Inside the Mind of a Vedantic Master: Exploring M. Hiriyanna’s Secret Diary, Chaff and Draff

Liquor, Wheat and a Philosopher’s Personal Diary

Mistress Page in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, utters an ancient English proverb: “Still swine eat all the draugh.”

Draugh is the archaic spelling of draff, a word which is almost extinct in the country of its origin. 

The earliest mention of this proverb is found in The Proverbs of John Heywood, who “made coarse rhymes fashionable” as early as 1546, eighteen years before Shakespeare’s birth.    

The redoubtable H.L. Mencken, after ransacking hundreds of dictionaries of quotations, gives us the American variant of this proverb in his classic A New Dictionary Of Quotations On Historical Principles From Ancient And Modern Sources: “The still sow gets the swill.” And then he reports that there is no “instance of its use in England in its American form.” Swill is still widely used in America both as a noun and a verb. It is the Americanism of draff. 

The slightly honourable meaning of draff is “sediment” and “residue,” typically used in the context of brewing and distillation. But its original sense is quite ghastly. It denoted the awful mass of dregs that remained after brewing beer or distilling whisky. This odious refuse was sold by liquor makers to pig farmers, thus birthing the “still swine” proverb. 

On the other hand, the word chaff is its pleasanter cousin; the sight of its whorls rising up at twilight in eccentric patterns is charming to behold. But both chaff and draff are unfit for human use. The former is disagreeable, the latter, fatal. 

“Jotted down for no eye but my own”

But Chaff and Draff is also a bizarre title for a personal diary written by Acharya M. Hiriyanna, one of the Premiers of Vedantic philosophy and Aesthetics of the 20^th century.  His public image and common perception was that of a sagely Guru who only spoke in the classroom or in academic forums. But it is not difficult to answer why such a saintly, tranquil man chose such an uncharacteristic title for his personal diary - it was fully consonant with his self-effacing temperament. In other words, he was simply being truthful to his conscience. Hiriyanna and humility are synonymns.  

Chaff and Draff was never meant to be published; Hiriyanna's capitalised admonition in his own, beautiful handwriting read:

“JOTTED DOWN FOR NO EYE BUT MY OWN”

In his own lifetime, Hiriyanna’s family was probably unaware of its existence, and our boundless thanks are due to his posterity for preserving a priceless treasure. 

Chaff and Draff is superficially a personal diary. To its current reader, it is a profound excursion undertaken by a luminary which unfolds the multidimensional history of seventy-five years; this second-hand voyage is, by itself, breathtaking and deeply humbling. 

The work has a fourfold impact that strikes us simultaneously like waves that break on the shore making it impossible to tell which wave followed which. The joys and upheaveals of Hiriyanna’s family life; his private musings; his spiritual evolution, and his frequent travels. Almost every entry in the diary is a revelation. 

One such revelation are the mentions of his interactions with the titans of the New Indian Renaissance: Raja Ravi Varma, Kuppuswami Sastri, Rabindranath Tagore, D.V. Gundappa, P.D. Gune, P.K. Gode, Sarojini Naidu, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi and two Sankaracharyas of Sringeri, among the most notable. 

Perhaps the most ennobling feature of Chaff and Draff is the complete absence of judgement while Hiriyanna writes about people. In D.V. Gundappa’s acclaimed profile of Hiriyanna, he rues the fact that a man of his eminence was shortchanged in his career. Chaff and Draff is conspicuous for its silence in this matter.        

The diary is a continuous chronological record, meticulously dated from May 7, 1897 to March 21, 1948. The last entry reads: “Returned to Mysore owing to illness.” 

For a private diary, there is a sort of intrinsic unity that ties the entries together, when we view it from a historical and biographical perspective.

A Pilgrim’s Progress

Hiriyanna’s learning and personality deservedly earned him legions of devoted pupils and admirers who’ve penned a sizeable volume of tributes and recollections. Reading these either individually or in toto, one gets the impression that he was the typical cloistered scholar locked up in his study room, one who left home only to teach at college.     

But for Chaff and Draff, we wouldn’t know how extensively Hiriyanna had travelled in his life — from his native Karnataka to the United Provinces, from the Madras to the Bengal Presidencies. 

His entries clearly indicate that he carried his diary with him on his travels. Compared to the rest, these entries are the lengthiest. They reveal a ruminative soul who is at once an ardent observer, an artist and poet. His compulsive love for nature is a tender but curious blend of romance and reverence. Romance because of his incurable fondness for English poetry; reverence because of his cultural roots and his mastery over Vedic and classical Sanskrit literature.  

