D.D. 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.

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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?
0 Comments
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

Tamil-Brahmi script found at Pattanam in Kerala

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:07:06 PDT

The Hindu : News / National : Tamil-Brahmi script found at Pattanam in Kerala

A Tamil-Brahmi script on a pot rim, reading “a ma na”, meaning a Jaina, has been found at Pattanam in Ernakulam district, Kerala, establishing that Jainism was prevalent on the west coast at least from second century CE (Common Era). The script can be dated to circa second century CE. The three Tamil-Brahmi letters are followed by two symbols generally called Megalithic graffiti and these two symbols could not be identified. This is the third Tamil-Brahmi script to be found in the Pattanam excavations.

The Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) has been conducting excavations at Pattanam since 2007, with the approval of the Archaeological Survey of India. The pot-rim was found during the sixth season of the excavation currently under way. Pattanam is now identified as the thriving port called Muziris by the Romans. Tamil Sangam literature celebrates it as Muciri.

P.J. Cherian, Director of the Pattanam excavations, said: “The discovery, in the Kerala context, has a great significance because of the dearth of evidence so far of the pre-Brahminical past of Kerala, especially in relation to the socio-cultural and religious life of the people. We have direct evidence from Pattanam now with the Brahmi script which mentions “a ma na” [Jaina] and so we have evidence that Jainism and Buddhism were extensively practised in Kerala.”

Iravatham Mahadevan, a scholar in Indus and Tamil-Brahmi scripts, said the discovery showed that “there was Jainism on the west coast at least from second century CE. The importance of the finding is that it stratigraphically corroborates the earlier datings given to the Tamil-Brahmi cave inscriptions in Tamil Nadu on palaeographic evidence. I will date this sherd, on palaeographic evidence, to circa second century CE.”

The Tamil word “a ma na” meaning a Jaina was derived from Sanskrit Sramana via Prakrit Samana and Tamil Camana, said Mr. Mahadevan. The two megalithic graffiti, following the three Tamil-Brahmi letters, could not be identified. “But we know from similar finds in Tamil Nadu, especially at Kodumanal, that Tamil-Brahmi letters and megalithic graffiti symbols occur side by side,” he said. Mr. Mahadevan was sure that “many more exciting finds will be made at Muciri [Pattanam] which was a flourishing port on the west coast during the Sangam age in Tamil Nadu, which coincided with the classical period in the West.”

Mr. Cherian, who is also Director of KCHR, said the discovery “excites me as an excavator because it was for the first time we are getting direct evidence relating to a religious system or faith in Kerala.” The pot might have belonged to a Jaina monk. The broken rim with the script was found at a depth of two metres in trench 29 in the early historical layer which “by our stratigraphic understanding could belong to third-second CE period,” he said. The associated finds included amphora sherds, iron nails, and beads among others.

In a trial trench laid earlier at Pattanam by Professor V. Selvakumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Archaeology and Epigraphy, Tamil University, Thanjavur and K.P. Shajan of KCHR, a pot-sherd with the Tamil-Brahmi letters reading “ur pa ve o” was found. Later, another Tamil-Brahmi script with the letters “ca ta [n]” was found. Mr. Mahadevan praised the Pattanam excavations as “the best conducted excavations in south India.” He said it was “a potentially important site and excavations are being done in a competent way by Mr. Cherian and his team from the KCHR and they have involved experts from around the world.”

DD Kosambi Festival 2011 is On

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:34:55 PST

Oheraldo Goa's complete online news edition :: Star-studded-line-up-for-D-D-Kosambi-Festival-of-Ideas

Star-studded line-up for D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Panjim, Feb 4: Chief Minister Digambar Kamat will inaugurate the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas on Saturday at Kala Academy, Panjim, to be followed by a lecture delivered by eminent scientist Dr Raghunath Mashelkar. This is the fourth edition of this lecture series, and will be held from February 5 to 10 at Kala Academy, Panjim.

Other speakers will include another great scientist and former President of India Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, Tibetan leader and Buddhist luminary His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Indian-born British economist and intellectual Lord Meghnad Desai, Human Rights activist and former Judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court Justice Albie Sachs and Rajya Sabha MP, Hindu leader and President of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Dr Karan Singh.
Saturday’s talk will have Dr Raghunath Mashelkar speaking about ‘Making the Impossible, Possible’, from 5 pm to 7.30 pm. Dr Mashelkar is the former Director General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a chain of 38 government research and development (R&D) institutions employing 20,000 scientists, which includes the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), located in Goa.

A son of Goa, Dr Mashelkar was born on January 1, 1943 in Mashel, Tiswadi, in a modest family. He went to school barefoot and almost had to give up studies owing to his family’s strained economic circumstances. Nevertheless, he was a rank holder in the matriculation examination.

An apocryphal story says that his school principal and science teacher, Bhave, once concentrated the rays of the sun through a magnifying lens on a paper till it burned and told him, “This lens is you. If you concentrate on your studies, one day you will reach the sky.” Though his mother could not support his college education, Dr Mashelkar managed to become a chemical engineer, won a Tata scholarship, went overseas and got his PhD degree.
He did ground-breaking work in polymer science and engineering, going on to become the head of the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL). He was then named Director General of the CSIR. Under his leadership, the CSIR was first in the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO’s) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) filings among developing nations in 2002. CSIR still has a 30-40 per cent share of all US patents granted to Indians in India during the last three years.

His personal experience of reaching the very top of his profession from the most dire of circumstances has convinced him that India is fated to become one of the world’s greatest intellectual and economic engines. He has been responsible for creating an unprecedented national awareness in India on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).
He led the challenge to successfully revoke the US patent on the wound-healing properties of Turmeric. He also chaired the technical committee that successfully challenged and revoked US patents on Basmati Rice. This set in motion a movement for the protection of traditional knowledge in the entire developing world.
Two Sundays ago, Dr Mashelkar and former Atomic Energy Commission chief Dr Anil Kakodkar sat and listened to the dreams, hopes and aspirations of young people from across Goa at the youth convention for the Vision Document for Goa-2035 – to prepare a roadmap for the development of Goa – at Ravindra Bhavan, Margao. He remarked, after listening to the ideas of dozens of young Goan men and women that it was possibly among the finest three hours of his life.

Mashelkar is presently the president of the Global Research Alliance, a network of publicly funded research and development institutes from the Asia-Pacific region, South Africa, Europe and the USA with over 60,000 scientists. He is also the President of India’s National Innovation Foundation.

Other topics and timings:

Sun Feb 6: Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, ‘Imagination Leads to Creativity’, 5 pm to 6 pm.
Mon Feb 7: Dalai Lama, ‘Ethics for the New Millennium’, 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm.
Tue Feb 8: Lord Meghnad Desai, ‘Kosambi, Modernity and the Question of Social Inclusion’, 5 pm to 7.30 pm.
Wed Feb 9: Justice Albie Sachs, ‘Light on a Hill’, 5 pm to 7.30 pm.
Thu Feb 10: Dr Karan Singh, ‘The relevance of Vedanta in today’s context’, 5pm to 7.30 pm.

An interaction session between the public and the speaker is held subsequent to the talk.
The Directorate of Art & Culture initiated the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas to commemorate the birth centenary of Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi, Indian mathematician, statistician, physicist, historian and polymath, and a great son of Goa. This festival is the only one of its kind in the country.

The Questionable Historicity of the Mahabharata by SSN Murthy

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 13:43:39 PST

The Questionable Historicity of the Mahabharata, a paper by SSN Murthy.

