Sanskrit pandits recall their youth: Two autobiographies from nineteenth-century Bengal.

• Author: Hatcher, Brian A.

This essay calls attention to two little-known autobiographies written by Sanskrit pandits in late nineteenth-century Bengal. These texts, by Isvaracandra Vidyasagara (1820--91) and Girisacandra Vidyaratna (1822--1903), are here examined in light of two overarching concerns. First, an attempt is made to justify treating these texts as examples of autobiographical writing, a status some have been unwilling to grant them. In this connection, the problems of reading autobiographies in non-Western or colonial contexts are also addressed. Second, an interpretation of the two texts is offered which suggests they represent two different responses to profound changes taking place in colonial Bengal. Despite their similar family backgrounds and life trajectories, Vidyasagara writes in a mode of intentional self-construction, while Vidyaratna writes in a mode of nostalgic recollection.

DURING THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH centuries, Bengal witnessed widespread changes in everything from landholding, agriculture, and commerce to folk arts, literature, and religion. Calcutta was the epicenter for many of these changes, and aftershocks from developments there were to rumble throughout the Indian empire and beyond. By now the names of key players from this period--orientalists like Sir William Jones and Horace Hayman Wilson, missionaries like William Carey and Alexander Duff, and indigenous reformers like Rammohan Roy and Keshub Chunder Sen--are widely known. Their lives and the impact of their work have been widely studied. But there is a class of men from this period who have hitherto not received the same degree of attention. Like those listed above, these men also contributed to the forces of change and controversy that were to have such a profound impact on the development of the modern society of the subcontinent. These men were the Sanskrit pandits of Bengal.

In pre-colonial times, pandits exercised a virtual hegemony over the creation, transmission, and exposition of brahmanical learning. Their schools were the schools for shastric learning and debate; their methods were the methods for interpreting Sanskrit literature and for adjudicating matters of Hindu social, legal, and religious practice; their norms of aesthetics, rhetoric, and rational argumentation were the norms that guided playwrights, poets, and philosophers. However, the advent of colonial rule in India was to see this situation change rapidly.

In less than a century, these pandits saw the long-cherished preeminence of Sanskrit called into question sometimes rancorous debates over language and government policy; they watched as familiar patterns of instruction practiced for centuries in village tols and catuspathis gave way to new educational institutions and foreign curricula; they felt the sting of European polemic against their cherished philosophies and theologies; they witnessed the dawn of the age of printing in India and all that went with it: missionary translation projects, orientalist scholarship, print journalism, widespread pamphleteering, and the dawn of tract-driven social controversies. Taken together, these changes transformed existing notions of reason, canon, literature, text, scholarship, and public debate.

And yet it would be misleading to imply that Bengal's pandits merely sat on the sidelines observing all these changes. On the contrary, they participated directly in them--often in ways that are only beginning to come to light. (1) As Calcutta became flush with schools, colleges, and universities, pandits from around Bengal and across India were drawn there in search of employment. Some were recruited by the early orientalists. Under Wilson alone, pandits from as far afield as Gujarat and Banaras found positions at the Calcutta Government Sanskrit College. (2) Other pandits found work with the missionaries, assisting them in their quest to master India's many languages so as to propagate the Gospel. Still others gravitated to the city with uncertain plans; perhaps to continue the tol-based teaching so common in the villages, perhaps to work as court pandits for the city's indigenous nouveaux riches, perhaps even to abandon their hereditary vocation altogether in the hope of earning better pay as clerks or in terpreters in foreign trading firms.

Unfortunately, we know relatively little about the daily lives, the struggles and ambitions of these pandits. Only rarely did their European employers record the kinds of details about them that we would like to know: where they came from, how they found their way to the city, how they taught their subjects, how they survived in Calcutta, and what became of pre-existing traditions of learning and scholarship. (3) True, there are a number of biographies and biographical memoirs of these scholars, written by their colleagues, sons, and students. But firsthand accounts detailing events from the early period of colonial rule are rare.

