D.D. Kosambi

Monk, Mathematician, Marxist

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:16:09 PST

Dharmanand Kosambi may be described as
a scholar and proselytiser of Buddhism and
practicing Buddhist, a Gandhian, and a feminist

By ANANYA VAJPEYI | February 1, 2012

Source?: Caravan Magazine

INDIA HAS REMADE ITSELF at least twice in the past 100 years. The economic and political character of the country, which was of a colonial-nationalist nature in the early 20th century, became Nehruvian-socialist after Independence and then shifted again toward globalising neoliberalism in the last decade of the century. An effective way to track the cultural effects of these very large shifts is to compare the trajectories of successive generations of Indians. The lives of the extraordinary father-son duo of Dharmanand Kosambi (1876-1947) and Damodar Dharmanand or DD Kosambi (1907-1966), both brilliant scholars and pioneers of entire fields of study, vividly illustrate the first great transformation of modern India, effected over the course of the 1950s and early 1960s, during three administrations under Jawaharlal Nehru.

The recent translation of several of Dharmanand’s Marathi writings, including his partial autobiography Nivedan (A Narrative): 1912-1924 (Permanent Black, 2011), and a broad retrospective exercise by a number of contemporary historians occasioned by Damodar’s birth centenary in 2007, allow us to follow Kosambi père and fils in some detail, and through them to view the changing historical contexts in which they were embedded. Dharmanand’s granddaughter and DD Kosambi’s daughter, Meera Kosambi, herself a sociologist specialising in urban studies and women’s studies, and an accomplished translator between Marathi and English, has in the past two years helped bring both her eminent forbears back into focus for students of modern India.

Father and son were polymaths, and in this regard they remind us of other talented public figures in South Asia prior to Independence, like the poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and the art historian Ananda K Coomaraswamy (1877-1947). Together and individually, the Kosambis also exemplify a confluence of intellectual streams that coloured the biographies of a large number of prominent Indians, men and women, in the first three quarters of the 20th century: Buddhism, Marxism, Gandhianism and Socialism. For reasons that remain culturally and sociologically under-studied and have as yet to get any sort of systematic treatment in the intellectual history of modern India, some blend of these ideological currents impacted a range of thinkers and leaders, from BR Ambedkar to Ram Manohar Lohia, Narendra Dev to Rahul Sankrityayana, Jai Prakash Narayan to Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Vinoba Bhave to JB Kripalani.

In fact, if we take widespread influence of Gautama Buddha, Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi on intellectual elites in the founding generations seriously, as we ought, then it becomes very difficult to figure out how, against their inclinations, we arrived at the second great transformation of India into a globalised free-market economy with powerful rightwing political forces active in it. It is as though all of the genuinely egalitarian and emancipatory tendencies within politics, that had an organic relationship with Indian political thought on the one hand and that could have made possible a properly Indian social revolution on the other, somehow foundered before they could flourish. As late capitalism makes its relentless advance into India and the left is driven further and further into the political wilderness, it does us good to remember the nuance and the promise of a more complex time, scarcely half a century ago, when unusual men like the Kosambis were included in the intellectual leadership of this country.

If we aim for brevity, Dharmanand Kosambi may be described as a scholar and proselytiser of Buddhism and a practicing Buddhist, a Gandhian, and a feminist; DD Kosambi may be described as a mathematician, a historian and a Marxist. Both men, born Brahmins, had pronounced linguistic abilities, and especially loved Sanskrit. Both moved around within India and South Asia, and also travelled the world, but must be seen as rooted primarily in the cultural ground of greater Maharashtra (including Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Hindi and Konkani-speaking areas, and the former princely states of Indore, Gwalior and Baroda). Both had intellectually significant, if not definitive experiences at Harvard University—the father as a philologist of Buddhist texts, the son as a student of mathematics. It doesn’t seem as though they had a very warm or expressive bond with one another as parent and child; nevertheless, they were profoundly similar to and connected with one another in terms of their intellectual personalities. Between them they shaped the disciplines of Buddhist studies, Indology, history, archeology, numismatics and mathematics in India; the imprint of Marxism—whether as class analysis, dialectical method, or a critique of caste—is all over their work.

But despite commonalities and continuities between Dharmanand and Damodar Kosambi, what emerges from the former’s autobiography, Nivedan, translated and edited by Meera Kosambi, and from the volume The Many Careers of DD Kosambi: Critical Essays, edited by noted historian DN Jha (Left Word, 2011), is that there had been a sea change in India between the time when the father was a young man and the time when his son came of age. Dharmanand wandered in a country where Buddhism as discourse or as practice was all but extinct; where almost all his personal contacts and professional networks consisted of fellow Brahmins who housed, clothed and fed him as he went from city to city in search of Buddhism; where Hindumathas and Buddhist viharas dotted the landscape through which he travelled—from Goa in the west to Burma in the east, from Nepal in the north to Sri Lanka in the south. The scholastic terrain of India was still largely unchanged from precolonial times.

Traditional learned classes—Brahmins, Kayasthas and residual Buddhists had given way, within the space of scarce two or three decades, to a modern knowledge elite of physical and social scientists, as well as technocrats charged with building a range of institutions for the new nation-state. Ancient Buddhism, long vanished, had reappeared in a variety of postcolonial guises, from the Navayana (‘New Way’) of Babasaheb Ambedkar, to other sects flowing back into India from Tibet, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Japan as well as the Anglo-American West. With the demise of the British Empire, colonialism, together with its Orientalist and Indological apparatuses, had packed up and gone home, leaving independent India in charge of its own cultural pasts as much as it was now responsible for its own political futures.

AS A GRADUATE STUDENT SOME YEARS AGO, I would spend months on end in Pune, reading Sanskrit and Marathi texts, and travelling around in Maharashtra, as well as in neighbouring Karnataka and Goa, in search of archives, individuals and institutions connected with my research. Between 1998 and 2003 I journeyed up and down the Deccan landscape and the Western Ghats, mostly by road or rail. The spirit of DD Kosambi was often with me on my forays into this—to me—unfamiliar part of the country. On one of my earliest trips to Pune, a friend introduced me to Meera Kosambi, who invited me to see her father’s house off Law College Road, where I would go almost every day to the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

The Kosambi residence was built in a coastal Goan style, its sloping roof covered with rounded red tiles of baked clay, a central courtyard open to the elements, and a covered verandah running around all four sides of the house. The large front room was set up as the late Damodar Kosambi’s study, with a number of books, papers, pens, paperweights, inkstands and other things lying on his large desk as though he had just left the room and gone into a different part of the house. But behind his chair hung a very large photographic portrait of him, reminding us that he had—already, at that time—been dead for well over 30 years. Perhaps there were photos of Dharmanand too, though I have no recollection of seeing them, nor would I have known, then, who I was looking at. Later I learned that the house had been sold to builders, who demolished it and replaced it with a block of apartments; I could not bring myself to go and see the place in its new avatar.

Pune is one of the many smaller cities in India that has found its historic architecture under severe stress over the past two decades. Just in the 12 or 15 years that I have been going there for my scholarly work, its graceful edifices and sleepy neighbourhoods, and with them their ways of life, have been vanishing before one’s eyes. But that Pune city, Maharashtra state or indeed the Indian government let the Kosambi home, built circa 1931, go the way of other old buildings is a sad commentary on our inability to recognise and respect the landmarks of our intellectual life and cultural history. A recent trip to Simla, where I saw an incredibly decrepit house called ‘Wood Field’ that Rabindranath Tagore had vacationed in, in 1893-94, together with other members of his illustrious family, and where he wrote a number of the poems in his collection Shonaar Taari(The Golden Boat), filled me with the same despair that I invariably feel in Pune: as a culture, we fail to honour and commemorate our greatest minds.

Indian history as a discipline was dominated by Marxism for so long—from the 1960s through the 1990s—that most leading historians over two generations, at universities such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Aligarh Muslim University, as well as a number of campuses in West Bengal, have studied DD Kosambi thoroughly, and had the opportunity to both learn from him as well as critique his methods and findings. A July 2008 special issue of the Indian social science journal, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), brought together a symposium on DD Kosambi’s work as a historian. Historiography within Maharashtra and of Maharashtra and the Deccan, as an important subset of Indian history, has benefited especially from his insights and innovations—those who read Marathi can access the rich debates there. It is good that at last he is also being assessed seriously from the perspective of other disciplines to which he contributed so much: Sanskrit philology, archaeology, numismatics, anthropology, religion and—unusually—mathematics and statistics.

Particularly interesting, in both the EPW (2008) issue as well as the recent DN Jha edited volume, are the essays by CK Raju, which walk us through some of the more technical aspects of Damodar’s mathematical gifts even while recounting his misadventures in the Indian science academy. In Raju’s telling, DD Kosambi must be seen as an early figure of dissent in Indian mathematics and science. He had significant mathematical abilities, which might have been encouraged in another country, but were only thwarted in India. It did not help that Damodar was a serious pacifist and spoke out publicly against the dangers of nuclear power (including its potentially harmful side effects on the genetic structure of human and other life forms—a prescient warning that no one heeded at the time or is likely to heed now, for that matter). His would-be patrons, the physicist Homi Bhabha, the father of India’s atomic energy programme, and the industrial family of the Tatas, eventually denied him tenure at TIFR, alleging that he had failed to solve a particular mathematical problem, and adding on the snide caveat that relieved of his scientific job, he would be better able to devote his time to his other interest, history—an insult to him both as a mathematician and as an historian that is infuriating to read about even today. This after Damodar had won the Raman Prize in 1934 and the Bhabha Prize in 1947 for his mathematical work!

In fact, two things stand out consistently about the man: first, his undoubted genius, the gifted and multi-faceted quality of his imagination; and second, his inability to function within institutional contexts populated by lesser minds and their propensity to play petty politics. Clearly, as a scholar, Damodar was brilliant, eccentric, prolific and even playful; but as an academic he was also condemned to a rather solitary existence, unable to find colleagues, interlocutors or students who might have kept up with his astonishing inventiveness. With the passage of time, DD Kosambi’s polymathic intellect stands vindicated; but it has to be said that the condition of Indian academia, especially of prestigious institutions meant for specialised research, has only deteriorated in the half century since his death. If extraordinarily talented individuals like him were undervalued, isolated or actively persecuted by the academic establishment in the 1950s and 1960s, they are likely to be even worse off today. Interdisciplinary abilities have never been nurtured or rewarded in our postcolonial systems of higher education.

Dharmanand, however, presents a rather different sort of an enigma. In him we see a thirst for Buddhism that propels him into arduous journeys—away from his native caste background and ethnic, regional identity as a rural Goan; often outside of India to neighbouring countries in South Asia; into languages that for him, a high-school dropout, have to be diligently learnt: Marathi, Sanskrit, Pali and English (for starters); and last but not least, away from his family, including his wife and children, for long periods of time. He seems to grapple with a genuine struggle between the responsibilities of bourgeois domesticity and the rigors of a monastic life. His health is in ruins from extreme poverty, his innate asceticism, the physically grueling nature of his travels and his exercises in bodily self-discipline. Some inner fire compels him to both try to master Buddhism and spread its message among his indifferent countrymen.

Surely a comparative study of the Buddhist zeal of the Brahmin Dharmanand and the Untouchable Ambedkar, both active in Maharashtra in the first half of the 20th century, is crying out for the attentions of a PhD candidate somewhere. Now that more and more of Dharmanand’s writings are becoming available to us in translation, we may begin a systematic analysis of the biography and work of this strange, tortured, questing individual who finally gave up his life in an act of voluntary starvation (following the Jain practice known as sallekhana) in Gandhiji’s ashram at Wardha in early June 1947. Meera Kosambi’s ‘Introduction’ to her grandfather’s Essential Writings (Permanent Black, 2010), as well as to his autobiography in its new freestanding and paperback edition, both open the door onto a potentially rich area of research and scholarship in modern Indian intellectual history.

TO GRASP THE ASTONISHING DIVERSITY of DD Kosambi’s interests and talents requires nothing more than a glance at the table of contents of his Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method (People’s Publishing House, 1957). This slim little volume contains pieces on, among other topics, the trial of Socrates, the Cultural Revolution in China, the quality of renunciation in the work of the Sanskrit poet Bhartihari (whom he compares and contrasts with Dante and Goethe), the relationship between scientific knowledge and class society, the reasons for the decline of Buddhism in ancient India, imperialism and peace in a post-war world, and a critique of Nehru’s The Discovery of India (1946) from a Marxist perspective. The breadth of Damodar’s interests is breathtaking, as also the ease with which he writes about both contemporary issues as well as scholarly matters. Few intellectuals exhibit this kind of supple, capacious curiosity about past and present, India and the world, science and literature today—Ashis Nandy comes to mind as a rare exception, and certainly it is hard to think of anyone in the younger generation who will confidently take on this range of subjects. As India’s economy opens itself to global markets, what accounts for the closing of the Indian mind?

Dharmanand’s writings, as evidenced in the selection made by his granddaughter, hew closer to his principal areas of commitment and concern: Buddhist texts and history, nonviolence both Ashokan and Gandhian, and the incipient labour movement in India during the final decades of the British Raj. The father has an implacable seriousness; the son can take more liberties because in a sense his father’s struggles and privations have created a space in which he may pursue whatever topic engages or excites him with a degree of ease. The father was born in a small village in Goa and never even made it through secondary school; the son went to college at Harvard and spent most of his life as a middle-class professor in Mumbai and Pune. While Damodar’s brilliance is undeniable, perhaps it would be fair to say that the greater distance covered, the bigger achievement, was really that of Dharmanand.

Given the welter of areas of intellectual endeavour in which the Kosambis participated, Dharmanand’s greatest contribution was to the revival and spread of the message of Buddhism in Maharashtra; Damodar’s was to the opening of Indian history to class analysis and dialectical materialism. Both these are truly significant interventions, although for different reasons and in different ways. Arguably Dharmanand’s Marathi writings on Buddhism, including his primer Buddha, Dharma ani Sangha (1910) and his play Bodhisattva, published posthumously in 1949, prepared the ground for the eventual popularisation of Ambedkar’s Neo-Buddhism in Maharashtra in the late 1950s, after Ambedkar’s formal conversion of himself and of about 400,000 Untouchable followers in October 1956, just prior to his death in December that year. Dharmanand helped create a climate of ideas, in which once again after a hiatus of centuries it became possible for ordinary people to reimagine and identify with the life and words of Siddhartha Gautama, and for them to aspire to creating a more equitable society based on the Buddha’s teachings about freedom, community and what it means to be human. The story of Buddhism’s modern rebirth in the land of its original birth, India, has a special chapter that unfolds in Maharashtra, and surely this owes as much to Dharmanand Kosambi as it does to BR Ambedkar.

DD Kosambi, as is relatively better known, transformed Indian history as a discipline by advocating for the integration of the study of material artifacts with the study of texts; by taking the category of ‘tribe’ as seriously as others had previously taken the category of ‘caste’; by introducing the ‘class’ into our understanding of Indian social structure; by finding innovative ways to read literary, religious and mythical textual materials as part of the historical record without getting bogged down in imponderable questions about their own historicity; and by continually placing India in a broad comparative perspective along with other ancient and modern societies. Even a casual student of history in this country has the two celebrated snapshots of Damodar’s scholarly life imprinted on his or her memory: his walks in and around Pune, carrying a walking stick with which he probed the ground, turning up all kinds of objects and fragments, literally feeling his way through the layers of historical time upon which we stand; and his regular train rides between Pune and Mumbai on the Deccan Queen, which allowed him a physical view of Maharashtra’s landscape that over the years yielded a subtle and complex historical vision. DD Kosambi showed that history has to be rooted in the earth on which it unfolds—a valuable, indeed indispensable corrective to a scholarly culture otherwise driven and shaped by the Brahminical preference for abstraction over materiality and text over lived experience.

The first half of the 20th century, an exciting and as yet mostly uncharted period in India’s intellectual history, produced many families that were active in political and intellectual life—the Nehrus, the Tagores and the Bhandarkars come immediately to mind. To this list we must add the Kosambis, over not just two but now three generations. After almost 65 years of political independence and a good two decades into globalisation, it is hard to imaginatively reconstruct, today, a time when a young man could wander the length and breadth of South Asia and be genuinely surprised, discombobulated and inspired by the cultural diversity he encountered along the way; a time when the seeds of history still lay scattered and expectant underneath the surface of our collective consciousness, awaiting the ministrations of a perceptive and careful farmer to flower into a vivid picture of our past, and a warrant for our future flourishing.

Remembering D. D. Kosambi

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:44:46 PST

Remembering D. D. Kosambi

SOURCE

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya

Progressive circles in India have been late in remembering D. D. Kosambi in 2007, the centennial year. Of course Pune, where Kosambi lived and died, led the way to centenary celebrations. A committee was formed with R. P. Nene and Meera Kosambi, daughter of D. D. Kosambi, to pay homage to the savant extraordinary in a befitting manner. A number of public lectures were organized on and from 31 July 2007, with Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik, and others as speakers. The Birth Centenary Committee has also been successful in persuading the Government of India to issue a postal stamp and instituting a Chair in the name of Kosambi in the University of Pune. The Human Resources Development ministry has sanctioned a grant of Rs. one crore (ten million) for this post. One, however, cannot be sure whether the right man will be appointed to continue the works of Kosambi along his lines.

