MAX MULLER: THE MAN WHO LOVED INDIA
By V.S.Gopalakrishnan Ph.D., IAS Retd.
MAX Muller (1823-1900) was a great Sanskrit scholar and an inveterate lover of India, and yet he never visited India! Why so?
I recommend to the readers a book by him titled ‘INDIA: what can it
teach us?’ (Rupa; Rs.150). This contains seven lectures given by Max Muller at the Cambridge University in 1882 for the British candidates for the I.C.S. exams, so that they realized what a great country India was and how best to intellectually extract maximum benefit during their postings in India. The lectures were first put together in a book form in 1883.
Max Muller was born in Germany, studied classical languages at school, specialized in Sanskrit and got a Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig, translated ‘Hitopadesa’ from Sanskrit, and went to England (‘my adopted country’ as he
called it) in 1846. He got there an assignment to translate the Rig Veda. He got inducted into the University of Oxford. Besides Sanskrit and Indology, his canvas was very wide, spanning the globe. He was an expert in Science of Language, Comparative Philology, Comparative Religion, Comparative Mythology etc. For such a busy genius, I do realize that visiting India would have been no top priority, travelling for weeks in ships. Much of his study materials were accessible in Europe. He himself did say that for ‘one who has never set foot on the soil of Aryavarta’ (that is, for himself), what was important was the India over three thousand years and not ‘Calcutta, Bombay or Madras, the India of the towns’. So, let us excuse him for not visiting India!
In the first
lecture called ‘what can India teach us?’ Max Muller focuses on the exciting discoveries by the British Orientalists, most notably Sir William Jones (1746-94) and Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837). Jones was Supreme Court Judge at Calcutta and founder of Asiatic Society. He translated Kalidasa into English. He knew thoroughly 13 languages (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic etc) and 28 languages ‘reasonably well’, a linguistic prodigy and hyperpolyglot! Jones established for the first time that Sanskrit was sister language to six others (Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic and Slavic), of the Indo-European group. Colebrooke was a Sanskrit scholar and translated Hindu Law texts and many other Sanskrit works. Max Muller said, “Sanskrit literature… is full of human interests, full of lessons which even Greek could never teach us”. He tells us, with examples, of the ‘migrations of fables’ from East (India) to West (Greece). He points out that King Solomon’s crude verdict of dividing a baby was surpassed by a previously existing gentler story in Tripitaka. He tells his audience, “You will find yourselves everywhere between an immense past and an immense future”.
In his second lecture, about the ‘character of the Hindus’, Max Muller roundly condemns Mill’s History of British India for the prejudices and rampant calumnies in it. He recommends on the other hand Col. Sleeman’s ‘Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official’ (1844). This is a fascinating chapter. Max Muller excels in analyzing from the records of notable foreign visitors and also from Indian texts, the nature and character of an Indian.
The third lecture was on Sanskrit literature, very meticulously handled. He notes that the number of unpublished Sanskrit MSS “amounts to about 10,000…more, I believe, than the whole classical literature of Greece and Italy put together”. Max Muller’s erudition and understanding of our Sanskrit texts, ancient and not-so-ancient, stare at our face as he succinctly talks about them and analyses them. We should
read and re-read this chapter! Most remarkably he says, “The highest wisdom of Greece was ‘to know ourselves’, the highest wisdom of India is ‘to know our Self’.”
The fourth lecture by Max Muller was called ‘was Vedic culture exclusive’? This contains greatly interesting facts and analyses, and shows Max Muller as a historian, anthropologist, philologist and many other things rolled into one. This is a great
chapter to read.
The fifth lecture handles ‘the religion of the Veda’. This packs considerable insights of the author. At one place he says, “Deva, which we translate by (as) god, was originally nothing but an adjective, expressive of a quality shared by heaven and earth, by the sun and the stars and the dawn and the sea, namely brightness.”
The sixth lecture is on ‘Vedic deities’ and the seventh on ‘Veda and Vedanta’. They are concise and clear. Just before ending, Max Muller quotes Schopenhauer who said: “In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life – it will be the solace of my death.”
THIS BOOK IS A MUST-READ FOR EVERY INDIAN.
(v.s.gopalakrishnan)
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