 Presumably, when he pronounces on the death
of Sanskrit, it is not to shock us, but to push us towards a more satisfying theoretical
account of the end of a cultural order that for two millennia exerted a transregional
influence across Asia.19 But his prose tends to combine the perspicacious and the
portentous. One thinks of the fate of Ozymandius and envisions great scene-changes
from history, magnificent ruptures in the continuum of history.20 What with
death in the air, it is hard not to detect a faint whiff of the post-mortem in Pollocks
work.21 Indeed, one important goal of the SKSEC project appears to be to understand just what died and when. At times we even venture into an otherworldly
limbo, as when Pollock tells us that Sanskrit culture led a ghostly existence in
places like Bengal on the eve of colonialism.22
When we look carefully, we notice that there are a series of beginnings and
endings in Pollocks narration of Sanskrits history. He argues that the Vedic language of the Gods began to enter the world of men around the start of the Common Era. This is one beginning. The rise of new forms of textual expression (notably
the genres of kvya and praasti), led to the creation of a culture-power formation
that would exhibit an astonishing stability over the following ten or more
centuries.23 This formation Pollock dubs the Sanskrit Cosmopolis. In time it would
come to represent a pan-regional field of discourse through which political power
was articulated by elites across South and Southeast Asia, from present-day Pakistan
to Java.
Then, after 1000 CE there was another beginning, to be precise a shift from the
no-space of the cosmopolitan world to forms of expression and textuality that
were locally rooted or regional. This process Pollock calls vernacularization.
He unravels the process into a series of interrelated component strands, but the
Pollock, Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History, p. 592.
Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, pp. 21 and 317.
18
Ibid., p. 30.
19
Pollock, Death of Sanskrit, p. 393; cp. his call for a convincing new theorization developed
from the stuff of precoloniality in his essay, India in the Vernacular Millennium, p. 42.
20
Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, p. 24.
21
Hanneder rightly says, the diagnosis resembles more a clinical death (On the Death of Sanskrit,
p. 293).
22
23
16
17
important point is that he claims that around 1000 CE, the textual and epigraphic
record reveals a series of vernacular beginnings.24 If in the beginning vernacular
authors chose to frame their projects in terms of the widely-held norms of the
Sanskrit cosmopolis, in time this deference to the cosmopolitan gave way to more
truly regional forms of textual expression, whether in Karnataka (in the twelth
century), Gujarat (in the fourteenth), or Assam (in the sixteenth). Here, then, was
another beginning, really a second vernacular revolution following upon the
vernacular start-date of 1000 CE.25
This wasnt to be the end for Sanskrit, though, since around 1500 CE Pollock
identifies yet another beginning, this time signalled by new forms of Sanskrit
intellectual life. Surveying a variety of works from the sixteenth century, Pollock
detects evidence of a self-conscious newness being articulated within a variety
of Sanskrit knowledge systems. However, this beginning was to be short-lived,
since according to Pollock, we witness a significant end after 1750. This time,
however, it was to be the very death of Sanskrit. The dawn of colonial modernity
was to initiate the final end-game, as South Asia was exposed to the worlds longest
and most fraught engagement with globalization in its harshest form.26 If there is
a once and final end to this story, it is the now imminent end of the very vernacular
millennium that had begun as early as 1000 CE.27 The cause of this end of all ends
is the unrelenting spread of the English language and the globalised capitalist
economy.
One cannot miss the drama that inheres in this ongoing narrative of births and
deaths, though one does at times tend to get turned around by all the beginnings
and endings. Pollocks chronological mapping of the ebb and flow of cosmopolitanism and vernacularity will surely open up new avenues for the investigation of
South (and Southeast) Asian polities and the study of emerging regional languages,
texts and discursive regimes (as in the case of Karnataka and the Kannada language,
so thoroughly discussed in Pollocks new book).
Finally, as the book is able to underscore, there are pressing reasons to take an
interest in these issues. This is not just the stuff of antiquarian curiosity or linguistic
showmanship. Questions of South Asian language and power bear intimately
on our understanding of such highly contentious and immensely timely matters
as the expression of nationalism, the dynamics of modern globalisation, and the
articulation and contestation of religious sentiment. Indeed, if The Language of
the Gods in the World of Men is a long read, it is because a good portion of it is
dedicated to exploring the proposition that our theoretical tools for addressing
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid.
26
Ibid., p. 578.
27
Pollock, India in the Vernacular Millennium, p. 74.
24
25
matters of language, culture and state are woefully outdated. As Pollock argues, we
desperately need to discard problematic assumptions about language, ethnos, and
nation in favour of newer and better models for thinking through local and global
history. In his estimate, this is the only hope we have of getting beyond the egregious fallacies of primordialism, linguism and nativism that haunt popular views
of religious and national identity.28
Still, when thinking about the practice of Sanskrit intellectual life over centuries
and across wide swaths of South and Southeast Asia, one wonders if Pollocks
simple distinction between Sanskrit and the vernacular (for example, Sanskrit
cosmopolitans are rootless, the vernacular is local) doesnt threaten to disguise
any number of quotidian forms of convergence, interrelationship, cross-fertilisation
and hybridity.29 Likewise, one struggles to keep in view less dramatic patterns of
historical continuity. Certainly by the time one arrives at the colonial period, it
helps little to state categorically that Sanskrit intellectual culture is dead when
one can identify any number of Sanskrit intellectuals carrying on, albeit often under
dramatically new conditions of training, patronage, material production (for
example the printing press), and cultural expression.30 To say that their Sanskrit is
no longer living is to run the risk of appearing to advocate a normative vision of
what counts as true or authentic Sanskrit. For all his suspicion of linguism and his
disdain for nativist appeals to the primordial status of language, this implicit
judgment on the authenticity of modern Sanskrit almost suggests a subtle form of
linguism in Pollocks own argument.31 In his defence, one can point to Pollocks
endeavour to historicise language, and his argument that culture is far better understood as a process rather than as a thing.32 Yet even so, his willingness to pronounce
on the lapsed vitality of Sanskrit intellectual life bespeaks an unspoken, almost
romantic view of the language.33
In a blast at current theory, Sudipto Kaviraj has declared that talk of hybridity in colonial
Bengal is totally illegitimate and thoughtless, arguingbut not showing howhybridity is different
from self-making (see Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal , esp. p. 54356).
30
Michael Dodson argues that while the SKSEC project may help delineate changes in pre-modern
Sanskrit scholarship, it clouds any useful discussion of the way Sanskrit learning was deployed in
the colonial period (see his Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture).
31
Here again, Hanneder rightly questions Pollocks implicit judgments regarding the relative quality
of Sanskrit in the colonial and pre-colonial periods, wondering whether Pollock hadnt succumbed
to the romantic Orientalist assumption that the only Sanskrit worth studying was ancient Sanskrit
(see On the Death of Sanskrit, p. 308).
32
33
In all fairness, it should be said that the conceptual issues involved here are far from lost on
Pollock. In the new book, he acknowledges that the entire question of beginnings is a vexing one
(The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, p. 284). Unfortunately, his reflections are too often
held hostage to more dramatic metaphors.
28
29
Beginnings and Endings Redux