DD Kosambi

Memorial meetings have been held in Aurangabad, Kolkata, Goa, Manipal, and Mumbai and maybe in other places in India. A Kosambi Festival was held in Goa from 4 to 7 February 2008 to celebrate “the life and work of an extraordinarily erudite son of a legendary figure in Goan intellectual history, the Abhimanyu of an Arjun, as someone has said about Damodar Kosambi and his father Dharmanand” (Reported by Sandhya Palekar in Indian Skeptic, 21: 1, 15. 05. 2008, p. 18). Dr.Vivek Monteiro, a Harvard doctorate, who abandoned the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to teach mathematics and science to the children of slum-dwellers of Mumbai, and finally became a trade unionist, gave a talk on “Science as the cognition of necessity”, the definition of science proposed by Kosambi.

Such attempts, however laudable, are not sufficient to make the new generation aware of what a versatile genius Kosambi was. Of course, it is not possible for a single person even to describe in broad terms, not to speak of evaluate, the contributions made by Kosambi in such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, classical genetics, Indian history, mathematics, numismatics, statistics, and Sanskrit text criticism. He was equally thoroughgoing in all the disciplines he had enriched. The bibliography of his works is bound to fill anyone with awe. A man like him is rare in all ages, more particularly in our times when ‘superspecialization’ is the key to both fame and success. In what follows I shall try to give an inkling of the man Kosambi, not the prodigious scholar he was.

Kosambi was a difficult man to work with. He was a veritable Durvasa, the sage known and feared by all for his irascibility. As Vasudev Viswanath Gokhale, foremost of the very few friends Kosambi had, and himself one of the greatest Indologists of our times, wrote in the obituary on Kosambi:

“As an independent thinker with a passionate devotion to scientific research, he seemed to be almost exclusively preoccupied with his own intellectual pursuits. As such, he was sometimes accused of brusqueness and intolerance, but he had obviously no use, nor time for all the sophistications of our normal social life, nor could he afford to waste his energies on empty rituals and ceremonies, except for treating them as objects of his anthropological studies” (Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 47 (1967), reprinted in: R. S. Sharma (ed.), Indian Society: Historical Probings, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1974, p. 4).

Not that Kosambi himself was unaware of his acid tongue. He has himself recollected how, in his early boyhood, his grandmother would seat him upon her lap and put sugar into his mouth with a benediction that his words might be sweet. Kosambi wryly commented: “Those who witnessed this charming, ridiculous, now forgotten observance feel, judging from the result, that she did not use enough sugar!” (An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, revised second edition, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1975, p. 381 n).

A grave and sombre person, he could, on rare occasions, relax, and then, as Gokhale assures us, “his childlike simplicity and sparkling wit were most refreshing even to those who were nearest to him and he spread laughter and sunshine around him.” But this is only one façade of his personality. He was also capable of playing pranks, just to irritate people who did not share his views. Think of his dedication of the Three Centuries of Bhartrihari’s Sanskrit Epigrams published in the Singhi Jain Series in 1948. In chaste Sanskrit he dedicated the work (which may be translated as follows): “In sacred memory of the pioneers of new human society, the vigorous great men (mahamanava) named Marx, Engels and Lenin.” Similarly he dedicated the collection of epigrams, Vidyakara’s Subhashita- ratnakosha (1957) edited jointly by him and V. V. Gokhale, “to all those who work for peace by peaceful means”. The work was published in the Harvard Oriental Series with Professor Daniel H. H. Ingalls as the Series editor, who was an anticommunist to the core. Kosambi was active in the World Peace Council, suspected by the U. S. establishment as a front organization of the international communist movement. The highly skilful editing of the joint editors was appreciated by all (well, almost all) but Louis Renou, the doyen of French Indologists, was taken aback by the Introduction written by Kosambi. Renou could not understand why a scholarly work, a critical edition of an anthology, should contain such items as class struggle (Jounal Asiatique,vol. 245, fascicule 4, 1957, p. 406).

To take another example: Kosambi dedicated the second dition of his Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1975) “to Indo-Soviet Friendship” (the first edition (1956) was dedicated to Monica Felton, a Stalin Prize winner) in place of an individual.

It is not enough to explain Kosambi’s pranks as something to be expected of a true Marxist disdaining to conceal his views. More likely he had a puck in him who encouraged him to do and say things that would irritate other people. In his meetings with Homi Bhabha in TIFR, he used to oppose whatever Bhabha proposed. Bhabha could not tolerate contradiction and Kosambi revelled in it. This did not contribute to the furtherance of his career but he could not help being what he was: a maverick.

Kosambi has often been accused of his disrespectful attitude to and open sniggering at eminent scholars, who were his contemporaries. It cannot be denied that he was a man of strong likes and dislikes. To take one example, look at his dismissal of an erudite German Indologist: “W. Ruben’s Einführung in a. Indienkunde shows how a good Sanskritist can go to pieces because of Marxism ill disgested…” (Introduction, etc., p. 14 n1). O. Herold is curtly written off for assuming the Urvasi-Pururavas legend as a case of Aryan group-marriage, “for which there might be no evidence but which apparently makes no difference to his judgment, being required by some (presumably Marxist) theory” (Myth and Reality, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1962, p. 54 n6). Anyone unacquainted with Kosambi’s world view would take him to be an anti-Marxist if such comments are read out of context. Or one might think that Kosambi considered himself to be the sole depository of Marxism, every other Marxist unfit to be called so.

Yet the fact remains that Kosambi was always prepared to honour those to whom it was due. Naturally his standards were very high, and so the only names he mentions are bound to be of persons of the first water. At the end of his Introduction to Myth and Reality he writes: “Readers will recognize my debt to B. Malinowski, H. Obermaier, H. Breuil and H. Frankfort, among other giants; but more than any other, to K. Marx” (p. 11 n). Strangely enough, F. Engels is not mentioned here, although in a letter to Vidal-Naquet (dt. 4 June 1964) Kosambi said: “I learned from these two great men [Marx and Engels] what questions to ask and then went to fieldwork to find the answers because the material did not exist in published books.” In course of a conversation with Charles Malamound, Romila Thapar came to learn that Kosambi had admitted to him that the deepest intellectual influence on him had come from the works of Engels (R. Thapar, “The Contribution of D. D. Kosambi to Indology”, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay, New Series, vols. 52-53/ 1977-78, pp. 381 and 384 n55). Kosambi’s admiration for Stalin, more particularly for his polemics against Academician Marr, is apparent from a reference to the rejoinders written by Stalin and printed in the journal, Soviet Literature (Myth and Reality, p. 44 n1).

Kosambi’s respect for truly eminent persons was not confined to Marxists. In a sharply phrased passage he makes fun of worthless Sanskritists and upholds a Christian Missionary: “The ability to replace incomprehensible Sanskrit works by still larger and equally meaningless English terms can make a prosperous career. It cannot produce an Albert Schweitzer, whose magnificent study Von Reimarus Zu Wrede, analysis of Bach’s music and record as medical missionary at Lambarene were impressive even in my irreverent undergraduate years” (“Adventures into the Unknown” in K. Satchidananda Murty and K. Ramakrishna Rao (ed.), Current Trends in Indian Philosophy, Waltair: Andhra University Press/ Bombay: Asia Publishing House, [1972] , p. 154).

There is no denying that Kosambi was a proud man, impatient with lesser mortals and aggressive in attitude. But by no means was he too proud to accept his own errors. When J. Brough corrected one of his mistakes, he admitted it in unequivocal terms (see Introduction etc., p. 109 n12).

Archaeological fieldwork took up a large part of Kosambi’s time and he was accused of neglecting mathematics by his superiors in TIFR. Kosambi did not neglect mathematics; it was his first love. He was working on prime numbers and one paper had already been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (U. S. A.), vol. 49, 1963, pp. 20-23. The paper, however, failed to evoke the expected response. When Kosambi was invited by the Andhra University to write on his personal philosophy as a scientist and research worker, he vented his despair in an epilogue to the autobiographical essay he contributed. It is necessary to quote the relevant passage in full if the reader is to comprehend how crest-fallen Kosambi had felt at being spurned by Western mathematicians:

Every competent judge who saw only this radically new basic result intuitively felt that it was correct as well as of fundamental importance. Unfortunately, the Reimann hypothesis followed as a simple consequence. Could a problem over which the world’s greatest mathematicians had come to grief for over a century be thus casually solved in the jungles of India? Psychologically, it seemed much more probable that the interloper was just another ‘‘circle-squarer.’’ Mathematics may be a cold, impersonal science of pure thought; the mathematician can be thoughtless, heatedly acrid, even rabid, over what he dislikes. Let me admit at once that I made every sort of mistake in the first presentation. There is no excuse for this, though there were strong reasons: I had to fight for my results over three long years between waves of agony from chronic arthritis, against massive daily doses of aspirin, splitting headaches, fever, lack of assistance and steady disparagement. It was much more difficult to discover good mathematicians who were able to see the main point of the proof than it had been to make the original mathematical discovery. How much of this is due to my own disagreeable personality and what part to the spirit of a tight medieval guild that rules mathematical circles in countries with an ‘‘affluent society’’ need not be considered here. There is surely a great deal to be said for the notion that the success is fundamentally related to the particular form of society. (Current Trends in Indian Philosophy, p. 168. A part of this posthumously published essay has been reprinted in other volumes by and on Kosambi bearing a new title, “Steps in Science,” without, however, this significant Epilogue).

How should one judge the matter? Are we to take this as the raving of a paranoid or are we expected to sympathize with a man silently rejected for being a non-Westerner? Much depends on one’s attitude. I for myself believe that Kosambi was right; he has been shabbily treated both in India and abroad. Even now he remains neglected and misunderstood. Death released him from all ignominy in the early hours of 29 June 1966.

I am not competent to speak of Kosambi’s achievements in scientific fields. As a student of Indology, I believe that his books and articles remain a quarry of the most fruitful ideas to be developed by his successors. This is not to say that Kosambi was always right. Some of his cherished theories and hypotheses have been challenged and, in a few cases, disproved. But that does not detract an iota from the merit of his works or his achievements as a historian. As D. Lorenzen observed, when some otherwise sound historians like A. L. Basham purposely hesitated to offer radically new and speculative interpretations of the sources of change and conflict in ancient India and of the interrelations of economy, politics, social structure, and cultural values, “ D. D. Kosambi has no such hesitations. His two general works, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History and The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline, spew forth new ideas and provocative comments as if from a shotgun . Although some of his speculative hypotheses are virtually impossible to verify, many have opened up fruitful new paths of understandings and research” (“Imperialism and the historiography of ancient India” in: S. N. Mukherjee (ed.), India: History and Thought, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1982, p. 98). This boldness is what is lacking in the works of many later historians. They are afraid to go in for systematic theoretical generalizations.

Kosambi never refrained from doing this very thing. Lorenzen has noticed that “Kosambi’s edition of Sanskrit texts and many of his articles display an academic rigour sometimes lacking in these two works [Introduction and Historical Outline],’’ but added that in spite of this shortcoming, they do not fail “ to be original and provocative” (p. 98 n29). And this is what really matters. I can do no better than end this tribute to Kosambi by quoting Lorenzen again:

A historical work which makes such generalizations undoubtedly risks, indeed requires, the formulation of an ideological bias, but this is, after all, what makes it food for thought. No one today reads Grant or Mill, or even Nehru, because of their historical accuracy. They remain important works precisely because of the ideological biases of their authors. ‘‘Accuracy,’’ as Housman once remarked, “is a duty, not a virtue.’’ (p. 100).

This essay was first published in Frontier, Annual Number 2008

D. D. Kosambi and the Sociology of Literature: A Critique

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:41:26 PST

D. D. Kosambi and the Sociology of Literature: A Critique

Source

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya

D. D. Kosambi (1907-66) was trained as a mathematician and used to teach and research in mathematics till 1941. Then he wrote an ‘exasperating essay’ on the Sanskrit epigrams attributed to Bhartrihari. This essay, Kosambi says, ‘caused every godfearing Sanskritist to shudder’ and consequently ‘I fell into Indology, as it were, through the roof’.1

The essay ‘upset’, among others, V. S. Sukthankar, the celebrated general editor of the critical edition of the Mahabharata.2 He was however, not able to give a definite contradiction in any essential of Kosambi’s basic contention. There were also a few points in the essay that caused others to be puzzled. Some readers, for example, felt that there was ‘a seeming inconsistency’ in a passing reference to Shakespeare’s dramas which ‘were assigned a class basis of the rising proto-bourgeoisie’.3

Kosambi took up the matter in a short essay written in 1958. Since this piece has not been included in any collection of writings by Kosambi, it is necessary to quote long extracts from it and then critique his approach. Kosambi had also touched on the same issue in a section of his Introduction to an anthology of Sanskrit poetry which was edited for the first time by him and V.V. Gokhale.4 It will be my endeavour to show how Kosambi makes use of Marx’s formulation of the relationship between the base and the superstructure and how Kosambi demonstrates its validity in two disparate cases, namely, ancient Sanskrit literature and English literature of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Although Kosambi does not explicitly refer to Marx in this connection there can be little doubt that he drew his conclusions from Marx.

In his essay on Bhartrihari Kosambi observed:

‘The greatness of an author does not lie in mere handling of words. Indeed, the finest craftsmanship of such manipulation is impossible without the expression of a new class basis. This does not mean that every writer who seeks enduring fame must express only the glory of the dictatorship of the proletariat: it is doubtful if Shakespeare could have grasped the meaning of the word (proletariat) itself except perhaps as a mass of Calibans. But in Shakespeare’s day there were other classes, the new trading gentry for example, that had begun to force their way to the front and had yet to become, in their turn, obstacles to human progress. One must remember that, during the course of its struggle against the old, every new class tends to assimilate and identify itself with the entire oppressed section of the human race – to take its own victory as the total desideratum of the progress of civilisation.’ 5

The question that Kosambi had to face from others is: if Shakespeare’s plays reflect the class basis of the rising proto-bourgeoisie, why do they so often portray high nobility and rarely the bourgeoisie? Can we really ascribe any class basis to Shakespeare other than the feudal?

Kosambi began his reply with the following observation:

‘The question is of importance in learning to distinguish between form and content, between the superficial mould and what has actually been poured into it.’ 6

He then expatiates on the matter in more detail:

‘The main assertion hardly needs proof. Shakespeare made a comfortable living (without court or baronial patronage) out of the theatre as a business, where a penny counted as such whether from the apprentice or the lord. The plays and their author grew in literary stature only with the growth of the new class. Though his principal characters are so often kings, princes and leisured aristocrats, the characterization is not done in the manner in which feudal nobility and royalty liked to visualize itself. This may be seen by contrast between the Elizabethan dramatists and the Chanson de Roland or Orlando Furioso. Honour and prowess were essential for a feudal noble while the villain who lacked these qualities had to be painted in dark monochrome, as for example “false Ganelon”.’ 7

Kosambi then provides an instance from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

‘With Shakespeare, those parts (such as Hamlet) that call upon the finest histrionic ability are far removed from the older princely concept. Hamlet does not challenge to mortal combat the usurper king, murderer of his father and seducer of his mother. The prince of Denmark takes his revenge as carefully as the head of any successful trading house, with all the hesitations, doubts, need and planning for evidence that this new type of humanity would have shown.’ 8

Two other examples are provided by Richard III (Richard III) and Shylock (The Merchant of Venice):

‘Richard III is a villain, but of unfeudal complexity in his overriding ambition as no knight, true or false, of the Round Table could be. The tricky Jewish usurer Shylock is heroic in his desire for revenge against insults to his race, human in love for his daughter and pathetic in his sorrow. One could never put him into the Charlemagne cycle nor the Arthurian.’ 9

Do all heroes and villains in Shakespeare’s plays correspond to this kind of interpretation? Kosambi admits an exception for Othello (Othello) but rather summarily dismisses him in this fashion: ‘One hero of the plays who could fit into the uncomplicated antique mould is Othello; but his story is purely that of a jealous, easily duped Negro condottiere for the merchant republic of Venice.’ 10

What was the source of Shakespeare’s portrayal of his central characters in a mould quite unlike that of the past? Kosambi singles out Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince as the indirect source of influence:

‘We know today that the inspiration for these heroes who are above every traditional moral restrained comes indirectly from Machiavelli’s Principe (The Prince), with its new renaissance prince to whom murder, ambush, poison and betrayal were frankly normal, convenient tools for policy. That book supplied (in manuscript copies, even before its general publication) the theory upon which Thomas Cromwell and the officers of Henry VIII sequestrated the great ecclesiastical foundations in England, thereby putting a considerable amount of most useful capital into the pockets of the new and rising gentry. It was the same book which inspired Marlowe and is ultimately the ancestor of Nietzsche’s superman – originally the man who unhesitatingly tramples all social conventions into the mire of limitless personal ambition. Yet, at the bitter end, Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus [in Dr. Faustus] paid for its wonderful fling with his precious soul like any upright bourgeois, were Goethe’s Faust [in Faust, part 2] cheats the devil’s painful contract.’ 11

In support of his contention Kosambi draws our attention to another significant event of those days, the discovery of the New World:

