SANSKRIT MAD
Up until almost the end of the 1700s, Europeans had little or no awareness of India’s centuries-old literary tradition. But in 1785, a few months before the United States dropped anchor off Pondicherry, the first English translation of a Sanskrit work went on sale in London. It was titled
The Bhagvat-Geeta, or Dialogue of Kreeshna and Arjoon; in eighteeen Lectures; with Notes. Translated from the Original, in the Sanskreet, or ancient language of the Brahmins, by Charles Wilkins, Senior Merchant in the service of the Honourable the East India Company, on their Bengal Establishment.
If there had been a best-seller list at the time, this book wouldn’t even have come close. But it sparked an interest in translating Sanskrit texts–mostly into English, French or German–that over the next couple of decades became all the rage in Europe. Just over 100 years later, a leading Theosophist, Charles Johnston, remarked that because of this one book, 1785 marks a watershed in the “intellectual history of the world,” when the wisdom of India began flowing to the West. [Sharpe 4]
The story of this first English translation of the Bhagavad Gita sadly begins with a tragedy that cost the lives of perhaps millions of people. In the years following the Battle of Plassey the EIC contrived to consolidate its political hold on the eastern regions of India (which included Bengal, Oudh, and Carnatic). After winning another dust-up with the Indians in 1764, the Company acquired the right to levy and collect taxes, which it did with greedy relish, virtually impoverishing the population. Near the end of the 1760s Bengal was gripped by a severe drought that threatened widespread food shortages. The Company ignored reports of the impending disaster, and did nothing to help feed the population when the famine finally did hit. As a result, between 1770 and 1773 millions of Indians died, not only from hunger but diseases like small pox. To make matters worse, during that time the Company actually increased taxes and allowed profiteers to control the grain markets.
This grievous mishandling of the food crisis topped off a run of EIC fiascos, which convinced the English parliament the Company was incapable of governing the large territory under its thumb. In 1773 then, after much wrangling, parliament passed the India Bill that gave it greater say-so in the business of running the EIC’s Indian possessions. The Company was also forced to appoint a ruling Governor-General, and the job fell to an old India-hand by the name of Warren Hastings.
I won’t go into great detail regarding Hastings’ career as Governor-General, the political troubles that cost him his office (in 1784), or the decade of legal headaches that followed. He first went out to India in 1750, began his career as a clerk, then rose impressively through the bureaucratic ranks. But disgusted by the corruption of EIC officials, he returned to England in 1764, still a man of modest means–presumably an indication that he wasn’t on the make. Five years later, though, Hastings went back to sit on the governing council of Madras, and became governor of Bengal in 1772 during the famine.
Enter Charles Wilkins. Born in 1850 (or 1849 according to some bios) into a relatively poor family, and not being able to afford a university education, he was trained as a printer. In 1770 he went to India to work for–who else?–the EIC as a printer and writer in Calcutta. Once there, his curiosity about Oriental languages–a curiosity shared by many of his EIC mates–lead him to learn Persian and Bengali. The real plum language though, Sanskrit, was out of bounds: the local Brahmin pandits or scholars, traditionally a secretive bunch, routinely refused Sanskrit instruction to mlecchas, Sanskrit for foreigners or, what to them amounted to the same thing, “barbarians.”
In 1778 Wilkins got the chance to combine his language and printer’s skills. A friend had written a Bengali grammar but couldn’t find anyone to print it. Wilkins volunteered for the job. He set up a printing press, shaped and hand-cast the Bengali font himself, and so produced the first typecast book in that language. Apparently his work on this grammar caught the collective eye of the Brahmins and they decided to accept Wilkins as a student. In a relatively short time (and if you’ve ever tried to learn Sanskrit we might say an amazingly short time), he became the first Englishman to learn the language and, in 1779, to compose a Sanskrit grammar (he would eventually design and hand-cast a Sanskrit font).
A few years later he set himself what can only be considered a most ambitious project, which was to translate the Mahabharata into English. Now the Mahabharata, at 100,000 verses, is reputed to be the longest epic poem in the world, way longer that the Iliad and Odyssey combined. I won’t even try to summarize its convoluted story, except to say it concerns the bitter rivalry between two related families for the throne of Bharat–the Indians’ name for India–which comes to a bloody conclusion in a battle that lasts 18 days.
Wilkins never finished his translation. But during the course of his work, he happened to show Hastings a sample of what he was up to, the translation of a seemingly minor episode–a short dialog actually between the good guys’ alpha-dog warrior, Arjuna, and his charioteer, Krishna–set in the no-man’s-land between the two armies on the eve of the hostilities. There’s no need to go into this story, it’s well-known to most modern yoga students. But it wasn’t known at all to Hastings who, himself an accomplished student of language, sat up and took notice of the Gita’s universal message. He later wrote that it will survive when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources which it once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance. [sharpe 9]
Hastings took it upon himself to write to the Chairman of the Court of the EIC to urge that the text be published without further ado, even though, as he acknowledged, its commercial prospects were poor at best. Eric Sharpe, in The Universal Gita, a must-read for any Gita enthusiast, writes: “The role of Warren Hastings in the appearance of Wilkins’ translation was thus a central one. Without this influential figure in the background as an enthusiastic (and knowledgeable) patron, not only Wilkins but others of the early British Orientalists ... would have found their enterprises harder to sustain.” [6]
The Bhagvat-Geeta, or Dialogue of Kreeshna and Arjoon; in eighteeen Lectures; with Notes. Translated from the Original, in the Sanskreet, or ancient language of the Brahmins, by Charles Wilkins, Senior Merchant in the service of the Honourable the East India Company, on their Bengal Establishment.