Sudipto Kaviraj has labelled Pollocks essay on the death of Sanskrit provocative,
adding that it has worked to split historical and critical opinion regarding our
understanding of the advent of modernity in South Asia.34 Writing under the apparent imprimatur of the SKSEC (in a special issue of the Journal of Indian Philosophy), Kaviraj provides a sort of appendix to Pollocks earlier essay.35 That Kaviraj
finds Pollocks thesis a productive one may be gauged by his curiously derivative
title, The Sudden Death of Sanskrit Knowledge. The metaphor lives. If anything,
in Kavirajs hands it takes on a further measure of urgency.
He cuts right to the chase. Had Sanskrit died in India after the sixteenth century?
Initially Kaviraj says it had not. As he suggests, one need only consider the case
of a poet like Bhratacandra Ry, who flourished at the court of Krishnanagar
around 1750. Bhratacandra appears to provide ample proof that Sanskrit literary
culture was not dead in colonial India. Not only did Bhratacandra achieve some
success in composing Sanskrit verse, Kaviraj also calls attention to other measures
of his continued engagement with the world of Sanskrit knowledge, such as his
decision to compose Bengali verse according to established Sanskrit metrical
rules.36 But then Kaviraj asks, does this example refute Pollock or might it in fact
support him? Does this provide proof that Sanskrit lived on, or does it rather
suggest that by the time of Bhratacandra, Sanskrit exerted little but a distant,
decaying, indirect influence as a high reference pointa reference point so high
it was already becoming virtually inaccessible.37 Though we would need to examine the case of Bhratacandra in more detail to decide whether his use of Sanskrit
was really all prestige and no efficacy, Kaviraj spares us the trouble. As he puts
it, there is hardly any dispute that nineteenth-century India witnessed a massive
epistemological rupture that saw languages like Sanskrit (and he includes PersianArabic) replaced as a vehicle of serious, complex, highly valued knowledge by
English.38
In other words, the death of Sanskrit is official. What therefore needs our immediate attention, according to Kaviraj, are the conceptualone might say historiographicalquestions raised by this view of the arrival of European modernity.
How are we to view this rupture, this break? Kaviraj proceeds by way of problematising our notions of historical change, calling into question the fundamental
ideas we may entertain regarding the phenomenon of historical rupture. As we
have seen, the rupture occasioned by the arrival of European modernity during
Kaviraj, Sudden Death of Sanskrit Knowledge, p. 119.
Kaviraj calls it an extension (ibid. p. 120).
36
Ibid., p. 119. Here Kaviraj draws upon his earlier essay, Two Histories of Literary Culture,
esp. pp. 52829.
37
Kaviraj, Sudden Death of Sanskrit Knowledge, pp. 11920.
38
Ibid., p. 120.
34
35
the colonial period has often been evoked using the metaphor of Indias awakening to a new dawn, on which the sun of enlightenment rises over the darkened
plains of dead habit and empty custom. Thus, Rabindranath Tagore on the advent
of Rammohan Roy: When Rammohan Roy was born, all of India was enveloped
in blind darkness. Death wandered through the ether.39
That it could just as easily be shown how little true rupture there was between
the likes of Rammohan and the intellectual and religious life of the pre-modern
period has, of course, long since been demonstrated.40 This is, in fact, a perspective
preferred by Kaviraj, who rejects the views of colonial and nationalist historians
alike, who were commited to asserting the decadence of pre-modern India in order
to bolster their goals of civilising or reforming India. Appealing to Louis Althusser,
Kaviraj rejects such politically determined readings as deficient in their conceptualisation of historical change.
Yet for all that, Kaviraj cannot dispense entirely with the metaphor of rupture.
Like Pollock, he is commited to finding newness.41 Perhaps to soften the apparent
contradiction between denying rupture and asserting it, he replaces the nationalists
single dawn with a series of three historical ruptures. When it comes to newness,
Kaviraj is generous.42
The first newness is less a moment than a modality or process inherent within
any tradition. In this case the tradition is Sanskrit intellectual culture. Thinking of
the Sanskrit intellectual tradition, Kaviraj sketches a dialectic of root text and
commentary in which original texts must be made new by later commentators,
without displacing the authority of the former. Indeed, since the commentarial
supplement always threatens the original with over-simplification, the original
text must remain as a kind of counter-force to innovation. In pursuing this way of
conceptualising change within the Sanskrit tradition, Kaviraj has in mind Pollocks
thoughts on the capability of Sanskrit discourse to generate innovations ... from
within the intellectual tradition itself.43 One thinks here of Jan Heestermans much
earlier studies of Vedic thought, in which he spoke of the inner conflict of tradition
as a way to theorise change from within a tradition; in this view, the Upaniads develop from the earlier Vedic corpus not through the intrustion of alien ideas (the
famous katriya thesis), but by the inner workings of Vedic thought itself.44 Like
Heesterman, Kaviraj offers us a way to conceptualise the how of change. This is
newness number one.
This passage is discussed in Hatcher, Great Men Waking, pp. 13563.
Notably in Sarkar, Rammohun Roy and the Break with the Past.
41
42
Compare his essay on the development of modern Bengali, which identifies two beginnings
one in the tenth century and another in the nineteenth; see Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal,
p. 504.
43
44
See Heesterman, Inner Conflict of Tradition.
39
40
There is nothing particularly unique about the Sanskrit tradition in this regard.
This dialectic of change and continuity is something of a perennial dynamic of
tradition. Since Kaviraj has already invoked him, we might think once again of
Althusser, who eloquently discusses the difficulties and ambiguities involved in
theorising historical change. The challenge, as he puts it, is to deal with the discontinuity of the epistemological break within the continuity of a historical process.45 As Althusser puts it, one doesnt break with a conceptual field all in one
blow; the very words and concepts one needs to employ in order to achieve the
break are themselves part of the older order one seeks to escape.
[E]verything is in play between the rigour of a single thought and the thematic
system of an ideological field. Their relation is this beginning and this beginning
has no end. This is the relationship that has to be thought: the relation between
the (internal) unity of a single thought (at each moment of its development) and
the existing ideological field (at each moment of its development).46
In the historiography of modern South Asia, we might say that the instinct to
honour this beginning-that-has-no-end led in the 1970s to the deploying of such
concepts as the modernity of tradition or the traditional moderniser, both rubrics
that were intended to help us wrestle with the conundrum of change and continuity.47 But neither Althussers reflections on the general problem of change, nor
these handy rubrics really help us enter into the particular history of the kind of
newness said to have appeared in India around 1750.48
Kavirajs other two newnesses are intended to provide more help in this regard.
His second newness denotes a specific period or a socio-cultural context (namely
late-medieval north India) during which the changing conditions of politics, economics, patronage and inter-religious communication led Sanskrit intellectuals
to adopt new modes of practice. To this period he applies a particular label, the
newness of late medieval times (130).49 This is newness number two.
Althusser, For Marx, p. 39.
Ibid., p. 64; emphasis in original.
47
See Rudolf and Rudolf, The Modernity of Tradition, and Tripathi, Vidyasagar. Compare Pollocks
approving reference to Bronners recent depiction of Appayya Dikshita as an innovative traditionalist
in his Introduction: Working Papers on Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems, p. 434.
48
Amartya Sens recent identification of Indias argumentative tradition as a kind of cultural continuum shared among communities across millennia provides another way of thinking about continuity
and change within intellectual traditions (see Sen, The Argumentative Indian, p. 31). What are Sanskrit
knowledge systems, new and old, if not grand argumentative traditions?
49
Is this what Jadunath Sarkar had in mind when he wrote in 1948 that,
45
46
For a century before the modernisation of Bengal society and administration by what we call
the Indian Renaissance, our ancestors lived, worked and suffered in many different lines as
That something new was taking place during this period had been the burden
of an earlier argument by Pollock. In New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-Century
India, Pollock identified a variety of late-medieval Sanskrit intellectuals who
began to adopt decidedly historicist modes of understanding their work in light
of the tradition in which they worked.50 Pollock noted not just the emergence of
new genres (like that of the kaustubha), but more importantly he observed authors
refering to themselves and to others as new (using adjectives like navya, navna,
dhunika, abhinava).51 Put simply, Pollocks essay described a world in which
Sanskrit intellectuals asserted a kind of independence of thought, even a kind of
innovation, as they began to employ new or reinvigorated criteria of agument in
reflecting on their own traditions.52
This evidence of newness notwithstanding, Pollock had also noted that such
change remained in epistemic continuity with older practices, traditions and problematics.53 As such, from 1500 to 1750, newness remained in tension with oldness. That tension would, in Pollocks view, eventually prove to be the key to
Sanskrits downfall. In a rather unfortunate bit of metaphorics, Pollock evoked a
newness of intellect constrained by an oldness of the willas if the appeal to a
quasi-Augustinian anthropology could do justice to the complexity of the changes
he was interested in highlighting.54 What constitutes the will in this case, after
all? And does such a view of things require us to identify the flesh? Is there a theory
here, or just flip phraseology? In any case, the upshot of Pollocks argument is
that for all its self-generated modernity, the Sanskrit intellectual tradition would
in the end prove resourceless against the European variant.55 If this is the case,
then did Europe have a stronger intellect, or a more vital will? Perhaps just a stronger
body?56
Pollocks 2001 essay left plenty of room for theorising. Hence the advent of
Kaviraj, who is no Sanskritist, but who is certainly no stranger to theory either.
Murshid Quli Khan had taught them to do, and our British governors only added something to
the superstructure, while the basis remained the same as before (from The History of Bengal,
Muslim Period, p. 397)?
50
See Pollock, New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-Century India, p. 8.
51
We notice the prefix navya applied to the new streams of learning that began to flow out of
places like Nadia around the time of Caitanya (for example, navya-nyya, -smti, -tantra, etc.). Mohit
Ray speaks of a wave of neoism (see Nadyr sekler vidysamjer kath, p. 39).
52
Pollock, New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-Century India, p. 12. For an application of Pollocks
insights to the case of pre-modern Sanskrit philosophy, see Preisendanz, Indische Philosophen in
vorkolonialer Zeit.
53
54
Ibid., p. 19.
55
Ibid., p. 24.
56
Precisely how resourceless the Sanskrit intellectual tradition proved to be in the colonial period
is surely a matter for detailed study. Thankfully, we have some valuable work to draw on in understanding just how Sanskrit intellectuals faced the new epistemological, legal and scientific challenges.
Kavirajs approach to grappling with the problem of newness number two is to