‘Finally when the most fantastic adventure was to be sought, Shakespeare did not send his people to quest after the Holy Grail or a-tilting just to break a lance, but cast them upon an unsuspected isle in the far seas [The Tempest ]. Such isles were then been discovered by intrepid voyagers who did not let the thrill of magnificent adventure into the vasty (sic) unknown interfere with their insatiable appetite and keen scent for profit and loot. Feudal prowess, on the other hand, was meant to impose respect for the upper class upon the common people; discovery or invention play (sic) no official part in it.’ 12

In order to set the action of his plays in such hitherto-unknown isles, it was not enough to have resort to bold imagination. The discovery of a new continent provided Shakespeare with this kind of setting. Here again Kosambi refers to history – not merely to geographical expeditions but to the appearance of a new class called the bourgeoisie which was forced to undertake such risky adventures into the open sea in search of gold:

‘To break with tradition, however, new discoveries in the Western hemisphere and the fabulous wealth of the Americas did not suffice by themselves; the rise of a new class was necessary.’ 13

If this could happen in England, why did it not happen in Spain, the pioneer of sea voyages in the fifteenth century? Secondly, does the whole of literature in Renaissance England exhibit the new spirit rather than the old? Kosambi’s response to these questions is as follows:

‘Spain retrogressed with the Inquisition. Its most appealing lay figure, Don Quixote, is after all a failure and misfit, precisely because he tried to experience the adventures then fashionable in feudal literature. The plays of Lope de Vega fail to move us in spite of their prolific elegance. In England itself, the older trend survives in Lyly’s Euphues which models the punctilious but empty superficialities of a courtier upon Castiglione’s Cortegiano [The Courtier].’ 14

Kosambi concludes his essay by contrasting Edmund Spenser with John Donne. In the last sentence he refers to Sanskrit literature as another case in point:

‘Spenser’s Faerie Queene with its unquestioned literary merit looks backward. The reason why John Donne is read rather than Spenser is precisely because his philosophy and his expression are both more acceptable to the bourgeoisie. In the same way, when the Sanskrit mahakavya [epic] tradition is analyzed, it shows devotion not to the gods and to religious life but to the feudal rulers whose life is lived in idealised form by Rama, or some other Puranic deity.’ 15

The last line comes rather abruptly but Kosambi had already written on the class basis of Sanskrit literature (more specially, the subhashita literature) in his Introduction to the Subhasitaratnakosa. He said:

‘[N]ew types of literature cannot be expected without the rise of new classes. The English reformation under Henry VIII shows the unmistakable beginning of such a new class, along with that of new literature. Even for the Elizabethan age, only the authors that look forward with the new gentry attain permanence, as, for example, dramatists like Marlowe and Shakespeare who did not scorn to display their wares to the London theatre audiences, or the keen-witted John Donne; the authors who look backwards to the court and its entourage wrote with no less skill, effort, mastery of words, but the Faerie Queene and Lyly’s Euphues seem comparatively insipid.’ 16

Kosambi then believes that only the coming of a new class can give rise to a new type of literature and, conversely, in spite of all talents, writers who remain tied to the old class fail to produce any work of lasting merit. It is to be noted that during the period of transition all authors do not tend to look forward; some continue to cling to old mores and stick to outworn ideas. Hence both kinds of authors co-exist for quite some time. Kosambi does not deny that poets like Spenser were highly gifted; they had ‘no less skill, effort, mastery of words’ than Shakespeare or Donne. But their adherence to the old, outgoing feudal mode of writing ultimately made them fall short of such poets who had adopted the outlook of the new class. Thus the writer vis-à-vis the class position he or she adopts during a period of transition is of seminal importance. Other things such as skill, effort, and mastery of words that constitute literary merit may be equal, but the outcome will not depend on these factors alone. The extra-literary issue, namely, the class position adopted by the writer, is the ultimate determinant.

By way of instance, Kosambi refers to the condition of Indian literature before and after the advent of the British rule:

‘In India, the new literature had to await the passage of centuries, till the great social novels in Bengal with Bankim Chandra Chatterji, matched by those of Rabindranath Tagore whose incomparable poetry speaks of completely new social aspirations. The social drama in Marathi hardly antedates the First World War. I am not qualified to speak in detail of contemporary Indian literature, but it will be admitted that these vigorous manifestation had been preceded by centuries of dreary classical imitation, even in the vernaculars. To those who could write, the ten-headed Ravana had remained more real than their living human neighbors, the woes of the Pandavas indistinguishable from their own.’ 17

Instead of resorting to the class question, could one not explain this stagnancy by other factors, such as foreign aggression and occupation? Kosambi makes short shrift of the suggestion:

‘Foreign conquest explains nothing, for where is the corresponding influence of Persian, though that had become a court language all over the country, to be cultivated by learned Hindus. The Fisana Ajayab and Bagh-o-Bahar might as well have been written at the time of the Arabian Nights.’ 18

How could the British rule make such a radical difference which the Mughal rule could not? Kosambi’s answer is as follows:

‘The difference is that the British introduced a fundamentally new, advanced mode of life, the bourgeois, as against Muslim feudalism which had meant a comparatively trifling readjustment of the way in which people lived. With Ghalib come new problems and new writing. The verse of Akbar Allahabadi shows what life nationalism could infuse; Mohammed Iqbal’s great days gave us an Urdu poem that became a national song, his words Hindostan hamara hai stirring every person who heard them – except the British’ 19

The new Indian literature that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, was no less class-oriented than before. Kosambi points out:

‘Yet this is unmistakably class literature. Munshi Premchand has many admirers, but no worthy successor, though the modern Urdu and Hindi short story begins with him. Iqbal’s later years showed higher Persianization, greater introspective detachment from the problems of the country, and a British knighthood! Competent writers increase, but the framework is now set, foreign models cheap and easy to imitate, profoundly original writing unnecessary as well as uneconomical, “progressive” writing no less imitative, though more dangerous and liable to be suppressed by police action.’ 20

Kosambi continues in this vein and reflects on the modern literary development in the west. But we have quoted enough to show that Kosambi takes his stand on Marx’s formulation concerning the relationship between the base and the superstructure. In his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). Marx wrote:

‘In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turned into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner of later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.’ 21

Kosambi creatively applies this general formula to interpret the radical changes both in form and content in Indian literature in the new bourgeois era and, as a parallel case, cites the case of English literature after the advent of capitalism. He does not lay the responsibility for the dreary monotony of premodern Indian literature at the door of individual authors, nor does he deny their literary merit. He blames the socioeconomic milieu that produced them. He demonstrates why new forms such as social novels could not arise in the old mould – not because some author or authors suddenly wished to opt for a new form of writing but because a radical change in the class relations had brought forward the replacement of old genres by the new. More perceptibly he points out that in case of Elizabethan literature, even though the characters appear to bear the stamp of old feudal nobility, their attitudes have undergone a sea change, as in the case of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. Thus mere appearance is not enough; one must go beyond appearance and look at the essence.

It should be emphasized at this point that what Kosambi succeeds in doing is to contribute only to the sociology of literature; his judgment in no way affects the aesthetic aspect of the works of the authors he mentions. His appreciation for poets, dramatists and story-tellers from Asvaghosha, Sudraka, Kalidasa and Dandin down to Jayadeva is well-attested. 22 While speaking of the beauty of the jativrajya verses depicting vignettes of everyday life of the people he notices perspicaciously: ‘These are quite exceptional topics for Sanskrit poetry, which only too often shows the unhappy crash resulting from an attempt at far higher flight.’ 23 He also makes another crucial observation in relation to the development of literature as a whole:

‘That society has progressed by the development of successive classes to positions of dominance implies that the progressive writer is oriented towards the needs of some rising class; his greatness derives from the inevitable tendency of the class to look upon the interest of all humanity as its own. It is a corollary that the great writers come far oftener at the beginning of their period than at any later stage; they are the ones whose appeal outlasts their times and societies. This is why we do not dismiss great writing because it is class literature. When the class in question has gained power, there follows a neat inversion whereby its own special interests are proclaimed to be those of all humanity. Then writers set themselves in a far narrower mold.’ 24

Kosambi sums up his evaluation of Sanskrit poetry, particularly of the authors of epigrams, in the following way:

‘The poetry strives to be and is, at best, exquisite rather than great. Yet though the voice be thin, it is clear. The field might be limited as to objectives, vision, or endeavor, but excess is rare. The poets speak across the centuries in refined musical tones bearing a soft but indelible charm, visualizing an elegant life. The dominant ideal, frankly expressed, is tasteful though not placid lovemaking in luxury – without vice, greed, brutal lust after blood, bourgeois concentration upon money-breeding profit. It is only fitting that their names and verses should not be altogether forgotten.’ 25

So Kosambi finds at least one redeeming feature in classical Sanskrit poetry: in spite of all its limitations it is untainted by the despicable traits of the capitalist society!

Kosambi had an all-inclusive taste in literature, unaffected by class considerations; he practised what he preached. Indeed he did ‘not dismiss great writing because it is class literature.’ This is proved by his choice of what he considered to be ‘great writing’: the Buddhist Pali Dhammapada, the fourteenth-century Italian classic, Dante’s Divine Comedy and the seventeenth-century English prose allegory, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.26 Kosambi does not allow his conviction in the class character of all hitherto existing written literature to interfere with his aesthetic appreciation. He keeps sociology of literature and literary judgment in two separate compartments. This distinguishes him from the horde of self-proclaimed ‘Marxists’ who approach literature as a mere mirror, without any inherent value of its own, and more often than not throw the baby with the bathwater. They forget (or perhaps are not aware of) Marx’s solemn warning: ‘If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically -cultivated person’ and ‘the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear.’ 27

It cannot be denied that artistically-uncultivated persons rather than the cultivated ones have long dominated the world of ‘Official Marxists’ (an omnibus term that Kosambi coined in 1957 to include ‘several factions of the [then undivided] CPI, the Congress Socialists, the Royists, and numerous left splinter groups’).28 Consistently and persistently the OM tended to equate literary criticism with sociology of literature. Yet Engels preferred to judge a work of art ‘both from the aesthetic and historical points of view’, a dual yardstick well worth keeping in mind for all times.29

Kosambi, it should be remembered, was a polyglot and a voracious reader of world literature. He was as much at home with Aeschylus and Kalidasa as with anonymous Old English poets, medieval Italian satirists, Renaissance dramatists and Villon, Goethe, Blake and Shelley.30 He could quite casually refer to the Wayland Smith Saga as well as the songs composed by Russian soldiers in honour of their general, Dovator.31 His views on literature thus are not those of a dilettante but of one who was as much accomplished in his own field, mathematics, as in history and literature.

What constitutes Kosambi’s contribution to the sociology of literature is that he was the first among the Marxists to apply the externalist approach (originally developed in the historiography of science, then extended to other, wider fields) to the study of literature.32 In this respect he was at one with John Bernal, Joseph Needham, Hyman Levy and Lancelot Hogben. They were inspired by the works of some Soviet historians of science and technology in the 1930s and consequently adopted the externalist approach in their studies in the history of science, both of the east and the west. As opposed to those historians who believe that individual genius alone is to be credited for all developments in literature (a view known as internalism), Kosambi worked out a scheme which, without discounting individual talent, placed literature in its proper historical perspective. The internalist approach can never account for the fact why Mukunda Chakravarti or Bharatachandra Ray in pre-modern Bengal, despite their talents, could not make any breakthrough in Bangla poetry either in form or in content and remained confined to the age-old tradition of the Mangalakavya. There can be no room for doubt about their worth. What held them back was the absence of a new class to which they could link themselves. Kosambi’s externalist approach emphasizes the fact that in the absence of a new class and new aspirations, the poets of the past could not but remain confined to the old groove. His analysis also explains the phenomenon called Iswarchandra Gupta more satisfactorily than any other. Since Gupta adhered to the old decaying class and its outworn ideas even in a transitional period when class relations were being radically transformed in the early nineteenth-century Bengal, he could not be a pioneer in the field of literature. His junior contemporaries, Michael Madhusudan Datta, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya and Dinabandhu Mitra, on the other hand, succeeded in bringing into operation both new forms and new contents.

Students of art and literature too have much to learn from Kosambi.

Notes and References

1 Kosambi, 1986, 9.

2 Kosambi, 1948, “Editor’s Preface”.

3 Kosambi, 1958, 45.

4 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lvii.

5 Kosambi, 1957/1986, 89.

6 Kosambi, 1958, 45.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Kosambi, 1958, 45-46.

10 Kosambi, 1958, 46.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Kosambi, 1958, 46-47.

15 Kosambi, 1958, 47.

16 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lviii.

17 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lviii-lix.

18 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lix.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Marx, 1970, 20-21.

22 For a detailed study see R. Bhattacharya, 2010, 21-38.

23 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, xlii.

24 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lvii-lviii.

25 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lxii. Elsewhere Kosambi has taken pride in ‘hav[ing] rescued over fifty poets [whose epigrams find place in the Subhasitaratnakosa] from the total oblivion to which lovers of Sanskrit had consigned them, not to speak of adding to our meagre knowledge of many others.’ 1986, 9.

26 Kosambi, 1975, 283.

27 Marx, 1961, 141 and 108.

28 Kosambi, 1986, 3.

29 Engels wrote this in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle (May 18, 1859). Marx and Engels, 107.

30 Kosambi, 1986, 92; Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lx, xliv, lxii.

31 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, xlviii n.

32 For a brief account of externalism vis-à-vis internalism, see internet sources.

Works Cited

Bhattacharyya, Ramkrishna. ‘Marxism and Classical Sanskrit Literature: D. D. Kosambi’s Approach and Assessment’, Revista di Studi Sudasiatici, No. 4, 2010.

Kosambi, D. D. The Epigrams Attributed to Bhartrihari. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2000 (first published in 1948).

Kosambi, D. D. ‘European Feudal and Renaissance Literature’, New Age (monthly), 7: 10, October 1958.

Kosambi, D. D. Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method. Pune: R. P. Nene, 1986 (first published in 1957).

Kosambi, D. D. An Introduction to the Study of Indian History. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1975 (first published in 1956).

Kosambi, D. D. Science Society & Peace. Pune: Academy of Political and Social Studies, 1986.

Kosambi D. D. and V. V. Gokhale (eds.). The Subhasitaratnakosa Compiled by Vidyakara. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957.

Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961.

Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

Internet Sources

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_science

[Acknowledgements: Amitava Bhattacharyya, Arun Ghosh (Bhowani Sen Pathagar), Subhasish Mukhopadhyay and Tarun Pyne]

This essay was first published in Frontier, 45:14-17, October 14-November 10, 2012, 36-41

Untouchability, Gita and the Pursuit of Truth

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:50:53 PST

Download the article: Untouchability, Gita, and the Pursuit of Truth

Remembering Vivekanand Jha
by Vishwa Mohan Jha

It might come as a surprise to the uninitiated that untouchability remains among the darkest aspects of India’s social history – despite Bhimrao Ambedkar, Marxist and “post-Marxist” histories, a wealth of contemporary caste studies, and the rise of dalit politics. It is to the labours of Vivekanand Jha, who passed away on 30 November 2012, that so much of our present understanding of the history of untouchability in ancient India is indebted to.

Historians had generally been evasive about the issue; or else we had apologias. Thus in the brief chapter on untouchability in the second volume of P V Kane’s masterly History of Dharma śāstra, all that he discussed was that inequities such as untouchability were not unique to India but were a fairly widespread phenomena; that it was not to be found in our glorious Vedic period; and how in numerous ways it has been is represented, its evils exaggerated. While we need to recognise, for example, that concern with hygiene contributed to the making of untouchability, we can equally be certain (Kane contended) that it was imposed with no hard feelings towards the untouchables!1 Ambedkar sought to fill the void and provide a corrective. In his Untouchables: Who Were They? and Why They Became Untouchables? (1948), he historicised the issue in important ways, as by drawing the crucial distinction between impurity and untouchability, and located the origins of the latter in the beef -eating of the downtrodden.

Historian’s Labour

The historian Ram Sharan Sharma of Patna University began to take interest in the history of the shudras about the same time when Ambedkar was coming out with his works on the shudras and “untouchables”. But the gauntlet that Ambedkar threw down before the specialist historians was to be picked up by Vivekanand Jha in his doctoral thesis “Untouchables in Early Indian History” (1972) under the supervision of Sharma.

Jha meticulously collected and vetted a truly impressive range of evidence and arguments, and marshalled them into a systematic account of the origin and development of untouchability in early India. This history unfolded itself as a part of the larger process of the transformation of a succession of aboriginal tribes (for example the Chandalas) into caste society as well as of the gradual degradation of the status of a number of professional groups such as washer-men and -women and leather workers. In the process a number of received ideas (beginning with the pet brahminical idea that untouchability proceeded from the “mixture” of castes) were, as they had to be, critiqued and set aside. A different chronology of the advent of untouchability than the one suggested by Ambedkar was worked out, sundering the causal connection between beef-eating and untouchability postulated by him.

It is revealing indeed that leatherwork, that was to become a surest sign of untouchability in medieval times, should not have been considered polluting, not only during the Vedic period, but for centuries thereafter. For instance, a record dating from early fi rst millennium AD refers to a pious donor named Vidhika as a Chamār (Cham makāra), the son of an Upājhāya (a teacher, Prakrit form of Sanskrit Upād hyāya). Incidentally, the surname “Jha” is supposed to derive from Upājhāya.

