Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture: India, 1770–1880

283 Pages·2007·2.074 MB·English

by  Michael S. Dodson (auth.)

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IMAGINED COMMONWEALTH
Cambridge Essays on Commonwealth and International Literature in English
Michael S. Dodson
ORIENTALISM, EMPIRE, AND NATIONAL CULTURE
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REDEFINING THE BONDS OF COMMONWEALTH 1939–1948
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ECONOMIC RELATIONS BETWEEN BRITAIN AND AUSTRALASIA 1945–1970
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Orientalism, Empire, and
National Culture
India, 1770–1880
Michael S. Dodson
© Michael S. Dodson 2007
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-0-230-28870-6
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dodson, Michael S.,
Orientalism, empire, and national culture : India, 1770–1880 / Michael
S. Dodson.
p. cm. – (Cambridge imperial and post-colonial studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. India–Study and teaching–History–19th century. 2. Orientalism–
England–History–19th century. 3. Sanskrit philology–Study and teaching–
History–19th century. 4. India–Study and teaching–History–18th century.
5. Orientalism–England–History–18th century. 6. Sanskrit philology–Study
and teaching–History–18th century. I. Title.
DS435.8.D63 2007
303.48′24205409034–dc22 2006051437
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
For Tanja and Joshua
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Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xii
A Note on Transliteration xiv
Introduction Histories of Empire, Histories of Knowledge 1
1 Orientalism and the Writing of World History 18
2 Sanskrit Erudition and Forms of Legitimacy 41
3 An Empire of the Understanding 61
4 Enlisting Sanskrit on the Side of Progress 87
5 On Language and Translation 118
6 Pan.d.its, Sanskrit Learning, and Europe’s ‘New Knowledge’ 144
Afterword Sanskrit, Authority, National Culture 184
Abbreviations 193
Notes 194
Bibliography 234
Index 257
vii
Preface
Benares, 11 January1853, on a spacious, verdant site located approx-
imately half way between the old city’s congested alleys, waterfront
gha¯t.s, and temples to the east, and the wide, planned streets of the
European cantonment to the west. Here James Thomason, the
Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, officially inau-
gurated the newly constructed home of the East India Company’s
Benares College. The building was a large and elaborate study in
gothic revival architecture, replete with numerous towers, arches,
and pinnacles, and, moreover, represented the first permanent base
for the college which had been established by the Company six
decades earlier, in 1791. Although seemingly at odds with the city’s
overwhelmingly ‘Hindu’ character, Thomason expressed a con-
fidence that the new college building’s ‘architectural beauty’ would
undoubtedly produce a positive ‘natural effect, upon the mind’ of
the college’s Indian students.1 Indeed, the building’s ‘surpassing
magnificence’ had also been characterised the previous day, in a par-
allel inaugural address given in Hindi, as representing a substantive
testimony to the Company’s commitment to the education, and
intellectual improvement, of India’s people.2
When, in the spring of 2000, I first spent some time on the site of
Benares College (now part of Sampu¯rn.a¯nanda Sanskrit University) to
begin the research for this book, and managed to gain entry to the
largely vacant original neo-gothic structure, I was impressed by its
imposing, if now somewhat faded, grandeur. In particular, the physical
similarities of the building to many of the Victorian churches in India,
and at home in London, were instantly recognisable. Having walked
through the large wooden double doors, the first thing I noticed was
the light streaming through a stained-glass window high in the wall
opposite. Along each side of the main hall were a series of small
enclaves, resembling chantries, which had probably been used for
teaching small groups of students in years previous. All were covered in
a thick layer of dust. In many ways, it would have been easy then, at
that first visit, to understand the building as a Victorian folly, a monu-
ment to the self-confidence of European civilisation and the imperial
project. Yet over the course of the next several years, as I conducted the
research for this book, it became clear to me that the educational pro-
viii
Preface ix
gramme pursued at Benares College during the mid-nineteenth century
was far more ambitious, but also, ultimately far more ambiguous, than
the inflated character of the building might at first suggest.
By the time of James Thomason’s speech in 1853, the city of
Benares had for many years represented an important outpost of the
East India Company’s government in northern India. During the late
eighteenth century, for example, Benares served as a small buffer state
between the Company’s territory in Bengal and the hostile Mughal
successor states to the west. The allied ra¯ja of Benares, moreover,
supplied the Company with much-needed intelligence on the move-
ments of its various rivals.3Increasingly, however, as these rivals were
subdued, it was the sacred character of Benares – its status as a place of
pilgrimage for Hindus, its traditional standing as the fountainhead of
all knowledge, and its reputation for Sanskrit learning – which had
begun to best serve the Company’s interests in its governance of
India. In this regard, Thomason’s inaugural speech that day spec-
ifically paid tribute to India’s Sanskritic intellectual heritage, which he
characterised as possessing ‘a depth of thought, a precision of expres-
sion, and a subtlety of argument’ which had ‘excited the wonder of
the learned in all countries of Europe’.4
Yet Benares College was then no longer wholly dedicated to educa-
tion in the traditions of Sanskrit literature, which had been its found-
ing mandate. Thomason was also celebrating that day the apparent
successes of a new experimental pedagogy overseen by the college’s
superintendent, a Scotsman by the name of James R. Ballantyne, which
advocated the recognition and appreciation of the ‘gifts’ of Hindu
intellectual achievement, but in order to turn them to the ‘highest
purpose’. In a fundamental way, the very location of the new college
building in the city – between the gha¯t.s and the cantonment – reflected
this new programme: Benares College was to act as a sort of ‘common
ground’ for the comparison of the knowledges of East and West,
which, it was hoped, would serve to demonstrate to Indians the ulti-
mate truth of Western thought, thereby ushering in an age where ‘a
higher philosophy and a purer faith will pervade this land’.5
One of the most interesting features I found that first day inside the
original college building is a series of aphorisms inscribed high upon the
walls, above the heads of the Indian teachers and their students who
would have sat on the floor beneath. Most appear in translation, in both
English and Hindi, but have now largely been obscured by wear and van-
dalism. One, however, still left intact, has always caught my attention. It
proclaims what, in the ideological context of the colonial nineteenth