Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India 113855670X, 9781138556706

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NATION AND REGION IN GRIERSON’S LINGUISTIC SURVEY OF INDIA

George Abraham Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India is one of the most complete sources on South Asian languages. This book is the first detailed examination of the Survey. It shows how the Survey collaborated with Indian activists to consolidate the regional languages in India. By focusing on India as a linguistic region, it was at odds with the colonial state’s conceptualisation of the subcontinent, in which religious and caste differences were key to its understanding of Indian society. A number of the Survey’s narratives are detachable from its rigorous linguistic imperatives, and together with aspects of Grierson’s other texts, these contributed to the way in which Indian nationalists appropriated and reshaped languages, making them religiously charged ideological symbols of particular versions of the subcontinent. Thus, the Survey played an important role in the emergence of religious nationalism and language conflict in the subcontinent in the 20th century. This volume, like its companion volume Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, will be a great resource for scholars and researchers of linguistics, language and literature, history, political studies, cultural studies and South Asian studies. Javed Majeed is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at King’s College London, UK, and has held appointments at SOAS, University of London, and Queen Mary, University of London. He has published widely on the intellectual and literary history of modern South Asia. His previous books include Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism (1992), Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity: Gandhi, Nehru and Iqbal (2007), and Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics and Postcolonialism (2009).

The great achievement of Javed Majeed’s masterly pioneering study is to probe into the complex but hitherto largely un-investigated intellectual ambiguities and presuppositions inherent in Grierson’s approach to his epic undertaking. Its subtle treatment should inform all subsequent readings of the Linguistic Survey of India as an outstanding product of imperial scholarship. Christopher Shackle, Emeritus Professor of the Modern Languages of South Asia, SOAS, University of London, UK Almost a century on, the massive Linguistic Survey of India (1894– 1928) remains unparalleled as a systematic description and comprehensive survey of languages in the Indian subcontinent. As Majeed shows, while Grierson was sensitive to the limits of knowledge, his authoritative classification and territorial mapping were highly consequential for state planning and language movements to come. This important and insightful book, a companion to Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, reveals Grierson’s combination of analytical observation and attention to the spoken vernaculars and his ideas of linguistic purity and contamination and Aryan-Hindu ‘preference’ at work, a combination that makes the LSI a radical and conservative text at the same time. Languages in the LSI may have unstable borders and names, this book shows, but are territorialised as contiguous – gone are the speakers’ practical multilingual competence, the natural mixing of languages, the historical importance of Persian, the Indianness of Urdu and of English. Majeed’s book is a must read for anyone interested in languages in India. Francesca Orsini, Professor of Hindi and South Asian Literature, SOAS, University of London, UK

NATION AND REGION IN GRIERSON’S LINGUISTIC SURVEY OF INDIA

Javed Majeed

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Javed Majeed The right of Javed Majeed to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-55670-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43922-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Note on transliteration

vi vii

Introduction: the Survey and India’s languages

1

1

Regional assertiveness

9

2

Mapping languages

56

3

‘Double names’

73

4

The politics of grammar

88

5

Grierson and the Indian nation

110

6

Aryanism and Semitism

136

7

Visceral language and citizenship

166

Conclusion: the Survey’s legacy

200

Bibliography Index

211 223

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the British Academy for their award of a Research Leave Fellowship which enabled me to lay the foundations for this book and its companion volume. I am also grateful to the collegiality and hospitality of the staff at the Department of Languages and Literature and the Centre of Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, where I spent two productive summers as the Mellon Distinguished Fellow. Research leave from Queen Mary and King’s College London was helpful in giving me the time to focus on this project away from administration and teaching. Christopher Shackle gave me some valuable pointers at key moments in this project and Chris Bayly’s support was invaluable in the early stages. Thanks are especially due to Nilanjan Sarkar for his advice on many matters relating to this project. Shashank Sinha has been helpful and supportive throughout. The staff at the British Library, and especially in the Asia and Africa Reading Room, were always accommodating. I gave presentations on parts of this work at the Indian Institute of Statistics, Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, the University of Witwatersrand, Newcastle University, Reading University, SOAS, Ertegun House at the University of Oxford, King’s College London, and the German Historical Institute in London. I am grateful to the participants at these venues for their constructive comments. This book is dedicated to Swarna, Amar and Sameer with my love and gratitude, and with special thanks to Swarna.

vi

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

I have not added diacritics to the names of South Asian dialects and languages except when I cite directly from sources where they have been used. Some of Grierson’s Indian correspondents Romanise their own names in different ways across their letters; as these are selfdesignations I have respected these variations in the endnotes. I have also respected the orthography of place-names as used by Grierson and his correspondents at the time in the sources.

vii

INTRODUCTION The Survey and India’s languages

The 21 volumes of George Abraham Grierson’s (1851–1941) Linguistic Survey of India (hereafter LSI) remain one of the most complete sources on South Asian languages. It covers over 700 South Asian linguistic varieties, and provides lexical and grammatical information for 268 varieties of the four major South Asian language families. Its Comparative Vocabulary (1928) lists 216 vocabulary items in 364 languages and dialects.1 The LSI continues to be a base reference for any discussion of the classification of Indian languages, and it has influenced almost all subsequent studies of the language situation in India.2 It has had a substantial impact on some of the Indian censuses after 1947 such as the 1961 census,3 and the State Reorganization Commission’s Report of 1955 also drew on Grierson. B.P. Mahapatra’s The Written Languages of India (1989) draws on the LSI for each of the 14 constitutional languages and 36 non-constitutional languages at the time of its publication. The LSI, therefore, is a landmark in the representation and analysis of India as a linguistic region. Given the massiveness of the LSI, it is inevitable that there are many different strands and narratives in it. In Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, which is the companion volume to this book, I focus on the question of colonialism and uncertainty in the Survey’s mode of knowledge production. I argue the governing narrative of the LSI is not one of mastery; instead it stresses the provisional nature of its findings and its shortcomings. I also outline the role Grierson’s complex subject position plays in the conduct of the Survey. However, one major strand in the LSI is its stimulation of and contribution to the emergence of regional languages and cultures in India. Language activists have drawn on the LSI’s maps and contents in their bid for language and cultural rights, and it continues to be used as an arbiter in current linguistic disputes.4 1

INTRODUCTION

As a massive exercise in comparison, the LSI encapsulated India as a multilingual entity, and regionally based languages, some of which the LSI helped to define, were an important part of this encapsulation. In part, the emergence of regional languages as entities in their own right within the pages of the LSI reflects its focus on the ‘facts regarding the languages of India as they stand at present’.5 As one colonial official put it, it was a ‘systematic survey of the vernacular languages of India’.6 In the mid-1880s Grierson circulated his proposal for the LSI amongst leading philologists and colonial officials, prior to tabling it at the Vienna Congress of Orientalists in 1886.7 In this note Grierson referred to his Bihār Peasant Life (1885) and Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihárí Language (1883–1887) as initial attempts at a ‘systematic survey of the language actually spoken in a given tract of British India’. His books showed how ‘radically the real language, – the mother tongue of all classes, rich and poor, educated and uneducated alike-in Bihar’ differed from Hindi and Hindustani. For him, the language situation in Bihar was representative of India – there was a gap between the literary or government language, the ‘polite language’ used by Europeans and Indians when they conversed with each other, and the language spoken by people in their homes.8 What was needed, therefore, was an identification of ‘the actual languages spoken at the present day throughout India’; officials appeared to be ignorant of Indian languages ‘as they exist at the present moment’.9 The importance of regional languages in the LSI, then, reflected its drive to identify the contemporary languages of India. Moreover, the enhanced status of Indian contemporary languages was part of a broader re-orientation taking place within European linguistics. The laws of sound change postulated by the Young Grammarians led to a renewed focus on living languages, which were no longer seen as corrupt or in decline; they were now valuable sources of linguistic data.10 For this reason, influential philologists at the time, such as William Crooke,11 John T. Platts12 and Max Müller,13 stressed the importance of Grierson’s proposal. Reinhold Rost of the India Office Library supported Grierson’s proposal in these terms: ‘the time when Sanskrit reigned supreme, and the vernaculars were left out in the cold, is fast passing by’.14 For these supporters, the Survey’s focus on the contemporary languages and dialects of India was of its time. It signalled a shift towards the study of contemporary Indian languages and dialects away from the dominance of Sanskrit in Indology. Given the fact that what Pollock has called the vernacular millennium had been 2

INTRODUCTION

underway for many centuries in India by the time the LSI was undertaken,15 the LSI can also be seen as a belated attempt by the British to come to grips with that millennium, which may have been obscured from them by the prestige of Sanskrit in Indology. H.H. Risley also registered this interest in ‘vernacularisation’. His suggestions for subsidiary tables for languages in the 1901 census included one for the number of books published in each language between 1891 and 1901, with the aim of throwing light on what he called the movement ‘in favour’ of vernacular literature.16 When Monier Williams supported the LSI, he sent an extract from the third edition of his Modern India and the Indian (1879) which argued vernaculars ‘ought to be stimulated’ by the colonial state and revitalised, otherwise they would ‘lapse into vulgar hybrid dialects’.17 The LSI, then, coincided with a shift in the colonial approach towards ‘vernaculars’, as well as a broader shift in linguistics. In addition, Grierson’s supporters saw his published work as evidence of his commitment to Indian vernaculars, which qualified him for the post of the LSI’s superintendent. Max Müller, Robert Needham Cust and E.B Cowell referred to his extant works as a factor in their support.18 For the colonial state, Grierson was the obvious choice as their nominee to the Oriental Congress of 1886 because of his ‘really new field of research’ and the ‘new departure’ he had made ‘in the critical study of the Indian vernaculars and neo-Aryan group’.19 A.P. MacDonnell, secretary to the Bengal Government, supported Grierson as a delegate to the Congress because of his work on Bihari.20 Indeed, a strong strand in Grierson’s oeuvre and career was his study of contemporary languages. One of his most famous earlier works was the informative The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan (Calcutta, 1889). This was the first historical account of Hindi literature in English and it broke with previous Indologists’ focus on classical texts.21 Grierson referred explicitly to how scholars no longer needed to apologise for working on Indian vernacular literature.22 In his note proposing the LSI, Grierson referred to the medieval and modern literature of Hindustan as a ‘rich mine . . . awaiting the labour of the student’. It reflected the progress of Indian languages from Prakrit down to the 19th century.23 Grierson also contributed chapters on ‘Vernacular Literatures’ for the Imperial Gazetteer.24 Grierson’s commitment to the importance of contemporary Indian languages is reflected in his interventions in the curriculum of the Indian Civil Service (hereafter ICS) exams and in Indian higher education. Almost two and a half decades later, in 1921 he thanked the registrar of the University of Calcutta for 3

INTRODUCTION

informing him about the developments in postgraduate teaching at the university, adding that he was especially interested in the importance given to the ‘study of the Vernaculars, – a branch of learning with which was greatly neglected when I was in India’.25 The LSI’s focus on contemporary Indian languages also emerges, then, from Grierson’s own earlier work and interests, and this underpins the importance of regional languages in the Survey’s volumes. This volume begins by examining the Survey’s contribution to the definition of regional languages and cultures and the way in which language activists interacted with Grierson to make their claims. In Chapter 1, I show how the LSI was a prominent player in Indian expressions of regional distinctiveness, and how Indians representing language associations and activist organisations interacted with Grierson to produce a heightened sense of the discreteness of their languages and regionally based cultures. In Grierson’s correspondence, intergenerational bonding, the extension of familial-like connections, friendship, and personal nostalgia blend together to create distinctive sentiments underpinning regional cultural and linguistic studies. Individual biographies intermesh with each other to personalise these languages, while also contributing to their emergence as objects of study. However, in Chapters 2 and 3 I show there are two other strands in the LSI which counter this narrative of regionalisation. In its cartographic and geographical approach to Indian languages, the LSI complicated the notion of India as a single and coherent geographical entity, and centralised it in a global linguistic geography. In doing so, it repeatedly pointed to the difficulty of drawing boundary lines between languages on maps. As such, its cartographical exercises are in keeping with the idiom of its knowledge production which I examine in Colonialism and Knowledge. Moreover, a striking feature of the LSI is its grappling with the multiple names for India’s languages and dialects. Its first task was to cross-identify the many different names it received for each language and dialect in India. However, it does not reify these names; instead it goes out of its way to call attention to their plenitude. Rather than fixing languages through the processes of naming, it dramatises the difficulties of doing so. This reluctance to reify language names also counters the regionalising of languages as discrete entities. For the LSI, India is a fertile space of multiple naming, and it keeps this situation in play rather than closing it off. In Chapter 3 I also show how even the name ‘India’ is not stable in the Survey. This, then, leads to a larger question: how does Grierson relate to the category ‘India’ and how does he define ‘Indian’? In the 4

INTRODUCTION

remaining chapters of the book, I discuss Grierson’s views on what constitutes being Indian and the depth of his identification with India. In Chapter 4 I discuss how the politics of grammatical representation plays a role in Grierson’s identification with India, as evidenced by his assertive representation of Indian traditions of knowledge in the field of grammatical analysis against European categories of thought. I focus on Grierson’s interventions from 1918 to 1921 on the Oriental Advisory Committee to the Standing Committee of Grammatical Reform, convened by Professor E.A. Sonnenschein (1851–1929), who was Professor of Greek at Mason College, Birmingham, from 1883 until his retirement. Grierson defends a ‘native point of view’ against attempts to marginalise it on the Oriental Advisory Committee. Grierson’s arguments for the validity of Indian difference against universalising imperatives becomes a kind of Indian knowledge nationalism; that is, a cultural nationalism which highlights India’s contributions to disciplines like linguistics and which demands these should be properly recognised within the frame of global knowledge. The range of regionally distinctive voices articulated in interaction with Grierson and his interventions on Sonnenschein’s committee on behalf of India raise the question of what constitutes the Indian nation for Grierson. In Chapter 5, I explore the different strands which go into Grierson’s imagining of the Indian nation. In his initial proposal for the LSI, Grierson stressed that in contrast to the 19th-century philological preoccupation with ancient India and Sanskrit, he would focus on contemporary India and its languages. However, the volumes and files show a tendency to frame the LSI’s findings through a specific version of the ancient Indian past. For Grierson India’s antique past, unlike Europe’s ancient past, is powerfully present. Moreover, for him Aryan India is the apogee of Indian civilisation, and it is also the ‘real’ and authentic India. Grierson also initiates an important shift in the discourse about Indian Aryans, by sketching out alternative grounds to their being authentically Indian which are not based on their being autochthonous. In Chapter 6, I show how Grierson’s identification with an Aryan India merges into aspects of a Hindu nationalist position. In some ways, from the perspective of this nationalism, Grierson is an ideal minority figure. Grierson’s conflation of ‘Aryan’ with ‘Hindu’ is secured against the antithetical category of Islam and he uses a quasi-national language when pitting a monolithically conceived Hindu India against an equally monolithic and ‘Semitic’ Islam. The overlaps between Grierson and Hindu nationalist discourse also help us to re-examine and 5

INTRODUCTION

explain some otherwise puzzling features of his approach to Siraiki and Panjabi. However, Grierson’s empathy for this nationalist discourse is developed through a Christian perspective which safeguards the latter’s priority, so while there are significant overlaps between Grierson and Hindu nationalist discourse, there are also key differences which point to the limits of his affinity with it. In this context, I assess the role Grierson’s Anglo-Irish background plays in the overlaps and differences between his political position and strands of Hindu nationalism. In the final chapter, I show how Grierson’s version of India reinforces, and even encourages, a Hindi-Urdu divide. Grierson’s bifurcation of India into an Aryan-Hindu India and a Semitic Islamic intrusion competes with the philologically nuanced and rigorous approach in the rest of the LSI and his works. Grierson’s support of Hindi stems from his quasi-Hindu nationalist views and he had strong connections with organisations committed to Hindi as a cause which in their case had communal overtones. However, it is important to stress that Grierson’s political position in and of itself does not invalidate the Survey’s production of knowledge about India as a linguistic region, except in the case of a few specific languages, where the temptation to ‘ideologise’ them as cultural symbols arose in the context of increasing communal conflict and as a result of his own complex subject position. Instead, we need to think of the LSI as a project with many different strands and narratives, some of which were in tension with each other. One strand contributed to the emergence of regional languages as objects of thought and fields of intervention in modern South Asia, while others need to be re-thought as part of the historical emergence of religious nationalism and language conflict in the subcontinent. The legacy of the LSI is therefore not confined to questions of language alone; it also extends to broader questions which South Asians continue to grapple with to this day.

Notes 1 For an assessment of the LSI’s classification of languages in the subcontinent see Colin P. Masica, The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 447–453. For India as a linguistic region, see Anwar S. Dil (ed), Language and Linguistic Area: Essays by Murray B. Emeneau, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980. For an overview of Indo-Aryan languages and their relationships to non-Indo-European languages in the subcontinent, see George Cardona and Dhanesh Jain (eds), The Indo-Aryan Languages, London and New York: Routledge, 2003, Ch. 1.

6

INTRODUCTION

2 Prabodh B. Pandit, ‘The Linguistic Survey of India: Perspectives on Language Use’, in Sirarpi Ohannessian, Charles A. Ferguson, and Edgar C. Polomé (eds), Language Surveys in Developing Nations, Centre for Applied Linguistics, 1975, pp. 71, 80; B.P. Mahapatra, ‘The Written Languages of India’, in B.P. Mahapatra and G.D. McConnell (eds), The Written Languages of the World: A Survey of the Degree and Modes of Use, Vol. 2, Pt. 1: Constitutional Languages, Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989, p. 197; and Jyotirinda Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970, p. 33. 3 Mahapatra, ‘Written Languages’, p. xxiii; Gupta, Language Conflict, p. 33. 4 Pandit, ‘Linguistic Survey of India’, p. 78; Christopher Shackle, ‘Siraiki: A Language Movement in Pakistan’, Modern Asian Studies, 1977, 11 (3): 387. 5 European Manuscripts, EUR 223/299, Grierson to W.W. Hunter, 22. 12. 1886, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, hereafter EUR only. 6 Linguistic Survey Files, S/1/2/1, J.P. Hewett, Home Department of India to Grierson, Magistrate and Collector of Agra, 2. 1. 1890, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library; my emphasis. 7 EUR 223/299, Grierson to W.W. Hunter, 22. 12. 1886. 8 Ibid., Grierson’s Note on the Survey. See also George A. Grierson, ‘Some Bhojpūrī Folk Songs’, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1886, 18 (2): 207– 208, and George A. Grierson, ‘A Plea for the People’s Tongue’, The Calcutta Review, 1880, 71: 151–168. 9 Ibid., italics in original. 10 Pieter A.M. Seuren, Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, p. 90; Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004, p. 368. 11 EUR 223/300, William Crooke to Grierson, 3. 2. 1887. 12 EUR 223/299, J.T. Platts to Grierson, 1. 9. 1886. 13 EUR 223/300, Max Müller to H.H. Risley, 12. 10. 1887; EUR 223/299, Max Müller to Grierson, 21. 8. 1886. 14 Ibid., Reinhold Rost to Grierson, 9. 8. 1886. 15 Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011, Pt. 2. 16 LS Files, S/1/14/1, H.H. Risley to Grierson, 10. 9. 1902, S/1/14/2, Grierson to Edward Gait, 5. 5. 1903. 17 EUR 223/299, Monier Williams to Grierson, 9. 1. 1886. 18 Ibid., Max Müller to Grierson, 5. 1. 1886; E.B. Cowell to Grierson, 9. 4. 1885; Robert Needham Cust to Grierson, 13. 6. 1886. 19 Ibid., W.W. Hunter to Grierson, 12. 8. 1885 & 28. 10. 1885. 20 Ibid., A.P. MacDonnell, Secretary to Government of Bengal, Revenue Department to Secretary to Government of India, Department of Finance and Commerce, 28. 12. 1885. 21 Allison Busch, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 217. As late as 1928 Indian publishers approached Grierson to reprint this book, see EUR 223/222, Direct Book Company Ltd, Calcutta to Grierson, 2. 8. 1928.

7

INTRODUCTION

22 George A. Grierson, The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1889, pp. vii, x. 23 EUR 223/299, Grierson’s Note on the Survey. 24 EUR 223/260, Editor of Imperial Gazetteer, India office to Grierson, 23. 6. 1903 & 20. 2. 1907, and Grierson to J.S. Cotton, 2. 5. 1904. 25 EUR MSS 223/223, Grierson to Registrar, Calcutta University, 8. 3. 1921.

8

1 REGIONAL ASSERTIVENESS

As I show in Chapter 8 of Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, Indians played a prominent role in the LSI’s epistolary culture. Distinctive regional voices emerge within the range of letters between Indians and Grierson. For Indian groups representing regional identities, Grierson’s Survey was a useful resource in their struggle for recognition, while for Grierson these groups boosted his own standing and that of the LSI. The LSI’s main concern was with the identity and nomenclature of a language; its boundaries, grammar and vocabulary; its relationship with other languages; and its history.1 It divided dialects into two categories: those of the localities from which they were reported, and ‘those which were spoken by foreigners’ in each locality. It focused on the former and excluded the latter.2 This, together with the fact that the LSI did not cover bilingualism, meant there was a tendency to present India in terms of regional languages dominating swathes of territory. Also, Grierson took great care with respect to the bibliographies for each language surveyed,3 so he threw the weight of a historically evolving archive behind each language – the LSI combined spatial reach and temporal depth to each language’s separateness and the two together further solidified languages and dialects as discrete entities.

Regional voices in the LSI: Maithili Some regional activists clearly saw Grierson as their advocate or sought to enlist him for their cause. The Maithili Sahitya Parishad, established in 1931 at Lahariaserai, was a turning point in the history of modern Maithili literature.4 Its founder and general secretary, Shri Bhola Lal Das, contacted Grierson, referring to his ‘immortal works’ of the LSI and his texts on Maithili, which included ‘Maithila 9

REGIONAL ASSERTIVENESS

folk-lore’ (Indian Antiquary, 1881), An Introduction to the Maithilí Language of North Bihár (1881–1882), Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihárí Language (1883–1887), ‘Vidyapati and his contemporaries’ (Indian Antiquary, 1885), and later The Test of Man (1935). Das wanted to secure the future growth of Maithili by getting it recognised as a subject of study at Patna University.5 He also wanted to supply Maithili textbooks to Calcutta and Benares universities where it had been recognised as a subject.6 The case the Parishad put to Patna University for Maithili uses statistics on the number of speakers, adding Magahi speakers and Maithili brahmins in Benares, Aligarh and elsewhere to the number of Maithili speakers. The memorial appends a presidential address by Dr. Umesh Mishra, himself a prominent scholar and advocate of Maithili,7 to the Parishad, arguing that Maithili’s historical inception predated that of Western Hindi and Khari Boli. Interestingly, the Parishad was aware that its push for the recognition of Maithili as a separate language might encourage other language movements in the region. It sought to forestall this by asserting there is ‘no point in recognizing Magahi separately’ as it does not have a literature that marks it off as an independent linguistic entity from Maithili while Sadari has no literature ‘worth its name’. In asserting its claims and pre-empting any claims by Sadari speakers, the Parishad cites from volume 5, part 2 of the LSI to counter potential claims that Sadari is a distinct dialect.8 Bhojpuri is more influenced by Hindi and its speakers have not shown ‘that consciousness of their mother tongue which the Maithils have been showing for Maithili’. At the same time, the memorial is careful not to alienate the speakers of these other dialects, by stressing it has no ‘grudge’ against them.9 The memorial to the university therefore uses the style of argumentation made de rigueur by the British colonial framework for the recognition of cultural, religious and linguistic identities: weight of numbers, historical precedence and importance, and a canon of literary texts. The latter served as an index of the historical evolution of the language and boosted its credentials as a distinctive culture in contrast to adjoining dialects which had no such canon.10 For Maithili activists, the ICS examinations were an equally important site for its recognition. In 1920 at a meeting in the Civil Service Commission office S.K. Chatterji argued Maithili should be added to the list of languages examined in the ICS examinations. One reason he gave for this was its recognition as an MA subject at Calcutta University.11 The institutionalisation of Maithili, then, involved interlocking processes across a range of sites, from universities to the Civil Service. What was 10

REGIONAL ASSERTIVENESS

at stake was the codification of Maithili through the different protocols operating on these sites in terms of pedagogy, training and the examination curriculum. Grierson also put forward the claims of Maithili in educational contexts. When asked for his views by the director of public instruction on Edwin Greaves and Pandit Shyam Behari’s Hindi Reader for Class VII, he criticised it for marginalising Mithila and ignoring its distinctiveness.12 Advocates for Maithili were to raise similar objections in analogous contexts later. For example, in 1943 Amarantha Jha, who also corresponded with Grierson about Maithili, criticised the fact that Maithili books were being published by the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. In the late 1940s Dr. Umesh Mishra refused to contribute to a three-volume history of Hindi literature proposed by the Council of Hindi at Allahabad University because it subsumed Maithili under Hindi.13 However, Maithili activists did not just objectify Maithili, they also tried to personalise it in their interactions with Grierson. They attempted to create a biography of Maithili, partly by intertwining it with Grierson’s own personal trajectory. Das asked Grierson for a list of his works on Maithili and his biographical details and in response Grierson’s autobiographical narrative focused on his interest in Maithili.14 Another correspondent contacted Grierson about a biography he was writing of Grierson, outlining his contributions to the ‘cause’ of Maithili.15 Thus, one strand of Grierson’s intellectual biography became retrospectively linked with Maithili as a ‘cause’. Maithili was not just an object to be studied, it was also evoked as part of the life stories of multiple actors including Grierson’s own life story. Paul Brass has noted that differences between groups can acquire subjective and symbolic significance, and thereby become the basis for political demands.16 In the correspondence of Maithili advocates with Grierson, we can see fitful attempts to articulate just such a subjective regional consciousness in which Maithili is intertwined with the life stories of multiple actors and there is an attempt to align these life stories, including that of Grierson, with the life story of Maithili itself. In addition, in Grierson’s correspondence on Maithili, networks of exchange are woven around Maithili as an emerging entity. One pandit sent his novel in Maithili, Rāmesvar, possibly the first in that language, to Grierson as the ‘patron’ of Maithili. Grierson reciprocated with his own work on Maithili.17 Other pandits sent Grierson their work on Maithili,18 while Grierson sent copies of his own work to pandits who had helped him in his studies of Maithili, some of whom offered to translate him into Indian languages.19 Grierson also corresponded 11

REGIONAL ASSERTIVENESS

with the Maharajah of Darbhanga, who was seen by leaders of the Maithili movement as a living embodiment of the region’s independent history and culture. Grierson refers to the recent revival of Maithili literature under the ‘enlightened guidance’ of the late Maharajah of Darbhanga.20 The latter was also the patron of the oldest Maithili organisation, the All-India Maithil Mahasabha, established in 1910.21 The Maharajah contacted Grierson about his memorial to the viceroy about the ‘restoration of the ruling powers and privileges which my family enjoyed before the Permanent Settlement’.22 In the memorial he refers to Grierson, ‘the famous Orientalist’, as having brought to light the battles his ancestors fought in maintaining Mithila’s distinctive character.23 Grierson expressed his interest in and sympathy for the memorial.24 Here, then, Grierson played a role in the way the Maithili cause was entangled with the restoration of the Maharajah’s power, seen as synonymous with a recognition of Mithila as a distinctive region with its own language. Both the Maharajah and Grierson sent each other texts on and in Maithili, and Grierson asked for the Maharajah’s help in locating Maithili manuscripts.25 Grierson also pressed learned societies into participating in this nexus of exchange of works on and in Maithili.26 Thus, Grierson, pandits and the Maharajah gifted each other their works in and on Maithili. They embedded Maithili in a gift economy and an ethos of generosity, thereby elevating it (in their view) above the grubbiness of political and economic self-interest. Their interaction with each other also reflects the upper caste character of the Maithili movement at the time.27 Grierson’s interaction with pandits also points to his broader political position, which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 6. Grierson was also a strong intergenerational presence for the Maithili cause. Some activists refer to his relations with their fathers as a basis for their own interaction with him.28 This included not just the Maharajah but also Amarantha Jha, professor of English literature at Muir Central College, whose father Grierson had known and who was entrusted with the editing of Mahesh Thakur’s work discovered in the India Office Library (IOL). Amarantha Jha, described by Brass as an influential spokesman for Maithili,29 was involved in the networks of Maithili learning, having sent Grierson as a ‘keen scholar’ of Maithili a copy of the songs of Chandrakavi.30 There is thus a filial cast to the network around Maithili as an emerging entity, in which Grierson bound together generations in the Maithili cause. A nostalgic tie of ‘pleasant memories’ of ‘the happiest and most intimate years of my life’ in the region also underlines Grierson’s own participation in 12

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Maithili networks, so for him there is an added affective dimension to his role in the knowledge economy around Maithili.31 The bonds tying together Maithili speakers as a community were therefore partly reinforced by a familial mode of interaction with Grierson and the LSI, and Grierson’s name was also an icon for an intergenerational and nostalgic cause binding fathers and sons together in Mithila. These networks of exchange around Maithili shaped Grierson’s own work on it. Grierson edited Umapati Upadhyaya’s Pārijāta Harana for the Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Society (1917).32 This drama was one of a set of four sent to Grierson by his friend Babu Sri Narayan Singh of Dharbhanga, one of whose works Grierson edited and translated as ‘The Battle of Kanarpi Ghát’ in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1885), while Narayan Singh had contributed some of the Maithili selections in the appendix of Grierson’s Seven Grammars. The authors of two of these dramas, whom Grierson described as ‘much admired pandits’, were personally known to Grierson in the late 1870s. Grierson approached Turner about editing and translating these plays for the School of Oriental Studies (as it was then, hereafter SOS) Bulletin. Turner suggested entrusting them to Sudhakar Jha, his student at the time. Grierson’s high regard for pandits is reflected in his remark to Turner that the plays ‘can, of course, be trusted to a Maithili pandit’.33 Grierson’s correspondence with Sri Narayan Singh thus highlights how his contacts with pandits brought about a manuscript edition of four Maithili plays with English and Hindi translations.34 Grierson also knew another key author in the Maithili movement, Chandra Jha, whom he described as a ‘close friend’, and as the author of the Maithili Rāmāyaṇa (completed in 1886), sent to Grierson by Sri Narayan Singh. He helped Grierson with his own edition of Vidyapati (for which, see later).35 In volume 5, part 2, when referring to the ‘remarkable revival’ of Maithili literature, Grierson makes special mention of Chandra Jha and his works.36 Grierson also facilitated Maithili networks by putting individuals in touch with each other.37 These networks were like an informal research group dedicated to the investigation of Maithili, which further solidified it as an object of study. For example, S.K. Chatterji and Grierson discussed the merits and problems of the Sahitya Parishad’s 1911 edition of Vidyapati’s poems, a copy of which Chatterji obtained for Grierson.38 Another topic of discussion in their correspondence were the works of Vidyapati.39 Grierson was also approached to evaluate proposed works on Maithili, such as Pandit Bhavanatha Misra’s planned Maithili dictionary.40 13

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Thus, Grierson and Maithili literati and activists were tied together through reciprocal endorsement. They stimulated each other’s authorship and their accrual of cultural capital around Maithili, and Grierson expanded his own writings on it through these networks. In making the case for Maithili to Patna University, the secretary of the Maithili Sahitya Parishad referred to a corpus of Maithili literature as part of the case for its recognition as a separate language. In doing so, special mention is made of Vidyapati, the medieval Maithili poet.41 Vidyapati’s pre-eminence for the Maithili movement is reflected in the Vidyapati Jayanti, which was proposed in 1929 by Narendra Nath Das, and patronised by the Maharajah of Darbhanga. For Chaudhary, this marked the beginning of a new era in the history of modern Maithili literature and ‘helped the growth of a new awakening’.42 Grierson received greetings for Vidyapati Jayanti from the Maharajah, so he was part of the celebratory and festive aspects of the movement.43 As Brass has noted, the literary history of Maithili provides a central symbol for its movement, especially in Vidyapati, and the week-long annual celebrations in his honour are important in the building of regional consciousness.44 Grierson played a pivotal role in the canonisation of the poet. He attributed his initial admiration for Maithili and indeed Indian poetry in general to Vidyapati’s poetry – Vidyapati’s beautiful verses ‘led me on to wander further and further into the enchanted garden of Indian poetry’.45 In part 2 of his Introduction to the Maithilí Language, he devoted a large section to Vidyapati, thereby underlining the strong link between the poet’s canonisation and the substantiality of Maithili as a language. The connections between Vidyapati’s canonisation, the elevation of Maithili as a literary language, and the institutionalisation of Maithili was encapsulated in the establishment of the Vidyapati chair at Bihar University in 1964.46 Grierson also likened Vidyapati’s neatness of expression and conciseness to Martial, thereby reinforcing the former’s canonical status.47 Later Grierson edited and translated the latter’s Puruṣa Parīkṣā as The Test of a Man (1935), which had not been translated into a European language before.48 In doing so, he therefore made it globally available as a text. Grierson’s edition of Vidyapati was financed by the Royal Asiatic Society’s Oriental Translation Fund series, so the text’s production spanned continents too.49 In keeping with his practice of consolidating networks with gifts of scholarship and as an acknowledgement of help received, he sent the Maharajah, K.P. Jayaswal and Narayan Singh a copy of his edition when it was published, having used the latter’s History of Tirhut (1922) to prepare the book.50 14

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In relation to Vidyapati’s Kīrti-latā, Grierson appealed to regional sentiments in his search for manuscripts of this work, stressing the need to ‘rescue the good name of Bihār in Europe’, especially in Germany whose scholars (according to him) believed that there was no knowledge of Prakrit in pre-modern Bengal and Bihar. An edition of this text, referred to in Chandra Jha’s edition of Puruṣa Parīkṣā, would ‘confound those who wish to take away Bihār’s reputation for learning’.51 Grierson made the case for this tradition of learning in Bihar in letters to Orientalists such as Professor Hermann Jacobi.52 Grierson activated his contacts in his Maithili networks to acquire a manuscript of Kīrti-latā from the Nepal Darbar library, reiterating the need to show that apabhraṃŚa was studied in medieval Mithila.53 In conveying his thanks to the Maharajah of Nepal via the British envoy at Kathmandu, Grierson again underlined the work’s ‘great importance to me for the study of Indian languages, as it is, so far as I know the only document that illustrates the form of speech from which are directly sprung the languages of Bihār, Bengal, and Assam’.54 Thus Grierson contributed to defining a tradition of learning for Mithila as a region; its antiquity and prestige had to be recognised as part of its historical identity and regional activism was imbricated with a global recognition that Grierson himself helped to bring about. Grierson also achieved a constructed rootedness in Bihar, evinced by the establishment of a bazaar called Griersonganj in Madhubhani where he was subdivisional officer for a time.55 This fashioned rootedness in Bihar is also conveyed by Grierson’s compilation Bihār Peasant Life (1885), a ‘discursive catalogue’ of ‘the names used by the Bihār peasant for the things surrounding him in his daily life’. He stressed how ‘every word in this book has been collected from the mouths of the people, and noted on the spot where it was spoken, either by the writer himself or by one of his assistants’.56 This is reinforced by the catalogue’s focus on agricultural implements and appliances, the many dimensions of rural life and its economy and culture, and the 15 classificatory headings of the soil of Bihar itself.57 This minute knowledge of Bihar’s soil deepens the sense of Grierson’s ground-level affinity with the region. Grierson’s rootedness was reflected in Aurel Stein’s remark about Vidyapati as Grierson’s ‘old friend’: ‘You fortunately command the right pen for it and such sympathetic comprehension for Indian ways as comes to few. . . . I myself have worked too much in partibus infidelium and scarcely long enough in any one of them to feel thoroughly at home’.58 The politics of home in the LSI is complex;59 nonetheless this remark suggests Grierson had simulated one 15

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kind of home for himself in Maithili as a linguistic zone and Bihar as a locality, and this is conveyed by the minutiae of detail and what one of his admirers called his ‘linguistic facility & your close study of local custom & folk-lore . . . displayed on a substantial scale’ in Bihār Peasant Life.60 As such, this further recommended him to Maithili advocates as a fellow traveller. Burghart has rightly pointed out that, over the course of his career, Grierson vacillated between treating Maithili as a language and a dialect. This is reflected in the change of title from An Introduction to the Maithilí Language of North Bihár (1881–1882) to the 1909 edition’s The Maithilī Dialect of the Bihārī Language.61 Some activists like Umesh Mishra later criticised Grierson for labelling Maithili a dialect. Nonetheless, when activists wanted to argue Maithili was a language, they sided with Grierson in strategic and selective ways, and after independence protests erupted when Glisan chowk, named after Grierson in another example of the Indianisation of his name, was renamed Gandhi chowk – the name Glisan was subsequently restored.62 In the 1950s and 1960s leaders of the Maithili movement continued to turn to Grierson to support their claims.63 To a certain extent, Grierson’s vacillation between seeing Maithili as a dialect and a language reflects a larger issue in the LSI surrounding the term ‘dialect’,64 and Burghart illuminatingly discusses the complexities of this in relation to Maithili.65 From the correspondence examined here it is clear, though, that many supporters of Maithili saw Grierson as an ally. In general terms, his stress on the distinctiveness of Maithili, whether as a dialect or as an independent language, was a welcome endorsement of their own stance, and given the slipperiness of the distinction between dialect and language, in a sense what mattered was this stress on Maithili’s distinctiveness which could easily, in different circumstances and contexts, lead to its being labelled a language. Thus, in Seven Grammars when reflecting on Bihari and Hindi as distinct languages, Grierson tended to focus on Maithili as a dialect of Bihari to foreground the differences between Bihari and Hindi. In doing so, he stressed its history as the language of ancient Mithila, and as the kingdom of Janaka, the father of Sita.66 In Test of Man, he refers to the different names for the Mithila tract in Sanskrit literature, and to how it is famous in Indian legend and history as the place where Ram found his bride Sita.67 He also emphasised that Bhojpuri and Magadhi had no literature in contrast to Maithili, which had Vidyapati.68 So even when Grierson approached Maithili as a dialect, he drew attention to its grammatical distinctiveness, historical prestige and antique genealogy rooted 16

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in a time-hallowed sacred geography. In his earlier Introduction to the Maithilí Language, Grierson had gone further, arguing that his treatise helped to fix a standard for Maithili, and this could lead to the creation of a literature ‘which might easily arise in so racy and fluent a language’. He stressed that Maithili was not ‘an uncouth dialect of untaught villagers’ and that his book enhanced the sense its speakers had of the language, because it now had also obtained ‘the honour of print’. The sentiment of pride was generalised to include Mithila as a ‘country with its own traditions, its own poets, and its own pride in everything belonging to itself’.69 Hence it is not surprising the first line of the university memorial mentions Grierson’s publications on Maithili and his ‘monumental work’ of the LSI. For the Parishad, Maithili had succumbed to the ‘artificial supremacy of Hindi’, but Grierson’s ‘colossal labours’ had secured its proper place.70 In volume 5, part 2, Grierson refers to how although Colebrooke discussed Maithili as a distinct dialect in an essay of 1803,71 thereafter it was generally considered to be a dialect of Hindi. This remained the case until Grierson’s An Introduction to the Maithilí Language and the accompanying Chrestomathy and Vocabulary (1882).72 He described the first edition of his grammar as ‘very imperfect’ because it was dealing with ‘an almost unknown form of speech’. The second edition was the result of a further 25 years of study of literature not originally available to Grierson. It reflected the growth of knowledge of Maithili over a quarter of a century, in part actuated by Grierson’s own work.73 This move of Maithili from an ‘unknown’ to a ‘known’ entity, enshrined in the LSI, grounded Maithili activists’ perceptions of it as rescued from oblivion into a full-fledged object of study, marked by multiple signs of self-conscious knowledge. Thus, the intertwined threads in the relationship between Grierson and Maithili language activists helped to create Maithili as an object of study and as the subject of a biography entangled with Grierson’s personal biography and those of his interlocutors. Grierson and his Mithila correspondents also endorsed each other’s production of knowledge about Maithili. They imagined and approached Maithili as a gift, as an object of affection matched by the affective dimension of its knowledge production, and as the fulcrum of intergenerational relationships woven around its emerging presence. Maithili needed a poet whose greatness was recognised, and here Grierson’s work on Vidyapati was important in laying the foundation of a canon of Maithili literature. Grierson also played a role in de-marginalising Maithili, and in jettisoning the image of Bihar and the Maithili-speaking 17

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regions as cultural and linguistic backwaters. Instead, Mithila became a distinctive region with its own valuable traditions of learning, its own great poet, and its own proper history. For many Maithili activists and its literati, Grierson and the LSI were important props in their struggle for recognition. For them Grierson was the ‘father of modern Maithli studies’ who brought about ‘a renaissance in its literature’; through his publications, Maithili became ‘conscious of its pristine purity, unity and glory’, and he had a ‘major share’ in the ‘noble work of [its] cultural awakening’.74

Asamiya We have seen how Grierson became a validating presence for an incipient Maithili sub-nationalism. He refers to how the ‘nationality’ of the speakers of the Bhojpuri dialect of Bihari is different from that of speakers of the Maithili dialect of the same language.75 The Maharajah of Darbhanga’s memorial to the governor of Bihar and Orissa uses similar vocabulary, referring to Mithila as a longstanding ‘national unit, a separate entity’ because of its history, language and its ‘distinctly national’ literature. The memorial also refers to Grierson to substantiate its use of ‘national’ to describe Mithila and its language.76 For Grierson, India is a continent of ‘many nationalities’.77 Grierson applied the term ‘nationality’ loosely to the speakers of other languages as well. Sindhis, Baluchis, Gujaratis and Marathis are all referred to as nationalities with ‘national’ literatures.78 Bihari is described as a ‘national language’, and references are made to the ‘Bhojpuri National Anthem’ and its ‘national epic’, and to the Coorg ‘national anthem’. The Kaithi script is the ‘national character’ in Bihar and Gujarat.79 Bengalis are a nationality, and one of Grierson’s informants is of Chakma ‘nationality’.80 Grierson’s liberal use of the term ‘nationality’ is further evident in volume 1, part 1. ‘Bangala’ is a ‘national name’ and Calcutta is the centre of the ‘Bengali nation’, Bhojpuris are ‘an alert and active nationality’, Maithili and Magahi are the ‘dialects of nationalities’, Kashmiri is a ‘national language’, and Brahui speakers are a non-Iranian ‘nationality’. In giving a general overview of the Indo-European dialects of India, Grierson describes how ‘nationalities’ and habitat combine to produce 345 dialects and 17 standard languages.81 However, sometimes Grierson goes further and becomes the arbitrator of what constitutes a language-based nationality in India. In doing so, he presents language-based nationality as a right to be won and an 18

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entitlement to be earned. In volume 5, part 1, Grierson comments that if grammar alone is taken as ‘a test’, then both Assamese and ‘the Chittagong patois’ are distinct languages. However, applying another test, that ‘of the possession of a written literature’, means we can have no hesitation in admitting that Assamese is entitled to claim an independent existence as the speech of a distinct nationality, and to have a standard of its own. . . . Assamese literature is essentially a national product. It always has been national and it is so still. . . . Whether its grammar resembles that of Bengali or not, [Assamese] has won for itself the right of a separate, independent existence.82 Here, then, Grierson slips into an informal and loose language of entitlements and rights. Given the LSI’s authority, his assertions bolstered the claims of Assamese organisations. In 1935 the Assamese Students’ Welfare League asked Grierson to endorse their demand for a separate University for Assam. This followed a ‘university day’ observed in Assam valley on 22 May 1935.83 As in the case of Maithili, Assamese literati and cultural advocates sent Grierson their publications, seeing him as a fellow advocate of Assamese cultural and linguistic rights. Professor S.K. Bhuyan (1894–1964) of Cotton College, Gauhati, Assam, sent his book Barphuknar Git, or the Ballad of Badan Chandra Barphukan in Assamese (1925) to Grierson, because of the ‘great impetus’ Grierson had given Assamese ‘by declaring it to be an independent language rich with its own literature . . . thereby demolishing the old theory that it was only a patois’.84 In keeping with the tendency of quasi-nationalist separatists to ground their claims in folk culture, Bhuyan refers to how the ballad ‘preserves the raciness and simplicity of our language’.85 Similarly, Kaliram Medhu (1880– 1954), a one-time president of the Asom Sahitya Sabha, sent Grierson his Assamese Grammar and Origin of the Assamese Language (1936), intimating that ‘a remark from you will be a great boon for me’.86 B. Kakati’s Assamese: Its Formation and Development (1941) described by Sanjib Baruah as the ‘classic historical study of the Assamese language’87 refers to Grierson and the Survey a number of times. Grierson was also involved in circuits of textuality around Assamese. He sought out Golap Chandra Barua’s Ahom-Assamese-English Dictionary (1920), and was contacted by the Assam Secretariat, under whose supervision the dictionary was compiled, for advice on Ahom type. He also asked for some well-written Ahom puthi to be 19

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transliterated and translated by Barua.88 On his request, the Chief Commissioner’s office of Assam sent him a copy of Hem Kosha or An Etymological Dictionary of the Assamese Language (1900) by Hemchandra Barua.89 There is another aspect to the interaction of Assamese advocates with Grierson. When they sought Grierson’s endorsement, the Assamese Students’ Welfare League wrote about how they were inviting opinions of ‘eminent educationists’ of India and abroad ‘who are conversant with the problems of Assam on the question of a separate University for the province’. The seeking of transnational endorsement for regionally based assertiveness within India is evident in the processes of institutionalising Assam and Assamese both within India and in London, with Gurdon, one of the editors of Hem Kosha, being added to the list of additional lecturers in the School of Oriental Studies in London as lecturer in Assamese and Khassi in 1920.90 The LSI was a filter for regional assertiveness and transnational recognition, and a fulcrum for institutionalisation both within London and in India. This is in keeping with the character of the Survey itself as a major global intellectual event rooted in India as a linguistic region. As Sanjib Baruah has argued, in the case of Assam the language demand was a proxy issue for ‘an embattled nationality trying symbolically to shape the public identity of “their” land that had been turned into a land frontier. Given the cultural grammar of the nation-province, there was a self-evident quality to this demand in ethnic Assamese eyes’.91 In the LSI’s correspondence it is clear Grierson contributed to this sense of an embattled Assamese nationality and provided some elements of the cultural grammar of the nation-province for Assamese activists. His assertion that on the basis of its written literature Assamese was the speech of a ‘distinct nationality’, and that it had won for itself the ‘right of a separate, independent existence’, needs to be seen as part of the history of Assamese self-assertion since the 1860s, sparked off by proposals that Bengali be made the language of the courts and education in Assam.92 It also follows in the wake of the Axomiya Bhaxa Unnati Xadhini Xobha (Association for the Development of the Assamese Language), established in 1888, which aimed to standardise the language. As Baruah has noted, the word ‘development’ in the organisation’s title is significant.93 It signalled a sense of a separate trajectory from adjoining languages along a linear path to a ‘developed’ present of the kind envisaged by Grierson, volume 5, part 1 of the LSI in which Grierson asserts the separateness of Assamese was published two years after the establishment of the Assam Association. In 1920 this organisation demanded the establishment of a 20

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university in Assam,94 a demand which, as we have seen, Grierson was later contacted about for his support. However, there is another dimension to Grierson’s statements in 1905 about the separateness of Assamese. One of the major issues the Assam Association took up after its formation was to oppose Assam’s incorporation into a single province called East Bengal and Assam in 1905.95 Grierson’s statements need to be read in the light of the plans for the partition of Bengal being developed between December 1903 and the formal announcement of the partition in July 1905. Since the 1860s the size of the Bengal presidency had been a source of anxiety for colonial officials and there was an increasing interest in the development of Assam into a more viable province. Sumit Sarkar has convincingly argued that one motive behind the partition was to ‘split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to [British] rule’, as Risley put it, by dividing Hindu politicians of West and East Bengal and encouraging Hindu-Muslim tensions.96 As such, Grierson’s assertions about Assamese also dovetail with this colonial interest in maintaining the separateness of Assam, and not just with Assamese activists’ cultural grammar of a nation-province.

Siraiki In the case of Siraiki, called Lahnda by Grierson,97 although Grierson does not use the language of nationality, his identification of it as separate from Panjabi was significant. What is interesting here is not so much the basis for this separation, which has been contested by some scholars and linguists,98 but the diction Grierson uses. He refers to a language akin to modern Lahnda as the ‘substratum’, ‘foundation’ and ‘basis’ of Panjabi, whose ‘superstructure’ is a dialect of Western Hindi that has ‘concealed the foundation’.99 The LSI, therefore, is uncovering a hidden foundation and Lahnda is synonymous with rediscovering forgotten roots. Lahnda is also referred to as a ‘submerged layer’ in a passage which uses the diction of ‘tides’ to refer to the spread of both Lahnda and Panjabi.100 Sometimes Grierson deploys the language of ‘waves’ combined with ‘mastery’, representing the two languages in terms of competitive domination. Thus, in Eastern Panjab ‘the wave’ of old Lahnda ‘had nearly exhausted itself’, and old Western Hindi ‘had the mastery’, while in Western Panjab the old Western Hindi wave had ‘nearly exhausted itself’ and old Lahnda ‘had the mastery’.101 The two languages are pictured as struggling against each other. Grierson’s narrative also combines ‘waves’ with references to immigration and 21

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invasion, in which tribes previously settled are either ‘absorbed’ or ‘driven’ elsewhere.102 Both his letters and the volumes use the language of invaders or immigrants overrunning regions, imposing their language, or encroaching on territory.103 Moreover, according to Grierson, a language akin to Lahnda once spread over the whole region of which Panjabi is now the vernacular. In Grierson’s classification, it is ‘a pure language of the Outer Circle’,104 so its ancient pedigree is combined with purity. Its historical priority is reinforced in a section on ancient history, referring to the kingdoms of the Lahnda area at the time of the Mahābhārata, to the ancient university of Takshasila as the ‘greatest university in India’, and to Panini’s birth close to this university. The area was therefore ‘famous for its learning’. This antiquity is further framed by allusions to the Greek invasion of the area and Greek references to it.105 Lahnda’s ancient priority is reinforced by the resonant geographical names Grierson invokes to paint its previous extensiveness: its old form once ‘extended right up to’ the legendary river Sarasvati.106 Thus, when speaking of Siraiki, Grierson combines linguistic analysis with a controversial language of conflict, struggle and the denial of rights. He lays the basis for linguistic nostalgia, since Siraiki’s extent in the past is contrasted with its reduced geography in the present. Grierson tried to ensure Siraiki’s separate status was recognised by census officials. He noted officials used the name Western Panjabi rather than Lahnda in their census operations. He had no objection to this so long as it is ‘distinctly understood that it is not a dialect of standard Panjābī but is a separate and distinct language’.107 In the notes Gait circulated to provincial superintendents in 1911, Gait referred to how some languages had been re-classified by Grierson – Lahnda was now considered to be a separate language and as a result Panjabi ‘proper’ was re-situated in relation to other languages.108 From this it is clear the LSI’s re-classification of Lahnda as a separate language had seeped into the census commissioner’s and superintendents’ awareness by this date, although it was not always easy to deal with this distinction in the census when it came to other regions.109 Grierson also described Panjab as Siraiki’s ‘proper home’.110 Here Grierson almost suggests Panjabi is not just a late comer, but in terms of indigeneity, Siraiki has priority. Grierson criticises the name ‘Panjabi’ as a misnomer because it is not the language of the entire ‘Land of the Five Rivers’.111 This opens the possibility of re-naming the region, or at least a part of it, to reflect Siraiki’s indigeneity and historical priority. There are no representations from Siraiki cultural and language 22

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organisations in the LSI files. The movement for a separate Siraiki state started in earnest in the 1960s, and was increasingly assertive from the late 1980s onwards.112 Given Grierson’s narrative about Siraiki, it is not surprising, though, that he is invoked by Siraiki activists in Panjab in present-day Pakistan.113 Nukbah Taj Langah’s monograph on Siraiki defines a canon of Siraiki literature in terms of a poetry of resistance that draws on folk culture and art,114 reflecting again the importance of combining a language’s separate status with literary canonisation in movements for language-based provinces. The Siraiki Literary Conference at Multan in March 1975 was a watershed in the movement.115 As in the case of Assamese, here the language demand is also a proxy issue, and economic grievances play a key role in the demands for Siraikistan.116 However, also as in the case of Assamese, the cultural grammar of the nation-province, and its self-evident quality, partly draw its strength from the authority of the LSI.

