JADUNATH SARKAR and other giants of his calibre were the real founders of Indian historiography in its truest and most objective sense.
Another quality that further elevates their eminence is the fact that they worked in a period of extreme and varied constraints.
The first constraint was the fact that they wrote in English – an alien language, the language of their oppressors. When we read some of their biographies, it is clear that their struggles with learning and articulating in English formed a huge obstacle during their formative education.
Second, they faced the clear and present danger of falling afoul of the colonial British Government which could and did destroy the careers of many Indian historians and scholars for writing or speaking uncomfortable truths. The shameful precedent of how John Marshall ruthlessly suppressed the findings of Rakhal Das Banerjee related to the Harappa-Mohenjodaro excavations is well-known.
The third factor is perhaps the most important. When we study the histories of various ancient civilisations and nations, it is clear that reconstructing Indian history with accuracy and truthfulness is still the toughest task. All the pre-Abrahamic civilisations and cultures have vanished and so it is relatively easier to make informed conjectures about their histories. But this is not the case with India because our people have preserved substantial memories of their own past – i.e., it is a living civilisation, culture and society.
Add to this, one more difficulty: in the period during which these stalwarts of Indian history worked, reconstructing the history of ancient India, especially, was almost like walking blindfolded with your arms tied behind your back. They had no past masters or research precedents to guide them.
Archaeology, epigraphy, manuscriptology, numismatics and textual research were all disciplines that were still evolving in Europe itself. Applying these to reconstruct our past involved superhuman efforts and there was every possibility that even a small oversight or misspelling could result in major blunders. In short, these luminaries had to carve out the path from the scratch. They worked in a period of drought and aridity and yet managed to reap an abundant harvest. Which is where their true pre-eminence lies. The body of work produced by these giants still remains unsurpassed.
Their succeeding generations of historians and scholars have only supplemented or added to their bequest but none have equalled or rivalled them. Three random examples illustrate this truth. P.V. Kane’s History of Dharmasastra, Jadunath Sarkar’s History of Aurangzeb, and S. Srikanta Sastri’s Sources of Karnataka History.
There are several reasons why they could accomplish so much –in both quality and plenitude.
THE FOREMOST REASON was the fact that they regarded history as… history. To them, history was the quest for truth; it was not an extension counter of politics or ideology.
The second reason was the inner attitude that they brought to the study of history. When we read their lectures or prefaces or introductions, they invariably describe themselves as “devoted” or “faithful workers” of history; they call themselves as the sons and servants of Bharata Mata.
Jadunath Sarkar for example, treated history research as a lifelong Tapas; he regarded it as a form of asceticism and a sacred calling.
Radhakumud Mukherjee viewed history as a source of profound insight. For instance, in his brilliant work, Men of Thought of Ancient India, he devotes the very first chapter to Maharshi Yajnavalkya – a great revelation in itself of that scholar’s refined temperament. To quote his own words,
Yajnavalkya was a representative man of his age, one of the most typical embodiments of all that was best and highest in Vedic culture and civilisation… Vedic culture in its most developed and typical form can be best studied in him, the acknowledged intellectual and spiritual leader of his times… The biography of Yajnavalkya is practically the culturi history of his country in his times.
The third and perhaps the most important reason is this: almost without exception, these savants of Indian history were deeply rooted in the Sanatana ethos. They had received their primary education pretty much in the traditional manner – first at home, then either in a Gurukula or in the typical village school that had existed in every nook and corner of Bharatavarsha. The annihilation of these village schools after “independence” is at the root of much social disorder and strife that we notice today.
R.C. Majumdar practiced the Bangla alphabet on dried banana leaves and wrote on them till he reached high school.
Jadunath Sarkar knew by heart the whole of Jayadeva and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. As a boy, he was encouraged by his Zamindar father to sit in the village square and listen to discourses and Bhajans and Sankirtans by various Sadhus and Sants and Pravachana-Kartas. Thus, the same man who wrote so prolifically on Aurangzeb and Shivaji also wrote an erudite and moving masterpiece on Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the History of Dasnami Naga Sanyasis and his heart melted upon reading Ramanujacharya’s treatises on Sharanagati and Prapatti.
By the time he was 10 years old, P.K. Gode had memorised the whole of Amarakosha and Bhartrhari Shatakas and hundreds of assorted Subhashitas.
Dr. S. Srikanta Sastri had received a thoroughly traditional Sanskrit training in his boyhood in Nanjunagud. With some latitude, I can claim that theirs was the last generation that had received such a fully grounded early education, especially in language education, especially the Sanskrit language. Needless, their mastery over their respective mother tongues was of a similar standard. They primarily thought in their mother tongue although they wrote in English. In a sense, they were natural polyglots. Most of them wrote in both English and their mother tongues – be it Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Bengali or Hindi.
For example, Dr. K.B. Vyas who wrote the most authoritative translation of Padmanabha’s Kanhadade Prabandha, was fluent in Hindi, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrt, Apabhramsha, Farsi and an extinct dialect of Rajasthani.
A majority of these scholars had also mastered other foreign languages like German, Japanese, French, Greek and Latin. This raises the obvious question: if they could do all this less than a century ago, why are history scholars of today unable to do it, especially when information and resources are so easily available?
And now we can look at the fourth reason, which is equally important. These exemplary scholars toiled in history in a purposeful fashion. They saw history as a means to rediscover both the good and the regrettable elements of our past – and they wanted an answer to a basic question: how did a country that was the hub of philosophy, education, wealth, culture and bravery for more than a millennium, fall into such a sorry mess? How did it fall under the rule of a handful of ethics-free pirates from a tiny island nation of traders? From this perspective, these stalwarts of Indian history were also freedom fighters.
To be continued
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