consider it against the evidence of yet another newness, which we can call newness
number three. For him newness number three designates the arrival of British
colonialism, and the epistemological onslaught of European modernity. What happened when these two forms of newness squared off? In a word, rupture. The
colonial transformation of knowledges was an epistemic rupture on the vastest
possible scaleone of the greatest known in history.57 The newness of newness
number two was simply overcome by the newness of newness number three.
In all fairness, Kaviraj does point out that it would be a mistake to think that
what preceded this rupture was necessarily something ossified or ripe for replacement.58 In making this disclaimer, Kaviraj seems anxious to avoid the appearance
that he might be making normative or ideological judgements about the relative
truth or authenticity of the pre-modern intellectual universe. Thus the rupture that
inaugurates colonial modernity is not to be taken as a rebirth or a reinvigorating
of a culture on its deathbed (as Tagores poetic image seemed to suggest). That
said, this rupture did apparently lead to the death of something once living, viz.,
the Sanskrit discursive universe.
The reader will be forgiven if it proves difficult to keep all these newnesses
straight. In particular, while we are familiar enough with what Kaviraj calls newness
number three, the precise nature of newness number two still needs clarifying.
Can he help us understand the vitality of the pre-modern universe, and of the new
intellectuals Pollock had identified behind the creation of texts like Mahdevas
Nyyakaustubha (ca. 1675)? At least Pollock had attempted to correlate the innovations of the pre-modern period with transformations in the lived social world of
scholars, which he approached in terms of new cross-cultural interactions, new
modes of subjectivity, and changing modes of sociality, such as the one witnessed in seventeenth-century Varanasi.59
Like Pollock, Kaviraj sees change and innovation in the pre-modern traditions.
His conclusions in this regard are shaped by the work of several of the SKSEC
collective, notably Karin Preisendanzs work on nyya and Johannes Bronkhorsts
work on sphoa theory. This is enough to demonstrate that the Sanskrit intellectual
tradition did know about newness number one, what Kaviraj calls an awareness
of the newness of renewal inherent in tradition.60 However, this still leaves us
curious about newness number two. Sadly, we dont really get this, apart from
The work of Michael Dodson on pandits associated with the Benares Sanskrit College during the
tenure of James Ballantyne, for instance, provides compelling evidence of a rather vigorous intellectual
response by Sanskrit scholars to the colonial knowledge project. See Dodson, Translating Science,
Translating Empire.
57
58
Ibid.
59
See Pollock, New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-Century India, pp. 2021.
60
Kavirajs reading of Abhinavaguptas aesthetic theory, which he takes as proof

that between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, poetic theory broke with earlier
medieval models, which are rather surprisingly described as deeply entrenched.61
Here again, metaphor competes with theory. If a tradition is open to change, how
can something get so deeply entrenched? More evidence regarding the social
world and lived practice of Sanskrit intellectuals is needed if we are to understand
problems of conservatism or cultural inertia (that is, we need to explore court life,
patronage, land grants, educational paradigms and practices, etc.). In any case,
Abhinavagupta appears to mark a moment of newness that precedes even the one
pursued by the SKSEC scholars (who take up their work in 1550). Does this suggest we need four newnesses? Obviously thats the route to reductio. In the end,
Kavirajs reading of Abhinavagupta threatens to undercut the newness of newness
number two; we watch as that moment of innovation dissolves back into a continuum of change (as already asserted by newness number one).
Anyone looking for further insights into the particular newness of the late
medieval period, anyone wanting substantiation of Pollocks claim that something
new began in the seventeenth century, will no doubt come away from Kavirajs
essay disappointed. But just as surely, Kaviraj would respond that all along, his
goal was more theoretical than historical. The specifics of newness number two
take a backseat to general reflections on change. The burden of the essay amounts
to a series of philosophical meditations intended both to demonstrate how a tradition can accommodate originality (thus affirming the potential for newness within
the Sanskrit intellectual world), and to reveal that the sudden death of Sanskrit
occasioned by newness number three was achieved by the combined impact of
European verificationist epistemology and colonial ideological fiat.
In order to demonstrate this, Kaviraj begins by asking how and why traditional
knowledge systems were supplanted.62 In reply, he suggests that while European
modernity operates via a verificationist epistemology of testing, this epistemology
was not in fact the rationale used by the coloniser to refute the worth of Sanskrit
knowledge systems. Instead, the colonisers refutation was a profoundly ideological
one. The irony we are to appreciate, of course, is that it is for this very reason that
the western, colonial repudiation of Sanskrit epistemologies represented a methodological violation of modernitys own operating principles.63 The coloniser didnt
set about proving Sanskrits deficiency; he merely asserted it. One may think here
of James Mills famous dismissal of the so-called fabrications of the pandits.64
Kaviraj acknowledges that to say a knowledge system could be overthrown by
instruments ... of power is entirely in keeping with a general Foucauldian approach
Ibid., p. 138.
Ibid., p. 132.
63
Ibid., p. 133.
64
See Sen, The Argumentative Indian, p. 78.
61
62
to postcolonialism.65 Yet, he is reluctant to reduce the matter of Sanskrits death to