Jha’s works became conspicuous for a wrong reason too, which he himself much regretted: for a long time he was perhaps the only standard authority on the subject, at least going by the references to untouchability in scholarly literature. The works of Mikael Aktor and Genichi Yamazaki (preceded by that of K R Hanumanthan) are beginning to redress the complaint, however, and they further underline the lasting nature of his legacy.

As every student of Indian history knows, Vivekanand Jha stood out in the profession as much for his own researches as for looking after those of others. As the founder editor of the Indian Historical Review, he set high standards for editing and publishing

(Download the pdf to read the complete article)

DD Kosambi Commemoration Volume (1974)

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 09:21:10 PST

We now have this veritable goldmine of essays in honour of DD Kosambi, brought out in 1974. Thanks, once again to Arvind Gupta.

Download the pdf

Marxism and Classical Sanskrit Literature: D.D. Kosambi’s Approach and Assessment

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 18:14:54 PDT

Download Marxism and Classical Sanskrit Literature: DD Kosambi's Approach and Assessment

by Ramakrishna Bhattacharya

"In this essay I examine D. D. Kosambi’s approach and assessment of classical Sanskrit literature from the Marxist point of view. In the first part, I discuss S. N. Dasgupta’s critique of the Marxist approach to art and literature, arguing that Dasgupta had an idealist (and idealized) view of Indian society that does not match historical reality. I then contrast Dasgupta’s views with those of Kosambi. The latter asserted that there was no qualitative change in the means of production and hence in the relations of production in India before the imposition of British rule. In his view, classical Sanskrit literature too reflects this ground reality. In the second part, I discuss how Kosambi’s Marxist approach to art and literature was both aesthetic and historical. Through presenting Kosambi’s appreciation of classical Sanskrit literature, I show that Daniel H. H. Ingalls misapprehended Kosambi’s views and that his criticism of Kosambi was misdirected accordingly."

UNSETTLING THE PAST Unknown Aspects and Scholarly Assessments of D.D. Kosambi

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:33:34 PDT

UNSETTLING THE PAST: D.D. KOSAMBI AND ROMILA THAPAR

In the Permanent Black pipeline for next year (2013) are two wonderfully interesting books by two great historians of ancient India,D.D. Kosambi and Romila Thapar.

Source

The book by Kosambi (actually, two parts of it are by him and one part is on him) is calledUNSETTLING THE PAST.

The book by Thapar is called THE PAST BEFORE US.

UNSETTLING THE PAST

Unknown Aspects and Scholarly Assessments of D.D. Kosambi

The Kosambi book is a collection of obscure and pretty unknown writings by D.D. Kosambi alongside assessments of his contribution to various areas of scholarship -- ancient history, mathematics, Sanskrit literature, numismatics, and marxism as a method for understanding the past.

An array of the great man's unpublished letters, unearthed from the Harvard and TIFR archives by his daughter Meera Kosambi, will comprise one section of the book. Kosambi's correspondence includes an exchange with Robert Graves on comparative aspects of Indian and Greek myth.

Almost no one has ever seen this cache of incredibly interesting letters which reveal new facets of Kosambi's insights, range of interests, methods, friendships, and affections. Some wonderful photos of Kosambi, mostly unavailable, will also feature in the book. They reveal a man resembling a Greek god, 5 ft. 10 in. tall, who was humane, compassionate, and caring in unexpected ways, as for example in the photo below, showing him bathing one of his two dogs, Chatya. (The other one was called Bonzo, who too will be revealed in the book.) Some people have it all: intellect, physique, Harvard education, bungalow in Poona ... Kosambi had it all by the spadefull. It comes almost as a relief to know that in later life he suffered from arthritis -- though even about his illness Kosambi is wonderfully blunt. In the last year of his life, in one of his letters to a Japanese collaborator, he writes presciently: "I find that my health trouble has been due to long standing and apparently incurable virus infection. The main site is the sinuses, with secondary sites in the chest and bowels. The arthritis is a result of this, and so cannot be cured except by death."

Kosambi's famous falling out with Homi Bhabha at the TIFR (they got on fine initially) was in part because, at a time when scientists were debating the relative advantages of solar and nuclear energy, Kosambi argued for the sun whereas Bhabha preferred uranium and had the backing of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Here's an extract from the first of Kosambi's 'Three Essays on Solar Energy' (1957), an essay powered by the writer's fiery English prose, which concludes with a swipe at Bhabha and capitalist functioning more generally -- and which rings true in our time, when inflated costs in the execution of public works are the state's way of looting citizens.

The cost of research on direct utilization of solar energy would be far lower than for atomic energy. India has much greater supply of solar energy than most other countries; in fact, the problem is to keep the land from being blasted altogether by the sun. One difficulty is that the sun’s energy is not constant. There is the variation between sunrise and sunset, with nothing at all at night. Again, cloudy days make a difference. The problem of storage, however, is not too difficult. Better storage batteries can certainly be produced, to give long life without heavy servicing. Another method would be to pump water by use of solar energy, at whatever variable speed the sun allows, into high-level tanks (say on towers). The water can then come down by gravity through turbines which turn electric generators, and can be further used for irrigation. The advantages are that the fuel—the sun’s radiation—costs absolutely nothing, and there are no harmful exhaust gases or radioactive byproducts. Moreover, the installation can be set up anywhere in India, and will work quite well except perhaps in the heaviest monsoon season. The research is of no use for war purposes. That is why it attracts some of us, but does not attract those who control the funds.

At another point in the same essay, Kosambi seems to anticipate modern objections to the anti-science aspect of Ashis Nandy's worldview:

Already, before we have had any decisive benefit from atomic power, the problem of the radioactive waste, material which appears in the processing, has become formidable. This leads some prophets of gloom to the other extreme: humanity destroys itself by striving for progress; science is an evil. Let us go back to nature, the simple life of the villager.

This reaction is puerile. The clock cannot be turned back. Science is not to blame, only the greed that misuses it. Man in the state of nature was helpless in relation to the environment. For that matter, edible grain like rice and wheat is as artificial as a brick house; it took our ancestors a few thousand years to develop them out of the grasses; and if human cultivation stopped, nature would not give such food crops. The whole question of energy, atomic or any other, has to be considered dispassionately, without sentiment.

Romila Thapar, Ranajit Guha, Sheldon Pollock, A.L Basham, B.D. Chattopadhyaya, Daniell Ingalls, Nayanjot Lahiri, Kumkum Roy, Kunal Chakrabarti, R.P. Goldman, Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, and Vivek Monteiro are the contributors who assess Kosambi in the second half of the book.

Romila Thapar's

THE PAST BEFORE US

Historical Traditions of Early North India begins by acknowledging an intellectual debt to Kosambi (one of Thapar's mentors). It is a book that even Kosambi, notoriously exacting and a difficult man to please, is likely to have congratulated her for. She has written a massive tome of 250,000 words which is not only breathtakingly insightful but also 'breadth-takingly' incredible: it surveys the entire historiography of India's ancient past and shows why history in ancient India took the shapes it did. Here's a short description of what it does. (But before getting to her book, here's something even more consequential -- a picture of the author with her dog Amba, an absolute beauty named after the courtesan of Vaishali.)

THAPAR CONVERSING WITH AMBA

It has so often been said that Indian civilization lacks historical writing—and therefore a sense of history—that this notion passes for a truism. There has been little attempt to show up the falsity of the generalization. In the present book—a magisterial historiographical survey of every major form within which ancient North Indian history is embedded or evident—Romila Thapar shows an intellectually dynamic ancient world profuse with ideas about the past, an arena replete with societies constructing, reconstructing, and contesting various visions of worlds before their own.

“To determine what makes for this historical consciousness”, says Professor Thapar, “is not just an attempt to provide Indian civilization with a sense of history, nor is it an exercise in abstract research. My intention is to argue that, irrespective of the question of the presence or absence of historical writing as such, an understanding of the way in which the past is perceived, recorded, and used affords insights into early Indian society, as it does for that matter into other early societies.”

She argues that to possess history a civilization does not have to reveal writing in forms regarded as belonging to the established genres of history. In fact, a variety of ancient Indian texts reflect a consciousness of history; and, subsequently, there come into existence recognizable historical traditions and forms of historical writing. Both varieties of texts—those which reflect a consciousness of history and those which reveal forms of historical writing—were deployed to “reveal” the past, and drawn upon as a cultural, political, religious, or other resource to legitimize an existing social order.

The Vedic corpus, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the itihasa-purana tradition, the Buddhist and Jaina canons, the hagiographical and biographical literature, the inscriptional evidence, a variety of chronicles, and dramatic forms such as the Mudrarakshasa are all scrutinized afresh in this book: not as sources for historical data, but instead as a civilization’s many ways of thinking about and writing its history.

ROMILA THAPAR, described here as “virtually the only living historian of ancient and pre-modern India who has risen to the rank of world-class historians”, is Emeritus Professor of History at Jawaharlal University, New Delhi. She holds an Honorary D.Litt. each from Oxford University and the University of Chicago, and is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and SOAS, London University. Her refusal to accept state awards has only enhanced her renown: in both 1992 and 2005 she declined the Padma Bhushan, awarded by the Indian Government, because, as she put it, “I only accept awards from academic institutions or those associated with my professional work, and not state awards.” In 2008 Professor Thapar was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of the US Library of Congress, which honours lifetime achievement in studies such as history which are not covered by the Nobel Prize.

PROFESSOR THAPAR'S BOOK IS ORIGINATED AND EDITED BY PERMANENT BLACK.

RIGHTS OUTSIDE SOUTH ASIA HAVE BEEN BOUGHT BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PERMANENT BLACK WILL BLOG MORE INFORMATION AND PUBLICATION DATES OF BOTH THESE BOOKS NEARER THE TIME.

The Man of the Sun: A Biographical Novel

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 05:14:21 PDT

The Man of the Sun is a biographical novel written by Dharmanand Kosambi's grand daughter, Indrayani Sawkar.

Download the pdf.

Thanks to Arvind Gupta for scanning and sending the ebook.

Climate Change Skeptics, Here’s a Lesson from Harappan Extinction

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 04:58:07 PDT

Source: Forbes

by Seema Singh

Many hypotheses have been floated after many, many years of work on what actually led to the collapse of Harappa, the largest Bronze Age Civilization and the earliest urban civilization that India has seen, some 5200 to 4500 years ago. Some said the invading Aryans destroyed it; others proposed that there were massive earthquakes which ruined the cities. Then there were some who suggested that rivers shifted course and left the cities on their banks to decay.

Now, a group of researchers, from mathematicians to geologists to archaeologists, report today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there’s conclusive evidence that it was climate change which led to the extinction of the Harappan civilization.

“Our work shows that none of these is likely to be true. Rather, it was the shifting pattern of the monsoon, which receded towards the north and the east of the Indian continent which led to a drying up of the land in which the Harappans had made their civilisation, and this led to its collapse,” says Ronojoy Adhikari, a mathematician at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai.

Data analysis from multiples sources show that it was the gradual decrease in flood intensity that had encouraged urbanization around 4500 BC. However, further decline in monsoon precipitation made both inundation and rain-based farming difficult. For a long while it was believed that a large glacier-fed Himalayan river, which some have identified as the “mythical Saraswati” river, watered the Harappan heartland. The new research shows that only monsoonal-fed rivers were active in those days. And as the monsoon weakened, these rivers dried or became seasonal, impacting “habitability” along their courses.

Unlike the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, regions which were surrounded by deserts and hence restricted people’s movement forcing them to adapt and take action, harsh climate conditions led Harappan people to find an escape route. They moved eastwards, to the moister monsoon regions of upper Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, says Liviu Giosan, a geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

So, does this finding offer any lesson to the climate change skeptics?

Of course it does, say both Adhikari and Giosan.

Global warming is leading to a change in the glaciers in the Himalayas. It is also conjectured that the global warming will increase the intensity of the monsoons. This will lead to much greater floods in the monsoon-fed rivers of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Our

society may have to find out innovative technological measures to deal with such a situation, and it is in this context, that we consider the findings in our paper a “lesson from the past”, they say.

This result is “instructive”. As was the case in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, people today hardly have any possibility to “move”. National borders and densely populated regions don’t provide the option of finding an escape route. Giosan, who researched inKarachi (unfortunately under protection) from 2003 to 2009, says the floods of 2010 inPakistan are a warning sign. “Monsoon is the life blood of India and other countries in the region but we don’t understand how it’s going to increase or decrease due to changing climate. The entire system of irrigation in this region is under calibrated,” he cautions.

However, there’s one more reason why this study is important. This work brings in several independent sources of data – sediments, fluvial patterns and archaelogical records – to provide compelling support for the climate change hypothesis. “The great pioneer of such ‘combined methods’ was D. D. Kosambi [he wrote a popular book called ‘Combined Methods in Indology’] and I see our work as firmly embedded in that paradigm. This is the real strength of this work,” says Adhikari.

For some of the earlier work of Adhikari and researchers from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research here’s a video:

Our past is being moth-eaten

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 05:44:32 PDT

Source: The Hindu (19 April 2012)

India's archives and libraries are in a state of ruin. We would lose our history and heritage if the government does not act to save them.

How do you destroy Indian history? In Delhi, letters written by Mahatma Gandhi, Dadabhai Naoroji, and Babasaheb Ambedkar are left to rot away in rooms lacking proper temperature control. In Lucknow, secretariat holdings are dumped and burned. And in Chennai, archival records are literally washed away by the monsoons.

Among both foreign and Indian scholars, it is an open secret that most Indian archives and libraries are in a deplorable state. Over the past 15 months, I have visited many institutions across the country in connection with my dissertation research on Naoroji. What I have seen has disturbed me. Archival experiences recounted by my academic colleagues have horrified me. Unless the government takes quick and decisive action, India is at risk of letting much of its heritage literally crumble into dust. Sources of Indian history are at grave risk of being lost forever.

Poor preservation

India is a country that is justifiably proud of its illustrious past. But this pride does not always translate into proper custodianship and preservation. Most Indians would cringe at how sources of Indian history are treated in government institutions. In spite of the plethora of capable administrators and skilled archivists in this country, many institutions do not follow clear, up-to-date, and verifiable standards for document preservation.

State-level facilities, where the majority of public archives are housed, are in the greatest need of help. Many institutions are housed in old buildings that may actually facilitate rapid damage to collections. The Maharashtra State Archives in Mumbai, for example, is located in an open-air structure built in 1888. As a result, pigeons regularly fly into the premises and leave their droppings on centuries-old colonial factory records and priceless newspaper collections. Occasionally, as an American colleague recently recalled, a pigeon will collide into a fan, plummet to the floor, and writhe around in a pool of blood until a peon is charged with cleaning up the mess.

The situation is also quite grim in New Delhi. At the National Archives of India, I consult Naoroji's papers in the Private Archives room, which has broken windows and no proper climate control. It is no surprise, therefore, that thousands of Naoroji's letters have been destroyed over the past few decades and that thousands more are now too damaged to be read: while Naoroji bequeathed over 60,000 items upon his death in 1917, less than 30,000 survive today. The papers of Naoroji's colleagues, such as Romesh Chunder Dutt, are in a similarly shameful state. How would the Grand Old Man react to this disappearance of so much nationalist heritage?

Poor upkeep has also damaged more recent records. Some of Dr. Ambedkar's correspondence has decayed into piles of scraps. This should not happen in a country where his legacy and memory are subjects of such great contestation and debate.

Within the international academic community, Indian archival experiences are traded like war stories. In the 1990s, an eminent British political scientist found documents and files from the Uttar Pradesh Secretariat's library dumped and burned outside. The Secretariat, the political scientist noted, contained valuable revenue settlement and provincial police reports that are probably not available anywhere else. In the fall of 2005, an M.Phil. candidate from Delhi University saw staff at the Tamil Nadu State Archives in Chennai hanging a clothesline on the archives' verandah. Why? It was being used to dry out historical papers soaked during a monsoonal deluge. And in 2008, staff at the West Bengal State Archives in Kolkata chose to go on a month-long strike after an Ivy League professor made a routine request for a document.

These three instances hint at glaring problems in the ways that Indian archives and libraries are managed. In order for there to be any hope for the long-term survival of India's sources of history, the Union and State governments need to urgently bring about real and lasting changes.

The most necessary change is also the simplest. These institutions need to be housed in proper facilities. In 21st century India, it is absolutely absurd that records and collections continue to be housed in Raj-era structures that have hardly been modernised since they were built. This is tantamount to condemning documents to 19th century preservation methods. In order for old documents to be preserved, they need to be kept in sealed, temperature-controlled environments where the elements, humidity, insects, and animals are kept at bay. The new director of the Maharashtra State Archives is pushing the State government to build such a structure for her institution. She needs support.

At the same time, new buildings must conform to the highest standards. The National Archives' annexe was inaugurated in 1991 but its construction is of such substandard quality that its roof is leaking, its window panes have fallen off, and its storage facilities are a veritable magnet for dirt and dust. Our history deserves better than this.

Secondly, these institutions need highly qualified directors and staff. There are now some encouraging developments. The National Archives, which was left rudderless for several years, now finally has a director general. He has brought about visible and commendable change in his two years on the job, helping modernise the facility and improve standards of preservation and recordkeeping. The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, the leading storehouse of non-official documents, is busy reviewing existing practices and upgrading skills and techniques. Here too, a new director is working with other experts to effect changes.