If there had been a best-seller list at the time, this book wouldn’t even have come close. But it sparked an interest in translating Sanskrit texts–mostly into English, French or German–that over the next couple of decades became all the rage in Europe. Just over 100 years later, a leading Theosophist, Charles Johnston, remarked that because of this one book, 1785 marks a watershed in the “intellectual history of the world,” when the wisdom of India began flowing to the West. [Sharpe 4]
The story of this first English translation of the Bhagavad Gita sadly begins with a tragedy that cost the lives of perhaps millions of people. In the years following the Battle of Plassey the EIC contrived to consolidate its political hold on the eastern regions of India (which included Bengal, Oudh, and Carnatic). After winning another dust-up with the Indians in 1764, the Company acquired the right to levy and collect taxes, which it did with greedy relish, virtually impoverishing the population. Near the end of the 1760s Bengal was gripped by a severe drought that threatened widespread food shortages. The Company ignored reports of the impending disaster, and did nothing to help feed the population when the famine finally did hit. As a result, between 1770 and 1773 millions of Indians died, not only from hunger but diseases like small pox. To make matters worse, during that time the Company actually increased taxes and allowed profiteers to control the grain markets.
This grievous mishandling of the food crisis topped off a run of EIC fiascos, which convinced the English parliament the Company was incapable of governing the large territory under its thumb. In 1773 then, after much wrangling, parliament passed the India Bill that gave it greater say-so in the business of running the EIC’s Indian possessions. The Company was also forced to appoint a ruling Governor-General, and the job fell to an old India-hand by the name of Warren Hastings.
I won’t go into great detail regarding Hastings’ career as Governor-General, the political troubles that cost him his office (in 1784), or the decade of legal headaches that followed. He first went out to India in 1750, began his career as a clerk, then rose impressively through the bureaucratic ranks. But disgusted by the corruption of EIC officials, he returned to England in 1764, still a man of modest means–presumably an indication that he wasn’t on the make. Five years later, though, Hastings went back to sit on the governing council of Madras, and became governor of Bengal in 1772 during the famine.
Enter Charles Wilkins. Born in 1850 (or 1849 according to some bios) into a relatively poor family, and not being able to afford a university education, he was trained as a printer. In 1770 he went to India to work for–who else?–the EIC as a printer and writer in Calcutta. Once there, his curiosity about Oriental languages–a curiosity shared by many of his EIC mates–lead him to learn Persian and Bengali. The real plum language though, Sanskrit, was out of bounds: the local Brahmin pandits or scholars, traditionally a secretive bunch, routinely refused Sanskrit instruction to mlecchas, Sanskrit for foreigners or, what to them amounted to the same thing, “barbarians.”
In 1778 Wilkins got the chance to combine his language and printer’s skills. A friend had written a Bengali grammar but couldn’t find anyone to print it. Wilkins volunteered for the job. He set up a printing press, shaped and hand-cast the Bengali font himself, and so produced the first typecast book in that language. Apparently his work on this grammar caught the collective eye of the Brahmins and they decided to accept Wilkins as a student. In a relatively short time (and if you’ve ever tried to learn Sanskrit we might say an amazingly short time), he became the first Englishman to learn the language and, in 1779, to compose a Sanskrit grammar (he would eventually design and hand-cast a Sanskrit font).
A few years later he set himself what can only be considered a most ambitious project, which was to translate the Mahabharata into English. Now the Mahabharata, at 100,000 verses, is reputed to be the longest epic poem in the world, way longer that the Iliad and Odyssey combined. I won’t even try to summarize its convoluted story, except to say it concerns the bitter rivalry between two related families for the throne of Bharat–the Indians’ name for India–which comes to a bloody conclusion in a battle that lasts 18 days.
Wilkins never finished his translation. But during the course of his work, he happened to show Hastings a sample of what he was up to, the translation of a seemingly minor episode–a short dialog actually between the good guys’ alpha-dog warrior, Arjuna, and his charioteer, Krishna–set in the no-man’s-land between the two armies on the eve of the hostilities. There’s no need to go into this story, it’s well-known to most modern yoga students. But it wasn’t known at all to Hastings who, himself an accomplished student of language, sat up and took notice of the Gita’s universal message. He later wrote that it will survive when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources which it once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance. [sharpe 9]
Hastings took it upon himself to write to the Chairman of the Court of the EIC to urge that the text be published without further ado, even though, as he acknowledged, its commercial prospects were poor at best. Eric Sharpe, in The Universal Gita, a must-read for any Gita enthusiast, writes: “The role of Warren Hastings in the appearance of Wilkins’ translation was thus a central one. Without this influential figure in the background as an enthusiastic (and knowledgeable) patron, not only Wilkins but others of the early British Orientalists ... would have found their enterprises harder to sustain.” [6]