I conclude by saying that the Epic Mbh, is a dramatized version of the btk and there is no historicity involved in the Epic. There is only one ‘bhårata war’ ie., the Vedic battle of ten kings. It is believed here that this communication would start an interesting debate in the study of the ancient history of India.

Read the full paper (pdf).

Source: Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies

Was the Harappan Culture Vedic? by RS Sharma

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:04:57 PST

Was the Harappan Culture Vedic?*

by Ram Sharan Sharma
West Boring Canal Road, Patna 800001

(* Fourth Foundation Day Lecture of the Indian Council of Historical Research delivered on March 27, 2005.)

Download (original site)

Link via Communalism Watch

A film maker inspired by DDK

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:16:05 PDT

The Hindu : Arts / Cinema : Visual symphonies

“I can hear music in a colour,” says eminent film maker Kumar Shahani. This becomes quite evident when one looks at his repertoire of films all of which have a lingering musical quality. Shahani seems to carry music with him. There is an innate sense of music in his words; music colours his thoughts and many of his major films like ‘Khayal Gatha' and ‘Bamboo Flute' are based on music.

However he says he had no formal training in music as a child and later he began to train himself, not to perform but to enjoy music. Mumbai in those days was a centre for Khayal Gayakies and in the post-independence era was the hub of many music maestros.

Shahani considers singing to be the basis of Indian arts. For him without vocal music there is no orchestra, without which there is no dance, without dance there is no sculpture and without sculpture there is no painting.
Ocean of music

When he made the ‘Bamboo Flute' with Hariprasad Chaurasia he recollects how he kept on dreaming of life under the sea. He later interpreted this as an unconscious ‘knowing' of the pressure of water, of the pressure of life, the water in the womb and the water in the sea and their primeval music. Interestingly enough water is a predominant metaphor that figures in most of his movies.
Important works

Groomed under the tutelage of the likes of D.D. Kosambi, Ritwik Ghatak and Robert Bresson, his most important works include ‘Maya Darpan' (1972), ‘Tarang' (1984), ‘Khayal Gatha' (1988), ‘Kasba' (1990), ‘Bhavantharana' (1991), ‘Char Adhyay' (1997) and ‘Bamboo Flute' (2000). ‘Maya Darpan' was made in 1972 and in reply to the question whether his approach would be any different if he remade it today he said that he hadn't yet found out the final practice of either living or film making. “And I don't think I'll ever find it out in an absolute sense.”

In response to the comment that in his films one can see the struggle between the aesthetic and the ideological, he said he was grateful to both Marx and Kosambi for helping him bring forth and even represent that struggle itself.

It is the brilliant exploration of the visual in the performing and traditional arts of India that make his films resonate with a curious synesthetic beauty that is indeed rare in Indian cinema. Going by the Godardian definition of cinema as truth at 24 frames per second, for Shahani this truth itself is multivalent with oblique meanings offering the possibility of numerous perspectives.

The beauty of cinema for him is that so many subjectivities and so many arts come together in a film, making it a composite art

Shahani said that he was working on two projects: one on Odissi with Ileana Citaristi, a disciple of Kelucharan Mohapatra, and another with internationally renowned sculptor Anish Kapoor.

Speaking on the relevance of serious cinema in the age of digitisation he pointed out that we need to differentiate between the digital and cinematic art.

Although they overlap, each has a different potential and take off in different directions. It is important therefore that young film makers understand that the digital is not a cheap variant of the cinematic. Responding to questions regarding the philosophical and spiritual in his works he said in a jocular vein that his friends accuse him of not being carnal enough.

Surrounded as we are by film makers who seem to carry baggage of their films on their shoulders and are unable to digest any criticism, Shahani's view that the work has its own life and as an artiste he prefers to move on mentally and emotionally holds great significance.

Choosing not to speak on his own films he waxed eloquent on his master Ghatak and his student M.R. Rajan's films.

It was the humility and grace of this consummate artiste, his erudition and humaneness that held listeners spellbound during his lecture at the Institute of English, Thiruvananthapuram. The talk was in connection with the ‘Erudite Scholar Programme' of The University of Kerala.

Points to ponder

Shahani made a fervent plea to the youngsters of today to make attempts to preserve their rich heritage and their past. It is indeed the need of the hour to revive the works of major film makers and landmark films of India. Aravindan's films he said make the best case in point.

A discussion with Romila Thapar

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:55:13 PDT

I hope that this discussion with Prof. Romila Thapar might be of interest to the readers of this blog. Prof Thapar is one of the outstanding historians who were inspired by DD Kosambi's writings. Of particular interest are her comments on how British colonial perception led to the creation of the 'Hindu' identity and ignored other streams like Buddhism, Jainism and others.

The Quest of Dharmanand, a review by Romila Thapar

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:35:59 PDT

Dharmanand Kosambi: The Essential Writings edited and translated by Meera Kosambi
(Ranikhet: Permanent Black), 2010; pp xv + 421, Rs 695.

A review essay by the historian Romila Thapar.

Dharmanand Kosambi was an extraordinary man. He sought knowledge about Buddhism when few in India were interested in it. He virtually trained himself as a scholar of Buddhism and did so in a manner that was the polar opposite of how we train to be scholars in our time. He had neither degrees nor research fellowships nor attachments to academic institutions but was recognised as a scholar.

Born in 1876 in a village in Goa he slowly became obsessed with wanting to learn about the teachings of the Buddha. This he proceeded to do and it involved him in long wanderings. It took him to various teachers and places for short or longer periods and in Sri Lanka and Burma he honed his knowledge.

The way he set about becoming a scholar shows immense determination but is at the same time a very moving articulation of a genuine wish to know and without any motives other than the acquiring of this knowledge. There are few who are motivated in this manner. He virtually worked out a curriculum for himself addressed to the knowledge for which he was searching.
In this volume under review, his grand-daughter Meera Kosambi has translated from the original Marathi and edited some of his more important writings. This provides a welcome acquaintance with the man, his scholarship and his social commitments. Complete Surrender His memoirs, written as a series of articles between 1912 and 1924 under the title of Nivedan, describe his early life. Declaring in 1899 that he had become a complete Buddhist at least in his mind, he left home and his young wife. He travelled first to Pune known to be a hub of Sanskrit scholarship. A smattering of Sanskrit provided an introduction to various scholars who helped him improve his knowledge of the language. Among them was R G Bhandarkar who was also developing a scholarly interest in Buddhism. From here Dharmanand travelled with his meagre belongings to Ujjain, Gwalior, Varanasi, Kathmandu and Gaya. He wandered often barefoot, ill-clad and accepting food where offered in the spirit of a bhikshu. This took him all over northern India and to sites linked to Buddhism.

During his travels he met Sanskrit teachers in various towns connected by a close network often through oral communication. These were not Indologists studying Sanskrit as something apart from their lives but were scholars for whom the study was itself a way of life. Money was extremely short and he was living on the edge of every coin. He was warned not to mention his interest in Buddhism which was frowned upon by the orthodox.

They associated it with the nastikas, the unbelievers and the pashandas, the heretics. As a contrast to this, initial studies and translations of Buddhist texts into English, such as those published by the Pali Text Society founded in 1881, were beginning to recognise the importance of Buddhism in south Asia, a recognition emerging from a mist of forgotten ideas. In eastern India, the Mahabodhi Society was slowly becoming a hub of studies on Buddhism, using both Sanskrit and Pali sources.

Dharmanand was directed to the Mahabodhi Society in Calcutta and from there he scraped together a few rupees and with a little help from his friends eventually reached Sri Lanka in 1902. Here he could openly state his purpose. The Mahabodhi Society extended support and he joined the Vidyodaya Vidyalaya.

