HOMER ON THE GANGES
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Lt.
Col. James Skinner, "Manuscript Book on History of
Castes in India." Son of a Scottish military adventurer
and a woman of the Indian martial nobility, James Skinner
(1778-1841)
became a famous soldier with his private regiment Skinner's
Horse, which still continues in the Indian Army. He was
a fluent writer in Persian, the prestige language of India
in his day, and composed his "Kitab-i tasrih
al-aqvam" (History of the Origin and Distinguishing
Marks of the Different Castes of India), given by
James S. Collins of Pennsylvania to the Rosenwald Collection.
The castes presented here are Khattris, nobles who converted
from Hinduism to Islam and who function as lawyers and
judges. This particular Khattri seems comfortable and benevolent,
and is blessed with a son or student fiercely attentive
to his dictation. The style is of the Company School, paintings
made by local artists combining Mogul traditions with a
minute realism to record people and natural history for
staff members of the British East India Company which was
taking over India. (Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book
and Special Collections Division)
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The title of a slim, nineteenth century volume in the Library's
collection of Indian books almost shouts out to be noticed--Was
the Ramayana Copied from Homer? by Kashinath
Trimbak Telang, Senior Fellow at Elphinstone College and Advocate
at H.M.'s High Court in Bombay. The yellowing pages contain Telang's
indignant but scholarly rebuttal to the German Indologist, Dr.
Albrecht Weber, whom he accused of suggesting that the Indian
epic, the Ramayana, "is nothing more than a Buddhist
saga dovetailed to the Homeric story of the Trojan War." The
book, inscribed "To Professor Weber, with the author's compliments," is
part of Weber's Indological library, the first major purchase
of books about the Indian subcontinent by the Library of Congress
in 1904. Weber's terse, handwritten comments in the margins,
not always complimentary, are perhaps as interesting as the text
itself.
The possibility of classical Greek influences on Indian culture
was one of the great issues that captivated nineteenth-century
European scholars of India. Western interest in India's past
started with the work of the Jesuits and was carried forward
by Europeans working for the East India Company in the eighteenth
century. The founding of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784
marked the beginning of a sustained scholarly effort to understand
India's complex civilization and languages. The first President
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Sir William Jones, or "Oriental
Jones" as he was sometimes called, spurred European interest
in India when he found that Sanskrit was related to Latin and
Greek. Today, the chief languages of Europe, including English,
and the languages of the Indian subcontinent are all classified
as part of the Indo-European family of languages. Translations
of classical Indian works by French and German scholars in the
nineteenth century influenced the founding of the German Romantic
movement in the nineteenth century as well as the Transcendentalist
movement in the United States.
The purchase of the Weber collection of over four thousand books
and pamphlets in 1904 laid the foundation for the Library's extensive
holdings on southern Asia. The Weber collection includes texts
in Sanskrit of India's sacred Hindu works--the Vedas, Brahmanas,
and Upanisads--as well as the stories of the Puranas
and the great epics in the Mahabharata and
the Ramayaa. The Weber collection also contains
material in other Indian languages; Indian works on music, science,
history, geography, and grammar; and most of the writings on
India by nineteenth-century European scholars. In addition, there
are a number of Weber's notebooks with his handwritten transcriptions
of rare Indian texts for his pioneering critical editions.
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A
Gurkha Piper. This illustration, taken from Maj. Donovan
Jackson's India's Army, a 1942 handbook with the
histories of the British colonial regiments in India, shows
a pipe major from the 8th Gurkha Rifles. Soon after the
British began recruiting Gurkhas in 1814, these hill people
from Nepal earned a reputation, which remains with them
today, as being tough professional soldiers. Headquartered
in Assam, the 8th Regiment saw service in many campaigns,
including Burma during the nineteenth century, Tibet during
the British invasion of 1905, and France and the Middle
East during World War I. After independence, the 8th Gurkhas
became part of India's new army. (Southern Asian Collection,
Asian Division)
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It was not until 1938, however, that the Library began to develop
the southern Asian collection systematically, thanks to a grant
from the Carnegie Corporation. A Sanskritist with a Ph.D. from
the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Horace Poleman, was brought
into the Library to head "Project F--Development of Indic Studies," which
in 1942 became a permanent section of what is today's Asian Division.
During a field trip to India and Southeast Asia in 1938, Poleman
reinforced and expanded the Library's relationships with universities,
museums, and government publishers. He obtained microfilms of
rare manuscripts, as well as pamphlets, recordings of Indian
music, and movies of traditional ceremonies of the Malabar coast.
The music and movies can be found in the Library's Music Division
and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.