Dearth of staff

But qualified directors, alone, cannot institute real change. There is a glaring dearth of trained archivists and librarians in institutions across the country. In spite of the real talent that India yearly produces in these fields, most archives, museums, and libraries have a shockingly high number of empty posts. The reasons are not difficult to discern. It can take anywhere from two to three years for the Union Public Service Commission to clear an applicant's file for a vacancy. During that period of time, most candidates will have found another job; any remaining candidates will be deterred by low pay scales and the promise of a poor work environment. As one archival official told me, the Indian government looks upon its archivists and librarians as “dignified clerks.” It is a miracle that, in spite of everything, many central and state institutions retain a core of dedicated, professional staff.

The critical shortage of trained staff has had one very destructive consequence. Methods and technologies of preservation have greatly lagged behind what is practised elsewhere in the world. I have been dismayed to see archivists across India use technologies that were abandoned in the West decades ago. For example, the preservation technique of lamination — whereby brittle documents are pasted in between thin sheets of paper — is still widely and indiscriminately used. This technique, as archivists in the British Library inform me, is no longer commonly practised there due to adverse long-term consequences.

I have seen these consequences first hand: Gandhi's earliest surviving letter to Naoroji is no longer legible due to lamination. Without more qualified preservationists, institutions in India are unable to keep up with international best practices or even review their own preservation policies, assimilating tried-and-tested techniques with new methods.

Autonomy

In order to facilitate the hiring and retention of India's best talent, and in order to put an end to decades of neglect and destruction, certain institutions, such as the National Archives, should be granted a degree of autonomy. The National Archives desperately needs more qualified staff in order to assist in projects for preservation, catalouging, and upkeep. At present, the director has limited powers even to repair those broken windows that daily let in dust, mosquitoes, and hornets into the room where I work: all repairs must go though the Central Public Works Department, adding a completely unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

The Ministry of Culture, which oversees so many of India's cultural treasures, must provide the right conditions for allowing India's best historians, librarians, and archivists to give Indian heritage the dedication and care it deserves. The Nehru Library, which has a degree of autonomy, provides an interesting model of an institution that has fared better than most.

Indian libraries and archives have enormous potential. They are home to some of the world's greatest and most important collections of historical documents. With qualified directors, better staff, and proper facilities, these institutions can take their rightful places as internationally-recognised centres of scholarship. They can help restore India's pride of place as a global hub of learning and culture. Will the government help give India's history the future it deserves?

(Dinyar Patel is Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, Harvard University. dinyar.patel@gmail.com)

Harappan relics excavated in Karnal?

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 10:41:16 PDT

By: Manish Sirhindi Source:
The Tribune
A map shows the location of Khalsa Bohla village in Karnal district where relics have been excavated. Graphic: Rajbir Singh Nilokheri (Karnal), April 5 Archaeological experts from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and Cambridge University, London, have dug out relics believed to be associated with the Harappan civilization. The discovery was made at Khalsa Bohla village in the district from a mound spread over 400 metres.

The excavation teams are being led by Arun Pandey of Banaras Hindu World School and historian Patrick from Cambridge University of London. Arun Pandey said the excavation was in the initial stages and they had dug up only four metres of land. He said the team had already found relics, including utensils, pottery and bones, which are believed to have been used by people belonging to the Harappan era. Pandey said the excavated relics had been sent for carbon dating to ascertain their exact age to determine if these actually belonged to the Harappan era.

The size and shape of utensils made of mud suggested that these were of the Harappan times. He said the team planned to dig to a depth of 40 metres or more to bring out all the relics. He claimed the excavation was being carried out carefully so that no damage was caused to any historical object.

Gumeet Singh, sarpanch of the village, said the excavation assumed significance as the epic war of Mahabharata was fought at this village and the excavated relics could date back to that period.

Job Opening: DD Kosambi Chair at Goa Univ

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 07:13:34 PDT

Source

PANAJI: The Goa University (GU) has written to vice-chancellors of universities across the country in its lookout for senior and experienced professors to head the research chairs established recently in the honour of Goa's first chief minister D B Bandodkar, scholar D D Kosambi and noted Konkani poet Bakibab Borkar.

The chosen professors will be brought on deputation and appointed on contract basis for a total period of five years. The initial contract will be signed for three years and will be extendable by another two years after evaluation by a committee appointed by the Goa University.

While the research chair in the name of Bandodkar is in political economy in the Goa University's department of political science, the research chair in the name of Kosambi is in interdisciplinary studies in the department of history. The research chair in the name of late Kavivarya Bakibab alias B B Borkar is in comparative literature in the department of Konkani.

For the research chair in political economy, the Goa University is looking for professors who have published research work and articles in referred journals in the area of political economy. In case of the research chair in the name of D D Kosambi for interdisciplinary studies, the university is looking out for an applicant who is an eminent scholar from the areas of social sciences particularly in history, archaeology, indology, anthropology and having interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary perspectives in his published research work and articles in referred journals.

The research chair in the name of Bakibab Borkar will be headed by a professor who is a 'widely recognized intellectual in the field of comparative literature in India and/or outside India, who is a creative writer and winner of state or national level recognized award.'

Comprehensive tribute to man of many parts

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 07:01:49 PST

Source: The Hindu, 05 March 2012

by B. SURENDRA RAO

D.D. Kosambi was a rare genius. In a world that revels in narrow specialisation, he was truly a man of Renaissance versatility: a mathematician of distinction, a polyglot, a Marxist, an active member of the World Peace Council and a man who had strayed into Indian history (“… I had fallen into Indology, as it were, through the roof.”) and yet created a major paradigm shift there. He had creatively subverted — which means enriched — the understanding and writing of Indian history.

A whole generation of historians has harnessed his ideas to new areas and destinations, to test his theories and hypotheses, and drawing on not only his critical, scientific temperament but also his strong social commitment. That 45 years after his death his discerning admirers should yet join together to re-visit him shows how strong his impact is on Indian historiography. Professor D.N. Jha and the scholars who have participated in this academic venture and produced this book deserve our compliments.

The book has eight essays that touch upon the myriad aspects of Kosambi's work and legacy. D.N. Jha's essay highlights the various areas of Indian history which Kosambi upturned to achieve newer perspectives and refreshing harvests like numismatics, religious and secular literature, ethnography and even archaeology.

Though Kosambi was a Marxist, he refused to be dogmatically so. It was for him a method, a ‘tool of analysis' and not ‘a substitute for thinking.' He questioned the received Marxist notion of Asiatic Mode of Production and the simplistic slavery-feudalism-capitalism scheme of epochal progress. But Kosambi could identify features of feudalism in India, which, he believed, had its source both from below and from above, an idea which has been productively debated and cultivated in Indian historiography.

Irfan Habib's essay points out that for all his sturdy independence, Kosambi had accepted the universality of class struggle and hence the foundational idea of Marxism. But what he would not compromise with was the academic rigour with which to test a theory or a hypothesis. Irfan Habib gratefully acknowledges that “He opened doors for many of us to new ideas and new questions …”

ACCULTURATION

Not only did Kosambi adopt a framework in which to explain Indian history, but as Prabhat Patnaik shows in his brilliant essay, he extended the frontiers of dialectical materialism. His concept of ‘acculturation' by which the tribal societies were anaesthetically subjugated and sucked into the agrarian and hence class societies, was new to the usual Marxist analysis, which also proves the point that the theory is much more open-ended than its traducers would have us believe.

Kosambi's understanding of medieval India has been analysed by Eugenia Vanina, who takes up certain issues like ‘ahistoricity' of ancient and medieval India, the applicability of feudalism as an idea or the class character of medieval literature and argues for the need to extend the researches to areas such as culture, literature, mentalities, ethical values, and scientific views.

K.M. Shrimali's attempt to explore Kosambi's idea of religious histories of India is done by strenuously juxtaposing it with the work of Mircea Eliade. He points out that contrary to the belief that Marxism denies religion and culture, Kosambi sought to study religion in the larger historical contexts and as responding to various ideas. Suvira Jaiswal's essay on ‘Kosambi on Caste' takes up several strands of debates and shows how material conditions and ideologies together went into its making and consolidation.

Kesavan Veluthat in his essay points out that Kosambi, notwithstanding his uncharacteristic modesty about his facility in Sanskrit, was the first to analyse Sanskrit literature within the framework of historical materialism to show its class character. He contends that Sheldon Pollock's rejection of Kosambi's thesis is based on exceptions which proverbially prove the rule. The last essay by C.K. Raju deals with Kosambi's work on mathematics which the author interestingly and illuminatingly links with the status of science management in post-Independence India which has consecrated the idea and workings of hierarchy.

All the essays seek to reaffirm the place of Kosambi in Indian historiography. He could be faulted in matters of some details and judgments; but it is less important to criticise or defend them than acknowledge the shifts he had effected and the larger debt we owe him. Some critics have gleefully noticed his influence only with the Left, which at least concedes that scientific and critical history is possible with, and palatable to, a few.

THE MANY CAREERS OF D. D. KOSAMBI: Critical Essays: Edited by D. N. Jha; LeftWord Books, 12, Rajendra Prasad Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 275.

Renaissance man

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 07:56:00 PST

Source: Deccan Herald, 05 March 2012

Renaissance man

Mar 04, 2012 :

Lead review

This collection of essays manages to bring out various facets of a man who has been able to authoritatively comment on a wide range of topics, writes S Nanda kumar.

Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi was a remarkable person — mathematician, statistician, historian, numismatist and Sanskrit scholar — who lived between 1907 and 1966.

The Many Careers of D D Kosambi: Critical Essays is a collection of essays that throws more light on this rare and interesting human being.

Noted historian Prof D N Jha, who has

edited the book, says in his preface that the book attempts to bring together articles by scholars “who are neither allergic nor adulatory about the work of Kosambi.”

Through the essays, one is introduced to a man with the ‘renaissance’ type of versatility: a wide range of knowledge without sacrificing depth. This important choice was made when he was studying mathematics in Harvard University in the 1920s. The famous American mathematician George David Birkhoff told him to focus on this field.

He is said to have consulted his father, another versatile scholar, who agreed that he should instead acquire knowledge as widely as possible. Kosambi then went to take advantage of the freedom available in American universities to take 18 courses in a year!

In his essay, C K Raju writes that Kosambi’s refusal to specialise went against him, even at the beginning of his career, since “on the capitalist value of specialization, non-specialists are taken non-seriously.” The essays also underscore the loneliness of a man who refused to kowtow to authorities, or dabble in the politics that even academic institutions revel in.

Kosambi used his abstract mathematical methods to study various branches of social sciences. He studied numismatics purely to get a better grasp of statistics, and weighed nearly 12,000 coins for this exercise. Kosambi, through his detailed studies of coins, was able to reconstruct the social and economic history of India. For instance, the paucity of coinage in the post-Gupta period led him to link it with the decline of trade and the emergence of the self-sufficient village economy during the same period in history.

Kesavan Veluthat, a professor of history at Delhi University, who has written an essay on Kosambi’s contribution to Sanskrit, outlines how Kosambi took up the analysis of coins to solve a statistics problem, and states that he had used the famous Taxila hoards for this purpose. Kosambi found that the “written sources display a shocking discordance. The Puranas, Buddhist and Jain records give different names for the same king.” So, he decided to go into the records himself.

Veluthat quotes Kosambi as saying that he selected a specific work, Bhartihari’s Subhasitas. But Kosambi found that the philosophy of Bhartihari, as glorified by commentators, was at variance with his poetry of escape and frustration. He quotes Kosambi, “By pointing out this (variance) in an essay, which made every god-fearing Sankritist who read it shudder, I had fallen into Indology, as it were, through the roof.”

C V Raju’s essay brings out human facets of the man, who restlessly flitted from the Banaras Hindu University to the Aligarh Muslim University, and then to Fergusson College in Pune.

Kosambi was sacked from Fergusson’s on the alleged grounds that students did not understand the mathematics he was teaching. Finally, he met Homi Bhabha, who was expanding the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) at Mumbai, who offered him a lucrative job in pure research. Even at TIFR, Kosambi was sacked for playing a prank – albeit on a high intellectual plane – by publishing a proof of the Riemann hypothesis. He meant this as a joke. Kosambi continued to remain active in mathematics, and continued his work on probability and the number theory even after his removal from TIFR.

I do not know if Raju, in his essay, has sought to make an example of Kosambi’s sacking from TIFR for a debate on Nehru’s vision; or questioning Nehru’s packing the top three departments of atomic energy, space, and Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) with the scions of leading industrial houses: Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai and the Birlas respectively.

Raju points out a very relevant fact — that Kosambi argued in vain for technology to be better adapted to the needs of Indian people, such as solar energy, small dams, even small reactors. All contrary to Nehru’s vision of mega projects — and we are, as Raju points out, still debating this even today.

That Kosambi belonged to a tight group of Marxist scholars who were against many of Nehru’s ideas makes it more difficult to understand in today’s era, when there is no USSR, and when China, a country that was impressed by some of Kosambi’s thoughts, is relentlessly pursuing capitalist methods of capturing the world market.

While there is no doubt that the essays in this book bring out fascinating facets of Kosambi, they might only interest those who are of a more academic bent of mind. Some of the essays are beyond the common man’s grasp, and are too scholarly and specialised.

The essays, however, do manage to bring out captivatingly the man who was able to comment on the caste system, Sanskrit, numismatics, the religious history of India, on how Bhartihari’s poetry resonated with “the groans of the oppressed man,” and of course, his contributions to mathematics. Common readers like myself can only marvel at Kosambi, the man, the mathematician, the historian, and believer in world peace.

I certainly have been captivated by the remarkable D D Kosambi, and do hope that somebody would soon undertake the task of writing a faithful biography of the man that will reach the common masses, rather than specialised tomes on him that adorn just the bookshelves of mathematicians, scholars and Marxists.

Monk, Mathematician, Marxist

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:05:47 PST

Monk, Mathematician, Marxist
How the talented Kosambis made India modern
By ANANYA VAJPEYI
Published :1 February 2012

Source

COURTESY PERMANENT BLACK
Dharmanand Kosambi (left) may be described as a scholar and proselytiser of Buddhism and a practicing Buddhist, a Gandhian, and a feminist. The polymathic DD Kosambi (right) was a mathematician, a historian and a Marxist.

I NDIA HAS REMADE ITSELF at least twice in the past 100 years. The economic and political character of the country, which was of a colonial-nationalist nature in the early 20th century, became Nehruvian-socialist after Independence and then shifted again toward globalising neoliberalism in the last decade of the century. An effective way to track the cultural effects of these very large shifts is to compare the trajectories of successive generations of Indians. The lives of the extraordinary father-son duo of Dharmanand Kosambi (1876-1947) and Damodar Dharmanand or DD Kosambi (1907-1966), both brilliant scholars and pioneers of entire fields of study, vividly illustrate the first great transformation of modern India, effected over the course of the 1950s and early 1960s, during three administrations under Jawaharlal Nehru.

The recent translation of several of Dharmanand’s Marathi writings, including his partial autobiography Nivedan (A Narrative): 1912-1924 (Permanent Black, 2011), and a broad retrospective exercise by a number of contemporary historians occasioned by Damodar’s birth centenary in 2007, allow us to follow Kosambi père and fils in some detail, and through them to view the changing historical contexts in which they were embedded. Dharmanand’s granddaughter and DD Kosambi’s daughter, Meera Kosambi, herself a sociologist specialising in urban studies and women’s studies, and an accomplished translator between Marathi and English, has in the past two years helped bring both her eminent forbears back into focus for students of modern India.

But despite commonalities and continuities between Dharmanand and Damodar Kosambi, what emerges from the former’s autobiography, Nivedan, translated and edited by Meera Kosambi, and from the volume The Many Careers of DD Kosambi: Critical Essays, edited by noted historian DN Jha (Left Word, 2011), is that there had been a sea change in India between the time when the father was a young man and the time when his son came of age. Dharmanand wandered in a country where Buddhism as discourse or as practice was all but extinct; where almost all his personal contacts and professional networks consisted of fellow Brahmins who housed, clothed and fed him as he went from city to city in search of Buddhism; where Hindu mathas and Buddhist viharas dotted the landscape through which he travelled—from Goa in the west to Burma in the east, from Nepal in the north to Sri Lanka in the south. The scholastic terrain of India was still largely unchanged from precolonial times.

By contrast Damodar navigated a very different academic territory, one dotted with prestigious colonial establishments such as the Fergusson College in Pune, institutions that were a product of the nationalist movement such as the Aligarh Muslim University and the Banaras Hindu University, as well as emerging Nehruvian institutions such as the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai. Traditional learned classes—Brahmins, Kayasthas and residual Buddhists had given way, within the space of scarce two or three decades, to a modern knowledge elite of physical and social scientists, as well as technocrats charged with building a range of institutions for the new nation-state. Ancient Buddhism, long vanished, had reappeared in a variety of postcolonial guises, from the Navayana (‘New Way’) of Babasaheb Ambedkar, to other sects flowing back into India from Tibet, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Japan as well as the Anglo-American West. With the demise of the British Empire, colonialism, together with its Orientalist and Indological apparatuses, had packed up and gone home, leaving independent India in charge of its own cultural pasts as much as it was now responsible for its own political futures.