the play of power, an explanation he finds unsatisfactory. If he resists the urge to
explain the demise of Sanskrit knowledge systems by an appeal to colonial power,
he does so in the name of greater theoretical complexity. After all, he notes, we
can adduce contexts from elsewhere in the world that experienced no colonial
domination, where pre-modern knowledge systems also gave way to the norms of
European modernity (for example modern Japan). Likewise, even in India, the
passing of traditional knowledge was by no means universally realised; forms
of alternative science persist even into the postcolonial period (witness Ayurveda,
for example).
It is in this context that Kaviraj alludes to the role of vernacular knowledge
systems in colonial modernity, though to do so he once again abandons theory in
favour of poetry. Metaphor takes over as he conjures the muffled and pleasurable rustle of Sanskrit theories in the cadences of ordinary language.66 Are we
to think of the vernaculars going about their modern business while secretly
wearing Victorian lingerie? Or does language confirm our mothers sound advice
to always wear layers so were prepared for sudden changes in the weather? Surely
here, too, the vernaculars could use better theorising.
In the end, Kaviraj leaves us pondering the complexities of colonial power,
but shies away from actually fleshing out how his view of power improves upon
familiar postcolonial models of the discursive power of colonial hegemony. His
passing poetic reference to the vernaculars is a reminder of an opportunity missed.
Pollock himself has worked diligently to theorise vernacularisationalthough
sadly not in the colonial period. What we are left with in the case of both Kaviraj
and Pollock is simply rupture. In other words, we are pretty much where we were,
wondering how the putative newness of pre-modern Sanskrit intellectuals (newness
number two) should be understood in relation to Kavirajs newness number three.
For him, it comes down to a rhetorical question: Is this modernity [i.e., number
two] overcome, interrupted, shattered by a modernity drawn from the West and
forced through its power? ... Are there two modernities, one destroying the
other?67
Must Worlds Collide?
We could go on to add some further rhetorical questions: with his evocation of
the sudden death of Sanskrit, hasnt Kaviraj just left us with another version of
the so-called break with the past? Doesnt this dramatic language of sudden rupture
ultimately support a dichotomising understanding of epistemologies? Isnt this
just another way of saying modernity replaces pre-modernity? What has Kaviraj
Ibid., pp. 13637.
Ibid., p. 138.
67
Ibid., pp. 13839.
65
66
contributed to our understanding of the non-uniform, non-instantaneous way in

which modernity penetrates or permeates any society?68 Likewise, should we simply accept Pollocks framework, in which an already tradition-bound innovativeness proves powerless against a modernity premised upon tradition-breaking
inquiry? Then again, is it perhaps Pollocks view that for all its innovativeness,
pre-modern Sanskrit knowledge systems were already arthritic, if perhaps not
completely ossified? Is that something we want to say? It is difficult to imagine
the SKSEC group wanting to endorse such a conclusion regarding the collective
record of pre-modern Sanskrit intellectual activity.
Kaviraj rightly encourages the SKSEC group to make sense of the hows and
whys of the transformation of traditional knowledge systems under the conditions
of colonial modernity. The goal is worthwhile, but the language used to articulate
it could prove problematic. Do we want to frame the problem using the concept
of one knowledge system supplanting another? Like the metaphors of dawn and
awakening, the notion of supplanting only further reinforces notions of rupture
and discontinuity. To be sure, Kaviraj here follows Pollocks lead. In his essay on
new intellectuals, Pollock argued that Sanskrit intellectuals never directly
confronted colonialism, whether as a political or an epistemological order; virtually
without exception they simply ignored it.69 Elsewhere, Pollock has suggested
that during the colonial period Sanskrit intellectuals seemed able to respond, or
were interested in responding, only to a challenge made on their own terrain
that is, in Sanskrit.70
What we are offered appear to be two incommensurate worlds, two orders, two
terrains. By dichotomising in this fashion, the conclusion seems inevitable. One
world must succumb to the other; the Sanskrit order must be supplanted by that of
European colonialism. But of course, the inevitability inheres in the metaphors,
and not necessarily in the nature of the encounter.71 Dichotomised views of cultural
encounters of this sort are misleading and unhelpful. Sanskrit pandits did confront
radical transformations (if not an outright collapse) of their familiar civic ethos.72
But experiencing transformations in ones world is different from exchanging
68
As long as Kaviraj has invoked Japan, others have attempted to think through the problem of the
non-uniform spread of modern rationality in Japan. For a good example, see Davis, Dojo.
69
70
Pollock, Death of Sanskrit, p. 414. Pollock does refer to the work of Richard Fox Young on
Sanskrit responses to Christian missionary polemics, but this seems to represent for him a rare exception; see Young, Resistant Hinduism.
71
It was Althusser, again, who warned against writing history in the future anterior(For Marx,
p. 75). Kaviraj should be careful lest his theory of the sudden death of Sanskrit doesnt become a
teleological reading of history in this fashion. Pollock himself has warned against teleological thinking
when it comes to understanding language and politics in South Asia (see The Language of the Gods in
the World of Men, p. 563). One wonders, nevertheless, whether his understanding of modern Sanskrit
doesnt betray hints of teleological thinking (on this, see Hanneder, On the Death of Sanskrit, p. 309).
72
ones world for another. What we need are ways to recover and analyse the nature
of change taking place within the lived worlds of Sanskrit intellectuals. My own
preference in this regard would be to follow the lead of an historian like C.A. Bayly,
who has endeavoured to demonstrate the continuities between pre-colonial and
colonial South Asian economies, polities, and the worlds of social communication. Baylys influence can be traced in the work of a variety of other scholars,
but in the present context it is perhaps Michael Dodson, working on the pandits of
Benares, who deserves special mention for his attempt to pursue the threads that
link colonial Sanskrit intellectual life with pre-modern patterns of epistemology
and practicewithout, however, denying the profound changes taking place in
colonial India.73
In my earlier work on varacandra Vidysgara, I advocated paying attention
to the contact zone in which such encounters were lived, that is, the local, vernacular, space of colonial South Asia.74 As I attempted to demonstrate, such a
space lends itself to analysis in terms of cultural convergence. Like Pollock,
I invoked the rubric of vernacularisation to think through the complex dynamics
of such convergence. I found the concept of vernacularisation to be useful because
it suggested that the fate of Sanskrit in places like colonial Bengal might be better
approached as a question of cultural synthesis and transvaluation, than as the supplanting of one world by another.
Even Kavirajs ear seems tuned in this direction, insofar as he claimed to
hear the rustling of Sanskrit in the ordinary rhythms of the vernacular. Consider
Bhratacandra Ry, whom Kaviraj invoked at the outset of his essay to suggest
the apparent continuing vitality of Sanskrit in the early colonial period. We could
say that it was Bhratacandras ability to devise new ways of achieving poetic
beauty by using Sanskrit and the vernacular that makes him such an important
figure in the intellectual history of modern Bengal. Bhratacandras use of Sanskrit
might in fact provide a fine example of Pollocks own theory of vernacularisation
which, as he is at pains to stress in the new book, is always a matter of choice.75 To
speak of choice is to highlight agency, which itself can only be understood within
a context of lived challenges and opportunities.
According to Pollock, vernacularisation always proceeds via two decisive steps:
first, a poet asserts the authority of his locality by choosing to write in a language
hitherto excluded from the realm of authorised communication; second, the poet
73
Baylys 1983 monograph, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, was influential in my earlier interpretation of the worldview of pandit varacandra Vidysgara (see Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement),
and since that time he has produced further work that bears consideration in this context, notably his
Empire and Information. For Dodson, see Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture.
74
See Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, p. 2. I borrowed the idea of the contact zone from Pratt,
Imperial Eyes. Subsequently David Curley used the same concept to sketch another contact zone,
namely eighteenth-century Krishnanagar; see Curley, Maharaja Krishnacandra.
75
See Pollock, Language of the Gods in the World of Men, p. 504.
seeks his own form of expression by appropriating and domesticating literary