Panjabi Given the LSI’s tendency to cast Siraiki and Panjabi as rival languages, and Grierson’s own apparent investment in the former’s separate status, it is interesting to note Grierson’s more cautious attitude to Panjabi and its institutionalisation. As in the case of other regional languages, Grierson was involved in networks of textual production, reading and information exchange around Panjabi. Grierson met Banarsi Das in May 1925 in England to discuss his work on Panjabi phonetics (published as A Phonology of Panjābī as Spoken Around Ludhiana and a Ludhiānī Phonetic Reader in 1934), which was supervised by R.L. Turner as his PhD in London University.117 He also liaised with the Royal Asiatic Society (hereafter RAS) and the Government of Panjab to produce a collection of Bailey’s monographs on Panjabi and hill dialects.118 In his involvement with these networks, Grierson made explicit links with the LSI. When advising H.A. Rose on a possible collection of Panjabi poetry and lyrics, he commented on a plan to edit a Pahari grammar by Pandit Tika Ram. Rose had already been involved in Joshi’s A Dictionary of Pahari Dialects and Dictionary and Grammar of Kanwari (1909). For Grierson, the Pahari grammar would be timely as he was just then ‘up to my neck’ in the Pahari language of Shimla.119 Similarly, he discussed Banarsi Das’s work on Panjabi dialects, which in his view reflected how the LSI had become the basis for further research.120 In 1917 Grierson contacted the chief secretary of Panjab about the need for a Panjabi dictionary, which was 23

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brought home to him by the LSI volume dealing with Western Hindi and Panjabi which had just gone to press. The Government suggested a dictionary of the kind envisaged by Grierson should be compiled by the university and were prepared to make a grant to Grierson for this. In 1918 the Syndicate of Panjab University appointed Banarsi Das Jain as the project’s supervisor.121 Das referred to Bihār Peasant Life and its gathering of information from inspectors of schools in relation to the problems he was encountering in gathering information in Panjab for his dictionary. Here the crystallisation of Panjabi as a regional language through lexicography partially drew its inspiration from other regionalising projects in Grierson’s oeuvre. In his response, Grierson also gave Das some advice on the experience of his Kāshmīrī Dictionary (1916–1932), parts of which he sent to Das.122 Das kept Grierson abreast of the project, showing him some pages of the manuscript when he was in England in 1926.123 While the project was supposed to have been taken over by L. Duni Chandra in that year, in 1928 Das claimed he had been single handedly compiling the dictionary, which was in its 10th year. When Das sought financial help from Sikh princes and chiefs for printing the dictionary, Grierson provided him with a statement endorsing the project. He referred to it as ‘scientifically arranged, showing origin of word and its use by the best writers’ and hoped that its publication would be made possible by the ‘patriotic help’ of Panjabi leaders.124 Here, then, Grierson also invoked the language of regional patriotism to further knowledge creation about Panjabi. However, in Grierson’s view, Panjabi lacked an established history and canon of written literature and this put limits on its institutionalisation in the ICS examinations as a subject. In 1922 the Civil Service commissioner contacted Grierson, who had made the list of literatures to be included as examination topics, about a proposal to include Panjabi literature as a subject in the Allahabad ICS examination. Mair attached a resolution of the Chief Khalsa Diwan at the Sikh Educational Conference of 21 September 1922, arguing that it should be included as a literature exam: Resolved that the Government of India be requested to give Punjabi the mother tongue of the Punjab an equal status with the other Languages of this country and that in the recent Regulations for the I.C.S Examinations to be held in India published in the Gazette of Punjab dated 14th July 1922

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Punjabi be included in the Languages given under the heading of Literature-section (20).125 The Diwan argued that the number of books published in Panjabi was more than in Urdu and Hindi, that it was taught in approximately 250 institutions and schools and at Khalsa College Amritsar as a vernacular. The request also alluded to Panjabis as ‘martial races’ by referring to the language as the ‘mother tongue of the valiant people of the Punjab’.126 Grierson’s view was if the term ‘literature’ were to be used in the sense of English, French, Sanskrit, Hindi or Tamil literature, then ‘I can say without hesitation that there is no such thing as Panjabi literature’. He argued that the word Panjabi was used in two senses: the language of the Panjab, and anything written in the Gurmukhi script, which in fact covered a range of languages and dialects. He was unclear about whether the Diwan represented all Sikhs, but in his view its conception of Panjabi probably excluded anything written in the Persian script.127 The Chief Khalsa Diwan made their case again in 1923. Their claims were as follows: Panjabi literature is older than Urdu and Hindi; it can express ideas without resorting to Sanskrit, Arabic, or Persian (here it echoed the LSI); it has as much religious literature as Urdu and Hindi; and its literature is as varied as any language of India. It reiterated that the number of Panjabi books produced in the province was as great as any other language in other provinces. Moreover, the teaching of Panjabi was institutionalised in educational institutions up to the middle standard, and Panjab University recognised the language and its literature as an optional subject. There was a network of Sikh institutions that used it as the medium of instruction. As an alternative to Government and district board institutions, the number of these schools was increasing under the management of the Educational Committee of the Diwan. There were also approximately 300 Sikh girls’ schools. Panjabi was the language of business transaction in the region and all inhabitants speak it. To understand and administer the province, a study of it was essential.128 A.C. Woolner of the University of Lahore also made some representations on behalf of Panjabi in this context. He argued that in terms of bulk only Gujarati could rival Panjabi, and he gave figures for the latter’s speakers as being greater than Gujarati. He contested Grierson’s view in volume 9, part 1, that there was a scanty literature in Panjabi, and argued that just as the term Hindi literature applies to a wide range

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of dialects, so the term Panjabi literature should be used in the same way. If Panjabi literature in all it scripts were taken into account, then it compares favourably in ‘mass and variety’ to Gujarati.129 Grierson’s response focused on the terms ‘literature’ and ‘classical’. For him a literature exam tested a knowledge of texts, literary history, and the power of ‘weighing and appreciating the importance of the different writers’. The literature of a language refers to ‘a body of works which has stood the test of time and have now become classics’. This does not exclude contemporary works but such works do not have the same importance as texts that are ‘admittedly classics’. The Panjabi literature referred to in the earlier representations is predominantly contemporary and modern. In Grierson’s view this is an attempt to fill up the lack of an ‘admittedly classical literature’ in Panjabi. Whereas examinees in other languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati can be tested in ‘a long array of classical authors extending in a continuous line from the 13th century’, this is not the case for Panjabi. In volume 9, part 1, Grierson stressed the lack of a written Panjabi literature was not due to the language’s ‘rudeness’; on the contrary, it ‘can express any idea with its own stock of vocables, and is well adapted for both prose and poetry’. It is also rich in ballads and folk poetry which ‘well show its capabilities’. However, its lack of a written literature is due to its being ‘overshadowed by its near relation’, Hindustani, and to the fact that it has been ruled for centuries from Delhi.130 It is indeed the case that Panjabi as a language is a ‘fine instrument for expressing ideas, and is one of the truest and purest forms of north Indian speech’, but this is not relevant to the question of whether it has a literature. Gujarati literature is more extensive than Panjabi literature; one collection alone of Gujarati classical poetry fills seven thick large-paged octavo volumes. Omitting the Sikh Granth, the whole of Panjabi classical poetry could go into one of them. If the exams were confined to texts in the Gurmukhi script, this would only deal with Sikhism; if confined to the Persian script, it would deal with everything else but the Sikh religion. The question of script, therefore, also militated against Panjabi as a subject for the ICS exams.131 Thus, the institutionalisation of regional languages played out differently in different regions in relationship to the LSI. The exchanges around Panjabi and its literature show how claims to institutionalised recognition turned on contested definitions of literature and the ‘classical’, questions of historical longevity, and the existence or otherwise of established canons of texts. The question of what constitutes a classic work in South Asian literature is complex,132 and this is reflected in 26

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the debate about the status of Panjabi literature. Also important here was a sense of ‘bulk’, that is, of the accumulated material weight of texts intertwined with intergenerational networks and fields of learning. ‘Bulk’ also pertained to the number of speakers and the material weight of bodies. Grierson noted that outside its ‘proper home’ in Panjab it was difficult to count Siraiki speakers because they are confused with Panjabi speakers.133 A.C. Woolner exploited this difficulty. In making a case for the substantial nature of Panjabi in relation to other regional languages such as Gujarati, he cited figures for the number of Panjabi speakers and for Gujarati speakers, giving two sets of figures, one for Panjabi and one for Panjabi and Siraiki speakers together. He thus tried to counter Grierson by re-absorbing Siraiki speakers into the category of Panjabi speakers.134 There is another dimension to Grierson’s rebuttal of Panjabi organisations and their supporters. In Grierson’s lexicon ‘modern’ Indian literature sometimes had the taint of inauthenticity. In stressing the importance of literature in the ICS exams, he exclaims ‘let it be real literature, – the classical literature which forms part of the very beings of the natives of India, – not modern books, written under English influence, and read only in the towns’.135 As we shall see, notions of authenticity and antiquity played an important role in Grierson’s political views. It is worthwhile noting Grierson refers to the stereotyping of the inhabitants of what became Panjab in the Mahābhārata and in incidental references in Panini. In keeping with his general affinity towards Sanskritic civilisation and its spread, Grierson is cagey about fully denying these ancient accounts of the loose and anarchic habits of the region’s people.136 He wonders if the people thus described are the ancestors of the modern Jats.137 While he notes the account is given by enemies of the region’s people, he nonetheless uses it to reinforce the gulf that exists between the culturally and symbolically important Madhyadésá and the Panjab.138 Panjab’s cultural distinctiveness is reinforced, in a slightly negative way, by the valorisation of ancient accounts of the region and its people, in contrast to how antiquity is used to bolster the status of Siraiki. These references to Panjab point to other factors which may have influenced Grierson’s approach to Panjabi, which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 6.

Kashmiri In Grierson’s oeuvre Kashmir was an important field of regional cultural and linguistic studies. He is recognised as giving a lead to 27

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studies of the Kashmiri language.139 Again, there was an element of nostalgia in his approach, as he spent ‘the happiest days of my life’ in Kashmir and had ‘the pleasantest memories of it’.140 One Kashmiri pandit referred to how Kashmiris appreciated his ‘zeal and love’ for Kashmiri as reflected in Hatim’s Tales (1923).141 Another felt Kashmir would always be grateful to Grierson for his edition of Lallā-Vākyāni (1920), making her apparently incomprehensible sayings intelligible in English.142 In 1939, Professor J.L. Kaul wanted Grierson to write the foreword to his collection of Kashmiri Lyrics (1945).143 Aurel Stein saw Grierson’s engagement with Kashmiri as his ‘old love’ and his Manual of the Kāshmīrī Language (1911) and Dictionary of the Kāshmīrī Language (1916–1932) ‘as true monuments of precise and exhaustive research’, adding ‘How lucky that Kashmiri found its biographer as it were just when the independent growth of the language is becoming a thing of the past’.144 As in the case of Maithili, then, Grierson’s relationship with Kashmiri was seen in terms of a more intimate one of biographer rather than dispassionate linguist who studied its grammar and historical evolution. Just as Grierson’s work on Maithili stressed his rootedness in the region, so Hatim’s Tales stressed its first-hand credentials and rootedness in Kashmir. ‘Specimens of the language [were] taken down . . . from the mouths of speakers’, and the text is a ‘first-hand record’ of folk-lore handed down from generation to generation. While this first-handedness is heavily mediated by Grierson’s complex indexing system, transliteration techniques, and orthographical interventions, these are brought to bear on the written word to make it yield the sounds of the language and ‘pure peasants’ speech’.145 The multiple levels of mediation are presented as necessary in the recovery of the tales’ rootedness in Kashmir. Kashmiri origins are also mythologised. The goddess Sarada is invoked as ‘the protectress of learning as well as of the alpine land’; she presides over the interaction with pandit Govind Kaul who embodies ‘in his person all the best characteristics of that small but important class among the Brahmans of Kashmīr to which the far-off and secluded mountain territory owes its pre-eminent position in the history of Indian learning and literature’.146 Hatim’s location in a hamlet nestling in a typical Kashmiri landscape of glaciers and rivers is also emphasised. Here, then, Grierson’s relationships of mutual endorsement with pandits and reciters like Hatim are embedded in a mythological framework as well as in Kashmir’s vividly distinctive landscape of glaciers and mountains.147 Others approached Grierson as the ‘best authority on the language’ to clarify the question 28

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of place-names on new topographical maps of the region, again identifying Grierson with both the language and the land.148 For many pandits, Grierson was a fellow Kashmiri and a guiding inspiration. In a letter to Grierson, Jagaddhar Zadoo, a prominent scholar in Kashmiri studies amongst other things, wrote of how as a Kashmiri Brahmin he wanted to conduct philological and ‘ethnographical’ research ‘in my mother-land which your noble self so much holds in reverence’. He also wanted to model his planned edition of Kashmiri marriage songs on Hatim’s Tales.149 Grierson’s response reflects his role in stabilising Kashmiri. He sent Zadoo a copy of the Kasmīraśabdāmṇta by Pandit Isvara Kaula with a guide to correct spelling in Kashmiri.150 He also sent a copy of his edition of this text to Pandit Nityananda Sastri.151 This grammar, written in Sanskrit in 1879 in a style reminiscent of Panini, was the first complete descriptive grammar of Kashmiri written by any scholar.152 Grierson translated it into English and published it in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal from 1896 to 1898. He was aided in its preparation by Pandit Mukund Ram Sastri, and described the text as the ‘foundation of all subsequent studies of the language’.153 Grierson used Isvara Kaula’s system of orthography for Hatim’s Tales, transliterating Govind Kaul’s copy, not based on a ‘fixed system’, into Isvara Kaul’s system.154 He also followed Isvara Kaul’s system in his Manual of the Kāshmīrī Language (1911), his Essays on Kāçmīrī Grammar (1899) and his Kāshmīrī Dictionary (1916–1932), ongoing at the time of the publication of Hatim’s Tales.155 For Stein, it was a ‘great boon’ that Kashmiri found ‘at the appropriate time such a painstaking systematizer as Iswar Kaul was, and a particularly great piece of good fortune that his labours have been rescued by you with such care and knowledge’. Kashmiris had no consistent system of orthography until Grierson took up ‘the Kashmiri Pānini’.156 Grierson was also seen as stabilising and codifying Kashmiri as an object of study by fixing its orthography in collaboration with pandits; Hatim’s Tales publicised these joint efforts of Grierson and Pandit Isvara Kaul to fix phonetic, grammatical and lexicographical standards for the literary form of Kashmiri.157 Their collaborative efforts and ‘joint standard’ of spelling158 established standards for a language that ‘had so far remained free from the systematizing influence of Paṇḍit grammarians’.159 As in the case of Maithili, then, Grierson’s collaborations with pandits had a standardising effect on the language. Grierson’s collaborations with pandits in his Kāshmīrī Dictionary were also extensive. Grierson based this dictionary on an ‘original half-finished collection 29

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of words’ by Isvara,160 which was a ‘valuable addition to the literature of an important and little-known language’.161 The Dictionary was another step in the recognition of Kashmiri language and culture. One of Grierson’s correspondents referred to the ‘beautiful fulness [sic] of the definitions, and the light they throw on the manners and customs of the people’.162 As it was completed by Grierson with the help of Pandits Govind Kaul, Mukund Ram Sastri and Nitayanand Sastri, it was another instance of the strong team work between Grierson and pandits in the field of Kashmiri studies. Although the headwords were in Grierson’s romanisation of Isvara Kaul’s revised Kashmiri alphabet and the dictionary was organised in Latin alphabetical order, for Grierson its authority rested mainly on the fact that a ‘greater portion has been prepared by these Kashmiri pandits’.163 Grierson also publicised the Dictionary by sending copies of it to other pandits who were not directly involved in its compilation and to missionaries in Kashmir.164 The Dictionary was thus an instance of how Grierson objectified and publicised Kashmiri, in this case through lexicography. Grierson, then, had a range of extensive contacts with Kashmiri pandits and these were at the heart of the textual circuits around Kashmiri culture, language and literature in the LSI. For example, Pandit Salegram Kaul sent his Kashmiri Reader (1908) and some of his other work to Grierson; he wanted to dedicate some of these texts to Grierson. Grierson commented on some of these texts.165 His exchanges with Nitayananda Sastri encompassed searches for manuscripts, exchanges of work in progress, interventions to secure publication, the identification of Kashmiri authors and deities, and the scanning of metres.166 Sastri helped in clarifying passages and locations in Ram Prakash Bhatt’s Rāmāvatāracarita.167 Grierson sent him and Pandit Gopi Nath copies of his work on the language of the Mahānayaprakās’a (1929), some words of which Sastri had clarified for Grierson.168 However, there were two specific foci in Grierson’s networks of correspondence and learning on Kashmir. These were his Ḳāsḥmīrī Rāmâyaṇa (1930) and Kashmiri Shaivism. Both further deepened Grierson’s reinforcement of the contours of an upper caste and Hindu Kashmiri regional culture. In his correspondence about the preparation of the Ḳāsḥmīrī Rāmâyaṇa, Grierson interacted with European orientalists like Sten Konow and pandits such as Mukund Ram, who prepared a version of the Śrīrāmāvatāracarita for him and discovered a version in the Persian script.169 The preparatory work for Grierson’s Ḳāsḥmīrī Rāmâyaṇa showed the extent of team work in his mode of knowledge production. Grierson sent this text to pandits like 30

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Nityananda Sastri and colonial scholars and orientalists such as C.W. Oldham and Alexander Zieseniss after publication.170 It reinforced Grierson’s reputation as a Kashmiri expert and deepened a sense of Kashmiri as an object of study. Professor F.W. Thomas, on reading a copy of the book, exclaimed, ‘you have most richly endowed the Kashmiri, which owed to you everything it possessed of material prepared for study’.171 Grierson was also heavily involved in the extension of knowledge about Kashmiri Shaivism. In 1904 Grierson was in contact with Kashmiri State officials associated with its Archaeological and Researches Department. The department’s aim was to preserve the ancient monuments of the valley, investigate its history, acquire Sanskrit and other manuscripts, and publish the important manuscripts in the Raghunatha Temple Library in Jammu. The department’s head informed Grierson of the forthcoming publications on Kashmiri Shaivism, along with details of other publications, and asked Grierson’s advice on aspects of these.172 In 1918 the chief pandit in the department, Mukand Ram Sastri, sent Grierson presentation copies of its publications, which were described by Grierson as ‘valuable gifts’, once again highlighting the importance of a gift culture in these narratives around regional languages. In his response Grierson stressed their value in illuminating Kashmiri Shaivism; he made a similar point to the British resident in Kashmir, referring to how ‘they have opened out a whole vista of important philosophical works to the view of occidental students’.173 By 1920 the department had issued 28 publications on Shaivism. In that year Pandit Madhu Kaul wrote to Grierson intimating that the department was under threat from the state. He attached a leaflet listing the department’s books along with opinions from influential figures validating its work. At the top of these were citations from Grierson.174 Grierson wrote a letter strongly supporting the department to Colonel A. Bannerman, the British resident, in July 1920, endorsing its publications. He referred to a range of figures in Kashmir’s literary history, some of whose work he himself was editing, copies of which he sent to the resident.175 One of Grierson’s jointly produced works was the Śivapariṇayaḥ (six volumes, 1914–1925) which he sent to both pandits and Orientalists after its publication.176 Thus, Grierson intervened directly in the Archaeological and Researches Department, and played a key role in the development of studies of Shaivism within Kashmir. He also played a role in formalising the status of pandits through the conferment of titles; for example, he secured the title of ‘mahamahopadhyaya’ for Pandit Mukund 31

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Ram Sastri.177 His relationships with Kashmiri pandits slipped into financially supportive ones as well. He wrote to the Asiatic Society of Bengal’s secretary to get a bonus for Sastri on the completion of the Kāshmīrī Dictionary.178 Both Grierson and Stein intervened to secure Sastri’s pension. In his letter of recommendation to the British resident in Kashmir, Stein attached a letter of support from Grierson, adding, ‘I need scarcely mention to you the unique position which Sir Grierson occupies in regard to all scientific research into the almost countless languages and dialects of India’.179 Grierson also wrote to the British resident to obtain a pension for Sastri’s wife after her husband’s death, outlining the many different ways Sastri had helped him in Kashmiri language and cultural studies.180 He tried to secure employment for Sastri’s sons, stressing to officials that Sastri was ‘most loyal to the British crown’.181 Sastri’s sons wrote to Grierson as their ‘honoured patron’, and requests for help from Sastri’s nephew extended to informing Grierson about family in-fighting. Thus, after Sastri’s death his family tried to prolong the patron-client relationship with Grierson. As in the case of Maithili, Grierson became a familial figure for them, reflecting the affective dimensions of knowledge production ranging from friendship to the simulation of family ties around Kashmiri. While Grierson did not accede to all their requests, he did secure the arrears to their mother’s pension as well as an additional grant for her from the Kashmir State Council.182 Hatim also benefitted in material terms from collaboration with Grierson and Stein through a grant of land.183 Grierson’s interactions with Kashmiri pandits therefore had a strong financial element as well. To a certain extent this was motivated by the fragile status of pandits in the state. In a letter to Grierson, Pandit Gopi Nath mentioned that he and his brothers were anxious about ‘our future prospects’ in Kashmir.184 Stein and Grierson saw their patronage of Kashmiri pandits and their learning as being in opposition to a hostile Kashmiri state, or what Stein called the ‘education machine’ of the ‘queer quasi-foreign regime in Kashmir’. In a later letter, Stein asserted there was no interest in the language, traditions and history of Kashmir by the ‘foreigner Dogras’ who rule the state. Hence Brahmins such as Nityananda were considering leaving.185 He complained of the lack of support for the Rājataraṅgiṇī from the Kashmir government, and contrasted this with other princely states in India (for example, Rajputana and Central India) and their patronage of historical chronicles.186 Both Stein and Grierson applied to the Dharmartha fund, set up for acts of religious merit and Brahmins who 32

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had distinguished themselves in scholarship, to help pandits they had collaborated with.187 In his letters of support for Sastri, Grierson hints that Sastri was subject to hostility from Indians from other regions in ‘some high quarters in Kashmir’ and that this was due to envy at his title and a general antipathy to Kashmiri pandits.188 Grierson therefore saw himself as intervening to safeguard the figure of the Kashmiri pandit within Kashmir itself. Both he and Stein felt they were struggling with pandits to gain recognition for the Kashmiri language and cultural studies within a hostile environment. In doing so, they sought to publicise Kashmiri cultural studies within Kashmir, India and internationally, reflecting the way the production of regionally assertive knowledge in the LSI sought recognition on these three interleaving levels simultaneously. When Grierson floated his proposal for the LSI, one of its aims was to rectify the ignorance of Kashmiri amongst European scholars, since its languages ‘are practically unknown’ to them.189 For Stein the importance of Hatim’s Tales and Grierson’s studies of Kashmiri language and literature lay in arousing ‘some interest in the country itself for the language which the administration and gregarious shoals of visitors practically consider as non-existent’, hence the need to distribute Hatim’s Tales carefully within Kashmir and India.190 As with the LSI volumes itself, Grierson played a major role in defining the global distribution list for this text. The very publication of the text by Stephen Austin in Hertford, which Grierson had to see painstakingly through the press because of the complicated issues with fonts and transliteration,191 reflected its status as a regional and global text. Grierson sent the book to individuals and institutions in Kashmir and other parts of Asia such as L’Ecole Française d’Etrême-Orient in Hanoi, as well as to institutions in Paris, Leiden, Munich, Leipzig, London, and the American Oriental Society, and to individuals at US universities. For Stein, the distribution of the text showed Kashmiris that Europeans took a direct interest in their language which was officially treated as ‘non-existent’.192 As in the case of other regional languages, global recognition would offset the lack of recognition within Kashmir itself. I discuss Grierson’s selective representation of Kashmiri culture and language in Chapter 6, but here we can note that Grierson’s sense of the distinctiveness of an upper caste and Hindu Kashmiri culture can sometimes slip into a hint that Kashmir is culturally set apart from India. In one letter he refers to how the Kashmiri Rāmāyaṇa ‘in many respects . . . differs from the Indian version’, and asks his interlocutor if he knows if these differences exist in versions in ‘India’ as distinct 33

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from Kashmir.193 Stein also makes a similar slip when he argued that unless economic prospects for Brahmins were improved, they would emigrate ‘to India’.194 This hint of an incipient Kashmiri separateness from ‘India’ is based on a highly distinctive and regionally coagulated form of Hindu learning and an accompanying sense of Kashmiri pandits as a beleaguered minority group within Kashmir. In fact, Grierson configured the term ‘Kashmiri’ to keep other parts of Kashmiri culture and language at arm’s length.195 Such hints of an upper caste Hindu Kashmiri separateness is in marked contrast to Nehru’s sense of Kashmiriyat in his life-writings, in which he tried to overcome his Kashmiri roots because they were a possible impediment to his all-Indian representative status; both therefore shared a sense of this distinctive and potential separateness, but Nehru was keen to overcome this for obvious reasons, while in contrast Grierson highlighted it.196 Grierson was also finely attuned to the politics of naming in the case of Kashmiri: he chose the name Dardic for its classification as a substitution for ‘Piśācha languages’, which is how Kashmiri was referred to in earlier volumes of the LSI, because he did not want to give the impression that speakers of Kashmiri were descended from demons. In volume 8, part 2, he replaced the term with ‘Dardic’, recognising that ‘philological accuracy must yield to sentiment’.197 He was sensitive to the need to counter any stereotyping of Kashmiri speakers, unlike in the case of Panjab as we have seen, where he was less sensitive about its negative representation in ancient Indian literature. Thus, Grierson’s interventions in the field of Kashmiri studies were motivated by a number of factors but his main concern was to improve the position of Kashmiri pandits within the state. As Zutshi has discussed, during the Dogra period of rule in Kashmir (1846– 1947) pandits were relegated to the lower rungs of bureaucracy. The replacement of Persian with Urdu as the court language in 1889 and as the language of administration led to the import of Panjabis into the state administration whose higher echelons they dominated. Kashmiri was demoted to the background in administrative and educational matters.198 Moreover, by the end of the 1920s demands by external and indigenous organisations on behalf of Kashmiri Muslims were embroiled with the question of Muslim representation in state services to reflect the demography of Kashmir.199 Kashmiri pandits therefore faced the prospect of becoming a numerically insignificant minority with poor prospects in state employment, and their vulnerability was later brought home to them in the 1931 disturbances.200 So Grierson’s engagement with pandits had another dimension in the case of 34

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Kashmir – his interventions were in part a response to a sense of their vulnerability, hence his concern to secure pensions and financial emoluments for them. His attempt to revive one kind of Kashmiri was also a response to the linguistic situation in Kashmir where Kashmiri was sidelined by the Dogra state and its Panjabi administrators. There is also a communally charged cultural dimension to Grierson’s interventions. There is a strong sense in Grierson’s correspondence and writings on Kashmir that Kashmiri pandits were the bearers of an upper caste Hindu Kashmiri culture beleaguered by the Muslim majority population. Some aspects of Grierson’s views overlapped with one kind of nationalist discourse in the period and this may also have determined his approach to Kashmiri pandits and to the Kashmiri language.201

Bengali Grierson was claimed by the advocates of other regional cultures and languages as one of their own. The Bangiya Sahitya elected Grierson as an honorary member in 1929. The invitation and Grierson’s response once again indicates how global recognition and regional assertiveness were entangled in the LSI. The invitation was couched in all-Indian and global terms, recognising the LSI both as ‘valued throughout the world’ and as ‘leading us to a true and thorough study of the languages of India’. Grierson’s response, on the other hand, was region specific, expressing his delight at being associated with the Sahitya which had done much to ‘throw light on the literary history of the Province with which I was long associated and for which I still nourish a warm affection’. He also expressed his pleasure at the invitation from ‘one of my oldest friends in India’ (Haraprasad Shastri, president of the Sahitya at the time), and how the letter brought back many memories.202 In one letter, he refers to how the representation of Bengali sounds ‘revived many pleasant memories’.203 Once again, friendship, affection and nostalgia were entangled in Grierson’s relationship with region-specific assertiveness. Regionalist sentiments in the LSI were a mix of these different emotions and nostalgic reminiscences, in which personal and collective identities slid into each other. For Grierson, correcting global perceptions of the region was a motive in defining Bengal’s cultural history. As in the case of Bihar, Grierson used the language of pride and restoration, stating his desire to restore to Bengal the credit of being home to the best Prakrit scholars, again with a view to counter European perspectives on this.204 Grierson also played a role in institutionalising Bengali in the ICS 35

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exams. He was influential in prescribing the list of literary works for the Bengali examinations from 1901 onwards. In doing so, he made judgements as to the level of acceptable Sanskritisation in Bengali literary texts. Nabanārī, for example, was too ‘old-fashioned and highly Sanskritized’, illustrating only a ‘temporary phase of Bengali literature’; hence he recommended its removal from the list. On the other hand, he recommended Bengali novels written in ‘modern’ Bengali as good examples of a ‘colloquial style’, repeatedly foregrounding Bankimchandra in this respect as the most famous novelist of ‘his country’ (i.e. Bengal) and as initiating a ‘much more chaste’ style and ‘a striving after simple language’. He ensured the reading list reflected changes in Bengali since the 1870s, beginning with the magazine Baṅgadarśan, in which Bankim played a pivotal role. Other interventions included clarifying what constituted ‘classical’ in Bengali literature.205 Grierson kept abreast of literary developments in Bengal after he left India, referring to contemporary magazines and periodicals containing selections of literary masterpieces.206 While Grierson played a role in defining Bengali literature in the ICS exams, he also had close links to figures associated with Calcutta University. He was asked to examine PhD theses at Calcutta University,207 and was sent a range of publications on Bengali literature, culture and society by the assistant registrar, many of which he commented on.208 Bengali researchers, literati and academics contacted Grierson as a sympathetic supporter of Bengali learning. One of the texts the assistant registrar sent Grierson was volume 3 of Babu Dinesh Chandra Sen’s Eastern Bengal Ballads (1923).209 Sen also sent Grierson his works on Bengali ballads, language and literature directly. He asked Grierson to testify ‘to the general merits of these ballads’, with a view to making his words the motto on the title page of Eastern Bengal Ballads, Mymensingh (1923). For Sen, Grierson was a pioneer in the field of Bengali ballads because of his 1878 translation of Gopichand in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.210 There was an incipient subnationalist tone in Grierson’s and Sen’s exchanges. Grierson praised Sen’s collections of ballads, commenting, citing from Andrew Salter, ‘if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation’. For Sen, ‘our own countrymen are crying hoarse over politics and following all kinds of visionary things’ but ‘they do not appreciate these works’.211 Here, then, regional patriotism is rooted in the recovery of folk-lore and popular ballad literature, and it is explicitly contrasted with formal politics and electioneering. The focus is on a broader cultural identity rather than 36

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organised politics. Grierson was especially glowing about Sen’s Folk Literature of Bengal (1920) and The Bengali Ramayanas (1920),212 and reciprocated with his own articles on aspects of Bengali language and culture.213 Grierson also endorsed Sen’s research and work to the vice chancellor of Calcutta University when the funding for Sen’s ‘recovery and preservation’ of ‘rural literature’ ran into problems,214 and he obtained a ‘literary pension’ for Sen.215 As in the case of other regional languages, nostalgia and reminiscences play a role in Grierson’s engagement with Sen’s work. When endorsing the later volumes of Sen’s Eastern Bengal Ballads to the vice chancellor, he refers to how the poetry ‘revives memories of my own happy days spent in India’.216 Grierson also corresponded extensively with S.K. Chatterji (1890– 1977), the prominent Bengali linguist and educationist, and was involved in the development of Chatterji’s career as a pre-eminent Bengali scholar. Chatterji kept Grierson informed about the completion of his PhD thesis in London on the history of the Bengali language, and had hoped Grierson would be an examiner. Grierson early on described the thesis as ‘valuable work’ and also assuaged Chatterji’s anxieties about it.217 He made a number of detailed comments on the thesis after Chatterji submitted, and saw it as ‘an excellent and scholarly piece of work’ and as the first ‘really scientific investigation of the language and its history’.218 He publicised Chatterji’s thesis to others, and Chatterji took his advice on writing it up as a book, with Grierson supporting his applications for grants.219 The thesis became the famous The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language (two volumes, 1927), to which Grierson wrote a positive foreword at Chatterji’s request.220 He made special mention of Grierson in his acknowledgements.221 He sent Grierson copies of the files of the books as it was being printed, thereby keeping him involved in the emergence of the book, and Grierson, when his eyesight was failing him, had the book read aloud to him.222 Grierson amplified on his foreword to the assistant registrar of Calcutta University, who also sent him a copy of the book asking for his comments.223 Grierson continued to engage with the book after it was published, sending Chatterji detailed comments.224 Chatterji also sent some of his other articles and essays (for example, on Bengali phonetics) to Grierson for his comments.225 Grierson helped Chatterji’s career in other ways too; he put the director of exams at the ICS Commission in touch with Chatterji, who in a subsequent meeting with the director made detailed suggestions about its syllabus.226 Chatterji was appointed an examiner for the ICS exams through Grierson’s recommendation.227 Grierson also 37

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recommended Chatterji’s name to CUP when they were thinking of doing an elementary manual of Prakrit, with Grierson advising them on how to shape such a manual.228 He sent Chatterji the proofs of Jacobi’s Nemināhacariu (1921), discussing issues raised by Dr. Jacobi with regard to transitions in literary apabhraṃśa, as well as offprints of his own articles upon Chatterji’s request.229 As in the case of other Indian scholars and literati, Chatterji’s and Grierson’s relationship was mutually beneficial. Chatterji obtained a copy of Kramadisvara’s Samkṣipta-sāra in Calcutta at Grierson’s request.230 He helped Grierson in the reading of sections of the Prākṛta-Kalpataru.231 Chatterji suggested to Grierson that he publish an edition of this; Grierson published portions of the text in the Indian Antiquary, sending copies to Chatterji.232 Chatterji also sent a copy of the Adbhuta Rāmāyaṇa to Grierson at his request, who wrote an article on it for the Bulletin of SOS (1926–1928).233 Like Sen, Chatterji found Grierson to be a sympathetic ear when it came to the turmoil in Calcutta University after the death of Sir Ashutosh, to whose commemoration volume Chatterji contributed a piece.234 Chatterji expressed his fears about the increasing political interference in the ‘temple of learning’ in the tussle between Sir Ashutosh and the education minister, P.C. Mitter, and then following Sir Ashutosh’s death, yet more political interference and communalism as well.235 In particular he was worried about how linguistic texts peddling ‘fanciful theories’ were being used to teach the history and philology of Bengali. Grierson shared this worry, referring to the country’s ‘unfortunate political condition’ and how his heart ‘bleeds for the Bengal I have known and loved so well’.236 These political sentiments expressed by Grierson and some of his Indian interlocutors such as Sen and Chatterji are again suggestive of the conservative cast of learning and knowledge produced by the LSI, sometimes presented by its participants as being at odds with the perceived demagoguery of emerging mass politics in India and as representing a more solid and durable cultural foundation for regionally distinctive identities than the latter.

Other regional languages Grierson, then, played an important role in clarifying the contours of Bengali literature, language and culture, and in the emergence of such influential works like Chatterji’s Bengali Language. Other regional advocates tried to get Grierson to legitimise their regions’ growing cultural capital. In 1924 R. Krishna Pillai, the chief secretary to the 38

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Government in Travancore, sent Grierson issues of the Sri Mulam Malayalam series, published by the Government Press in Travancore with an aim to bring to light rare and ancient manuscripts.237 In 1927 when asked if he still wanted to be on the distribution list of this series, Grierson responded, ‘they are highly valued by me, and have constantly been consulted’.238 Others tried to co-opt Grierson in the project to define their dialects as languages. In 1934 the Reverend. Thomas C.N. Fernandez of the Konkani Committee in Bombay contacted Grierson for his help in ‘systematising’ Konkani. He sent Grierson a questionnaire for his comments, prior to its being circulated to gather information and views about the language from its users. Its aim was to improve its ‘wretched condition’ by choosing a script, to gather information about ‘old writings or any other means of study that would help it in the scientific cultivation of our mother tongue’, to define its register for ‘literary purposes’, to clarify its pronunciation and phonology, and to settle its orthography. Grierson was unable to help because he was ill, but he recommended Fernandez communicate directly with the director of SOS, where there was a department specialising in the phonetics of Oriental languages.239 In volume 7 of the LSI, Grierson had commented on the spelling of Konkani specimens as inconsistent, so definite rules for the pronunciation of its vowels could not be given. However, given the importance of this for understanding the phonetical development of Konkani and Marathi, he hoped that a phonetically trained scholar in Konkani would determine exact sounds, hence the focus on phonetics in his response to Fernandez after the LSI was completed.240 In volume 7 Grierson was ambiguous about the status of Konkani. While the 1891 census returned speakers of Konkani and Marathi separately Grierson combines them to produce figures for Marathi speakers and its dialects.241 For Grierson Konkani is a Marathi dialect preserving an older stage of phonetical development than standard Marathi. He disagreed with Indian writers who argued for its different origins from Marathi, but there is some slippage in his terminology. In keeping with his own observation that the ‘line between dialects and languages is . . . difficult to draw’, he discusses Konkani by using the term ‘language’, while referring to Marathi and Konkani as ‘dialects of the same speech’.242 The only reason he calls the language Marathi rather than Konkani is that its literature is written in a script derived from the northern dialects of the region, rather than the Konkan region.243 In a letter of 1901, in response to the census superintendent’s query as to whether ‘Goanese’ was a dialect of Marathi, he asserted that ‘true Goanese’ is Konkani Marathi, that is Marathi of the south of 39

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the region, which is almost a different language.244 In these various statements, the LSI left open a space for the definition of Konkani as a language in its own right. Other regional activists sought Grierson’s endorsement. G.V. Ramamurti (1863–1940) was an influential spokesperson for the ‘modernisation’ of Telugu as an appropriate medium for an emerging Telugu public sphere in the early 20th century. His commitment to educational reform and his study of Telugu language and literature underpinned his advocacy of language reform and its centrality ‘in the remaking of political subjectivities’.245 In 1913 he sent A Memorandum on Modern Telugu to the governor of Madras urging the reform of Telugu teaching in schools and universities. He sent a copy to Grierson, referring to how pandits had insisted on the Sanskritisation of Telugu, while others like himself who espoused the values of ‘modernity’ wanted the literary idiom to be rooted in the language of everyday life. Ramamurti was influenced by Grierson’s criticisms of the Sanskritisation of Bengali and Hindi, and he cited Grierson in his Memorandum in this context. Grierson sympathised with his project, and stressed the value of one of the Memorandum’s appendices comparing old and modern Telugu.246 Ramamurti also wrote to Grierson outlining his role in the Composition Committee at the University of Madras.247 As he explained to Grierson, this committee wanted to fix the standard of Telugu for students to use in their compositions. He and other proponents of the ‘living dialect’ were outvoted by those who favoured the ‘classical’ style. He wanted to enlist Grierson’s views, along with others such as Sten Konow, Otto Jespersen and R.W. Frazer, in support of his position.248 Here, then, an advocate of ‘modernising’ Telugu sought Grierson’s opinion as a perceived ally. Grierson was also part of the textual flows and circuits around Telugu and its related dialects. In 1913 Ramamurti kept Grierson informed about the publication of his work by the Madras government.249 In 1914 the Director of Public Instruction (hereafter DPI) sent Grierson Ramamurti’s Savara Reader (1912), his Savara Songs (1913), and the proofs of his Telugu-Savara Dictionary (1914).250 In 1931 Ramamurti’s son G.V. Sitapati sent Grierson his father’s A Manual of Sora (or Savara) Language (1931). Grierson praised this text for giving Savara a script and for its use of the IPA. The flyer for the Manual cited endorsements from a range of scholars, including one from Grierson citing from one of his earlier letters. Other endorsers included Edward Sapir, Sten Konow and Daniel Jones,251 reflecting how regional language activists like Ramamurti 40

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sought recognition from globally recognised scholars for their efforts. In 1933 Sitapati visited London to give evidence to the secretary of state for India, arguing that the Telugu tracts of Gangam should not be transferred to Orissa. He met Grierson and presented him with an advance copy of his father’s English-Sora Dictionary (Madras 1933). Later Grierson was also given the text of the Sora-English Dictionary (1938).252 Grierson also commented on Sitapati’s ‘Accent in Telugu Speech and Verse’ which appeared in the Grierson Commemoration Volume of Indian Linguistics in 1936.253 Grierson interacted with others in the networks of textual flows constituting knowledge production in Telugu and related studies. P.T. Srinivas Iyengar sent Grierson a copy of his translation of the Śivasūtravirmarśinī (1912), which threw light on Grierson’s own studies.254 Grierson facilitated the publication of Telugu scholars’ work, such as G.R. Subramiah’s articles ‘Augustan Age of Telugu Literature’ in the Indian Antiquary (1897–1899), which Subramiah wanted to write up as a monograph, requesting Grierson to write a foreword to it. Grierson acted as a referee for Subramiah when he approached presses with the manuscript, and also for his manuscript Some MileStones in Telugu Literature (1915). Grierson gave him permission to cite his view on the book as a valuable contribution to the study of Indian literature.255 Proponents of other South Indian languages and cultures also approached Grierson. For example, R.V. Jagirdar of Karnatak College, Dharwar, wrote to him in 1930 for an endorsement for a journal’s special issue devoted to the language, literature and history of Karnataka.256 Despite Grierson’s North Indian and explicitly Aryan focus, which I discuss in Chapters 5 and 6, and the fact that the LSI did not technically extend to Madras, Grierson’s standing meant advocates of Dravidian India were keen to connect with him. Scholars asked for Grierson’s support for publications on South Indian history, as in the case of the Madras University Historical Series. In 1919 in response to S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar’s request and his forwarding of a copy of his Sources of Vijayanagar History (1919), Grierson wrote to the registrar of the university in support of the series. Aiyangar cited Grierson’s positive view in the preface to Sources. In the previous year Aiyangar had already sent Grierson his own work on South Indian history.257 He continued to send Grierson some of this work, such as South India and her Muhammadan Invaders (1921) and Manimekhalai in Its Historical Setting (1928).258 Grierson commented on L.V. Ramaswami Aiyar’s work on phonetics which he sent to him in the late 1920s and early 41

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1930s.259 K.V. Subhaiya invoked Grierson’s dedication to the ‘cause of Dravidian phonology’ and the inspiration of the ‘monumental’ LSI when he sent Grierson a copy of his Primer of Dravidian Phonology from the Indian Antiquary of 1909, and he informed him of his preparation of A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages (1910–1911). He requested an endorsement of his efforts.260 In 1915 Grierson discussed questions of phonology with K. Amrita Row, at that time reader in Dravidian phonology at the University of Madras, who sent Grierson some of his unpublished work for his comments, referring to Grierson’s own paper on Prakrit palatals in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (hereafter JRAS) of 1913. Row’s papers were eventually published in the Indian Antiquary in 1916 and 1919 (‘Notes on Some Hindi words from the Dravidian’ and ‘The Dravidian Elements in the Prakrit’).261 Thus even though Grierson frequently called attention to his lack of expertise in the field of South Indian studies (including turning down an invitation to examine a Madras University thesis on classical Tamil because of his lack of knowledge),262 he was perceived as a figure whose endorsement was required for Dravidian studies in general, and as an important institutional figure when it came to the circulation and publication of texts on South India. In one respect Grierson was sympathetic to the importance of what might be called Dravidian culture and literature. In the first decade of the 20th century, Grierson wrote articles on Vaishnavism and the bhakti movement, which led to Indian scholars from the south corresponding with him. T. Narasimmiyengar and Alkondavilli Govindacharya drew Grierson’s attention to the importance of Vaishnavite works in Tamil and Telugu, which in their view had been neglected by European scholars who tended to focus on north India. Narasimmiyengar suggested a list of such works with a short account of each in English and appealed to Grierson for help in this.263 Grierson admitted that in this respect all his sources were north Indian, hence he welcomed making South Indian literature in this field available but his LSI commitments and lack of knowledge of Dravidian languages made it difficult for him to help.264 Others for whom Dravidian studies had a more assertive edge contacted Grierson. Krishna Menon, for example, sent Grierson his Madras University lecture of 17 October 1933 on ‘Dravidian Culture and its diffusion’.265 The English-language quarterly, Dravidian Culture, established to correct the bias in Indology for ‘things Aryan’ and to rectify the ignorance of ‘many western scholars [who] do not have any idea of the nature and antiquity of Dravidian Civilization and 42

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Culture’, wrote to Grierson asking him for his support and a written contribution.266 As in the case of other regional forms of assertiveness, Dravidian Culture was sensitive to the need to gain recognition within India, ‘western Nations’, and ‘the nations of the world’ – these arenas worked in tandem with each other.267 Similarly, S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar referred to his book Manimekhalai in Its Historical Setting as addressing European readers, South Indian readers and Indians ‘across the borders of the Tamil land’.268 This interleaving of regional, Indian and global institutional recognition is also clear in T. Rajagopal Rao’s definition of his scholarly persona, who wrote to Grierson in 1936 to try to set up a meeting about his planned comparative lexicon of South Indian languages. In doing so, he attached testimonials from the principal of Madras Christian College and P.E.N, the global network of writers, as evidence of both his global and regional standing.269

Conclusion Grierson and the LSI played a key role in ongoing processes of regional linguistic identity formation in the early 20th century. In the case of some languages Grierson helped to lay the foundations for their emergence as clearly discrete entities and as definitive objects of study. This was combined with narratives of nostalgia, a sense of the recovery of forgotten roots, and the grounding of viable literary and cultural identities in literary canonisation. We have also seen how in the LSI’s correspondence intergenerational bonding, the extension of familiallike connections, friendship and personal nostalgia blended together to create a distinctive amalgam of sentiments surrounding regional cultural and linguistic studies. Moreover, in the LSI’s epistolary culture the biographies of some of these languages were enmeshed with the personal biographies of Grierson and his interlocutors, creating a field of affectively charged subjectivities around Maithili, Asamiya, Bengali and Kashmiri, amongst other languages. Strategies of mutual endorsement dovetailed with the endorsement of the language in question to form a regional persona for specific languages,270 and the personas of individual actors and their multiple subjectivities are brought together through the assertion of the language in question. To a certain extent, the LSI reflects how after 1857 the British saw India more and more as an agglomeration of small societies, in part because of the density of their governance and its institutions. This post-1857 ‘epistemological balkanisation’ accorded well with the Raj’s paternalist bureaucracy connecting with the feudal and ‘natural’ 43

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leaders of the people and a pliant peasantry.271 The LSI gave this tendency an additional twist by seeing these many Indias as languagebased nations, using the terms ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ loosely. Something of the open-ended nature of the term ‘nationality’ was also in play in questions of citizenship and definitions of the Indian polity after 1947. As Jyotindra Gupta has shown, official pronouncements on languages after 1947 did not draw clear distinctions between the categories of a common language, a national language and an official language, and tended to use these terms interchangeably. The term ‘national language’ was and is used by supporters of Hindi as a synonym for the official language of India, and to distinguish indigenous regional languages from English as an alien language. Whereas the Indian Constitution avoids using the term ‘common’ or ‘national’ language, ministers have referred to Hindi as a ‘national’ language, the Report of the Committee on Emotional Integration (1962) referred to the 14 languages in the original 8th Schedule of the Constitution as having the ‘status of national languages’, while the Report of Official Language Commission of 1956 called them ‘regional languages’. In 1963 in the Indian Parliament Nehru described all the languages in the 8th Schedule as ‘national languages’. The number of languages given an honorific national status as ‘national’ or ‘major’ languages has also fluctuated.272 Some political parties also shared Grierson’s view of India as a congeries of language-based nationalities but for different reasons. For example, the Communist Party of India, influenced by Stalin’s writings on language and nationalism, saw India as multinational, in part as a way of recruiting mass support. Its 1942 manifesto advocated power be transferred to 17 different ‘sovereign national constituent assemblies’ defined by what amounted to language-based ‘nationalities’. However, it was unsure about the criteria for determining nationality and its boundaries, and it was split over the issue of Hindi as the official language of India and the question of how it was to be introduced.273 Others, such as the Assamese nationalist Ambikagri Raychaudhuri (1885–1967), outlined a constitution for India as a federation of linguistic nationalities with dual citizenship.274 Thus, there are some strands of continuity between Grierson’s LSI and Indian activists and politicians who had to grapple with the terms ‘national’ and ‘nationality’ in relation to India as a linguistic region. Moreover, at the time Grierson was writing, the term ‘nation’ did not have any clear substantive content; the idea was still being worked out in the crucible of empires. As Burbank and Cooper have reminded us, the 44

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world of nation-states is historically recent, and the nation-state is a ‘blip on the historical horizon, a state form that emerged recently from under imperial skies whose hold on the world’s political imagination may well prove to be partial or transitory’. In the 19th and most of the 20th centuries what it meant to be national was far from clear.275 However, there are other strands in the LSI which are at odds with its narrative of regionalisation. To a certain extent, given the importance of script in South Asia as the marker of linguistic differences par excellence, the LSI’s presentation of passages in some languages in multiple Indian scripts militates against their regional discreteness.276 More importantly, though, the way the LSI maps India’s languages and names them counteracts its regionalising strand. The next two chapters examine these processes in the LSI, and shows how they are at odds with the assertive discreteness of Indian languages and dialects.

Notes 1 Prabodh B. Pandit, ‘The Linguistic Survey of India – Perspectives on Language Use’, in Sirarpi Ohannessian, Charles A. Ferguson, and Edgar C. Polomé (eds), Language Surveys in Developing Nations, Virginia: Centre for Applied Linguistics, 1975, p. 78; B.P. Mahapatra, ‘The Written Languages of India’, in B.P. Mahapatra and G.D. McConnell (eds), The Written Languages of the World: A Survey of the Degree and Modes of Use, Vol. 2, Pt. 1: Constitutional Languages, Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989, p. xxvii. 2 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Pt. 1: Introductory, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publications Branch, 1927, p. 19. 3 See Ch. 6 of my Colonialism and Knowledge. 4 Radakrishna Choudhary, A Survey of Maithili Literature, Deoghar: Shanti Devi Patna, 1976, p. 177 ff; Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974, p. 99. 5 On the importance of education in securing the status of languages, see Mahapatra, ‘Written Languages’, p. xxxvii, Brass, Language, p. 102. In 1939 Patna university accepted Maithili as an MA subject and in 1948 as a BA subject as well. 6 European Manuscripts EUR 223/231, Babu Bhola Lal Das, General Secretary, Maithili Sahitya Parishad, Laheria Sarai, Darbhanga. 2. 10. 1934, Asian and African Collections, British Library, London, hereafter EUR only. 7 Brass, Language, p. 70. 8 EUR 223/231, Secretary, Maithili Sahitya Parishad, Darbhanga, ‘The Case of Maithili Before the Patna University’. 9 Ibid., ‘The Case of Maithili Before the Patna University’. 10 On the importance of literature as an index of the unfolding of a language and the kind of literature at stake here, see Mahapatra, ‘Written Languages’, p. xxix.

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11 EUR 223/226, S.K. Chatterji to Grierson, 3. 12. 1920; see Brass, Language, p. 102 on Calcutta University accepting Maithili as a subject of study at MA level in 1919. 12 Linguistic Survey Files S/1/5/1, Grierson to DPI, UP, 30. 1. 1917, Asian and African Collections, British Library, London, hereafter LS Files. 13 Brass, Language, p. 70. 14 EUR 223/231, Babu Bhola Lal Das, General Secretary, Maithili Sahitya Parishad, Darbhanga to Grierson, 2. 10. 1934, and Grierson to Das, 2. 10. 1934. 15 Ibid., Babu Ganga Pati Simha, Pustak-Bhandar, Patna to Grierson, 15. 9. 1934. 16 Brass, Language, p. 51. 17 EUR 223/231, Pandit Jibach Misra to Grierson, 6. 2. 1919, and Grierson to Pandit Misra, 16. 4. 1919. 18 Ibid., Pandit Chetnath Jha, Palace Officer, Dharbhanga to Grierson, 18. 6. 1917, sending Grierson a copy of his edition of Umapati’s Pārijāta Harana, and 9. 4. 1918 sending him a copy of one of the poet Gangananda Jha’s works. 19 Ibid., Sri Narayan Singh to Grierson, 17. 2. 1908. 20 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bihārī and Oṛiyā Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, p. 17. 21 Brass, Language, pp. 53, 58–61, 96. 22 EUR 223/231, Maharajah to Grierson, 16. 5. 1921. 23 Ibid., ‘Memorial to His Excellency the Right Honourable Baron Sinha of Raipur. Governor of Bihar and Orissa. From the Maharajah of Darbhanga’, Allahabad: Pioneer Press, 1921. 24 Ibid., Grierson to the Maharajah, 30. 6. 1921. 25 Ibid., Grierson to the Maharajah, 20. 10. 1921 & 26. 4. 1933. 26 Ibid., Grierson to Sri Narayan Singh, 30. 10. 1910, where he asks the Asiatic Society of Bengal to send the pandit a copy of his Maithili grammar. 27 For useful discussions of this see Brass, Language, Ch. 2, and Richard Burghart, ‘A Quarrel in the Language Family: Agency and Representations of Speech in Mithila’, Modern Asian Studies, 1993, 27 (4): 761–804. 28 EUR 223/231, H.H. The Maharajadhiraja of Darbhanga to Grierson, 14. 11. 1930 on his father speaking about Grierson. 29 Brass, Language, p. 96. 30 LS Files S/1/5/2, Professor Amarantha Jha, Prof. of English Literature, Muir Central College, Allahabad to Grierson, 28. 5. 1921. 31 EUR 223/231, Grierson to Maharajah Sir Rameshwara Singh, 3. 6. 1919, Grierson to The Maharajadhiraja of Darbhanga 24. 1. 1934; LS Files S/1/16/1, Grierson to Maharajadhiraja Sir Rameshwara Singh of Darbhanga, 30. 9. 1921. 32 For Umapati, see Choudhary, Survey of Maithili Literature, pp. 50–52. See EUR 223/44 for Grierson’s edition of this. 33 EUR 223/333, Grierson to R.L. Turner, 28. 6. 1932. 34 EUR 223/231, Sri Narayana Singh to Grierson, 26. 11. 1908, 5. 4. 1910, & 6. 10. 1910.

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35 EUR 223/226, Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 19. 11. 1920; EUR 223/299, Sri Narayan Singh to Grierson, 29. 11. 1885 & 28. 8. 1886; for Chandra Jha, see Choudhary, Survey of Maithili Literature, pp. 181–182. 36 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 18. 37 LS Files S/1/5/2, Grierson to Prof. Amarantha Jha, 11. 10. 1922. 38 EUR 223/226, S.K. Chatterji to Grierson, 17. 11. 1920 & 22. 11. 1920, Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 19. 11. 1920 & 26. 11. 1920. 39 Ibid., Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 17. 5. 1921. 40 LS Files S/1/1/10, Lionel D. Barnett to Grierson, 14. 7. 1925, & Grierson to Barnett, 25. 5. 1926. 41 EUR 223/231, Secretary, Maithili Sahitya Parishad Darbhanga, ‘The Case of Maithili Before the Patna University’. 42 Choudhary, Survey of Maithili Literature, p. 178. For Vidyapati, see ibid., Ch. 5. 43 EUR 223/231, Grierson to H.H. The Maharajadhiraja of Darbhanga, 24. 10. 1933. 44 Brass, Language, p. 56. 45 EUR 223/231, Grierson to Babu Bhola Lal Das, General Secretary, Maithili Sahitya Parishad, 2. 10. 1934; LS Files S/1/16/1, Grierson to Maharajadhiraja Sir Rameshwara Singh, of Darbhanga, 30. 9 1921. 46 Brass, Language, p. 102. 47 George A. Grierson, An Introduction to the Maithilí Language of North Bihár Containing a Grammar, Chrestomathy and Vocabulary, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1881, p. 1; for the section on Vidyapati, see pp. 34–112. 48 EUR 223/311, Grierson to Hoysted, 12. 3. 1935. 49 Ibid., Grierson to Hoysted, 28. 3. 1935, Hoysted to Grierson, 12. 4. 1935. 50 EUR 223/231, Grierson to the Maharajadhiraja of Darbhanga, 21. 4. 1936; EUR 223/265, Grierson to K.P. Jayaswal, 21. 1. 1936. 51 EUR 223/231, Grierson to Maharajah Sir Rameshwara Singh, 1. 12. 1920. 52 EUR 223/264, Grierson to Prof. Hermann Jacobi, 29. 11. 1920. 53 LS Files S/1/5/2, Professor Amarantha Jha to Grierson, 21. 9. 1922; EUR 223/226, Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 9. 3. 1923. 54 EUR 223/330, Grierson to the British Envoy, Katmandu, Nepal, 5. 2. 1923. 55 EUR 223/231, Grierson to W. Egerton, 22. 1. 1908, Grierson to Pandit Bhava Natha Misra, Dharbanga, 25. 7. 1925. I discuss this in Ch. 8 of Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 56 George A. Grierson, Bihār Peasant Life, Being a Discursive Catalogue of the Surroundings of the People of that Province, With Many Illustrations From Photographs Taken By the Author, Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat Press and London: Trübner and Co., 1885, p. 1. 57 Ibid., Division III. 58 EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 19. 8. 1933. 59 See my discussion of this in Ch. 3 of Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, and here, Chs. 5–6. 60 EUR 223/220, F.H. Brown to Grierson, 9. 7. 1926. 61 Burghart, ‘Speech in Mithila’, pp. 776–779. 62 Ibid., pp. 788–789. 63 Brass, Language, p. 62.