International Recognition

A major movement in Sri Lanka at this time was focusing on the revival of Theravada Buddhism which had gone into a decline. The movement began in the late 19th century with the activities of the Theosophists– in particular Henry Olcott and Madame Blavatsky – who had links in India and with some organisations such as the Arya Samaj. The revival was pursued vigorously by Anagarika Dharmapala. An effort was made to propagate Theravada Buddhism and to identify it with Sinhala Buddhism. Tied into this revival were the current European theories of race with claims that the Sinhala Buddhists were Aryans. These theories were to contribute to Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. The movement has recently been described as “Protestant Buddhism”. Dharmanand met Dharmapala briefly but the meeting left little impression on him. It would have been interesting to have had an outsider’s view of the movement and particularly one sympathetic to the religion.

From Sri Lanka he went for a while to Burma where he was ordained a monk. But by now his health was so impaired that he had to discontinue monkhood. Nor was there a monastic network in India to maintain monkhood. He came to Calcutta in 1906 and taught Pali first in the National College and then at the university. His wife joined him but not for long. In 1907 their son was born. A stipend from the Maharaja of Baroda permitted a period of further research, Baroda being one of the princely states that took an active interest in furthering education. He eventually settled in Maharashtra.

Here his writings and lectures led to recognition. It also brought him into contact with James Woods to whom he taught Pali. Woods was at Harvard University and his colleague there, H C Warren, a professor of Sanskrit, was searching for a Pali scholar to help edit the Visuddhimagga, a major work on Theravada Buddhism. In 1910 Dharmanand was invited to Harvard to help with this work, the first of many visits. This established Dharmanand internationally as a scholar of Pali and Buddhism.

An Alternative System

His determination to study Pali is all the more impressive given that Buddhism elicited no interest in Goa. Nor was it much sought after elsewhere in India at that time. Apart from a children’s book on the Buddha, he mentions that he read a Marathi translation of Edwin Arnold’s poem on the life of the Buddha, The Light of Asia. This narrative in uninspired Victorian verse, published in 1879, was an instant success. Buddha’s life was portrayed as exemplary and reminiscent of Christ. Those of us that scoff at this poem will have to reassess its influence.

The poem coincided with the emerging Orientalist interest in Buddhist texts and the study of Pali in the latter half of the 19th century. Buddhism was absent in India although prevalent in other parts of Asia, so its Indian context remained somewhat in the shadow. The historical background of the Pali Buddhist Canon associated with Theravada Buddhism and later with the Hinayana, “lesser vehicle”, was rooted in northern India of the fifth century BC. There was a tendency therefore to treat it as just another manifestation of Hinduism not recognising that it was projecting an alternative system. At best it was compared to the Protestant Reformation in Christianity. But Dharmanand’s memoirs confirm that the Brahmana orthodoxy regarded it as a definitive opposition to Brahmanism. It had no place for deity and its social ethic was not based on the code of the four castes. It was, however, vibrant in other parts of Asia and the Canon was elucidated by extensive commentaries which gave the teaching an additional provenance in Asian cultures. Those recorded in Pali came to be viewed as a source of pristine Buddhism.

There was another tradition of Buddhist teaching dating to the early centuries AD, the texts of which were largely in Sanskrit. These were associated more often with the other school of Buddhist thinking, the Mahayana, “greater vehicle” whose initial core area was north-western India but extending into other parts of south Asia as also into central Asia and beyond. It would perhaps have been easier for Dharmanand to have worked on these Sanskrit texts. He does refer to the biographies of the Buddha in Sanskrit, the Lalita-vistara and the Buddhacharita of Ashvaghosha, when writing his biography of the Buddha, Bhagvan Buddha. But the Pali texts were the earliest and thought to be the original teaching whereas the Sanskrit texts reflected later changes in belief and ritual.

Buddhism, Brahmanism, Islam

Despite having to go outside India to study Pali and Buddhism, Dharmanand surprisingly says little about why he thought it had faded out in India. There are, of course, many reasons. It could be argued that language may have played a partial role. The Buddha had stated that his teaching was to be in the local language and not in Sanskrit so as to reach a wider audience and remain distinct from Brahmanism. The Prakrit used by the Buddha has been labelled “Old Buddhist ardha-magadhi” to distinguish it from the Jaina Canon. From the mid-first millennium AD Sanskrit became the hegemonic language of religious and cultural discourse. Had there been more visibility of Buddhist writing in Sanskrit, it is just possible that Brahmanism may have had to defend itself with greater vigour.

The fading out of Buddhism also came with a decrease in patronage both royal as well as that of wealthy householders. Patronage gradually shifted from Buddhism and Jainism to the Vaishnava and Shaiva sects and to Brahmanas.

Buddhism had emerged from an ethos of gana-sanghas, chiefships and oligarchies. The organisation of monasteries used these as their model as directed by the Buddha. Dharmanand insisted, quite correctly, that the Buddha was not the son of a king which at that time was almost a lone opinion. He commented on the similarity of social organisation in the ganasanghas and in socialist systems. Kingship eventually became the more powerful political form and kings treated patronage as a means of building support and acquiring legitimacy. Religious sects therefore competed for patronage and the competition would have encouraged making concessions in belief and worship.

The patronage of wealthy householders had earlier drawn in small-scale land-owners, artisans and merchants as testified in the votive inscriptions at stupa sites such as Bharhut, Sanchi, Kanheri, Amaravati and others. Many of these spectacular Buddhist structures date to the period between the Mauryas and the Guptas when trade was at a peak. A slowing down of the trade in some areas may have affected patronage from these groups. Eastern India was an exception where Buddhism remained a strong presence until the early second millennium AD. But here Buddhism was of the Vajrayana form infiltrated by Tantrism and in the proximity of Tibetan Buddhism. This created some difference with the Theravada form.

Eastern India maintained trading activities as with south-east Asia until Arab intervention diverted this trade. This coincided with the Turkish conquest of the area resulting in political confrontation, sometimes violent. But the contention that Islam was responsible for the decline of Buddhism hardly holds. Xuanzang’s account of India in the seventh century AD indicates that the decline in various parts of the subcontinent was noticeable and this was prior to the arrival of Islam. The contrast with eastern India a little later is quite striking.

Whether or not Dharmanand subscribed to this view is not stated. But he comes down heavily on the Muslims ascribing the decline and destruction of the cultures of central Asia, Persia and Egypt to Muslim conquest. He then adds, “They could not entirely destroy Indian culture; but during their reign it was almost dead; the suffering of the Hindus knew no bounds” (p 330). As a Maharashtrian he would doubtless have been familiar with the compositions of Ekanatha and the activities of the court of Shivaji, so his assessment could have been more nuanced. But this was a facile explanation and did not require questioning possible changes in Buddhism.

Large grants of land to monasteries became less frequent (except in eastern India) as compared to grants to Brahmanas which increased. Rituals of all kinds were performed and astrological predictions came to the fore in which monks were not adept. Jaina monks in particular became a sign of the inauspicious. The antagonism between Shaivas and Shramanas was almost a given, although its intensity varied. Nevertheless the Jainas maintained a position of eminence especially in western India.

Non-violence over Suffering

Despite the increasingly low profile of Buddhism some aspects of Hindu belief and thinking were likely to have been altered by the proximity of the heterodox sects, and vice versa, as is evident from the sectarian fissions that emerged in each of the religions. It is a moot point whether the essentials of Puranic Hinduism (as distinct from Brahmanism) would have evolved the way they did had there not been the proximity of the Shramanic sects. This is not to argue that the one deliberately took from the other, but rather that given the relatively decentralised of religion in the subcontinent, osmoses among religions were the more likely processes of change. The identification of such processes is significant to understanding religion in pre-modern India.