models derived from superposed cultural formations.76 Thus, in Bhratacandras
case, he chooses to compose Bengali poetry following Sanskrit metrical templates.
Pollocks attention to the hegemonic power of superposed formations to shape,
constrain, or guide choices seems a fruitful way to go about examining the convergence and redefinition of Sanskrit knowledge systems in the modern period.77 Such
a theoretical perspective at least encourages us to consider one of the ways Sanskrit
can be said to have lived on in places like colonial Bengal, namely by informing
the development of vernaculars like Bengali. If it is difficult for Pollock to admit
the continued vitality of Sanskrit after 1750, perhaps this reflects a subtle kind of
linguism that persists in his study of the language.78 Indeed, can we not imagine
the creation of a future scholarly study of colonial India that might carry the title,
The Life of Sanskrit?
The Life of Sanskrit in Colonial Bengal
That Sanskrit lived on in modern South Asia is a fact that requires little proof. A
survey of printed books alone from the nineteenth century reveals an enormous
amount of intellectual activity in Sanskrit, ranging from British-sponsored (or
orientalist) projects to edit, codify and publish the sastras on the one hand, to
what might be seen as more truly indigenous undertakings in the areas of philosophy, commentary, poetry, or devotional spirituality. Side by side with their
Ibid., p. 298.
One colonial observer linked the choices made by Bhratacandra to those made by later reformers
like Rammohan:
76
77
Bharat Chandra at first found great difficulty in embodying his ideas in Bengali. He found it
inadequate to the expression of nice and subtle distinctions. But he obviated these difficulties
by the introduction of Sanskrit words. The same plan was followed by Rammohan Rai in his
translations of the Upanishads and religious tracts, and also by the editors of the TatwabodhiniPatrika. To these exertions the Bengalis are largely indebted for the improvement of their language. It is an admixture with, not a severance from, Sanskrit; and the elimination of Sanskrit
would only impoverish the vernacular of the province (Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal,
Vol. II, p. 157).
78
It has been equally hard for some proponents of the vernacular to come to terms with the shaping (many would say constraining) role played by Sanskrit in the development of modern Bengali.
Thus Vidysgaras Bengali has long been stigmatised for being too Sanskritic and out of touch with
popular patterns of speech; see Acharya, Politics of Primary Education in West Bengal. As Kaviraj
has pointed out in an essay on modern Bengali, such charges had already been laid against Vidysgara
in the nineteenth century (Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal, pp. 54345). It is surely difficult, when dealing with emotional issues like language and identity, to avoid shifting registers from
the descriptive to the normative, but what we are concerned with in the present context is less the right
or wrong of Vidysgaras attempt to Sanskritise Bengali than the how and why of such intellectual
choices.
profound engagement in publishing, pandits also continued to offer instruction in