In hindsight, his travel-related entries are also invaluable accounts of a bygone geography and society. Society changes geography (and vice versa) just as politics preserves or destroys nature. 

Hiriyanna had travelled in an age when the railway had irreversibly altered the traditional routes that Indians had used before British usurpation. We are reminded of Jadunath Sarkar’s triumphal admission that only he possessed the map of the pre-railways routes. 

Hiriyanna’s prose panoramas especially of the Tamil Nadu Cauvery delta are the finest in the book. These places still exist but only in name. Not only has its physical geography been maimed and bulldozed, its cultural soul has been obliterated with the resultant massacre of its social fabric. 

When Hiriyanna stood atop the “Trichinopoly hill” in 1907, “the whole town stretched before” him and he could see the “two branches of the Cauvery for a long distance,” and the centerpiece of Tiruchirappalli, Srirangam was a “forest of cocoanuts and mangoes; and so crowded are the trees that they hide even the gigantic temple itself from our view.” 

His visit to the nearby Jambukesvara temple which was “being renovated,” uncurtains the socio-cultural facet of this journey.  

 Next, this is the Madura he saw. 

More heartbreaking are the reports of his boarding and lodging not just in Tamil Nadu but in all of Dakṣiṇāpatha. 

Hiriyanna, like all Hindus of the period, lodged in Dharmachatrams, the ubiquitous charitable institution of extraordinary antiquity. The society as a whole maintained Dharmachatrams irrespective of who had built them, and even ordinary people built them because it was… well, an expression of Dharma. These are the names of some of the Dharmachatrams Hiriyanna had stayed in: Lakshmi Sattram, Chettiyar Chatram, Mangamma’s Choultry, Cocanada [Kakinada] Chatram, Kanakamma Choultry [Vijayawada]… 

This lived reality in itself is sufficient to disprove the mountain of garbage piled around some all-encompassing “evil caste system.” The fact that Hiriyanna found free accommodation in Chatrams wherever he went shows the extraordinary resilience of this institution. It had outlasted centuries of Muslim invasions and had even borne the fatal axe of the East India Company’s liquidation — and still survived to Hiriyanna’s day. But all it took was for one E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker to succeed. Needless, Dharmachatrams have been replaced by hotels, signifying the triumph of unrestrained Artha over Dharma.

Philosophical Musings of a Recluse

Another eye-opening revelation in Chaff and Draff is Hiriyanna’s gamut of intellectual and philosophical musings. In more places than one, he comes across variously as a quasi sceptic, a devout Sanatani, a lifelong Sadhaka, and one who, almost perilously, seeks to refine his inner life through the triad of Shravana, Manana, Nidhidhyasana accompanied by Dhyana. 

However, his quiet and withdrawn outward personality bursts in vivid Technicolor in these pages: self-doubt, uncertainty, a sense of guilt and self-reassurance come alive like characters here, on his private stage. 

Quite astonishingly, we detect a fair bit of Christian theological influence on Hiriyanna although he was a confirmed Vedantin. From one perspective, this shows the extraordinary success of missionary propaganda that wrapped Jesus and the Chrisitian God in Sanatani finery. In fact, Hiriyanna himself admiringly endorses a discourse on the Bhagavad Gita delivered by a Pastor; his admiration was that of a lifelong student, the Pastor’s discourse, that of the Panchatantra’s jackal.

Hiriyanna in the Indo-European Encounter  

All this was the natural outcome of British colonialism. For about a century, theology and colonial plunder were warring cousins in England itself until both parties reached a mutally profitable compromise. The Church consented to a policy of non-interference in England’s loot of India as long as it was free to harvest Hindu souls. Education and scholarship was (still is) the most effective weapon for harvesting Hindu souls by first defacing their intellects. In practice, the result was kaleidoscopic. Its positives included unprecedented advances in archeology, epigraphy, numismatics and scholarship in comparative philosophy, culture and history. 

Hiriyanna lived in and was a product of this era, which was also the golden age of the  Indo-European encounter. Kris Manjapra’s brilliant Age of Entanglement is an exhaustive exploration of this encounter which correctly places Germany at its centre. Throughout the 19^th and the early 20^th century, Germany was the hub of what is known as Indology; England, the unchallenged monarch of global colonialism had little time for things like Vedanta, etc. Thus, it is unsurprising that Hiriyanna — like most scholars of his eminence - hired two tutors to teach him the German language. 