Possibly one could argue that Dharmanand subconsciously recognised the presence of these processes in the world around him and set out to seek for their roots. However, commenting briefly on the interaction of Buddhism and Hinduism he maintained that the essential values of Buddhism – non-violence and the need to eliminate suffering – had bypassed Hinduism. He gave priority to non-violence over suffering. The cause of the Buddha’s renunciation was less due to his experience of seeing sickness, old age and death, and more the imminent violence between the Shakya and the Koliya clans of Buddha’s time. (This situation is described in the Kunala Jataka.) Dharmanand maintains that the violence between the clans was averted by his renunciation. This marks an important segment of his book, Hindi Sanskriti ani Ahimsa (Indian Civilisation and Non-violence), and is stated more clearly in his play, Bodhisattva, published posthumously in 1949.

Socialism and Neo-Buddhism

His interest in socialism could also have led him to underline the social message of the Buddhist ethic. In the early part of the 20th century there was an incipient dialogue between some Buddhists and Marxists. Ideas about socialism were also in the air.

Dharmanand makes some connections and these would have been an innovation at that time. Such ideas were subsequently expressed by others of the next generation such as Rahul Sankrityayan. These may indirectly and to some degree have contributed to neo-Buddhism.

Dharmanand’s initial reading of Marx impressed him enough for him to take up a short teaching assignment at Leningrad University. The application of Marxism to organising society as in the Soviet Union interested him. He was clearly impressed by the low incidence of unemployment in the Soviet Union and by the freedom accorded to women.

In the Name of the Father

These interests of Dharmanand are reflected in some of the ideas that surface in the writings of his son who was at the time completing his degree at Harvard and returning to Pune. Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi read Mathematics at Harvard. His training as a scholar was the reverse of the path followed by his father. He took regular courses in school and at university, studied a variety of European languages and above all familiarised himself with the methodology of scientific investigation. But the impact of his father’s work and concerns seems to have been enormous. This can be seen in what began as an extra-curricular study of ancient history and Sanskrit texts.

For theories of historical explanation he drew on Marxism about which he must initially have heard from his father. In his discussions on ancient Indian history he was concerned with giving visibility to the role of Buddhist social and economic activities emphasising a dimension that had received less attention in earlier general histories. Where Dharmanand had casually mentioned the Buddhist rock-cut monasteries, his son studied the sites in order to understand their function as socio-religious institutions of early India. However, for him these were not the articulations of the holy but of history.

This is also reflected in his choice of texts to edit. He chose courtly literature in Sanskrit reflecting his definition of feudal society. Refusing to be limited to texts and library research he walked the countryside around Pune collecting data to reconstitute “living prehistory”. This ranged from the study of microliths to that of mother-goddesses. One cannot help but suspect that Dharmanand’s walk across the land inspired his son not to neglect the continuities, literally on the ground.

Dharmanand’s major work was the editing of the Visuddhi-magga (Vishuddhimarga), the Path to Purification. This was a summation of his wish to learn Pali and expand the understanding of Buddhism. In the fifth century AD, the Brahmana acharya Buddhaghosha had travelled to various centres of learning, seeking knowledge through debating with philosophers both orthodox and heterodox. At the bidding of a Buddhist monk he went to Sri Lanka where he studied the Pali Buddhist Canon and its later commentaries. Some commentaries were composed in Sinhala and it was thought necessary to translate them into Pali so that they would circulate wherever Pali was known. At the time this would have included parts of south-east Asia. Such texts were crucial to the propagation of Buddhist teachings. Buddhaghosha became a major intellectual figure through the multiple commentaries he wrote on the Canon as well as the anthologies that he compiled. In his lifetime he was probably the foremost scholar of Theravada Buddhism and the Visuddhi-magga his most celebrated work. He is acclaimed in Buddhist writings such as the Mahavamsa, a Sri Lankan monastic chronicle of the Mahavihara monastery. In editing the text, Dharmanand was introducing a foundational text of Buddhism to the wider world. It is almost as if he was continuing the work of Buddhaghosha. And there seems to have been a resemblance in the unfolding of the two lives.

Path to Purification

The Visuddhi-magga is an anthology of Buddhist teachings and a manual on Theravada Buddhism. It was intended as a summary of the Canon and also incorporated the earlier oral commentaries, the atthakathas, subsequently lost. The texts claimed to be authentic, maintaining that they incorporated the actual words of the Buddha, or traditions vouched for by the elders of the Sangha familiar with the teaching. The concern with authenticity was necessary now that almost a millennium had passed since the time of the Buddha. Furthermore, dissenting sects were sparring over the correct reading of the texts.

The Visuddhi-magga encapsulates some of Theravada Buddhist thinking in focusing on three paths to purification/liberation: sila (shila) discipline, samadhi, meditation and panna (prajna) wisdom. Discipline included finding a teacher and a place. Meditation involved reflecting on the teachings and the stages of concentration. The acquiring of wisdom was in part based on the practice of what has now become fashionable, namely, vipassana, as a method of acquiring insight. Narrative is used to explain the more abstract concepts which form the essence of the teaching. Absence of the centrality of deity and the insistence on a social ethic that did not require religious underpinnings, distinguishes early Buddhism from other religions; or, as Emile Durkheim argued, denies it the label of a religion. Editing the text therefore was an intellectual challenge.

The Sanskritist Henry Warren had begun the editing but needed the assistance of a Pali scholar. On the death of Warren another Sanskrit scholar Charles Lanman took over but looked for a person with greater expertise. The editing required consulting important manuscripts in Pali and in the Burmese and Sinhala scripts. Dharmanand was therefore well-equipped to edit the text. Dharmanand and Lanman did not always see eye-to-eye, nevertheless the work was completed in 1927. It was published later in 1950 in the Harvard Oriental Series as edited by H C Warren and D D Kosambi.

In Death, So in Life

The quest of Dharmanand illustrates the potential of searching for knowledge by seeking it directly. Ultimately that is what makes for the excellence of a scholar however arduous the training, particularly if self-imposed. After the 1930s his views were more forthright on the politics of his time. The past is brought into play on issues of the present but only where relevant. What his son D D Kosambi managed to do was in many ways a continuation of his father’s enquiries but with methods appropriate to the requirements of knowledge that prevailed in the subsequent generation.

For him the historical context of event and knowledge had primacy. This required a detailed study of context in addition to the analysis of the language. Understanding the context involved drawing on a range of evidence and this in turn enlarged the scope of causal connections. And if aspects of the analyses of the early past required juxtaposing with present times, he did this by providing a contextual critique.

When ill-health became unbearable Dharmanand retired to the Sevagram Ashram at Wardha, having known Gandhi, discussed ahimsa with him and participated in his movement. Here he chose to die through deliberate slow starvation more often associated with the Jaina tradition of sallekhana. In death as in life the decision was his.

Dharmanand wrote almost exclusively in Marathi although he knew English and other languages. He too wished to reach a large audience to explain his understanding of the teachings of the Buddha and other matters of contemporary interest. This accounts in part for his not being as well known as he should have been elsewhere in the country. Meera Kosambi’s editing and translating of his writings, involving both determination and care on her part, will help to familiarise many more people with Dharmanand’s work and thinking.