traditional ols and catuphs, to copy out texts by hand, to meet for public debates on important occasions like rddha ceremonies, as well as other forms of
practice associated with the old ways (prcn dhr) of Sanskrit scholarship.79
This said, Sanskrit intellectual life did undergo enormous changes during the same
period; one thinks of the advent of colonial-style institutions like the Calcutta and
Benares Sanskrit colleges, or the introduction of the system of title exams in the
late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, such changes could be taken to signal life
rather than death.80
Another important way of pursuing the issue of Sanskrit and modernity is to
think of the ways in which Sanskrit converged with other systems of knowledge
in colonial India. This seems to be a satisfying way to approach the problem of
Sanskrit and modernity. In many cases, especially early on, colonial Sanskrit intellectuals capitalised on a prestige they owed to pre-modern conceptions of knowledge and textuality to gain positions that allowed them to broker their specialised
knowledge in new and unprecedented ways. Often this involved not simply
adopting new occupations and social roles ( judge-pandit, professor, journalist,
etc.), but also entailed working in languages other than Sanskrit (like Bengali, but
also including Hindi or English, etc.). Were such transformations the small steps
that led to the death of Sanskrit? Or were they merely avenues along which Sanskrit
intellectuals could seek continued social and political relevance? I find it interesting
that when Pollock sought an example of how Sanskrit pandits failed to engage
with colonial modernity, he chose the example of varacandra Vidysgara, a man
who clearly embodied the sorts of processes I have in mind here. Of Vidysgara
Pollock wrote, When he had something satirical, contemporary, critical to say,
as in his anti-colonial pamphlets, he said it, not in Sanskrit, but in Bengali.81 This
seems to presume an overly simplistic equation of intellectual life with the medium
of expression.
If anything, Vidysgaras pamphleteering (as, indeed, all of his work) should
caution us from rigid dichotomising. Vidysgara thought, wrote, argued (and
probably dreamt) in both Sanskrit and Bengali; his English wasnt bad either. No
79
One need only look at a text like Kmkhyntha Tarkavgas 1892 vivti on Haridsas vykhy
on Udayanas Nyyakusumjali to appreciate that traditional modes of Sanskrit scholarship had
survived the nineteenth century; see Tarkavga, Kusumjalivykhyvivti.
80
For an excellent overview of transformations during the colonial period, see Sinha, Pandits in a
Changing Environment. For other studies, see Dalmia, Sanskrit Scholars and Pandits of the Old
School; Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture; Hatcher, Sanskrit Pandits Recall their
Youth and Whats become of the Pandit?; and Rocher, Career of Rdhknta Tarkavga.
81
Pollock, Death of Sanskrit, p. 68. It is not entirely clear what Pollock means by anti-colonial
pamphlets. Vidysgaras pamphlets were often pro-government reform (as in the case of widow
marriage), and if they were anti- anything, it was often other pandits (see Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, esp. Ch. 10).
single language had a monopoly on how he thought, nor did thinking in a language like Bengali or English mean his connections to Sanskrit culture were the
less profound. Indeed, we might consider the single case of the widow marriage
controversy of the mid-nineteenth century. This controversy generated literally
scores of petitions, letters, journal essays, and printed books (in Sanskrit, Bengali
and English) in which the movers and shakers of colonial Calcuttaoften with
pandits in the foregroundengaged in debate over the sastras as well as over the
rational or moral grounds for or against widow marriage.82 A detailed study of
this vast literature would provide excellent evidence of the modes of discourse,
debate and diatribe that characterised the public face of mid-century Sanskrit
intellectual life. Even a cursory review is enough to show that the controversy did
not entail the death of Sanskrit. Wade into Vidysgaras treatises on behalf of
widow marriage or in opposition to Kuln polygamy, and you witness not just his
mastery of Sanskrit sources and modes of exegesis, you also witness his command
over modern historical-critical methods; and along the way you encounter other
pandits who were equally assiduous in formulating arguments on such established
topics as vyavahra, prama, stra and decra.83
For an excellent example of the continued, yet evolving, practice of Sanskrit
intellectual life in a colonial context, we may consider a passage from the second
of Vidysgaras two important Bengali tracts on widow marriage, both of which
were composed in 1855 and entitled Vidhav vivha pracalita haoy ucita kin
etadviayaka prastva, which can be loosely rendered as, A proposal concerning
the promotion of widow marriage. The second tract appeared several months
after the first tract in which Vidysgara had initially advanced his argument that
the marriage of Hindu widows was in accordance with the stras.
As is widely known, Vidysgara premised his support of this practice on the
testimony of the Parara-smti, a dharmastra from the first half of the first
millennium CE.84 More specifically, Vidysgara selected as his central proof text
the following single verse from Parara (4.28):
Nae mte pravrajite klbe ca patite patau |
Pacasvpatsu nrm. patiranyo vidhyate ||
82
Moving beyond Bengal, one might consider the controversies surrounding John Muirs polemical
Christian tract, Matapark, and the responses this generated from Sanskrit intellectuals in north
India; on this see Young, Resistant Hinduism.
83
For Vidysgaras use of the modern historical-critical method, see his brief discussion of the
problem of attributing the Dattakacandrik to the ancient author Kubera, in Vidysgara-granthval,
Vol. 2, p. 18384. Such an approach earnd the approval of none other than John Muir (see Young,
Resistant Hinduism, p. 13654).
84
On Parara-smti, see Lingat, Classical Law of India, p. 103.
Another husband is ordained for a woman in five dire situations, namely if her
husband is missing, deceased, a celibate renouncer, impotent, or outcasted.85
Not only does this verse appear prima facie to endorse widow marriage, it is
found in a treatise that claims to have particular relevance for the present era, or
yuga. Parara claimed that unlike other authors on dharma such as Gautama and
Manu, his goal was to address the duties relevant to the last of the four world ages,
the Kali Yuga. Vidysgara took advantage of this fact to argue that since we currently live in the Kali Yuga, Parara is the appropriate treatise on dharma to follow. Much of Vidysgaras energy was then devoted to defending the choice of
this stra against criticisms from other pandits, notably the charge that on this
topic Parara conflicted with Manu, who was understood to be the chief authority
on dharma.86
The second tract is lengthy and dense with Sanskrit citations; it runs to over
ten times the length of the first tract, its length being one measure of the pains
Vidysgara took to answer every possible objection. The principal medium may
be Bengali, but the mode of reasoning is in keeping with traditional modes of sastric
exegesis. In the introduction, Vidysgara addressed his decision to conduct an
investigation into the sastric grounds of widow marriage through the medium of
Bengali. He gave two reasons. First of all, the majority of the residents of Bengal
did not know the stras; when disputes between two sastric positions arose, such
people had no way to arrive at a decision on their own. Second, and just as importantly, the well-to-do (viay loka) had insufficient command over Sanskrit to grasp
the meaning (artha) and purport (ttparya) of the stras.87 By referring to the
well-to-do, Vidysgara implicitly suggests that the dispute over the viability of
this practice had ramified in important ways in the socio-political climate of colonial
Calcutta; in his day there were powerful factions and wealthy patrons involved on
both sides of the issue. He wished to communicate his argument as much to these
patrons as to other pandits.
85
Vidysgara-granthval, Vol. 2, p. 42. For a discussion of the intepretive issues surrounding
this verse, see Datta, A Controversy over a Verse on the Remarriage of Hindu Women. I would like
to thank Rosane Rocher for helpful comments on the concepts of pad and patita.
86
Vidysgaras opponents would call attention to a passage from Bhaspati, which states,
Vedrthopanibandhtvt prdhnyam. hi mano smtam. |

Manvarthavipart y s smtirna praasyate ||
Manu has collected the meaning of the Vedas in his own Sam.hit; therefore he is preeminent.
Any Smti that is opposed to Manu is not commendable (Vidysgara-granthval, Vol. 2,
p. 66).
87
Vidysgara-granthval, Vol. 2, p. 40.
That there was intense discussion on this topic among Sanskrit scholars is evident. If we look at this second tract, we notice that there is a footnote at the bottom
of the very first page that lists the names of over 20 pandits from around Bengal
who adopted a limited reading of the above verse from Parara. These pandits
supported the giving of a woman to a second husband only in cases where (a) the
woman had been betrothed to the first husband, and (b) the first husband was currently missing. Vidysgara begins his tract by asking whether the opinion of
these dissenting (prativd) pandits can be accepted. He believes not. He believes
Parara should be read as identifying five separate cases in which a previously
married woman could be remarried. Vidysgara argues that, in lieu of some special
circumstance, it is never appropriate to abandon the straightforward (sahaja) meaning of words. That is, we should take Parara at his word.88
There was at least one major obstacle Vidysgara had to clear, however.
Pararas great commentator, Mdhava (ca. fourteenth c. CE), had rejected Pararas
apparent support for widow marriage. The following excerpt from Vidysgaras
second tract reveals the approach he chose to adopt in refuting Mdhavas position.
I select it to illustrate two important points: one, Vidysgaras exegetical and
argumentative technique; two, the interplay in the text between Bengali and Sanskrit.
Both of these points may be taken as evidence of the continued relevance and
vitality of Sanskrit intellectual life in colonial India. In what follows, the body of
Vidysgaras argument is set in boldface roman type; his translation of Sanskrit
passages is set in plain roman type; and the Sanskrit passages under discussion
appear in italics (untranslated here, since Vidysgara has translated them into
Bengali). Hopefully this will allow readers to appreciate not merely the overlapping linguistic registers in the text, but just as importantly the interplay among
root text (which Vidysgara refers to as sam.hit) and Madhavas commentary
(bhya)not to mention Vidysgaras own original argument, which effectively
amounts to another commentary.
Section Two: Passages from Parara are a matter for the Kali Yuga, not
other Yugas.
In explaining the passage from Parara Sam.hit regarding the marriage
of widowed women, Mdhavcrya concludes,
Ayaca punarudvho yugntaraviaya | tathcdipuram
hy punarudvham. jyehm.am. govadham. tath |
kalau paca na kurvta bhrtjym kamaalumiti ||
Parara says this injunction regarding remarriage of widows is a matter for
other Yugas because, as the dipura says, there are five actions that should
88
Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 43.
not be performed in the Kali Yuga: the remarriage of widows, the right of
primogeniture, the slaughter of cows, the bestowing of sons on a brothers
wife, and carrying the water pot [as a renouncer].
Here it is essential to consider whether the judgment given by Mdhavcrya
is proper or not. In this case, it is essential to understand first of all the
purpose [uddeya] of Parara-Sam.hit, which we can do by understanding
the intention [abhiprya] of the Sam.hit as well as the gloss and explanation
of purport [ttparya] given by Mdhavcrya.
Sam.hit
Athto himaailgre devadaruvanlaye |
Vysamekgramsnamapcchannaya pur ||
Mnum. hitam. dharmam. vartamne kalau yuge |
auccram. yathvacca vada satyavatsuta ||
Now therefore, Lord Vysa was seated in focused meditation in an ashram in a
forest of Deodar trees on a Himalayan peak. The sages asked him, O son of
Satyavat, now that it is Kali Yuga, what is the meaning of dharma and of
purity? And what conduct will be beneficial to humans? Please tell us as best
you can.
Bhya
Vartamne kalviti vieat yugntaradharmajnnantaryam |
The meaning of the word now is that since the sages understood what dharma
applied in the Satya, Treta, and Dvapara Yugas, they were asking about the
dharma of Kali Yuga.
Bhya
Ataabdo hetvartha yasmdekadedhyyino neadharmajnam.
yasmcca yugntaradharmamavagatya na kalidharmvagatistasmditi |
The meaning of the word then is that because even if one were to read thoroughly
one could not know dharma completely, and even if one knew the dharma of
the other yugas one could still not know the dharma of the Kali Yuga, then for
these reasons the sages inquired.
From this it can be seen clearly that after the beginning of the Kali Yuga,
the sages, who knew the dharma for the three YugasSatya, Treta,
Dvaparain the end were driven by a desire to understand the dharma of

