R.C. Majumdar's view
that Indians knew little of their history in the early nineteenth century, prior
to the impact of Western scholarship, may seem brusque. However, the impact of
English-language texts documenting, and English-language education diffusing,
discoveries and speculations in philology and archaeology was nevertheless
monumental. From the mid-nineteenth century, but especially after the early
1870s, this was evident in the conscious cultivation of the 'memory', indeed
affective remembrance of India's archaic Hindu past by numerous societies and
writers, in the burgeoning print media (newspapers, periodicals and journals),
by nationalist and religious leaders and by British colonial officers and
administrators and Western religious societies, such as the Theosophists.
As British
interpretations of India increasingly privileged race, British scholars and
administrators dwelt not only on racial differences between Indians and
Europeans, but also placed greater emphasis on the clash between Aryan and
Dravidian elements in Indian history. This centrality of race was enshrined in
the Imperial Gazetteer of India: in the 1909 edition British understandings of
India were so racialized that even the geology of India was divided into
Dravidian and Aryan periods.
The Aryan ‘invasion’
provided the key starting point for this national narrative and many Britons
imagined India’s history as essentially the story of the changing fortunes of
the Indo-Aryans.
Colebrooke already constructed a dichotomized image of Hinduism:
the beef-eating Aryas of the Vedas, whose rationality
was evident in their monotheism and their village republics, were contrasted
with modern Hindus who had degenerated into idolatry, polytheism and
sensuality. Jones posited a similar argument, contrasting contemporary
Hinduism with the Vedic golden age: ‘how degenerate and abased so ever the
Hindus may now appear ... in some early age they were splendid in arts and
arms, happy in government; wise in legislation, and eminent in various
knowledge’.
Thus Company
Orientalism, exemplified by Jones and Colebrooke,
created a ‘Sanskritocentric’ vision of Indian culture
that celebrated Sanskrit and the Vedas, but decried contemporary culture as
debased and backward. This latter attitude is not only evident among
Indologists but also in wider read books like “Human Devolution.” by Michael
Cremo.
Tilak and Annie Besant
Where Dayananda was
primarily concerned with the spiritual renewal of Hindu Aryas,
nationalist leaders cooped the Aryan theory in their search for a cohesive
ideological tool to reify Hindu/Indian nationhood. Of the early nationalists, Balwantrao Gangadhar Tilak, co-founder of the Indian Home
Rule Leagues where he was supported by Annie Besant. In line with
Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, Tilak published two works, Orion, or Researches
into the Antiquity of the Vedas (1892) and The Arctic Home or Vedas (1903),
which set out his argument.
Tilak, drawing on a
Hindu cosmogony with a vast temporal scope, had no trouble accepting the
‘latest and most approved geological facts and opinions’, which greatly
extended the timescale of history. He suggested that the ancient home of the Aryas was not central Asia but rather in the Arctic during
the ‘Tertiary period’. Originally, the Arctic was temperate, but the advent of
an ice age between 10 000 BCE and 8000 BCE transformed it into an ‘icebound land
unfit for the habitation of man’. From 8000 BCE the Aryas
left their Arctic home moving south into Europe and central Asia and by 6000
BCE had settled in the southern tracts of the central Asian steppes, displacing
pre-existing communities and carrying with them an advanced culture: this was
the Vedic culture carried south into India in the final southern push of the
great migration.
These Indo-Aryans
retained their cultural sophistication and military superiority, but those Aryas who settled in northern Europe began to slide into
barbarism. The sophistication of the Indo-Aryans was enshrined in the Vedas
that were transmitted ‘accent for accent’ for maybe as long as six millennia.
Therefore the Indo-Aryans, Tilak argued, were precociously civilized, attaining
a level of civilization that was commensurable with the glories of Egypt at the
height of its power, but predating the peak of Nile civilization by several
thousand years.
Thus Titak extended and reinterpreted the work of European
Indologists, rebutting arguments that European culture developed earlier and
more quickly than Indian culture, and asserting the sophistication of Vedic
culture.
Tilak wrote much of
The Arctic Home of the Vedas while imprisoned for sedition. Tilak
supplemented Theosophy and Max Mueller with Rhys and Taylor’s works on Aryan
origins and Warren’s research on ancient languages. Most importantly,
Tilak extended the image of a Vedic Golden Age created by Jones, Colebrooke and Theosophy, using it to assert the primacy, vigour and superiority of Indo-Aryan culture.
Elsewhere, Tilak
suggested that this superiority was manifest in the Devanagari script used for
Sanskrit and later Hindi. He argued that all Indian languages should be written
in a standardized script and Devanagari was best suited for this purpose. He
noted that European Sanskritists had ‘declared the
Devanagari alphabet is more perfect than any which obtains in Europe’. He
firmly rejected suggestions that the Roman script might be the best tool for
standardization as it was ‘entirely unsuited to express the sounds used by us
... sometimes a single [Roman] letter has three or four sounds, sometimes a
single sound is represented by three or four letters.’ Devanagari, he argued,
could be used to build a pan-Indian community by uniting ’the Aryan ... and the
Dravidian or Tamil character’ and promoting linguistic comprehension across
regional boundaries.
Thus Tilak’s
contributions to debates over language and history were central to his programme that proclaimed Arya superiority, reclaimed
national self-esteem and posited potential Indian unity. Here it is important
to note that Tilak drew upon an older Indian astrological and geographical
tradition as well as the latest Indological research. His periodization of Arya
history in The Arctic Home was based on an astrological calendar. The period
between 8000 and 5000 BCE was termed the Aditi period as in this period the
‘vernal equinox was then in the constellation of Purvasu,
and ... Aditi is the presiding deity of Punarvasu’.
The two subsequent periods were named after the Orion and Krittika
vernal equinoxes.” Astrological knowledge thus became a key tool for Tilak as
he pushed back the date for the composition of the Vedas from Max Mueller’s
1200 BCE to before 4000 BCE.
This debate over the
dating of the Vedas can be read as a skirmish in the ongoing contest between
Indian astral sciences and western historians over Indian chronology. Tilak
believed that rationalist European science was not necessarily inimical to
Hinduism, arguing that science could be easily accommodated into pre-existing
Indian traditions. Bayly has therefore suggested that
Tilak was able to command social and political respect because he spanned both
long-existing indigenous and newly founded colonial knowledge communities.sl
This observation illuminates Tilak’s researches into the Vedas, which clearly
show his attempts to synthesize Indian and western traditions to create a
history that established the sophistication and superiority of Vedic India.
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