Romila Thapar (romila.thapar@gmail.com) is professor emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Scholars Extraordinary

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:00:00 PDT

Dileep Padgaonkar reviews the book on Dharmanand Kosambi edited by Meera Kosambi.

Scholars Extraordinary - The Times of India

For close to four decades after his death, the name of Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi did not ring a bell outside a small circle of academics engaged in the study of ancient Indian history, society and culture. But interest in his prodigious output revived in India and abroad on the occasion of his birth centenary three years ago. Younger generations of scholars discovered a man of many parts: a polyglot fluent in Sanskrit, Pali, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian, not to mention English and Marathi; an internationally-acclaimed mathematician, statistician, Indologist, Sanskritist, archaeologist and expert in numismatics; a creative, if contested, Marxist; a peace activist and, not least, what in today's parlance is known as a 'public intellectual'.

One sad consequence of his towering achievements, however, was the near-eclipse of attention to the achievements of his father, Dharmanand Kosambi, that were, in some respects, even more remarkable. These have now been brought into focus thanks to Meera Kosambi who represents the third generation of this family of scholars extraordinary. She has brought together, for the first time in English, the essential writings of her grandfather prefaced with a succinct account of his fascinating life and career.

Born on October 9, 1876 in a humble Gowd Saraswat Brahmin family in a small village in Portuguese-ruled Goa, Dharmanand, beset with persistent health problems, dropped out of school and was compelled to manage the family's coconut grove. The routine asphyxiated his restless mind. Adding to his despair was his marriage at the age of 14. He sought and found salvation in books in Marathi, particularly books about Maharashtra's saint-poets like Tukaram and about the Buddha. The latter's teachings made such a strong impression on him that he resolved in his early 20s to devote all his energies to the study of Buddhism and to propagate Buddhist philosophy throughout the Marathi-speaking world.

Soon after his father's death in late 1899, Dharmanand left behind his wife and infant daughter in the village and, on borrowed money, headed for Pune, then recognised as one of the foremost educational and cultural hubs in the subcontinent. Here he began to study Sanskrit in earnest and, thanks to Dr R G Bhandarkar, a fellow Saraswat, came in contact with the Prarthana Samaj. Over the next six years, he travelled, penniless and often on foot, to places in India and in neighbouring countries including Nepal, Burma (where he was ordained a monk) and Ceylon to deepen his knowledge of Buddhism.
It is in Calcutta that he got a break to enter the mainstream of academic life. His principal mentors were the linguist Harinath De, Prof Manmohan Ghosh, (brother of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh), Satyendranath Tagore and, above all, Justice Ashutosh Mookerjee. The latter invited him to introduce Pali in the curriculum of the National University and, later, at the University of Calcutta. From here his reputation as a scholar of Buddhism spread wide and far in academic circles.

As a result, Dharmanand launched on the international lecture-cum-research circuit that included four stints at Harvard University (also the alma mater of son Damodar), teaching assignments in Leningrad and, at different intervals, at Pune's Fergusson College and finally at Gandhi's Gujarat Vidyapeeth and the Vernacular Society in Ahmedabad. Along the way, he became more and more drawn into the Mahatma's inner circle, took part in the salt satyagraha, spent time in jail and worked among mill workers in Bombay. He continued to write prolifically on Buddhism and socialism in Marathi periodicals, making sure, as Meera Kosambi notes, to anchor his social and political concerns in spirituality and moral uprightness.

In 1947, much against his son's wishes, Dharmanand chose the Jain manner to end his life he fasted unto death at Gandhiji's ashram at Wardha. A deeply anguished Mahatma paid tribute to him saying that he was a scholar who "preferred to work silently in the background and never blew his own trumpet". It would have embarrassed Dharmanand Kosambi who disdained money and celebrity no end to learn that six decades after his death there is a surge of curiosity about his work on Buddhism, especially among young Ambedkarite scholars; a surge that will now doubtless soar on account of his granddaughter's diligent labours.

Scholar Rebel- Dharmanand Kosambi

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:59:04 PDT

From The Telegraph

SCHOLAR REBEL

- A window into a remarkable mind

Dharmanand Kosambi: The essential writings Edited by Meera Kosambi,

Permanent Black, Rs 695

The Kosambi whom historians know well is D.D., the brilliant iconoclastic scholar who brought about a fundamental change in the writing of ancient Indian history and who, ironically, himself acquired an iconic status in Marxist historiography. But this book is about another, less-known Kosambi, D.D.’s father, Dharmanand (1876-1947). And the editor-translator is yet another Kosambi — Meera, eminent sociologist, daughter of D.D. and granddaughter of Dharmanand. Given the fact that Dharmanand was a grandfather whom she did not know, the book no doubt represents an important personal journey for her. For the reader, what lends it importance and interest is the remarkable life of its protagonist, and his amazing life-journey, which took him from a small Goan village to Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma, Russia, the United States of America and back. Not a bad record for a man who was afraid to travel!

Dharmanand is known as a Buddhist scholar in Maharashtra but is scarcely known elsewhere. This is because, although fluent in English, he chose to write in Marathi. This book introduces the man and his ideas to a wider audience and offers the first English translation of some of his writings. These include his autobiography, Nivedan,and his essays on Ashoka, Buddhism, non-violence, socialism, and the Indian working class. There is also a play (was it ever performed?) titled Bodhisattva, where Dharmanand wove satyagraha, women’s emancipation and his own vision of an ideal conjugal relationship into the story of the life of the Buddha-to-be.

Dharmanand was a school drop-out, his early education interrupted by frequent bouts of ill health. Married at the age of 14, shouldering the responsibility of the family business at 16, he had a strong contemplative and melancholy streak right from his childhood. Being a voracious reader only increased his dissatisfaction with life. The turning point came when he chanced upon a biographical sketch of the Buddha in a Marathi magazine, and later read a Marathi translation of Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia. He resolved to renounce his family and worldly life and to embark on a quest in search of knowledge of Buddhism. The problem was that he didn’t know quite where to look, because in the late 19th century, Buddhism had practically disappeared from India. After a seven-year-long journey, during which he became a monk, Dharmanand returned to the worldly life, determined to spread the Buddha’s message among his fellow Maharashtrians.

It is a gripping story. Dharmanand’s was not the usual search for an academic understanding of Buddhism. He was inspired by an intense, desperate yearning to comprehend the Buddha’s teaching from within the tradition, from practitioners of the faith. And his extraordinary spiritual quest was combined with a grim struggle for survival. He had no money and no wealthy patrons. He lived on the edge of starvation, begging for food and shelter, his body frequently racked with sickness. Concealing his interest in Buddhism, he set out to learn Sanskrit in Kashi, submitting to the Brahmin hierarchy which often left a Saraswat Brahmin like him hungry because he could only eat in the second shift. His pilgrimage to the Buddhist holy places speaks volumes about their sorry state in the early 20th century. His account of his sojourn in Burma is frank about the practical difficulties faced by a vegetarian monk in that country. After his return to the worldly life, Dharmanand travelled to the US, where the Harvard Indologist, Charles Rockwell Lanman, tried to deprive him of credit for translating the Visuddhi Magga — a story recounted with an admirable lack of rancour.