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64 See Ch. 3 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 65 Burghart, ‘Speech in Mithila’, pp. 776–779. 66 George A. Grierson, Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihárí Language Spoken in the Province of Bihár, in the Eastern Portion of the North-Western Provinces, and in the Northern Portion of the Central Provinces, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1883–1887, p. 16. 67 George A. Grierson, The Test of a Man Being the Purusha-Parîkshâ of Vidyâpati Ṭhakkura, London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1935, p. ix. 68 Grierson, Seven Grammars, pp. 16–17. 69 Grierson, Introduction to the Maithilí Language, pp. 1–2. For Grierson’s standardisation of Maithili, see Burghart, ‘Speech in Mithila’, pp. 775–776. 70 Ibid., ‘The Case of Maithili Before the Patna University’. 71 For Colebrooke’s essay see Asiatick Researches, 1803, 7: 199–231. 72 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 18. 73 EUR 223/333, Grierson to R.L. Turner, 19. 12. 1933. 74 Choudhary, Survey of Maithili Literature, pp. 172–173. 75 LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to J.T. Marten, 8. 4. 1920. 76 EUR 223/231, ‘Memorial to His Excellency the Right Honourable Baron Sinha of Raipur. Governor of Bihar and Orissa. From the Maharajah of Darbhanga’, p. 3. 77 George A. Grierson, The Bible in India, Anarkali, Lahore: Punjab Bible Society, c. 1904, p. 1. 78 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8: Indo-Aryan Family (North-Western Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Sindhī and Lahndā, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing India, 1919, p. 138; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 10: Specimens of Languages of the Eranian Family, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1921, p. 414. 79 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, pp. 11, 16, 31, 40, 46; LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to H.H. Risley, 25. 11. 1902; LS Files S/1/3/2, Gramophone Company to Grierson, 11. 12. 1922. 80 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of the Bengali and Assamese Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Press, 1903, pp. 12, 19, 321. 81 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 221–223, 151, 150, 112, 104, 21, 27. 82 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 393–294. 83 EUR 223/254, N.P. Kataki, Secretary, Assamese Students’ Welfare League, Calcutta to Grierson, 1. 6. 1935. 84 LS Files S/1/4/1, Prof. S.K. Bhuyan, Cotton College, Gauhati, Assam to Grierson, 17. 3. 1925. 85 Ibid. 86 LS Files S/1/4/15, Kaliram Medhu to Grierson, 25. 3. 1937. 87 Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999, p. 73. 88 LS Files S/1/14/3, Grierson to Gait, 6. 4. 1902, and S/1/4/1, Grierson to A.W. Botham, Assam Secretariat, 28. 2. 1917.

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89 LS Files S/1/4/1, J.H. Corkery, Assistant Secretary to Chief Commissioner of Assam to Grierson, 29. 1. 1901. 90 LS Files S/1/1/33, Secretary, SOS, 20. 12. 1920. 91 Baruah, Assam, p. 113. 92 Ibid., p. 39. 93 Ibid., p. 72. 94 Ibid., pp. 76–77. 95 Ibid., p. 77. 96 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947, Delhi: Macmillan India, 1983, pp. 106–107. 97 I discuss the politics of naming in the case of Siraiki in Ch. 6. 98 Christopher Shackle, ‘Problems of Classification in Pakistan Panjab’, Transactions of the Philological Society, 1979, 77 (1): 195–196; Christopher Shackle, From Wuch to Southern Lahnda: A Century of Siraiki Studies in English, Multan: Bazm-e Saqaft, 1983, pp. 33, 36–37; Christopher Shackle, ‘Siraiki: A Language Movement in Pakistan’, Modern Asian Studies, 1977, 11 (3): 387–388; and Christopher Shackle, ‘Panjabi’, in George Cardona and Dhanesh Jain (eds), The Indo-Aryan Languages, London and New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 583. 99 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Western Hindī and Pañjābī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, pp. 615, 608, 652. 100 Ibid., p. 614. 101 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, pp. 1, 237. It is possible that Grierson may have been influenced in his vocabulary here by the wave theory of linguistic change, formulated from the late 1860s onwards, for which see Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004, p. 213; Pieter A.M. Seuren, Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, pp. 102–103. However, as far as I can see, Grierson makes no reference in his letters or in the LSI volumes to this theory or its proponents. 102 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 237. 103 LS Files S/1/14/6, Grierson to Superintendent of Census Operations, Panjab, 14. 3. 1901, Grierson to H.A. Rose, 12. 12. 1901 & 22. 7. 1902; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 608; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 244. 104 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 614; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 237. 105 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, pp. 1–3. 106 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 608; see also LS Files S/1/14/6, Grierson to H.A. Rose, 12. 12. 1901. For the resonance of Sarasvati in sacred and Vedic geography see Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 165–169. 107 LS Files S/1/14/2, Grierson to Edward Gait, 28. 7. 1910. 108 Ibid., Edward Gait to Grierson, 6. 7. 1911, attaching ‘Notes for Provincial Superintendents’, para. 2. 109 LS Files S/1/14/9, Grierson to L.G. Sedgwick, 10. 11. 1922. 110 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 244. 111 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 608.

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112 Shackle, ‘Siraiki Language Movement’; Tariq Rahman, Language and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 173; Nukbah Taj Langah, Poetry as Resistance: Islam and Ethnicity in Postcolonial Pakistan, New Delhi: Routledge, 2012, pp. xvii–xviii. 113 Shackle, ‘Problems of Classification’, p. 198, ‘Siraiki Language Movement’, p. 387. 114 Nukbah, Poetry as Resistance, pp. xx, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 5. 115 Shackle, ‘Siraiki Language Movement’, pp. 389–399; Rahman, Language and Politics, p. 183ff. 116 Rahman, Language and Politics, Ch. 10. 117 LS Files S/1/1/17, Banarsi Das Jain to Grierson, 9. 4. 1925 & 28. 4. 1925. 118 LS Files S/1/14/6, Grierson to H.A. Rose, 23. 6. 1905 & 31. 8. 1905. 119 Ibid., Grierson to H.A. Rose, 28. 8. 1910. 120 EUR 223/306, Grierson to A.C. Woolner, 3. 3. 1921. 121 EUR 223/305, D. Johnstone, Under Secretary to Government of Panjab to Grierson, 16. 12. 1918, attaching proceedings of Syndicate of Panjab University, 15. 11. 1918. 122 EUR 223/306, Banarsi Das Jain to Grierson, 7. 12. 1921, Grierson to Das, 31. 12. 1921. 123 EUR 223/305, Grierson to Chief Secretary, Government of Panjab, Lahore, 22. 9. 1926. 124 EUR 223/306, Grierson to Banarsi Das Jain, 17. 3. 1928. 125 EUR 223/228, Chief Khalsa Diwan. The Sikh Educational Conference to the Viceroy, 21. 9. 1922, attached to Mair to Grierson, 13. 12. 1922. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid., Grierson to Mair, 14. 12. 1922. 128 Ibid., Copy of Letter of Chief Khalsa Diwan to DPI, Panjab, attached to Mair to Grierson, 26. 9. 1923. 129 Ibid., see A.C. Woolner’s note dated 16. 2. 1923, attached to Mair to Grierson, 26. 9. 1923. 130 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 617. 131 EUR 223/228, Grierson to Mair, 27. 9. 1923, and his accompanying ‘Note on the Letter from the Chief Khalsa Diwan’. 132 Rupert Snell and Ian M.P. Raeside (eds), Classics of Modern South Asian Literature, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998, pp. 1–3. 133 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 244. 134 EUR 223/228, A.C. Woolner’s note, dated 16. 2. 1923, attached to Mair to Grierson, 26. 9. 1923. 135 LS Files S/1/3/1, Grierson to Sir Andrew Fraser, 28. 10. 1905. 136 I discuss this in more detail in Chs. 5–6. 137 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, pp. 617–618 and f.n. on 618. 138 Ibid., p. 618. 139 Mahapatra, ‘Written Languages’, p. 270. 140 EUR 238, Grierson to Edward Gait, 24. 6. 1918. 141 EUR 223/269, Pandit Nityananda Sastri to Grierson, 1. 1. 1924. I discuss this text in Ch. 8 of Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India.

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142 143 144 145

146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169

EUR 223/269, Pandit Anand Kaul to Grierson, 28. 1. 1935. Ibid., Prof. J.L. Kaul to Grierson, 10. 2. 1939. EUR 223/323, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 14. 11. 1910. Sir Aurel Stein, Hatim’s Tales: Kashmiri Stories and Songs, Recorded With the Assistance of Pandit Govind Kaul, Edited With a Translation, Linguistic Analysis, Vocabulary, Indexes, ETC. by Sir George A. Grierson, K.C.I.E, With a Note on the Folklore of the Tales by W. Crooke, C.I.E., London: John Murray, 1923, pp. xlvii–lxxxiv; EUR 223/332, Grierson to R.L. Turner, 12. 11. 1924. Hatim’s Tales, pp. xi, xv. For the importance of landscape in constructing Kashmir as a ‘territory of desire’, see Ananya Kabir, Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. LS Files S/1/12/1, Major F.W. Pirree to Grierson, 2. 10. 1912. EUR 223/269, Jagaddhar Zadoo to Grierson, 24. 3. 1924. Ibid., Grierson to Jagaddhar Zadoo, 19. 4. 1923. Ibid., Grierson to Pandit Nityananda Sastri, Maharajah College, Srinagar, 20. 4. 1917. Kashi Wali and Omkar Nath Koul, Kashmiri: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar, London and New York: Routledge, 1997, p. xviii. LS Files S/1/12/1, Grierson to Col C.J. Windham, 14. 12. 1921. Hatim’s Tales, p. xlviii; see also EUR 223/323, Grierson to Sir Aurel Stein, 13. 11. 1910. Hatim’s Tales, p. xlviii. EUR 223/323, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 22. 11. 1910 & 15. 8. 1912. Hatim’s Tales, p. x. EUR 223/323, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 22. 11. 1910. Hatim’s Tales, p. x. On texts which serve as a tool for the standardisation of regional languages in India, see Mahapatra, ‘Written Languages’, p. xli. EUR 223/323, Grierson to Sir Aurel Stein, 12. 9. 1912. A Dictionary of the Kāshmīrī Language, Composed Partly From Materials Left by the Late Bengali Pandit Isvara Kaula, Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1916–1932. LS Files S/1/1/17, John Sampson to Grierson, 6. 7. 1926. Grierson, Dictionary of Kāshmīrī, Preliminary Note. EUR 223/269, Pandit Gopi Nath to Grierson, 9. 12. 1929; EUR 223/267, E.J. Neve to Grierson, 20. 4. 1926, 30. 5. 1932 & 20. 6. 1933. EUR 223/269, Pandit Salegram Kaul to Grierson, 8. 7. 1908 & 11. 1. 1909, Grierson to Pandit Kaul, 7. 2. 1909. Ibid., see the correspondence between Grierson and Pandit Nityananda Sastri, from 19. 3. 1918 to 28. 9. 1930 covering this range of topics. EUR 223/269, Grierson to Pandit Nityananda Sastri, 2. 4. 1929 & 13. 5. 1929. Ibid., Grierson to Pandit Nityananda Sastri, 11. 12. 1928, Pandit Gopi Nath to Grierson, 9. 12. 1929. EUR 223/270, Grierson to Sten Konow, 11. 12. 1928; EUR 223/323, Grierson to Sir Aurel Stein, 29. 10. 1917.

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170 EUR 223/269, Pandit Nityananda Sastri to Grierson, 22. 8. 1930. He also sent a copy to Alexander Zeiness whose Die Ráma-Sage Beiden Malaien, Ihre Herkunft und Gestaltung (1928) was consulted by Grierson. It reinforced Zieseniss’s sense of the ‘manifold variants of the Rāma legend [as] an enthralling subject, which I find is difficult to abandon’. It also reinforced his sense that ‘we should make known as many versions of the Rāmāyana as possible’, see EUR 223/294, C.W. Oldham, 6. 7. 1930; EUR 223/302, Grierson to Alexander Zieseniss, 7. 10. 1929, Zieseniss to Grierson, 11. 6. 1929 & 13. 7. 1930. In a letter to Dinesh Chandra Sen, he points to similar deviations from the Valmiki version of the Rāmāyaṇa in both the Kashmiri version by Devakara Prakasa Bhatta in the 18th century and the Adbhuta Rāmāyaṇa, see EUR 223/318, Grierson to Dinesh Chandra Sen, 14. 3. 1921. 171 EUR 223/330, F.W. Thomas to Grierson, 24. 7. 1930. 172 EUR 223/268, J.C. Chatterji to Grierson, 25. 7. 1904. 173 EUR 223/268, Grierson to Pandit Mukand Ram Shastri, 29. 7. 1924; LS Files S/1/12/1, Grierson to Col C.J. Windham. 14. 12. 1921. 174 EUR 223/268, Pandit Madhu Sudan Kaul, Superintendent, Research Department to Grierson, 22. 6. 1920. 175 LS Files S/1/12/1, Grierson to Col. A. Bannerman, 22. 7. 1920 & 26. 7. 1920. 176 EUR 223/269, Grierson to Pandit Nityananda Sastri, 17. 12. 1924; EUR 223/302, Alexander Zieseniss to Grierson, 11. 6. 1929 & 13. 7. 1930; EUR 223/314, Grierson to Pandit Gopi Nath, 6. 6. 1922. This was an edition of Krsna Rajanaka’s poem, with a Chaya by Mukund Ram Sastri. 177 EUR 223/323, Grierson to Sir Aurel Stein, 8. 7. 1912 & 19. 3. 1918. 178 EUR 223/208, Grierson to Secretary, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 11. 9. 1912. 179 EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 24. 8. 1919. 180 Ibid., Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 19. 11. 1921; LS Files S/1/12/1, Grierson to J. Manners Smith, 27. 12. 1916, Grierson to Col. C.J. Windham. 14. 12. 1921. 181 LS Files S/1/12/1, Grierson to J. Manners Smith, 27. 12. 1916. 182 S/1/12/1, Grierson to Col C.J. Windham, 14. 12. 1921. 183 EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 21. 8. 1921; EUR 223/323, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 10. 7. 1918 & 5. 9. 1918. 184 EUR 223/314, Pandit Gopi Nath to Grierson, 11. 12. 1923. 185 EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 15. 7. 1921 & 19. 8. 1933. 186 Ibid., EUR 223/323, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 5. 9. 1918. 187 EUR 223/314, Pandit Gopi Nath to Grierson, 17. 1. 1922; EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 10. 9. 1919, attaching letter to British Resident in Kashmir, 7. 9. 1919. 188 EUR 223/323, Grierson to Sir Aurel Stein, 19. 3. 1918; LS Files S/1/12/1, Grierson to Col C.J. Windham, 14. 12. 1921. 189 LS Files S/1/2/1, Grierson to J.P. Hewett, 15. 1. 1890. 190 EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 20. 5. 1923. 191 LS Files S/1/1/34, see the correspondence between Grierson and Austin and sons, Hertford, 17. 11. 1919 to 18. 11. 1922.

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192 EUR 223/258, Grierson to William Foster, 20. 6. 1923; EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 25. 3. 1923. 193 EUR 223/308, Grierson to Sita Ram, 23. 3. 1914. 194 EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 15. 7. 1921. 195 I discuss this in more detail in Ch. 6. 196 See my Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity: Gandhi, Nehru and Iqbal, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 143–146. 197 LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to J.T. Marten, 8. 4. 1920. 198 Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, London: Hurst & Company, 2004, p. 176. 199 Ibid., pp. 199–201. 200 Ibid., p. 222. 201 See Ch. 6. 202 EUR 223/222, Grierson to Haraprasad Shastri, President, Bangiya Sahitya Parishad Mandir, 17. 6. 1929. 203 EUR 223/302, Grierson to Dr. Reinhard Wagner, 2. 12. 1930. 204 EUR 223/222, Grierson to Haraprasad Shastri, 25. 11. 1918. 205 These comments and recommendations were made in a series of letters from Grierson to the Civil Service Commission, see EUR 223/227, Grierson to Civil Service Commission, 16. 5. 1901, 4. 6. 1902, 19. 5. 1903, 26. 6. 1903, 26. 5. 1908, 7. 1. 1909. 206 Ibid., Grierson to Mair, 26. 5. 1908. 207 EUR 223/223, N. Sen, Controller of Examinations, Calcutta University to Grierson, 21. 12. 1927 & 16. 6. 1930. 208 Ibid., see J.C. Chakravorti, Assistant Registrar to Grierson, from 26. 3. 1929 to 11. 12. 1935, sending Grierson a range of publications. 209 Ibid., Chakravorti to Grierson, 26. 3. 1929. 210 EUR 223/318, Sen to Grierson, n.d., on Grierson as ‘the pioneer in the field of exploration of our ballad literature’. See George A. Grierson, ‘The Song of Mánik Chandra’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1878, xlvii (1): 135–238. 211 EUR 223/318, Grierson to Sen, 5. 9. 1923. Sen acknowledged Grierson in his Eastern Bengal Ballads: Mymensingh, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1923, p. xcix, and used the Andrew Salter citation as the motto for his title page. 212 EUR 223/318, see Grierson’s extensive comments to Sen on these texts, 14. 3. 1921. 213 Ibid., Sen to G, 5. 3. 1921. 214 Ibid., Sen to Grierson, n.d. 215 Ibid., Sen to Grierson, n.d. on his pension, and 17. 7. 1929. 216 Ibid., Grierson to J.C. Chakravorti, Assistant Registrar, Calcutta University, 15. 2. 1927. 217 EUR 223/226, Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 2. 2. 1921, Chatterji to Grierson, 30. 7. 1921. 218 EUR 223/226, Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 14. 9. 1921 & 19. 9. 1922. 219 Ibid., S.K. Chatterji to Grierson, 14. 3. 1922, Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 12. 9. 1922. 220 Ibid., S.K. Chatterji to Grierson, 22. 1. 1924 & 20. 3. 1924. For Grierson’s foreword see Suniti Kumar Chatterji, The Origin and Development

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221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254

of the Bengali Language, Calcutta: Calcutta University Press, 1926, 2 Vols, Vol. 1: pp. v–vii. Chatterji, Bengali Language, Vol. 1, p. xiii. EUR 223/226, S.K. Chatterji to Grierson, 5. 12. 1923 & 22. 1. 1924, Grierson to Chatterji, 17. 4. 1924. Ibid., J.C. Chakravorti, Assistant Registrar to Calcutta University to Grierson, 28. 9. 1926. Ibid., Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 3. 1. 1927. Ibid., Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 1. 12. 1919, 31. 3. 1921, & 30. 7. 1921. Ibid., Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 29. 11. 1920, Chatterji to Grierson, 3. 12. 1920. Ibid., Chatterji to Grierson, 25. 5. 1921. Ibid., Grierson to Chatterji, 3. 3. 1920 & 5. 3. 1920, Chatterji to Grierson, 6. 3. 1920 & 29. 4. 1920. Ibid., Chatterji to Grierson, 11. 2. 1921 & 11. 2. 1923. Ibid., Grierson to Chatterji, 17. 5. 1924; Chatterji to Grierson, 5. 12. 1923. Ibid., Chatterji to Grierson, 15. 2. 1923 & 9. 10. 1924; Grierson to Chatterji, 12. 8. 1925, 15. 8. 1925, & 16. 11. 1925. Ibid., Grierson to Chatterji, 14. 7. 1928 & 27. 8. 1928. Ibid., Grierson to Chatterji, 13. 12. 1924 & 23. 2. 1925, Chatterji to Grierson, 3. 6. 1926. Ibid., Grierson to Chatterji, 5. 10. 1925. Ibid., Chatterji to Grierson, 11. 4. 1923, 10. 6. 1924, & 18. 4. 1927. Ibid., Grierson to Chatterji, 16. 5. 1927. EUR 223/331, R. Krishna Pillai to Grierson, 30. 10. 1924. Ibid., K. George, Chief Secretary to Government, Travancore, 4. 6. 1927, and Grierson’s response, 4. 7. 1927. EUR 223/298, Reverend Thos. C.N. Fernandez, Secretary, The Konkani Committee, Bombay to Grierson, 25. 1. 1934, Grierson to Fernandez, 13. 2. 1934. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 7: Indo-Aryan Family (Southern Group), Specimens of the Marāṭhī Language, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1905, p. 168. Ibid., p. 1. Ibid., p. 164. Ibid. LS Files S/1/14/7, Grierson to Russell, 30. 12. 1901. Rama Mantena, ‘Vernacular Publics and Political Modernity: Language and Progress in Colonial South India’, Modern Asian Studies, 2013, 47: p. 2. EUR 223/285, G.V. Ramamurti to Grierson, 3. 6. 1913, Grierson to Ramamurti, 28. 6. 1913. Mantena, ‘Vernacular Publics’, pp. 18–21. Mantena, ‘Vernacular Publics’, p. 18. EUR 223/285, Ramamurti to Grierson, 26. 8. 1913. Ibid. LS Files S/1/13/4, Sir A.G. Bourne to Grierson, 12. 2. 1914. EUR 223/285, see the flyer for A Manual of the Sora (or Savara) Language. Ibid., Grierson to G.V. Ramamurti, 1. 8. 1933. Ibid., G.V. Sitapati to Grierson, 18. 8. 1931. Ibid., G to P.T. Srinivas Iyengar, 19. 5. 1912.

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255 Ibid., G.R. Subramiah to Grierson, 20. 1. 1915; Grierson to G.R. Subramiah, 5. 10. 1916; see also L.D. Barnett, A Catalogue of the Telugu Books in the Library of the British Museum, London: British Museum, 1912 on the ‘Augustan Age’ in Telugu literature. 256 EUR 223/285, R.V. Jagirdar to Grierson, 31. 7. 1930. 257 Ibid., Grierson to S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, 21. 10. 1918 & 10. 9. 1919, S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar to Grierson, 8. 8. 1919. 258 Ibid., Aiyangar to Grierson, 31. 8. 1921 & 19. 4. 1928. 259 Ibid., L.V. Ramaswami Aiyar to Grierson, 1. 12. 1926, 17. 12. 1928, & 19. 8. 1930, Grierson to Aiyar, 3. 1. 1927, 16. 9. 1930, 6. 7. 1932, & 5. 7. 1933. 260 Ibid., K.V. Subhaiya to Grierson, 16. 11. 1910. 261 Ibid., see the correspondence between K. Amrita Row and Grierson from 2. 10. 1915 to 5. 12. 1915, in which Row sends Grierson a range of his articles, and Grierson comments on their content. 262 Ibid., Grierson to G.R. Subramiah, 12. 12. 1915 & 5. 10. 1916, Grierson to S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, 20. 6. 1928, Grierson to Registrar, University of Madras, 11. 6. 1929. 263 EUR 223/291, T. Narasemhiengar to Grierson, 18. 8. 1909 & 20. 7. 1911, A. Govichandra to Grierson, 22. 8. 1909. 264 Ibid., Grierson to Govindacharya, 24. 10. 1909, Grierson to V.N. Narasimmiyengar, 4. 12. 1911. 265 EUR 223/285, T.K. Krishna Menon to Grierson, 7. 12. 1934. 266 Ibid., Circular from South India Saiba Siddhanta Works Publishing Society, Tinnebelly, 4. 3. 1938, with notice of the quarterly, Dravidian Culture. 267 Ibid. 268 Ibid., S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar to Grierson, 19. 4. 1928. 269 Ibid., T. Rajagopal Rao to Grierson, 27. 8. 1936. 270 I have taken this phrase from Gyanesh Kudaisya, Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic, New Delhi: Sage, 2006, p. 342, where he discusses the ‘regional persona’ of UP. 271 Christopher A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 352–353. 272 Jyotirinda Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India, Berkely: University of California Press, 1970, pp. 37–39; Brass, Language, pp. 72–73 f.n. 273 Gupta, Language Conflict, pp. 228–231; Rahman, Language and Politics, p. 253. 274 Baruah, Assam, p. 80. 275 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010, p. 1, 3, Chs. 11–12. 276 I discuss the issue of script and transliteration in Ch. 4 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India.

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2 MAPPING LANGUAGES 1

There are two countervailing narratives in the LSI at odds with Grierson’s role in defining the discreteness of regional language identities in India. The first lies in the LSI’s approach to mapping Indian languages and dialects. This chapter concentrates on the LSI’s cartographic and geographical approach to Indian languages. Historians of colonial India have argued that cartography was central to colonial power in India; maps came to define the British Empire’s authority in the subcontinent. The effectiveness of imperial geography made India a concrete entity for both British colonialists and Indian nationalists, for whom India came to be a single and coherent geographical entity whose boundaries coincided with those of the subcontinent.2 The LSI’s geographical imagining of India conflicted with these colonial and nationalist mappings. It complicated the notion of India as a single, coherent, self-referential geography, and in doing so it centralised India in a global linguistic geography. Its cartographical exercises were at odds with the colonial state’s investment in a specific geographical image of India, and ultimately with the re-mapping of India after 1947 in terms of linguistic states.

The LSI’s cartographic sensibility Both Goswami and Edney have stressed the importance of the discrete spatial partitioning of territory with no porous boundaries to the visual device of the map.3 The LSI, on the other hand, stressed the fictiveness of drawing boundaries in linguistic maps. It focused on the difficulties of fixing boundaries between languages. Discussing the boundaries of Indian languages, Grierson emphasises: Indian languages gradually merge into each other and are not separated by hard and fast boundary lines. When such 56

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boundaries are spoken of, or are shown on the map, they must always be understood as conventional methods of showing definitely a state of things which is in its essence indefinite.4 The same volume describes the boundary between Awadhi and Bagheli as ‘uncertain’ and asserts that it is ‘impossible to draw any clear dividing line between’ Panjabi and its neighbouring dialects.5 Another volume is equally explicit about the problems of drawing boundaries between languages: What is wanted is definite information regarding a state of affairs which is essentially indefinite, a want which it is manifestly impossible to supply. It is most nearly supplied by selecting fixed points, where, at each, we are certain that a well-defined language is spoken, and, taking these as the foundations of our hypothesis, by drawing arbitrary lines showing the imaginary boundaries which do not exist, but which give the needed definite impression of the approximate area in which each recognised form of speech is spoken. On this principle, the maps illustrating the relative position of the various languages which form the Eastern Group of Indo-Aryan vernaculars have been drawn up, and they should be accepted subject to the above explanation.6 The same volume describes the boundaries on maps as ‘essentially indefinite’, and the boundary between Bengali and Oriya as ‘not capable of accurate definition’.7 This sense of the indefiniteness of boundaries extends to other volumes. To give just two examples, Grierson writes of having ‘roughly put the boundary’ between Panjabi and ‘Lahnda’, emphasising that any boundary between the two languages is approximate and a ‘purely arbitrary’ convention,8 and he speaks of the boundaries between Pashto and other languages as ‘very ill-defined’.9 In his correspondence Grierson is equally emphatic: ‘It is really impossible to say geographically where Punjābī ends and Lahndā begins’.10 In the context of discussing the difficulty of classifying border dialects he refers to having to draw ‘a rough line’,11 but he also makes it clear that this roughness applies not just to border dialects. In a letter of 22 January 1902, he states: Of course to talk of boundary lines at all is really absurd, for languages are not divided by a sharp line, but merge into each 57

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other, and if, for the sake of definiteness, we do put down boundary lines, the language for a considerable distance on each side must be of a very indefinite character, and people will always differ as to where, exactly, the lines should be put on a map.12 Many more examples of this geographical language exist in the LSI’s volumes and correspondence. Thus, while the LSI volumes reproduce many maps, Grierson goes out of his way to point to the difficulty, even the absurdity, of drawing boundary lines between languages on maps. The printed text of the LSI casts doubts on the maps it reproduces to illustrate the boundaries between languages; it foregrounds the indefiniteness which maps cannot capture. Referring to his map of where Bengali, Oriya and Bihari meet, Grierson adds that the map ‘shows, so far as a map can show by definite lines, a state of affairs which is essentially indefinite’.13 Grierson appends to his map of the Naga group of the Tibeto-Burman family of languages the comment, ‘Boundaries, even where given, are only approximate’, and on the map of the languages and dialects of the Bodo group in the same volume he states: ‘Boundaries are only approximate’.14 In other cases, he spells out why data has had to be left off a map ‘for the sake of clearness’, as with the case of not showing Nagpuria speakers in five districts.15 The LSI is geographically and cartographically self-reflexive, and even as it uses maps, it frames these critically. Edney has discussed how the colonial state’s commitment to a cartographic ideal played a central role in British approaches to knowing India. This ideal saw maps as unproblematic and truthful statements of geographical reality.16 However, as he argues, the British mapping of India proceeded in a crisis-ridden and almost anarchic manner. From the outset, though, the LSI does not subscribe to this cartographic ideal; if anything, it hollows it out by dramatising it. Furthermore, when reflecting on the possibility of drawing boundaries between languages, Grierson notes: It must be remembered that on each side of the conventional line there is a border tract of greater or less extent, the language of which may be classed at will with one or other. Here we often find that two different observers report different conditions as existing in one and the same area, and both may be right.17

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Other examples of this include the boundary between Bengali and Oriya; ‘on each side of the border line .  .  . there is a mixed dialect which may be styled either bad Bengali or bad Oriya’.18 The LSI’s mapping exercise therefore strives to accommodate different vantage points, thereby precluding reductive notions of geographical ‘truth’. Edney has observed that the colonial state’s cartographic ideal could not be implemented; no matter how accurately or precisely the world’s structure is measured, that structure, he points out, is created through the surveyor’s and geographer’s experiential perception which is personal.19 The LSI hints at shifting geographies dependent on the location and perspective of the observer and cartographer. In the LSI there is sometimes a slippage between the difficulties of identifying the boundaries of a language, to identifying languages/ dialects themselves especially in border tracts, as we have seen. However, the LSI is not so much about fixing languages through classification, but about classifying them provisionally, just as it maps them provisionally. The open-ended nature of the LSI’s geographical approach parallels the way it foregrounds questions which it makes clear cannot always be definitively answered. Its cartographical imagination reflects its epistemological style, one that is open-ended, provisional and conscious about the limits of knowledge.20 Grierson evokes alternative visual devices to the drawing of boundaries on a map. For him ‘an ideal map of the Aryan languages of India would .  .  . present to the eye a number of colours shading off into each other’.21 Others, too, refer to shades rather than boundaries in their correspondence with Grierson. In August 1904 H.W. Orange, the director general of education in India, wrote to ask Grierson for advice ‘with the construction of school books in India in conformity with the right linguistic principles’, adding that one of the difficulties was the ‘shading of one language into another and the absence of any precise geographical limit within which one standard language is spoken’.22 ‘Shading’ is the key term Grierson uses to visualise the language map of India. He envisages India as ‘An unbroken chain of dialects, all imperceptibly shading off into each other, across India to the Arabian Sea, and thence northwards through Gujarati into Sindhi, but leaping across Lahnda, into the Dardic country of the Indus Kohistan’.23 The language of shading, then, extends to cover the whole of India as a linguistic region but it is also used in more specific instances, as for example of Halabi which ‘shades off’ into Oriya.24 Some of

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Grierson’s correspondents supplement this vocabulary with references to melting, referring to how Hindi ‘melts into’ Oriya.25 Grierson also uses images of waves and tides to depict the merging together of languages, as we have seen, for example, when he considers Lahnda/ Siraiki and Panjabi.26 In other instances, he uses the imagery of overflowing languages, referring to how Kashmiri has ‘overflowed the Pir Pantsal range into the Jammu province of the State’.27 The diction of shading, and the supplementary vocabulary of waves, tides and overflowing, is in stark contrast to the images used in geographical education in English schools during the period 1870–1944. These images enabled pupils and the public at large to visualise the condition and potential of overseas empire – the ‘red bits on the map’ were a potent symbol clearly demarcating the British Empire from other colonial empires and territories.28 The language of shading in the LSI in which boundaries bleed, as opposed to visually arresting blocks of colour with clear boundary lines, is a different way of conceptualising the world from that in imperial geography textbooks at the time. Goswami has shown how colonial and then nationalist cartography defined the ‘internal-domestic’ and ‘external-foreign’ of India. The LSI, on the other hand, breaches the boundaries between what is external and internal to India. An obvious example is its ‘Map of Eastern Europe and Western Asia illustrating Aryan Migration into India’, which goes up to the borders of France, and includes Italy, Austria and parts of Germany.29 Linkages and connections within other families of languages also transcend the boundaries of India; in the same volume, we are led from a discussion of the Munda influence on the Himalayan Tibeto-Burmese dialects to central India, Assam, the languages of Indonesia and Polynesia, and finally to the Easter Island. These ‘Austric’ languages, like the Indo-European family of languages, stretch almost half way across the globe, emanating from India in the LSI’s cartographic imagination. For Grierson, after the Aryan family, they were the most widely extended family of languages.30 The imperatives of the LSI required recourse to languages outside India too; Grierson justifies the inclusion of non-Indian languages in his Comparative Vocabulary for the sake of comparison in the case of Indo-Chinese,31 and seeks out Korean words for similar reasons.32 This leads to an acknowledgement of the proliferating nature of comparativism centred on India, as when Grierson signals his wish to insert Basque words into his Comparative Vocabulary but excludes Finnish: ‘I must stop somewhere’.33 60

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Furthermore, Grierson makes frequent cross-continental comparisons to highlight the size and importance of India as a linguistic entity. Bihar is compared to Yugoslavia, and the number of its speakers to the combined population of Norway and Sweden; the number of speakers of Rajasthani is half the population of England and Wales; the total number of speakers of Indo-European languages in India is more than half the estimated population of Europe; and the total number of speakers whose languages are surveyed corresponds to threequarters of the entire population of Europe. Further comparisons in this vein include the speakers of the Austric languages being equal to the population of Denmark, those of Tibeto-Burmese languages to half the population of Switzerland, and the speakers of all IndoEuropean languages in India are equal to the combined population of the UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Italy and Greece.34 This recurring rhetoric of numerical equivalence between different areas of the globe directs attention towards India’s pre-eminence as a linguistic entity. The assertion of India’s linguistic importance takes place in other contexts: in his negotiations about the word limit for his articles on Indian languages for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Grierson pointedly refers to how the Indo-Aryan languages in India can be compared to the Romance languages in terms of importance, and as such, should be given the same space as the latter.35 Grierson makes other intercontinental connections beyond the Indo-European family of languages. Thus, he refers to Pater W. Schmidt’s work on Austro-Asiatic languages, and his role in defining the Austric family of languages covering ‘Nearer and Further India’, Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and New Zealand.36 Grierson also refers to the possible links between some Indian languages and Australian languages connected in the so-called Lemurian continent, although he stressed the need for further materials here and that the matter was sub judice.37 In a concrete way, the LSI was an intercontinental project, as it was simultaneously located and conducted in both India and in Britain. This split location is aptly summed up by the way some official correspondence was addressed to Grierson at the ‘Linguistic Survey, Surrey’.38 Grierson’s intercontinental comparisons create a global India-centric geography in which attention is directed outside India in order to centralise it rather than to marginalise it. This is again in sharp contrast to the historical geographies of empire written between 1887 and 1925, edited by C.P. Lucas and then his successor H.B. George. The latter’s Historical Geography of the British Empire (1904) is organised according to the status of 61

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each section of empire, beginning with the British Isles, moving on to Malta, Gibraltar, Cyprus, Singapore and the Falkland Islands, then the ‘daughter nations’ (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) followed by the ‘dependencies’ India and the West Indies, and lastly the protectorates and British dominions in Africa.39 This historical geography of empire therefore encodes a strong sense of hierarchy. In contrast, Grierson’s linguistic geography disrupts this hierarchy and the LSI’s geographical imagination was more on a par with those maps which disrupted triumphalist notions of empire’s extended geography, such as Walter Crane’s equivocal Imperial Federation Map (1886).40 The LSI, then, presents a global India-centric geography in which a departure from India serves to centralise rather than to marginalise it. This is the case with the mapping of ‘Gipsy’ languages where the LSI outlines how the ‘Gipsies of Europe and their congeners of Armenia and Syria found their way to their present abodes from India, which they left from the North-West’.41 Another interesting example of this departure and then return to India occurs in Grierson’s letter on the entries for ‘Romany’ and ‘Basque’ in the 1911 Indian census: ‘How on earth did 59 Romani-chals get back to India? As for the entry of Basques, I suppose it is due to the perfervid patriotism of some Spanish or French family. I hope they are in the South of India, where they can compare their mother tongues with Dravidian!’42 Here kindred languages return to India and reconnect with it in a kind of linguistic homecoming. For the LSI, the ‘enormous dialectal continuum’ that is India43 cannot be framed by the internal versus external distinction of British imperial mapping and its later nationalist incarnations. Whereas imperial cartography defined hard boundaries to centralise the British Isles in a global imperial geography, the LSI’s geographical sensibility questioned the possibility of clear-cut boundaries in order to globalise India. Its flexible and provisional cartographic sensibility centres India as a linguistic entity in the globe. Something of this notion of India’s global linguistic prominence is also conveyed in Grierson’s endorsement of R.L. Turner’s application for the Boden chair of Sanskrit at Oxford: In his hands, Sanskrit is no longer an isolated subject of study, or one which is to be associated only with languages of the west. It occupies its proper place, both as a subject of independent study, and also as a link connecting the great languages of Europe with those now spoken in India.44 62

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This centring of India in a global geography is also reflected in the distribution lists for the LSI volumes, which braided together institutions, learned societies and universities in India, Britain, Europe and the US, as well as parts of Asia. The volumes were also sent to Indian, European and American individuals.45 The distribution list for the gramophone recordings is equally international, covering learned societies, museums, institutes, colleges and libraries in India, as well as in Britain, the US and many countries of Europe. It also included Australia.46 The LSI was simultaneously a global and an Indian intellectual event, and the distribution of its recordings and volumes enhanced the spread of the Indian word across the globe.

The LSI’s geography as a genre of writing There is another way in which the LSI distances itself from the cartographic ideal of the colonial state. Edney argues that the Great Trignometrical Survey (hereafter GTS) in India replaced India’s physical geographic structure of mountains, plains, rivers and deserts with the abstract and mathematical geographic structure of triangles.47 In this respect as a genre of writing the LSI’s ‘geographics’ forms another interesting contrast.48 Each section of the Survey’s volumes outlines the areas where a language or dialect is spoken. These passages are characterised by two features: rather than suggesting a geographer’s separation from the landscape he surveys, their style suggests its opposite, namely his immersion in it as he travels through it. Second, Grierson calls attention to India’s physical geography in different ways, thereby distancing himself from the abstractions characterising other cartographical exercises such as the GTS. For example, when describing the geographical distribution of the Kuki-Chin group of the TibetoBurmese family of languages, he adds an orographical note describing in detail the chain of mountains rising from the plains of Eastern Bengal, about 220 miles north of Calcutta, stretching eastwards. The paragraphs here give elevations, the names of interlinked hill ranges and their highest points, the location of its ridges, and other topographical details.49 This concrete detail on India’s physical landscape is replicated throughout the volumes, which far exceeds the LSI’s task of classifying languages. Occasionally this takes a dubiously reductive turn, as when the features of a language are conflated with the physical landscape: when outlining the geographical territories where Pashto is spoken, Grierson adds, ‘The rugged character of the sounds suits the nature of its speakers and of the mountains that form their home’.50 63

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The LSI’s literary geography works in other ways too. At times Grierson writes in the style of a route march, travelling through the landscape, speaking in the present continuous tense. To give two brief examples from volume 4, he writes, ‘Proceeding beyond the southern frontier of the district of Chanda we reach the territories of His Highness the Nizam’ and ‘Proceeding from Bastar towards the west we find Maria and Gondi spoken in Chanda’.51 Sometimes he uses the present tense; referring to Bengali he writes: Its western boundary runs through the District of Singhbhum, and includes the whole of the District of Manbhum. It then meets the hill country of the Santal Parganas in which languages belonging to the alien Munda family are spoken, and is forced in a north-easterly direction up to the River Ganges which it crosses near Rajmahal. Thence it runs nearly due north, following closely the course of the Mahananda (Mahanadi of the maps) River, through the Districts of Malda and Purnea, up to the Nepal frontier.52 Frequent passages such as these read as if they are taking readers on a journey with languages as a travelling companion, and here the surveyor is connecting with the landscape, not abstracting himself from it.53 A travelling point of view is evoked in other volumes too. When dealing with Lahnda/Siraiki of the Salt Range, for example, Grierson opens a perspective on the linguistic map of the region with the phrase ‘If you travel from Chakwal to Pind Dadan. . . .’54 When speaking of the way Indian languages shade into each other, he refers to a well-known saying in this country [that] the language changes every twenty miles, and such indeed is the fact. A native of India travelling that distance from his home would be sure to have some expression, some name for a common article of everyday use, or some grammatical form, which was strange to his ears.55 The LSI combines a rigorous scholarly apparatus with the process of reconnecting with the physical and linguistic landscape of India. This may also stem from Grierson moving to England in 1900, from where he wrote up the LSI and oversaw its publication. As we saw in the previous chapters, his letters from 1900 to 1930 express increasingly nostalgic views for India as well as intense expressions of friendships 64

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with Indians, especially pandits and men of other upper caste groups.56 The LSI’s literary geography, then, was partly an exercise in nostalgic reconnection.

The LSI and Indian conceptions of India Finally, it is interesting to note how the LSI’s geographical terminology uses qualified terms such as ‘Further India’, ‘Greater India’ and ‘India Proper’ as a way of dealing with the complex linguistic geography of the subcontinent. By ‘India Proper’ Grierson seemed to mean the Indian subcontinent but he appeared to exclude important regions such as Burma57 and Kashmir, as we have seen. He used the category of ‘Further India’ when referring to the Mon-Khmer family of languages, the Siamese-Chinese languages and the Tibeto-Chinese languages.58 Inevitably, when mapping India’s languages he had to take into consideration how some of these spilled over India’s frontiers – thus, in preparing the map for Balochi, Grierson was ‘met by the difficulty that the language extends beyond British into Persian Baluchistan’.59 Clearly for Grierson ‘India’ is a series of gradations, rather than a neatly bordered entity. Both India Proper and Further India blurred into ‘Greater India’ and in one letter Grierson refers to his task in this way: ‘You will understand that the comparative tables I am preparing deal with nearly every language between Japan and Syria, or rather, deal with all the languages of Greater India, and with the languages of the Countries surrounding it’.60 Grierson also corresponded with Indians and Europeans on the historical, cultural, linguistic and architectural connections between India and South East Asia that fall under the rubric of ‘Greater India’. The Kern Institute in Leiden alerted Grierson to their archaeological atlas of ‘pre-Muhammadan’ Greater India, an atlas which resonates with Grierson’s own preoccupation with the geography of ancient India, as we shall see.61 Grierson was a signatory to an appreciation of Professor F.W. Thomas’s achievements on the latter’s 70th birthday, which refers to how ‘when to-day we are comparatively well-informed about the great expansion of Indian civilization outside the borders of India, we gratefully acknowledge that this is to a very great extent due to your conscientious and never relaxing work’.62 Grierson’s use of the term overlaps with Tagore’s, whose collection Greater India (1921) appeared while the latter was on his journey through Bali, Java and Siam as part of his experience of ‘Greater India’.63 ‘Greater India’ was also evoked by other writers, including Nehru,64 and was the subject of a periodical issued by the 65

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Greater India Society in the 1930s. Here we can note the use of qualified terms for ‘India’ is indicative of the complexity of the very term ‘India’ in the LSI (for which see the next chapter). The LSI’s aim is less to fix India on a map, than to evoke it as a multiple, multilayered entity with porous boundaries, which forms a central locus in a global linguistic geography. The commitment to a cartographic ideal meant the colonial state tried to iron out the ambiguities of earlier British maps of the subcontinent.65 Grierson also refers to earlier historical confusions, for example, to how the Dutch East Indies was confused with ‘India Proper’ so that Malay and Bengali were conflated in some accounts.66 However, the LSI’s qualified use of terms for India, its cartographic scepticism, the expansion of linguistic knowledge, and its consciousness of the complexities of classifying languages leads to an awareness of the ineradicable nature of ambiguity in mapping the languages of India. This ambiguity has less to do with confusion, though, and more to with the LSI’s sense of epistemological complexity. There are overlaps between the LSI’s conception of India as a linguistic entity and other broadly conceived notions of India in a later period that were eventually marginalised by canonical nationalism. For example, in Shriman Narayan Agarwal’s Gandhian Constitution for Free India with a Foreword by Gandhi (1946) India is conceived of as a concatenation of numberless village communities; India is not presented as a nation-state with clear-cut boundaries that need to be defended. The premise of this imagining of India is ‘Violence logically leads to centralization; the essence of non-violence is decentralization’.67 In the geography of the LSI and this version of a Gandhian constitution, India’s power lies precisely in the lack of its clearly demarcated boundaries. The fact that one might be associated with the colonial state and the other with a variant of nationalism should not deter us from examining the overlaps between the two alongside their obvious differences. The LSI’s geographical imagination was also at odds with India’s official post-colonial linguistic geography, in so far as the reorganisation of India into linguistic states demarcated languages within clearcut boundaries. This also went alongside reinforcing hard and fast boundaries between the internal-domestic and the external-foreign of India. It is worth noting, though, that the State Reorganisation Committee’s Report of 1955 was guarded about language as the sole criterion for reorganisation and Nehru encouraged it to take a more balanced approach.68 The report stressed that while linguistic regionalism had a place in India, the supremacy of the Indian Union politically 66

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and economically was paramount in the event of any such reorganisation.69 For the report linguistic homogeneity could not override administrative, financial or other political considerations.70 In keeping with this, it tended to invoke Grierson to underline its points about indistinct boundaries between languages in order to argue against the demands for some language states.71 It also, in LSI fashion, stressed the provisional nature of the classification of languages and the border areas between languages as areas of ineradicable complexity.72 Thus, the LSI’s narrative of provisionality and its cartographical imagination resonated in the State Reorganization Commission’s (hereafter SRC) guarded attitude towards the demarcation of language as neatly discrete entities with clear-cut boundaries. Here the LSI was useful in its attempt to contain linguistic sub-nationalism in the aftermath of Partition.73

Conclusion Masica points out that South Asia lacks clear-cut geographical boundaries, as well as longstanding political boundaries. Hence the entire Indo-Aryan realm (except for Sinhalese) constitutes one enormous dialectal continuum, where continued contact inhibits crystallisation, and differentiated dialects influence one another.74 The LSI’s approach to mapping Indian languages and dialects reflects the reality of this dialectal continuum. It evokes the many linguistic zones of highintensity communication and contact in the subcontinent, in which the distance between languages is not always definitive.75 Although the SRC report’s guarded attitude towards the demarcation of languages overlaps with the LSI, ultimately India was re-mapped as linguistic states.76 The creation of these states necessarily assumed fixed boundaries between languages as clearly discrete entities. As we have seen, while the LSI was closely connected to the census, it also emerged as a project which was sometimes at odds with the latter. Grierson’s focus on the fictiveness of drawing boundaries between languages on maps  conflicts with one aspect of the census, in so far as the latter operates with a concept of knowledge which leads to the creation of boundaries between languages rather than to their problematisation.77 It is also worth pointing out that as a linguistic region ‘India’ conflicts with the post-partition political map of the subcontinent. The Indian languages of the Indo-Aryan family of languages are an obvious example of a group of languages that do not fit the political boundaries of the subcontinent, while languages such as Panjabi 67

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and Bengali that are geographically contiguous with each other span across the political borders of the subcontinent. Other languages that are not geographically contiguous are also related in families that span political boundaries. Brahui, spoken in the highlands of Baluchistan and contiguous parts of Sind in present-day Pakistan, with speakers in contiguous parts of Iran and Afghanistan, is related to the Dravidian language family of South India. This language, described as ‘the most-interest exciting of the languages of the Dravidian family’,78 is a good example of how linguistic maps do not fit well with post-colonial political maps. India as a linguistic region does not fit with India and Pakistan as political entities created out of competing nationalisms. Historians have rightly cautioned us against ‘methodological nationalism’79 and have argued for the need to bring back into the historical picture multiple and alternative meanings of ‘nation’ that have fallen by the wayside.80 The LSI was concerned with how speakers of languages moved across the land masses of India and beyond, and as such its flexibly conceived geography can also accommodate diasporic languages and their histories in wider expanses of the globe (such as the India Ocean World), far better than, say, the SRC’s linguistic geography; indeed Rajend Mesthrie has drawn upon Grierson in discussing what he calls ‘languages in indenture’ in South Africa.81 We also need to consider multiple and potentially productive meanings of the term ‘India’ in what might conventionally be called ‘colonial discourse’ that have been marginalised by the way the nation-states of the subcontinent were ultimately defined, without ipso facto dismissing these as ‘colonialist’. Ironically, the flexibly conceived geography of the LSI, and its expansively and productively ambiguous use of the term ‘India’, may be more in keeping with India’s ‘great cosmopolitan past’82 than current nationalist ideologies. In the following chapters, we will see how Grierson’s identification with India amounted to a form of cultural nationalism in some forums. His commitment to a Greater India is an instance of this. First, though, we will consider another narrative in the LSI which is at odds with processes of regionally based linguistic crystallisation, and this is its approach to the naming of Indian languages and dialects.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Javed Majeed, ‘“A State of Affairs Which Is Essentially Indefinite”: The Linguistic Survey of India

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

(1894–1927)’, African Studies, August 2015, 74 (2): 221–234, © Taylor & Francis Group Ltd on behalf of the University of Witwatersrand, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd. Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 2, 15–16. Edney, Mapping an Empire; Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Pt. 1: Introductory, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publications Branch, 1927, pp. 30–31. Ibid., pp. 158, 168. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of the Bengali and Assamese Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Press, 1903, p. 18. Ibid., pp. 158, 168. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Western Hindī and Pañjābī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, pp. 607–608. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Dardic or Piśācha Languages (including Kāshmīrī), Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1919, p. 507. EUR 223/306, Grierson to A.C. Woolner, 14. 3. 1919, European Manuscripts, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, London, hereafter EUR only. Linguistic Survey Files S/1/14/3, Grierson to the Provincial Superintendent of Bengal, 19. 5. 1902, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, hereafter LS Files. LS Files S/1/14/5, Grierson to Superintendent of Census Operations, NWP and Oudh, 22. 1. 1902. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 106. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bodo, Nāgā, and Kachin Groups, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, maps facing p. 193 and p. 1. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bihārī and Oṛiyā Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, p. 166 and see map facing p. 140. Edney, Mapping an Empire, p. 23. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 30–31. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 12, 105. Edney, Mapping an Empire, p. 95. For this epistemological style, see Ch. 7 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 3. LS Files S/1/2/10, H.W. Orange to Grierson, August 1904. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 141.

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24 Ibid., p. 141. 25 EUR 223/300, Assistant Director of Schools, Chota Nagpur Division Ranchi to Grierson, 13. 10. 1887. 26 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 743. 27 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 233. 28 Teresa Ploszajska, Geographical Education, Empire and Citizenship: Geographical Teaching and Learning in English Schools, 1870–1944, London: Historical Geography Research Group, 1999. 29 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 95. 30 Ibid., pp. 15, 59. 31 LS Files, S/1/1/15, Grierson to Director De L’Ecole Française d’EtrêmeOrient, 12. 8. 1918. 32 Ibid., Grierson to Reverend Mark H. Trollope, n.d. 33 Ibid., Grierson to W.J. Edmonton Scott, 11. 3. 1920. 34 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 146, 170, 28. 35 EUR 223/237, Grierson to Hugh Chisholm, 30. 6. 1906. 36 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 14–15, 32–38. Pater Schmidt was the first to attempt to establish a family of Australian languages. See also Clare Bowern and Harold Koch, Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004, pp. 18–25. 37 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 82–83. 38 LS Files S/1/14/3, Grierson to Edward Gait, 1. 1. 1903. 39 Robin A. Butlin, ‘Historical geographies of the British Empire, c. 1887– 1925’, in Morag Bell, Robin Butlin, and Michael Heffernan (eds), Geography and Imperialism 1820–1940, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 151–188. 40 David Blayney Brown, ‘Mapping and Marking’, in Alison Smith, David Blayney Brown, and Carol Jacobi (eds), Artist and Empire, London: Tate Enterprises, 2015, p. 16. 41 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 109. 42 LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to the Superintendent of the 1911 Census, 4. 1. 1913. 43 Colin P. Masica, The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 25. 44 EUR 223/332, Grierson to R.L. Turner, 11. 12. 1926. 45 For some examples of Indians who received the volumes, see LS Files S/1/13/3, V. Venkayya, Government Epigraphist, Ootacamund to Grierson, 25. 4. 1906; S/1/2/5, Grierson to Babu Gauri Kant Roy, 29. 4. 1910; S/1/2/8, Grierson to Superintendent Government Printing, Calcutta, 20. 10. 1921 & 20. 5. 1924, adding S.K. Chatterji and Pandit Mahabir Prasad Dvivedi to the list. For individuals and institutions in Europe and the US, see Grierson’s letters to the Superintendent in this file, from 10. 11. 1921 to 28. 9. 1926, putting the names of R.L. Turner, Georg Morgenstierne, Dr. Paul Tedesco and Prof. Franklin Egerton on the distribution list. See also S/1/2/1, A. Williams to Superintendent, Government Printing, India, Calcutta, 1–2. 6. 1903, attaching ‘Statement showing the number of copies of the Linguistic Survey Volumes required by the Government of India, Local Governments and Administrations for distribution’.