But given the inescapable reality of British rule in India, it was but natural that he came into regular contact with Englishmen both in his professional and personal life. One such contact included a scholarly letter that he wrote to A.C. Bradley, the lionised authority on William Shakespeare. B.N. Shashi Kiran, who has written a fine introduction to Chaff and Draff memorably describes it: 

We learn that Hiriyanna had written a letter to Prof. A.C. Bradley, explaining an abstruse point in Tennyson’s In Memoriam from the perspective of Indian philosophy, which the English scholar had found difficult to grasp. 

Indeed, the letter is but a sliver of his vast erudition. Reading the nonchalant ease with which he quotes - from memory - from every imaginable classic from the West and India, from the ancient past to the present even on mundane events like travel and family occasions is a profound personal experience in the literal sense. 

It is also rather intriguing to learn that Hiriyanna was mighty fond of English poetry. His repertoire included everyone from William Shakespeare to William Wordsworth. We see him reciting entire poems, sonnets and odes from memory on occasions ranging from death to tranquility. If the melancholy or the joy was too much to contain, he composes impromptu verses in English describing the experience. On other occasions, this is what he does: 

It appears that his attachment hinged more towards Wordsworth and Newman. 

This English cultural influence on Hiriyanna is discernible in other facets as well. Two examples suffice. He uses the word “idol” instead of Murti or Vigraha and retains British spellings for Indian geography — Chitaldrug (Chitradurga), Seringapatam (Srirangapattana), Nerbuda (Narmada), Cocanada (Kakinada), Trichinopoly (Tiruchirappalli), Vizag (Vishakhapattanam), etc.  

The Restrained Rasika

Another breathtaking revelation of Chaff and Draff are the nooks of his personality so far concealed from the world. 

His profile written by say, D.V. Gundappa, N. Sivarama Sastry, M.H. Krishna, P.T. Narasimhachar, T.N. Srikantaiya, M. Yamunacharya or K. Krishnamoorthy while elevating, are also limiting. Most of these are in the nature of tributes. 

But reading his own disclosures in his own words in his own handwriting reveal a different picture; for one, we see him as a restrained Rasika in his observations about Prayagraj. 

As the common cliche goes, this is not the Hiriyanna we know. But now that we know this Hiriyanna as well, we understand a universal truth: only salt can make a nutritious meal tasty. 

The Birth of a Renunciate

But romance died in Hiriyanna’s life when his beloved wife passed away when he was just thirty-nine. In just nine monosyllabic words, he has written perhaps one of the profoundest elegies ever written: 

Elsewhere, he is more defiant: 

Notwithstanding profundity or defiance, Hiriyanna carried the tragedy till his own departure. Contemplative by temperament, this calamity naturally transformed him into a true Virakta despite his own, repeated misgivings about it. He sought and found solace in Vedanta by submitting himself to dhyana, one of the practical exercises to realise it. He was a constant pilgrim to Adi Shankara’s birthplace Kaladi, which he called his “spiritual home.” He enriched it by building a philosophical library there. At Nerur, he meditated at the Samadhi of the great Vedantin, Sadashiva Brahmendra whose Atmavidyavilasa Hiriyanna recited countless times. He took lessons in Advaita and the Upanishads from his Guru, Mahamahopadhyaya Harihara Sastri. He had a Darshana of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai.            

Faraway in America and forty years before Hiriyanna was born, another luminary had trodden on Hiriyanna’s path. His name was Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose first wife Ellen had died when she was just ninteen. It first made Emerson an Unbeliever and then after shedding Christianity, had transformed him into a seeker and a philosopher in the classical Western sense. 

Hiriyanna never remarried. This was a source of curiosity, surprise and admiration for his family, well-wishers and admirers. Indeed, this was a frequent talking point in D.V. Gundappa’s circle of friends. 

Hiriyanna himself dispels this curiosity in Chaff and Draff: 

Family Man

In general, Hiriyanna was the quintessential middle-class traditional Brahmin patriarch who no longer exists but was once the cynosure of our society. He typically celebrates all pious and happy family occasions like childbirth and marriage. He is overjoyed at a brother’s promotion or a sister’s delivery. He quietly dotes on his only daughter and constantly worries about her well-being. He is furious at a doctor’s negligence which causes the death of his sister’s infant - the stoic philsopher erupts in rage here. 