In the Harvard libraries, Dharmanand discovered Marx. His thoughts moved from religion to social and political issues, but he viewed these through a somewhat innocent Buddhist lens. He saw Buddhism as an ancient form of socialism. He talked about the incompatibility of fear and national freedom. National craving was the cause of war and world suffering. He urged capitalists to love their workers. He wrote against child marriage, caste discrimination and untouchability. Dharmanand was also inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. He became the leader of the Maharashtra Satyagraha Mandal and led the salt satyagraha in Shirode village near Goa. But he was not an unquestioning camp follower and criticized both Gandhian ideas and Marxism. He was drawn towardssatyagraha, but thought it dangerous to base a philosophy of non- violence on the Bhagavad Gita. Moved though he was by Marx’s egalitarian message, he was repelled by the conflict and violence that was inherent in that message and in the Bolshevik revolution.

The autobiography is fascinating not only for what it says but also for what it does not talk about. There is remarkably little about his family, even in his account of his life after he gave up monkhood. There is no description of what must have been a very poignant family reunion. Was this reticence due to indifference, or was it too personal or painful a subject? Other relationships that remain hazy include Dharmanand’s relationship with Anagarika Dharmapala, and with Ambedkar and his movement. A very significant point mentioned by Meera Kosambi is that although Ambedkar does not mention any sources in his The Buddha and his Dhamma, he was probably indebted to Dharmanand for his understanding of the life and ideas of Gautama Buddha.

Historians are bound to be very curious about the relationship between Dharmanand and his historian son, Dharmanand Damodar. Did D.D. inherit some of his talents, ideas and methods from his father? Or did he react against his father’s engagement with religion and spirituality that had torn his family apart? In spite of being a great scholar, Dharmanand did not make a major scholarly impact. This was because he was essentially a loner who chose to operate within a Maharashtrian world. Even after renouncing monkhood and engaging directly with the world as a teacher of Pali and Buddhism in various universities, he remained unmoved by the lure of money and ambition. His death was as unusual as his life. Wearied by persistent illness, he decided to end his life through sallekhana, fasting unto death in Gandhi’s ashram near Gorakhpur. Dharmanand died just a few months before India became independent. Do not be misled by the gentle unpretentiousness of his writings. This book is a window into the remarkable life and mind of a rebel who lived by his convictions, who combined scholarly erudition with spirituality, simplicity and social commitment, with no interest in mundane personal gain.

UPINDER SINGH

DDK Festival of Ideas: What it cost the aam aadmi

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:38:01 PDT

Kebabs and more! | Goan Observer - Weekly News Portal

The D.D. Kosambi memorial lecture series, which attracted unusually large audiences and were no doubt a very commendable initiative, also cost the aam admi a lot of money. Not on the travel and accommodation of eminent people like Dr. Romila Thapar who were invited to participate in the Festival of Ideas. More money was spent on wining and dining of the bold and the beautiful, the rich and the powerful than on the festival itself. At the inaugural D.D. Kosambi Festival of Ideas in February 2008, the Chief Minister hosted a banquet for the distinguished visiting dignitaries and local culture-vultures which cost the aam admi Rs2.5 lakhs.

When the Ministers from the coastal states and senior officials came to Goa for a junket, under the guise of holding a conference, the Chief Minister hosted a dinner for them aboard the stationary cruise vessel which functions as a restaurant, Noah’s Ark, at a cost of Rs2.20 lakhs. When a conference on information technology and good governance was held in Goa, the Chief Minister picked up the tab of over Rs3 lakhs for dinner for the delegates in a five-star deluxe hotel. Similarly, when a national level meeting was held of town and country planners, probably among the most corrupt and well-to-do officials in the country at least going by the Goan experience, the Chief Minister very generously hosted a dinner costing over Rs3 lakhs.

DDK on The Name Gautama

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:20:10 PDT

Jayarava's Raves: Some Additional Notes

2. The Name Gautama

In my essay What Was the Buddha's Name? I drew attention to the quirk of history which left the Buddha, a kṣatriya by tradition but possibly a non-āryan, with an ostentatiously Brahmin gotra-, or clan-name: Gautama (meaning 'descended from Gotama, the one with the most cows go'). However more than half a century ago D.D. Kosambi offered a different take on this subject in a review published in 1953:

D.D. Kosambi. 'Brahmin Clans'. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1953), pp. 202-208.

He points to two brief Pāli passages which suggest that Gautama (Pāli: Gotama) is not the Buddha's gotra name. The first is from the Therīgāthā verses of the Buddha's maternal aunt and foster mother. She says (Th 2 162)

Bahūnaṃ vata atthāya, māyā janayi gotamaṃ;

Truly for the many, Māyā gave birth to Gotama

Kosambi's point here is that the names Māyā and Gotama are on the same level - i.e. they are both first names. This is to read the text quite literally, and I'm a bit doubtful about doing that. Compare for instance the case of the Brahmin boy Uppatissa, son of Rūpasārī, better known as Sāriputta 'son of (Rūpa)sārī'.[2] However Kosambi points out that neither does the Buddha's wife become known as Gotamī in any tradition. The fact that Mahāpajāpati, his mother's sister, is called Gotamī also suggests that it is not the Buddha's clan-name since the names pass pass down patrilineally (though I think Kosambi here is thinking in terms of Brahminical social rules which required Brahmins to marry outside their gotra). Kosambi also notes that bhikkhus are sakiyaputta not gotamaputta. He does not attempt to explain why the future Buddha might be named after Vedic sages however, which still strikes me as odd.

Kosambi's other text is the Pabbajjā Sutta [Sn 3.1] in which King Bimbisāra asks the Buddha where he is from. The Buddha replies that he comes from the country of Kosala, and:

Ādiccā nāma gottena, sākiyā nāma jātiyā;
Tamhā kulā pabbajitomhi, na kāme abhipatthayaṃ.

Called Ādiccā by clan, called Sākiya by caste [jāti]
I went forth from that family, not longing for pleasures.

The phrase only occurs once in the canon, but elsewhere the Buddha says that the Sākiya consider rājā okkāka their ancestor [Ambaṭṭha Sutta, DN 3, PTS D i.92-3] and Pāli okkāka is Sanskrit ikṣvāku a king of the ādityā [P. ādiccā] gotra. The suggestion then is that the Buddha's name was in Sanskrit Gautama Ādityā; and Pāli Gotama Ādiccā. The Buddha is also sometimes called Āṅgirasa which according to the Dictionary of Pāli Names was a tribe which included the Gautama gotra. My reading of some of the DOPN references suggests that āṅgirasa was being used as an adjective (e.g. 'shiny like the sun') rather than a name. Against the passage above Kosambi also cites the Mahāpadāna Sutta [Dn 14, PTS ii.3]

Ahaṃ, bhikkhave, etarahi arahaṃ sammāsambuddho gotamo gottena ahosiṃ.

I bhikkhus, now worthy, fully awakened, was of the Gotama gotra. [3]

This phrase occurs 3 times in the suttas, all in the Mahapadāna. Kosambi refers to this as "the first interpretation of Gotama as the Buddha's gotra name... obviously a late formation under Brahmin influence". Indeed it is so obvious that Kosambi provides no evidence for his conjecture, nor does he consider the possibility that both statements about gotra are "late formations". Contrarily we find the name Gotama being used in the last two chapters of the Sutta-nipāta which are generally considered to be the oldest layers of the Pāli Canon.

It is still a puzzle as to why the Buddha even has a gotra name, let alone a Brahmin one (which both Gautama and Ādityā are). He was not a Brahmin. I don't think Kosambi solved the mystery, but he provided an interesting additional view point. One last observation of my own is that though the Buddha meets Brahmins from many other gotra lineages, he never seems to meet a Gautama Brahmin. This is despite the fact that the two ancestors Gotama and Bharadvāja are mentioned together in Bṛhadāranyka Upaniṣad 2.2.4, and Gautama the Buddha meets more than a dozen Brahmins from the Bhāradvāja lineage, who mostly seem to live in Kosala (see e.g. DN 3, 13, 27, 32, but throughout the nikāyas).