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46 LS Files S/1/7/1, J.B. Taylor, Under Secretary to Government of CP to Grierson, 26. 10. 1920, attaching list by R.B. Hiralal for the distribution of 98 copies of the transcriptions and translations of the gramophone recordings of languages in the Central Provinces. The Indian institutions include the State Museum of Cochin, Oriental College Library Lahore, Oriental and Mixed Library Bangalore, Museum Library Nagpur, Bhandarkar Oriental Institute Poona, Robertson College Jubbulpore, Morris College Nagpur, Asiatic Society of Bengal Calcutta, the Bombay branch of the RAS, Imperial Library Calcutta, and the Imperial Museum Calcutta, amongst others. 47 Edney, Mapping an Empire, p. 95. 48 For geographical texts as a genre of writing see Sheila Hones, ‘Text as It Happens: Literary Geography’, Geography Compass, 2008, 2 (5): 1301–1317. 49 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, pp. 1–2. 50 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 105–106. 51 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 4: Muṇḍā and Dravidian Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1906, pp. 546, 535. 52 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 12. 53 For other examples, see George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 10: Specimens of Languages of the Eranian Family, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1921, pp. 327–328; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 3: The Bhīl Languages, including Khāndēśí, Banjārī or Labhānī, Bahrūpiā, & c., Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1907, pp. 7–9. 54 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 433. 55 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 3. 56 See Ch. 6. 57 For Grierson’s implied distinction between India Proper and Indo-China, see EUR 223/302, Grierson to Arthur E. Olley, Literary Editor, The Evening News, Associated Newspapers Ltd., 21. 7. 1928; EUR 223/328, Grierson to L.F. Taylor, 15. 4. 1936 & 22. 10. 1937, for ‘India Proper’ excluding Burma. For India Proper and Tibet, see George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 4: Specimens of the Pahārī languages and Gujurī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, p. 669, and for Nepal, Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 56. 58 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 10; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 32ff, 41–42, 59. See also LS Files S/1/1/22, Grierson to Pater W. Schmidt, 22. 9. 1923. 59 LS Files S/1/15/1, Grierson to the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, 25. 2. 1918. 60 LS Files, S/1/1/15, Grierson to L. Milne, 20. 3. 1918. 61 EUR 223/303, J. Ph. Vogel to Grierson, 4. 10. 1934. 62 EUR 223/330, F.W. Thomas to Grierson, 22. 3. 1937. 63 Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, Ch. 7. 64 Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, 1946, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 200–210. 65 Edney, Mapping an Empire, pp. 23–25. 66 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 4.

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67 Shriman N. Agarwal, Gandhian Constitution for Free India: Foreword by Mahatma Gandhi, Allahabad: Kitabistan, 1946, p. 38, see also Ch. 13. 68 Louise Tillin, Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins, London: Hurst & Company, 2013, pp. 31, 34, 42. 69 Report of the State Reorganization Commission, New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1955, p. 236, hereafter SRC Report. 70 Ibid., pp. 39, 40, 43, Ch. 5, Ch. 6. For how there were clear deviations from the linguistic principle in the reorganisation of boundaries, see Joseph E. Schwartzberg, ‘Factors in the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States’, in Paul Wallace (ed), Region and Nation in India, New Delhi: IBH Publishing, 1985, pp. 171–172. 71 SRC Report, pp. 141–145 on Panjab. 72 SRC Report, pp. 175–176, 180. 73 For this sub-nationalism, see Lisa Mitchell, Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Makings of a Mother Tongue, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009, Ch. 6. 74 Masica, Indo-Aryan Languages, pp. 23–25; for a definition of language and dialect, see Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004, pp. 186–188, 216. 75 B.P. Mahapatra, ‘The Written Languages of India’, in B.P. Mahapatra and G.D. McConnell (eds), The Written Languages of the World: A Survey of the Degree and Modes of Use, Vol. 2, Pt. 1: Constitutional Languages, Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989, p. xxxi. 76 Tillin, Remapping India, for an overview of this. 77 Richard Burghart, ‘A Quarrel in the Language Family: Agency and Representations of Speech in Mithila’, Modern Asian Studies, 1993, 27 (4): 200. For the LSI and the Census, see Ch. 2 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 78 Anwar S. Dil (ed), Language and Linguistic Area: Essays by Murray B. Emeneau, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980, p. 315. 79 Goswami, Producing India. 80 Shruti Kapila, ‘Preface to “An Intellectual History for India”’, Modern Intellectual History, 2007, 4 (1): 1–6. 81 Rajend Mesthrie, Language in Indenture: A Sociolinguistic History of Bhojpuri-Hindi in South Africa, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1992, pp. 79–81. 82 Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, p. 575.

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3 ‘DOUBLE NAMES’ 1

There is another strand in the LSI which counters its regionalising of linguistic identity formation. A striking feature of the LSI is its grappling with the multiple names for India’s languages and dialects. In many ways, its first task was to cross-identify the different names it received for each language and dialect in India. However, this chapter shows that the Survey does not reify these names; instead it goes out of its way to call attention to their plenitude. Rather than fixing languages through the processes of naming, it dramatises the difficulties of doing so. As such, its naming practices reflected its dominant epistemological idiom, which is one of openness to uncertainty and complexity, but it also points to its sensitivity to an alternative linguistic ecology in existence in India at the time, in which languages and dialects were not frozen into reified entities.

‘Double names’ For the LSI, one of India’s basic features as a linguistic situation is its plenitude of names for different languages and dialects. A letter Grierson wrote to H.H. Risley on 30 December 1900 captures this well. In relation to the alphabetical list of names for the ‘Aryan’ and TibetoBurman languages that he was compiling, Grierson refers to over 1,000 names. He states that the great majority of these are ‘double names or sub-varieties not worth classifying, but I thought it best to insert every possible name I could scrape in’.2 As he says in another letter, ‘the alphabetical list contains every name, right or wrong, which I have met anywhere, with an attempt to identify them’.3 For Morgan Webb the planned Linguistic Survey of Burma would have a similar approach; at the initial stage the ‘duplication of the same language under different local names does not matter’, ‘it should rather be welcomed’ since the 73

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object is ‘to give the widest and most comprehensive list of the languages and dialects spoken that can possibly be made’.4 Similarly for Grierson, although these names exceed the task of the classification of Indian languages, and may even be irrelevant to that classification, every possible name still had to be ‘scraped in’. Grierson describes how in the forms returned by district officers and political agents of the names of every language spoken in their district ‘the same form of speech was reported under different names’ or a few names were returned many times over from different provinces.5 Grierson therefore had to decide whether one dialect lay behind the multiple names returned by officials, or whether the multiple names referred to multiple dialects. The examination of specimens revealed that some dialect names referred to a dialect that was ‘a mere fiction’, while some dialects returned under one name were in fact separate dialects.6 Identical specimens were even returned under different dialect names, or dialects were returned under different names which turned out to be the same dialect when the specimens were examined.7 Names of dialects were also confused in the gramophone recordings.8 Furthermore, Grierson had to disentangle occupational and caste-names from dialect names.9 Additional problems were created by dialect names being ‘distorted almost beyond recognition’ as they made their way through several levels of administration,10 with different transliterations of the same name producing multiple names.11 In a note on the Bengal List of Languages sent to him in 1901, Grierson calls attention to languages and dialects that are not included in the List, dialects entered on the List that do not exist and problems in the transliteration of the names.12 This sort of problem went beyond the itemising of languages. In his 1883 Emigration Report, Grierson notes how on the registration forms towns are entered which do not exist.13 Several levels of the colonial administration grappled with and reflected on the complexities of names alongside Grierson.14 The 1920 circular from the superintendent of the Burmese census to district officers contains complex and convoluted instructions on producing the list of language names. The circular advises enumerators to write ‘unknown’ rather than supplying dialect names ‘out of their imagination’, and warns against recording place-names and nick-names as the different names of the same dialect in different villages. What is aimed for is ‘approximation’ rather than detailed fidelity to ground-level reality. It also advised enumerators not to simply record what local people say about ‘race’ and language otherwise there will be a separate name collected for these from every village: ‘this would give a useless 74

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record; division must not be pushed so far’. At the same time, ‘all really distinct differences of race and language should be recognised’. How officers and enumerators who were not linguistically trained were to recognise these linguistic differences is not clear.15

Grierson’s index of language names Grierson pointed out that ‘one difficulty which always arises in a census is the multiplicity of names’. He detailed some of these difficulties in his report on the 1901 census. The same language ‘may be called by many names in different localities, and there is always the risk of variety of nomenclature leading to wrong classification’. In an attempt to resolve these difficulties, Grierson sent the Education Department of the Indian government an index of all the language names in the subcontinent, with a suggestion that it be printed for the use of census officials.16 Two of these indexes were published separately in 1919 and 1920.17 An Index of Language-Names also formed appendix 3 of volume 1 of the Survey.18 The main task of this index was to crossidentify some 2,620 language names and dialects as multiples of the same linguistic entity. Whereas tabulated indexes generally formulate knowledge into comprehensive schemes by clarifying, categorising and cross-referring their subjects, the LSI’s index dramatises the proliferation of language names as a process. This is evident in several ways. First, there are many names that bear no resemblance to each other but are cross-referred to one another as the names of one linguistic entity. Yet the one language behind these is itself entered as doubly or triply named. For example, the entry for ‘Arniyā’ is glossed as ‘another name for Khōwār or Chitrālī’. The entry for the latter has a double name, ‘Chitrālī or Chatrārī’, and is glossed as another name for ‘Khōwār’. ‘Khōwār’ is entered as a triply named language, that is, as ‘Khōwār, Chitrālī, or Arniyā’. The branch of language it is ascribed to also has a double name; it is referred to as the ‘Dardic or Piśācha’ branch of Aryan languages.19 There are numerous other examples of doubly or triply named languages as the master entries in this index. One language even has a fivefold name. Here the entry reads, ‘Mo-s’o, Mosso, Muhsö, Musu, or Mussu’. In the remarks glossing this entry, a sixth name is added, namely ‘Lahu’, which is the name the speakers use to refer to themselves.20 At other points in the index, names nest within other names, as the sub-dialects of dialects that are themselves doubly named (see the entry for ‘Bērārī’).21 75

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Thus, the LSI’s index does not stabilise language names, instead it proliferates them. The LSI opens a space for the self-dividing nature of names. Even where there is one language name entered as a master entry, this divides into multiple names. The entry for ‘Jaṭkī’, for example, has nine sub-entries, each referring to other language or dialect names, with some of the sub-entries themselves containing double names or language names that are a compound of two names.22 Even the word name is broken and generates other names. The index refers to ‘nick-names’, ‘by-names’ and ‘ghost-names’.23 Name is itself unstable and generates other versions of itself. The basic situation the Linguistic Survey deals with, then, is the plenitude of different names for each language and dialect in India. In many ways, the LSI is an encyclopaedia of and treatise on the names of Indian languages and dialects. It weaves a path through the welter of names it uncovers and it intervenes in different ways in the vast field of names that is India. Virtually all the sections on each dialect or language contain a discussion of its name or names. As in the case of the index, in the volumes Grierson calls attention to multiple names for languages and dialects as well as of tribes.24 One good example of this is ‘Ao’ for which nine other names are mentioned.25 There are also examples of nick-names.26 Thirty-nine names were reported for dialects of Marathi, the majority of which were forms of standard speech or real dialects, pronounced in some distinctive way according to caste or locality.27 Some sections have multiple names in their headings, suggesting that in the end Grierson cannot decide on one name alone for the dialect in question.28 A particularly good example is the specimen headings ‘Tibeto-Burman Family. Bara or Bodo Group. Garo. Atong or Kuchu Dialect’ and ‘Tibeto-Burman Family. Bara or Bodo Group. Bara, Bodo, or Plains Kachari. Mes or Mech Dialect’.29 Even when Grierson has disentangled different names from each other to identify the dialect in question, he sometimes prefaces this with phrases like ‘whatever its name’, ‘whatever it is called’, or ‘under whatever name it is referred to’, again suggesting he cannot decide finally on a name for the dialects in question.30 In one case, when two identical specimens are returned under different names, Grierson settles on a hyphenated name rather than opting for one alone.31

Defamiliarising language names The published volumes and Grierson’s correspondence, then, testify to the LSI’s grappling with language and dialect names as the first 76

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stage of its production of knowledge, and it keeps multiple names of languages and dialects in play in its index, in some section headings and otherwise. In so far as fixing the name of a language is part of reifying it, in the LSI languages are not reified through the fixing of names because multiple naming possibilities are kept in view. This extends to better-known language names as well. The gloss for the entry of Hindi is a swirl of names, referring to the ‘Hindūstānī’ dialect of Western Hindi, ‘a name given to Kanaujī’, ‘a local name for Mūltānī’ and ‘a local name for Lahndā’. In addition, there are the sub-entries ‘Hindī or Khontai’  – glossed as ‘a name given in Malda (Bengal) to Eastern Magahī’ – and ‘Hindī of Nagpur’, which asks the reader to consult the entry for Nagpuri Hindi.32 Similarly, Telegu appears under 10 other names in the index (as ‘Baḍaga’, ‘Badages’, ‘Badlak’, ‘Baytakammara’, ‘Gentoo’, ‘Golla’, ‘Gōlarī’, ‘Kāliṅgī’, ‘Telinga’ and ‘Yānādi’).33 The entry for Farsi refers to Persian, to Urdu when it is full of Persian words and ‘in contradistinction to the current colloquial, [to] literary Hindī’. The Sasis also use the term ‘for their secret argot’.34 Thus, the LSI defamiliarises well-known language names by referring to their multiple referents. Grierson’s extensive comments on well-known names like ‘Bengali’ is instructive in this context. Here Grierson opens the name up to diverse readings and histories. He notes what its speakers call it, how the territory it signifies has a colloquial and a literary name, and what one of these names means in Sanskrit. He reflects on ‘Bengali’ as an English word, speculating on its possible journey from southern India via Arabic into Persian and Hindustani, and then into English. He comments on how ‘Bangālī’ has been borrowed by some English speakers under ‘the mistaken idea of correct spelling’. He likens this to an Englishman borrowing the French ‘Allemagne’ for ‘Germany’. He justifies his use of the English word ‘Bengali’ and explains why he does not use diacritics to indicate the stress on the second syllable.35 In the ‘Addenda Majora’ to volume 1, part 1, there is another disquisition on the name, tracing its history and further multiple names for the country and their shifting usages, depending on the location and the origin of the speaker in Bengal.36 Grierson signals his intention to continue to use both ‘Bengali’ and ‘Banga-Bhâshā’ in titles and headings. Hence, the relevant chapter heading in volume 5, part 1 uses both names. Grierson, then, foregrounds the complexities and difficulties of making decisions about language names. His use of names is self-reflexive, and he tries to justify his naming practices. Rather than fixing the name ‘Bengali’ and stabilising it, he draws attention to its multiple possibilities and divergent histories. For Grierson at least, Indian 77

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language names are sites of shifting coalescences of possibilities not fixed demarcations. Here we can note the extremity of the analogy of using the hybridised Hindustani term ‘Bangālī’ with an Englishman borrowing the French word ‘Allemagne’ for ‘Germany’. It is as though Grierson wants to intensify the distances names travel across languages, highlighting them as processes of movement rather than fixed designations. Familiar names are evoked through the prism of the ‘foreign’, and names in the LSI are multiple, shifting and transmuting. Thus, the LSI does not so much reify and fix language names as track them in their various incarnations.37 This is also the case with the name ‘Assamese’. Grierson begins with noting ‘Assamese’ is an English word which is a corruption of the Bengali name for the tract where the language is spoken; that is, he begins by framing the name in terms of its non-native appropriations. He then gives the native selfdesignation, marking the vowels in both syllables short to indicate the pronunciation, and notes the popular but incorrect view of its derivation from ‘Ahom’. Grierson gives what the correct form would be if indeed it were to be derived from ‘Ahom’. He notes the name’s spelling in the native script, reproducing it in that script in the text, while also noting its irregular pronunciation which he renders as ‘Ošomiyā’. He comments on how the word ‘Asamese’, while it would be in line with the native designation ‘Asam’, would be to ‘concoct a hybrid word half Bengali and half English’.38 Here then Grierson flirts with a hybrid form which is then dismissed, points to an incorrect etymology while giving the form it would have been had it been derived in accordance with that incorrect etymology, and reproduces the native spelling in its script while marking it as an irregular pronunciation. Thus, even when Grierson chooses a name of a language for the LSI, the choice cannot be divorced from the vast hinterland of choices, semi-choices, possible hybridisations and fake etymologies which swirl around it.

The LSI and Indian naming practices In calling attention to and keeping multiple names in play, the LSI also reinscribes local Indian nomenclature for dialects and languages. For instance, Grierson lists how the same tribe uses different names for its speech.39 He also points to the multiple names used by speakers to refer to their dialect or language.40 He lists the ‘local denominations of slightly varying forms of Khandesi’ in the Satpuras, and he refers to the ‘local names for the border dialects where Gondi merges into Telugu’.41 In some cases a ‘double nomenclature’ illustrates the 78

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composite nature of mixed languages, while ‘special names’ given to dialects of Eastern Marwari by its speakers reflects the varying proportions of Jaipuri in the dialects from district to district.42 The nomadism of some tribes is reflected in their multiple self-designations.43 Thus, at times Grierson wants to show how local designations are in keeping with the nature of the dialects in question. The LSI’s naming practices therefore resonate with and echo local nomenclature. Occasionally Grierson retains multiple names in ‘deference to the traditional usage, though they in reality connote the same form of speech’ or adopts a name in a similar note of deference.44 At other times he abandons a term the population of an area uses, using another term instead ‘which, while not familiar to the Natives, has the advantage of being definite’.45 However, Grierson remains in dialogue with native names irrespective of whether he adopts some of them and moves away from others. His engagement with native names extends to abandoning names which wound ‘local susceptibilities’ or have possible offensive connotations, such as Lepcha and Pisacha. In the case of the latter’s replacement by Dardic, one of Grierson’s correspondents, Aurel Stein, hoped that the term would have some sort of grounding in genuine indigenous usage.46 In staying in dialogue with native names, Grierson also relativises English designations for Indian languages. This is the case with his reflections on Bengali and Assamese as we have seen earlier. Similarly, he notes that the term ‘Kāshmīrī’ is not used by the people of Kashmir themselves; instead their self-designation indicates how their language belongs to the Dardic group.47 Grierson notes some general problems arising from naming Indian languages and dialects in English. In a letter of 1901 he points out that in English there is a tendency to use the same word to designate the nation and the language . . . we talk of ‘English’ more often than of ‘English-language’, so for ‘Bengali’, ‘Hindi’, ‘French’ and so on. The name of the tribe always connotes its language also, without any addition. This is not always the case in Indian names for languages, where the terms do not always double up as terms of ethnicity.48 Grierson also relativises his own naming practices in relation to Indian ones. Writing in the early 1900s Grierson noted that Indians, when talking of the languages of the Ganges Valley, mention dialects such as Braj Bhasha, Kanauji, Bhojpuri and so on, just as in Rajputana they speak of Marwari, Mewari, Jaipuri etc.: ‘they have no word for 79

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the general language unless, in the case of the Ganges Valley, they have come under European influence, and talk of Hindi’. The terms ‘Hindi’ and ‘Rajasthani’ are ‘concocted’; the former was ‘invented by foreigners to express the numerous dialects spoken in the Central Gangetic Valley’. The dialects of Rajputana are connected to each other, and distinct from Hindi, so ‘merely as a matter of convenience’ Grierson ‘grouped them under one name’. But the inhabitants of Rajputana themselves do not recognise any such language called ‘Rajasthani’.49 In another letter Grierson refers to objections made against the term ‘Rajasthani’ because there is no native name for the group of dialects in the region, but for the ‘purposes of grouping a name had therefore to be invented, and, in consultation with the best scholars I knew of, I invented “Rajasthani”’. The word ‘Hindi’ was originally on the same footing with ‘Rajasthani’, but now it is well known to natives. In general, ‘native village philology does not go further than the dialect name, and hardly ever grasps the larger idea of a language, formed of groups of dialects, at all’. The names of languages such as Bihari, Eastern Hindi and Western Hindi, are ‘necessarily the invention of Europeans’ because ‘natives . . . as a rule distinguish between dialect and dialect, and not between languages and languages’.50 On one level, the LSI’s detailed focus on dialect names and the minute differences between dialects and sub-dialects resonates with this picture of Indian’s radically localised linguistic perspectives. At the same time, Grierson uses organising categories like Hindi and Rajasthani, ‘concocted’ and ‘invented’ by Europeans for the purposes of philological classification in accordance with the protocols of linguistics as a discipline. The terms ‘concoction’ and ‘invention’ highlight the artifices of European names in relation to ground-level naming practices in India. Some British officials, though, experienced a sense of dissonance between such ‘concoctions’ and Indian speakers’ self-designations, and chose to stay close to the latter. For instance, Sir Denys de S. Bray apologised to Grierson for his use of the abbreviation ‘Jaṭ’, but ‘Jaṭki’ was the name given by Brahuis themselves, and was ‘so familiar to me on the spot that I have found myself unable to absorb your own more accurate nomenclature’.51 There are other examples of this practice of giving both European and native names for some languages. For example, Grierson gives both the European name and Nepalese inhabitants’ names for KhasKura, in the end opting for the latter as the name employed by those who speak it in British India.52 In the case of Jaipuri/Dhundhari, Grierson alerts his readers to names coined by Europeans alongside listing 80

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the names employed by natives for their languages.53 When he opts for European or English names for Indian languages, he does so because they have ‘obtained currency in English’ and it would be ‘an affectation of purism’ to change them in these circumstances.54 Conversely, he points out when a term Europeans use, as opposed to Indian speakers’ multiple terms, is misleading.55 As in the case of Rajasthani, his own naming interventions are sometimes represented in terms of convenience; for example, he uses Bhattiana because ‘some general name is required to include all the varieties of this mixed dialect’. He also adopts Kashmiri officials’ name for Chibhali as an ‘appropriate enough name’ since ‘none of the local names applies sufficiently to all the speakers’.56 For the same reason, he retains the old and conventional term Kuki-Chin for a group of dialects, rather than adopting the better name Meithei-Chin – here Grierson opts for the conservativism of convention to avoid confusion, especially as ‘there is no indigenous name covering them all as a whole’.57 In one instance Grierson initiates a resurgence of Indian names against colonial texts of Indology. A.A. Macdonell contacted Grierson about a chapter on Indian languages for his book India’s Past: A Survey of Her Literatures, Religions, Languages, and Antiquities (1927). Grierson was at pains to reinvigorate Indian names against Macdonell’s English renderings. Thus, Bengali ‘is an English word; the native name is “Baṅglā” or “Baṅga-bhāṣā”; people themselves call the language of Kashmir “Kāshirü” and Indians use the term “Lahndē dī bōlī”’.58 Here Grierson foregrounds Indian names against their Anglocentric renderings by Macdonell. To a certain extent, the index of language names in the LSI, discussed earlier, also performs the same task, unveiling Indian nomenclature behind the screen of English names. Grierson, then, dramatised the movement of names across multiple domains in English and Indian languages without fixing them. At times, he foregrounds them against English renderings. The LSI’s openness to multiple names partly reflects its sensitivity to and awareness of Indian naming practices. Rather than trying to close these off, it is in dialogue with them, and Grierson’s deployment of names is marked by self-reflexivity – this includes relativising English names and some of his own terms. Some of Grierson’s interlocutors, like Sir Aurel Stein, were equally self-reflexive about naming practices, discussing the historical, ethnic, geographical and linguistic divisions referred to in language names, and the possibilities of settling on language names which suggest the distinctness of languages while remaining ‘non-committal’ about their discreteness.59 81

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Conclusion At one point Grierson describes the variety of names for a tribe as ‘bewildering’, and for the Konkan standard dialect he comes across ‘a bewildering mass of names, partly denoting locality and partly caste or occupation’.60 However, the LSI is dense with references to the multiple names for Indian languages. Its pages on Koda or Kora bristle with the multiple variants of its names, their range across locations, how they are pronounced by other groups of Indians, and how they are confounded with other names and therefore other tribes as well. This, alongside with the names of its sub-castes and its locations, far exceeds any need for philological demonstration of the dialects in question. Another example is its iteration of the many names for a Naga tribe.61 David Lelyveld has stressed that the Survey found it difficult to name languages because Indians had linguistic repertoires which varied even within the same household.62 India is a site for a multiplicity of names which is always kept in view by the LSI, even as it foregrounds some names over others. For it, India refers to a fertile space of multiple naming, and its index keeps this situation in play rather than closing it off. Moreover, even the name ‘India’ itself cannot exist as a stable proper name for the Survey. In a letter to Risley, Grierson refers to the multiple names for India and its inhabitants, such as ‘Sindhu’, ‘Saindhava’, ‘Hindava’ and ‘Hindustan’. In another letter to Risley, Grierson discusses whether Hindustan/Hindostan should be pronounced as ‘Hindostān’ to rhyme with ‘Bostān’ or whether it ought to be ‘Hindūstān’.63 Here a single name for India can be sounded differently, and its articulation reproduces the instability of names for India. Peter Mühlhäusler makes some key points about the process of naming languages in the Pacific region. He argues the identification of languages and their subsequent naming ‘can constitute a very serious trespass on the linguistic ecology of an area’. He adds that ‘the very view that languages can be counted and named may be part of the disease which has affected the linguistic ecology’ of Pacific.64 As we have seen the basic situation the Linguistic Survey deals with is the plenitude of different names for each language and dialect in India. Grierson’s power to name, unevenly exercised by him, is rarely an imposing one and the Survey was more an intervention in the field of names rather than a project to fix names. As such, it was at odds with any project to reify languages and dialects in India through the fixing of names. In contrast, names of languages in India today tend towards

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the singular. Mahapatra, for instance, lists very few names for each language he discusses.65 The LSI’s interaction with and reinscription of Indian nomenclature evokes a linguistic ecology in which names and the languages and dialects they denote are not yet reified entities. This is also reflected in Grierson’s attitude to mapping Indian languages, where he stresses the boundaries between languages cannot be easily defined. Thus, while there is one strand in the LSI which participates in and even encourages the regional crystallisation of languages in the subcontinent, there are countervailing narratives which are at odds with this regionalising strand. As we have seen, even the name ‘India’ is not stable in the LSI. This, then, leads to a larger question: how does Grierson relate to the category ‘India’ and how does he define ‘Indian’? In the following chapters, I discuss how Grierson advocates his views on what constitutes being Indian and the depth of his sense of identification with India.

Notes 1 This chapter is a substantially revised version of parts of my essay ‘What’s in a (Proper) Name? Particulars, Individuals, and Authorship in the Linguistic Survey of India and Colonial Scholarship’, in Daud Ali and Indra Sengupta (eds), Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India, New York: Palgrave, 2011, pp. 19–39. 2 Linguistic Survey Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to H.H. Risley, 30. 12. 1900, Asia and Africa Collections, the British Library, London, hereafter LS Files. 3 LS Files S/1/14/3, Grierson to Edward Gait, 9. 4. 1902. 4 European Manuscripts, EUR 223/221, C. Morgan Webb, Officiating Secretary to Government of Burma to Secretary to Government of India, Dept. of Education, 21. 9. 1914, Asia and Africa Collections, the British Library, London, hereafter EUR only. 5 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Pt. 1: Introductory, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publications Branch, 1927, p. 18. 6 As with the Koshti dialect, see George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Western Hindī and Pañjābī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, p. 7; see George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 7: Indo-Aryan Family (Southern Group), Specimens of the Marāṭhī Language, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1905, for the Mahari dialect of Bastar pp. 331, 350; for a dialect that is ‘a mere fiction’ see ibid., pp. 295, 291, 262–263. See also LS Files S/1/14/4, Grierson to Superintendent of Census Operations, Assam, 25. 3. 1901, referring to Hajong which ‘does not exist’. 7 As in the case of Kanauji, Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 383, and local forms of Marathi, Grierson, LSI, Vol. 7, p. 63. See also George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 4: Muṇḍā and Dravidian Languages,

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8 9

10 11 12 13 14

15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24

Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1906, pp. 528, 541 on Gond dialects, pp. 385, 394 on the specimens for so-called Golari and Holiya. EUR 223/243, Grierson to Secretary, High Commission for India, 30. 1. 1930. LS Files S/1/14/7, CP Census Superintendent to Grierson, 13. 12. 1901, ‘Note on certain dialects not found in the indexes’, on Kuda not being a separate dialect but an occupational term; S/1/14/3, Grierson to Edward Gait 2. 6. 1901 on caste-names returned as separate dialects in Orissa when these dialects all turned out to be Oriya. See George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Rājasthānī and Gujarātī, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing India, 1908, p. 326; and Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 74 on caste and place-names returned as dialect names. LS Files S/1/14/3, Gait to Grierson, 14. 10. 1901. LS Files S/1/1/11, R. Kilgour to Grierson, 7. 6. 1928 on Volvi/Walui for a Bhil dialect. LS Files S/1/14/3, Grierson to Gait, 17/6/01. India Office Records, IOR P. 2058, Major Pitcher and Mr. Grierson’s Inquiry into Emigration, August 1883, diary entry for 26. 1. 1883. LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to Risley, 8. 11. 1900 referring to terms like Gondi and Kharia. Grierson notes that what terms mean ‘in any particular case must be decided by the Prov. Supt. of Census in consultation, if necessary, with the District Officer’. LS Files S/1/13/2, S. Grantham to G, 17. 8. 1920, attaching Census Circular No. 4 of 1920–1921, 31. 7. 1920, S. Grantham to Deputy Commissioners, 22. 10. 1920 & 1. 1. 1920; see also Census Circular No. 12 of 1920–1921, 2. 10. 1920 in this file and L.F. Taylor to Grierson, 27. 9. 1920 on how some of the language names recorded in the census were in fact village names. LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to J.T. Marten, 8. 4. 1920; Prabodh B. Pandit, ‘The Linguistic Survey of India: Perspectives on Language Use’, in Sirarpi Ohannessian, Charles A. Ferguson, and Edgar C. Polomé (eds), Language Surveys in Developing Nations, Centre for Applied Linguistics, 1975, p. 74. These were The Linguistic Survey of India and the Census of 1911 (Calcutta, 1919) and Index of Language-Names (Calcutta, 1920). Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 425–517. Ibid., pp. 428, 443, 467. Ibid., p. 485. Ibid., p. 434. Ibid., p. 490. For an example of a ‘nickname’, see the entry to ‘Baughshè’; for a ‘byname’, see ‘Gīrvānam’; and for a ‘ghost-name’, see the entry ‘Taughlu or Tunghlu’, whose gloss reads, ‘a ghost-name of a non-existent language, founded on a misprint or misreading of the name “Taungthu”’, ibid., pp. 433, 541, 508. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 4: Specimens of the Pahārī languages and Gujurī,

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25

26

27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35

Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, p. 881 on the different names for Bhadrawahi. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 3: The Bhīl Languages, including Khāndēśí, Banjārī or Labhānī, Bahrūpiā, & c., Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1907, pp. 51, 47 on the multiple names for Bhili, 203 on Khandeshi. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8: Indo-Aryan Family (North-Western Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Sindhī and Lahndā, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing India, 1919, pp. 450, 404, 398 on the names for Hindko, 329 on Bhawalpuri, 158 on Lasi and the confusion this causes. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Dardic or Piśācha Languages (including Kāshmīrī), Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1919, p. 551 on Burushaski. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 1: General Introduction, Specimens of the Tibetan Dialects, the Himalayan Dialects, and the North Assam Group, Calcutta: Superintendent of the Government Press, 1909, pp. 14, 72 on Tibetan. See also Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 123 on Dhataki and its other names, 53 on Malvi, 49 on Ahirwati; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 89 on names reported to the LSI indicating tribal rather than linguistic differences, 30 on how some tribes name their language after the important tribe in their area. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bodo, Nāgā, and Kachin Groups, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, p. 265; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 67. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 2: Mōn-Khmēr and Siamese-Chinese Families (Including Khassi and Tai), Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1904, p. 430 for Kanwari, also known under four other names, two of which are ‘nick-names’. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 42. For some examples, see Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, pp. 9, 133; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 318; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, pp. 235, 333, 411, 451. There are many other examples. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, pp. 86–88, 38–40. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 696 on the different names for the dialect he calls Powadhi Panjabi; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 495 on Lahnda of the hill country between Rawalpindi and Kashmir and its many names, and 450, 458 on Hindko and its names. As in the case of ‘Jatki-cum-Chinwari’, Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, pp. 280–281. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 654. Ibid., pp. 429–430, 433, 450–451, 462, 509, 516. Ibid., p. 503; for this use of the term Farsi to refer to a register of Hindi, see George A. Grierson, ‘A Plea for the People’s Tongue’, The Calcutta Review, 1880, 71: 162. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of the Bengali and Assamese Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Press, 1903, p. 11.

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36 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 221–222. 37 LS Files S/1/14/5, Grierson to Superintendent of Census Operations, North West Provinces, 25. 3. 1901, on how the names ‘Rohilkandhi’ and ‘Pacchari’ will disappear as a cursory examination of specimens show them to be same as standard ‘Hindustani’. 38 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 393. 39 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 3, p. 255 on the Banjara tribe and its different names for its dialect. 40 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 11: Gipsy Languages, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922, p. 71 on the ‘criminal tribe’ of Kolhatis; for multiple names of tribes see p. 17. See also George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 10: Specimens of Languages of the Eranian Family, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1921, p. 518 on the various names for Yudgha. See also Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, pp. 404, 450 on Hindko and its speakers using different names for it in different localities, 398 on the ‘three-named dialect’ Landha in Dera Ismail Khan being called Hindki, Jatki, and Derawal which is the same as Thali in Shahpur, 381 on how the speakers of Thali call it by different names according to their locality, 361 on how Siraiki is called differently by its speakers depending on locality. 41 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 3, p. 157; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 472. 42 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, pp. 106–108 on Marwari-Gujarati and p. 71 on Eastern Marwari. 43 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 318 on the Koravas/Yerukala. 44 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 7, p. 217 on the different designations for the Marathi of Berar and the dialect in the Central Province; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 28 on adopting the name Kherwari in deference to Santali traditions. 45 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bihārī and Oṛiyā Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, p. 43 the discussion here is on the terms Purbi and Western Bhojpuri. 46 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 414 on Western Assamese/Dhekeri; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 233 on the self-designation Rong and the term Lepcha possibly meaning ‘vile speakers’; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 108–109; LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to J.T. Marten, 8. 4. 1920, on how ‘Dardic’ is not a good name ‘but it is the best available, and gives no offence’. 47 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 233. 48 LS Files S/1/14/3, Grierson to Gait, 25. 11. 1901. 49 LS Files S/1/14/10, Grierson to Capt. A.D. Bannerman, 8. 5. 1901. 50 LS Files S/1/14/5, Grierson to Superintendent of Census Operations, North-Western Provinces and Oudh, 15. 5. 1901. 51 EUR 223/259, Sir Denys de S. Bray to Grierson, 13. 5. 1931. 52 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, p. 18. 53 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 32. 54 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 40 f.n. on Bhojpuri. 55 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 221, 224 on the term Sylhettia. 56 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 734; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 505; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 147.

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57 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 3: Specimens of the Kuki-Chin and Burma Groups, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1904, p. 2; see also Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 72. 58 LS Files S/1/1/17, A.A. Macdonell to Grierson, 14. 7. 1926. 59 EUR 223/323, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 1. 3. 1917. 60 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 3, p. 5 referring to the many names for the Bhils, Grierson, LSI, Vol. 7, p. 61 on Konkan. 61 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, pp. 107–115; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 270. 62 David Lelyveld, ‘The Fate of Hindustani: Colonial Knowledge and the Project of a National Language’, in Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (eds), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 202. 63 LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to H.H. Risley, 17. 4. 1901 & 18. 2. 1901. 64 Peter Mühlhäusler, Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Region, London and New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 5. 65 B.P. Mahapatra, The Written Languages of India, in B.P. Mahapatra and G.D. McConnell, The Written Languages of the World: A Survey of the Degree and Modes of Use, Vol. 2, Pt. 1: Constitutional Languages, Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, vol. 2, pt. 1, 1989.

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In his important study of John Gilchrist (1759–1841), the early 19thcentury scholar of the ‘Hindustani’ language, Richard Steadman-Jones addresses the question of the politics of grammatical representation. He discusses the difficulties Gilchrist experienced in using the tools of Western language study to analyse and interpret the distinctive properties of languages such as ‘Hindustani’. In engaging with the mismatch between the conceptualisation of language in Western thought and the data of the language he was studying, Gilchrist resisted representing the latter in terms of a discourse which made it conform with patterns familiar to a Western readership, and he charted alternative possibilities to the traditional structure of Greco-Roman grammar.1 In his discussions of nominal and verbal morphology, Gilchrist grappled with the politics of representation and sought technical solutions to the problems created by assimilating the data of Hindustani into the framework of Western grammar.2 The politics of grammatical representation also plays a role in Grierson’s identification with India, manifested in his assertive representation of Indian traditions of knowledge in the field of grammatical analysis against European categories of thought. In this chapter I focus on Grierson’s interventions from 1918 to 1921 on the Oriental Advisory Committee to the Standing Committee of Grammatical Reform, convened by Professor E.A. Sonnenschein (1851–1929), who was professor of Greek at Mason College, Birmingham, from 1883 until his retirement. Grierson defends a ‘native point of view’ against attempts to marginalise it on the Oriental Advisory Committee. As Steadman-Jones notes, grammatical texts mediate the experience of difference.3 Grierson’s investment in and construction of Indian difference against universalising imperatives amounts to a form of Indian knowledge nationalism; that is, a cultural nationalism which highlights India’s contributions to disciplines like linguistics and 88

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which demands that these should be recognised within the frame of global knowledge.

The Standing Committee of Grammatical Reform The Standing Committee of Grammatical Reform was formed in 1911 and met until 1918. It was chaired by Professor E.A. Sonnenschein (1851–1929) and consisted of eight associations which included the Classical Association, the Modern Language Association and the English Association, as well as various associations of headmasters, headmistresses and teachers.4 These formed the Joint Grammatical Terminology Committee of 1909 to 1911 which became the Standing Committee of Grammatical Reform.5 The latter produced a report in 1911 ‘On the Terminology of Grammar’, arguing for the adoption of unified grammatical terminology in the teaching of English, French, German, Latin and Greek in English schools because of the ‘confusion of mind and discouragement caused to learners by the use of superfluous and inconsistent grammatical terms’.6 The problems of ‘having a separate set of grammatical terms and grammatical conceptions for each of the several languages taught’ in English schools led to the ‘idea of one common system and one common terminology for all of them’.7 In a letter to Grierson, Sonnenschein attached a leaflet on the Committee’s activities. This referred to how the Government Committee on Modern Languages in its Report of 1918 endorsed the aims of Sonnenschein’s committee to adopt ‘the principle of uniformity in grammar’. Sonnenschein reproduced extracts from this, which argued ‘a uniform terminology brings into relief the principles of structure common to all allied languages; needless variation of terms conceals the substantial unity’.8 In the same letter Sonnenschein referred to two reports by educational authorities, one a 1916 report on the teaching of French in London Secondary Schools and the other a 1917 report by London County Council education officers, as further evidence of sympathy for the committee’s aims.9 In a subsequent letter, Sonnenschein referred to two further government committees in 1921, one on classics and the other H.L. Fisher’s ‘The Teaching of English in England’, as ‘a triumph’ for the principle of grammatical uniformity and as ‘a happy augury of future success’.10 Thus, by the time Sonnenschein contacted Grierson in 1918, his committee had achieved public success and had received official endorsement. For Sonnenschein, the recognition of the Government Committee of Modern Languages of his scheme marked ‘a new epoch 89

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in the movement’ to reform and unify grammatical terminology. Sonnenschein wrote to Grierson in 1918 about ‘forming a special advisory committee for the chief native languages of India, with a view to bringing them within the scheme of grammar which we have drawn on the basis of Indo-European philology’.11 This became the Oriental Advisory Committee in November 1918 and it met in Dr. Barnett’s private rooms at the British museum until the end of 1921. Grierson described himself as taking ‘a somewhat prominent part as Superintendent of the L.S.I’ on this committee.12 For Sonnenschein, the Oriental Committee was an invitation to Orientalists to co-operate in applying the scheme of unified grammatical terminology as formulated for English, Latin, Greek, French and German to Sanskrit and the ‘modern Indian vernaculars of Sanscritic origin’ (in this case, ‘Hindostani’, Gujarati, Marathi and Bengali). It was to bring ‘non-European members of the great Indoeuropean [sic] family of languages into touch with the languages of Europe as far as the naming and classification of their grammatical phenomena is concerned’. Sonnenschein went on to say: The essential thing for our purpose was to provide a common point of view from which all the languages of the family, European, as well as Indian, might be regarded as a linguistic unit and justice be done both to the similarities and to the diversities of their similar idioms. . . . It is not too much to say that in the present terminological chaos Europeans and Indians, speaking languages which belong to the same linguistic family, can only with difficulty recognize either the common features of these languages or the features which differentiate them. Some kind of unification system is imperatively necessary if this chaos is to be reduced to a cosmos.13 He ventured to suggest: The grammatical entente herein proposed, whereby the syntactical relations between the Sanskritic languages of India and European languages are clearly outlined may (if adopted as a basis by writers of grammars) facilitate the acquisition of Indian languages by European students and of European languages, especially English, by Indian students; and . . . it may thus contribute towards bringing the 250,000,000 of people who speak Indo-Aryan languages into closer touch with the other peoples of the British commonwealth and prove 90

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a humble means of strengthening those spiritual bonds on which the unity of the Commonwealth ultimately depends.14 For Sonnenschein, then, the Committee’s work would transform the field of grammar and would strengthen the bonds of empire by bringing European and Indian languages together in the same grammatical framework. It would also facilitate the learning by Indians and the English of each other’s languages, thereby strengthening those bonds further.

Grierson’s separatist position Grierson, though, saw grammatical terminology and conceptions of grammar as sites of cultural struggle in which he had to represent what he saw as an Indian point of view and he resisted the committee’s project to unify grammatical terminology. The committee’s documents reflect the conflict between Grierson and Sonnenschein, with the redrafting of documents, comments on each other’s notes and revisions, and tables displaying their interventions and their disagreements.15 Grierson’s resistance to the committee’s project took different forms. Sonnenschein wanted to produce a uniform table of declensions for all the languages concerned. Grierson, on the other hand, argued that when it came to cases, each language should be dealt with separately.16 He was more inclined to take ‘each language separately and treated it on its own merits’.17 Sonnenschein argued this would give the table ‘a ragged appearance’, and it would result in a ‘raggedness of the mental picture’ of these languages if they could not be brought under the same grammatical scheme.18 From the outset, then, Grierson was at odds with the committee’s aim to compile a uniform table of declensions for modern European and Indian languages. He wanted to inject a resistant raggedness into any smooth picture produced by the committee and was more inclined to assert the individuality of each Indian language through the distinctive terminology shaped for these languages. Grierson repeatedly asserted the classifications and terms of ‘native’ Indian grammarians and the ‘native’ Indian point of view against the committee’s project of unifying terminology. Thus, in a note on Sonnenschein’s proposed terminology for ‘Verb-Nouns and Verb-Adjectives’, Grierson declares: In the following note I shall frequently quote the terminology of modern Indian Grammarians. I submit that the statements 91

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of these men cannot be lightly dismissed. India has for two thousand years been famous for the learning and accuracy of its grammarians, and at the present day the tradition is by no means extinct. I am not alluding to the futile remarks made on language by natives of India who have no real knowledge of the subject, but to the statements ex cathedra of professional paṇḍits who have made a life-long study of it. These men may make mistakes in questions of comparative philology, or in derivations, but their opinion as to the force of a particular grammatical form are deserving of the highest respect. He reiterates ‘we must consider the opinions of Native Grammarians’ as ‘these men, with much skill and perspicacity have grouped and catalogued all the forms of the verb’.19 Grierson remained steadfast in his identification with Indian grammarians throughout his career. In an exchange of letters with T. Grahame Bailey more than a decade after the committee meetings, he signalled his ‘great admiration’ for Indian grammarians, and ‘for the great names descending in an unbroken line from the third century B.C’. Bailey did not share his views, finding some of these grammarians ‘ludicrously incompetent’.20 Others, such as William Dwight Whitney, also expressed negative views about this tradition.21 Grierson’s empathy for an Indian tradition of grammar also emerges in throwaway remarks; for example, he described feeling ‘like the Indian grammarian who looked upon the saving of a single syllable as equivalent to the birth of a son’ when he was compiling his comparative vocabulary for the LSI.22 Elsewhere, he stressed the indebtedness of modern phoneticians to the authors of the Prātiśākhyas of 2500 years ago, and discussed in detail early 20th-century works by Indians on phonetics and cerebral sounds in particular.23 Clearly, for Grierson it was important that Sonnenschein’s committee should recognise and draw upon the long tradition of Indian linguistics, especially in the field of grammar.24 The range and sophistication of this tradition is now well known and acknowledged, but at the time of the LSI, this was not always the case. As Pollock has pointed out, the arts of language played a foundational role in the intellectual life of the Sanskrit cosmopolis and thereafter, and at its core lay grammar, which carried more potent cultural and political associations than any other form of knowledge.25 In asserting the distinctiveness of an Indian point of view based on this long tradition, Grierson’s statements are almost quasi-nationalist in tone. He insisted that in dealing with verbs the committee had adapted Indian 92

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languages to European grammatical terminology, not vice versa, and that: a European frame-work of Voice, Mood, and Tense has been adopted, and four unfortunate languages have been forced into it. They do not fit this framework at all, and the consequence is that the whole scheme exhibits important omissions, (in my opinion) redundancies, statements of fact that are incorrect, and instances of wrong nomenclature.26 In doing so, the Committee had marginalised ‘the nomenclature of all Oriental grammatical terms for which there are no corresponding forms within the European frame’.27 He frequently informed the committee of the terms pandits used to describe tenses, and asserted the ‘various tenses of the verb recognized by native grammarians’ against the committee’s proposed table of terminology.28 For him one of the main principles of the committee should be ‘that, so far as is possible, we should adhere to terms already generally accepted in India’.29 At other times, Grierson counters distinctions made by the committee on the basis that Indians do not make sharp distinctions assumed by the committee.30 He objected to grammatical terms (such as ‘gerunds’) because they will not be acceptable in India, suggesting alternatives based on names used there.31 For Grierson forms that have no parallel in Europe are omitted in the committee’s framework, and distinctions made by Indian grammarians are not noted or recognised by the committee: ‘we have avoided all mention of the four prayōgas, which are the life of most Indo-Aryan languages, and which have nothing to correspond to them in Europe’.32 He sent the committee a note on these, distilling the views of ‘Indian Grammarians’.33 Grierson also disagreed with the committee’s references to the subjunctive, arguing that Indian grammarians have no conception of it. For him it is clear ‘no tense is ever used by a native of India as a Subjunctive. If foreigners import a subjunctival meaning into a language, it is not the fault of the language’.34 He also argued that ‘Indian Grammarians have no idea of what we call “mood”’. These ideas are introduced by translators and ‘are necessitated by the structure of the language into which the translation may happen to be made, and have nothing to do with the structure of the original language’.35 One of Grierson’s colleagues, J.D. Anderson, labelled Sonnenschein’s project ‘dangerous classification by translation’.36 For him a ‘translation-fallacy’ lay at the heart of Sonnenschein’s misplaced efforts.37 93

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Thus, the committee and Grierson battled over what should or should not be recognised in the field of grammar when it came to Indian languages. Grierson only agreed with the committee when he felt their conclusions were congruent with distinctions and categories ‘recognized by native grammarians’.38 He identified strongly with the Indian tradition of linguistics, and resisted the attempt to codify Indian languages through Western systems of grammar. For him, ‘because English or Latin uses a certain mood .  .  . [this] does not prove that the same is the case in an Indian language’.39 Moreover, in his note on the committee’s verbal terminology, prefaced by his refusal to ‘agree to adapting [Indian] languages to suit European terminology’, he protested that Indian and European languages should be treated equally when it came to the formulation of grammatical terminology.40 Sonnenschein’s objections to Grierson’s position brings out the latter’s resistance to the committee’s universalising project clearly. Grierson was advocating ‘separatism of nomenclature’, and had lost sight of the aim to ‘harmonise’ Indian and European grammatical terminology. The key question here lay in the status of the ‘native’ point of view put forward by Grierson. For Sonnenschein, adopting ‘the native Indian grammarians’ classifications and names would be inconsistent with our scheme of bringing about a grammatical entente based on a common point of view’.41 ‘Native opinion’ cannot be a ‘final court of appeal’, and we cannot ‘adopt the point of view of Hindoo grammarians on all points’.42 The committee’s project means some departure from the latter is inevitable.43 He could not endorse a report which relativised grammatical terminology, treating Sanskrit terminology separately from other languages, or allowing the term ‘passive’ to be applied differently to English and Indian vernaculars.44 For Sonnenschein the key issue was to recognise that the terms denoting cases were terms of syntax, not morphology. The committee was guided by the function of forms and their actual use in literature and every day speech ‘rather than by their historical antecedents’.45 In a letter to Grierson, Sonnenschein stressed this distinction between morphology and syntax, because Grierson seemed to be fixated on morphology in his attempt to resist the committee’s project.46 Hence the committee’s proposed terminology constituted a ‘great departure from current usage – a usage current among native Indian grammarians as well as among all European nations – to employ the case-names as denoting morphological features’.47 For Sonnenschein the key point remains that the committee’s grouping of tenses was not based on origin, as R.L. Turner, who criticised the committee’s proposals, thought. 94

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It was based on function, although ‘a certain amount of compromise with form’ was necessary.48 Because of the committee’s approach, ‘several innovations’ were introduced, such as recognising a subjunctive mood, with a table explicating what it means and a classification of conditional sentences illustrating its meanings. He also circulated a note on the subjunctive, outlining its prominent meanings and illustrating them by Latin and ‘Hindustani’ examples taken from Platt’s grammar. In this note, he accepted that no satisfactory name had been devised for this mood, but the committee decided to accept the term subjunctive ‘with a warning against the misunderstanding to which it is liable’.49 In fact, though, because of the pressure from Grierson, Sonnenschein had to justify the committee’s position in relation to Indian traditions of grammatical analysis and terminology, so Grierson had succeeded in changing the terms of the debate. Sonnenschein argued that Indian grammarians ‘seem to me to be feeling after the idea of mood’ and while from the ‘time of Panini it has been customary among some Indian grammarians to range the several tenses in one category, but without any common appellation, the distinction between moods is practically recognized’. In some recent grammars, such in Rajaraja Varma’s Laghupaniniya (1913), various terms are used for mood.50 Sonnenschein wanted to show how some points of the committee’s scheme are ‘in complete touch with Indian grammarians’, and how the ‘whole spirit’ of its report agreed with the general view of Indian scholars, that a modern Aryan language, in spite of differences due to the lapse of time and to the intermixture of non-Aryan forms and constructions, may be adequately described by the same terminology as is applied to ancient members of the same family.51 Because Sonnenschein wanted to partially justify the committee’s proposals with reference to an Indian grammatical tradition, he stressed the report had been received well by individuals and societies in India such as the Asiatic Society of Bengal.52 Sonnenschein was also anxious to stress that the committee’s mode of procedure agreed with the tradition of Indian pandits: ‘Difference of form is not the principle on which Indian pundits proceed; for you [Grierson] tell me they are guided by meaning and not by form. They in fact do what we are doing on this Committee’.53 The committee named forms ‘in accordance with their meanings or uses in the 95

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structure of the sentence’.54 With regard to cases, ‘the ground was prepared for us in the system which is current both in India and among European writers on Indian grammar’, and the committee was only concerned with ‘improvements of detail’.55

Knowing India Grierson’s position, then, amounted to an Indian cultural and epistemological nationalism, which forced Sonnenschein to justify his position at least partially through the Indian tradition of linguistics. For Grierson, grammar becomes symbolic of a distinctive Indianness which he identifies with and which cannot be simply subsumed under or erased by a universalising grammatical project hatched in London. His stance is echoed by some of his British colleagues, like Anderson, who criticised Sonnenschein for ‘identifying, like the kind souls who say that a Bengali is a man and a brother. He is all that, but he is a brother with a difference, and it is the difference that counts’.56 The question of difference, then, loomed large for some of Grierson’s correspondents too, and their hostility to Sonnenschein suggests a commitment to asserting Indian difference against any smooth integration of Indian forms of knowledge into Western categories of thinking; instead the committee’s conclusion should be informed by bringing together both traditions and their ways of thinking about language. However, as Sonnenschein perceptively comments, when Grierson says a usage is ‘deeply rooted in India’, he is sometimes ‘referring to British residents in India’.57 In fact, the ‘native’ Indian point of view which Grierson pushed for on the committee was a coalescence of a Sanskrit grammarian tradition and contemporary works by Indian authors and by Europeans, especially colonial British scholars. While for him the Indian tradition informed these texts in a general sense, this coalescence also reflected a larger economy of learning in India, in which hybridisation and cannibalisation were part of its creativity.58 In a note on one of Sonnenschein’s tables, Grierson signals his intention to ‘quote the terminology of modern Indian Grammarians’. Here, though, many of the references are to works authored by Europeans. For Sanskrit, Grierson refers to eminent Indologists like Karl Brugman (1849–1919), Jacob Speyer (1849–1903), Monier MonierWilliams (1819–1899), Max Müller (1823–1900), A.A. MacDonnell (1854–1930) and Richard Pischel (1849–1908), amongst others. For Hindi and ‘Hindostani’ he draws on the grammars of J.T Platts (first published 1874) and D.C. Phillott (published in 1909) as well 96

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as S.H. Kellogg’s A Grammar of the Hindi Language (1876) and Edwin Greaves’ Hindi Grammar (1896 and 1921). He also refers to Krushnashastri Godbole’s A New Grammar of the Marathi Language (1867) and R.B. Joshi’s A Comprehensive Marathi Grammar (1900), and for Bengali he refers to Shyamacharan Sharma Sarkar’s grammar (first published 1850). Alongside this roll call of specific names there are broad references to ‘Hindu grammarians of northern India’ with no specific names mentioned.59 In an appendix, when discussing the names applied to tenses by ‘principal Hindōstānī Grammarians’, he refers to Duncan Forbes’s Bengali Grammar (1861), Phillott, William Etherington’s Hindi Grammar (first published 1871), Kellogg, Greaves and himself. In other parts of this appendix he again makes generalised references like ‘Hindu grammarians’ and ‘pandits’.60 There are thus two strands in Grierson’s category of an Indian native point of view. One is a generalised invocation of the long Indian tradition of linguistics, which the committee needs to acknowledge, recognise and give its due, and which in Grierson’s view, is a necessary part of the background to the works mentioned above. However, Grierson’s roll call of the names he lists also suggests a distinctive European and British body of learning, tied to a colonial production of linguistic knowledge about India in interaction with reconstructed, generally upper caste, traditions of Indian learning as well as the grammatical works of Indians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To a certain extent, Grierson’s frequent invocations of this Indian grammatical tradition is part of the long British patronage of Sanskrit scholarship from the late 18th century onwards which helped to consolidate the position of Panini and dominant schools of grammar in the subcontinent.61 From Grierson’s interventions on the committee, it also seems he was intellectually and emotionally invested in this distinctive colonial tradition of learning with its own terminology and methodologies produced in dialogue with Indian upper caste men of learning. For the LSI, at least, the knowledge it produced of India as a linguistic region involved strong relationships of cooperation, exchange and pedagogy between Indians and the British.62 Networks of correspondence and exchange, as well as the training of Indian students in Britain, form the larger intellectual landscape of which the LSI is a part. The importance of links to India in British academic culture is evident in the British Academy’s (hereafter BA) attempt to secure a relationship with Indian intellectual life in its 1933 proposal for an Indian Academy which would have strong ties to the BA. In 1933 the president of the 97