Kali Yuga. Thus they inquired about the matter of dharma in the Kali
Yuga.
Sam.hit
Tat rutv ivkyastu saiyognyarkasannibha |
Pratyuvca mahtej rutismtivirada ||
Na cham. sarvatattvaja katham. dharmam. vadmyaham |
Asmatpitiva praavya iti vysa suto vadat ||
The brilliant Vysa, master of ruti and smti, was seated with his students.
His brilliance was like the fire and the sun. When he heard their words, he said,
I am not an expert in all matters. How shall I speak to you of dharma? On this
matter, you should inquire of my father [e.g. Parara]. Thus did Vysa speak.
Bhya
Nachamiti vadato vysasyyamaya samprati kalidharm
pcchante tatra na tvadaham. svata kalidharmatattvam. jnmi
asmatpitureva tatra prvyt ataeva kalau prar smt iti vakyate |
yadi pitprasdnmama tadabhijnam. tarhi sa eva pit praavya
nahi mulavaktari vidyamne praik yujyata iti |
Lord Vysas intention in saying he was not expert in all matters was to suggest
that since you [students] are now inquiring about the dharma of Kali Yuga,
[you should know] I learned about Kali dharma from my father. My father
alone is wise in this matter. Hence people say that kalau prar smt,
that is, the dharma compiled by Parara is the dharma for the Kali Yuga. You
should inquire about Kali dharma from my father since I too have learned this
from my father. There is no need to look to tradition [parampar] when the
original speaker is available.
Bhya
Evakrenyasmarttro vyvartyante | yadyapi manvdaya
kalidharmbhij tathpi pararasysmin viaye tapovieabalt
asdhraa kacidatiayo draavya | yath kvamdhyandinakhakakauthumataittirydikhsu kvdnmasdhraatvam.
tadvadatrvagantavyam | kalidharmasampradyopetasypi
pararasutasya yad taddharmarahasybhivadane sankoca
tad kimu vaktavyamanyemiti |
To say that you should inquire of my father is to rule out other creators of
smti. Even though Manu and the others certainly know the dharma of the Kali
Yuga, nevertheless Parara is the wisest regarding Kali dharma due to the
power of his special austerities. Just as among the [Vedic] schools like Kva,
Mdhyandina, Khaka, Kauthuma, Taittirya, etc., Kva is somewhat superior,
so too is Parara superior to all the smti creators in the matter of Kali dharma.
If Lord Vysa, who is the propagator of traditions regarding Kali dharma, is
himself reluctant to speak about Kali dharma because of the existence of
Parara, then what need we say about the words of other sages?
From this it can easily be established that Parara is the wisest of all
other creators of smti, like Manu and the rest, when it comes to the dharma
of Kali Yuga. And the chief stra for the explication of Kali dharma is
Parara-smti.89
There is no need to extend the selection further, although it is worth noting that
this section of the tract alone carries on for another nine pages in the same fashion,
with alternating Sanskrit text, Sanskrit commentary, Bengali translation of the
Sanskrit text and commentary, and Vidysgaras own argument, communicated
in Bengali.
Later on Vidysgara notes that while Mdhava clearly recognises the preeminence of Parara in explicating the duties of the Kali Yuga, he also makes
an important error. Of the three alternatives presented to widowsnamely marriage (vivha), abstinence (brahmacarya), or immolation (sahamaraa)Mdhava
says that remarriage only applies to the other yugas, but not Kali Yuga. Hence,
for Mdhava, Parara really only allows widows the options of abstinence or
immolation.
To this Vidysgara asks: if the Parara-smti was compiled with the express
purpose of providing the easiest ways to fulfill dharma in the degenerate Kali
Yuga, why does Mdhava remove the easiest of the three options presented to
widows? In support of his own position, Vidysgara quotes Bhaoji Dkitas
Caturvim.atismtivykhy to the effect that the crucial proof text, nae mte ...,
is to be taken as applying in the Kali Yuga. By the end of the section, Vidysgara
adds to his list of supporting witnesses the likes of the great Bengali lawmaker,
Smrta Raghunandan. Major figures like these are called upon to help him prove
that Mdhavas opinion is without merit in this particular case. Throughout the
section we are provided with a fine example of a colonial pandit carrying forward
the traditional methods of sastric exegesis.90
89
Ibid., pp. 5457. I am currently preparing a complete translation of Vidysgaras two tracts
from 1855.
90
There is an English-language version of these tracts, prepared by Vidysgara himself, but the
dynamics I am attempting to highlight here are obscured by Vidysgaras rather loose re-creation
The conclusion of the section is worth reviewing since it reminds us of the