Autobiography of Dharmanand Kosambi, in Marathi

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:10:09 PDT

The Autobiograpy of Acharya Dharmanand Kosambi, father of DD Kosambi, and a great Buddhist scholar himself, is available in three parts at Arvind Gupta's site. The book is in Marathi and can be downloaded by clicking on the following links:

Part 1 (pages 1- 100) 3 MB file
Part 2 (pages 101-200) 4 MB file
Part 3 (pages 201-330) 5 MB file

Thanks to the indefatigable Arvind Gupta.

A beautiful mind- Dharmanand Kosambi

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:26:33 PDT

HindustanTimes-Print

A beautiful mind

How do you become an academic and a scholar? Usually, those who aim to research and teach are privileged with a formal education and spend their lives in academia. This was the path taken, for instance, by historians like Jadunath Sarkar and RG Bhandarkar. Sarkar began life in a village, then studied and taught at Presidency College. Bhandarkar took the regular exams and taught at Elphinstone and Deccan College. Both wrote for English-reading audiences. This made them widely known.

It is virtually impossible to come across a scholar of international stature who had neither access to a regular education nor libraries. Dharmanand Damodar Kosambi (1876-1947), a self-taught man who became a scholar of Pali and Buddhism, is in this sense unique. Obscured by the fame of his historian son D.D. Kosambi (1907-1966), Dharmanand also remains little known outside Maharashtra because he preferred Marathi to English. His local renown will now become widespread because his granddaughter, Meera Kosambi, has recently edited and translated his writings into English (Dharmanand Kosambi, The Essential Writings, Permanent Black, 2010).

What these writings reveal, described so well in her introduction, is a man of phenomenal intellect with a matching capacity for austerity. Kosambi the Elder scripted for himself “a trajectory of intellectual and ideological adventure” that transported him, in his search for knowledge about Buddhism, from an impoverished rural Goa to various places in India, Nepal, Ceylon, Burma, Russia and America.

It has been said that our lives are irrevocably shaped by the cards we are dealt in childhood. The frail and mentally impoverished Dharmanand, a Gaud Sarasvat Brahmin by birth, seemed destined to spend his life tending the family’s coconut grove in village Goa. But his passion for reading, which developed around the time he was married off at age 14, spurred him out of domestic disenchantment into a life filled with an almost incredible severity of self-teaching. Reading material wasn’t readily available. So, every month he travelled to Madgaon to borrow it from friends and relatives. In a Marathi magazine, Bal-Bodh, he first read about the Buddha. Later, travelling to learn Sanskrit in Poona, he read a Marathi translation of Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia (which also influenced Gandhi and Nehru). For Dharmanand, this book on the Buddha became a religious text: “I have still not forgotten how,” he says, “while reading certain portions of it, my throat would constrict and tears would stream down my face.”

Roughly half of Kosambi’s Essential Writings comprises an unusually moving autobiographical narrative: ‘moving’ in both senses, because this is an Indian Pilgrim’s Progress crafted to inspire disadvantaged people to carve out extraordinary paths; and because his self-abnegation in the cause of replicating the Buddha’s suffering for self-enlightenment leaves one close to tears. The almost penniless Dharmanand, after studying Sanskrit in Varanasi, walks virtually barefoot to Nepal in February 1902 because he has been told that knowledge of Buddhism might be acquired in the vicinity of Kathmandu. Reaching the promised land exhausted, he finds only sadhus who tell people’s fortunes by throwing dice.

Filled with sorrow, his search resumes, taking him towards Bodhgaya, and then, by begging for money in the prescribed manner of the true bhikshu, to the doorstep of the Mahabodhi Society in Calcutta. Supplication here results in sponsors who send him to Colombo, where he finally acquires direct knowledge of Buddhism. Now Dharmanand becomes a monk, subsisting daily on begged food, which must be consumed before noon. Through all his trials and tribulations he neither loses his sense of humour nor his aversion for unappetising food: in Kashi the dal was, as he nicely puts it, swimming in Ganga water.

The pilgrim then becomes a missionary. Forsaking the monk’s cowl, Dharmanand repays his debt to Calcutta, introducing Pali into the curriculum of the National College and teaching at the university. The restlessness of the truly zealous overtakes him again: he gives up a bhadralok’s salary to be closer to Marathi-speaking regions where he may spread knowledge of the Buddha. He lectures in Baroda, introduces Pali to Bombay University, and writes copiously in Marathi on Buddhist texts and ahimsa. His itinerant narrative ends at Harvard, where over three spells he helps prepare a critical edition of Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhi-magga.

Paradoxically, the journey to capitalist America opened Dharmanand’s mind to socialism. At Liverpool, a Dutch accountant introduced him to Marx’s thought and bought him books on socialism that he followed up with others in America. In his later writings, Dharmanand consistently sought to trace socialism’s compatibility with ancient Indian thought.

Dharmanand’s writings on Buddhism made him a celebrated figure across Maharashtra: they comprise the second half of his Essential Writings. The most unusual here is a play, Bodhisattva. In it he enlists the past for present social reform. Yashodhara is shown marrying Bodhisattva knowing full well that celibacy for a protracted period is the condition of their marriage.

A critique of child marriage, and the difficulties faced by couples married before their time, is implicit and links with what Gandhi said of his failed attempt to teach Kasturba, whom he married when she was 13: he was anxious to teach her, but lust left him little time, and later public life left him none. Dharmanand worked with the Mahatma and must have known this. Sensing and espousing the connections between Buddhism, socialism, and Gandhianism, it was in Gandhi’s Vardha ashram that he chose to die in 1947 — voluntarily, by giving up food. In his tribute to Dharmanand, Gandhi said: “May God inspire us all to walk in his footsteps.”

Pay and promotions provoke rather more passion among academics now than the disinterested quest that so nobly motivated Dharmanand. In a consumerist world where socialism and Gandhian principles are thoroughly dead, it is difficult even to imagine a life of the kind lived by Dharmanand Kosambi, let alone live it.

India has produced outstanding and committed scholars. And then there is Dharmanand, the only scholar-sage that Indology has known.

Nayanjot Lahiri is a member of the Delhi Urban Art Commission

The views expressed by the author are personal
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/577651.aspx
© Copyright 2009 Hindustan Times

Crossing Thresholds: Feminist Essays in Social History by Meera Kosambi

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:40:16 PDT

Scholars without Borders

Meera Kosambi is a prominent Indian sociologist. She has done her PhD in sociology from the University of Stockholm and has authored several books and articles on urban sociology and woman's studies in India. She is the youngest daughter of a prominent Marxist historian and mathematician, D. D. Kosambi, and grand-daughter of Acharya Dharmananda Kosambi, prominent Buddhist Scholar and a Pāli language expert.

In her book "Crossing Thresholds: Feminist Essays in Social History" Kosambi states that 'The notion of the threshold, indicating the restricted periphery of the 'woman's place' in family and society, was firmly embedded in the psyche of nineteenth-century women in western India. Yet some remarkable and articulate women (who are the focus of this book) 'transgressed' patriarchal boundaries--crossing thresholds, literally and metaphorically--to make their mark in the public sphere. These Indian women created the 'first ripple feminism' of the region.

Nineteenth-century men also inbabit the book--social reformers and those who helped these women, as well as conservatives who opposed both the reformers and the progressive women. The central objective of Professor Kosambi's book is to interrogate official social history--which posits strong male reformers and passive women recipients--as well as retrieve and assess women's own pioneering contribution to their proto-feminist efforts.