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Academy wrote to 25 Indian scholars, writers and scientists putting the proposal before them, including Sir C.V. Raman, Sir P.C. Ray and Sir Muhammad Iqbal.63 The Academy asked Grierson to take a pivotal role on the committee for this, because he knew ‘Indian scholars of the earlier period and . . . those who have grown up in the last thirty years, many of them personally or by correspondence, and you understand and sympathize with them’. The BA also considered working with the Indian Science Congress to establish such an Academy.64 For the BA, Grierson’s extensive contacts with Indians, the LSI’s epistolary culture, and his creation of a British-Indian knowledge nexus were key in this attempt to ensure the intellectual relationship between India and Britain would continue after the British left India. In the proposal, reference was also made to the number of Indians who had studied at English universities, and European scholars who had engaged with the dissertations written at Indian universities. Many of the Indian linguists who ran the Linguistic Society of India, founded in 1928 at the fifth Oriental Conference in Lahore, studied at the School of Oriental Studies or elsewhere in Britain. Some key Indian linguists, such as Siddheswar Varma and B.D. Jain, had been Turner’s pupils. Turner also examined V.S. Ghate’s Cambridge thesis and supervised other Indian students on topics relating to Indian languages and linguistics. S.K. Chatterji had been Daniel Jones’s student in London, while Jones himself went on a lecturing tour in India, during which he had many conversations with Indians on phonetics.65 Thus, the investment in ties of knowledge production with India ran deep in parts of British intellectual culture, and the tone of Grierson’s interventions on Sonnenschein’s committee reflected this. At one level, Grierson was trying to safeguard this historical relationship and to assert his power over representing India linguistically against Sonnenschein’s committee which operated outside the historical evolution of that relationship. Consequently, sometimes Grierson slides into expressing a kind of British colonial folk-wisdom about India, based on an experience which Sonnenschein could not hope to share. Hence the patronising tone of the following passage: You know the story of Impey, the first Chief Justice of Bengal. As he landed, and saw the bare-footed natives, he turned to his puisne brother and said, ‘brother, I hope that before we have been many months in this country, these poor people will all have shoes, – aye, and stockings too’. In spite of this pious wish, Indian natives still get on very well with bare feet. 98

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Now, I can’t turn round to my fellows on the Committee and say, ‘brothers, I hope that before many months have elapsed after the publication of our report, these poor people will all have an indicative mood, – aye, and a Subjunctive too’. The reason is that I don’t want to make myself ridiculous, and am perfectly aware that Indians get on admirably without any Indicative or Subjunctive mood, and will do so in spite of a dozen committees and a dozen reports.66 It is important to stress that the constellation of names Grierson refers to under the rubric ‘Indian’ is also used by Sonnenschein to develop his own claims. While Grierson complained that the committee had ignored ‘great grammarians’ like Kellogg,67 Sonnenschein argues the committee follows Kellogg’s principle of classification and nomenclature closely.68 He uses MacDonnell and Kellogg to justify his own position.69 He also informs Grierson that MacDonnell, with whom he is in communication, disagrees with Grierson about moods.70 Reference is made a number of times to Platts’s grammar to confirm his own views on cases, and his note ‘What are Subjunctive meanings’ calls on this text.71 Sonnenschein also uses grammars by Indians published in the late 19th century to substantiate his points. According to him G.R. Navalkar recognises moods and the subjunctive in his Student’s Marathi Grammar (third edition 1894),72 whereas Grierson asserts that Navalkar and others who follow him ‘have got hold of the wrong stick’.73 Sonnenschein’s reiterates Navalkar’s recognition of the subjunctive case a number of times, arguing that others such as Stevenson, Godbole and Joshi also refer to the subjunctive in their works.74 Grierson’s response is to argue that in India ‘when one leading grammarian fixes nomenclature, his successors follow him, in this respect, like sheep’. For Grierson, Navalkar’s explanations are on a par with the way English grammarians explained English forms in the 18th century; ‘many of them are quite wrong and some of them are ludicrous’.75 Similarly, whereas the draft introductions to the Committee’s report refers to Rajaraja Varma’s use of terms for mood in his Laghupaniniya (1913), Grierson ‘strongly’ recommended dropping this reference: ‘Rājarāja, himself evidently did not understand English, and hence blundered. He tried to translate “mood” and then showed that he did not know what the word means’.76 Thus, the body of learning Grierson uses to ground his own position in is a shifting and malleable one, and it is used by Sonnenschein for his own purposes. 99

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What appears to determine Grierson’s outlook on the committee is his strong identification with a conservative version of India which dovetails with his own desire to represent India linguistically and grammatically as a knowledge broker and go-between. In addition, given Grierson’s predilection for joint authorship, it is also possible that through his many amendments and interventions,77 Grierson was trying to co-author the committee’s report. For him knowledge production regarding India had to be co-authored, but in this instance, co-authorship is a way of muscling into another’s authorial domain, seen by Grierson as a threat to the evolution of a special British-Indian relationship in the production of knowledge. We have seen how Grierson’s nostalgia for India played a role in his approach to the subcontinent in different parts of the LSI, from the demarcation of regional languages to the mapping of India as a linguistic region. It is also possible that nostalgia had a hand in Grierson’s attitude on the committee, which is why Grierson’s terminology sometimes comes across as antiquated in the committee’s proceedings. Terms like the ‘organic’ and ‘compound passives’, ‘oriental passive’ and statements referring to ‘the Passive voice in the East’ appear eccentrically old-fashioned in the context of the committee’s deliberations and its clear analysis of syntax.78 Grierson even seems curmudgeonly in his statements and correspondence to the committee and there is some truth in Sonnenschein’s remarks that Grierson is in danger of associating himself ‘with grammarians of a bygone era’ and that his position on the committee is ‘a retrograde step’.79 Grierson’s nostalgic conservatism also comes across in his argument that if a set of terms have been commonplace for 50 years or more in colonial scholarship, then they should not be changed; the mere fact of their persistence is adequate grounds for their continuation.80

Conclusion The LSI was conducted when the Greco-Aryan paradigm dominated philology, and comparative philology was almost exclusively restricted to the Indo-European family; indeed, the development of historical linguistics was closely associated with the study of IndoEuropean.81 When the final volumes of the LSI were coming out, there was a decisive shift in the discipline towards structuralism, led by Saussure, which freed linguistic work from a purely historical approach, whereas the 19th century was dominated by questions concerning the historical relatedness of languages.82 The accumulation of empirical 100

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data in the LSI and its many grammatical sketches of Indian languages and dialects reflect the state of the discipline at the time – the latter are in striking contrast to 20th-century generative and transformational grammar, in which the urge to formulate structural universals encompassing all the language of the world and to reduce linguistic variety to universal principles, as opposed to the close examination of small groups of individual cases, is paramount.83 Additionally, 20th-century structural linguistics has been less interested in the ecological variety of languages than in the mental mechanisms and structures underlying language per se.84 Grierson’s interventions on Sonnenschein’s committee in part, then, reflect the LSI’s focus on the ecological variety of languages, its close examination of individual cases in India, and the dominance of historical relatedness in 19th-century philology. However, Grierson’s interventions on Sonnenschein’s committee are also indicative of the complexities of the Survey’s knowledge production and Grierson’s own subject position. On one level, Grierson clearly identified with the long tradition of Indian linguistics. It is possible that his preoccupation with what I call the colonial auditory order, and his stress on the importance of pronunciation,85 was influenced by this tradition, in which, as Pollock has argued, the preservation of sounds was linked to the preservation of social order and the polity. In the Sanskrit cosmopolis, the obligation to maintain the order of language was intimately connected to the maintenance of the political order.86 Grierson felt the committee ought to recognise the Indian tradition of linguistics. This became important irrespective of the actual outcome of the committee’s deliberations. What was at stake here was the symbolic importance of that recognition, especially in a period when many European linguists did not give this tradition its full due. In part, this reluctance may have stemmed from the fact that Panini’s phenomenal contributions to linguistics did not fit well with the dominant Western conception of science in terms of linear progress. It was not until the 1960s that Western linguistics matched Panini’s achievements. Distinguished linguists like Bopp, Whitney, Saussure and Chomsky learned from the grammaticalisation of the Indian tradition and partly developed linguistics on its basis, and so the modernity of this linguistics was beholden to the Indian tradition.87 This again flies in the face of deeply held notions of knowledge as the product of a narrative of progress. There is also some evidence to show that India’s tradition of linguistic analysis played an important role in the new knowledge being produced in British India, especially in the field of phonological analysis.88 101

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Grierson’s stance on the committee also resonates with those of other Indian intellectuals and thinkers of the period who were concerned to highlight India’s historic contributions to the development of knowledge in various fields, especially in the sciences, as in the case of B. Prashad’s The Progress of Science in India during the Past Twenty-Five Years (1938). The latter’s introductory section ‘Scientific work up to the end of the Nineteenth Century’ has a subsection on ‘Scientific work in ancient India’. This period also saw the rise of conceptions of ‘Hindu science’, in which ancient Hindu thought is presented as prefiguring the discoveries of contemporary science and as anticipating modern Western thought.89 Grierson shared some of the sentiments of this Indian cultural and epistemological nationalism, particularly in its self-conscious Hindu variety. As we shall see in the following chapters, Grierson was committed to a version of India which overlapped with a view of India as essentially Hindu. Irrespective of that, though, what we find in the committee’s deliberations are the lineaments of an emerging world philology. Both Pollock and FanSen Wang have stressed the need for a new kind of philology which is historically self-reflexive and non-provincial, as well as globally and epistemologically comparative. Such a philology would be based on an engagement with multiple forms of understanding and would have to guard against passing off local forms of knowledge as universal.90 In the arguments about the extent to which the Indian linguistic tradition needed to be taken into account, the criticisms of provincial modes of analysis passing themselves off as universal, and the bringing together of multiple traditions of thought across regions, cultures and historical epochs, Grierson and Sonnenschein were making an early stab at formulating just such a world philology. Steadman-Jones has called attention to the ‘flashpoints within grammatical texts’ as ‘moments of danger that provoked authors to engage in explicit discussion’ of the properties of languages they were discussing.91 Such flashpoints structured the discussions of the Sonnenschein committee, and in this case they illuminated the possibilities, in a preliminary way, of a new kind of world philology. As we have seen, the Indian point of view which Grierson invokes tends to be an amalgamation of European and Indian works, formed by a hybridised knowledge economy embedded in the historical relationship between Britain and India. This points both to the complexities and tensions within Grierson’s position. As is clear from Grierson’s remarks, he claimed to know India and the ‘natives’. This is clear in other ways, such as in his objection that the four languages chosen by 102

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the committee (‘Hindostani’, Gujarati, Marathi and Bengali) are not representative of ‘the Sanscrit vernaculars’ of India because the languages of north-western India were omitted and ‘it would be as true to say that English, German, Italian and Neopolitan, are representative of the Indo-European languages of Europe’.92 He argues that at the very least Sindhi, Kashmiri and Naipali ought to be added.93 However, Grierson’s knowledge extends to claiming to know what Indians would say when questioned about tenses, and what natives would call a tense even though the name does not appear in their grammars.94 He makes authoritative statements of the following kind: ‘In India, if you ask an educated man what tense is “I went”, in nine cases out of ten he will say “the Past”, and if you ask him what tense is “I have gone”, he will say “the Perfect”’.95 Grierson also substantiates his position by referring to the ‘Indian mind’, so that he strays into the territory of mental life and the subjective; he knows how Indians think too. Thus, he refers to ‘the order of Indian thought’, and to how ‘an Indian never thinks in the subjunctive’. Conjunctive participles are ‘very typical of Indian thought, and there is little like it in Europe’.96 When urging that the committee incorporate the views of ‘Native Grammarians’, he describes their texts as telling ‘us what is the idea in the native mind in using a form’. When classifying tenses, ‘our business is mainly with the thought which, in the native mind, lies behind it’.97 Some of his absolute statements are intensified by references to this Indian mind: ‘the Indian mind cannot put an idea into the form of indirect statements. It always works through direct statements’.98 Even more basic assertions are made such as, ‘I cannot admit that there is any subjunctive feeling in a native user of any Indian language’.99 When discussing postpositions, and comparing them to the English function of ‘for’, Grierson tells Sonnenschein: ‘Indians don’t think that way. To our ideas they think backwards. . . . To attempt to give an equivalent to the English “for” in any Indo-Aryan languages would in my opinion be dangerous, and could be interpreting Indian thought in English form’.100 For Grierson, the issue at stake is ‘European categories’ being used to ‘fit the Indian mind’;101 ‘we have, from our European inner consciousness, drawn up a European framework, and have tried to force four unfortunate Indo-Aryan languages into it’.102 The relationship between language and thought is a complex and difficult linguistic and philosophical issue, and in some sense Grierson is addressing these issues, although his formulations are crude. However, these formulations, while crude, also indicate that for Grierson at one level knowing India goes down to the very stuff of consciousness. From one angle, his 103

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objections amount to saying that fitting Indian languages into European categories is a colonisation of the Indian mind. This again reflects his in-between subject position, since Grierson claims to know both the European ‘inner consciousness’ and the ‘Indian mind’, and he can move between both. His closeness to what he deems ‘Indian’ thinking is both subversive and colonially privileged. As such, Grierson demonstrates the contradiction in the subject position of those who are inbetweens and go-betweens. On the one hand, he transgresses borders, but on the other hand he also defines, objectifies and maintains these boundaries.103 The two go hand in hand, since one’s power and role as a go-between requires the existence of the very borders one transgresses. Without these borders, the go-between loses his or her raison d’être. However, the key question then becomes what does Grierson mean by ‘Indian’? The remaining chapters in this book investigate Grierson’s position on this.

Notes 1 Richard Steadman-Jones, Colonialism and Grammatical Representation: John Gilchrist and the Analysis of the ‘Hindustani’ Language in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, Oxford: Philological Society, 2007, pp. 18, 4–6, 162–164. For his insightful discussion of ergativity as both a technical and a political problem, see 151–165. See also Rachael Gilmour, Grammars of Colonialism: Representing Languages in Colonial South Africa, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, for a study of the politics of grammatical representation in South Africa. 2 Steadman-Jones, Grammatical Representation, Chs. 4–5. 3 Ibid., p. 8. 4 Linguistic Survey Files S/1/1/35, E.A. Sonnenschein to Grierson, 25. 5. 1919, attaching ‘Draft of Introduction to Report’, p. 1 f.n., Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, London, hereafter LS Files. 5 Ibid., E.A. Sonnenschein to Grierson, 9. 7. 1918. 6 Ibid. 7 LS Files S/1/1/36, E.A. Sonnenschein to Grierson, 20. 12. 1921, attaching the former’s article, ‘The Teaching of English in England. Plea for the Mother Tongue’, Bath Herald, n.d. 8 LS Files S/1/1/35, ‘To the Members of the Eight Associations represented on the Joint Terminology Committee’, attached to Sonnenschein’s letter to Grierson, 9. 7. 1918. 9 Ibid., E.A. Sonnenschein, ‘The Standing Committee on Grammatical Reform’ to Grierson, 9. 7. 1918. 10 LS Files S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson and members of the Oriental Advisory Committee, 20. 12. 1921. 11 LS Files S/1/1/35, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 9. 7. 1918. 12 Ibid., handwritten note in file by Grierson.

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13 Ibid., ‘Draft of Introduction to Report’, p. 2, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 29. 5. 1919. 14 LS Files S/1/1/36, Revised Draft of Introduction to Report (September 1919) p. 3, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 3. 10. 1919. 15 For example, see LS Files S/1/1/35, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 20. 6. 1919, where Sonnenschein responds to Grierson’s comments on the committee’s draft introduction to its report, and in turn Grierson comments on his response; S/1/1/36, Grierson, ‘Reply to Professor Sonnenschein’s remarks on my note of August 2, 1919’; Grierson to Sonnenschein, 21. 9. 1919 where Grierson comments on Sonnenschein’s amended proposals. 16 LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson’s note on ‘The subjects in the Report of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology’, 20. 11. 1918. 17 Ibid., Grierson to Sonnenschein, 19. 12. 1918. 18 Ibid., Sonnenschein to Grierson, 23. 12. 1918. 19 Ibid., Note by Grierson on Professor Sonnenschein’s Table of Verb-Nouns and Verb-Adjectives, 28. 3. 1919. 20 European Manuscripts, EUR 223/316, Grahame Bailey to Grierson, 29. 12. 1932, Grierson to Bailey, 14. 3. 1933, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, London. 21 Sheldon Pollock, ‘What Was Philology in Sanskrit?’, in Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin A. Elman, and Ku-ming Kevin Chang (eds), World Philology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015, pp. 134–135; Esa Itkonen, Universal History of Linguistics: India, China, Arabia, Europe, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1991, p. 69. 22 LS Files S/1/1/16, Grierson to Dr. John Sampson, 30. 4. 1921. 23 EUR 223/310, Typescript of an article by Grierson, ‘Once Again on Ṣiṇā “cerebrals”’ (c. 1925). This appeared in the JRAS for April 1925, pp. 304-314. 24 On how these contributions come close to scientific linguistics, see Pieter A.M. Seuren, Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, p. xii; Itkonen, Universal History of Linguistics, Ch. 2 on the Indian linguistics tradition. 25 Sheldon Pollock, ‘Introduction’, in Pollock, Elman, and Kevin Chang (eds), World Philology, pp. 15–16; Pollock, ‘Philology in Sanskrit’, pp. 114–136; see also Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011, Ch. 4. 26 LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 22. 4. 1919. 27 Ibid., Grierson’s postscript on Committee on Oriental Grammatical Terminology’s Tables of Verbal Conjugation, 13. 10. 1919. 28 LS Files S/1/1/36, Grierson to Committee on Oriental Grammatical Terminology, 11. 10. 1919, with detailed amendments on their report; S/1/1/35, Grierson’s comments on the Committee on Oriental Grammatical Terminology, 13. 10. 1919, with a postcript 20/10/1919, and Grierson’s note on Sonnenschein’s Table of Verb-Nouns and Verb-Adjectives, 28. 3. 1919, see the ‘Appendix on the Finite Verb’. 29 LS Files S/1/1/35, Note by Grierson on Sonnenschein’s Table of VerbNouns and Verb-Adjectives, 28. 3. 1919, ‘Appendix on the Finite Verb’.

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30 Ibid., see the comments and counter-comments by Grierson and Sonnenschein in Sonnenschein to Grierson, 20. 6. 1919. 31 Ibid., Note by Grierson on Sonnenschein’s Table of Verb-Nouns and Verb-Adjectives, 28. 3. 1919, and ‘Appendix on the Finite Verb’. 32 Ibid., Grierson’s Note on Verbal Terminology, attached to Grierson to J.D. Anderson et al., 28. 5. 1919. 33 Ibid., Grierson’s ‘Note on the Prayogas’, 20. 10. 1919. 34 LS Files S/1/1/36, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 9. 8. 1919 & 21. 9. 1919; see also S/1/1/35, 13. 3. 1919 in which J.D. Anderson sends Grierson a note arguing that Bengalis ‘are not aware of any subjunctive mood in their language, nor is there any special form to express a subjunctive sense’, and that it is important not to ‘classify the facts of Bengali grammar by their English . . . translations’. 35 LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson’s postscript on Committee on Oriental Grammatical Terminology’s Tables of Verbal Conjugation, 13. 10. 1919, and Note by Grierson on Sonnenschein’s Table of Verb-Nouns and VerbAdjectives, 28. 3. 1919, and ‘Appendix on the Finite Verb’, italics in original. 36 LS Files S/1/1/36, J.D. Anderson to Grierson, 11. 8. 1919. 37 Ibid., Anderson to Grierson, 25. 8. 1919, and postscript 26. 8. 1919. 38 LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson’s note on ‘The subjects in the Report of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology’, 20. 11. 1918. The reference is to the committee’s proposed terms for subject, predicate and the predicative (adjective, noun, and pronouns). 39 LS Files S/1/1/36, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 27. 9. 1919. 40 LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson’s Note on Verbal Terminology, attached to Grierson to J.D. Anderson et al., 28. 5. 1919. 41 Ibid., Sonnenschein to Grierson, 30. 3. 1919. 42 Ibid., Sonnenschein to Grierson, 15. 2. 1919 & 22. 3. 1919. 43 Ibid., Sonnenschein to Grierson, 13. 5. 1919. 44 LS Files S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 22. 10. 1919. 45 LS Files S/1/1/35, ‘Draft of Introduction to Report’, p. 2, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 29. 5. 1919; S/1/1/36 ‘Revised Draft of Introduction to Report (September 1919)’, p. 2. 46 LS Files S/1/1/35, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 18. 4. 1919. 47 Ibid., Sonnenschein to Grierson, 5. 1. 1919. 48 LS Files S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 30. 7. 1921. Turner’s views are not in the file, but Sonnenschein refers to Turner’s letter to the Director of Public Instruction of UP, which was forwarded to Sonnenschein by the India Office. He in turn sent it to Grierson – see S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 20. 12. 1921. Grierson wrote to Turner about the latter’s remarks, but this letter is also not in the file – see S/1/1/36, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 20. 12. 1921. 49 LS Files S/1/1/35, Sonnenschein, ‘What Are Subjunctive Meanings’, 5. 4. 1919. See also S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 6. 8. 1919; S/1/1/35, ‘Draft of Introduction to Report’, pp. 2–3, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 29. 5. 1919, and S/1/1/36 ‘Revised Draft of Introduction to Report (September 1919)’, p. 2, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 3. 10. 1919.

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50 LS Files S/1/1/35, ‘Draft of Introduction to Report’, pp. 2–3, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 29. 5. 1919, and S/1/1/36, ‘Revised Draft of Introduction to Report (September 1919)’, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 3. 10. 1919. 51 LS Files S/1/1/35, ‘Draft of Introduction to Report’, pp. 3–4, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 29. 5. 1919, and S/1/1/36 ‘Revised Draft of Introduction to Report (September 1919)’, p. 3, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 3. 10. 1919. 52 LS Files S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson and members of the Oriental Advisory Committee, 20. 12. 1921. 53 LS Files S/1/1/35, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 9. 5. 1919. 54 Ibid., ‘Draft of Introduction to Report’, p. 2, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 29. 5. 1919, and S/1/1/36 ‘Revised Draft of Introduction to Report (September 1919)’, p. 2, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 3. 10. 1919. 55 LS Files S/1/1/35 ‘Draft of Introduction to Report’, p. 2, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 29. 5. 1919, and S/1/1/36 ‘Revised Draft of Introduction to Report (September 1919)’, p. 2, attached to Sonnenschein to Grierson, 3. 10. 1919. 56 LS files S/1/1/35, J.D. Anderson to Grierson, 26. 5. 1919. 57 LS Files S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 26. 8. 1919. 58 Christopher A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 371; C.A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Political Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 59 LS Files S/1/1/35, Note by Grierson on Sonnenschein’s Table of VerbNouns and Verb-Adjectives, 28. 3. 1919. 60 Ibid., ‘Appendix on the Finite Verb’, attached to Grierson’s Note on Sonnenschein’s Table of Verb-Nouns and Verb-Adjectives, 28. 3. 1919. 61 Bayly, Empire and Information, pp. 294–295. 62 I discuss this in Ch. 8 of Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 63 EUR 223/218, Minutes of ‘Committee formed for the purpose of considering an initiative on the part of the British Academy with a view to institution of an Indian Academy’, Meeting held 16. 10. 1933. 64 EUR 223/330, F.W. Thomas to Grierson, 4. 2. 1933, and Memorandum dated 4. 2. 1933. 65 For details see Ch. 8 of Colonialism and Knowledge, where I outline the links Indian students of linguistics had with British universities. 66 LS Files, S/1/1/36, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 9. 8. 1919. 67 LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson’s Note on Draft Introduction n.d., p. 2. 68 LS Files S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 30. 7. 1921. 69 LS Files S/1/1/35, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 23. 1. 1919, 28. 1. 1919, & 30. 1. 1919. 70 Ibid., Sonnenscehin to Grierson, 22. 5. 1919. 71 Ibid., Sonnenschein to Grierson, 30. 12. 1918, 23. 1. 1919, 22. 3. 1919, 5. 4. 1919, & 9. 5. 1919; see also Sonnenschein, ‘What are Subjunctive meanings’, 5. 4. 1919.

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72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91 92

93 94

95 96

Ibid., Sonnenschein to Grierson, 15. 2. 1919 & 20. 6. 1919. Ibid., Sonnenschein to Grierson, 20. 6. 1919. LS Files S/1/1/36, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 4. 9. 1919. Ibid., Grierson to Sonnenschein, 21. 9. 1919. LS Files S/1/1/35, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 20. 6. 1919. See, for example, ibid., his postscript on Committee on Oriental Grammatical Terminology’s Tables of Verbal Conjugation, 13. 10. 1919, S/1/1/36 no. 23. LS Files S/1/1/35, see Grierson’s note on Doderet’s amendment, n.d., with agenda for meeting of 18. 6. 1919. Ibid., Sonnenscehin to Grierson, 22. 5. 1919. LS Files S/1/1/36, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 21. 9. 1919. Seuren, Western Linguistics, p. 83; Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004, pp. 155ff. Seuren, Western Linguistics, pp. 140, 145–157; Manfred Bierwisch, Modern Linguistics: Its Development, Methods and Problems, The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Chs. 2–3. Seuren, Western Linguistics, pp. 227–252, 282. Ibid., p. 286. I discus this in Ch. 5 of Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. Pollock, Language of the Gods, p. 183. Itkonen, Universal History of Linguistics, p. 83; and on Panini not being surpassed in the West until the 1970s, pp. 68–69, 331. Thomas R. Trautmann, Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras, New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2006, Ch. 2. B. Prashad (ed), The Progress of Science in India During the Past TwentyFive Years, Calcutta: Indian Science Congress Association, 1938; Bayly, Recovering Liberties, pp. 255–257, 278; David Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 169–176. Fan-Sen Wang, ‘Foreword’, in Pollock, Elman, and Kevin Chang (eds), World Philology, pp. vii–x; Pollock, ‘Introduction’, ibid., pp. 5, 22–23. Steadman-Jones, Grammatical Representation, p. 7. LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson’s Note on Draft Introduction, n.d.; S/1/1/36, Grierson’s amendments to results of Committee on Oriental Grammatical Terminology, 11. 10. 1919, ‘we have not even thought of the many peculiarities of any of the languages of North-Western India’. LS Files S/1/1/35, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 20. 6. 1919. LS Files S/1/1/36, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 7. 10. 1919, where he refers to how ‘to my mind, no native would ever express himself in that way’ and S/1/1/35, Note by Grierson on Professor Sonnenschein’s Table of Verb-Nouns and Verb-Adjectives, 28. 3. 1919, ‘This tense would be called by Natives the karma-pradhān kriyā-dyōtaka saṁjñā, but the name does not appear in formal Grammars’. See also LS Files S/1/1/36, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 27. 9. 1919. LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson’s note on ‘The subjects in the Report of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology’, 20. 11. 1918, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 19. 12. 1918, Sonnenschein to Grierson, 22. 3. 1919.

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97 Ibid., Note by Grierson on Professor Sonnenschein’s Table of VerbNouns and Verb-Adjectives, 28. 3. 1919. 98 LS Files S/1/1/36, Grierson to Sonnenschein, 27. 9. 1919. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., Grierson to Sonnenschein, 4. 11. 1919. 101 Ibid., Grierson to Sonnenschein, 13. 8. 1919. 102 LS Files S/1/1/35, Grierson’s Note on Verbal Terminology, attached to Grierson to J.D. Anderson et al., 28. 5. 1919. 103 For this aspect of being a go-between, see Simon Schaffer, Lissa Roberts, Kapil Raj, and James Delbourgo (eds), The Brokered World: GoBetweens and Global Intelligence, 1770–1820, Washington: Science History Publications, 2009, p. xv.

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5 GRIERSON AND THE INDIAN NATION

Introduction: immigration and the foreign in India The range of regionally distinctive voices articulated in interaction with Grierson and his interventions on Sonnenschein’s committee on behalf of ‘Indians’ raise the question of what constitutes the Indian nation for Grierson. As we have seen, the LSI deploys a loose language of nationality. One effect of this is the proliferation of the terms ‘foreign’ and ‘abroad’ in its volumes. When languages or dialects are spoken outside their main regions in other parts of India, they are described as ‘foreign tongues’, or as being ‘spoken abroad’.1 Grierson discusses ‘Bengali as a foreign language’ in other parts of the subcontinent, and refers to it as a ‘foreign speech, [spreading] over the rest of India’.2 At times, the use of ‘foreign’ as a term is combined with a stress on conquest, imposition and immigration from other parts of India, suggesting inter-regional competitiveness and struggle. Thus, Orissa ‘has been a conquered nation’, subject to rule from Tilinga, and it then fell under the sway of the Bhoslas of Nagpur. As a result, a number of Telugu and Marathi words and idioms were ‘imposed’ on its language and ‘foreign elements . . . have intruded’ into it.3 In the section on Eastern Magahi, Grierson argues that three ‘nationalities’ live side by side in the district of Malda, each adhering to their own speech of either Bihari, Santali or Bengali. He then discusses ‘emigrants’ from the highlands of Chota Nagpur into Bengali-speaking areas. The result in this case and in Malda is a dialect of Bihari ‘with a curious Bengali colouring’: In each case this dialect is the language of a strange people in a strange land. All round them, and usually in a great majority, live the true people of the country, who speak a Bengali of 110

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considerable purity, and quite distinct from the mixed Bihārī spoken by these immigrants.4 Grierson clarifies that ‘in speaking of the Bengali speakers as the true people of the country, I do not mean that they necessarily are the autochthones of Manbhum’, but from the perspective of current linguistic facts, Bengali speakers are ‘in possession of the district at the present day’.5 This language of rightful possession, strangeness, purity and immigration suggests a localised and fraught sense of belonging woven around issues of language and dialect. In keeping with one colonial view, Grierson saw India as a collection of many nations, although for him these were mainly determined by distinct languages and dialects. However, for Grierson British imperial rule could not provide the unifying framework to counter the possible balkanisation of India into separate language nations. Ultimately, the findings of the LSI are underpinned by a powerful cultural narrative centring on one specific version of India as providing the unifying framework for the subcontinent. In this chapter, I explore the different strands which go into Grierson’s imagining of the Indian nation. In his initial proposal for the LSI, Grierson stressed that in contrast to the 19th-century philological preoccupation with ancient India and Sanskrit, he would focus on contemporary India and its languages. However, the volumes and files show a marked predilection for framing the LSI’s findings through a specific version of the ancient Indian past. For Grierson India’s antique past is powerfully present. Unlike Europe’s ancient past, which is safely left behind, in India it is contemporary. Moreover, Grierson’s version of India is specifically ‘Aryan’. For him, Aryan India is the apogee of Indian civilisation and it represents the real and authentic India. At the same time, he initiates an important shift in the discourse about Indian Aryans, by sketching out alternative grounds for their being authentically Indian which are not based on their being autochthonous.

The LSI and India’s antiquity In contrast to the LSI’s avowed aims of focusing on contemporary India, the LSI’s volumes and files frequently evoke ancient India as powerfully present. First, the Survey often twins Greek and Roman antiquity with Indian antiquity. Grierson cross-refers the names of Indian tribes and places to those in Greek and Latin texts, and in this context alludes to Herodotus, Ptolemy, Pliny, Nonnus, Strabo and 111

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Dionysios Periegetes, sometimes in conjunction with Sanskrit texts and authors.6 He cites Herodotus’s account of Darius I’s invasion of Western Panjab and discusses the Indian names recorded by Greek historians of Alexander the Great’s invasion.7 Occasionally Grierson applies terms like ‘prefecture’ to regions in India.8 In his correspondence he and Stein discuss Ptolemy’s name for Kashmir and Greek names from Arrian for Upper Swat.9 He also connects some Ormuri words with words in Herodotus.10 The notion of India’s antiquity as contemporary rather than safely remote in the past is reinforced by a reference to the ‘dramatic performances’ of the ‘Kafirs’ of the Hindu Kush resembling old Greek tragedies.11 Grierson was writing against a background in which comparisons between Indian and Greek and Latin antiquity were common in British colonial scholarship. In the wake of the Indo-European hypothesis, Greek history had become the ‘antique twin’ of Indian history. Sir William Jones (1746–1794) had compared the deities of ancient Rome and Greece to those of contemporary India,12 and his comparative mythology was underpinned by his emphasis on the relationship between Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.13 Jones also played a key role in the establishment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, whose publications contributed to Sanskrit texts and Brahmanical Hinduism acquiring the prestige of ‘classics’ and the ‘classical’.14 By the 1850s, Indian and other Asian intellectuals’ understanding of the ancient and medieval history of southern Asia included comparisons of ancient India with Greece and Rome in their writings.15 Elaborate comparisons between ancient India, Rome and Greece were also a prominent strand in ‘the classicism of anti-imperial modernity’ in the political and historical works of Indian liberal thinkers in the 19th and 20th centuries.16 For some of Grierson’s British correspondents, works like Grierson’s The Lay of Alha (1923) illustrated the origin of epics like the Iliad and Odyssey, and they used Grierson’s text for their teaching on the origins of the Greek and Latin epics.17 The comparisons with Greece and Rome in Grierson’s work reinforced the prestige and valency of India’s antiquity. However, this antiquity was also contemporaneous for Grierson, and this is evident in various ways. Grierson argued that Sanskrit was not a dead language like Latin: when he was in India he ‘carried on frequent correspondence in that language, and for many years spoke it every day’. He narrates an incident of conversing with an Indian passenger in Sanskrit on a train as it was ‘our most convenient lingua franca’. He also received letters in Sanskrit from friends in India.18 Others read 112

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some of his earlier articles as giving a clear idea of Sanskrit as a ‘living language’.19 Unlike Europe, which had left Greek and Latin behind as dead languages, for Grierson Sanskrit is a living language and a lingua franca in India. In a further conflation of contemporary India with ancient India, Grierson evokes the ancient geography of India as depicted in Sanskrit texts in relation to contemporary India; for example, he notes how the country denoted by the name ‘Hindostān’ includes the ancient Madhyadésá or ‘Midland of Sanskrit geography’, the eastern limit of which is now Allahabad.20 When discussing the traditions of the Doms, Grierson refers to the location of the country of the Nishadas in the Mahābhārata and the river Sarasvati, as well as to other Sanskrit texts locating them in the Vindhyas.21 In a number of letters he discusses the ancient river of Sarasvati as a key feature of India’s ancient geography.22 The ancient name of Kanauj in the Rāmāyaṇa is alluded to alongside its current location.23 The section on Maithili opens with its ancient name and the definition of its territory in a Sanskrit text, and Grierson outlines how this ancient map matches with current districts in India.24 Sometimes Grierson inserts ancient geography into contemporary India, braiding the two together. For example, he begins with the Sanskrit name for the sub-Himalayan hill-tract west of the present kingdom of Nepal, and speaks of the ‘modern Sapādalaksha’, even though the name is no longer in use.25 This preoccupation with matching up Sanskrit geography with contemporary India is also expressed by some of his correspondents. In 1934 the Kern Institute in Leiden approached Grierson about their atlas of ‘Greater India’ in which the ‘ancient names (Sanskrit or Sanskritized) of towns, villages, districts, rivers, etc’ would be printed ‘in red letters under modern names’. The Institute also aimed to collect data about the ‘ancient topography found in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit literature and inscriptions’ to throw light on the position of localities.26 Some, like Max Müller, looked forward to Grierson’s Bihār Peasant Life (1885) in terms that valorised ancient India as contemporary: I expect to find in your book the horses and carts and utensils of the people very much as they are described in the Veda, and I hope that your descriptions will . . . give me a clearer idea of these things than the scattered notices in the Veda. I wish you could have added always the Sanskrit names where you give the modern names, but in many cases it is easy to see what the original form must have been.27 113

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Others also read into Bihār Peasant Life customs unchanged from their description in ancient Sanskrit texts.28 In this they were given a generous helping hand by Grierson, who, as Shahid Amin has shown, ignored many signs of change in the North Indian countryside in Bihār Peasant Life, highlighting over 150 terms associated with the wooden mill, and only one term for the English-made iron mill.29 Grierson’s sense of the contemporaneity of India’s ancient past is further evident in the LSI’s gramophone recordings. In Colonialism and Knowledge, I show how in the LSI’s second specimens Grierson foregrounded a rural and folkloric India rather than an urban and technologically modernising one. I also showed how its gramophone recordings used techno-modernity to lift Indian languages out of the noisiness of Indian modernity’s soundscape. In this Grierson shared Crooke’s predilections, who in his Glossary constructed an image of India immune to modernity, and excluded borrowed Anglicisms and words for the industrial milling apparatus, railways and the telegraph.30 In the LSI, there are other ways in which Indian languages are untainted by techno-modernity while being reproduced through its technological means. One of the arguments Grierson repeatedly used to persuade local governments to undertake the recordings was to exclaim, ‘What would we not give today for gramophone records of the hymns as sung by the Vedic Rishis!’31 Grierson collapsed the past, present and future, projecting the possibility of sound recording technology backwards into antiquity in order to underline the value of the recordings for future generations: What would we not now give for gramophone records of the Veda as recited by their original composers, and, on a more modest scale, that is what the Linguistic Survey wishes to secure for future generations of researchers into what will then be India’s past.32 Further, ‘For future generations of scholars, a complete record of all the languages spoken in India at one particular time, would be of inestimable value’; and, ‘What would not scholars of the present day give for samples of the speech current in Vedic times?’33 Grierson thus framed the recordings by destabilising linear chronology and inserting India’s antiquity into the narrative of techno-modernity. He reinforced ancient India as both the site of techno-modernity’s absence as well as its foil and support, thereby evoking India’s antiquity as powerfully present in contradictory ways. This unstable temporality 114

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was also imbricated with sound recording technology from the start. Edison, for example, referred to the similarity between the baked clay cylinders used by the Assyrians and Babylonians 2500 years ago inscribed with cuneiform characters ‘as their medium for perpetuating records’, and the phonograph’s wax cylinders – here again antiquity and techno-modernity are entangled with each other.34 The Gramophone Company’s advertisements in India also combined the appeal of India’s antiquity with the promise of techno-modernity.35 A preoccupation with using sound technology to preserve India’s past was evident in a musicological project undertaken by A.A. Bake. Bake hoped the Government of India might ‘make a well-founded organization of the whole scheme, very much after the fashion of the Linguistic Survey of India . . . to collect the materials in every province separately, and make a central bureau where everything would be concentrated’.36 Grierson was consulted by Bake when they met in June 1930. Bake wanted to use the same principles and forms in the recordings of folksongs as Grierson had used for the Survey’s recordings.37 The preservation through sound recordings of dying musical and singing traditions amongst lower caste groups in India was highlighted in a fund-raising letter signed by a number of European scholars in support of Bake’s project, including Grierson; in many ways, this also paralleled one of the LSI’s own concerns, to preserve records of dialects and languages dying out in India.38 Thus, sound recording technology in India was often entangled with preserving India’s past or, in Grierson’s case, paradoxically pointing to how that past could have been preserved had the technology been available. For him, the value of the recordings lay in preservation rather than innovation and this reflects his broader conservative outlook in this context. In contrast, an Indian company, the National Record Company, had the tricolour national flag as its emblem and its trademark was ‘Young India’.39 This trademark is in sharp contrast to the way the Survey entangled its recordings project with a heightened sense of a re-imagined ancient India.

The Aryan in the LSI However, for Grierson the Indian antiquity that matters is ‘Aryan’ antiquity and ‘Aryan’ India is the apogee of Indian civilisation. IndoAryan languages are ‘the tongue of civilization and of the caste system with all the power and superiority which that system confers upon those who live under its sway’.40 Whereas B.H. Hodgson had 115

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argued in the 1840s that the aborigines of India were civilised at the outset and had fallen into barbarism because of an oppressive Aryan invasion,41 in the LSI degrees of civilisation are measured in terms of proximity to Aryan India and it presents India in terms of ‘Aryanisation’. Hill tribes and their dialects are ‘Aryanised’, especially when they are settled as cultivators and landholders.42 The Brahmaputra valley is now ‘completely Aryanised’ as are the plains of northern India.43 The Survey also mentions how in north India many Dravidians have become ‘Aryanised’.44 In some instances, references are made to ‘semiAryanised’ tribes, such as the Korwas.45 ‘Semi-Aryanised’ suggests an implicit teleological direction in Indian culture towards complete ‘Aryanisation’ so that ‘Aryanisation’ is both inevitable and desirable. For Grierson, Aryan speakers never give up their languages for other languages. However, aboriginal tribes willingly give theirs up for Aryan languages because of the prestige attached to the latter: Speakers of an Aryan language when living as strangers in a country in which another Aryan language, even a nearly related one, is spoken, retain their use of their ancestral tongue. This is, as might be expected, still more prominently the case where they have settled among an aboriginal population, speaking non-Aryan languages.  .  . . This is a peculiarity of Aryan speakers as distinct from the aboriginal tribes. It will be noted in future volumes of this Survey, how willingly an aboriginal tribe allows its own proper language to be corrupted by those of its more civilised Aryan neighbours, and how, in some cases, it has even abandoned its own language altogether, and has adopted in its stead one whose speakers claim, and are allowed, all the prestige that attaches in India to the caste-system.46 The languages of Aryan civilisation in India ‘are continually superseding . . . the aboriginal languages such as those belonging to the Dravidian, the Munda and the Tibeto-Burman families’.47 This assumption about Aryanisation was institutionalised in the census, with officials referring as a matter of course to non-Aryan languages spoken by Dravidian and ‘Mongolian’ races as being displaced by the languages of an Aryan ‘superior civilisation’.48 A general view of an Aryan-centric India penetrated the everyday vocabulary of such officials; one census official in the Central Provinces refers casually to the ‘Aryan residents of these Provinces’.49 116

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Thus, in the LSI India is on a historical track towards ‘Aryanisation’. The terms Dravidian, Munda, Dardic and Tibeto-Burman are positioned around the category ‘Aryan’ and ‘the common Aryan vocabulary of India’.50 As is to be expected, ‘Aryan’ is closely associated with Sanskrit and its legacy in the Survey. For Grierson it was imperative that the ICS exams reflect the importance of Sanskrit in understanding India; in 1920, for example, he rightly argued for the inclusion of Vedic Sanskrit into the ICS exams, pointing to how it was already taught at the universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.51 He also justifiably argued that for the ICS exams in India, if the examination in a classical language was to correspond to the examination in Greek and Latin for the ICS examinations in Britain, then Sanskrit should be on the same level as Arabic, Persian and Pali.52 However, for Grierson Sanskrit is not only important as the ‘literary mother of most of the Indian vernaculars’, it is also the ‘only key to unlock the door to the inner mind of India’.53 Here, then, Grierson is clear about what he means by the Indian mind, which he invokes on Sonnenschein’s committee although there he does not spell it out.54 He also described his study of Sanskrit (he passed the High Proficiency Standard in the ICS Sanskrit exam in July 1876)55 as ‘lifting the veil between my eyes and India’.56 In the context of his failing eyesight, Sanskrit compensated for his loss, and was akin to a revelatory experience. Sanskrit enabled him to see India when his eyes were breaking down.57 It is not surprising, therefore, that some of Grierson’s Indian interlocutors saw him as committed to the ‘cause of Sanskrit language and literature’.58 Grierson was also plugged into networks of Sanskrit knowledge production in India. In 1916 he asked the DPI of Bombay to send him copies of two works mentioned in R.G. Bhandarkar’s ‘Report on the Search for Sanskrit Manuscripts in Bombay Presidency’ in 1883–1884 and subsequently corresponded with V.S. Ghate, Professor of Sanskrit at Deccan College, Poona, about the manuscripts in question.59 In 1929–1930 he received the descriptive catalogues of the Sanskrit manuscripts in the Tanjore Maharaja Serofji’s Sarasvati Mahal library, which he appreciated particularly for its information on Vedic India.60 Grierson was sent the Trivandrum Sanskrit series from 1911 onwards, including Ganpati Sastri’s edition of the Arthaśāstra.61 He stressed their value for ‘every student of Indian literature’, and when the editors sought to reduce the distribution of free copies in 1927, he emphasised ‘they are highly valued by me, and have constantly been consulted’, adding ‘I should greatly regret if the supply was discontinued’.62 117

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Grierson also evoked the perspectives of ancient Sanskrit texts on contemporary tribes and languages in India, in ways which tended to align the Survey with these perspectives. The section on the Khasa tribe begins with an extended discussion on the depiction of the tribe in Sanskrit literature.63 Reference is made to the tribes in Western Panjab, the north-west of India and the Hindu Kush in the ‘most ancient Indian authorities’. These were of Aryan origin but lost their claim to being Aryan and became ‘Mlechchhas’ because they did not adhere to the ‘rules for eating and drinking observed by the Sanskritic peoples of India’.64 For Grierson, the mixed character of the languages of Central and Western Panjab is ‘illustrated by the character given to the inhabitants of those tracts’ in the Mahābhārata and by references in Panini. Although not distant from the Madhyadésá, ‘the centre from which Sanskritic civilization spread’, the people were described as living in anarchy, without caste and without Brahmins, ‘a dreadful thing’ to orthodox Hindus ‘of the Middle Country’. They also had no respect for the Vedas, and seemed to be polyandrous. While Grierson qualifies this account by saying that ‘it is given to us by enemies’, he counter-qualifies by concluding that ‘whether true or not, it illustrates the gulf in habits, customs and languages’ between the Madhyadésá and Panjab. In his correspondence, he draws on similar references in the Mahābhārata to tribes in Western Panjab.65 In his letters he again invokes the perspective of orthodox Hindus of the Sarasvati towards southern and western Panjab.66 Thus, whatever the Survey’s original intention to focus on contemporary India, in its actual narration the culture of a Sanskritic, Aryan India looms large. When the LSI was conceived, Grierson envisaged himself as the director of the ‘Aryan branch’ alone. For him this would be a ‘labour of love’, while for the other family of languages in India, the ‘rewards for the grammars and vocabularies so produced, would be nothing like so large as those offered in the Aryan branch’.67 His value system and assumptions are captured in his comments on the differences between Magahi and Maithili: Magahī is condemned by speakers of other languages as being rude and uncouth like the people who use it. In fact the principal difference between it and Maithili is that the latter has been under the influence of learned Brahmans for centuries, while the former has been the language of a people who have been dubbed boors since Vedic times.68 118

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However, for Grierson Aryan India is more than just the pinnacle of civilisation in the subcontinent – it represents the real and authentic India. In his correspondence Grierson describes Dardic languages as being ‘superseded by true Indian languages’.69 Grierson’s circumscribed view of what counts as ‘Indian’ is evident in an exchange of letters with Georg Morgenstierne about the term ‘Indo-Aryan’. For the latter, the fact that Dardic languages were not Prakritic or Sanskritic did not make them un-Indian, ‘just as the Kafir [sic] languages may not be Sanscritic, but (to my mind) are after all, Indian’. For Grierson, on the other hand, ‘if a language is not Prakritic or Sanskritic, it cannot be Indian’. While in the end Grierson speculates on the need for a term such as ‘Indo-Dardo-Aryan’ to accommodate Morgenstierne’s arguments, he also uses an analogy with plant seeds to argue that languages have hereditary tendencies in order to explain his view of the Dardic languages as not properly Indian.70 This botanical analogy reinforces his sense of the rootedness of Indo-Aryanism in the subcontinent, although, as we shall see, his sense of rootedness is unconventional. Grierson’s version of India is shared by other colonial officials. J.S. Cotton wrote to Grierson in 1904, asking for two chapters for the Imperial Gazetteer, one on languages and the other on ‘Vernacular Literatures’. Stressing that the Gazetteer was for the public, he proposed that Grierson begin with the Sanskritic languages, as being ‘the characteristic Indian ones’ and hence deserving of the largest space, followed by Dravidian and Indo-Chinese languages, and then ‘the odds and ends last’.71 Here, too, a continuum of Indianness is presented, with Sanskrit and Sanskrit-derived languages being characteristically Indian and Dravidian and other language groups representing diluted forms of it. Grierson goes out of his way to tie the term ‘Aryan’ more closely to the term ‘Indian’. He regrets the term is used as an equivalent to Indo-European, especially by the English. He himself does not apply it to languages such as English or German, which are sometimes termed ‘Aryan languages’ in England because ‘The word “Aryan” is an Aryan word, originally used by the Aryan people’. Indians and Iranians from ‘Indo-European stock’ have a right to call themselves Aryans, but ‘we English have not’.72 Grierson’s eccentric spelling of ‘Eran’ is intended to ‘show the connexion with the word “Aryan”’.73 Thus, the LSI accepts the self-designation of the Aryans, whereas in the case of the Munda tribes, like ‘several other civilized or semi-civilized tribes’, it adopts the names used to designate them by ‘their Aryan-speaking neighbours’.74 Similarly, although the Bhils ‘are known under a bewildering variety 119

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of names’, the only ‘comprehensive name’ is derived from the Sanskrit Bhilla.75 While the Gonds refer to themselves as Koi, the Survey uses the word ‘Gonds’ which according to Grierson occurs in the Sanskrit works of lexicographers such as Hemachandra.76 These naming practices reflect the LSI’s focus on and sympathy with an upper caste ‘Aryan’ perspective. There are also hints of an overlap between British colonial hierarchies and these names. In a discussion of the names for Munda tribes, it transpires that ‘Indian Aryans’ adopted their word ‘Kol’ as a generic term for ‘non-Aryan’ tribes, identifying it with the Sanskrit term for pig. Grierson speculates that this name may also be related to the word ‘coolie’.77 At one point, Grierson combines an English term with weighty colonial baggage in Ireland with Indian notions of purity, when he alludes to how for the Mahābhārata the Khasas were Aryans who had fallen outside ‘the Aryan pale of purity’.78

Aryan mobility In contrast to the general instability of names in the LSI, then, the name ‘Aryan’ is stabilised and reinforced as the key reference point of Indian civilisation. This was also institutionalised in the ICS examinations. In the early 1920s the paper on Indian history referred to the ‘social, religious and political evolution of Hindu India’, with special attention to ‘the Aryan and non-Aryan migration into India . . . and to the distribution in India of the leading racial types’.79 In the LSI the division between Aryans and non-Aryans is reinforced by references to how Aryans think differently from the speakers of other language groups in India;80 the division goes down into the workings of consciousness. The LSI also depicts Aryans in competition with other groups ‘in the race for possession’ of territory in India, as having ‘colonies’ in parts of India, or in terms of powerful expansion and the displacement of others.81 Sometimes the differences are nationalised, as when Grierson describes the speakers of proto-Dravidian as the ‘survivors of a national movement from the east or from the south of India’ that came about with the Aryan invasion/immigration into India.82 At one point Grierson refers to the Aryan migrations into India as ‘the ultimate limit in one direction of the Great Adventure’;83 that is, he deploys the language of an adventure narrative to both Indian Aryans and the British.84 Both the British and the Indians participated in an Aryan adventure. However, while Indian Aryans are the apogee of civilisation in India they are also a warning sign. In a section headed ‘Race Mixture with the Aborigines’, Grierson argues that the ‘ethnical 120

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character of the Aryans’ was altered ‘partly by intermixture with the numerically superior aborigines, and partly owing to climatic influences’.85 The casual use of terms like ‘Aryan half-breeds’ in general, conjoined with references to the ‘purest representatives’ of race and the depiction of the Aryan population of northern India as not being a ‘pure race’ as it contains a ‘strong Dravidian element’, racialises Aryans and non-Aryans, while also expressing colonial fears about miscegenation.86 Grierson identifies with and centralises Indian Aryans in the LSI, but he also distances them from the British, and in this sense, his exclusion of the English from the term ‘Aryan’ (see earlier) also serves another purpose. The Indian Aryans were also culturally hybridised in India: they inter-married with Dravidian tribes and adopted ‘many of their gods and many of their customs’.87 Grierson suggests that Siva as one of the main deities of the Hindu pantheon in the Vedas has Dravidian roots and the conception of the god Rudra-Siva has a ‘tinge of Dravidian ideas’. This example shows how fundamental the influence of the Dravidians on the Aryans might have been, ‘not only philologically, but on the whole method of thought’.88 Grierson also discusses the extent to which cerebral letters of the alphabet of Indo-Aryan languages ‘came into being on Indian soil’. He argues that cerebral letters do occur in words of ‘purely Aryan origin’, but that the pronunciation of Aryan words changed under the influence of surrounding ‘non-Aryan tongues, whose speakers many times exceeded the Indo-Aryans in numbers’. This is in keeping with a general rule that a people which invades a foreign country, to some degree adopts the pronunciation of its new home, partly as a result of the influence of the climate, and partly also on account of the intermixture with the old inhabitants.89 Thus, like the British in India, the Aryans were outnumbered by the inhabitants they found in India when they arrived. However, unlike the British, they inter-married with the inhabitants. Moreover, as Buettner has shown, Anglo-Indians were fearful of acquiring a creolised pronunciation of English, akin to the way Eurasians and Indians spoke English; hence much emphasis was placed on their correctness of English pronunciation.90 Unlike the British, then, Indian Aryans were unable to maintain the purity of their pronunciation and language when they arrived in India. They adopted the cerebral sounds which British ICS trainees found so difficult to pronounce. While on the one hand, Grierson descried this inability on the part of ICS trainees, on 121

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the other hand it was a useful reminder of how the British had not made the same mistakes as the Indian Aryans when it came to pronouncing their own language.91 Grierson’s racialisation of Indian Aryans also needs to be set in a wider intellectual context. Grierson’s approach to race was ambivalent; he tried to dissociate linguistics from race ‘science’ but at times also succumbed to the dominance of race as a discourse.92 But from the mid-19th century onwards, one leading body of thought inspired by ‘race science’ saw languages and races as necessarily connected. Linguistic differences between the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian language groups in India were interpreted in terms of a clash between different coloured peoples, giving rise to an influential racial theory of Indian civilisation, which was a synthesis between race science and the notion of India as essentially Sanskritic.93 Grierson’s anxieties about ‘race mixture with the aborigines’ echo this racial theory of Indian civilisation.94 In this context at least, his commitment to Aryan India overrode his attempts to disentangle linguistics from race.