A S A GRADUATE STUDENT SOME YEARS AGO, I would spend months on end in Pune, reading Sanskrit and Marathi texts, and travelling around in Maharashtra, as well as in neighbouring Karnataka and Goa, in search of archives, individuals and institutions connected with my research. Between 1998 and 2003 I journeyed up and down the Deccan landscape and the Western Ghats, mostly by road or rail. The spirit of DD Kosambi was often with me on my forays into this—to me—unfamiliar part of the country. On one of my earliest trips to Pune, a friend introduced me to Meera Kosambi, who invited me to see her father’s house off Law College Road, where I would go almost every day to the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

Pune is one of the many smaller cities in India that has found its historic architecture under severe stress over the past two decades. Just in the 12 or 15 years that I have been going there for my scholarly work, its graceful edifices and sleepy neighbourhoods, and with them their ways of life, have been vanishing before one’s eyes. But that Pune city, Maharashtra state or indeed the Indian government let the Kosambi home, built circa 1931, go the way of other old buildings is a sad commentary on our inability to recognise and respect the landmarks of our intellectual life and cultural history. A recent trip to Simla, where I saw an incredibly decrepit house called ‘Wood Field’ that Rabindranath Tagore had vacationed in, in 1893-94, together with other members of his illustrious family, and where he wrote a number of the poems in his collection Shonaar Taari (The Golden Boat), filled me with the same despair that I invariably feel in Pune: as a culture, we fail to honour and commemorate our greatest minds.

Indian history as a discipline was dominated by Marxism for so long—from the 1960s through the 1990s—that most leading historians over two generations, at universities such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Aligarh Muslim University, as well as a number of campuses in West Bengal, have studied DD Kosambi thoroughly, and had the opportunity to both learn from him as well as critique his methods and findings. A July 2008 special issue of the Indian social science journal, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), brought together a symposium on DD Kosambi’s work as a historian. Historiography within Maharashtra and of Maharashtra and the Deccan, as an important subset of Indian history, has benefited especially from his insights and innovations—those who read Marathi can access the rich debates there. It is good that at last he is also being assessed seriously from the perspective of other disciplines to which he contributed so much: Sanskrit philology, archaeology, numismatics, anthropology, religion and—unusually—mathematics and statistics.

Particularly interesting, in both the EPW (2008) issue as well as the recent DN Jha edited volume, are the essays by CK Raju, which walk us through some of the more technical aspects of Damodar’s mathematical gifts even while recounting his misadventures in the Indian science academy. In Raju’s telling, DD Kosambi must be seen as an early figure of dissent in Indian mathematics and science. He had significant mathematical abilities, which might have been encouraged in another country, but were only thwarted in India. It did not help that Damodar was a serious pacifist and spoke out publicly against the dangers of nuclear power (including its potentially harmful side effects on the genetic structure of human and other life forms—a prescient warning that no one heeded at the time or is likely to heed now, for that matter). His would-be patrons, the physicist Homi Bhabha, the father of India’s atomic energy programme, and the industrial family of the Tatas, eventually denied him tenure at TIFR, alleging that he had failed to solve a particular mathematical problem, and adding on the snide caveat that relieved of his scientific job, he would be better able to devote his time to his other interest, history—an insult to him both as a mathematician and as an historian that is infuriating to read about even today. This after Damodar had won the Raman Prize in 1934 and the Bhabha Prize in 1947 for his mathematical work!

Surely a comparative study of the Buddhist zeal of the Brahmin Dharmanand and the Untouchable Ambedkar, both active in Maharashtra in the first half of the 20th century, is crying out for the attentions of a PhD candidate somewhere. Now that more and more of Dharmanand’s writings are becoming available to us in translation, we may begin a systematic analysis of the biography and work of this strange, tortured, questing individual who finally gave up his life in an act of voluntary starvation (following the Jain practice known as sallekhana) in Gandhiji’s ashram at Wardha in early June 1947. Meera Kosambi’s ‘Introduction’ to her grandfather’s Essential Writings (Permanent Black, 2010), as well as to his autobiography in its new freestanding and paperback edition, both open the door onto a potentially rich area of research and scholarship in modern Indian intellectual history.

T O GRASP THE ASTONISHING DIVERSITY of DD Kosambi’s interests and talents requires nothing more than a glance at the table of contents of his Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method (People’s Publishing House, 1957). This slim little volume contains pieces on, among other topics, the trial of Socrates, the Cultural Revolution in China, the quality of renunciation in the work of the Sanskrit poet Bhartihari (whom he compares and contrasts with Dante and Goethe), the relationship between scientific knowledge and class society, the reasons for the decline of Buddhism in ancient India, imperialism and peace in a post-war world, and a critique of Nehru’s The Discovery of India (1946) from a Marxist perspective. The breadth of Damodar’s interests is breathtaking, as also the ease with which he writes about both contemporary issues as well as scholarly matters. Few intellectuals exhibit this kind of supple, capacious curiosity about past and present, India and the world, science and literature today—Ashis Nandy comes to mind as a rare exception, and certainly it is hard to think of anyone in the younger generation who will confidently take on this range of subjects. As India’s economy opens itself to global markets, what accounts for the closing of the Indian mind?

Given the welter of areas of intellectual endeavour in which the Kosambis participated, Dharmanand’s greatest contribution was to the revival and spread of the message of Buddhism in Maharashtra; Damodar’s was to the opening of Indian history to class analysis and dialectical materialism. Both these are truly significant interventions, although for different reasons and in different ways. Arguably Dharmanand’s Marathi writings on Buddhism, including his primer Buddha, Dharma ani Sangha (1910) and his play Bodhisattva, published posthumously in 1949, prepared the ground for the eventual popularisation of Ambedkar’s Neo-Buddhism in Maharashtra in the late 1950s, after Ambedkar’s formal conversion of himself and of about 400,000 Untouchable followers in October 1956, just prior to his death in December that year. Dharmanand helped create a climate of ideas, in which once again after a hiatus of centuries it became possible for ordinary people to reimagine and identify with the life and words of Siddhartha Gautama, and for them to aspire to creating a more equitable society based on the Buddha’s teachings about freedom, community and what it means to be human. The story of Buddhism’s modern rebirth in the land of its original birth, India, has a special chapter that unfolds in Maharashtra, and surely this owes as much to Dharmanand Kosambi as it does to BR Ambedkar.

DD Kosambi, as is relatively better known, transformed Indian history as a discipline by advocating for the integration of the study of material artifacts with the study of texts; by taking the category of ‘tribe’ as seriously as others had previously taken the category of ‘caste’; by introducing the ‘class’ into our understanding of Indian social structure; by finding innovative ways to read literary, religious and mythical textual materials as part of the historical record without getting bogged down in imponderable questions about their own historicity; and by continually placing India in a broad comparative perspective along with other ancient and modern societies. Even a casual student of history in this country has the two celebrated snapshots of Damodar’s scholarly life imprinted on his or her memory: his walks in and around Pune, carrying a walking stick with which he probed the ground, turning up all kinds of objects and fragments, literally feeling his way through the layers of historical time upon which we stand; and his regular train rides between Pune and Mumbai on the Deccan Queen, which allowed him a physical view of Maharashtra’s landscape that over the years yielded a subtle and complex historical vision. DD Kosambi showed that history has to be rooted in the earth on which it unfolds—a valuable, indeed indispensable corrective to a scholarly culture otherwise driven and shaped by the Brahminical preference for abstraction over materiality and text over lived experience.

Ananya Vajpeyi is a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi in 2011-12. Her book, Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India, is forthcoming.

The Many Careers Of D.D. Kosambi- A Review

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:26:16 PST

Source: Outlook

The Master Revisited

Historian, statistician, Indologist, polyglot—there is a datedness to his political verities, but the scholar lives

DILEEP PADGAONKAR

The Many Careers Of D.D. Kosambi Critical Essays

Edited By D.N. Jha

LeftWord | Pages: 203 | Rs. 275

The name of Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi hardly rings a bell beyond a small circle of Marxist scholars—a circle that has shrunk with the implosion of the Soviet empire, China’s tight embrace of the market economy and the rout of Communist parties around the globe. Another reason for his limited appeal, paradoxically, is the sheer range and complexity of his intellectual pursuits. He was, at one and the same time, a mathematician and a statistician, an economic and social historian, an Indologist and a major contributor to the studies on genetics and numismatics. Moreover, he excelled as a polyglot—his peers envied his mastery over several classical and modern languages—and, not the least, as a ‘public intellectual’ who commented on issues of topical relevance with an unmatched flair for polemics.

Interest in Kosambi’s multi-faceted work revived briefly on the occasion of his birth centenary in 2007. Universities across India held seminars to subject it to critical scrutiny. That exercise was also conducted in the pages of academic journals. The articles reappraised his vast output in the light of newer insights that scholars had gained in their respective fields of endeavour following his death in 1966. However, some of them, including, especially, those published in a special issue of the Economic and Political Weekly, bordered on the scurrilous. This book, edited by D.N. Jha, the distinguished Marxist historian, seeks to restore the balance.

The result is a mixed bag. Drawn from various disciplines, the eight contributors present Kosambi’s achievements without succumbing to the twin temptations of gratuitous insult or obsequiousness. Jha’s own introductory essay offers an excellent overview of his life and work in a style that is accessible to the general reader. And yet, to our great relief, the style is singularly free of the virus of ‘popular’ writing—conversational, slang-ridden, crowded with cliches, laced with platitudes—that infects so many columns of newspapers and newsmagazines.

Some of the essays, however, are far too technical in nature, notably those that focus on Kosambi’s writings on Indology and mathematics. They demand a level of expertise that is out of reach for anyone but a scholar. Likewise, readers not entirely familiar with the intricacies of Marxist thought—or rather with the tedious squabbles over what Marx or some Marxist or the other actually meant—will find themselves in a befuddled state as they attempt to come to grips with a text that discusses, say, the “frontiers of historical materialism”.

But other essays do provide a respite, notably Irfan Habib’s fine piece entitled ‘What Kosambi Gave Us’. Even as he rebuts the critics of Kosambi, he does not hesitate to express his own scepticism about the theses of this Renaissance Man on certain issues like caste, Indian feudalism, ‘Asiatic Despotism’ and Brahminism. On this latter score, Kosambi was ruthless in denouncing Brahmins and Brahminism for lending legitimacy to unjust social structures—a feat all the more remarkable given the fact that he himself belonged to the Gowd Saraswat Brahmin community.

Where this book disappoints is on its failure to address Kosambi’s role as a public intellectual. In his anti-imperialist and anti-colonial zeal—which few can question given the conduct of the West during the Cold War period—he chose to look the other way when evidence of the crimes perpetrated by totalitarian Communist regimes came to light. He had not a harsh word to say about the way these regimes choked voices of dissent or about the follies of economic policy that brought untold misery to millions of people. The word Gulag apparently was a mere trifle in his reckoning.

All the same, this collection of essays is to be commended for the possibilities it opens up for a new generation of scholars—Marxists and non-Marxists alike—to build on Kosambi’s ideas and insights. This will arm them to ask tough questions about injustices and inequities that prevail in every nook and cranny of the country today, thus making a mockery of the highfalutin rhetoric of a ‘resurgent India’. The remedy for the ills afflicting the nation lies, to use John Kenneth Galbraith’s memorable phrase, in “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”—but without the ideological blinkers that sometimes distorted his generous and enlightened vision.

(Dileep Padgaonkar is consulting editor, Times of India.)

5th D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas from February 7

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:15:42 PST

DD Kosambi Lectures begin Feb 07, 2012

2012-01-25

Source URL

The 5th D.D. Kosambi Festival of Ideas will commence from 7th February 2012 at Kala Academy, Campal, Panaji – Goa. This year, the Directorate of Art & Culture has invited world renowned personalities from various fields for delivering lectures of substantial knowledge.

This year the Directorate of Art & Culture has invited the following Speakers:
Smt. Uma Dasgupta, D.Phil (Oxon.) is an Eminent Author and former Research Professor, Social Sciences Division, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. She has edited The Oxford India Tagore: Selected Writings on Education and Nationalism (OUP 2009), Rabindranath Tagore: My Life in My Words (Penguin Books, 2006), A Difficult Friendship: Letters of Edward Thompson and Rabindranath Tagore 1913–1940 (OUP 2003). She is the author of Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography (OUP 2004).

Smt. Medha Patkar (Active Social Activist and Environmentalist), She is known for her role in Narmada Bachao Andolan. She has also filed a public interest petition in the Bombay High Court against Lavasa along with other members of National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), including Anna Hazare.

Shri Shekhar Singh (Founder member, National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI)), Has worked with the government in various capacities, including as advisor to the Planning Commission of India on environment and forests, chairman of the Environmental Appraisal Committee for Power Projects of the Government of India, and as Supreme Court appointed commissioner on forestry and related matters for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Shri Saeed Naqvi (Senior Journalist and Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi) His articles appear in various newspapers in India and abroad. Parvin Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, US. Studied Journalism at the Thomson School of Journalism, Cardiff, UK. Graduated from Delhi University. School, La Martiniere, Lucknow.

Prof Muhammad Yunus (Noble Laureate, Acclaimed Economist and Chairman of Yunus Center, Grameen Bank). He is dedicated to eradicate poverty. Against the advice of banks and government, Yunus carried on giving out 'micro-loans', and in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank, meaning 'village bank' founded on principles of trust and solidarity.

In Bangladesh today, Grameen has 2,564 branches, with 19,800 staff serving 8.29 million borrowers in 81,367 villages.

The Directorate of Art & Culture had initiated the D.D. Kosambi Festival of Ideas to commemorate the birth Centenary of the legendary Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi the Indian mathematician, statistician, historian, and polymath who contributed to genetics by introducing Kosambi's map function. He is well-known for his work in numismatics and for compiling critical editions of ancient Sanskrit texts. D.D. Kosambi was also a Marxist historian specializing in ancient India who employed the historical materialist approach in his work. He is described as "the patriarch of the Marxist school of Indian historiography".

He was an enthusiast of the Chinese revolution and its ideals, and, in addition, a leading activist in the World Peace Movement. This Festival is the only one of its kind in the Country.

The inaugural talk at the 1st D.D. Kosambi Festival of Ideas - 2008 was delivered by H.E.Hamid Ansari, Hon. Vice President of India. This was followed by talks by Prof. Romila Thapar – eminent Historian, Meera Kosambi – scholar and daughter of D.D. Kosambi, P. Sainath – Magsaysay award winner, Journalist and Dr. Vivek Monteiro, a well-known Scientist.

The 4th D. D. Kosambi comprised of colossuses like Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar (Eminent
Scientist of India and President of Global Research Alliance), His Excellency Dr. A.P. J. Abdul
Kalam (Former President of India and Eminent Scientist), His Holiness The Dalai Lama (World renowned spiritual leader and crusader of Peace), Lord Meghnad Desai (Indian- born British economist and acclaimed intellect), Justice Albie Sachs (Former Judge on the

Constitutional Court of South Africa and active Human right activist) and Dr. Karan Singh (Hon. MP of Rajya Sabha and President of ICCR).

The interaction sessions between the public and the speakers is held subsequent to the talk delivered by the speaker to elucidate any doubts in the minds of the people.

The Directorate of Art & Culture requests all the people of Goa to exploit the potential of these illustrious personalities, gain knowledge imparted by them by attending the lectures in large numbers.

Related Report

The 5th DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas will commence from February 7 at Kala Academy, Campal, Panaji. This year, the Directorate of Art and Culture has invited personalities from various fields.

The speakers include Uma Dasgupta, Medha Patkar, Shekhar Singh, Saeed Naqvi and Prof Muhammad Yunus.

Uma Dasgupta is an eminent author and former research professor, social sciences division, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. She has edited The Oxford India Tagore: Selected Writings on Education and Nationalism, Rabindranath Tagore: My Life in My Words, A Difficult Friendship: Letters of Edward Thompson and Rabindranath Tagore 1913–1940, and is the author of Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography.

Medha Patkar is known for her role in Narmada Bachao Andolan. She has also filed a public interest petition in the Bombay High Court against Lavasa along with other members of National Alliance of People's Movements , including Anna Hazare.

Shekhar Singh has worked with the government in various capacities, including as advisor to the Planning Commission of India on environment and forests, chairman of the Environmental Appraisal Committee for Power Projects of the Government of India, and as Supreme Court appointed commissioner on forestry and related matters for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Saeed Naqvi articles appear in various newspapers in India and abroad. He studied journalism at the Thomson School of Journalism, Cardiff, UK and graduated from Delhi University, School La Martiniere, Lucknow.

Prof Muhammad Yunus is dedicated to eradicating poverty. Against the advice of banks and government, Yunus carried on giving out 'micro-loans', and in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank, meaning 'village bank' founded on principles of trust and solidarity. In Bangladesh today, Grameen has 2,564 branches, with 19,800 staff serving 8.29 million borrowers in 81,367 villages.

The Directorate of Art and Culture had initiated the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas to commemorate the birth Centenary of the legendary Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi

Integrating Mathematics and History- The Scholarship of DDK

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:12:17 PST

by Ramakrishna Ramaswamy

Today, D D Kosambi’s significance as a historian greatly overshadows his reputation and contributions in mathematics. Kosambi simultaneously worked in both areas for much of his adult life, and to understand the body of his work either in the social sciences or in mathematics, an appreciation of the complementarity of his interests is essential. An understanding of Kosambi the historian can only be enhanced by an appreciation of Kosambi the mathematician. In a fundamental way, Kosambi embodied the multidisciplinary approach, channelling diverse interests – indeed combining them – to create scholarship of high order.

