podalangai
11th December 2008, 07:52 PM
[tscii]A few weeks ago, Professor Sheldon Pollock published a rather thought-provoking piece in The Hindu on the debate surrounding the grant of the status of classical languages to Kannada and Telugu.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/27/stories/2008112753100900.htm
Some excerpts:
Who cares if language X, Y, or Z is given “classical” status if there is no one who can read it?... At the time of Independence, and for some two millennia before that, India was graced by the presence of scholars whose historical and philological expertise made them the peer of any in the world. in many cases their works have not been replaced. This is not because they are irreplaceable — it is in the nature of scholarship that later knowledge should supersede earlier. They have not been replaced because there is no one to replace them.
A great university in the United States with a long commitment to classical Indian studies sought for years to hire a professor of Telugu literature. Not one scholar could be found who commanded the tradition from Nannaya to the present. During all my time in Karnataka I did not encounter a single young scholar who had command over the great texts of classical Kannada — Pampa, Ranna, Ponna. Today, in neither of the two great universities in the capital city of India, is anyone conducting research on classical Hindi literature, the great works of Keshavdas and his successors.
Nine years ago, H.C. Bhayani, the great scholar of Apabhramsha, passed away. With his death, so far as I am able to judge, the field of Apabhramsha studies itself died in India. To my eyes, the situation with Apabhramsha is symptomatic of a vast cultural ecocide that is underway in this country.
A hard-hitting article, but completely true.
Some years ago, I was trying to find out if there were any early mediaeval Apabrahmsa manuscripts - either literary or non-literary works - dealing with commerce and / or merchants, largely to look for references to northern merchant guilds with a power and status similar to that of the Ainnurruvar. Utterly fruitless. Nobody at any of the leading universities in India even knew what sort of texts existed in Apabrahmsa, leave alone their contents.
Tamil is slightly better off than other languages - there are plenty of young scholars who have a broad command of Tamil literature and literary theory from the Sangam period to the present day. But we're not immune to the sort of things Pollock describes - particularly in the field of critical scholarship.
There are few people in Tamil Nadu today who can take the place of Iravatham Mahadevan, or of the great scholars who produced editions of Sangam and mediaeval texts in the early 20th century. Work is currently being done to produce critical editions of texts such as Iraiyanar Akapporul and Kurunthokai, but all the scholars involved are American or European. And there's been so much done in recent times that advances our understanding of ancient and mediaeval Tamil literature - almost all by Europeans. Why did a publication such as the Lexicon of Tamil Literature have to wait for Kamil Zvelebil?
It seems to me that the causes are related. We have few great scholars left because our universities have been slowly declining. Part of this is due to a lack of funds, but there's a deeper reason as well - the marginalisation - and drastic collapse in prestige - of literary studies and pure research, as compared with applied fields such as engineering and so on. Traditionally, few people had as much honour in the Tamil context as a scholar of literature. Today, this place is taken by computer programmers / MBAs / financial service types.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/27/stories/2008112753100900.htm
Some excerpts:
Who cares if language X, Y, or Z is given “classical” status if there is no one who can read it?... At the time of Independence, and for some two millennia before that, India was graced by the presence of scholars whose historical and philological expertise made them the peer of any in the world. in many cases their works have not been replaced. This is not because they are irreplaceable — it is in the nature of scholarship that later knowledge should supersede earlier. They have not been replaced because there is no one to replace them.
A great university in the United States with a long commitment to classical Indian studies sought for years to hire a professor of Telugu literature. Not one scholar could be found who commanded the tradition from Nannaya to the present. During all my time in Karnataka I did not encounter a single young scholar who had command over the great texts of classical Kannada — Pampa, Ranna, Ponna. Today, in neither of the two great universities in the capital city of India, is anyone conducting research on classical Hindi literature, the great works of Keshavdas and his successors.
Nine years ago, H.C. Bhayani, the great scholar of Apabhramsha, passed away. With his death, so far as I am able to judge, the field of Apabhramsha studies itself died in India. To my eyes, the situation with Apabhramsha is symptomatic of a vast cultural ecocide that is underway in this country.
A hard-hitting article, but completely true.
Some years ago, I was trying to find out if there were any early mediaeval Apabrahmsa manuscripts - either literary or non-literary works - dealing with commerce and / or merchants, largely to look for references to northern merchant guilds with a power and status similar to that of the Ainnurruvar. Utterly fruitless. Nobody at any of the leading universities in India even knew what sort of texts existed in Apabrahmsa, leave alone their contents.
Tamil is slightly better off than other languages - there are plenty of young scholars who have a broad command of Tamil literature and literary theory from the Sangam period to the present day. But we're not immune to the sort of things Pollock describes - particularly in the field of critical scholarship.
There are few people in Tamil Nadu today who can take the place of Iravatham Mahadevan, or of the great scholars who produced editions of Sangam and mediaeval texts in the early 20th century. Work is currently being done to produce critical editions of texts such as Iraiyanar Akapporul and Kurunthokai, but all the scholars involved are American or European. And there's been so much done in recent times that advances our understanding of ancient and mediaeval Tamil literature - almost all by Europeans. Why did a publication such as the Lexicon of Tamil Literature have to wait for Kamil Zvelebil?
It seems to me that the causes are related. We have few great scholars left because our universities have been slowly declining. Part of this is due to a lack of funds, but there's a deeper reason as well - the marginalisation - and drastic collapse in prestige - of literary studies and pure research, as compared with applied fields such as engineering and so on. Traditionally, few people had as much honour in the Tamil context as a scholar of literature. Today, this place is taken by computer programmers / MBAs / financial service types.