Besides being the home of Hinduism, South Asia is also the birthplace
of Buddhism. (The Buddha was born in what is today part of southern
Nepal.) The Theravada Buddhist tradition spread to Ceylon and
from there to mainland Southeast Asia, where it largely replaced
earlier Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist sects. The Mahayana tradition
moved northward into Tibet and along the Silk Road to China,
Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
The southern Asian collection holds some unique remnants of
Buddhism's journey along remote settlements on the southern fringe
of Sinkiang's Taklamakan Desert. The "Crosby Khotan fragments" contain
parts of Buddhist texts as well as illustrations of the Buddha
and bodhisattvas. During a 1903 journey to Central Asia, Oscar
Terry Crosby, an American who later became Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury, purchased this bundle of manuscripts in the
oasis town of Khotan, famous for its jade and carpets. Following
in the footsteps of the explorers Sven Hedin and Sir Aurel Stein,
Crosby found local Khotan businessmen well aware of the demand
for Silk Road antiquities in the West and not above manufacturing
them to satisfy the demand. One of the Library's Khotan fragments
is, in fact, a fake done in a script invented by a local entrepreneur.
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Krishna
Subdues Kaliya. One of Krishna's many heroic deeds,
as recorded in the Bhagavatapurana, was the taming of
the many-headed cobra Kaliya, who was poisoning the Yamuna
River. This late Mogul miniature is from a Hindi version
of the text (left), probably 18th century, given by the
art collector and dealer Kirkor Minassian. Krishna is shown
first arriving
on the scene in a chariot and being greeted by a local
man. In a second view, having tamed the cobra, Krishna
appears to the man's wonder in his real essence as the
god Vishnu, with four arms, seated peacefully on the beast. (Southern
Asian Collection, Asian Division) |
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A number of magnificent early books reflecting the West's fascination
with India can be found in the Library's Rare Book and Special
Collections Division. These include such beautiful works as the
Daniell brothers' massive volumes of aquatints of Indian views
and the earliest work on Indian flora, Hendrik van Reede tot
Drakestein's Hortus Indicus Malabaricus of 1686. The
William M. Carpenter collection in the Prints and Photographs
Division also holds valuable early twentieth-century photos of
India.
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Seventeenth-Century
Portuguese Manuscript Map of Ceylon (Sri Lanka).
This manuscript map is found in a volume of drawings
of cities, ports, and other sites made during the brief
Portuguese occupation of Ceylon from 1597 to 1658. The
work is thought to have been done around 1650. (Geography
and Map Division) |
Vinustavarajastotra. This tiny illustration,
1.5 inches square, to the "Vinustavaraja," a hymn to Vishnu
found in the great Indian epic the Mahabharata,
shows the archer Arjuna, his great-uncle and foster father
Bhishma, and his comrade Krishna, who is manifested as
the god Vishnu of whom he was an incarnation. Arjuna was
obliged by the warrior code to kill his foster father in
battle. Mortally wounded, Bhishma delayed his death for
several months by supernatural powers, while lying pierced
by arrows. Refreshed by a stream of water that Arjuna drew
from the earth with an arrow, he spent the interim teaching
Arjuna the duties of kingship and religion. Finally, after
reciting this hymn, he merged into Vishnu. Nineteenth-century
paper manuscript, from North India, possibly Kangra. (Southern
Asian Collection, Asian Division)
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"Jaina
Kalpasutra." The mother of Mahavira, the Jaina religion's
savior, sees a series of dreams telling her she is to bear
a truly great man. In gouache and gold paint, this 1452
manuscript is from Gujarat in western India. This scripture
from the Kalpasutra tells the story of Mahavira and previous
Jinas, "victors," who came to the world to teach it the
right path. (Southern Asian Collection, Asian Division)
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Padmavata. Queen
Nagamati rashly asks her new parrot who is more beautiful,
she or his former owner Princess Padmavati of Sri Lanka.
Naturally, she gets a displeasing answer. In his poetic
romance Padmavata, the sixteenth-century Muslim mystic
poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi, employed the two-centuries-old
historical story of Padmavati, the consort of the Rana
of Chitor, a Hindu king defeated by the truths of Sufism
(Muslim mysticism). This manuscript of the poem dates from
1750 and was created in North India. (Southern Asian
Collection, Asian Division) |
Nepalese Manuscript. This manuscript
from Nepal, in Newari and Sanskrit, dating from around
1900, contains a number of miscellaneous prayers and spells
with illustrations on a long strip of stiff paper folded
into a compact book. In addition to being a basis for the
writing and painting, the yellow background may also be
an insect repellent containing arsenic. Represented here
are deities of the planets, who are propitiated to prevent
the bad things their position in a horoscorpe may threaten.
In the Indian system, there are nine planets, the seven
visible ones plus the two "nodes" of the moon.
Lunar and solar eclipses occur at the points of the moon's
orbit. (Southern Asian Collection, Asian Division)
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