Download the full paper

Understanding ancient Indian mathematics

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:30:11 PST

This topic lies at the intersection of DD Kosambi's twin interests in ancient Indian history and mathematics.

Source:http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article2747006.ece

It is high time we studied our mathematical heritage with diligence and objectivity

By S.G. DANI

Caption: A portion of a dedication tablet in a rock-cut Vishnu temple in Gwalior built in 876 AD. The number 270 seen in the inscription features the oldest extant zero in India.

Quite often I find that conversations, with people from various walks of life, on ancient Indian mathematics slide to “Vedic mathematics” of the “16 sutras” fame, which is supposed to endow one with magical powers of calculation. Actually, the “16 sutras” were introduced by Bharati Krishna Tirthaji, who was the Sankaracharya of Puri from 1925 until he passed away in 1960, associating with them procedures for certain arithmetical or algebraic computations. Thus, this so-called “Vedic mathematics (VM)” is essentially a 20th century phenomenon.

Neither the “sutras” nor the procedures that they are supposed to yield, or correspond to, have anything to do with either the Vedas, or even with any post-Vedic mathematical tradition of yore in India. The image that it may conjure up of ancient rishis engaged in such arithmetical exercises as are taught to the children in the name of VM, and representing the solutions through word-strings of a few words in modern styled Sanskrit, with hardly any sentence structure or grammar, is just too far from the realm of the plausible. It would have amounted to a joke, but for the aura it has acquired on account of various factors, including the general ignorance about the knowledge in ancient times. It is a pity that a long tradition of over 3,000 years of learning and pursuit of mathematical ideas has come to be perceived by a large section of the populace through the prism of something so mundane and so lacking in substance from a mathematical point of view, apart from not being genuine.

Tall claims

The colossal neglect involved is not for want of pride about the achievements of our ancients; on the contrary, there is a lot of writing on the topic, popular as well as technical, that is full of unsubstantiated claims conveying an almost supreme knowledge our forefathers are supposed to have possessed. But there is very little understanding or appreciation, on an intellectual plane, of the specics of their knowledge or achievements in real terms.

In the colonial era this variety of discourse emerged as an antithesis to the bias that was manifest in the works of some Western scholars. Due to the urgency to respond to the adverse propaganda on the one hand and the lack of resources in addressing the issues at a more profound level on the other, recourse was often taken to short-cuts, which involved more assertiveness than substance. There were indeed some Indian scholars, like Sudhakar Dvivedi, who adhered to a more intellectual approach, but they were a minority. Unfortunately, the old discourse has continued long after the colonial context is well past, and long after the world community has begun to view the Indian achievements with considerable objective curiosity and interest. It is high time that we switch to a mode betting a sovereign and intellectually self-reliant society, focussing on an objective study and critical assessment, without the reference frame of “what they say” and how “we must assert ourselves.”

Ancient India has indeed contributed a great deal to the world's mathematical heritage. The country also witnessed steady mathematical developments over most part of the last 3,000 years, throwing up many interesting mathematical ideas well ahead of their appearance elsewhere in the world, though at times they lagged behind, especially in the recent centuries. Here are some episodes from the fascinating story that forms a rich fabric of the sustained intellectual endeavour.

Vedic knowledge

The mathematical tradition in India goes back at least to the Vedas. For compositions with a broad scope covering all aspects of life, spiritual as well as secular, the Vedas show a great fascination for large numbers. As the transmission of the knowledge was oral, the numbers were not written, but expressed as combinations of powers of 10. It would be reasonable to believe that when the decimal place value system for written numbers came into being it owed a great deal to the way numbers were discussed in the older compositions.

The decimal place value system of writing numbers, together with the use of ‘0,' is known to have blossomed in India in the early centuries AD, and spread to the West through the intermediacy of the Persians and the Arabs. There were actually precursors to the system, and various components of it are found in other ancient cultures such as the Babylonian, Chinese, and Mayan. From the decimal representation of the natural numbers, the system was to evolve further into the form that is now commonplace and crucial in various walks of life, with decimal fractions becoming part of the number system in 16th century Europe, though this again has some intermediate history involving the Arabs. The evolution of the number system represents a major phase in the development of mathematical ideas, and arguably contributed greatly to the overall advance of science and technology. The cumulative history of the number system holds a lesson that progress of ideas is an inclusive phenomenon, and while contributing to the process should be a matter of joy and pride to those with allegiance to the respective contributors, the role of others also ought to be appreciated.

It is well-known that Geometry was pursued in India in the context of construction of vedis for the yajnas of the Vedic period. The Sulvasutrascontain elaborate descriptions of construction of vedis and enunciate various geometric principles. These were composed in the rst millennium BC, the earliest Baudhayana Sulvasutra dating back to about 800 BC. Sulvasutra geometry did not go very far in comparison to the Euclidean geometry developed by the Greeks, who appeared on the scene a little later, in the seventh century BC. It was, however, an important stage of development in India too. The Sulvasutra geometers were aware, among other things, of what is now called the Pythagoras theorem, over 200 years before Pythagoras (all the four major Sulvasutras contain an explicit statement of the theorem), addressed (within the framework of their geometry) issues such as nding a circle with the same area as a square and vice versa, and worked out a very good approximation to the square root of two, in the course of their studies.

Though it is generally not recognised, the Sulvasutra geometry was itself evolving. This is seen, in particular, from the differences in the contents of the four major extant Sulvasutras. Certain revisions are especially striking. For instance, in the early Sulvasutra period the ratio of the circumference to the diameter was, as in other ancient cultures, thought to be three, as seen in a sutra of Baudhayana, but in the Manava Sulvasutra, a new value was proposed, as three-and-one-fth. Interestingly, the sutra describing it ends with an exultation “not a hair-breadth remains,” and though we see that it is still substantially off the mark, it is a gratifying instance of an advance made. In the Manava Sulvasutra one also nds an improvement over the method described by Baudhayana for nding the circle with the same area as that of a given square.

The Jain tradition has also been very important in the development of mathematics in the country. Unlike for the Vedic people, for Jain scholars the motivation for mathematics came not from ritual practices, which indeed were anathema to them, but from the contemplation of the cosmos. Jains had an elaborate cosmography in which mathematics played an integral role, and even largely philosophical Jain works are seen to incorporate mathematical discussions. Notable among the topics in the early Jain works, from about the fifth century BC to the second century AD, one may mention geometry of the circle, arithmetic of numbers with large powers of 10, permutations and combinations, and categorisations of innities (whose plurality had been recognised).

As in the Sulvasutra tradition, the Jains also recognised, around the middle of the rst millennium BC, that the ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter is not three. In “Suryaprajnapti,” a Jain text believed to be from the fourth century BC, after recalling the “traditional” value three for it, the author discards that in favour the square root of 10. This value for the ratio, which is reasonably close to the actual value, was prevalent in India over a long period and is often referred as the Jain value. It continued to be used long after Aryabhata introduced the well-known value 3.1416 for the ratio. The Jain texts also contain rather unique formulae for lengths of circular arcs in terms of the length of the corresponding chord and the bow (height) over the chord, and also for the area of regions subtended by circular arcs together with their chords. The means for the accurate determination of these quantities became available only after the advent of Calculus. How the ancient Jain scholars arrived at these formulae, which are close approximations, remains to be understood.

Jain tradition

After a lull of a few centuries in the early part of the rst millennium, pronounced mathematical activity is seen again in the Jain tradition from the 8th century until the middle of the 14th century. Ganitasarasangraha of Mahavira, written in 850, is one of the well-known and inuential works. Virasena (8th century), Sridhara (between 850 and 950), Nemicandra (around 980 CE), Thakkura Pheru (14th century) are some more names that may be mentioned. By the 13th and 14th centuries, Islamic architecture had taken root in India and inGanitasarakaumudi of Thakkura Pheru, who served as treasurer in the court of the Khilji Sultans in Delhi, one sees a combination of the native Jain tradition with Indo-Persian literature, including work on the calculation of areas and volumes involved in the construction of domes, arches, and tents used for residential purposes.

Mathematical astronomy or the Siddhanta tradition has been the dominant and enduring mathematical tradition in India. It ourished almost continuously for over seven centuries, starting with Aryabhata (476-550) who is regarded as the founder of scientic astronomy in India, and extending to Bhaskara II (1114-1185) and beyond. The essential continuity of the tradition can be seen from the long list of prominent names that follow Aryabhata, spread over centuries: Varahamihira in the sixth century, Bhaskara I and Brahmagupta in the seventh century, Govindaswami and Sankaranarayana in the ninth century, Aryabhata II and Vijayanandi in the 10th century, Sripati in the 11th century, Brahmadeva and Bhaskara II in the 12th century, and Narayana Pandit and Ganesa from the 14th and 16th centuries respectively.

Aryabhatiya, written in 499, is basic to the tradition, and even to the later works of the Kerala school of Madhava (more on that later). It consists of 121 verses divided into four chapters — Gitikapada, Ganitapada, Kalakriyapada and Golapada. The rst, which sets out the cosmology, contains also a verse describing a table of 24 sine differences at intervals of 225 minutes of arc. The second chapter, as the name suggests, is devoted to mathematics per se, and includes in particular procedures to nd square roots and cube roots, an approximate expression for ‘pi' (amounting to 3.1416 and specied to be approximate), formulae for areas and volumes of various geometric gures, and shadows, formulae for sums of consecutive integers, sums of squares, sums of cubes and computation of interest. The other two chapters are concerned with astronomy, dealing with distances and relative motions of planets, eclipses and so on.

Influential work

Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta is a voluminous work, especially for its time, on Siddhanta astronomy, in which there are two chapters, Chapter 12 and Chapter 18, devoted to general mathematics. Incidentally, Chapter 11 is a critique on earlier works including Aryabhatiya; as in other healthy scientific communities this tradition also had many, and often bitter, controversies. Chapter 12 is well-known for its systematic treatment of arithmetic operations, including with negative numbers; the notion of negative numbers had eluded Europe until the middle of the second millennium. The chapter also contains geometry, including in particular his famous formula for the area of a quadrilateral (stated without the condition of cyclicity of the quadrilateral that is needed for its validity — a point criticised by later mathematicians in the tradition). Chapter 18 is devoted to the kuttaka and other methods, including for solving second-degree indeterminate equations. An identity described in the work features also in some current studies where it is referred as the Brahmagupta identity. Apart from this, Chapter 21 has verses dealing with trigonometry. Brahmasphutasiddhanta considerably influenced mathematics in the Arab world, and in turn the later developments in Europe. Bhaskara II is the author of the famous mathematical texts Lilavati and Bijaganita. Apart from being an accomplished mathematician he was a great teacher and populariser of mathematics. Lilavati, which literally means ‘one who is playful,' presents mathematics in a playful way, with several verses directly addressing a pretty young woman, and examples presented through reference to various animals, trees, ornaments, and so on. (Legend has it that the book is named after his daughter after her wedding failed to materialise on account of an accident with the clock, but there is no historical evidence to that effect.) The book presents, apart from various introductory aspects of arithmetic, geometry of triangles and quadrilaterals, examples of applications of the Pythagoras theorem, trirasika, kuttaka methods, problems on permutations and combinations, etc. The Bijaganita is an advanced-level treatise on Algebra, the first independent work of its kind in Indian tradition. Operations with unknowns, kuttaka and chakravala methods for solutions of indeterminate equations are some of the topics discussed, together with examples. Bhaskara's work on astronomy, Siddhantasiromani and Karana kutuhala, contain several important results in trigonometry, and also some ideas of Calculus.

The works in the Siddhanta tradition have been edited on a substantial scale and there are various commentaries available, including many from the earlier centuries, and works by European authors such as Colebrook, and many Indian authors including Sudhakara Dvivedi, Kuppanna Sastri and K.V. Sarma. The two-volume book of Datta and Singh and the book of Saraswati Amma serve as convenient references for many results known in this tradition. Various details have been described, with a comprehensive discussion, in the recent book by Kim Plofker. The Bakhshali manuscript, which consists of 70 folios of bhurjapatra (birch bark), is another work of signicance in the study of ancient Indian mathematics, with many open issues around it. The manuscript was found buried in a eld near Peshawar, by a farmer, in 1881. It was acquired by the Indologist A.F.R. Hoernle, who studied it and published a short account on it. He later presented the manuscript to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where it has been since then. Facsimile copies of all the folios were brought out by Kaye in 1927, which have since then been the source material for the subsequent studies. The date of the manuscript has been a subject of much controversy since the early years, with the estimated dates ranging from the early centuries of CE to the 12th century.

Takao Hayashi, who produced what is perhaps the most authoritative account so far, concludes that the manuscript may be assigned sometime between the eighth century and the 12th century, while the mathematical work in it may most probably be from the seventh century. Carbon dating of the manuscript could settle the issue, but efforts towards this have not materialised so far.

A formula for extraction of square-roots of non-square numbers found in the manuscript has attracted much attention. Another interesting feature of theBakhshali manuscript is that it involves calculations with large numbers (in decimal representation).

Kerala school

Let me nally come to what is called the Kerala School. In the 1830s, Charles Whish, an English civil servant in the Madras establishment of the East India Company, brought to light a collection of manuscripts from a mathematical school that ourished in the north-central part of Kerala, between what are now Kozhikode and Kochi. The school, with a long teacher-student lineage, lasted for over 200 years from the late 14th century well into the 17th century. It is seen to have originated with Madhava, who has been attributed by his successors many results presented in their texts. Apart from Madhava, Nilakantha Somayaji was another leading personality from the school. There are no extant works of Madhava on mathematics (though some works on astronomy are known). Nilakantha authored a book called Tantrasangraha (in Sanskrit) in 1500 AD. There have also been expositions and commentaries by many other exponents from the school, notable among them being Yuktidipikaand Kriyakramakari by Sankara, and Ganitayuktibhasha by Jyeshthadeva which is in Malayalam. Since the middle of the 20th century, various Indian scholars have researched on these manuscripts and the contents of most of the manuscripts have been looked into. An edited translation of the latter was produced by K.V. Sarma and it has recently been published with explanatory notes by K. Ramasubramanian, M.D. Srinivas and M.S. Sriram. An edited translation of Tantrasangraha has been brought out more recently by K. Ramasubramanian and M.S. Sriram.

The Kerala works contain mathematics at a considerably advanced level than earlier works from anywhere in the world. They include a series expansion for ‘pi' and the arc-tangent series, and the series for sine and cosine functions that were obtained in Europe by Gregory, Leibnitz and Newton, respectively, over 200 years later. Some numerical values for ‘pi' that are accurate to 11 decimals are a highlight of the work. In many ways, the work of the Kerala mathematicians anticipated calculus as it developed in Europe later, and in particular involves manipulations with indenitely small quantities (in the determination of circumference of the circle and so on) analogous to the innitesimals in calculus; it has also been argued by some authors that the work is indeed calculus already.

Honouring the tradition

A lot needs to be done to honour this rich mathematical heritage. The extant manuscripts need to be cared for to prevent deterioration, catalogued properly with due updates and, most important, they need to be studied diligently and the ndings placed in proper context on the broad canvass of the world of mathematics, from an objective standpoint. Let the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of the genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a global mathematician to the core, inspire us as a nation, to apply ourselves to this task.

(The author is Distinguished Professor, School of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.)

Keywords: Srinivasa Ramanujan, Ramanujan birth anniversary, mathematical heritage, Vedic mathematics, Kerala school of mathematics, Sulvasutra geometry, mathematics and Jain tradition, mathematics and Siddartha tradition

The Many Careers of DD Kosambi- pdf version

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:32:48 PST

Thanks to the good folks at Leftword, the publisher of the book The Many Careers of DD Kosambi, a pdf version of the book is now available for download.

Do purchase the paper copy of the book from Leftword, and help their efforts in publication of studies on DD Kosambi.

Download the pdf version.

The Many Careers of DD Kosambi

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:27:03 PST

Thanks to the truly indefatigable Arvind Gupta, the latest collection of critical essays edited by the historian DN Jha is now available for download. Most of these essays have appeared in EPW earlier and are available on this blog. However, this book contains all essays in one place, along with a couple of newer ones.

Download the book

The Agenda of the Gita

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:33:22 PDT

Cross posted from my personal blog

Left liberals are likely to denounce the BJP’s support for the Karnataka government’s introduction of Gita classes in schools as an attempt at stifling minority rights and invoke on the separation of the state and the church. The BJP’s agenda, however, goes far beyond just a communal agenda. To decipher that, one has to trace the agenda behind the Gita itself.

The Gita has, in popular belief, symbolized the rejuvenation of Hinduism after a thousand years of Buddhist domination. It was the book that apparently struck the last nail on Buddhist thought by a thirty-something Adi Sankracharya. Sankara advocated the advaita--in other words, a form of subjective idealism. In simple words, what it means is that there is only one entity in the universe, the Brahma. The rest is an illusion. Thus, he reconciled all the contradictions in the world by proclaiming that everything is an illusion, or Maya. A person needs to realize this supposed unity and unless one is able to do so, one remains entangled in the web of illusions, or mayajaal.

The Gita attempted to do the same--reconcile contradictions. It attempted to justify violence in the name of morality. It ordained the caste system, and showed women “their place.” In other words, The Gita is the chariot of Brahmanism and what can be called the ideology of racism ensconced within Brahmanism.