Aryans as outsiders However, Grierson’s Aryanism has subtler aspects to it. He entangles the category ‘Aryan’ with narratives of mobility, belonging and home,95 and in doing so, he sketches out alternative grounds for Aryan claims to be authentically Indian which do not rest on their being autochthonous. First, Grierson describes Aryans as both invaders and immigrants. He postulates a theory of an Aryan ‘double invasion’ to explain the distribution of Indo-European languages in India,96 but also refers to the Aryan entry into India as ‘immigration’ and the Aryans as either immigrants and settlers.97 Sometimes he describes Aryans as both invaders and immigrants in the same paragraph. Similar ambiguities persist around his use of the terms conquest, settlement and displacement.98 In his correspondence Grierson moves between referring to an Aryan ‘double immigration’ and a double invasion, again sometimes in the same letter.99 These references are part of an extensive vocabulary of migration and invasion that runs through the LSI volumes. This includes such phrases as ‘a constant reflux of emigration’, ‘re-immigrants’, ‘re-immigration’, ‘occupation’ and ‘absorption’.100 The LSI also presents a picture of migration internal to India in which Indians from other regions are referred to as ‘immigrant settlers’, ‘non-resident immigrants’, ‘emigrants’ and ‘colonists’.101 In one instance he refers to immigrants coming into an area 122

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as ousting their ‘immigrant predecessors’;102 that is, what we have are successive waves of migrants rather than autochthonous inhabitants. For Grierson, at least, most Indians have a migrant status. Similarly, the language of invasion also pervades the Survey and in some cases, invaders are themselves conquered by other invaders.103 For Sten Konow, Mundas were the original inhabitants of India, whose language was ‘ousted’ by Dravidian immigrant-conquerors. The Dravidians then lost their own ‘anthropological type’ and adopted the ‘Munda physical type’, but were later ousted by the Aryans.104 Other groups are depicted as in conflict with each other, or are referred to in terms of conquest and loss.105 For the LSI, then, India is characterised by invasion and immigration. The migratory and invasive status of Indian Aryans is therefore normalised because India is anyway a space of constant migration and invasion. Moreover, the ambiguous nature of the Aryan entry into India as both invasion and immigration is shared by the British entry into India as well, since the British presence combined features of immigrant settlement and conquest without being either fully. In this sense, the Aryans are precursors of the British in India, so Grierson’s ambiguity here is also an act of British self-legitimisation. The LSI tends to deploy images of waves when it refers to invasion and migration in India, suggesting liquid-like flows of peoples and their languages. It uses words and phrases like ‘reflex waves’, ‘eddies of the various waves of .  .  . immigration’, ‘jetsam from the tide of . . . invasion’, ‘successive waves of . . . invaders’, ‘wave after wave of . . . further migration into India’ and ‘the backwash of immigration’.106 Sometimes the phraseology can be dramatic; for example, in one passage the language of ‘swarm after swarm’, ‘wave after wave’ and ‘great waves’ of invasion and migration are joined together.107 Sindhi has ‘overflowed’ into parts of Baluchistan, Panjab and Bhawalpur, and Grierson likens the spread of other languages to ‘a wave which diminished in force the further it proceeded from the place of origin’.108 Nehru also depicted India in liquid terms, but to a different effect.109 For him its fluidity and liquidity is in keeping with the general nature of ‘the world [which] is fluid and seeks new levels before it solidifies afresh’, and it is therefore in keeping with the fluid nature of modernity itself.110 While grappling with India’s heterogeneous and elusive nature Nehru also writes: There are myriad ideas that float about like flotsam and jetsam on the surface of India, and many of them are mutually 123

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antagonistic. . . . This is, to some extent, possible everywhere; in an old and big country like India, with so much of the dead clinging on to the living, it is peculiarly easy.111 For Nehru, too, the fluidity of India raised questions about the Indian past and its impact on the present, but for him the key issue is how the dead were clinging on to the living in India and weighing it down. For Grierson, on the other hand, India’s liquidity is part of its always present antiquity and its waves of migrants and invaders normalises Aryan India and Aryan civilisation as the apogee of authentic Indianness.

The question of home The LSI’s picture of an India caught up in a flux of migrations and invasions raises the question of where ‘home’ is for these groups on the move. In the Survey, it is rare that a language occupies its ‘original seat’.112 In his Emigration Report of 1883 Grierson notes how both people and languages travel. He comes across a boy returned from the French Mauritius who speaks French: ‘It was a novel experience to me to hear a nearly naked native boy of nine speaking good French in a Bihar village’.113 In general, no sooner is home mentioned in the LSI than it is marked by loss, displacement or departure. Speakers give up the languages of their ‘original home’, or their dialects flourish more than ‘a thousand miles from the true home of the race’ or ‘its proper home’.114 Original homes are continually supplanted by ‘present’ or ‘new’ homes.115 In other instances, the word home is dropped for ‘nidus’, suggesting a distinction between home and a point of origin.116 In the LSI, a place of origin and being at home are rarely synonymous. Discussion on the whereabouts of the ‘original home’ of the Aryans is inevitably framed by speculation as to their routes of migration into India and Persia, as is the equally long disquisition on the migration of Tibeto-Burmans from their ‘original seat’.117 Theories about the original home of the Indo-Europeans changed during Grierson’s life time and are reflected in his letters. He warned one of his correspondents in 1922 not to take his account of the Indo-Aryans’ entry into India ‘as my final opinion’, as he now accepted Giles’s new theory in the New Cambridge History of India that the Aryans originated ‘somewhere about Hungary’. In 1930, however, he went back to Max Müller’s theory of the Asian origins of the Aryans.118 Thus, in Grierson’s texts the Aryans are marked by shifting possibilities of home. At times, the Aryan ‘home’ slips into phrases explicitly referring to moving away, 124

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such as the ‘original centre of dispersion’ and a ‘secondary centre of dispersion’.119 For the Aryans in India, then, there is no home as such, only points of dispersion. One theorist has argued that literary texts which interrogate the seductive pleasures of ‘feeling at home’ could be read as ‘“immigrant” fictions’.120 In some ways, because of its stress on migration into and within India, the LSI is a form of immigrant writing. For Grierson, India complicates and interrogates the pleasures of home; Indians dwell in travel and are at home in it.121 Because home is marked by estrangement, speakers’ locations are often marked by strangeness in the LSI. The Aryans were initially ‘isolated in India among a strange population’, and speakers of an Aryan language retained their ancestral tongue even when ‘living as strangers in a country’ in which another Aryan language is spoken.122 The mixed Bihari-Bengali dialect in Malda is described as ‘the language of a strange people in a strange land’, and Grierson also refers to ‘islands of [dialects of] Mōn-Khmēr origin, standing out amidst seas of alien peoples’.123 In the valley of Assam the Chutiya tribe has preserved its language and customs ‘in the midst of a number of alien races’.124 Since the concept of home is mobile in India, and nobody is at home in their point of origin, the fact that Aryans may have had an original home elsewhere is inconsequential. For Indians in general, home is not a fixed place; rather it refers to a process of making oneself at home and so Aryans can legitimately claim India as their home. In fact, they are quintessentially Indian, since the term Aryan is essentially conjoined with ‘the stormy question’ of their original home.125 Also, as we have seen, in India the terms ‘foreign’ and ‘alien’ can include any Indian group in relation to any other Indian group and the boundaries between being native and being foreign are always porous. This, alongside the pervasiveness of the language of migration in the LSI, means it is difficult to identify who are autochthones in India and thus the legitimacy of Aryans as Indians cannot be questioned. It is also important to remember that in his 1883 Emigration Report Grierson countered stereotypes of Indians being held back from travelling overseas because of anxieties about losing caste.126 In Grierson’s view, ‘Everyone in this country [India] fights shy of the question of Dravidian ethnology in its ultimate terms’,127 but for the LSI it is not possible to say whether the Dravidian ‘race’ are autochthones or immigrants.128 Some of Grierson’s other correspondents asked Grierson to clarify whether ‘the present distribution of Munda and Dravidian . . . affords any clue as to which was first in the field’, but the question 125

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is not definitively answered by Grierson.129 Grierson and his correspondents do use the term aborigine, aboriginal or ‘partly aboriginal’, without defining the terms clearly; the term ‘partly aboriginal’ suggests such categories were not watertight for Grierson.130 He cautiously suggests at one point that the ‘Australo-Dravidians of India proper’ are ‘looked upon as the aborigines of India’.131 The hyphenated term, echoed in letters by other officials,132 indicates the aboriginal as a compound and no further explication is provided, except to allude to the hypothesis of ‘clear traces’ of connection between the aboriginal languages of Australia and the Munda languages of the subcontinent. It is possible that the use of the term aborigine and aboriginal are in part borrowed from an Australian context – at one point Grierson refers to the ‘Lemurian continent where now sweep the restless waves of the Indian Ocean’.133 In his correspondence he also alludes to the possible connection between Dravidian languages and those of Australia.134 The term ‘aboriginal’ is also used in contrast to ‘Aryan’ when discussing the supposed peculiarity of Aryan speakers as distinct from the aboriginal tribes, while also being applied more generally to the Dravidian, the Munda and the Tibeto-Burman families, as languages which existed before the advent of the Indo-Aryan speakers.135 When Grierson speculates that a form of Mon-Khmer language once spread across the whole of ‘Further India’, he clarifies he is not thereby suggesting its ‘speakers were autochthones of this region’; rather they were probably migrants from north-western China who ‘dispossessed the aborigines, as they, in turn, were dispossessed by the Tibeto-Burmans and the Tais’.136 Thus, the LSI breaks the connection between belonging to India and being aboriginal or autochthonous. Aryan claims to being Indian are not compromised by the fact that at one point they may have been outsiders and the LSI’s celebration of India as a migratory space inserts Aryans more deeply into it. However, there are limits to this narrative as some Indian groups are too radically migratory to be contained within the Survey’s discourse. In the case of ‘gipsy’ dialects and nomadic tribes, the migratory and an original home cannot be connected at all. Taken to its extreme, the migratory can move beyond the stabilising framework built around the Aryan. The speech of a ‘vagrant’ tribe like the Kanjars, for example, does not show ‘where their original home is’. All that can be traced in their speech are the languages they have had contact with.137 Other examples of such radically mobile and protean dialects include the language of the Kodas, whose ‘wandering life’ means that ‘we find them in one district, and 126

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now in another’. It is not possible to draw up boundaries for their dialect, nor is it possible to define its characteristics in all its various localities.138 In the case of one other wandering tribe the origin of their multiple self-designations remains unknown. Moreover, ‘consistency cannot . . . be expected in the dialect of a tribe which wander over such a wide area and associate with people talking so many different languages’.139 Another nomadic group speaks a mixture of Gujarati, Rajasthani and Marathi, the relative proportions of which vary according to locality, or as one official put it, with whom Grierson agreed, their language is ‘a queer jumble of about every language this side of India’ – whatever their original dialect, it was ‘hopelessly lost in their wanderings’.140 Other officials were of the view that ‘the language of a travelling race squatting from place to place is bound to be a hybridized one’, hence the dialect of one such group is ‘more or less a patchwork culled from languages’ they encountered in their wanderings.141 Grierson also refers to nomadic groups who have no legends of their ancestral homes, and who bury their dead where they die without marking the spot in any way.142 Home and migration are always in play together in the Survey, so not having any notion of home at all threatens its Aryan narrative since, in the end, the Aryans migrated and made India their home. In extreme cases, the breakdown of the migration-home nexus leads to radically alternative communities, such as the Pendharis, who were ‘of no common race, and of no common religion’, with their ranks full of ‘outlaws and broken men of all India’.143 The possibility of having ‘no common religion’ created by such radically mobile communities is particularly threatening to Grierson’s notion of the Aryan as authentically Indian, because religious difference played a key part in his idea of India as Aryan. The next chapter addresses the question of how Grierson’s notion of India was grounded in stark ideas of religious difference.

Conclusion Emeneau has argued that the examination of borrowings from Dravidian by Sanskrit was blocked by the enthronement of Sanskrit in Indian civilisation by Western scholars. It was assumed that Sanskrit culture was higher than Dravidian; hence only Dravidian could borrow from Sanskrit.144 Grierson certainly contributed to this enthronement of Sanskrit, but he was open about Sanskrit’s borrowings from Dravidian, as we have seen. For him the question of borrowing was not at odds with the enthronement of Sanskrit in Indian civilisation; 127

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once Aryan India is released from the need to be autochthonous, borrowing from others does not undermine its centrality.145 That said, he was cagey about discussing the origins of the Dravidians, as his fleeting and tentative references to this issue and the Lemurian continent shows; he seemed anxious to give such theories, which were an important component of an assertive Tamil and Dravidian identity in the early 20th century,146 as little space as possible. Moreover, his sense of a Greater India was also Aryan-centric, and as such, it countered the Dravidian movement’s reimagining from the 1930s onwards of a transnational ancestral homeland partly within and partly outside India.147 For Gandhi, too, the question of whether Aryans were indigenous was irrelevant, since what mattered to him was how the peoples of ancient India ‘blended’ with one another to produce a composite culture.148 Grierson kept any such notions of compositeness at arm’s length. For him, India is ultimately Aryan and its civilisation is Aryan. All other non-Aryan groups are positioned around this term, and all other groups are being or should be ‘Aryanised’, with one important exception, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Notes 1 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 7: Indo-Aryan Family (Southern Group), Specimens of the Marāṭhī Language, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1905, pp. 2, 217. 2 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of the Bengali and Assamese Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Press, 1903, pp. 19–20. 3 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bihārī and Oṛiyā Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, p. 369. 4 Ibid., p. 145. 5 Ibid., p. 145. See also p. 179 on how in the district of Malda ‘we find a curious mixture of language, different nationalities and tribes in one and the same village each speaking its own language. . . . Even each of these three languages varies according to the caste of the speaker’. 6 For some examples, see George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 10: Specimens of Languages of the Eranian Family, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1921, p. 46 for comments on the Afridis and Pakhtuns; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: IndoAryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 4: Specimens of the Pahārī languages and Gujurī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, pp. 7–8, 17 for the Khasas; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Pt. 1: Introductory, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publications Branch, 1927, p. 108; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8,

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7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24

Pt. 2: Specimens of the Dardic or Piśācha Languages (including Kāshmīrī), Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1919, p. 1 for the Dards; and George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 4: Muṇḍā and Dravidian Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1906, p. 576 for Telugu. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 135; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8: Indo-Aryan Family (North-Western Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Sindhī and Lahndā, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing India, 1919, p. 3. For example, ‘a sub-prefecture of Lhasa’, George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 1: General Introduction, Specimens of the Tibetan Dialects, the Himalayan Dialects, and the North Assam Group, Calcutta: Superintendent of the Government Press, 1909, pp. 613–614. EUR 223/323, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 1. 3. 1917; EUR 223/324, Stein to Grierson, 30. 9. 1926. Linguistic Survey Files S/1/1/8, Grierson to Sten Konow, 24. 11. 1915, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, London, hereafter LS Files. LS Files S/1/2/2, Grierson to Sir John Marshall, 3. 3. 1926. Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, Ch. 1. Ibid., Ch. 1. Phiroze Vasunia, The Classics and Colonial India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 10–11. Christopher A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Political Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 47, 163ff. Bayly, Recovering Liberties, pp. 180, 189; Vasunia, Classics and Colonial India, p. 122. EUR 223/337, Sir William Ridgeway to Grierson, 16. 10. 1923. See Ch. 8 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India for a discussion of this text. EUR 223/228, Grierson to Blaikie, Civil Service Commission, 28. 2. 1921. EUR 223/299, Prof. J. Jolly to Grierson, 21. 2. 1886, referring to Grierson’s ‘Curiosities of Indian Literature’, Indian Antiquary (1885), xiv: 124, 206, 236, 261, 292, 323; xv: 281–282, 318–319, 348; xvi: 46–48, 78, 199–200, 226–227, 256, 284, 315; xvii: 60, 88. For Grierson’s earlier view that Sanskrit ‘has always been a second language, a polite language’, from Panini to the present day, see his ‘In What Degree Was Sanskrit a Spoken Language?’, JRAS, July 1904: 471–481. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Western Hindī and Pañjābī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, pp. 42–43. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 11: Gipsy Languages, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922, p. 5. LS Files S/1/14/6, Grierson to H.A. Rose, 12. 12. 1901 & 22. 7. 1901. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 82. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 13.

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25 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 180. 26 EUR 223/303, J. Ph. Vogel to Grierson, 4. 10. 1934, attaching note ‘Archaeological Atlas of Greater India’. 27 EUR 223/299, Max Müller to Grierson, 5. 1. 1886. 28 Ibid., Prof. J. Jolly to Grierson, 8. 1. 1886. 29 Shahid Amin (ed), A Concise Encyclopaedia of North Indian Peasant Life, Being a Compilation From the Writings of William Crooke, J.R. Reid, G.A. Grierson, New Delhi: Manohar, 2005, p. 34. 30 Ibid., pp. 34–35. 31 EUR 223/278, Grierson to the British Resident in Kashmir, 21. 5. 1917. 32 EUR 223/274, Grierson to the Secretary of the Government of Assam, 29. 10. 1928. 33 EUR 223/249, Grierson to the Secretary to the Government of India, 15. 9. 1931 & 2. 5. 1928. 34 Thomas A. Edison, ‘The Perfected Phonograph’, The North American Review, June 1988, 146 (379): 645. Others also drew similar analogies, see Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 139. 35 Gerry Farrell, ‘The Early Days of the Gramophone Industry in India’, in Andrew Leyshon, David Matless, and George Revill (eds), The Place of Music, London and New York: The Guildford Press, 1998, pp. 70–73. 36 EUR 223/302, A.A. Bake to Grierson, 13. 2. 1930, and Grierson to J. Ph. Vogel, 19. 2. 1930, and to Bake, 19. 2. 1930. 37 EUR 223/303, A.A. Bake to Grierson, 23. 2. 1931, and Grierson to Bake, 17. 3. 1931. See also EUR 223/302, Grierson to Bake, 28. 5. 1930. 38 EUR 223/303, see the correspondence between J. Ph. Vogel and Grierson, 29. 9. 1930 to 22. 10. 1930, which includes a copy of this letter. 39 G.N. Joshi, ‘A Concise History of the Phonograph Industry in India’, Popular Music, 1988, 7 (2): 151. 40 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 29. 41 Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans in British India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, p. 159. 42 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 91; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 2; Grierson, Vol. 4, pp. 9, 28, 185, 637; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 11, p. 5. 43 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 62, 35. 44 Ibid., p. 81. 45 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 277. 46 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 4. 47 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 29. 48 LS Files S/1/14/1, J.T. Marten, Office of Census Commissioner for India, 11. 3. 1920 & 3. 12. 1921, with ‘Notes for Report. Chapter IX. Language’; S/1/14/2, Edward Gait to Grierson, 6. 7. 1911, ‘Notes for report’. 49 LS Files S/1/14/7, Central Provinces’ Census Superintendent to Grierson, 13. 12. 1901. 50 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 11, pp. 9, 122. For the emergence of the idea of the Dravidian family of languages and its legacy in India, see Thomas Trautmann, Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras, New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2006, Chs. 5–6.

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51 EUR 223/228, Grierson to Mair, Civil Service Commission, 26. 11. 1920. 52 Ibid., Grierson to Blaikie, Civil Service Commission, 23. 2. 1921. 53 LS Files S/1/1/28, ‘Confidential. SOS, London Institution. Report of Inspectors of Research, Teaching and Equipment’; this report was authored by Grierson and the other inspector, Reverend. S.W. Green. For the invitation to Grierson to act as an inspector of SOS in connection with its application for admission as a School of London University in the Faculty of Arts, see P. Hartog, Academic Registrar, University of London to Grierson, 8. 3. 1917. 54 See Ch. 4. 55 EUR 223/299, Information attached by Grierson to Judicial, Political and Appointment Departments, Calcutta, 13. 1. 1886, for the India Office List. 56 LS Files S/1/3/1, Grierson to Sir Andrew Fraser, 26. 10. 1903. 57 I discuss the significance of Grierson’s failing eyesight in Ch. 3 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 58 EUR 223/300, Hari Charan Basu to Grierson, 22. 3. 1887, my emphasis. 59 LS Files S/1/9/16, Grierson to DPI, Bombay, 25. 3. 1909, and see the correspondence with Ghate from 5. 5. 1909 to 15. 2. 1909. 60 EUR 223/285, P.P.S. Sastri to Grierson, 16. 9. 1929, Curator for Publication of Sanskrit manuscript, Trivandrum, 24. 2. 1930. 61 EUR 223/331, see T. Ganapati Sastri, Curator for the Publication of Sanskrit Mss. to Grierson, 1. 1. 1911, 24. 8. 1912, 15. 10. 1915, & 3. 1. 1914, Grierson to Mahamahopadhyaya T. Ganpati Shastri, 14. 5. 1924. 62 Ibid., Grierson to K. George, Chief Secretary to Government, Travancore, 4. 6. 1927. 63 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, pp. 2–8. 64 Ibid., p. 7. 65 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, pp. 617–618. 66 LS Files S/1/14/6, Grierson to H.A. Rose, 22. 7. 1902. 67 LS Files S/1/2/1, Grierson to J.P. Hewett, Home Dept. India, 15. 1. 1890. 68 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 34. 69 EUR 223/306, Grierson to A.C. Woolner, 18. 5. 1922, my emphasis. 70 EUR 223/289, Morgenstierne to Grierson, 18. 1. 1925, Grierson to Morgenstierne, 3. 2. 1925, Grierson to Morgenstierne, 21. 12. 1925, Morgenstierne to Grierson, 29. 12. 1925, Grierson to Morgenstierne, 6. 1. 1926, and their correspondence from 8. 5. 1927 to 24. 6. 1927. 71 EUR 223/260, J.S. Cotton to Grierson, 25. 4. 1904. 72 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 95–96 where Grierson also discusses the satem-centum division. See James Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 49–51 on this as an outdated theory. 73 LS Files S/1/14/6, Grierson to H.A Rose, 22. 7. 1902. See also M.A. Mehendale on how the word ‘arya’ continues in the name of Iran; ‘IndoAryans, Indo-Iranians, and Indo-Europeans’, in Thomas R. Trautmann (ed), The Aryan Debate, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 48. 74 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 38. 75 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 3: The Bhīl Languages, including Khāndēśí,

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76 77 78

79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89

Banjārī or Labhānī, Bahrūpiā, & c., Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1907, p. 5. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 472. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 38. Ibid., p. 180. The ‘Pale’ refers to the fortifications and ramparts built around those parts of Ireland’s mediaeval counties under the control of the English government. It was the boundary between the Anglo-Irish polity and its culture and the Gaelic Irish. EUR 223/228, see the curriculum for the 1923 and 1925 ICS examinations. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 422; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 2: Mōn-Khmēr and Siamese-Chinese Families (Including Khassi and Tai), Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1904, p. 75. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, pp. 15, 17, 279; Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 2; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 100. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 29, 81. Ibid., p. 99. For Grierson’s use of the adventure narrative, see Ch. 1 of my Colonialism and Knowledge. Ibid., p. 101. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bodo, Nāgā, and Kachin Groups, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, p. 499, 502; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 3: Specimens of the Kuki-Chin and Burma Groups, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1904, pp. 126, 254; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, pp. 217, 278. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 130. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 279. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 130–131; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 279. For a detailed discussion on whether the Aryans adopted cerebral letters from the Dravidians or not, see Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, pp. 279–280. For the question of whether Dravidian languages influenced the formation of intensive compounds, see EUR 223/226, Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 18. 3. 1927. In R.L. Turner’s view, a comparative study of Dravidian and Munda was necessary to understand the vocabulary of modern IndoAryan, see EUR 223/332, R.L. Turner to Grierson, 12. 10. 1927. In his correspondence, Grierson refers to K. Amrita Row’s article in vol. XLVI of the Indian Antiquary: see EUR 223/310, Note by Grierson dated 5. 7. 1923, and EUR 223/285, K. Amrita Row to Grierson, 9. 10. 1915 & 15. 10. 1915 on ‘The Dravidian elements in the Prakrits’, and Grierson’s response, 5. 11. 1915. On the non Indo-Aryan features of Sanskrit especially retroflexion, see Emeneau’s classic essays ‘Linguistic Prehistory of India’ and ‘India as a Linguistic Area’, in Language and Linguistic Area: Essays by Murray B. Emeneau: Selected and Introduced by Anwar S. Dil. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980, Ch. 5 and Ch. 6. At the start of his career, when the Yale Linguistics Department sent Emeneau to India to work on Dravidian languages, Emeneau met Grierson on route; see EUR 223/304, Emeneau to Grierson, 1. 8. 1935.

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90 Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 215. 91 For which see Ch. 5 of Colonialism and Knowledge. 92 See Ch. 1 and Ch. 3 in ibid. 93 Trautmann (ed), Aryan Debate, pp. xxix–xxxii; Aryans in British India, 194. 94 For this theory, see Trautmann (ed), Aryan Debate, Ch. 7. 95 For a discussion of linguistic homelands and migration, see Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, 1998, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004, pp. 399–411. 96 See the following letters where Grierson develops this theory: EUR 223/245, Professor A. Hillebrandt, 6. 11. 1901; LS Files S/1/14/6, Grierson to Superintendent of Census, Panjab, 14. 3. 1901, Grierson to H.A. Rose, 22. 7. 1902; S/1/14/3, Grierson to Gait, 3. 11. 1901. Other census officials also referred to this theory, see S/1/14/2, Gait to Grierson, 10. 6. 1910, and Grierson to Gait, 28. 7. 1910. For Grierson’s outline of this theory, see Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 115–120. 97 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 2; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 237; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 116. 98 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 115–116, 117. 99 LS Files S/1/14/6, Grierson to Superintendent of Census Operations, Panjab, 14. 3. 1901, Grierson to H.A. Rose, 22. 7. 1902. 100 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, p. 14; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Rājasthānī and Gujarātī, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing India, 1908, p. 2; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 130. 101 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 150; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 7, p. 144; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, pp. 407, 364, 33; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 317; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 173, p. 30. 102 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 3, p. 182; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 71. 103 LS Files S/1/13/2, Grierson to L.F. Taylor 17. 6. 1920, on the Lui group as remnants of an older Tibeto-Burman invasion followed by the conquest by Meitheis. 104 LS Files S/1/14/2, Sten Konow to Grierson, 4. 3. 1904. 105 For examples, see Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 41, 44, 75; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 133; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 433. 106 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 2; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, pp. 4–5; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 572; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 179, 99; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, p. 13. 107 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 42–44. 108 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, p. 237. 109 See my Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity: Gandhi, Nehru and Iqbal, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 159. 110 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘India in travail’, 9. 8. 1940, in S. Gopal (ed), Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 11 vols., New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972–1978, 11: p. 100. Zygmunt Bauman has explored ‘fluidity’ and ‘liquidity’ as fitting metaphors for the ‘melting powers’ of modernity, see Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Oxford and Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000, p. 6.

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111 Jawaharlalal Nehru, The Discovery of India, 1946, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 143–144. 112 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 148 referring to Bihari. 113 India Office Records, IOR P. 2058, Major Pitcher and Mr. Grierson’s Inquiry into Emigration, August 1883, Grierson’s diary entry for January 8th 1883. 114 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 187, 179. 115 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 3, Pt. 3, p. 255; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 2, pp. 78–79. 116 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 60, 81–82 referring to Tibeto-Burmans and Dravidians. 117 Ibid., p. 95ff., 42. 118 LS Files S/1/14/1, Grierson to J.T. Marten, 7. 9. 1922, and Grierson to H.H. Risley, 17. 4. 1901 on the need to keep up with the latest works on the question of the ‘original home of the Indo-Germanic race’. 119 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 97. 120 Rosemary M. George, The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-century Fiction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 197. 121 For other examples see Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 73. 122 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 99; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 4. 123 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 144; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 2, p. 1. 124 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 64. 125 EUR 223/226, Grierson to S.K. Chatterji, 18. 2. 1930, on this ‘stormy question’. See Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, Chs. 5–6, on these homeland theories in the 19th and 20th centuries, and on how lack of scholarly consensus on even basic points epitomises the history and culture of the Indo-European homeland quest more than any other comparable undertaking. 126 India Office Records, IOR P. 2058, Major Pitcher and Mr. Grierson’s Inquiry into Emigration, August 1883, Ch. 5 and diary entry for 8 January 1883. Grierson relates how emigrants re-imagined the ships they were travelling on to be like the temple of Jagganath, and as such the usual caste restrictions did not apply. 127 LS Files S/1/14/2, Grierson to Gait 23. 10. 1910. 128 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 81; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 281. 129 LS Files S/1/14/2, Gait to Grierson, 6. 2. 1904, and Sten Konow to Grierson, 4. 3. 1904. 130 LS Files S/1/14/7, Central Provinces’ Census Superintendent to Grierson, 13. 12. 1901, and Grierson to R.V. Russell, 30. 12. 1901. 131 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 2, p. 2. 132 LS Files S/1/4/14, J.H. Hutton to Grierson, 29. 7. 1922. 133 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 193; for references to ‘aboriginal’ tribes, see Grierson, LSI, Vol. 11, p. 22. 134 LS Files S/1/14/2, Grierson to Gait, 28. 7. 1910; S/1/14/1, Grierson to Risley, 30. 11. 1901; see also S/1/14/12, on Thomsen Christiania’s view that Kols and Aborigines descend from the original race of the Lemurian continent in Grierson to C.C. Lowis, 18. 7. 1901. For some colonial officials, such as Edward Gait, the Dravidians were the oldest inhabitants

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135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146

147 148

of India, and were allied to the ‘African negro and probably came from the south by the submerged continent of Lemuria’, see S/1/14/2, Gait to Grierson, 17. 3. 1904. See also George A. Grierson, The Bible in India, Anarkali, Lahore: Punjab Bible Society, c. 1904, p. 1 on the theory of Dravidians and Mundas being related to Australian aborigines. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 4; Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 29. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 2, p. 1 f.n. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 11, p. 100. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 4, p. 109. Ibid., pp. 318–319. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 187; LS Files S/1/9/14, Varley to Grierson, 2.5. 1902. LS Files S/1/9/9, District Agricultural Inspector, Násik to Collector of Nasik, 15. 6. 1901. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 11, p. 153. Ibid., p. 12. Emeneau, Language and Linguistic Area, p. 90. Bryant, Vedic Culture, Ch. 5 on how the linguistic substrata in Sanskrit texts is used as evidence for the non-Indian origins of Sanskrit and the Aryans. For a detailed study of how the idea of Lemuria was appropriated by Tamil and Dravidian activists in 20th century India, see Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, esp. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5. Ibid., p. 168 for this conception of a Dravidian ancestral homeland. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Our Language Problem, Karachi: Anand T. Hingorani, 1942, p. 8.

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6 ARYANISM AND SEMITISM

There is a strong narrative in the LSI which resonates with the emergence of Hindu nationalist discourse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this chapter I show how Grierson’s identification with an Aryan India merges into a Hindu nationalist position. In some ways, from the perspective of this position, Grierson is an ideal minority figure. I outline how Grierson’s conflation of ‘Aryan’ with ‘Hindu’ is secured against the antithetical category of Islam and how he uses a quasi-national language when pitting a monolithically conceived Hindu India against an equally monolithic and ‘Semitic’ Islam. The overlaps between Grierson and Hindu nationalist discourse also help us to re-examine and explain some features of his approach to Siraiki and Panjabi. However, Grierson’s empathy for this nationalist discourse is developed through a Christian perspective which ultimately safeguards the latter’s priority.1 Thus, while there are significant overlaps between Grierson and Hindu nationalist discourse, there are also key differences which point to the limits of his affinity with this discourse. In this context, I also assess the role Grierson’s Anglo-Irish background played in the overlaps and differences between his political position and strands of Hindu nationalism.

Aryanism as ‘Hinduisation’ Trautmann outlines three different readings of the idea of the Aryan in British India: a racist reading, a colonial reading for which the term ‘Aryan’ signified kinship between Britons and Indians, and for Indians themselves a religious reading in which Hinduism is celebrated.2 In the LSI the terms ‘Aryan’ and ‘Hindu’ imply each other and the term ‘Hinduised’ is equivalent to ‘Aryanised’. For instance, when discussing how the Brahmaputra Valley was ‘completely Aryanised’, 136

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Grierson refers to how Bodos have ‘become so far Hinduised’ they have abandoned their language and changed their diet.3 When speaking of the tendency of the Bodo or Bara group of languages to ‘become absorbed into the Aryan tongues of Bengal and Assam’, and how the ‘Aryanised’ Bara borrows freely from the ‘linguistic artifices’ of Aryan languages, he describes the language of a tribe as ‘now completely Hinduised’. Regarding the speakers of the Bara group of languages in general, if they become Hindu, they change their diet and adopt the ‘use of the Aryan tongue as their sole language’.4 In Grierson’s correspondence, being an Aryan ‘outsider’ is equated with ‘non-Hindu’ practices like eating mutton and not submitting to the caste restrictions of ‘Aryan India’.5 For Grierson, then, being Aryan and being Hindu go together, and the term encompasses language, diet and membership of the caste system. His views are shared by some other colonial officials. As we have seen, in 1904 J.S. Cotton suggested to Grierson that his two chapters for the Imperial Gazetteer on languages and ‘Vernacular Literatures’ begin with Indo-Aryan languages as the ‘characteristic Indian ones’. For Cotton this parallels the order of religious importance in India which begins with Hinduism and ends with ‘animism’.6 Census officials also noted the tendency of ‘animistic’ groups to return themselves as Hindu, as part of the process of ‘Aryanisation’.7 In the Survey, the ancient geography of India as evoked in Sanskrit texts sometimes slips into a Hindu sacred geography. Grierson discusses the names for the ‘holy land’ of India, and the abode of Krishna’s foster-father and the scene of the god’s adventures.8 The ancient name of the peak of Kanadeo in the Almora district is referred to and Grierson tells us that this was where the god Vishnu was worshipped by Indra, Narada and the Rishis in his tortoise incarnation.9 There are some instances, then, where Grierson’s map of India is marked by Hindu mythological and religious beliefs. It is interesting to note that towards the end of his career in 1932 when the director general of archaeology wrote to Grierson about the continued supply of their publications to him, Grierson expressed an interest in receiving all their publications, except Epigraphia Moslemica: ‘I have never received this, nor is the subject dealt with in it one of those branches of study in which I am specially interested’.10 Furthermore, the contents of Grierson’s personal library are revealing – it contained 15 volumes of the sacred books of the Hindus and 120 volumes on Tulsi Das, the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata – but no mention is made of any Islamic texts.11 137

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Semites in India In the LSI, the conflation of ‘Aryan’ with ‘Hindu’ is secured against an antithetical category of Islam. From its inception, the formulation of the Indo-European concept was distinguished from the ‘Semitic’,12 but Grierson specifically deploys the ‘Semitic’ as a label for Islam in India. As we have seen, for Grierson Indian Aryans are predecessors of the British, but they are also a warning sign of the dangers of miscegenation. However, while the Muslims chronologically precede the British in India, they cannot attain the status of predecessors. Grierson’s need to not identify with Muslims as predecessors while identifying with Aryans and Hindus as partial predecessors runs through his writings. I will discuss Grierson’s characterisation of Urdu and Hindi in terms of an opposition between Islam and Hinduism in the next chapter, but here we can note Grierson associates the term ‘Semitic’ with Urdu, and through this with Islam, in an obvious distinction from ‘Aryan’. Urdu’s grammar is affected by ‘Semitic languages’ and it often follows the Persian or ‘Semitic’ rule of order.13 In his correspondence he stresses that no Semitic languages are spoken in India, although ‘Semitic’ vocabulary entered some Indian languages via Persian. Urdu is full of ‘Semitic’ words, which came into use in India through Muslim influence.14 As there is no logical reason why those languages labelled as ‘Semitic’ cannot be spoken in India, these statements imply that India as an Aryan entity necessarily excludes ‘Semitic’ Islam. Moreover, we have seen how Grierson stresses it is rare ‘for one Aryan-speaking nationality to abandon its language in favour of another Aryan tongue’. However: The only exception to this general rule about the noninterchangeability of Indo-Aryan languages is caused by religion. Islām has carried Urdū far and wide, and even in Bengal and Orissa we find Musalmān natives of the country whose vernacular is not that of their compatriots but is an attempt (often a bad one) to reproduce the idiom of Delhi and Lucknow.15 Islam, then, is the Semitic exception that proves the rule of Aryan India. Unlike the Aryan or British entry into India which hovers between immigration and invasion, for Grierson there is no ambiguity about Islam’s entry into India. The words associated with Indian Islam are ‘invasion’, ‘satanic’, ‘massacres’, ‘conquest’, ‘plunder’, ‘horrors’, ‘oppression’, ‘foreign oppression’, ‘persecution’ and ‘lust’.16 Here, then, invasion is disentangled completely from immigration. Migration 138

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is only mentioned in relation to non-Muslims seeking refuge from Islam’s horrors, or in terms of hastening the immigration of groups into other regions of India where they found ‘ready asylum among their brethren’, the invocation of brotherhood here expressing a sense of a monolithically conceived Hindu community defined against the category of Islam.17 In contrast, for Nehru it is ‘wrong and misleading to talk of a Moslem invasion of India’. Instead there was a Turkish invasion, an Afghan invasion and a ‘Turco-Mongol or Mughal invasion’. For him at least ‘Islam did not invade India’.18 For Grierson it is Islam that invades India, and this invasion acquires the status of an ontological event in his writings. In addition, Grierson deploys a quasi-nationalist language when pitting India and Indians against the foreign intrusion of Islam. Kanauj ‘was the great centre of Indo-Aryan power during the centuries preceding the Musalmān conquest of India’ while Surdas’ brothers had been killed ‘fighting for the independence of Hindūstān’.19 Islam is also represented as alienating Hindus from their own historical memories. Magadha, for example, was ‘too long a cockpit for contending Musalmān armies, and too long directly subject to the headquarters of a Musalmān province, to remember its former glories of the Hindū age’.20 For Grierson restoring those memories is crucial. While Grierson is scholarly in this context, his scholarship is tethered to a preconceived category of ‘Hindu’ as antithetical to ‘Muslim’ and these ontological categories vie with historical and evidential complexity in his writings. Thus, in 1904 Grierson wrote to Curzon, drawing his attention to bardic chronicles in the libraries of Rajputana and Gujarat.21 The Home Department agreed to fund a search for these manuscripts and their publication.22 When there was a threat to the project’s funding, Grierson intervened and secured another five years’ funding.23 In 1925 Pandit Gauri Shaukar Ojha sent Grierson fascicules of his Rajpūtanā kā itihās (1927). He stressed that Tod’s Annals and Antiquities was based on local traditions and unreliable bardic sources, whereas his own research was grounded in archaeological and epigraphic training. Grierson commended the pandit’s scientific methods, while seeing his history as completing the ‘great work begun by Tod’.24 Thus, there was a clear scholarly rigour to Grierson’s interventions. However, what also motivated Grierson’s support for these projects was the need to ‘relate . . . events from the point of view of the Hindus, and not from that of the Muhammadan conquerors of India’;25 that is, history had been preconceived by him in terms of this binary opposition. This view was echoed by Tessitori, 139

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who directed the project to find bardic chronicles. For him the materials represented ‘the Hindu side of social life in those times, from the Hindu point of view’.26 In the Survey, then, the Hindu-Muslim binary has an ontological status and Islam is alien to India. When the two are brought together, the result is an odd compound smacking of inauthenticity. Prannath ‘attempted to combine Hinduism with Muhammadanism [sic]’, and wrote in a ‘curious language, which, like his doctrine, was a compound of India and Islām’.27 Rather than a powerful and deep syncretism, the combination of the two is a mere curiosity. Grierson was also in contact with authors like S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, who sent him a copy of his South India and Her Muhammadan Invaders (1921). Its preface described how Indian and Hindu culture were ‘saved’ in South India from Muslims.28 Other authors who sent Grierson their books included K.P. Jayaswal, who sent him his Hindu Polity (1924), while Madras University sent Grierson a copy of one of their publications Hindu Administrative Institutions (1929) by V.R. Ramachandra Dikshitar.29

Grierson, Christianity and Hinduism Grierson sought parallels between Christianity and Hinduism, rather than between Christianity and Islam – doing both is possible but Grierson chose not to take this route, which is prima facie surprising given that both Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic faiths which share a Jewish legacy. The fact that Grierson focused only on Christian-Hindu parallels suggests his strong sense of a need to identify with one version of India via his own religious beliefs against the category of Islam. After reading Grierson’s work on bhakti, Konow commented that he had long ‘had a feeling that there might be something Christian in Hinduism, and I am glad to see you take it up’, but added ‘something like bhakti meets us all over the world’.30 Given these other possibilities of comparison, Konow’s comment highlights the selectivity of Grierson’s search for an affinity between Christianity and bhakti. Ananda K. Coomoraswamy sent Grierson a typescript of one of his essays, which argued that there were many close parallels between Christianity and Hinduism. These were ‘often so verbally exact, that we can only consider that both are dialects of one and the same spiritual language’; in the case of ‘mediaeval Christianity, or Catholic doctrine, even this distinction partly disappears’.31 Grierson agreed with this view. For him, the Bhagavata aspects of Hinduism were in close agreement with key 140

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Christian teachings, and some of Tulsi Das’s hymns ‘with the appropriate change of names could find a place in a Christian hymnal’.32 Grierson’s writings on the parallels between Christian and Hindu doctrine generated some correspondence with Indians, who were appreciative of his work on Vaishnavism and the Bhagavata system, which some of them felt had been under-studied by British and European scholars – some felt Grierson was the only Englishman who had gone ‘deeper’ into the subject.33 T. Narasemhiengar, Alkondavilli Govindacharya and S. Krishnaswami Aiyanger engaged with Grierson’s articles in the JRAS, in particular with ‘The modern Hindu doctrine of works’. In this essay Grierson sets out his view of the parallels between what he calls the ‘Bhakti-Church’ and Christianity. He also underlines these by translating bhagavata dharma as ‘state or gospel of grace’. While admitting that transmigration and the ‘light thrown by Eastern meditation’ suggests perspectives that may seem strange to Europeans, he minimised these differences by describing this as a ‘matter of illumination’ rather than a question of substance.34 Grierson was also intrigued by the doctrine of reincarnation, rather than dismissive of it, and described the problem of past lives and memories of them as a ‘very interesting’ subject.35 At times Grierson’s sense of the closeness between Christianity and bhakti slips into explicit proselytisation: the Bible will put into the hands of those ‘whose moral law is often nearly that of Christianity the one thing needful to lead them to step across the narrow boundary-line’ into communion with Christ.36 In his correspondence with Narasemhiengar, Govindacharya and Aiyanger, Grierson clarified his views on the parallels between Christian doctrine and these strands of Hinduism. While stressing that all religions borrow from other religions, he maintained that some of Kabir’s works amounted to translations of St. John’s Gospel, and that Bhakta māla was influenced by Christianity. However, this was not the same as asserting that the bhakti movement and Vaishnavism are of Christian origin or that they originated in Christianity. Similarly, Ramanuja’s teachings were ‘of purely Indian origin’, but there were traces of influence from the version of Christianity taught in South India at that time.37 Grierson sent his ‘Gleanings from the Bhaktamala’ and his other articles to Govindacharya, who made extensive comments and corrections to ‘Gleanings’, and referred to Grierson’s articles in his own work. He and Grierson discussed questions of translation as well, such as of the terms ‘Ācarya’ and ‘Bhagwān’; Govindacharya wrote an article on the latter’s meaning which Grierson tried to get published.38 He also commented on some of Grierson’s 141

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other essays on the subject.39 Govindacharya sent Grierson some of his own work, including a manuscript on universal religion, and many of his writings on Vedantism and Bhagavata, which Grierson commented on.40 Grierson helped shape some of these for publication in Indological and Orientalist journals. This included Govindacharya’s ‘The Artha-Panchak of Pillai Lokacharya’, which he typed up and edited for the press, and wrote an introduction for. He also checked the proofs as he did for some of Govindacharya’s other articles.41 Grierson recommended Govindacharya’s essay ‘The Universal Religion’ to Sir Richard Temple for The Indian Antiquary, and Govindacharya also asked Grierson’s advice on publishing some of his books.42 Grierson paved the way for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society to publish Govinchandra’s article ‘The Astadasa-Bhedas, or the Eighteen points of difference’,43 and in keeping with the Survey’s networks of learning, he recommended this article to other Indians interested in the differences between Vaishnava schools.44 Grierson’s search for parallels between Christianity and Hinduism therefore generated collaborations and exchanges with Indian scholars, resulting in further publications on Vaishnavism and the bhakti movement. British writers like L.J. Sedwick also engaged with Grierson’s ‘Gleanings’ and suggested compiling translations from other vernacular bhakti texts such as Marathi.45 R. Raj Singh rightly argues that Grierson and other Indologists contributed to a monolithic and homogenous account of the medieval bhakti movement, by using Western-derived concepts of polytheism, monotheism, monism or pantheism to explain Hindu religious beliefs.46 Govindacharya makes a similar criticism in a letter to Grierson, when he takes issue with the latter’s view of Ramanuja as a founder of the Ramabhakti; for him the analogy with Christ or Muhammad as a religion’s founder was misplaced.47 At one point Grierson even tried to remould the category of ‘Hindu’ in the census, arguing that the census should classify every Hindu as either a Vaishnavite or a Shaivite. For him every Hindu fell into one of these two camps, ‘though he [sic] may not know it himself’.48 At the same time, Grierson’s exchanges with Indians about Christianity and Hinduism show him once again acting as an intercultural and inter-religious broker. For Grierson Govindacharya’s articles were valuable because of their ‘exposition of the Indian ideas of the Bhāgavata religion, not of what Europeans, however learned, think they are’. Hence when he edited these papers he omitted Govindacharya’s citations from European scholars.49 Thus, Grierson’s search for parallels went hand in hand with a commitment to presenting Indian 142

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notions of bhakti as viable in their own right. While Grierson retained his Christian faith and did not cross over to Hinduism fully, it is worth noting he wrote to Sita Ram about how ‘my eyes began to lose their sight, but, Paramēśwara kī dayā sē, they are now much better, and I can read and write again’.50 Grierson’s loss of eyesight once again comes to the fore; this loss is linked to India and the Survey, but India’s deities also restore his eyesight, just as Sanskrit lifts the veil between him and India and allows him to see India clearly.51

‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’ Grierson’s interest in Hinduism was thus not academic alone; it reflected his need to identify with the subcontinent, re-imagined and truncated by his ideas of India as Aryan. While Grierson’s personal faith sustained him and helped cultivate the qualities required to finish the onerous task of the LSI, it also played a role in his conception of an Aryan India which both required and abhorred a ‘Semitic’ Islam. His fears of a Semitic Islam may also be a displacement of Christianity’s own tense relationship with its Jewish legacy, as well as a disavowal of the implications of his own middle name, ‘Abraham’.52 Grierson’s version of India is polemically expressed in the typescript of a lecture dated 1908, significantly entitled ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’. This lecture is valuable in revealing three strands in Grierson’s version of India, shorn of the painstakingly collected and analysed linguistic data of the LSI. The lecture binds together the British in India with Indian Aryans by connecting Christianity with one strand of Hinduism and it defines this connection against the foreign intrusion of Islam. At the same time, Indian Aryans are a warning sign of what can happen if conquerors intermarry with ‘aborigines’. One strand in the lecture addresses how the history of the Aryans is full of ‘interest and lessons’ to us in ‘this country’ – since the lecture is dated 1908, the latter presumably refers to England. The assumption of a shared Aryan heritage is clear in references to ‘our Aryan ancestors’ and statements such as ‘you and I are descended from them’.53 In this lecture, at least, there are no ambiguities about ‘us’ as Aryans, unlike in other passages in the Survey. Moreover, the Aryan-aboriginal distinction is heavily racialised. When the Aryans settled in India, their religion and language was ‘sharply distinguished from those of the dark-skinned, flat-nosed, aborigines whom they had conquered’.54 Through intermarriage with the latter, they lost their ‘Aryan physique, and some of them became as swarthy and as flat-nosed as those whom 143

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their ancestors had despised and conquered’.55 They retained their language and their Vedic beliefs but some of them also adopted many of the customs and beliefs of the aborigines.56 Here, then, miscegenation in India exists as a warning sign to the British. Europeans attempted to reconcile the Indo-European thesis from its very inception with the Mosaic chronology in the Bible.57 Grierson refers to a Biblical and Christian chronology throughout the lecture when speaking of the development of Hinduism. A Brahmanical insistence on ritual is dated to the same period as the time of David, the completion of the second temple in Jerusalem, and the founding of priestly rule in Palestine by Ezra and Nehemiah.58 The two chronologies merge with the Apostle Thomas’s preaching in Panjab, and the growth of the Syrian Christians in South India in the 7th century.59 For Grierson, the prominence given to Krishna as a child from this time onwards shows the influence of legends of the infant Jesus in India; moreover, the portrayal of Krishna’s mother is likened to the Madonna. For Grierson ‘it is no extravagant fancy, but a sober historical statement, that . . . the Hindus in this cult of the Madonna-Child have, in reality, but unwittingly, been worshipping the Christ-Child for fully a thousand years’.60 Here Grierson’s anxiety to connect with Hinduism via his own personal religious faith is palpable. The lecture also pits Christianity-Hinduism against Islam. ‘India was a Hindu country, governed by Hindus’, then came the horrors of Mahmud of Ghazni, and ‘India lay prostrate and bleeding under the domination of strangers alien by race and alien by religion’.61 What gave India hope were the teachings of Ramanujan and Madhwa, which were directly influenced by Christianity in India.62 Their teachings spread in India as a ‘new gospel’, and ‘the secret of its driving force was the Christianity with which the reformers of Southern India had come into contact’. This gospel brought calm and healing to a nation gasping in its death-throes amidst the horrors of alien invasion . . . in this reformation India rediscovered faith and love, and the fact of this discovery accounts for the passionate enthusiasm of the contemporary religious writings.63 The term ‘reformation’ is used a number of times in this context, reflecting Grierson’s own sectarian views, while the lower case and its historical dating maintains its distance from the Protestant Reformation in Europe.64 For Grierson, almost 150 million Hindus belong 144

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to the sects ‘founded on this reformation’.65 This Hindu version of Christianity is also described as the ‘greatest religious revolution that India has ever seen’; out of it emerged figures similar to the poets and mystics of medieval Europe.66 It is Christian influence through ‘Bhâgavatas’ and ‘Bhâgavatism’ that has opened the possibility of Hinduism’s return to its true self. This also has a gendered equivalence to manly Christianity: ‘there can be no doubt that in those parts of India where Bhâgavatism has been preserved in its greatest purity, the population is more manly and straightforward than where it has exercised little or no influence’.67 The lecture concludes thus: We call Hinduism debasing, corrupt, soul-destroying. So, in a measure it is, but we must not forget that it is also elevating, pure, and is partly based on Christianity. . . . Before the reformation which I have described, India had been brooding through centuries of darkness, darkness that was all the darker because it preceded one of God’s twilight’s – a darkness like that of Egypt, which could be felt, and which we feel even now as we wander through the subtilties [sic] and through the grossness of the literature that would fain have been its light. Then came the true dawn. To India, lying crushed and almost lifeless under an alien conqueror’s feet, came faith and love, and from these two came hope. Truly may we call this reformation ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’.68 Grierson thus imagines overlaps between Hinduism and Christianity, while also preserving the difference between the two – they are similar enough to define against Islam, but not so similar as to undermine the uniqueness of Christianity. India’s centuries of darkness are also framed through an allusion to the Biblical Exodus. The title of the lecture and its last line give this narrative an explicitly nationalist twist, as a Christian-inspired ‘reformation’ brought about through British rule in India leads to the birth of India as a renewed Hindu nation, returning to its true Aryan self. The prodigal son narrative which runs throughout the LSI may therefore also signal a family reunion of another kind, that of Christian and Hindu brothers brought together after a period in which the latter has been in exile, in this case, in their own land. There is another dimension to Grierson’s Christian identification with Hinduism and his safeguarding of the latter’s priority. In his 145

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study Secularism, Islam and Education in India, 1830–1910, Robert Ivermee has argued that the decision of Lord Mayo, the viceroy of India from 1869 to 1872, to reform state education for Muslims was shaped by his experience of the separation of religion from education in 19th-century Ireland. The Government’s resolution of 1871 noting the deficit of Muslims participating in state education, which led to a softening of the Raj’s commitment to secular education, may have been partly influenced by Mayo’s identification as a member of the Anglican community of Ireland with India’s Muslim minority, and his understanding during his Irish career of the Government’s responsibility to respond to multiple religious constituencies.69 Grierson, on the other hand, as an erstwhile member of the Anglican community in Ireland, identified not with Muslims but the Hindu majority. I have argued throughout this study that we need to keep Grierson’s complex subject position in focus. His identification with Hindu nationalism may at first seem counter-intuitive. However, it can also be read in terms of his management of his own subjectivity. First, his identification with a form of nationalism which stressed the majoritarian status of a monolithic Hindu group overcomes his sense of being a member of a minority group, whether in Ireland, Britain or in India. As we have seen, he stressed the numerical majority of this monolithic group. At the same time, the upper caste nature of this nationalism did not imperil or challenge his sense of privilege as an erstwhile member of the colonial elite in India or the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. It is also interesting to note that although there are hints of Christian sectarianism in Grierson’s letters, in his speculation on the links between bhakti and Christianity the latter is generally invoked in general, even vague, terms. Similarly, his pamphlet The Bible in India assumes a unified, non-sectarian Christianity. This tendency is in sharp contrast to the empirical detail in the Survey and in his other work and it suggests that at some level his assertion of affinitive links between the two also had a rejuvenating, and even unifying effect, on his own sense of faith. In more senses than one, Grierson’s sympathy for bhakti was a leap of faith. It is worth contextualising Grierson’s views on Christianity, Hinduism and a ‘Semitic’ Islam in a broader intellectual context. IndoEuropean studies in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries aimed to reconstruct a proto-Indo-European religion as well as a proto-IndoEuropean language.70 This religion and the attempt to reconcile the Indo-European hypothesis with tenets of Christianity are evident in Sir William Jones’s writings.71 In his theories of Indo-European religion, 146

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Max Müller tried to strike a balance between the ‘Semitic’ and the ‘Aryan’. In his view, the structure of Aryan languages made them more vulnerable to mythopoeia than Semitic languages. Hence IndoEuropeans produce myths and epics, while Semites tend not to, and as a result, the latter have handed down a purer form of religion.72 For Müller, the religion of the future would be a modified form of Christianity tied to the Semitic tradition, but it would also be Aryan, since the notion of God’s infinity is, he claimed, an Aryan concept.73 Müller also thought that the reunion of the Aryan Britons with the Aryan Indians through British imperialism would result in a reformation that would lead Indians back to the pre-mythological and original monotheism of the Vedic religion, of the kind the Brahmo Samaj had uncovered.74 Grierson’s lecture echoes this idea of a reformation, but he inflects it in specifically nationalist terms. He could not blend together the ‘Aryan’ and the ‘Semitic’, because what is important for him is that Aryan-Hinduism and Semitic Islam remain separate. This also means he has to elide the Semitic legacy of Christianity itself. Whereas for Nietzsche Christianity is the ‘anti-Aryan religion par excellence’, and for Leopold von Schroeder’s Arische Religion (1914–1916) the struggle against Semitic religions, including the ‘half-Semitic’ Christianity, would lead to a new religion rooted in the ‘higher forms’ of IndianAryan ‘religious development’,75 for Grierson Christianity needs to link up with Aryanism. In contrast, then, to W. Robertson Smith, who in his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889) aimed for a ‘right understanding of the Christian faith’ and of the Old Testament by examining its Semitic context and ‘Semitic religion as a whole’,76 Grierson kept this Semitic dimension of Christianity in the background in order to nationalise an Indian Aryanism against a Semitic Islam. As Arvidsson has pointed out, Jews and other ‘Semitic’ peoples have long been the significant ‘Others’ of Aryan identity. Some ideologues, such as Renan and Lassen, bracketed Jews and Muslims together in their anti-Semitism.77 Colleagues of Grierson also expressed anti-Semitic views; Lorimer, for example, remarked that the regime of ‘Jewry’ will end British rule in India soon.78 In the context of the Survey, though, Grierson’s anti-Semitism was reserved for Islam.