continuity between this tract and the intellectual traditions of pre-modern Sanskrit
culture.91 With respect to the argument that Parara viewed widow marriage as a
matter for the other Yugas, Vidysgara points out that Mdhava only adduces a
single passage in support of his position, namely the passage cited in the selection
above from the dipura. He further speculates that Mdhavas intention may
have been to suggest that even though Parara composed his dharmastra for
the Kali Yuga, and even though Pararas text includes an injunction allowing
for the remarriage of widows, one could nevertheless conclude that Pararas injunction was not relevant to the Kali Yuga since the dipuraa prohibits the practice in Kali Yuga.
According to Vidysgara, there are two objections (patti) to be made to such
an argument. First, the passage quoted by Mdhava from the dipura cannot
be found in any extant versions of that text. He asks, how can an unattested passage
be considered authoritative? Second, even if one accepted the existence of this
passage from the dipura, it would not constitute a refutation of Parara for
two further reasons. For one thing, Parara is a smti text and the dipura is a
pura. In any contest between a smti and a pura, the smti text is always the
stronger (balavat). For another, Vidysgara reminds the reader that he has already
shown that while the dipura is a general treatise (smnya stra) which applies
to all times, Parara-sam.hit is a special treatise (viea stra) specifically
designated for the Kali Yuga.92 As he emphasises, in any dispute between two authorities, if one is a general treatise and the other is a special treatise, the special
treatise always trumps the general. Hence Vidysgara rejects Mdhavas reading
of Parara, and carries on with his defence of widow marriage. For present purposes, the viability of Vidysgaras position is of far less import than the way in
which he goes about proving it.
Less rupture, more convergence
Reading through a tract such as this, one wonders in what respect its intellectual
project differs from the dynamics of the classical Sanskrit knowledge systems
sketched by Kaviraj. Vidysgaras intervention in the exchange between Mdhava
and Parara seems a fine illustration of Kavirajs point about the dynamics of
root text and commentary, not to mention his point that traditions must by definition
contain elements of newness. The way Vidysgara employs the patterns of sastric
and abridgement of his argument for readers he presumed to be less attuned to sastric modes of commentary (see Vidysgara, The Marriage of Hindu Widows). For more on the English text in relation
to the Bengali original, see Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, 1996, pp. 25458.
91
See Vidysgara, Vidysgara-granthval, Vol. 2, pp. 6364.
92
Ibid., pp. 4647.
exegesis reminds us, too, of what Kaviraj calls the systematicity of sastric knowledge.93 If Mdhava worked to reinterpret Parara (who may himself have been
interested in reinterpreting earlier dharma writers), in what sense is Vidysgaras
engagement with the both of them any less a part of the Sanskrit intellectual
project? His tracts may have been written in Bengali, but this is itself potentially
misleading since his terminology is through and through drawn from Sanskrit
technical vocabulary (stra, smti, abhiprya, ttparya, bhsya, vykhy, etc.).
This is admittedly but a single example to adduce from colonial Bengal. However, I think it safe to say that a thorough review of the polemical literature generated in any of the major reform campaigns, from widow marriage to the Age of
Consent Bill, would serve to illustrate the degree to which debate was framed and
conducted in terms established by pandits working in and thinking through the
medium of Sanskrit.94 If vernacularisation is about choice, it seems odd to turn
our backs on some of the best evidence we have for the kinds of choices made by
pandits and other Sanskrit intellectuals during the colonial period (the ranks of
whom seem to have expanded after the middle of the nineteenth century, through
the granting of university degrees in the study of Sanskrit).95
If the SKSEC does not wish to commit itself too strenuously to the paradigm
of rupture, and if it is curious about what happens on the morning after the eve of
colonialism, by examining the choices made by colonial Sanskrit intellectuals it
has the opportunity to reflect upon the continuities of Sanskrit composition, commentary and debate. As Michael Dodson argues, it is unwise to make pronouncements about Sanskrits death. If anything, during the colonial period Sanskrit
retained an important cultural resonance, and paits utilised the language itself
as a medium of expression (though not necessarily exclusively), and as a culturaltextual resource.96 One cannot help wondering whether the failure to address the
colonial evidence of such continued respect for Sanskrit as both a form of expression and a cultural resource (so apparent in the kind of reform literature discussed
above) betrays scholarly preconceptions about the inherent worth of indigenous
colonial Sanskrit scholarship, not to mention some rather unfortunate preconceptions about the pandit that owe their origin to the very dynamics of colonial disqualification highlighted by Kaviraj.97
I refer only to the literature on social reform, not to other genres and domains of activity such as
drama, philosophy, scientific writing, or poetry.
95
Hanneder suggests that the very ability of the pandit to negotiate these changes worked to create
the environment out of which modern Indology itself emerged (see On the Death of Sanskrit, p. 309).
96
Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture, p. 145.
97
See Hatcher, Whats Become of the Pandit?, pp. 683723. Rosane Rocher provides a detailed
and informative look at the decline of pandit authority during the career of H.T. Colebrooke in her
essay, Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the Marginalization of Indian Pandits.
93
94
Is Vidysgaras Bengali tract proof of Kavirajs claim that Sanskrit had become
an inaccessible reference point, or does it perhaps bespeak the continued importance of the tradition not merely as point of reference, but as intellectual resource?
For two scholars committed to exploring the dynamics of intellectual change in
South Asia, it is surprising that Kaviraj and Pollock should both prefer dichotomising Sanskrit and the vernaculars over models that can demonstrate the complexity
of vernacularisation as a process of cultural convergencea process that could
support habits of Sanskrit intellectual praxis even while transforming them.
By revisiting Pollocks thesis, Kaviraj appeared well-situated to caution against
metaphors of dichotomy and rupture. Initially, his attempt to identify a variety of
newnesses suggests his desire to make the picture more, rather than less, fuzzy.
But we have to ask whether he hasnt in the end merely employed the idea of the
second newness as an ambiguous rationale for dichotomising the pre-modern and
the modern. Surely continued invocation of a radical or sudden rupture will only
encourage other members of the SKSEC collective to remain ensconced in the
pre-modern period, taking the colonial failure of Sanskrit as a foregone conclusion.
While the members of the SKSEC working group may be able to highlight some
bright moments of Sanskrit pre-modernity, it seems they are prepared to dim
the lights on the eve of colonialism. If I may make a play on Althussers memorable
line, we know that pre-modern Sanskrit culture was eventually transformed by
its encounter with colonial modernity, but we should not want to live faster than
Sanskrit did; instead of waiting impatiently at the finish line (as teleological theories
of change tempt us to do), we have to make sure our scholarship gives Sanskrit time
to live, time to grow, time to change.98
In history there is always a morning after. Historians are here to remind us, just
as Benoy Ghosh had done in his book on Vidysgara, that the morning cannot
easily be divorced from the preceding night.99 One hopes that the SKSEC group
will not settle too easily for dramatic metaphors or neat dichotomies, but will
work towards just the sort of sophisticated theorising that Pollock has called
for. Without a doubt that will entail thinking less about ruptures and more about
convergences.
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98
See Althusser, For Marx, p. 70: Of course, we now know that the Young Marx did become Marx,
but we should not want to live faster than he did ... (emphasis in original).
99
Well have to leave debates over the Morning After Pill (RU480) to the ethicists.

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The metaphorics and theory

Pollock, Introduction: Working Papers on Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems, p. 438.

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that on that occasion he added unapologetically, I say began emphatically.16

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Beginnings and Endings Redux

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Kavirajs approach to grappling with the problem of newness number two is to

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Kavirajs reading of Abhinavaguptas aesthetic theory, which he takes as proof

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to postcolonialism.65 Yet, he is reluctant to reduce the matter of Sanskrits death to

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contributed to our understanding of the non-uniform, non-instantaneous way in

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seeks his own form of expression by appropriating and domesticating literary

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profound engagement in publishing, pandits also continued to offer instruction in

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Vedrthopanibandhtvt prdhnyam. hi mano smtam. |

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Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 43.

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Dvaparain the end were driven by a desire to understand the dharma of

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The conclusion of the section is worth reviewing since it reminds us of the

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