DD Kosambi remarks in his book Myth and Reality that "The Gita furnished the one scriptural source which could be used without violence to accepted Brahmin methodology, to draw inspiration and justification for social actions in some way disagreeable to a branch of the ruling class upon whose mercy the brahmins depended at the moment.”

Ambedkar too had a similar view. Nalini Pandit, in her essay, Ambedkar and the Gita, remarks:

After making a detailed study of the ancient religious texts, Ambedkar came to the conclusion that the Aryan community of pre-Buddhist Aryan times did not have any developed sense of moral values. Buddhism caused a moral and social revolution in this society. When the Mauryan emperor Ashoka embraced Buddhism, the social revolution became a political revolution. After the decline of the Mauryan empire, the Brahmins, whose interests had suffered under the Buddhist kings initiated a counter-revolution under the leadership of Pushyamita Sunga. The counter-revolution restored brahmanism. The Bhagwat Gita, says Ambedkar, was composed to give ideological and moral support to this counter-revolution.

Kosambi also pointed out that those who find inspiration in the Gita invariably are from the leisurely classes. He might have added that they are from the upper castes. Those that come from non- Brahmin castes or articulate their voices tend to ignore the Gita. For example, Kabir, Nanak, Namdev, Chaitenya and Jayadeva did not evince any interest in the Gita. On the other hand, Tilak, Gandhi, Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan- all upper castes, if not brahmins- are the names that are associated with writings on the Gita. The correlation with the caste of those who drew inspiration from the Gita is hard to overlook.

It is very interesting to note that interest in the Gita revived only after the advent of the British and their strategy to espouse communal identities. It is even possible that they just came looking for a book like the Bible or the Koran and the pandits could just think of the Bhagvat Gita as an answer. Ambedkar compares these three seminal works thus:

They (pandits) have gone on a search for the message of the Bhagvat Gita on the assumption that it is a gospel as the Koran, the Bible or the Dhammapada is. In my opinion this assumption is quite a false assumption. The Bhagvat Gita is not a gospel and it can therefore have no message and it is futile to search for one. The question will no doubt be asked : What is the Bhagvat Gita if it is not a gospel? My answer is that the Bhagvat Gita is neither a book of religion nor a treatise on philosophy. What the Bhagvat Gita does is to defend certain dogmas of religion on philosphic grounds. If on that account anybody wants to call it a book of religion or a book of philosophy he may please himself. But essentially it is neither. It uses philosophy to defend religion. (Ambedkar, Revolution and Counter Revolution in India)

Having seen some critical views on the Gita, let us look at a handful of shalokas to substantiate.

Shaloka 9.32 ia particularly illustrative of the contempt in which the Gita hold the broad masses of people, including women.

mam hi partha vyapasritya
ye 'pi syuh papa-yonayah
striyo vaisyas tatha sudras
te 'pi yanti param gatim

(O son of Prtha, those who take shelter in Me, though they be of lower birth--women, vaisyas [merchants], as well as sudras [workers]--can approach the supreme destination.)

I have taken the translation from a version that I found on an ISKON site. A better translation, instead of “lower birth” would be “born out of sin” since the word “papa” in Sanskrit means “sin”. Gandhi interprets it more correctly:

“For finding refuge in Me, even those who though are born of the womb of sin, women, vaishyas, and shudras too, reach the supreme goal.”

The different castes are not to be treated equal is made amply clear in other shalokas. Even when there is mention of equality, it is very clear that one needs to reach the stage of sthitaprajana to become a sama darshi. (Sardesai, page 17)

5.18

vidya-vinaya-sampanne
brahmane gavi hastini
suni caiva sva-pake ca
panditah sama-darsinah
(The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcast].)

The cow, elephant, the dog and the outcast are all clubbed together, and are seen to be equal to the brahmin- but only when one reaches that esoteric stage of the sama- darshi. It is anybody's guess on how many people actually reached that stage!
Further, shaloka 18.44 clearly ordains the caste duties for the vaisyas and sudras:
18.44
krsi-go-raksya-vanijyam
vaisya-karma svabhava-jam
paricaryatmakam karma
sudrasyapi svabhava-jam

(Farming, cow protection and business are the qualities of work for the vaisyas, and for the sudras there is labor and service to others.)

The caste system is of course, ordained by God himself, in the human form of Krishna (4.13):
catur-varnyam maya srstam
guna-karma-vibhagasah
tasya kartaram api mam
viddhy akartaram avyayam

(According to the three modes of material nature and the work ascribed to them, the four divisions of human society were created by Me. And,although I am the creator of this system, you should know that I am yet the non-doer, being unchangeable.)

The Bhakti Marg:

The way of redemption for the common, unlettered men and women lay in the bhakti marg, advocated by the Gita. It meant unconditional surrender to the God, with profound feelings of devotion. The gyana marg was evidently meant only for those that were lettered, an abysmal minority even till 1947. The Gita, dated to be around 150AD-250 AD, came much after the Upanishads--the harbinger of the “gyana marg” needed this ideology to counter the Buddhist way that appealed to the lower orders because of its simplicity and its stress on morality.

It is indeed possible to give a “humanistic” veneer to the teachings of the Gita, as Gandhi attempted to do by interpreting the Gita not as an invocation to war (which is what it is), but as a struggle within oneself. What, however, cannot be denied is that even those who attempt such “humanistic” interpretations, assume the framework of the caste system (chaturvarnya) to be inviolable. Gandhi, too, is no exception in this regard.

References:
1. Myth and Reality, Chapter 1- Social and Economic Aspects of the Gita, by DD Kosambi
2. Marxism and the Bhagwat Gita, SG Sardesai and Dilip Bose
3. Krishna and his Gita, in Revolution and Counter Revolution in India, by Dr. BR Ambedkar
4. Ambedkar and the Gita, by (only 1st page available free online) by Nalini Pandit
5. Bhagwad Gita as it is (online, pdf)
6. The Gita according to Gandhi (online)

Prof DD Kosambi- some reminiscences by Dr. BV Sreekantan

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:23:21 PDT

download pdf

Source- RESONANCE June 2011 599

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

Professor D D Kosambi – Some Reminiscences

It is with distinct pleasure that I recall my very pleasant informal and peripheral association with Prof. D D Kosambi for a period of 14 years from 1948 to 1962. This came about in a rather unusual way. I had applied in the summer of 1948 for admission to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research as a research student. In the application form, in answer to the query about my research interests, I had written Theoretical/Experimental physics. I was called for an interview on the 6th of August. First I was interviewed by the experimental committee, with Bhabha as theChairman. I was called for a second time the same day and this time the committee consisted of Dr Bhabha, Prof. Kosambi and Prof. Levy. Dr Bhabha told themthat he had already examined my knowledge of physics and asked them to question me in mathematics. Prof. Levy asked me some questions about matrices and then Prof. Kosambi asked some question in statistics. He also asked me whether I know the Iyengars in the Mathematics department of Central College. A little later, I was called for a third time to Dr Bhabha’s room. As I entered, Dr Bhabha said “Sreekantan, we have decided to admit you. Tell us whether you want to dotheory or experimental research”. I replied “Sir, you have interviewed me. I go by your advice”. Dr Bhabha said “young man, if you join experimental group then perhaps you may also be able to do theoretical work. The other way is doubtful. Moreover, you have some experience in electronics which very few have in this country. If I were you, I will choose to do experimental work”. I joined the Cosmic Ray group of the Institute on the 12th August 1948.

A few weeks later, Dr Bhabha called me and said that I will be working on the Cosmic Ray Mumeson Decay problem. I should read up all the necessary literature and present a colloquium on the subject in about six weeks time. On the day of my first colloquium, I was surprised and shocked to find that right in front row of the small lecture hall were sitting Dr Bhabha, Prof. Kosambi, Prof. Levy and Prof. Masani. Behind them experimentalists AS Rao, Sahian, Thattar and others. There were no facilities for slide projector or for overhead projector system. Everything had to be written on the black board with chalk piece.

I had drawn on the black board, some of the experimental arrangements that had been adopted by others for the study of meson decay and started explaining them one by one. Dr Bhabha interrupted me, came to the black board and suggested what modifications should be made in our experimental arrangements for the experiment. Immediately after that Prof. Kosambi came to the black board and suggested some more changes. Then there ensured a discussion on the pros and cons of the modified arrangements. The net result was that my colloquium which was to be for one hour stretched to three successive Wednesday colloquia, at the end of which, I knew what exactly was the ideal experimental set-up, what precautions I had to take and what kind of statistics I had to gather and how I should go about the analysis – enough work for two years to follow.

Towards the end of 1948, Dr Bhabha invited us for a Tea Party at his Malabar Hills house next to the Hanging Gardens and overlooking the Arabian Sea. The party was to felicitate Prof. Kosambi who had been invited by the Harvard University as a Visiting Professor. In September 1949, the new premises of TIFR at Appollo Pier, near Gateway of India became ready and we moved there. The Yacht club building had a large Dance Hall in the first floor which was converted to the Library, Laboratory for Cosmic Ray Research by the High Altitude Studies group and at one end two special air conditioned rooms were made; one for Prof. Kosambi and the other for Prof. Bernard Peters who had joined TIFR. Our Cloud Chamber laboratory was in the ground floor. Prof. Kosambi used to come to our laboratories frequently for two different reasons. One was that he was a great consumer of chacolates which he used to get from abroad and these had to be stored in an air conditioned room. Since our cloud chamber rooms had to have twenty four hour air conditioning, he used to store his stock in one of these rooms. The second reason was that Dr Kosambi had a great interest in photography. He had a Cannon Reflex Camera with which he used to take photographs. Occasionally he would give it to me to take photographs. We had all the facilities in the cloud chamber section for developing films and also do enlargements of prints. He also had expertise in Sepia toning of the prints. After moving to Yacht Club, Prof. Kosambi gave a course of lectures on statistical treatment of data. In fact in my very first paper from TIFR, on the ‘Life time of mu-meson’ I have thanked Prof. Kosambi for helping me with the statistical analysis of the data.

In 1954, after my PhD thesis, Dr Bhabha deputed me to MIT, Cambridge, to work with Prof Bruno Rossi for a year or so. When I went to tell Prof. Kosambi about this, he said that it is a good idea to have post doctoral research experience abroad and told me that his sisters’ son Arun Prasad was studying at MIT in the Aeronautics Department. He would give me a small packet which I should give it to Arun which I gladly did after going there. I did not meet Arun again for a long time. I was happy to see him in the lecture hall at NIAS, after 56 years when Prof. Kosambi’s daughter Prof. Meera Kosambi gave a lecture in November 2010.

Prof. Kosambi lived in Poona and used to come to Bombay everyday by Deccan Queen which during those days would have only first and second class carriages and some were reserved for season- ticket holders. It used to be said that one particular window seat in the train was always reserved for Prof. Kosambi. Hewas a voracious reader of fiction. He would buy new books, read them on the train and give them away to our small library in the lounge next to the dinning hall at Yacht Club.

In 1962, we moved to the new building of TIFR at Navy Nagar. Prof. Kosambi moved away from TIFR. I did not have the fortune of meeting him after this.

B V Sreekantan, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore 560 012, India.

Email: bvs@nias.iisc.ernet.in

When did early humans reach India?

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Tue, 03 May 2011 18:58:01 PDT

When did early humans reach India? | Down To Earth

When did early humans reach India?
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Author(s): Tiasa Adhya
Issue: May 15, 2011

Stone tools suggest a million years ago, previous assumption was 0.5 million years ago

imagePappu and her research team started studying the site in Tamil Nadu in 1999 (Courtesy: Shanti Pappu)EARLY humans arrived in India from Africa more than a million years ago, indicate newly discovered stone tools. The discovery overturns the earlier assumption that our ancestors reached India about half a million years ago.

A research team led by Shanti Pappu of non-profit Sharma Centre for Heritage Education in Chennai discovered 3,528 stone tools at a prehistoric site in Attirampakkam in the Kortallayar river basin of Tamil Nadu. The tools fall into a class of artefacts called Acheulian tools that scientists believe were first created by Homo erectus— ancestors of modern humans—in Africa more than 1.6 million years ago. The Acheulian tools largely include handaxes and cleavers.

The conclusion of Pappu’s study was earlier voiced by Robin Dennell of University of Sheffield in England in a commentary published in 2005 in the journal Nature.

The Old Stone Age, or Palaeolithic Age, is divided into three periods— Lower Palaeolithic, Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic. Each period is characterised by typical stone tool assemblages. The Acheulian is a phase within the Lower Palaeolithic, characterised by a stone tool assemblage consisting largely of handaxes and cleavers.

Acheulian populations were primarily hunters and gatherers, skilled at adapting to different environments. “We know this from fossil remains found at sites in India and world over,” says Pappu. The Acheulian tools were probably used to butcher and skin animals and to exploit plant resources like roots and tubers, she adds.

imageAcheulian handaxeDating, for the first time The archaeologists found the artefacts at a depth of one to nine metres in thick layers of clay.

To date the tools, the research team analysed traces of certain elements embedded in them and by correlating the archaeological layers excavated at the site with changes in the earth’s magnetic field. Many such artefacts have been found in south India, but this is the first study that has dated the tools.

The team used two dating methods, palaeomagnetic dating of the sediments that covered the Acheulian tools and cosmogenic nuclide burial dating of the stone tools. The former is based on the principle of periodic reversal of the earth’s magnetic fields over geological time periods. The palaeomagnetic measurements showed a reversed polarity, meaning the sediment samples predate the period after the last reversal of the earth’s magnetic field.

“The sediments date to more than 1.07 million years,” says Pappu. The burial dating technique measures isotopes of two earth metals, aluminium and beryllium, which gives the age of burial of the tool.

The finding “is one of the finest in Indian archaeology”, says V N Misra, retired professor of anthropology at Deccan College in Pune. “It proves, for the first time, that early humans migrated from Africa to Tropical Asia and Europe. They did not go to the Himalayan side of India because of the colder climate,” he adds. It proves that early humans were present in Asia much earlier than in Europe, he concludes.

The study, published in the March issue of Science, is part of an ongoing research project of Sharma Centre for Heritage Education. The research aims to understand prehistoric stone tool technology and changes in patterns of adaptation of Homo erectus to changing environments at Attirampakkam.

“We examine what type of development (agriculture and infrastructure development) is destroying prehistoric sites. This will help pave the way for methods that could be adopted to conserve the sites,” says Pappu.
Tags: Science & Technology, Africa, History, India, Life Science, Tamil Nadu

Remnants of Mauryan-era stupas found in Girnar forest

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Sun, 01 May 2011 11:59:00 PDT

The Hindu : States / Other States : Remnants of Mauryan-era stupas found in Girnar forest

Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has asked Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to undertake a thorough archaeological survey of the Girnar reserve forest and the Gir sanctuary in Junagadh district in the Saurashtra region of the State.

In a letter dated April 21, Mr. Ramesh said he was giving the advice on the suggestion of a noted historian from Delhi University Nayanjot Lahiri, who recently visited the reserve forest and found the remnants of two “stupas” which she believed could be of the Mauryan dynasty.

Mr. Ramesh said Dr. Lahiri located one of the stupas, locally known as Lakha Medi, near the Bhordevi temple inside the forest.

The historian reckoned that the stupa must have been about 50 feet high. Its core was of solid bricks, similar to the “Sanchi Stupa – I” (Madhya Pradesh) and the “Stupa at Piprahwa” (Uttar Pradesh), believed to be of the Mauryan era.

She had also found many loose bricks around indicating there could have been other stupas in the vicinity. But what was more alarming was that the bricks from the stupas were being taken away by the locals for renovating the temple.

“Therefore, it is urgent, that there is a complete survey of the stupa with accurate line drawings and photographs followed by careful archaeological conservation,” Mr. Ramesh said.
Better stupa

The historian located another “stupa,” locally called “Rathakot,” near another temple known as “Jina Baba ki Madi,” beyond Hasnapur dam in the Girnar reserve forest. This stupa was found to be in a much better condition.

Mr. Ramesh said Dr. Lahiri believed that if a proper survey was carried out, the reserve forest and the sanctuary could become famous for not only being the only abode of the Asiatic Lions, but also of the country's “historic heritage.”

The survey would require close cooperation between the State Forest Department and the Department of Archaeology.
‘Coral Atlas'

Meanwhile, a first comprehensive “Coral Atlas” of the State — giving not only the figures and extent of the coral reefs across the State's coastline, but also the details of the habitat scenario in each of the reefs — has been released by the State government. The Atlas was prepared by the State-owned Gujarat Ecology Commission with technical assistance from the Bhashkaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo-Informatics.

According to Principal Secretary of the State Environment and Forests Department S.K. Nanda, the Atlas would serve as an important baseline in the preparation of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan for Gujarat initiated by the Union Environment Ministry. “It is also a contribution to the State's earnest efforts towards sustainable development,” he said.
Website launched

Along with the Atlas, a dedicated website on Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project was also launched by the State government. The Atlas was the second publication of the GEC after the “Mangrove Atlas of Gujarat” last year featuring thematic maps of mangrove distribution along the State's coastline.

“The initiative by GEC is an attempt to come out with the baseline documentation on the natural heritage in order to ensure effective management of the coastal zone in line with the rising developmental activities on the coastal belt,” GEC member-secretary E. Belaguruswamy said.

Keywords: Jairam Ramesh, Girnar forest, Mauryan-era