Grierson and Hindu nationalism Thus, Grierson was committed to the idea of an Aryan and Hindu India as the India. The overlaps as well as differences between Grierson and Hindu nationalist discourse are instructive in this context. 147

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Christophe Jaffrelot has shown how Hindu nationalism emerged as an ideology from the 1870s to the 1920s, in the same period as when the LSI was underway. It became more clearly defined in the 1920s, when the Survey was coming to an end.79 The main assumption of Hindu nationalism was that Indian culture was Hindu culture alone and clearly Grierson shared this view. Some other features of Hindu nationalist ideology resonate in Grierson’s writings, like the focus on the symbolically charged territoriality of ancient India as the land of the Aryans, the upper caste perspectives which orient this past in terms of Aryans and non-Aryans, and the racialisation of Aryans as a group of people.80 For Savarkar, Hindus are bound together by common homage we pay to our great civilization – our Hindu culture, which could not be better rendered than by the word Sanskrit suggestive as it is of that language, Sanskrit, which has been the chosen means of expression and preservation of that culture.81 As we have seen, Grierson saw Sanskrit as the ‘inner mind of India’ and he also referred to it as a living language.82 In this he was in agreement with Har Bilas Sarda, who in his Hindu Superiority (1906) alluded to Shyamji Krishnavarma’s paper at the 1881 International Congress of Orientalists in Berlin on Sanskrit as a living language.83 As an ideology, Hindu nationalism vindicated the traditional worldview of upper castes, and in doing so it incorporated what Jaffrelot has called an ‘Indian traditional xenology’.84 A Brahmanical ethic pervaded the ideology and ethics of the RSS.85 Some of Grierson’s writings connect with this Brahmanical ethic, as we have seen. To a certain extent, Grierson was a participant in the general British ‘Brahmanising tendency’ which characterised British rule.86 As Susan Bayly has shown, from the early 19th century onwards, the British expanded and sharpened the norms and conventions of caste, and incorporated caste language and ideology into their structures of authoritative government.87 In Grierson’s case, this is closely tied to his views of India as Aryan. Here at least Grierson was clearly at odds with those missionaries who wanted to represent Brahmins as Aryan outsiders in order to win lower castes over to Christianity.88 Grierson referred to the caste system and Aryan languages as the ‘tongue of civilization’ in the same breath, and described how aboriginal tribes abandoned their languages and adopted Aryan ones as part of a bid to share in the ‘prestige’ of the caste system.89 Nowhere is Grierson critical of caste. 148

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He was also intimately involved in and helped to reinforce the upper caste character of the Maithili movement with its strong sense of Vedic orthodoxy, and played a key role in defining upper caste Maithili as standard Maithili.90 The Brahmanical assertion of Maithili involved stressing the purity of pedigree and foregrounding claims of antiquity, which Grierson echoes in his own work on Maithili. Moreover, Grierson’s philological investigations into Maithili were not an alien construction to pandits and, as Burghart has stressed, the differences between the knowledge of the investigator and investigated were ambiguous because of Grierson’s interaction with these pandits.91 Grierson also had close friendships with many other upper caste Hindus. His sense of an affective tie with India is mainly articulated in expressions of friendships with pandits, some of whom had been collaborators in his works. This includes Pandit Dvivedi,92 Pandit Nityananda Sastri,93 Chandra Jha who had assisted Grierson in his edition of Vidyapati94 and his erstwhile assistant Rai Gauri Kant Roy.95 When Sita Ram passed away, Grierson wrote to his son on how Ram had ‘filled me with a warm feeling of friendship for him, fostered by admiration for his learning and by his happy mastery of the Hindi language’.96 There were also many expressions of friendship for Pandit Hara Prasad Sastri,97 who accepted the Sir William Jones medal on Grierson’s behalf at the 1929 Annual Meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In expressing his thanks, Grierson described Sastri as ‘the oldest friend we have remaining in India’,98 and on his death, Grierson referred to him as ‘one of my most valued friends, whom I admired both for his high character and for his learning’.99 Moreover, Grierson became an honorary pandit; the Bihar and Orissa Sanskrit Association conferred the title of ‘Vāgīsha’ on him in 1921.100 Thus while interracial and cross-cultural friendships were important in creating ‘affective communities’ of anti-colonial thought as Leela Gandhi has convincingly shown, friendships between Grierson and pandits created a countervailing community of a conservative knowledge order committed to a project of cultural recovery, albeit one often grounded in committed and deep scholarship. It was also an exclusive community of friendship. There is only one letter in Grierson’s correspondence in which he describes a Muslim as a friend.101 As Romila Thapar has stressed, the real function of Aryanism in Hindutva is to separate the Hindu Aryan from the alien Muslim and Christian.102 However, Grierson tried to align being Christian with Hindu Aryanism, and an obvious overlap between him and Hindu nationalism lies in their attitude to Islam in India as a violent intrusion 149

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and a foreign presence.103 Some passages in Savarkar’s Hindutva closely resemble Grierson’s depiction of Islamic invasion into India; the same applies to Golwalkar.104 In one sense, Grierson is an ideal minority figure for Hindu nationalists. Golwalkar stressed religious minorities ought to owe allegiance to Hindu symbols of identity as the embodiment of the Indian nation and Hindu nationalists used the concept of Bharatiya to argue religious minorities should assimilate into Hindu India by removing the external signs of their adherence to other religious communities. For them religious practice had to withdraw into the private sphere and public allegiance should be pledged to Hindu religious symbols.105 Grierson’s commitment to a Hindu and Aryan India in his writings is a form of public allegiance to these symbols. Thus, Grierson’s writings and parts of the LSI have sympathetic connections with elements of Hindu nationalism. Some of Grierson’s Indian correspondents perceived Grierson as being in sympathy with a Hindu nationalist vision of India. S.K. Chatterji wrote to Grierson about how in Ramaprasad Chanda’s The Indo-Aryan Races (1916) Grierson’s ‘opinions have been insisted upon in setting up a theory . . . pleasing enough for our countrymen’ and ‘very attractive to those who find a very great solace in an Aryan ancestry’.106 The editor of the weekly Hindi paper issued by the Arya Samaj approached Grierson for a contribution to a special issue on Diwali, as did the editor of Kalyan, who contacted him for contributions, including for a special issue called ‘Iswaranka’. Grierson was in ‘entire sympathy with the project’ but was too ill and struggling with his eyesight to accede to the request.107 Grierson’s contact with the Gita Press’s Kalyan is particularly significant in this context. As Akshaya Mukul has shown, Kalyan played a significant role in the propagation of the varna system as a divine order on which society, politics and economics should be based. It gave a platform to organisations like the RSS and VHP, and it accentuated the Hindu-Muslim divide by fanning communal hatred from the 1920s onwards. It carried excerpts from Grierson, and later in November 1955 when the Gita Press launched its monthly Mahābhārata, it gave an account of works by scholars on the epic, including Grierson’s.108 This press was also the leading purveyor of print Hinduism in the 20th century, and its top bestseller was the Rāmacaritmānas,109 a poem which Grierson interpreted in a similar way to the Gita Press in its propagation of Hindu nationalism.110 Jagodish Chatterji of the International School of Vedic and Allied Research also sent Grierson the journal and prospectus of this society, 150

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asking him for his cooperation.111 Grierson sent one of his correspondents two issues of the journal Gaṅgā on Vedic studies, and tried to get Turner to notice the journal in the Bulletin of SOS.112 Organisations associated with the Arya Samaj sent Grierson books on the Vedas, and expressed the view that that they were revealed by God ‘in the very beginning of the creation, and that they do not contain anything contrary to human reason’.113 Grierson was approached by Har Bilas Sarda to contribute to his commemorative volume on Dayanand Saraswati (1933). In his letter Sarda described the establishment of the Arya Samaj for the ‘cause of Religion, Aryan Culture, and Moral and Social uplift of mankind’, and referred to Grierson as a ‘well-known scholar and a gentleman held in high esteem in India’.114 Sarda (1867– 1955) was one of the main leaders of the Arya Samaj in Rajputana, and was active in the Central Legislative Assembly as a reformer.115 While Grierson declined the invitation, the fact he was approached by Sarda suggests a perception, not altogether unfounded, of his being in sympathy with Hindu nationalism. However, these overlaps should not obscure the differences between Grierson and Hindu nationalists. For some Indians who held such views, the term ‘Aryan’ referred to Hindu superiority over Western civilisation, rather than kinship between Indians and the British; Aryan here meant India versus Europe.116 The figure of Mother India is a powerful one in Hindu nationalist discourse. Swami Shraddhananda, for example, proposed the construction of temples devoted to the three ‘mother-spirits’ and suggested a ‘life-like map of Mother-Bharat’ be displayed in these temples.117 Grierson does not mention ‘mother India’ anywhere. He also tends to eschew the term ‘mother tongue’ preferring ‘home tongue’ or ‘home language’ instead.118 He uses the latter terms in his letters as well, even in response to correspondents who use ‘mother tongue’ in their letters.119 Rather than ‘Mother India’, Grierson invokes ‘Greater India’, which dovetails with his commitment to Aryan India as a civilising project – by its very nature, a civilisation is hard to contain within national boundaries.120 For Savarkar and Har Bilas Sarda the Hindu nation was grounded in the ownership of a ‘common Sanskrit civilisation’ and for Lajpat Rai, the Hindus are a nation ‘because they represent a type of civilization all their own’.121 Hindu nationalists, on the other hand, were anxious to contain that civilisation within the territory of India, as opposed to Nehru, for example, who evoked both ‘Mother India’ and ‘Greater India’ in his writings. He pressed both into service against what he called ‘narrow nationalism’.122 For a long time, the RSS ignored overseas Hindus, 151

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because the ethnic dimension of their nationalism was intertwined with its territorial dimension.123 In this they differed from Gandhi, whose own experiences of the Indian diaspora were crucial to his reimagining of India, and from Grierson, whose cartographical imagination both centred and globalised India.124 For Grierson, a Greater (Aryan) India was necessarily at odds with the discreteness of national boundaries. One of the prime concerns of his 1883 Emigration Report was to maintain a ‘connecting link’ between emigrants in the colonies and India, and to lessen their sense of separation from their homes. As such, he had a strong sense of the Indian diaspora and its struggles with their ‘dread of final separation’.125 He also argued that the geography teaching in primary schools in India should focus on India and the other colonies with which it is connected, and less on places like Norway and Sweden, with which it was not connected.126 Grierson’s empathy with Aryan-Hinduism had other limits: while he was anxious to connect with it through Christianity, the mode of that connection presented Hinduism in terms of the historical and spiritual priority of Christianity. His affinity with Indians was therefore both controlled and selective. While for some Indians Grierson’s ‘love’ of bhakti ‘endeared your name to our Indian homes’,127 his focus on bhakti was at odds with Hindu nationalism’s upper caste orientation. Hindu nationalist organisations also had and have a tense relationship with Christianity. As a reconversion technique, the ceremony of shuddhi was partly aimed at Indian Christian converts, while for Dayananda Saraswati British colonialism and conversion to Christianity were the main threats to the Hindu nation. Savarkar focused on Islam as the main threat but he also grouped Muslims and Christians together in terms of an outlook of ‘a foreign origin’ and a loyalty to a Holy Land outside India.128 In contrast, Grierson’s triangulation of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity safeguards the latter’s priority, connects it with an Aryan-Hindu India, and marginalises Islam. In this narrative, Christianity and Aryan India become mutually reinforcing master discourses, whereas for Hindu nationalists both Christianity and Islam are a threat. In Hindu nationalism, there is some vacillation over whether being Hindu and Indian ought to be grounded in claims to autochthonism. For Dyananda Saraswati the Aryas of the Vedas settled in virgin territory, and for Golwalkar Hindus were autochthonous.129 Savarkar is more circumspect. He notes that we cannot say when the Aryans made India their home and describes the Aryans as cutting themselves off from ancient Persians when they came to India.130 This implies that 152

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they are not autochthonous. In the LSI, as we have seen, India is presented as a territory in which the notions of home and autochthonous belonging are problematised by language and migration. No sooner is home invoked than it is destabilised through migration. This opens the way for legitimising the dominance of the term ‘Aryan’ in the Survey’s version of India. Aryan superiority, like British superiority, does not rely on claims to autochthonous belonging. Their superiority lies in their claims to civilisation and the civilising of others.

Siraiki and Panjabi revisited Grierson’s commitment to a particular version of India may have played a role in his approach to Panjabi. We have seen how Panjab’s cultural distinctiveness is reinforced, in a slightly negative way, by the valorisation of ancient accounts of the region and its people, in contrast to how antiquity is used to bolster the status of Siraiki. Grierson resisted the attempts of Sikh organisations to bolster the status of Panjabi and to institutionalise the ICS exam, and he questioned the pedigree they attached to Panjabi literature. When he refers to the boundaries between Panjabi and its adjoining languages, he describes the differences in languages as connoting ‘a difference in nationalities’. In particular, when reflecting on the border line between Panjabi and Western Hindi, he refers to the former as the language of the Sikhs.131 It is possible that Grierson’s reluctance to countenance the Sikh Diwan’s claims and his investment in Siraiki as a different language were affected by the mobilisation of Sikhs as a separate community in the Panjab, and especially their increasing self-differentiation from a Hindu community, as well as their attempt to circumscribe Panjabi as a Sikh language. This would explain one puzzling feature of the Survey. Whereas in general it calls attention to the multiplicity of names for languages and dialects in India, when it came to Siraiki Grierson was unusually committed to stabilising its name.132 He appears to have been personally invested in the separate status of Siraiki, and was touchy about his coinage of the name ‘Lahndā’.133 He seemed anxious to secure its status as a discrete language, thereby reducing both the numbers and the territory of Panjabi as a language. In 1929 Grierson responded to Siddheshwar Varma’s paper ‘Nasalisation in Hindi Literary Works’ (later published as a book in 1935).134 In doing so, he took issue with Varma’s use of the word ‘Lahndī’ as opposed to ‘Lahndā’. Grierson states that he himself does not like ‘Lahndā’ but ‘as an English word it is permissible’. He added he only 153

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used it as ‘it was, in English, the only established name that I could find. It has been used in Grammars written by Englishmen for at least fifty years’.135 Were Varma to insist on another name, the only possibility would be ‘Lahndāī’. However, it is a great evil to change the name of a language. My experience of the Linguistic Survey had shown this. It often causes the greatest confusion, and unless an established name is palpably wrong and misleading it is far better to stick to it.136 Here, then, Grierson was acting out of character, because he was resistant to opening the name ‘Lahndā’ to a field of other possible names, and he held back from interacting with Indian practices of naming in this context.137 The separateness of the name has to be imposed from above through English; it cannot be teased out of a swirl of possible names for the language at the ground level. In fact, the name ‘Lahndā’ was not one of the local names current in the region and the language continues to be referred to by a variety of local names.138 Grierson’s refusal to interact with the Indian economy of names in this case is at odds with other indications in his correspondence of the fluidity of language names in the Panjab. Indian candidates for the ICS exams had to be tested in the ‘vernacular’ of their province. However, where the candidate’s ‘mother tongue’ was the provincial language, he had to take a paper in history instead. One candidate, A.N. Bhandari, who was selected for Panjab, put down Panjabi as his ‘mother tongue’ and wanted to be examined in Urdu not history. In another form, he listed his ‘mother tongue’ as ‘Hindustani (Punjabi)’. Mair, the Civil Service commissioner, was therefore confused about the term Panjabi used in this context. Was it a language belonging to the ‘inner ring’ of Indo-Aryan languages in Grierson’s classification, or was it a local form of ‘Hindustani’, so that it was in fact a local form of ‘Urdu’?139 Clearly for some inhabitants of Panjab at the time, their multilingualism encompassed more fluid ideas about the boundaries between languages and dialects, and their use of language names reflected this. This is in keeping with what the LSI conveys about language names in India. Grierson’s response to Mair’s query is interesting. He would have recommended that, for the purposes of the exams, Panjabi and Urdu should be seen as the same language, but such a statement would ‘arouse considerable religious and nationalistic opposition among the Sikhs’.140 Thus, Grierson was prepared to countenance Urdu and Panjabi merging with each other at one level, while seeking to differentiate 154

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Lahnda from Panjabi. The former would have led to Panjabi’s distinctiveness being in question, the latter to its territory and number of speakers shrinking once Siraiki was taken out of it. In one case, he is responsive to the fluidity of names, but in the case of Siraiki he seeks to close that fluidity off. Varma’s response to Grierson’s previously mentioned objections about using ‘Lahndī’ was that it ‘has passed current’. Its final sound parallels terms like Marathi and other Indian language names. The LSI, while ‘monumental’, is subject to alteration and improvement. To him, ‘Lahndī’ sounded better than ‘Lahndā’.141 Grierson’s reply to this is unusually terse, suggesting that in this case the question of naming and the power to name are sensitive issues. He expressed ‘lively regret’ that Varma and he did ‘not see eye to eye’ in regard to ‘Lahndī’ and added: ‘You are mistaken in assuming that Professor Turner agrees with you’. He had written to Grierson ‘stating exactly the reverse’. He was also ‘quite unable to agree that the word Lahndī is parallel to Marathī’.142 Grierson later alerted Varma to his (Grierson’s) Bulletin of SOS article on the subject.143 Varma read the article, but remained unconvinced. He continued to insist that ‘Lahndī’ ‘sounds better’. He had tried both versions on Indian laymen ‘whose capacity to comprehend must be taken into account, if it is desired to make the subject a little popular’, and they always preferred the latter. He then suggests the term ‘Sindh-sāgarī’ since the actual home of the language is the SindhSagar Doab.144 Varma wanted to discuss the question at the Oriental Conference in Patna in December 1930, but the full programme at that conference prevented him from doing so. For him, the question remained open, but he decided to use Lahndā simply for the sake of convention.145 In 1937 Varma sent Grierson a copy of his The Phonetics of Lahndā (Calcutta, 1936); he underlined how he retained the term ‘Lahndā’ in his book, but also used the term ‘Sindh-Sāgari’.146 This prompted a spate of further criticisms from Grierson. Grierson does not tell us why or how he moves from other names to ‘Lahndā’ but he adds: ‘Multiplication of names leads to confusion, and there were already several other equally unsuitable names; so, in writing English, I though best to stick to the least bad one’. As for ‘Sindh-Sāgarī’, it is too long for convenient use.147 In his final response, Varma points out that ‘Sindh-Sāgari’ is only three syllables long and is no longer than several other names in the Survey such as ‘Kashṭwāri’, ‘Rājbangśī’, ‘Awāṇkārī’ and ‘Bashgalī’. Moreover, as it is the neighbouring language of Sindh, the name would be ‘naturally significant’.148 155

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We have seen how some section headings in the LSI keep multiple names in their titles; the same could have been done for Siraiki but Grierson did not choose to do this here. Grierson’s objection to the length of the name ‘Sindh-Sāgarī’ is unconvincing, for the reasons Varma outlines. The real reason Grierson may have objected to this name was that it did not alert his readers to the separate discreteness of the language strongly enough, because of the presence of ‘Sindh’ in it. There is a strong hint here, then, that when it came to Siraiki, Grierson was unusually committed to signalling its discreteness through its name, more so because of the blurred boundaries between it and Panjabi. The concern to signal the language’s discreteness through stabilising its name over other vaguer terms was an important part of Siraiki activists’ strategies from the 1960s onwards.149 They also sought to dissociate it from the epithet ‘Sindhi’.150 The extent of the phonological and grammatical differences between Siraiki and Panjabi is debatable. Shackle has argued that Grierson reified dialectal differences and loose distinctions to make two languages, and that Siraiki is a construct of Grierson’s.151 He also argues that Grierson’s internal classification of the varieties of Siraiki can be questioned and he reformulates the typology of its dialects.152 Some linguists at the time, both Indian and British, questioned Grierson’s classification.153 It seems likely Grierson was influenced by the communal politics in Panjab, and wanted to contain, at some level, Sikh self-assertion in the province. His resistance to the Sikh Khalsa Diwan’s attempts to argue Panjabi had a long and prestigious literary history can be interpreted in this context. First, this organisation played an important role in Sikh self-assertion and as such, Grierson would not have been disposed to support its attempts to increasingly differentiate Sikhs from the Panjabi Hindu community culturally and religiously, and in the case of language, to make Panjabi into a Sikh language written in the Gurmukhi script exclusively.154 Such developments were reflected in literary texts like Vir Singh’s Rāṇā Sūrat Singh (1905) with its message of the reformed Sikhism of the Singh Sabha movement presented in a new medium which jettisoned the traditional idiom of Panjabi poetry and its rhymes.155 It is also possible Grierson shared a longstanding colonial fear that promoting Panjabi, for example, as the official language of the province, would be tantamount to promoting Sikh political claims and risk a Sikh resurgence.156 As we saw, Grierson also argued there was no ‘admittedly classical literature’ in Panjabi and seemed reluctant to accept that it had any literature at all. This was despite Panjabi being recognised in 1877 as one of the languages 156

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students could be examined in at Panjab University. This decision followed a debate in the university senate in May 1877 on whether Panjabi was a literary language. The faction that argued it was a literary language produced a list of 389 books in Panjabi to prove its point. In fact, Panjabi had developed a substantial print culture from the late 1870s onwards.157 As Farina Mir has shown, from the 1870s onwards qissa literature played a key role in Panjabi print culture.158 The genre became a site for Panjabi writers’ increasingly sophisticated awareness of literary history, as demonstrated in the works of Maula Bakhsh Kushta (1876–1954) and Budh Singh (b. 1878).159 Moreover, in 19th- and 20th-century renditions of Hīr Rānjhā, religious difference was not a critical determinant of self and community; instead, the focus on zāt signified a Panjabi multi-religious social collective with shared notions of piety and devotion.160 This would not have sat easily with Grierson’s views on the monolithic nature of religious communities and the need to shore up distinctions between Hindus and others in India. Grierson’s reluctance to recognise Panjabi literary culture, and to engage with Hīr Rānjhā, contrasts with his strong and abiding interest in Tulsi Das’s Rāmacaritmānas, which he described as the ‘Bible of the Hindus’.161 Clearly Hīr Rānjhā was less easy for Grierson to appropriate for his political views than Tulsi Das. As we shall see in the next chapter, his approach to the latter was part of a 20th-century tendency to communalise the Rāmcaritmānas and present its author as a militant hero responding to a Kali Yuga characterised by the foreign domination of India.162 We have seen that Grierson had close connections with Kashmiri pandits and tried to bolster their position in relation to the ‘foreign’ Dogra state. It is also possible that the dominance of Panjabis in the Dogra state’s administration in Kashmir, at the expense of Kashmiri pandits there, played a role in his circumspection when it came to Panjab and Panjabi, especially as in the early 20th century the school curricula in Kashmir was reorganised along the schemes of the Panjab University syllabus and the education system was affiliated to this university, thereby relegating Kashmiri to the background in educational matters.163 For Grierson, Sanskrit, Shaivism and Pandits in Kashmir were closer to his version of India than a Sikh-dominated Panjab.

Conclusion As Trautmann notes, ‘everyone within the structure [of the linguistic tree] . . . is related to everyone else’. In contrast to the binary of Self 157

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versus Other, the segmentary idea of the tree ‘assumes sameness (kinship), which it then partitions along a calculus of distance’.164 Cladistics enables us to think about relationships of closeness and distance without falling into the trap of binary opposites. The language tree is obviously central to the Survey, and Grierson’s shifting movements between a closeness to and a distance from India can also be seen in terms of these gradations of closeness rather than binaries of difference. In one respect, though, Grierson held on to the self-other binary, and this was in defining Aryan India against Semitic Islam. He therefore deploys both the kinship tree and the self-other model, and in doing so, reproduces a binary opposition between the possibilities of arboreal kinship and the agonistic relationships of selves and others. This opposition needs to be kept in place to hold on to the idea of Aryan India and the calibrated inclusiveness of the family tree is contained and bounded by the agonistic other of Islam which cannot be incorporated into it. Thus, one narrative in the LSI contributed to making India Hindu and Aryan. Key to this, as David Ludden has stressed, is making Islam appear foreign in India and the notion that Muslims and Hindus are two separate communities opposed to each other.165 The idea of India as essentially Hindu has now become common sense,166 and one strand of the LSI and some of Grierson’s writings helped to make this notion appear self-evident. Moreover, for the Sangh Parivar, Hindu nationalism is not communal because it represents the ‘real India struggling to become itself’,167 and this narrative is also to be found in Grierson. Aspects of the LSI clearly resonate with the move towards Hindutva in the 1920s, postulated upon an ‘enemy image of a similarly conceived Islam’.168 Grierson can also be seen to be one of the British writers in India who perpetuated a repertoire of images construing Indian Islam as an ‘emblem of repellent otherness’.169 At its core, the Aryan debate is about who is foreign and who is native in India.170 In rendering the boundaries between ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ in India porous, and in reshaping the legitimacy of the category ‘Aryan’ away from autochthonism, Grierson operated outside these terms. For the Survey, at the micro level of India’s regions, ‘abroad’ referred to other parts of India and not just territories outside India. However, while the LSI moved away from an unproblematic category of the ‘native’, it held on to the ‘foreign’ in one important respect. As a corollary of this, Grierson’s version of India reinforces, and even encourages, a Hindi-Urdu divide. This is the subject of the next chapter. 158

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Notes 1 See Ch. 4 of my Colonialism and Knowledge for an examination of Grierson’s Christian beliefs in relation to the LSI. 2 Thomas R. Trautmann (ed), The Aryan Debate, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 88. 3 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Pt. 1: Introductory, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publications Branch, 1927, p. 62. 4 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bodo, Nāgā, and Kachin Groups, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, p. 2. 5 Linguistic Survey Files S/1/14/2, Asia and African Collections, British Library, London, hereafter LS Files; see Grierson to Gait, 1. 8. 1911, referring to the representation of the Bahikas in the Mahābhārata. 6 European Manuscripts, EUR 223/260, J.S. Cotton to Grierson, 25. 4. 1904, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, London, hereafter EUR only. 7 LS Files S/1/14/1, H.H. Risley to Grierson, 10. 9. 1902, ‘Census Report (Seventh Note) Language’. 8 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Western Hindī and Pañjābī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, p. 69. 9 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 4: Specimens of the Pahārī languages and Gujurī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, p. 108. 10 EUR 223/249, Grierson to D.R. Sahni, Office of Director General of Archaeology, 15. 3. 1932. 11 EUR 223/306, Grierson to Honorary Secretary, Dyal Singh Library, Lahore, 3. 11. 1931. 12 Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans in British India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, p. 48. 13 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 52. 14 EUR 223/303, Grierson to Sidney Burrard, 27. 2. 1931. 15 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 29–30. 16 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 10: Specimens of Languages of the Eranian Family, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1921, pp. 7–9; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, pp. 792, 373, 102, 14–15; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: IndoAryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Rājasthānī and Gujarātī, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing India, 1908, p. 49; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 481, 159; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Dardic or Piśācha Languages (including Kāshmīrī), Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1919, p. 514. 17 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, pp. 792, 102; see also 108 and 14 on ‘reimmigration’ being the result of Muslim oppression. 18 Jawaharlalal Nehru, The Discovery of India, 1946, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 241.

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Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, pp. 614, 74. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 151. LS Files S/1/2/1, Grierson to Lord Curzon, 10. 9. 1904. LS Files S/1/2/2, Brungati, Home Dept., India to Grierson, 6. 6. 1905. Ibid., Grierson to Sir Edward Maclagan, 10. 8. 1916. LS Files S/1/10/3, Pandit Gauri Shaukar Ojha to Grierson, 10. 9. 1925, Grierson to Pandit Ojha, 11. 7. 1927. LS Files S/1/2/1, Grierson to Lord Curzon, 10. 9. 1904. LS Files S/1/1/32, L.P. Tessitori to Grierson, 13. 7. 1916. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, pp. 89–90. EUR 223/285, S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar to Grierson, 31. 8. 1921. EUR 223/265, Grierson to K.P. Jayaswal, 24. 12. 1925; EUR 223/285, Registrar, University of Madras to Grierson, 13. 11. 1929. LS Files S/1/1/7, Sten Konow to Grierson, 12. 6. 1907. EUR 223/206, Grierson to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 9. 2. 1937, and typescript ‘The Indian Doctrine of Man’s Last End’. Ibid., Grierson to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 9. 2. 1937. EUR 223/291, A. Govindacharya to Grierson, 5. 9. 1909. George A. Grierson, ‘The Modern Hindu Doctrine of Works’, JRAS, 1908, 40 (1): 337–362. EUR 223/302, Grierson to Prof. Wincenty Lutoslawski, 16. 5. 1929. George A. Grierson, The Bible in India, Anarkali, Lahore: Punjab Bible Society, c. 1904, p. 14. EUR 223/291, Pandit Alkondavilli Govindacharya to Grierson, 22. 8. 1909. For this essay, see George A. Grierson, ‘Gleanings From the Bhakta-Mala’, JRAS, 1909, 41 (3): 607–644, 1910, 42 (1): 87–109, 42 (2): 269–306. EUR 223/291, Pandit Alkondavilli Govindacharya to Grierson, 22. 8. 1909, 19. 11. 1909, 30. 5. 1910, 7. 6. 1910, Grierson to Pandit Govindacharya, 17. 12. 1909, 14. 1. 1910, & 28. 2. 1910. Ibid., Pandit Alkondavilli Govindacharya to Grierson, 5. 9. 1909 & 19. 11. 1909. Ibid., Pandit Govindacharya to Grierson, 22. 8. 1909 & 5. 9. 1909. Ibid., Grierson to Pandit Govindacharya, 15. 9. 1909, 24. 10. 1909. See Alkondavilli Govindacharya, ‘The Artha-Pancaka of Pillai Lokacarya’, JRAS, 1910, 42 (3): 65–607. Ibid., Pandit Govindacharya to Grierson, 9. 2. 1910 & 8. 3. 1910. See JRAS, 1910, 42 (4): 1103–1113. EUR 223/291, Grierson to V.N. Narasimmiyengar, 4. 12. 1911. EURR 223/298, Sedgwick to Grierson, 30. 12. 1909; Sedgwick’s own article on Marathi bhakti poets was published in the Journal of Asiatic Society of Bombay, 23 (5): 109–134. R. Raj Singh, Bhakti and Philosophy, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006, p. 89. EUR 223/291, Pandit Govindacharya to Grierson, 7. 10. 1909. LS Files S/1/14/2, Grierson to Gait, 7. 1. 1910. EUR 223/291, Grierson to Pandit Govindacharya, 17. 12. 1909. EUR 223/308, Grierson to Sita Ram, 28. 8. 1910.

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51 For a discussion of Grierson’s failing eyesight, see Ch. 3 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 52 For a discussion of Grierson’s subject position in this respect, see Ch. 8 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 53 EUR 223/223, Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 1. 54 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 2. 55 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 7. 56 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 7. 57 Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s The History of British India, Ch. 1. 58 EUR 223/4, Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 4. 59 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, pp. 14–15. 60 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, pp. 16–17. 61 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 17. 62 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, pp. 17–20. 63 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 20. 64 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 21, p. 22. 65 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 24. 66 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, pp. 21–22. 67 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 25. 68 Ibid., Grierson, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’, p. 26. 69 Robert Ivermee, Secularism, Islam and Education in India, 1830–1910, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2015, Ch. 2. 70 Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, transl. Sonia Wichmann, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006, pp. 32–33, Ch. 2. 71 For Jones’s role in the reconstruction of the name of the proto-IndoEuropean supreme God, see Arvidsson, Aryan Idols, pp. 32–36, and for his anxiety to maintain a Mosaic chronology in the face of the implications of his own Indo-European discovery, see Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings, Ch. 1. 72 Arvidsson, Aryan Idols, pp. 66–90. 73 Ibid., p. 84. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., pp. 151–152, 165. 76 W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series. The Fundamental Institutions, Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1889, p. vi, 1–2. 77 Arvidsson, Aryan Idols, p. 4, 91ff. 78 EUR 223/283, D.L. Lorimer to Grierson, 24. 2. 1922. 79 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s, London: Hurst & Company, 1993, pp. 5–6; Christophe Jaffrelot (ed), Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 3. 80 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism: pp. 15, 35–36, 50, 61, 86, 94–96, 116–117. 81 Ibid., pp. 94–95. 82 See Ch. 5. 83 Hindu Nationalism, p. 54.

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84 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 5–6; for specific instances of this see pp. 15–16. 85 Ibid., pp. 47–48. 86 Sheldon Pollock, ‘Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj’, in Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (eds), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 101. 87 Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India From the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, Ch. 3. 88 Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The IndoAryan Migration Debate, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 28. 89 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 29. 90 For this see Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974, Ch. 2; Richard Burghart, ‘A Quarrel in the Language Family: Agency and Representations of Speech in Mithila’, Modern Asian Studies, 1993, 27 (4): 774–775, and George A. Grierson, An Introduction to the Maithilí Language of North Bihár Containing a Grammar, Chrestomathy and Vocabulary, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1881, p. 1 for his upper caste informants. For the Brahmanical assertion of Maithili, see Burghart, ‘Speech in Mithila’, pp. 788–797. 91 Burghart, ‘Speech in Mithila’, pp. 789–791; for Grierson’s contribution to the Maithili movement see Ch. 1. 92 EUR 223/208, Grierson to Honorary Secretary, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 15. 4. 1911. 93 EUR 223/269, Grierson to Pandit Nityananda Sastri, 12. 11. 1928. 94 EUR 223/215, Grierson to Edward Gait, 17. 9. 1917, on Pandit Jha. 95 EUR 223/238, Grierson to Edward Gait, 14. 10. 1915, on Rai Sahib Gauri Kant Roy. 96 EUR 223/308, Grierson to Lala K. Kishore, 8. 2. 1937. 97 EUR 223/210, Grierson to van Manen, 8. 1. 1929, on Mahamahopadhyaya Hara Prasad Shastri; EUR 223/211, Grierson to L.S.S. O’Malley, 24. 9. 1918, on the same; EUR 223/209, Grierson to Van Manen, 19. 7. 1928, on the same. 98 EUR 223/222, Haraprasad Shastri to Grierson, 7. 3. 1929, Grierson to Shastri, 27. 3. 1929. 99 Ibid., Grierson to Ganpati Sarkar, 15. 3. 1933, on his admiration and respect for Shastri. 100 LS Files S/1/16/1, Grierson to Maharajadhiraja Sir Rameshwara Singh of Darbhanga, 30. 9. 1921. 101 Ibid., Grierson to M.G. Hallett, 21. 12. 1920, on Maulvi Khuda Baksh as one of ‘my oldest friends in Patna’. 102 Romila Thapar, ‘Some appropriations of the theory of Aryan race relating to the beginnings of Indian history’, in Trautmann (ed), Aryan Debate, p. 127. 103 Jaffrelot discusses the specific contexts which gave rise to this hostility to Islam; see Hindu Nationalist Movement and Hindu Nationalism. 104 For example, see the section ‘Foreign invaders’ in Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, p. 91ff., and Golwalkar, in ibid., p. 100.

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105 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 57; Bryant, Vedic Culture, pp. 274–275. 106 EUR 223/226, S.K. Chatterji to Grierson, 22. 1. 1920. 107 EUR 223/334, see the letters from the Editor, Kalyan: An Illustrated Hindi Monthly of Devotion, Knowledge, and Universal Religion to Grierson, 14. 3. 1930, 12. 2. 1932, 14. 4. 1932, & 14. 3 1934; Vishnudatta Kapoor, Editor of Diwakar to Grierson, 25. 9. 1935. 108 Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, Noida, India: Harper Collins, 2015, pp. 214, 133–134. 109 Ibid., pp. 19–20. 110 See the following chapter. 111 EUR 223/226, Jagodish Ch. Chatterji, International School of Vedic and Allied Research, New York, 30. 4. 1930. 112 EUR 223/316, Grierson to Murray Browne, 2. 2. 1932. 113 EUR 223/254, Brahma Datta Jijnasa, Rama Lal Kapur Trust Society, Lahore, 19. 12. 1934. 114 EUR 223/307, The Secretary, Dayanad Nirvana Ardha Shatabdi celebrations Samiti, Ajmer to Grierson, 7. 4. 1933. 115 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 50–51. 116 Trautmann, British Aryans, p. 220, citing Raychaudhuri. 117 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, p. 7. 118 See his use of the latter two terms in George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 7: Indo-Aryan Family (Southern Group), Specimens of the Marāṭhī Language, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1905, pp. 42, 211; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bihārī and Oṛiyā Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903, p. 43; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 4: Muṇḍā and Dravidian Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1906, p. 363; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 187. 119 EUR 223/282, Grierson to W.N. Williams, General Secretary, University of Cambridge, Local Examinations Syndicate, 18. 12. 1924; Grierson to J.O. Roach, Assistant Secretary, University of Cambridge, Local Examinations Syndicate, 6. 2. 1929. 120 See Ch. 2. 121 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 18, 95; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, p. 50. 122 Javed Majeed, Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity: Gandhi, Nehru and Iqbal, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 6, 162, 172–173 note 250. 123 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, p. 361. 124 See Ch. 2. 125 India Office Records, IOR P. 2058, Major Pitcher and Mr. Grierson’s Inquiry into Emigration, August 1883, Ch. 7, Ch. 10, and diary entry for 8. 1. 1883. 126 India Office Records, IOR P. 2058, Major Pitcher and Mr. Grierson’s Inquiry into Emigration, August 1883, Ch. 10. 127 EUR 223/318, Dinesh Chandra Sen to Grierson, 16. 8. 1923.

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128 Hindu nationalists tended to be critical of Gandhi’s version of Hinduism because of its focus on bhakti; see Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 46; for anti-Christian stances and shuddhi, see ibid., pp. 9–10, 18–19, 95. 129 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 9–10, 30–31, 35; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 53–54. For the school of indigenous Aryanism, see Bryant, Vedic Culture, p. 4. 130 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, p. 87. 131 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 607. 132 For some of the names circulating amongst British officials at the time, see Nukbah Taj Langah, Poetry as Resistance: Islam and Ethnicity in Postcolonial Pakistan, New Delhi: Routledge, 2012, p. 5. 133 See below. 134 EUR 223/335, Grierson to Siddheshwar Varma, 14. 10. 1929. 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid. 137 For some of these other names, see Christopher Shackle, From Wuch to Southern Lahnda: A Century of Siraiki Studies in English, Multan: Bazm-e Saqaft, 1983, pp. i; 15. 138 Tariq Rahman, Language and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 103. 139 EUR 223/228, David Mair to Grierson, 22. 11. 1923. 140 Ibid., Grierson to Mair, 30. 11. 1923. 141 EUR 223/335, Siddheshwar Varma to Grierson, 6. 11. 1929. 142 Ibid., Grierson to Varma, 4. 12. 1929. 143 Ibid., Grierson to Varma, 28. 5. 1929. 144 Ibid., Siddheshwar Varma to Grierson, 6. 8. 1930. 145 Ibid., Varma to Grierson, 28. 9. 1930 & 24. 8. 1931. 146 Ibid., Varma to Grierson, 9. 1. 1937. 147 Ibid., Grierson to Varma, 2. 2. 1937. 148 Ibid., Varma to Grierson, 21. 2. 1937. 149 Christopher Shackle, ‘Siraiki: A Language Movement in Pakistan’, Modern Asian Studies, 1977, 11 (3): 388, Rahman, Language and Politics, p. 174; Nukbah, Poetry as Resistance, pp. xix, 47. 150 Nukbah, Poetry as Resistance, pp. 47–52. 151 Rahman, Language and Politics, p. 175; Shackle, From Wuch to Southern Lahnda, pp. 33, 36; Christopher Shackle, ‘Problems of Classification in Pakistan Panjab’, Transactions of the Philological Society, 1979, 77 (1): 195. 152 Shackle, ‘Siraiki Language Movement’, pp. 387–389. 153 Shackle, ‘Problems of Classification’, p. 196. 154 Jasit S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 144–149. 155 Christopher Shackle, ‘A Sikh Spiritual Classic: Vīr Singh’s Rāṇā Sūrat Singh’, in Rupert Snell and I.M.P. Raeside (eds), Classics of Modern South Asian Literature, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998, pp. 183–209. 156 On this fear and the colonial policy to choose Urdu as the official language, see Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture

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157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165

166 167 168 169 170

in British Colonial Punjab, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, pp. 50, 52. Ibid., p. 62; Ch. 2. Ibid., p. 12. Christopher Shackle, ‘Making Punjabi Literary History’, in Christopher Shackle, Gurharpal Singh, and Arvind-pal Singh Mandair (eds), Sikh Religion, Culture and Ethnicity, Richmond: Curzon, 2001, pp. 97–117. Mir, Social Space of Language, Chs. 4–5. George A. Grierson, ‘Tulsi Dāsā, Poet and Religious Reformer’, JRAS, July 1903, p. 456. For this tendency see Philip Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text: Performing the Rāmacaritmānas of Tulsidas, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 368–370. Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, London: Hurst & Company, 2004, p. 178. Thomas R.Trautmann, Aryans in British India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, p. 10. David Ludden, ‘Introduction. Ayodhya: A Window on the World’, in David Ludden (ed), Making India Hindu: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India, 1996, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 5, 12. Ibid., pp. 12–14. Ibid., pp. 15–16. Sumit Sarkar, ‘Indian Nationalism and the Politics of Hindutva’, in Ludden (ed), Making India Hindu, p. 273. Mushirul Hasan, ‘The Myth of Unity’, in Ludden (ed), Making India Hindu, pp. 186–191. Thomas Trautmann, ‘Introduction’, in Trautmann (ed), Aryan Debate, p. xv.

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Grierson’s assumption of a Hindu-Muslim divide is reflected in his representations of Hindi and Urdu. In some of his earlier writings, such as An Introduction to the Maithilí Language of North Bihár (1881) he was cautious about Hindi, and stressed the distinctive nature of Maithili and Bihari in relation to it. In 1901 he described ‘Hindi’ as ‘concocted’, and as ‘invented by foreigners to express the numerous dialects spoken in the Central Gangetic Valley’.1 He makes the same point in his The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan (1889) and elsewhere.2 Also, as is well known, in the Survey he differentiated Hindi dialects on the basis of their grammars into three groups, namely Bihari, Eastern Hindi and Western Hindi.3 However, his bifurcation of India into an Aryan-Hindu India and a Semitic Islamic intrusion competes with this philologically nuanced approach. Being a scholar of Hindi does not mean one is committed to a communalised politics, but it is clear Grierson framed Hindi in communalist terms. In addition, Grierson had strong connections with organisations committed to Hindi as a cause which in their case had communal overtones. In this chapter, I show how in Grierson’s writings Hindi becomes a cultural symbol for his version of India. Grierson deploys a language of visceral difference when differentiating Hindi from Urdu so that the ontological categories of Islam and Hinduism are combined with the physicality of the visceral. While Grierson used a loose language of nationality, entitlement and rights for some regional languages, he casts Urdu as an uncertain citizen in India. In addition, Grierson sought to institutionalise a Hindi-Urdu divide and to foreground the importance of the Devanagari script in the ICS exams. Unlike some advocates of Hindi who criticised the use of the Kaithi script in Bihar, Grierson explained his published manuals on this script in terms of using it to pave the way for the triumph of Nagari. Grierson also 166

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played a key role in the creation of Hindi as a subject for the Cambridge Examination Board in Britain. As such, he was an advocate for Hindi internationally.

Visceral differences In volume 1, part 1, Grierson argues Western Hindi has three main varieties, of which one, Urdu, is used by Muslims and by Hindus who have ‘adopted the Musalmān system of education, and a modern development, called Hindī, employed only by Hindūs who have been educated on a Hindū system’.4 Grierson therefore draws a stark distinction between a Hindu Hindi and a Muslim Urdu as ‘systems’. For Grierson, the importance of teaching Hindi in schools and institutions like SOS is to enable the student to grasp the nature of the ‘Hindu spirit’.5 Moreover, those Hindus who have adopted Urdu are self-alienated and out of touch with their real selves. In a letter Grierson writes ‘the heart of every Hindū not educated on Musalmān lines between the Panjab and Bengal feeds upon . . . the classical poetry’ of Tulsi Das, while ‘Hindūs who are brought up on Musalmān lines, i.e. whose school education is based on Urdū, and who habitually use Urdū as their everyday speech and literary dialect, seem to be unable to master Classical Hindī’. Only ‘Hindūs brought up on Hindū lines’ are familiar with the latter.6 The visceral language of hearts and nourishment reinforces this Hindu Hindi-Muslim Urdu division and linguistic differences become embodied differences. In one of his letters he alludes to how for pandits and maulvis Sanskrit and Persian words in Hindi and Urdu are ‘as the breath of their nostrils’.7 These differences, then, go down to the very air Muslims and Hindus breathe. In describing how Premsāgar gave a lingua franca to Hindus, Grierson notes it enabled ‘men of widely different provinces to converse with each other without having recourse to the (to them) unclean words of the Musalmāns’.8 In one of his letters he alludes to how Hindu Hindi and Muslim Urdu speakers see each other’s vocabulary: ‘To each the words used by the other are unclean’.9 However, Grierson goes further than simply reporting on such notions. He sometimes associates Hindus with purity and Muslims with impurity. While Hindus in Kashmir are in a minority, they speak a dialect that is ‘much purer Kashmiri than that of their Musalman brethren’, because the latter borrow freely from Persian vocabulary.10 In his own Kāshmīrī Dictionary, Grierson made clear he ‘deliberately excluded words borrowed from Persian’ and ‘confined myself as much as possible to words found in 167

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Hindū literature. It is in fact the Paṇḍits’ rather than the Musalmān language which is represented here’.11 Some of Grierson’s correspondents also appreciated Grierson’s Kāshmīrī Dictionary as a ‘valuable . . . assembly of pure Kashmiri unadulterated by Persian’.12 However, not all Kashmiri pandits shared Grierson’s views; some saw his dictionary as a text of ancient rather than modern Kashmiri because of its exclusion of such words.13 In keeping with Grierson’s views on India as essentially and only Hindu, his approach to Kashmiri and Kashmiri pandits’ learning is also influenced by the communally charged situation in Kashmir from the 1910s onwards. From the early 20th century onwards, Muslim organisations had increasingly stressed the need for a revival of Islamic learning and culture in Kashmir.14 By the early 1920s Muslim organisations’ demands had gone beyond the provision of educational opportunities, and encompassed representation in government and educational services, the return of mosques from state control, and seats in any future state assembly.15 Grierson’s focus on Kashmiri pandit learning and Kashmiri Shaivism with no mention of local Islamic or syncretistic culture dovetailed with these pandits’ own perceptions, as expressed in various memorials, on their historical persecution under Muslim rule, during which they managed to retain their ‘inherent love of learning’, and on Muslims as ‘barbarous and ignorant’.16 Such views echo Grierson’s on the authenticity and purity of a Hindu and Aryan India.