Elsewhere, he celebrates a personal triumph with childlike mirth:

This was not all. To tide over the boredom of a long train journey, Hiriyanna versifies the whole essence of the Isha Upanishad in English. We can almost touch the thick British Romantic-era imprint in it. This is how it begins: 

All this world a vision; naught but God the truth; 

Care not King or Kingdom, save thyself in sooth. 

Seek not death, nor hate this life but live it true;

Shirk no duty; greed is ruin, that’s, the clue;

A Treasury of Aphorisms

Another element that appears like a mathematical constant in Chaff and Draff are the updates of Hiriyanna’s pursuit of studies. We see him constantly learning and revising and hungering for more. These are the “secrets” of his exact scholarship that the outside world lauded so much. Here, in his private diary, we see its evolution.  

One priceless facet of this evolution transforms Chaff and Draff into a treasury of insights delivered aphoristically. In reality, Hiriyanna penned them down as “thoughts” that occurred to him spontaneously. This is an experience familiar to anyone who keeps a personal diary. But to us, his posterity, these aphorisms are the outcomes of observation contemplation, inspiration and intuition; his oceanic learning and depth of experience merely gave them a body. 

To get only the briefest idea of their universal validity and their compelling power to impact us on multiple levels, here are some random samples. 

• Comparing modern with ancient India, we may say that there are more distractions now and less strength of mind. 
• Brahmins, the makers of philosophy, Kshatriyas, the makers of history. 
• Our Vaidikas may have lost their soul, but they retain their mind; the laukikas have lost both. 
• Rhythm is an amalgam of rest and motion. 
• Tradition maybe viewed as the conscience of a race. 
• Intuition is a process of jumping at the right conclusions. 
• I do not live on the heights I see.
• Do what is right to learn what is true. That is the teaching of Vedanta. 
• Atheists are the anarchists in the realm of God.
• The state punishes even those that attempt to murder, but it lets go free those who murder souls. 
• Collectivism in theory, individualism in practice seems to be the motto of modern times.
• To reverence the past is even more necessary than reverencing God.
• Beauty hides her face in shyness when she meets utility. 
• The true aim of all art is spiritual. To make it serve a moral purpose is to degrade it and to reduce it to a department of state like the Police. 
• Art serves as the antechamber to God. 
• An honest critic cannot review a dishonest book.
• The rapid means of travel now come into vogue have made unity of place in a drama lose its whole significance. The hero or heroine may be shown in the same play as in London, New York and Melbourne.
• Our old-type scholars make a fine art of study; and there is an artist’s perfection about their exposition. 
• Hand-work, head-work and heart-work - this is the trinity of education. 
• Reflection without corresponding experience in life is the bane of modern life.
• While institutions help the average man, they hinder a genius.
• A public institution has no spontaneous memory, for it has only a collective mind. 
• The strength of ancient Indian civilisation was in the power left to the people of the locality. Now the country suffers for the sake of the town.
• To care for the antiquarian aspect only of Indian culture is like valuing gold for the stamp it may bear and not for its substance. 
• We can…do good to others through gifts of money and by expressing our mind on their behalf. But the best moral training for ourselves results when we help them through physical exertion.  

This is merely the apéritif and evidently, every quote is worth memorising and more. To repeat, these appear in a private diary, not in a philosophical treatise.  

Reading Chaff and Draff is akin to undertaking a sacred Yatra into one of the Tirthas of the Golden Age of Indian Renaissance. You want to go again and again like Hiriyanna visited Kalady again and again. 

Postscript

Chaff and Draff is the outcome of the patient labours of its compiler and editor, B.N. Shashi Kiran. His rich introduction to the work is, by itself, an instructive read. Words are insufficient to express our gratitude to him as well as to the brilliant team who contributed to it in significant ways. 

In reality, the discovery and publication of Chaff and Draff  is “nothing short of a landmark event” as Shashi Kiran puts it. It is the profound first-person saga of the slow blossoming of an exquisite flower, which — to borrow Hiriyanna’s own words — by itself is worthy of worship. It is an invaluable addition to the annals of the Makers of Indian Philosophy.    

Chaff and Draff is not an autobiography of Hiriyanna but a primary source material for writing his full-fledged biography, which is long overdue. 

Above all, it is a Seeker’s user manual. 

|| Om Shanti ||