The Introduction presents a conceptual framework of public/private spheres, attempts to retrieve women's subjectivity through their published narratives, and discusses questions of representation and 'voice'.

The ten essays that follow span a variety of topics--the politics of iconizing individual women, women's complex relationships to their homes and their bodies, women's exposure to education and nationalism, the nature of conjugality and 'consent', ideas of motherhood and widowhood.
Uniting all these themes is the effort to amplify women's voices and reconstruct their experiential worlds.

The book straddles the areas of Gender Studies, History, and Asian Studies while underscoring the resonance of these women's lives with those of other women across South Asia and the West. '

The Middle Class in Colonial India- a book review

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:12:15 PDT

The Hindu : Book Review : The making of the Indian middle class

THE MIDDLE CLASS IN COLONIAL INDIA: Edited by Sanjay Joshi; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 795.

This thought-provoking book is a compilation of readings on the making of the Indian middle class from the late 19th century to the early 21st century. There is both a challenge and an advantage in compiling such a volume. The challenge: what to include and how to order it. And the advantage: an enviable opportunity to make a critical appraisal of the essays. On both counts, Sanjay Joshi has performed admirably.

Microscopic minority

What or who constitute the Indian middle class? Since the secular and liberal Western middle class is taken as the norm, its Indian counterpart will often be seen as falling short of the ideal, so to speak. In 1888, according to the outgoing Viceroy, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, it was a “microscopic minority” that was incapable of representing the interests of the masses.

Even today, the middle class in India does not occupy a median position, and may, more properly, be dubbed an “elite, affluent class,” as Aurobindo Ghosh anticipated in his 1893 essay (“A Cheap Shoddy Import”) and D.D. Kosambi recalled, some 50 years on, in his review of Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India. One of the earliest tributes paid to the Indian middle class is to be found in the 1961 essay by B.B. Misra, where he called it “a product of British benevolence.”

It is not as if such a class did not exist in pre-colonial times. The main change in its status came about in the form of its participation in the public sphere (which C.A. Bayly calls ‘ecumene'), resulting in a kind of universalisation of middle class norms. But this so-called universalisation was tainted owing to the colonial experience.

The post-colonial subject, from Jawaharlal Nehru to the Bollywood scriptwriter (as M. Madhava Prasad argues), was forced to indulge in a paradoxical nationalist discourse, hoping to reconcile the goals of objective Western rationality and subjective Indian antiquity. To this day, there have been an uneasy, troubled coexistence of liberalism and caste endogamous practices in virtually all parts of the country. Nevertheless, the Indian middle class is not a monolith, as suggested by the various ways in which the contributors describe it — the non-fixity of the Western middle class narrative within the Indian context (Dipesh Chakrabarty); the Bengali rentier component giving rise to complex gender politics (Tanika Sarkar); players of cricket in the extended Macaulayan education system (Boria Majumdar); the prudent white-collar Kanara Saraswat community in Bombay (Prashant Kidambi); the family-oriented merchant class (Claude Markovits); the new sharif Islamic class divorced from the nobility and the lower classes (Margrit Pernau); and the educated Tamil Brahmins, who embody a schizophrenic realm of Westernised public and Sanskritised private values (M.S.S. Pandian).

Not demarcated

In reality, the ‘public' and the ‘private' are not very clearly demarcated as the ‘Westernised material sphere' and the ‘native spiritual sphere' respectively, as Partha Chatterjee would have it. According to Chatterjee, there can be no such phenomenon as the Indian middle class in colonial times, simply because the natives were excluded from the public sphere of economics and politics. Since the natives were confined to the private sphere of the household, religious, caste and gender hierarchies flourished in the Indian community during the colonial phase. However, as Sanjay Joshi (‘Re-Publicising Religiosity') points out, the native private sphere did not remain private; it acquired an aggressive public face, as in the case of religious expression, in defiance of the British colonial embargo on native participation in politics.

In a lighter vein, A.R. Venkatachalapathy tells us that even a private pleasure like coffee drinking — initially viewed as a Western vice — acquired a public face in the form of Brahmin-run coffee houses, which before long gave rise to the ‘other', namely the working-class tea houses, all over Tamil Nadu.

The importance of a volume like this lies in that it throws light on the historical evolution of the values of the middle class that are naturalised and taken for granted in the present-day.

Saluting a Genius: Dr K K Kusuman

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:11:04 PDT

Saluting a genius

Sabloo Thomas
First Published : 14 Jun 2010 01:38:46 AM IST

When Dr K K Kusuman, former head, Department of History at the University of Kerala died in a road accident in 2007, a group of his friends decided to bring out a volume in his memory. Dr Suresh Jnaneswaran, presently Reader of History at the University, who was then working in SN College, Chempazhanthy, was asked to take up the task of coordinating the work. and he accomplished the feat in time.

During the work, Jnaneswaran realised that there has been no similar work to honour Dr T K Ravindran, former Vice Chancellor of Calicut University and one of the prominent historians of our time.

In fact, Ravindran is among the few historians of his generation who has not been honoured with such a work.

‘‘That was when I decided to initiate a work that would be a tribute to the great scholar,’’ Jnaneswaran told.

Jnaneswaran single-handedly took up the task of bringing out the book. ‘‘The response from historians was very encouraging as most felt the need for such a book,’’ said Jnaneswaran.

‘‘Many, who could not contribute as they were working on other projects, were disappointed with the fact that they could not associate with the work.’’

It was during the course of the work that Jnaneswaran realised that there were other facets to Ravindran’s personality. Ravindran is a poet with over 20,000 poems to his credit. He is also an amateur painter. Historiography was selected as the topic for the festschrift, as it was Ravindran who introduced historiography as a topic for study in universities in Kerala, said Jnaneswaran.

The work ‘Historiography: Structure and Practice,’ a festschrift in honour of the eminent historian and teacher, has turned out to be a scholarly work and a fitting honour to the great man.

Union Minister for State for Home Mullappally Ramachandran released the book at a function at Palakkad on May 16.

‘‘The Minister cancelled all the programmes for the day to attend the book release function. He arrived well before the scheduled time and sat through the entire programme. This clearly showed his reverence for Ravindran who was also his teacher,’’ said Jnaneswaran.

It is a mystery why many consider Ravindran as an anti-Marxist historian, says Jnaneswaran. ‘‘He, in fact, is the one who first introduced the writings of Marxist historians like D D Kosambi and R S Sharma to the students in Kerala,’’ Jnaneswaran said.

Contributors to the festschrift include most of the prominent historians - Aditya Mukherjee, professor of Contemporary History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Dr Sukumar Bhattacharyya, former Professor of History, Viswa Bharati, Shantiniketan; Professor R Mahalakshmi, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Professor M G S Narayanan, former Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research and Prof B Sheik Ali, former Vice-Chancellor, Goa and Mangalore universities.

Some of the themes dealt in the book are ‘Ideas in History and Reflections on the Emergence of Indian Historiography;’ ‘D D Kosambi and Historiography in India’ and ‘The Return of the Colonial in Indian Economic History: The Last Phase of Colonialism in India’.

The book is a vast collection of articles that will add to historical knowledge and will serve as a reference book for teachers, researchers and students.

sabloothomas@expressbuzz.com

DDK- A paper on mathematics

noreply@blogger.com (readerswords) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:21:32 PDT

I am not sure what this paper is about, it is too obtuse for me to understand, but there seem to be significant references to DDK's work on mathematics. Download.