For this reason, we should be grateful that at least two Bengali Sanskrit pandits did record in their own words a narrative of their lives. These narratives provide the focus of the present study. While both date from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, they possess great value for us in that they purport to discuss events that took place at the other end of the century, when their authors were children growing up in the districts outside Calcutta. By examining these texts, I hope to consider both their character as self-narratives and to interpret what they tell us about the experiences of two young men destined to be pandits in a rapidly changing world.

1. INTRODUCING THE TEXTS

The first of the two texts was written by the renowned social reformer, educator, and author, Isvaracandra Vidyasagara. (4) Vidyasagara was born in 1820 in the village of Birsingha in what is now Midnapur District, West Bengal. For half a century he was to be one of the most prominent figures among Calcutta's intelligentsia. In fact, his life is simply too rich and multi-faceted to summarize here. (5) Suffice it to say that even today his name is a household word in Bengal, where he is credited not only with setting new standards of Bengali prose diction, but more profoundly with exemplifying ideals of broad-minded rationalism, humanist compassion, and uncompromising personal integrity. As a reformer he is remembered for spearheading campaigns in support of Hindu widow remarriage and against high-caste polygamy, the first of which won the legislative approval of the British in 1856. As an educator he is remembered not only as the first Principal of the Government Sanskrit College--an institution he did much to reform--but also as the author of a great many children's school books. (6) Without question, Vidyasagara is a man whose legacy is as enduring as it is complex.

When he died in 1891, Vidyasagara left behind a manuscript of his autobiography comprising two short chapters. That same year his son, Narayanacandra Bandyopadhyaya, published the manuscript under the title, Vidyasagara-carita (svaracita), literally, "the life of Vidyasagara as composed by himself." (7) The piece, which has received very little scholarly attention, is remarkable in at least three respects. (8) To begin with, the text provides little more than a sketch of Vidyasagara's childhood; in fact, it only takes us as far as his eighth year--long before he received the title by which he is now so widely known. Secondly, in his narration Vidyasagara seems more interested in recounting the history and legacy of his forebears than in exploring his own childhood. (9) Finally, when he does refer to his own childhood, it is not to recall what it was like growing up in rural Bengal; rather he seems principally interested in sketching the circumstances surrounding his coming to Calcutta to study. These are all aspects of the work to which I shall return below.

The second autobiographical sketch was written by Girisacandra Vidyaratna (1822-1903), a friend and colleague of Vidyasagara. Unlike Vidyasagara, Girisacandra-who was horn in Rajpur in 24 Parganas District--was never widely known. (10) While he also worked at the Government Sanskrit College and, like Vidyasagara, had some success as a publisher, Girisacandra seems neither to have been drawn into the dynamic vortex of reform debates nor to have been driven to gain a reputation as an author. Consequently, he is today largely forgotten in Bengal. Nevertheless, in 1892 his son, Hariscandra Kabiratna, urged Girisacandra, then seventy years old, to write down the story of his life.

Girisacandra complied with the request--but only in part. He composed a brief chapter on his childhood, but would go no further, despite his son's urging. When pressed for more, Girisacandra told his son: "I will not write about that; if it seems necessary, you write it." At first, his son was puzzled by such thinking. Subsequently, it dawned upon him what his father was saying; as Hariscandra tells us, "By writing of his adult life and later years my father would have been violating the spirit of Manu's great injunction that one should not boast after doing a good deed [e.g., na dattva parikirtayet (Laws of Manu 4.236).] This explains why my father had no desire to narrate the remainder of his life" (Kabiratna 1909: preface). (11)

We have, then, for Girisacandra little more than what we have for Vidyasagara: only the briefest of narratives, one that brings us no further than Giriacandra's twentieth year. (12) Like Vidyasagara, Giriacandra's devotes a great deal of attention in these pages to his brahmana forebears. But perhaps most interesting is the fact that while Vidyasagara's memories seem to be driven by the sense of his discovery in Calcutta of a bright and promising future, Giriacandra's narrative seems continually to coil back around his village origins. This lends to his work a sense of profound loss, which contrasts markedly with the future-oriented gaze of...