Nationality and citizenship Grierson, then, undertook an ethno-linguistic cleansing of Kashmiri as a language. In one volume, Grierson speaks of how Urdu and Hindi represent ‘the two great religious systems of India [and] have their headquarters wide apart’ in ‘two rival cities’.17 Hindi and Urdu are therefore also cast as systematised and territorialised rivals. But Grierson goes further. For him, Hindi and Urdu represent the differences ‘between two nationalities’ and ‘the order of thought of an Urdū speaker is different from that of a Hindī speaker’.18 Here Grierson seems to blithely echo the two-nation theory as if it were self-evident. Grierson combines a language of citizenship with foreignness when he refers to Urdu. In volume 1, part 1, Grierson discusses the influence on Indo-Aryan languages of ‘languages altogether strange to India’, especially Persian. The latter, he stresses, is ‘the Arabicized Persian of the Mughal conquerors’ and is not the ancient Persian close to Sanskrit. The extent to which Persian has been assimilated varies from locality 168

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to locality and the religion of the speaker, but ‘everywhere there are some Persian words which have achieved full citizenship’. In the same volume, when discussing the use of Persian words in Urdu, he again refers to words that have ‘been admitted to full citizenship’. However, we also find a Persian order of words in the Urdu of Muslims, or some registers of Urdu in Lucknow where an Indo-Aryan word is hardly used.19 Thus Urdu with its Persian words is not a born citizen of India; rather it needs to be naturalised as an Indian citizen. Sometimes Grierson heightens the disputed nature of Urdu’s and Persian’s citizenship. Citing Charles Lyall’s view in Sketch of the Hindustani Language (1880) that Persian is no longer a ‘foreign idiom in India’ and that ‘it would be a foolish purism and a political mistake to attempt to . . . eliminate it from the Hindū literature of the day’, in response Grierson asserts opinions will differ as to ‘what words have received the right of citizenship and what have not’. His own preference is for a Hindustani ‘from which words whose citizenship is in any way doubtful are excluded’.20 This response to Lyall’s views is repeated verbatim in another volume.21 Thus, for Grierson Urdu and Persian’s citizenship in India is not a given and their foreignness in relation to a Hindu Aryan India means their exclusion is a distinct possibility. In contrast to the language of rights, recognition and nationality Grierson used for regional languages in India, whose citizenship is not in question per se, in the case of Urdu its citizenship in the Indian nation is in question. The issue of Persian and Urdu’s claims to be Indian citizens recurs in the Survey’s volumes.22 In some instances, Grierson draws an explicit contrast between Persian and an ‘indigenous’ language or a ‘true Indian language’.23 The doubt about Urdu’s citizenship inevitably slips into a question about the citizenship and patriotism of Muslims in India. For Grierson, ‘simple Urdu’ belongs to India, ‘pedantic Urdu’ is ‘an imitation of the language of a foreign country’, and consequently ‘there should be no hesitation in the choice made by a patriotic Indian Musalmān’.24 The patriotism of Indian Muslims, therefore, is under watch in the Survey and Urdu becomes a metonym for Indian Muslims’ suspect Indian citizenship as a whole. In one instance Grierson comments that ‘the native instinct against the use of foreign constructions’ is such that ‘Hindū writers class a dialect as Urdū . . . not on the basis of its vocabulary, but on the order of words employed by it’.25 Here, then, ‘Hindū’ is equivalent to ‘native instinct’ and Urdu is equivalent to ‘foreign constructions’. Grierson also associates Islam with processes of phonological deformation. Thus, under Islamic influence Arabic and Persian words were 169

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introduced into Bengali in Eastern Bengal ‘in a more or less deformed shape’,26 and many of the words in Urdu have been ‘so deformed in Musalmán mouths as to render it extremely difficult to trace them’.27 For Grierson, an ‘important division’ in Kashmiri is between Muslim Kashmiri which ‘abounds in foreign words borrowed from Persian, often in distorted forms’, and ‘Hindū Kāshmīrī’, which by contrast is ‘very free from admixture with Persian, and, although the home language of Paṇḍits . . . is composed of honest Tadbhavas’.28 Here ‘Muslim’ is associated with a distorting foreign influence, and ‘Hindu’ with honesty and freedom from adulteration. Grierson does touch on the distinction between urban and rural Kashmiri, and prose and poetry, but elides these to centralise a Hindu-Muslim divide, which extends to the minutiae of pronunciation – Muslims sound different.29 It is interesting to note that Sir Aurel Stein disagreed with Grierson here.30 In contrast to these Muslim distortions of Indian sounds, Grierson stresses his own correctness of pronunciation when it comes to Indian names and languages. He is able to hear the main accent falling on the last syllable of ‘Hindōstān’, for example, with the subsidiary, secondary accent on the first syllable, warning his correspondent that ‘to some ears it might seem that there is an equal stress on each syllable, though this is not really the case’.31 Grierson hears and pronounces (on) Hindustan correctly, while Muslims distort its sound(s). The centrality of an Aryan, Hindu and Hindi India to Grierson’s conception of the subcontinent was expressed spatially in a sacred cartography. For him the territory of Western Hindi ‘almost exactly corresponds’ to the Madhyadésá or ‘midland’ as ‘the true, pure home of the Indo-Aryan people’. It is through this land that the ‘mysterious River Sarasvatī of Indian legend flows underground, from where it disappears in the sands of the Eastern Panjab to the Prayāg, near Allahabad, where it mingles its waters with those of the Jumna and the Ganges’.32 Grierson’s 1908 lecture ‘Birth of a Nation’s Soul’ refers to this midland as the area where the Aryans established themselves, refined their speech into polished Sanskrit, and compiled and collected the Vedic hymns. It is also the territory where Brahmins consolidated their religious influence and social supremacy over the whole of India.33 Thus, the Madhyadésá is also associated with Āryāvarta and therefore a notion of purity premised on the āryā-mlećcha distinction. Grierson’s Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan (1889) stresses this heartland tradition, as Ira Sarma has convincingly argued. Although Grierson’s geography in this text allows for the inclusion of the Urdu-Persian culture of Delhi and Lucknow, this is excluded.34 The 170

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frontispiece of the book leads us into the abode of Rama’s childhood, so we enter literary Hindustan through Ayodhya and its literary realm, which is established as the spatial and literary centre of Hindustani literature from the very start.35 Some Hindi activists engaged with Modern Vernacular Literature closely: Babu Shyam Behari Misra saw it as an authoritative text,36 while Dhirendra Varma, who was asked by the Nagari Pracharini Sabha (hereafter NPS) to write a history of Hindi literature, referred to how he was going to consult Grierson’s works in his history.37 His paper ‘The Identity of the present dialect areas of Hindustan with the ancient Janapadas’ drew on Grierson’s Modern Vernacular Literature for its definition of Hindustan.38 Grierson’s strong sense of affinity with this sacred heartland geography is evident in some of his other writings.39 The notion of a Hindi and Hindu heartland underpinned by a sacred geography was also articulated by the Hindu right, who, in foregrounding it in their conception of India, dismantled UP as a Muslim heartland after 1947.40

Grierson and Hindi organisations For the advocates of Hindi in the 20th century, Hindi was the metonym for the Indian nation.41 Grierson shares this view and this metonym is paired with Urdu as the metonym for a foreign Islamic intrusion. Given these binary oppositions and the conflation of Hindu and Hindi it is not surprising that one finds slippages between the two in Grierson’s writings. Premsāgar is described as creating a standard of ‘Hindū prose’ rather than Hindi prose, and Kabir is difficult unless one is ‘soaked in Hindī myth’.42 In more concrete terms, Grierson had close links and an extensive correspondence with organisations involved in the advancement of Hindi such as the NPS, which he described in one of his letters to the ICS commissioner as ‘a well-known literary society’ aiming to bring ‘out correct editions of masterpieces of Hindī literature’.43 In contrast, his interaction with the Hindustani Academy, established in 1927 as an institutional space in which Hindi-Urdu linguistic divisions based on religion were interrogated and broken down, was minimal.44 In many ways, the fate of Hindustani, to cite Lelyveld’s evocative phrase,45 demonstrated the triumph of the narrative which Grierson and others on both sides of the Hindi-Urdu divide peddled. Grierson interacted with the NPS in three areas. First, he wrote to the Government in support of the NPS. This was significant given the organisation’s reliance on government aid and private donations.46 In response to the NPS’s concern that their work was not recognised 171

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enough by the Government, Grierson recommended some key scholars to the colonial administration for rewards. These included Gouri Shankar Hira Chand Ojha for his works on Indian alphabets and their history, on the history of Rajputana, and on the decipherment of inscriptions. He also recommended Mahabir Prasad as the editor of Saraswatī, which he described as ‘a high-class magazine, with a distinctly literary tone’.47 In 1927 Babu Jagannath Das contacted Grierson about the lack of government recognition for the NPS and scholars such as Shyam Sundar Das, who was one of the organisation’s founding members and a key player in the movement. It was a matter of surprise and regret to us all that such a scholar and such an indefatigable worker should have been honoured with the title of Rais Sahib only. As a contrast to this just think of Dr. Ikbal [sic] of Lahor [sic] who has been knighted for his poetical contributions. Jagannath Das also pointed out that in the Honours List no mention was made of the NPS, and asked Grierson to see if he could obtain an honorary degree for Shyam Sundar Das from a European university. The NPS saw Grierson as having ‘espoused the cause of Hindi’ and as having ‘done a great deal for it’; hence if ‘we feel aggrieved on any matter our appeal must lie before you’.48 Grierson also promoted the NPS and its work on the global stage. When the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation under the aegis of the League of Nations contacted Grierson for a linguistic bibliography of India, Grierson recommended the NPS’s journal amongst others.49 Grierson supported the NPS in other ways. In 1900 the NPS wrote to Grierson about the annual grant they received for the search of Hindi manuscripts. Grierson took this opportunity to ask for their help in locating a manuscript for his own use.50 Grierson was sent the Triennial reports on the search for Hindi manuscripts on the strength of what his Indian interlocutor saw as his ‘pioneer work’ on Hindi in Modern Vernacular Literature,51 and he recommended these reports to Indian scholars for their own work.52 In 1914 Grierson wrote to S.P. O’Donnell, secretary to the UP Government, to disagree with the view that the reports on the search for Hindi manuscripts were valueless. He stressed that the reports ‘have very considerable value as works of reference, and I have often used them myself and derived assistance from them’.53 In 1920 the NPS again approached Grierson for his opinion on their reports. Grierson endorsed their ‘extreme importance’, made 172

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specific recommendations and stressed his readiness to help the NPS in any way.54 The second focus of Grierson’s interaction with the NPS was on publications. The NPS sent Grierson copies of Saraswatī soon after its launch in January 1900.55 This journal played a key role in the Hindi movement and in popularising one standard version of the language.56 In the introductory volume of the LSI, Grierson noted the criticism of its Awadhi specimen in the review in Saraswatī, as a result of which he presented alternative versions.57 The Sabha regularly sent Grierson copies of their publications, soliciting his views on these.58 Many of these were texts by important figures in the Hindi movement, such as Ramchandra Shukla’s edition of Jāyasī-Granthâvali,59 for which Grierson subsequently prepared an index, which he then sent to the NPS library.60 Shukla’s Hindī sāhitya kā itihās (1929) was a key text in the reconceptualisation of Hindi literature as nationalist Hindu literature and his importance in the Hindi movement has been underlined by a number of scholars.61 He acknowledged his debt to Grierson in his work.62 Grierson recommended the NPS edition of Padmāvatī by Shukla to a correspondent as an excellent example of criticism from ‘the Indian point of view’.63 The NPS secretary also sent Grierson Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Bhāratendu Nātakāvalī, which Grierson appreciated as ‘magnificent work’ for the cause of Hindi.64 Others sent Grierson advanced copies of their forthcoming articles in the NPS journal, and Grierson sent his own articles to the NPS library.65 Satya Jivan Varma alerted Grierson to the NPS’s project of Hindī śabdasāgara, on the completion of which Grierson sent a note of congratulations.66 The NPS described its project of a Kachahrīkōs as a fulfilment of Grierson’s earlier plan for such a dictionary, hence they wanted him to be on the committee. Grierson was too ill to accede to this but he reassured the NPS it had his ‘entire sympathy’, stressing that It is nearly fifty years since I first made attempts of my own in the same direction; – but in those days, they did not receive support from those members of the legal profession whom I tried to interest in the matter.67 The NPS also approached Grierson to review book proposals.68 A range of other Indian scholars of Hindi and Hindi writers regularly sent Grierson their work. This included ‘Hindī bhāshā aur sāhitya’ by Shyam Sundar Das, who was head of the Hindi Department at Benares 173

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Hindu University – Grierson was subsequently in contact with Sundar about this work.69 Others asked him to write a foreword to their work on Hindi language and literature.70 Lala Sita Ram sent Grierson his multi-volume Selections from Hindi Literature (1921) – in his own words, the English preface to book 3 was ‘almost entirely taken with grateful acknowledgements from your own writings to take extracts from which you were pleased to permit me’.71 Babu Ratan Das drew significantly on Grierson for his work on Hindi poetics and expressed his appreciation of Grierson’s fulsome endorsement; he also sent Grierson copies of one of his other articles.72 For Grierson Harishchandra was one of the ‘most remarkable’ Indian writers in recent years, who founded the ‘modern school of Hindi’.73 Hence he supported Babu Ram Singh’s letter to the Government seeking support for publishing this author’s works.74 In his library he had the complete works of Harishchandra.75 Vasudha Dalmia has outlined Harishchandra’s significant role in the nationalisation of Hindu traditions and Grierson’s views overlapped with the values expressed by Harishchandra in some of his works. For example, the latter’s poem Hindī kī unnati par vyākhyān (1877) was an address to the poet’s Aryan brothers in solidarity against Muslim invasion. The Aryan concept grounds his sense of the new emerging nation, and he calls on an Aryan brotherhood to unite in the cause of their own language. As in the case of Grierson, Hinduism, Aryanism and Hindi are merged together to express the lineaments of a new nation, paradoxically grounded in the recovery of an ancient Aryan self.76 Grierson also mentioned Harishchandra’s works as valuable in his article on the ‘Bhakti mārga’ in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1909).77 Grierson, then, was in close contact with the NPS and with Hindi literati, and he publicised their cause when he could in Britain too. He seconded the nomination of Babu Shiva Prasad, another prominent member of the NPS, for membership of the RAS.78 Earlier Prasad had sent Grierson materials for the latter’s biographical sketch of Prasad in Modern Vernacular Literature.79 Some of Prasad’s views could have been expressed by Grierson, as when Prasad referred to Urdu in terms of how it ‘thrusts a Semitic element into the bosoms of Hindus from all that is Aryan – our nationality is lost’.80 Grierson recommended or sent many Hindi texts to the SOS library, including the NPS edition of Padmāvatī by Shukla; Dunichand’s Panjābī aur hindī kā bhāṣā vijñān; Ramakant Tripathi’s history of Hindi prose; issues of Hindi magazines such as Mādhurī, Gaṅgā and the children’s magazine Bālak; Hindi grammars issued by the NPS; and the NPS edition 174

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of Shyam Sundar Das’s Kabīr Granthāvalī.81 He also recommended the NPS edition of Premsāgar for the ICS exams in Hindi and for the Hindi exams at SOS.82 In addition, Grierson was active in getting Hindi literati reviewed in British journals or in recommending their works to others to read. He arranged for some of Shyam Sundar Das’s and Dunichand’s work to be translated into English for periodicals.83 Similarly, when Mata Prasad Gupta sent him a typescript of his article in Hindi on a chronology of Tulsi Das’s works, he suggests it should be published in translation in the Bulletin or as a separate book by SOS.84 Grierson also sent his own works like his The Lay of Alha (1923) to the NPS, Saraswatī and the Nawal Kishore Press’s Mādhurī for review.85 Grierson, then, was keen to translate Hindi into a significant presence in leading libraries in Britain. Not surprisingly, Grierson was seen by many of his Indian interlocutors as having done ‘pioneer work in Hindi’, and one of his correspondents saw the LSI as an extension of this work.86 He also expressed delight when others studied ‘my beloved Hindī’.87 P.S. Pandey, the professor of Hindi at St. Xavier’s college, Calcutta, referred to his ‘literary services of the Hindi language’ having left ‘an undying impression on the Hindi speaking people of India’.88 Lakshman Sarup dedicated his Hindi translation of a Molière comedy to Grierson as ‘a humble token of my respect and admiration for the great services you have rendered to Hindi language and literature’, while Babu Ganga Pati Simha contacted Grierson about his plan to write a biography of him in Hindi.89 In 1928 the Sabha contacted Grierson to participate in a Shyam Sundar Das commemoration volume. For them, Grierson had ‘long been associated with the Sabha’, and his ‘contribution to the growth of Hindi literature has been of considerable value’. They asked for a short message as ‘even a few lines from you will add to the importance of the work and will make this occasion memorable in the history of the growth of Hindi literature’. Grierson obliged by sending a fulsome message of support.90 The NPS also asked Grierson to contribute to a commemoration volume for Acharya Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi; Grierson’s advanced old age and failing eyesight prevented him from doing so, but he stressed that ‘no one has a higher appreciation of the great services rendered to Hindi literature by the Acharya than myself’.91 Grierson was asked to contribute to other special issues of journals in commemoration of prominent Hindi literati.92 In 1938 Baburam Saksena wrote to Grierson on behalf of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan to confer the title of ‘Sāhityavāchaspati’ on him in recognition of the ‘long and useful services that 175

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you have rendered to the cause of Hindi language and literature in particular and to Indian languages in general’. Others on whom the title was conferred included Gandhi, Pandit Madan Mohan Mahaviya and Pandit Mahabir Prasad Dvivedi.93 The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan was another important organisation in the Hindi movement and a powerful lobby pressing the INC to establish Hindi as a national language.94

Grierson and the question of Devanagari Thus, Grierson’s contacts with the NPS and prominent figures in the Hindi movement ran deep. The importance of script in the Hindi-Urdu conflict in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is well known,95 as is the role of the NPS in the Hindi-Nagari campaign of 1895–1900.96 For the Hindi movement and defenders of Urdu, script became an icon of the differences between Hindu Hindi and Muslim Urdu. Unlike many of the documents submitted to the Government for consideration in this controversy,97 Grierson was careful not to confuse language and script. Nonetheless, there is sometimes a slippage between the terms Hindi and Hindu when he describes scripts in his writings. In the case of Sindhi, Grierson refers to the ‘Hindī Sindhī’ character on one occasion,98 but thereafter refers to it as the ‘Hindū Sindhī’ character.99 Sindhi Muslims are unequivocally equated with the Perso-Arabic script, and Hindus with the ‘Hindū Sindhī’ script. In part, this reflects previous British policy regarding the script for Sindhi, with colonial officers promoting different scripts at various times (including what they called ‘the Hindu-Sindhi’ script) to conciliate different sections of the Sindhi elite.100 Grierson also presents a communalised picture of the history of scripts in India. Akbar’s finance minister Todar Mall is referred to as ordering revenue accounts to be kept in the Persian script, ‘forcing Hindū officials to learn and use that character’.101 This meant that in even so ‘Hindū a province as Bengal’, very few Hindus could read or write the script ‘of their own country’.102 Kayasths and Muslims used the Persian script, Hindus the Nagari, and ‘there became a great gulf fixed between these two sets of geists’. If a third option like Roman were to be added, there would be ‘two geist-gulfs instead of one’.103 Here the ontological nature of the categories of Muslim and Hindu in Grierson’s thinking is further underlined in the use of the term ‘geist’. At times Grierson writes as if script is a primary reality in relation to which communities are secondary. His comments on script ‘geists’ are based on his experience in the 1870s of a Kayasth failing to read Kaithi, ‘a character named after his 176

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caste’.104 Not only is individual and group identity conflated here, but the individual and group concerned have failed to embody the script which is proper to them, and therefore are found wanting in relation to its primary reality. Grierson’s implicit stigmatisation of Kayasths as semi-Islamicised was shared by figures like Babu Shiva Prasad, who described them as ‘half-Muhammadanised’.105 Grierson stresses that in India scripts are ‘matters of nationality or religion’.106 The attempt to define a national script using an Indian script is bound to fail, as Muslims and Hindus will not give up their scripts.107 Their scripts represent not only two religions, but also two nationalities, and since Grierson invokes what is in effect the two-nation theory in his writings, he is not just commenting on Indian attitudes here; he is also reinforcing them. Gandhi was also committed to Devanagari as an all-India script for a large part of his political career, but by the late 1930s, he argued that both Devanagari and the Perso-Arabic script should be adopted as all-India scripts – he wanted to break the exclusive association of the former with India and the latter with the alien and foreign.108 At one point Nehru proposed that a common script for India’s languages should be designed, such as a ‘Devanagari-Bengali-Marathi-Gujarati’ script and a ‘southern script’ for the Dravidian languages, while Hindustani in either of its scripts should be the national language.109 Such flexibility is not evinced by Grierson. In the context of determining ICS officers’ training in scripts for the provinces they were posted to, there also indications in Grierson’s correspondence of a script geography of India, in which India is visualised according to the scripts that were dominant in its provinces.110 The sense of competition between the Nagari and Persian scripts conveyed in Grierson’s letters slides into a territorial imagining of India’s map in terms of these scripts, in which some expressed the impossibility of teaching all three characters (Persian, Kaithi and Nagari) for any one province.111 In 1900, Babu Shyam Sundar Das, the then-secretary of the NPS, wrote to Grierson about the Oudh and NWP government decision to admit petitions in the courts in either Devanagari or Persian, and to have all public pronouncements in both. The letter continued: For the present we are quite satisfied with these orders and we confidently believe that in the struggle which has already commenced between the two rival characters, the nagari character will finally come out crowned with success. Please now 177

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accept our sincere and heartfelt thanks for the help you were able to give us in this cause.112 For the NPS, then, Grierson was one of their supporters when it came to the 1900 Government Resolution. There is some substance, therefore, to Christopher King’s contention that Grierson gave the NPS ‘behind-the scenes’ help in its province wide campaign leading up to this resolution.113 It is clear Grierson could read the Persian script but when he received a letter from Debi Parshad in this script in 1899 he wrote over it: ‘What is this: if possible, dispose of it at once. . . . Office to note that letters written in the Persian character when sent to me should be accompanied by a translation [sic]’.114 He also defended the Nagari script against British colonial critics who stressed the superior ‘simplicity’ of the Roman script.115 It is worth stressing that although in his edition of Padumāwati Grierson discussed how Jaisi had written the poem in the Persian script, but the edition is entirely in the Nagari script.116 In the battle of the scripts in the Hindi-Urdu conflict, the NPS was also critical of the Kaithi script. In its view, Nagari was purer than the latter because of its links with Sanskrit, while Kaithi had suspect associations with Hindustani.117 By 1880 official policy in Bihar promoted both the Nagari and Kaithi scripts, and by 1881 a new version of Kaithi was prescribed for general use in primary vernacular schools in the province. The Kaithi script flourished in Bihar for another three decades or so. The NPS, along with other Hindi organisations, was critical of these developments.118 To a certain extent, Grierson was responsible for the longevity of the Kaithi script in Bihar. The second edition of his A Handbook of the Kaithi Character (1899) was used by officials and was a set text for ICS candidates.119 However, according to Grierson, the Kaithi script was introduced in Bihar in the 1880s in some official documents to accustom villagers to eventually read printed papers in Nagari. Once it had served this purpose the plan was to substitute Nagari for Kaithi, hence he designed and ‘dressed up’ the Kaithi type in his handbook so as not to be very different from Nagari. It was not ‘pure Kaithi’, and in fact there were ‘much purer’ versions in circulation. These were then sidelined by the Government-approved typeface designed by Grierson.120 Grierson therefore minimised any possible rivalry between the Kaithi and the Nagari scripts. Colonial figures in their memoranda recommended Grierson’s manual on Kaithi, but by the late 1920s the use of the Kaithi script was diminishing, and ICS probationers in Hindi were no longer required to study it by that date.121 178

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The ICS exams and Hindi Grierson was also an advocate for Hindi and the Devanagari script outside India. The ICS exams in Britain were another institutional and pedagogical space where Grierson sought to solidify Hindi and Urdu as separate categories, framed by a communal divide. From the early 1900s onwards Grierson stressed the importance of ICS candidates knowing the Devanagari script.122 Other British figures, who were against prescribing texts with ‘a Muhammadan colouring written in a high-flown language’, agreed with him in this.123 When recommending Ṭheṭh hindī kā ṭhāṭh in 1902 as a prescribed text for Hindustani, Grierson made sure it was available to the commissioners in the Devanagari script; hitherto, the ICS examinations had tended to use the Persian script edition only.124 He also suggested other literary texts as particularly useful for introducing candidates to the Devanagari script.125 When prescribed texts were in simple language and could be rendered in both Devanagari and Persian script, Grierson recommended candidates should use both versions, in order to impress upon them that ‘both characters are equally important’.126 He prescribed the Upper Primary General Reader in both the Nagari and Persian scripts.127 The commissioners approached Grierson to ask his advice about the amount of reading to be set in each script for the syllabus and the 1912 conference on the Hindustani course for ICS probationers included an item on teaching the Devanagari script.128 Grierson submitted a document for this item on the conference’s agenda, in which he commented on the limited knowledge of many candidates of Devanagari, although for him there had been a ‘marked improvement’ for some years in knowledge of the script because of the stress on its importance in the exam instructions.129 By the early 1920s ICS candidates taking the Urdu paper had to learn the Nagari script.130 As is to be expected given his views, Grierson tended to equate Devanagari with being Indian, and the Persian script as alien in India.131 Devanagari could not represent highly Persianised Hindustani because the words were too ‘foreign’ in sound.132 In 1904 Grierson was asked to be examiner for the Hindustani ICS examinations.133 He had already been consulted about the reading list for these134 and in subsequent years he made detailed suggestions about the reading list in response to requests from the commissioners.135 In 1908 his course of reading for the ICS final examination in Hindustani was accepted.136 He also participated in the conferences arranged by the commissioners on the course in Hindustani for ICS

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probationers in April 1912, which he followed up with a number of notes to the commissioners, and was invited by the commissioners to their conference in 1919 on the course of study for candidates during their second year of probation.137 Grierson, then, had a hand in the shaping of the curriculum for Hindustani. From the 1900s to the mid-1920s Grierson tried to rectify the imbalance between Urdu and Persian and Hindi in the exams. In 1901 one of the Civil Service commissioners described Ṭheṭh hindī kā ṭhāṭh in the Persian script as being in ‘the Hindustani character’ – at this stage, Hindustani in Devanagari seemed to be unusual, at least for this correspondent.138 In 1905 Grierson sent one of the senior examiners in the Civil Service commissioner a note on the Hindustani examination. He attributed the prominent position of Persian in the work of candidates to the legacy of ‘Muhammadan influence’. However, while candidates needed to be familiar with some Persian vocabulary this should not be to the neglect of ‘the purely Indian element’. Candidates should begin with the ‘actual idioms of the country’ before using Persian words in Hindustani. Moreover, he argued that classical Hindi should be an optional subject alongside Persian because its idiom is ‘Indian, the atmosphere is Indian, and thus its acquisition tends to promote the acquisition of Indian idioms’. It is the ‘sacred language’ of millions in north India, so candidates would go to India ‘with their literary instincts directed to India and with a Hindostani idiom based on an Indian not on a foreign language’. Also, numerically Hindus outweigh Muslims in the Panjab, Frontier Province, UP and the rest of the Hindustani speaking tract put together.139 Grierson therefore pushed his circumscribed view of what was Indian, defined against Persian and by implication Urdu as non-Indian and foreign, in his recommendations to the ICS commissioners. He sought to ‘de-Persianise’ ICS pedagogy; for him this was equivalent to ‘Indianising’ it. He argued that to wean candidates away from Persian and Urdu ‘a counterbalancing attraction in the other direction’ ought to be offered to them. Candidates took Persian as an optional subject because of the marks allocated to it and because its study helped with the acquisition of Hindustani: ‘Each helps the other. It is the encouragement of Persian which accounts for this Persianisation of Hindostani. My suggestion is that classical Hindi be also allowed as an optional subject as well as Persian’.140 Writing in 1907 Grierson stated that the tastes and future studies of ICS candidates were being directed towards ‘Musalman’ literature, whereas candidates who were to serve in north India needed to be 180

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acquainted with ‘Hindu literature’, adding ‘just now, a knowledge of Hindu ideals is more important than ever’. It was important to represent the ‘claims of the literature of modern Hinduism’ in the ICS exams, because, using a majoritarian argument, there were 207 million Hindus and 62 million Muslims in India.141 In 1909 he argued for separate examinations in Urdu and Hindi to ‘give an equal chance to students of Hindu and of Musalman literature’. He added: I do not wish in any way to appear to decry the importance of Musalman literature in India, but there are twenty Hindus to six Musalmans in the country. Both Urdu and Hindi are Hindostani, and while both have literatures, the classical literature of Hindi is the more important, whether we consider its extent or its bearing on the beliefs and lives of the people of India.142 One jointly authored document to which Grierson contributed reiterated Urdu literature ‘is not indigenous to India’.143 As a corollary of this, Hindi literature represented the real India. In his own words, if his proposals were accepted, then candidates would acquire ‘real sympathy with the real India with which they will be brought into real contact’, and it would give them ‘a start in the direction of sympathy with Indian ideas and Indian tradition’.144 The compulsive repetition of the word ‘real’ reflects the deep-seated and even obsessive nature of Grierson’s political views of a neatly bifurcated India into Hindu and Muslim, in which these differences are embodied in the persons of Indians. Again, there is a visceral element to this: Hindi literature was ‘absorbed in the marrow of even the humblest peasant’.145 Hindi literature was also important for the ‘good and sympathetic government’ of India and at one point he suggests he prevented a riot by citing from Tulsi Das: ‘the crowd recognized it and listened to me’.146 Thus, the numerical weight of religiously defined communities and a circumscribed view of what is authentically Indian imbue Grierson’s statements to the ICS commissioners. ‘Native’ and ‘real’ India, ‘the literature of the people of the country’, and ‘native ideals and aspirations’ are pitted against Persian and Urdu in his other letters.147 His suggestions were incorporated into the instructions for the final year examination of 1924, which warned candidates against the ‘unnecessary employment’ of Persian and Arabic constructions in the Urdu exam.148 Grierson’s preoccupation with and circumscription of the authentically Indian emerges in his recommendations for Hindi set 181

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texts. Ṭheṭh hindī kā ṭhāṭh is full of ‘genuine Indian idioms’, its Hindi is ‘meticulously pure’; the ‘atmosphere’ in the Upper Primary General Reader is ‘thoroughly Indian’.149 Grierson never uses such phrases as ‘essentially Indian’ or ‘genuinely Indian’ in the context of other Indian languages and literatures; his preoccupation with the authentically Indian is only clear in his pronouncements on Hindi. Thus, in the case of Bengali the new and better school of Bengali literature emerged with Bankimchandra as its leader when these authors ‘abandoned Sanskrit and took English literature as their model’.150 However, for the final examination in Hindustani, ‘modern works composed under English influence’ should be avoided as they do not ‘form a real part of essentially Indian literature’.151 In Bengali the question of what is authentically Indian is not an issue; in Hindi however it is, and it is the relationship with Urdu, Persian and Islam which determines Grierson’s preoccupation. From Grierson’s recommendations to the ICS commissioners, it is clear the creation of separate literary canons for Hindi and Urdu helped to sustain his binary opposition between an indigenous Hindu India and a foreign Islamic presence. At one point, in a rather confused letter, he concedes that at the everyday level the contemporary vernacular referred to in popular nomenclature as Hindi or Urdu could be taken as the same language and ‘every educated Indian from Northern India will naturally be a stranger to neither. His ordinary means of communication with the outer world will be in a Hindōstānī which is a mean between the two’. However, once ‘classical Hindi’ literature is taken into account, then this view of them as the same language cannot be sustained.152 In another letter to another educational body, he remarks that as a ‘Musalman’ language, Urdu has a ‘small old literature dating from the 16th century A.D’ and ‘cannot be compared for value with the great, and really noble, classical literature of Hindi’.153 Thus, Grierson was not prepared to acknowledge the common linguistic heritage of both Urdu and Hindi, and he ignored those genres and forms of writing which blurred the boundaries between both, such as rekhtah poetry in both Nagari and the Perso-Arabic script.154 In this he was in agreement with Harishchandra and his circle, who denied the existence of literature in Nagari rekhtah as a possible meeting point between Hindi and Urdu,155 and he was at odds with the publisher Naval Kishore, who while he exploited the possibilities opened up by the growing market for Hindi books, also tried to bridge the growing religio-cultural and linguistic divide by focusing on the shared literary tastes and the common cultural heritage of Hindi and Urdu readers.156 182

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He also ignored the linguistic and religious syncretism of courtly Braj Bhasha texts and the Rīti corpus of poetry which emerged from the interaction of the Persianate and Sanskrit courtly traditions.157 Grierson’s disentanglement of a Hindi literary canon from Urdu was also evident in his Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, as Ira Sarma has shown.158 His views are apparent in his approach to Tulsi Das, who is the only author who lends his name to a chapter in this book.159 For Grierson, Tulsi Das was the ‘guide and saviour of Hindustan’, and his epic is ‘interwoven into the life, character and speech of the Hindu community’. He was a ‘great apostle’ and a poet of heroic stature whose religious reform saved Hindu society when the Mughal empire was being consolidated.160 In fact, the ‘character of every Hindū of Upper India’ was moulded by Tulsi’s teaching.161 Elsewhere he describes Tulsi as the ‘greatest poet and prophet whom India has produced’.162 This conception of Tulsi Das as the icon of a monolithically conceived North Indian Hindu community dovetails with the views of some Hindu nationalists who saw Das as a HinduHindi cultural hero and social reformer who saved Hindu society from Muslim depredations. Ramchandra Shukla also viewed Tulsi as the exponent of bhakti as a form of national resurgence, a view of bhakti which Grierson shared.163 Grierson was one of a clutch of colonial officials who believed a kind of reformation was in the offing in North Indian rural culture, which would draw inspiration from Tulsi. These officials invested in the idea of a popular moral nationalism which would counteract the anti-colonial nationalism of the English-educated upper castes.164 Like Shukla, with whom he corresponded, Grierson saw Tulsi as a poet who drew his similes ‘direct from the book of Nature’.165 For Shukla, as for Grierson, the Muslim period in India was one of decline, and it was Tulsi who had saved Hindu society.166 Grierson also shared Indian scholars’ concerns with authentic versions of the Rāmacaritmānas.167 As historians have shown, there was a strong link between philology and ideas of the nation, and this was demonstrated in the editing of national epics in the 19th and 20th centuries. Philology provided the intellectual and poetic rhetoric for the linguistic geopolitics that territorialised cultures by strengthening the correspondence between language, people and territory.168 For Grierson, Tulsi Das’s Rāmacaritmānas was an epic of the Aryan HindiHindu nation, which emerged out of the heartland of the Āryāvarta. In 1922 Grierson sent the NPS three copies of his article on Tulsi Das from the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. In return the NPS sent their circular proposing a volume on Tulsi Das’s tercentenary to Grierson, 183

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who made some recommendations which the NPS took on board. Grierson stressed his hope that the volume ‘will be in every way worthy of the great master, whose character and poetry have no greater admirer than I’, whose Rāmāyaṇa he described as ‘the one bible of a hundred million . . . people’.169 The tercentenary celebrations in August 1923 further elevated Tulsi as the hero of a monolithically conceived Hindu community.170 As in the case of Grierson’s identification with bhakti, his identification with Tulsi Das is also framed via the closeness of the latter’s beliefs to Christianity.171 The inculcation of manliness in Hindus by Tulsi’s teachings suggests an overlap with muscular Christianity  – Grierson describes how fawning Indian subordinates would be transformed by his citations from Tulsi Das into ‘sensible men talking with confidence’. He also saw Tulsi’s teachings as saving upper India from the licentiousness of ‘sex-worship’ in Bengal; this accounted for the difference between the ‘nationalities’ of Bengalis and North Indian Hindus.172 Thus, Grierson also interpreted Tulsi within the framework of a colonial ethnology of masculinity and effeminacy mapped onto different regions of India, and for him Tulsi provided the ballast for a Hindu manliness. This celebration of masculinity is also evident in Grierson’s appreciation of Bhojpuri folksongs and their evocation of a country of ‘fighting-men’, made ‘holy’ by the blood of those who resisted Muslims, whose God is Rama of Ayodhya and not Krishna of Mathura.173 As we have seen, Grierson campaigned against erotic literature in India, and the LSI’s recordings kept different kinds of pleasure at bay.174 Erotic poetry was a serious problem for the Hindi intelligentsia from the late 19th century onwards and the erotic threat emanating from Braj Bhasa poetry had to be contained, because sensuality was seen as one of the causes of the decline of Hindu civilisation at the hands of Muslims.175 Grierson’s comment that Tulsi saved Hindu society from Mughal imperial immorality seemed to share this perspective.176 Elsewhere Grierson used strong language about sex workers, referring to them as ‘debauched and diseased’ and as the ‘scum of Calcutta’; for this reason he countenanced their emigration from India in his Emigration Report.177 It is almost as if he wanted to keep India free of ‘vices’ by exporting them elsewhere.

Grierson and Hindi in the educational sphere Aside from literature, for the Hindi movement education was a vital institutional and discursive space for Hindi to gain recognition.178 The growth of the Government’s vernacular system in both Hindi and 184

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Urdu was crucial in the mobilisation of the Hindi movement.179 Grierson was involved in the development of Hindi as a subject at Indian universities.180 In 1924 Babu Shyam Sundar Das asked Grierson to set the paper on Hindi phonology for the MA Hindi examination at Benares University. According to Das, this was the first MA examination held in Hindi at any North Indian university. It was a ‘unique event in the history of Indian education, and I think it is but just and proper that you should have a hand in the manufacture of the first M.A.’s [sic] in Hindi’.181 In 1927 he sent Grierson the prospectus for MA Hindi along with his treatise Sāhityâlôcana on literary criticism, asking for Grierson’s comments as it was set for the MA examination. Das also used Grierson’s articles and the Survey for his lectures on Hindi language and literature, and asked permission to adapt and translate parts of them for one of his own books on Hindi.182 Grierson publicised this MA, sending the prospectus to Grahame Bailey at SOS.183 Dhirendra Varma also asked Grierson for his suggestions on the Hindi studies course introduced in Allahabad University in 1925.184 In addition to his involvement in university-level Hindi education in India, Grierson played a role in the compilation of textbooks for schools in UP. He kept abreast of developments in Hindi textbooks in India. The publishers of Sita Ram’s school books in Hindi sent copies to Grierson at Ram’s request,185 and Grierson sent SOS reading books in Hindi prepared for schools in UP, which he thought would provide good material for beginners in Britain.186 In 1916 the DPI of UP obtained Grierson’s advice on the new textbook for boys’ schools on Hindi literature, prepared by the Rev. E. Greaves and P. Sham Bihari Misra, deputy collector, Bulandshahr.187 Grierson was also invited to be a consultant on the committee convened by Greaves and Misra to compile selections from Hindi literature for a reader introducing Hindi literature in UP vernacular schools – in the DPI’s view, the committee’s judgements would carry more weight if endorsed by a ‘recognized authority’ like Grierson.188 Grierson was involved in pedagogical initiatives around Hindi in Britain. In 1924 Cambridge University’s Local Examinations Syndicate asked Grierson to be their examiner for the School Certificate (taken by candidates aged 16–17) and the Junior Local Exams (for candidates aged 14–15) in Hindi.189 The secretary of the Syndicate stressed that Hindi as a subject had not yet been properly organised – there were no set texts nor did it have a printed syllabus of its own.190 Grierson drafted the syllabus, and set and marked the papers until at least 1929.191 He insisted that Hindi should always be written in its ‘own’ 185

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script, that is Nagari, not in the Roman script which some European candidates used in their answers. He recommended the instruction ‘translate into Hindi in the Devanagari character’ be inserted in the question papers; the rubric thereafter included these instructions.192 He drafted separate syllabi for Indian and European candidates who sat the Hindi exams which came into effect in December 1926.193 He accepted answers written in Hindi from the Indian candidates to questions which assumed the answers would be in English.194 He also decided not to penalise Indian candidates for indifferent or poor English, so long as their English version of set Hindi passages was intelligible.195 As in the case of the ICS exams, he shaped the prescribed texts for these exams too; for example, he recommended which cantos of Tulsi Das’s work to use, and recommended Pandit Kamta Prasad’s Hindi Grammar published by the NPS.196 In 1926 the assistant secretary of the Cambridge Examinations Syndicate approached Grierson about Hindi as a subject for the Preliminary Overseas Examination for entrance to Cambridge, which Grierson set and marked in 1927.197 In his response, Grierson endorsed the viability of Hindi as a subject, with a classical literature of greater standing than Urdu which, in his view, justified Hindi’s stronger claim for recognition.198 Thus, in contributing to the institutionalisation of Hindi as a subject for the Cambridge examination board, he pushed the claims of Hindi against Urdu. The figures for candidates show Urdu tended to outnumber Hindi as a language of choice for these examinations in the 1920s. In fact, the reason Grierson was invited to be an examiner of Hindi in 1924 was an increase in the number taking Urdu, which meant the current examiner could no longer mark the Hindi scripts.199 In 1928 for the School Certificate there was 370 candidates for Urdu, 169 for Hindi and 165 for Tamil. The candidates for the first two were overwhelmingly in India, for Tamil the majority sat the exams in Malaya (as it was then called) and Singapore, with only 35 sitting it in India. For the Junior Local Examinations in that year, 361 sat Urdu, 101 Hindi, again mostly in India, and 232 sat Tamil, mostly in Malaya and Singapore.200 In the 1929 Overseas Preliminary Examination, there were 312 candidates for Urdu and only five for Hindi.201 These numbers may have given further urgency to Grierson’s advocacy for Hindi. The remarks and assumptions made by the Cambridge Board’s secretaries suggest they were out of touch with developments around Hindi and Urdu in India. When Grierson was asked if Hindi had a classical literature of its own, he was also asked if Hindi went to Arabic and Persian for its ‘higher literature’.202 186

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The Board’s draft and then printed syllabus for the Hindi exam for European pupils was adapted from the Urdu syllabus.203 Clearly, there was a time lag between general perceptions of Hindi and Urdu by the educational authorities in Britain and developments in India itself. This extended to other sectors of British society; in response to Grierson’s inquiry about the possible production of gramophone recordings in Hindustani for the ICS exams, E.E. Clark of the International Correspondence Schools suggested recordings in Urdu as ‘the lingua franca of India’ might be more useful.204 The persistence of such perceptions may have sharpened Grierson’s role as an advocate for Hindi in Britain. For Grierson, then, both the Cambridge and ICS examinations in Britain were sites for the institutionalisation, stabilisation and advancement of Hindi. Grierson’s role in the advancement of Hindi outside India was recognised after 1947 – in 1989, the Dr. George Grierson Award was established by the Central Hindi Directorate for scholars promoting Hindi internationally. Grierson’s commitment to Hindi as a symbol of his version of India is thrown into sharp relief by those who held different views. While Grierson ‘ideologised’ Hindi, Gandhi ‘ideologised’ Hindustani, and he kept the term in play in relation to Hindi. His evolving and at times tense relationship with the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan reflects his commitment to take a broader view of Hindi, as opposed to those in the Sammelan who wanted to circumscribe it and exclude Urdu. By the early 1940s Gandhi began deploying the term Hindustani as an umbrella term for both Hindi and Urdu.205 Some colonial officials also challenged Grierson’s views of the clear-cut divisions between Hindus and Muslims in the sphere of language. In 1901 the assistant commissioner of Ajmer, for example, argued that contrary to Grierson’s assertions, the Muslims who were native to the district ‘speak the Ajmeri dialect in the same manner as is done by their Hindu brethren’.206 Some of the Indian candidates Grierson examined from Nairobi who sat the Cambridge paper in 1927 had a different perception of Hindi. As examiner of this paper, Grierson found that many of their answers were in fact about or in Gujarati and he commented that their answers would have been correct had the examination been in Gujarati.207 The Hindi spelling of one other candidate from Malaya was ‘dialectic’ rather than ‘orthodox’.208 The terms Indian candidates used to refer to their mother tongue under the regulations for the ICS examinations in India also indicated a more flexible sense of the Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani continuum. These regulations did not allow them to sit an exam in the language that was their mother tongue if 187

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it was ‘the principal vernacular of the province’ to which they were assigned.209 As we have seen, one candidate from Panjab described his mother tongue as Panjabi in one place, and ‘Hindustani (Panjabi)’ in another, and opted for the examination in Urdu, which was the official language of the Panjab. The commissioners were unclear as to whether ‘Hindustani (Panjabi)’ was Urdu or not.210 This was probably strategic on the candidate’s part, but if it was, the very fact that he could make such a move suggests language terms did not readily refer to easily discrete entities in this period. There were also slippages elsewhere; one supporter of Nagari in the ICS exams recommended Edwin Greaves’ Hindi Grammar (1921) as a grammar of ‘Nagari-Urdu’; elsewhere he describes it as a book on ‘Nagari-Hindustani’.211 Census officials also noted the confusion and flexibility surrounding Hindi-Urdu at the ground level. For example, Kirthee Singh, the extra assistant commissioner in Delhi, had problems with the Hindi and Urdu returns; he complained of how the Urdu and Hindi translations did not match up, and suspected that the latter and the Roman version was made from the former rather than independently.212 In some language lists in the census the word ‘Urdu’ is crossed out by hand and replaced by ‘Hindi’, and dialects returned as ‘Hindi’ have handwritten corrections to the effect they are probably ‘Malvi’.213 The hardening and politicisation of the boundaries between Hindi and Urdu in this period are reflected in the observations of census officials in 1911 that for political reasons attempts were made before the Census in Upper India to induce the Enumerators (a) to enter as speakers of Hindi persons whose real language was Punjabi or Urdu or (b) enter Urdu as the language when it was really Panjabi, Hindi, etc.214 Nonetheless, as we have seen, there remained flexibility around terms like ‘Hindi’, ‘Urdu’ and ‘Hindustani’ in the minds of some speakers and census enumerators.

Conclusion Grierson is one of the key figures who ushered in the era of philological studies of Hindi.215 It is worth noting that in the 1880s some Indians had objected to Grierson’s classifications in this context. Babu Syamacharu Ganguli, for example, had criticised Grierson for trying to make Eastern Hindi and Bihari a reality by creating a standard 188

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where none had existed before, or as he put it, producing a standard for a language ‘that is yet to be’.216 As Burghart has noted, in some ways Grierson’s ‘discovery’ of Bihari defied common sense, but its invention also had some plausibility given the philological conventions at the time.217 However, the fine-grained linguistic narrative of the LSI is at odds with Grierson’s commitment to Hindi and Urdu as reflections of a Hindu and a Muslim India in conflict with each other as separate nationalities. This strand of thinking is evident from his earlier articles and continues through his later works and in some parts of the LSI’s volumes. In ‘A Plea for the People’s Tongue’, for instance, he refers to a centuries-long struggle between Muslim and Hindu nations and between Semitic and Aryan languages in India. Muslims are cast as invaders only and Hindus as an ‘invaded people’ alone, and he describes Urdu as having ‘levied a contribution’ from every language of northern India.218 We have also seen that Grierson was uneasy and dismissive of pidgin English. Interestingly, at one point he describes Urdu as an ‘abominably bad lingo’, and compares it to pidgin English.219 As the evidence from the LSI correspondence and some of Grierson’s other texts shows, Grierson’s views about a Hindu, Aryan-centric India as the ‘real’ India competed with his philological sensibility. In philological terms the Survey regionalised Hindi as a language and unravelled it from other dialects and languages which it had subsumed, such as Maithili, but in political terms Hindi was ‘ideologised’ by Grierson as a symbol of an Aryan and Hindu India which had been obscured by the consequences of Muslim invasion. A similar disjuncture is evident between Grierson’s criticisms of the excessive Sanskritisation of Hindi and his depiction of Sanskrit as the ‘inner mind’ of India. On the one hand, Grierson criticises the excessive Sanskritisation of Hindi, although he extends this criticism to other Indian languages too, such as Marathi,220 Assamese221 and Bengali.222 He stressed that Indian languages such as these had innate capacities of expression which are ‘obscured by Sanskritising writers preferring to borrow needless Sanskrit nouns’.223 In this regard, he is at odds with Hindi nationalists whose focus was on classicising and codifying the language, and whose attitude was prescriptive and oriented to the creation of the formal structure of an ideal Hindi, rather than to its functional capabilities and communicational capacity.224 However, when Grierson was asked about the Hindi inscription for a memorial to Queen Victoria, he noted its heavily Sanskritised character but added ‘for an inscription intended to be read by Hindus alone’ it is appropriate.225 By logical extension, Sanskritised Hindi would be 189

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the natural choice as a national language in a nation that existed for Hindus alone. Such a language would also dovetail with his view of Sanskrit as revelatory of the ‘true’ India and its ‘inner mind’.226 In the end, Grierson contributed to the monolithic understanding of language practices marked by religious identity in the Hindi-Urdu literary sphere. In doing so, he refused to take on board their shared history as a composite linguistic and literary culture, and ignored the range of genres which blurred the distinctions between Hindu Hindi and Muslim Urdu, as we have seen.227 This also marked his approach to Tulsi Das’s Rāmacaritmānas. He overtly Hinduises this epic, in contrast to other possible readings, in which the poem can be interpreted as part of the composite literary culture of medieval Avadhi epics.228 As such, Grierson contributed to what Busch has called the ‘dramatic reconceptualization of literary values under colonialism and nationalism’.229 Some of his writings and one strand of the LSI helped to shape the competitive and teleological histories of a Hindu Hindi and Muslim Urdu in India. These writings and his contacts with advocates of Hindi also show how he played a role in the denial of a multilingual past in the majoritarian drive for one national culture, in which there is, as Orsini has noted, a backward projection of linear history teleologically oriented to Hindi.230 In this context, Grierson’s position was at odds with Nehru’s views in almost every respect. Nehru’s position was later summed up in his speech in the Lok Sabha in the debate on the Official Language Bill in 1963, in which he stressed English could vitalise Indian languages, Sanskrit could not be the working language of contemporary India, no one language is more national than another, and Urdu is a dynamic and cosmopolitan language whereas the Hindi of Hindi purists is too closely tied to Sanskrit. Hence Hindi can ‘get vitality from Urdu while retaining its own genius and nature’.231 It is important to stress that the defenders and advocates of Urdu more than matched the communalism of the Hindi movement.232 Moreover, as Amrit Rai has convincingly shown, there was a strong Islamicisation of Urdu in this and the preceding period.233 The focus here, however, has been on Grierson’s language politics when it came to Hindi. As Akshaya Mukul has remarked, both Hindu and Muslim revivalist movements were stuck in a chain of reactions to each other,234 and Grierson was caught up in, and contributed to, this chain. At one level, there may seem to be a tension between Grierson’s view of Hindi as a ‘concocted’ term and as a European invention, and his commitment to the Hindi movement. However, this invention may not be as irreconcilable as it first appears. In his Modern Vernacular 190

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Literature, Grierson depicted the 19th century as a period of literary renaissance brought about by British colonial rule.235 Similarly, in his narrative about the ‘Bhakti-Church’ and ‘the birth of a nation’s soul’, it is a British-inspired ‘reformation’ which leads to the birth of India as a Hindu nation restored to its true Aryan self. As such, his view of the European ‘invention’ of Hindi dovetailed with this narrative of colonialism saving the Hindu nation, since in his scheme of things, the Hindi Grierson envisaged is a metonym for this saved nation.

Notes 1 Linguistic Survey Files S/1/14/10, Grierson to Capt. A.D. Bannerman, 8. 5. 1901, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, London, hereafter LS Files. 2 George A. Grierson, The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1889, pp. xxii, 107; George A. Grierson, ‘Some Bihārī Folk Songs’, JRAS, 1884, p. 208. 3 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Pt. 1: Introductory, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publications Branch, 1927, p. 23, Chs. 13–15. For an initial statement of this differentiation, see George A. Grierson, ‘A Plea for the People’s Tongue’, The Calcutta Review, 1880, 71: 151–168. 4 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Western Hindī and Pañjābī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916, p. 1; European Manuscripts EUR 223/228, Grierson to David Mair, 30. 11. 1923, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, London, hereafter EUR only. 5 EUR 223/317, Grierson to Denison Ross, 23. 10. 1922. 6 Ibid. 7 LS Files S/1/2/10, Grierson to H.W. Orange, Director General of Education in India, 9. 9. 1904. 8 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 46. 9 LS Files S/1/2/10, Grierson to H.W. Orange, Director General of Education in India, 9. 9. 1904. 10 George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Dardic or Piśācha Languages (including Kāshmīrī), Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1919, p. 234. 11 EUR 223/267, Grierson to E.J. Neve, 18. 3. 1926. 12 Ibid., E.J. Neve to Grierson, 20. 4. 1926. 13 Ibid., A. Neve to Grierson, 21. 6. 1912. 14 Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, London: Hurst & Company, 2004, p. 185. 15 Ibid., pp. 199–201. 16 Ibid., pp. 222–223. 17 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 48. 18 EUR 223/317, Grierson to Denison Ross, 23. 10. 1922. 19 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 133.

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44

Ibid., pp. 164–165. Grierson, LSI,Vol. 9, Pt. 1, pp. 44–45. Ibid., pp. 42, 481. Ibid., p. 103, 116; Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, 554. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 56. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 133. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of the Bengali and Assamese Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Press, 1903, p. 202. Grierson, ‘A Plea for the People’s Tongue’, p. 156. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 113. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 234. EUR 223/323, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 22. 11. 1910, on how Muslims and Hindus share pronunciation patterns. EUR 223/303, Grierson to John Libis, 13. 10. 1931. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 162. EUR 223/4, ‘The Birth of a Nation’s Soul’. Ira Sarma, ‘George Abraham Grierson’s Literary Hindustan’, in Hans Harder (ed), Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages: Literature and Nationalist Ideology, New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2010, p. 206. Ibid., p. 184. EUR 223/288, Grierson to Misra, 23. 9. 1914. EUR 223/284, Dhirendra Varma to Grierson, 30. 1. 1924. Ibid. This paper was published in Allahabad University Studies, 1925, 1: 189–201. George A. Grierson, ‘Some Bhoj’pūrī folk-songs’, JRAS, 1886, 18 (2): 211. Gyanesh Kudaisya, Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic, New Delhi: Sage, 2006, pp. 359–366, 391–395; for proposals after 1947 to rename UP Aryavarta, see ibid., pp. 352–357. Allison Busch, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 239. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 166; EUR 223/216, Grierson to Bloch, 19. 11. 1924. EUR 223/228, Grierson to David Mair, 29. 11. 1922. For the importance of this organisation in advocating the cause of Hindi, see Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 26–27; Christopher R. King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 13, 127, 141–148. There is a brief exchange in Grierson’s correspondence in 1935 with a member of the Hindustani Academy; see EUR 223/334, Mata Prasad Gupta to Grierson, 1. 5. 1932 & 2. 3. 1935. For the Hindustani academy see Jyotirinda Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970, pp. 119–120, and for a detailed study, David J. Lunn, Looking for Common Ground: Aspects

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45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

of Cultural Production in Hindi/Urdu, 1900–1947, PhD thesis, Dept. of Languages and Cultures of South Asia, SOAS, University of London, 2012. David Lelyveld, ‘Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, October 1993, 35 (4): 665–682. King, One Language, Two Scripts, p. 146. EUR 223/292, Babu Syam Sundar Das to Grierson, 28. 10. 1920, Grierson to Burn, 6. 12. 1920. EUR 223/233, Babu Jagannath Das to Grierson, 15. 1. 1927. EUR 223/302, Grierson to International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, League of Nations, 2. 1. 1929. LS Files S/1/5/1, Grierson to S.P. O’Donnell, 22. 9. 1914; S/1/5/5, Grierson to Babu Syam Sunder Das, Honorary Secretary of NPS, 16. 4. 1900. EUR 223/225, Hiralal to Grierson, 26. 8. 1930. EUR 223/333, Grierson to R.L. Turner, 27. 8. 1930, asking Turner to direct Saksena to a manuscript of Vidyapati’s Kīrti-latā, referred to in Hiralal’s 11th report on Hindi manuscripts. EUR 223/292, ‘Copy of a letter dated the 22nd September 1914 from Sir George Grierson to the Hon’ble Mr. S.P. O’Donnell, I.C.S., Secretary to Government, United Provinces’. Ibid., Grierson to Secretary NPS, Benares, 18. 8. 1920. LS Files S/1/5/5, Babu Syam Sunder Das, Honorary Secretary of NPS to Grierson, 14. 3. 1900. Orsini, Public Sphere, pp. 53–54, King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 35–36. Grierson, LSI, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, ‘Addenda Majora’, p. 231; George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 6: Indo-Aryan Family (Mediate Group), Specimens of the Eastern Hindī Language, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1904, p. 62, Specimen 2. EUR 223/334, Assistant Secretary, NPS to Grierson, 15. 5. 1935. EUR 223/292, Grierson to Honorary Secretary, NPS, 9. 7. 1925. Ibid., Grierson to Honorary Secretary, NPS, 24. 8. 1927. Busch, Poetry of Kings, pp. 226–231, 238; Orsini, Public Sphere, pp. 155–157. Sarma, ‘Grierson’s Literary Hindustan’, p. 208. EUR 223/317, Grierson to Denison Ross, 13. 7. 1925. EUR 223/292, Grierson to Syam Sundar Das, 11. 4. 1927. Ibid., Babu Satya Jivan Varma to Grierson, 7. 5. 1925, Grierson to Jivan Varma, 25. 5. 1925, Grierson to Rai Syam Sundar Das, 14. 3. 1927. Ibid., Satya Jivan Varma to Grierson, 15. 9. 1925, Grierson to Honorary Secretary, NPS, 19. 11. 1928. Ibid., Grierson to Babu Madhav Prasaad, 9. 2. 1927. Ibid., Grierson to Secretary, NPS, 29. 6. 1921. EUR 223/334, The Indian Press Ltd, Publishers, 7. 8. 1930 to Grierson; Grierson to Rai Sahib Syam Sundar Das, 26. 8. 1930. Ibid., Syam Sundar Das, Benares Hindu University to Grierson, 26. 11. 1929. EUR 223/308, Sita Ram to Grierson, 24. 12. 1923.

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72 EUR 223/292, Grierson to Babu Braj Ratan Das, 11. 2. 1925, Das to Grierson, 2. 4. 1925. 73 EUR 223/323, Grierson to Sir Aurel Stein, 19. 5. 1919. 74 EUR 223/300, Grierson to Croft, 21. 2. 1887, with extract of letter from Babu Ram Singh. 75 EUR 223/306, ‘Notes on the contents of Sir George Grierson’s Library’, attached to Secretary, Dyal Singh Library, Lahore to Grierson, 15. 10. 1931. 76 Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-century Banaras, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 201–207. 77 Ibid., p. 407. 78 EUR 223/308, Grierson to Sita Ram, 26. 6. 1913. 79 George A. Grierson, The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1889, pp. 148–152. 80 King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 130–131. 81 EUR 223/317, Grierson to Browne, Assistant Librarian, 20. 4. 1923, Browne to Grierson, 30. 8. 1924, Grierson to Denison Ross, 13. 7. 1925, 13. 5. 1926, & 15. 2. 1927; EUR 223/316, Octavia Murray Browne to Grierson, 27. 3. 1928, 30. 4. 1929, 2. 2. 1932, & 18. 12. 1936, Grierson to Denison Ross, 15. 11. 1928. 82 EUR 223/317, Grierson to Assistant Librarian, SOS, 29. 11. 1922; EUR 223/228, Grierson to David Mair, 29. 11. 1922. 83 EUR 223/317, Denison Ross to Grierson, 11. 8. 1924, Grierson to Ross, 18. 8. 1924 & 14. 3. 1927, Browne to Grierson, 20. 5. 1926; EUR 223/292, Grierson to Syam Sundar Das, 18. 8. 1924. 84 EUR 223/316, Grierson to Octavia Murray Browne, 9. 3. 1933; in the event the work was deemed too lengthy to be published in the Bulletin, and there were no funds available to publish it as a book, see Browne to Grierson, 22. 3. 1933 & 24. 3. 1933. 85 EUR 223/229, Grierson to Humphrey Milford, 27. 4. 1923; EUR 223/337, Grierson to Philip Waterfield, 30. 11. 1923, 19. 2. 1924, & 7. 4. 1924. 86 EUR 223/225, Hiralal to Grierson, 26. 8. 1930. 87 LS Files S/1/14/5, Grierson to Burn, 22. 1. 1902. 88 EUR 223/222, Prof S.P. Pandey to Grierson, 6. 10. 1932. 89 EUR 223/306, Lakshman Sarup, University Hall, Lahore to Grierson, 31. 5. 1923; EUR 223/231, Babu Ganga Pati Simha to Grierson, 15. 9. 1934. 90 EUR 223/292, Babu Rama Chandra Verma to Grierson, 30. 8. 1928, Grierson to Honorary Secretary, NPS, 19. 11. 1928. 91 Ibid., Grierson to General Secretary, NPS, 9. 8. 1932. 92 EUR 223/334, Shyam Sunder Jaiswal inviting Grierson to contribute to a special issue of a journal dedicated to Rai Bahadur Hira Lall, n.d. (c. December 1934); Pandit Kantanath Pandy to Grierson, 9. 9. 1932, on a special issue dedicated to Babu Jagannath Das. 93 Ibid., Baburam Saksena to Grierson, 18. 8. 1938. 94 King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 13, 36, 163; Orsini, Public Sphere, pp. 116–122, 137–138; for the Sahitya’s relationship with the INC, see ibid., pp. 359–363; Gupta, Language Conflict, pp. 125–126.

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95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

104 105 106

107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

See Christopher King, One Language, Two Scripts, for a clear overview. Ibid., Ch. 5. Ibid., p. 75, 153–156. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8: Indo-Aryan Family (North-Western Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Sindhī and Lahndā, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing India, 1919, p. 19. Ibid., pp. 18, 96, 101, 114. Tariq Rahman, Language and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 104–108. EUR 223/261, Grierson, ‘Note on Knowles’ Pamphlet “A National Alphabet for India”’, March 1913. EUR 223/220, Grierson to F.H. Brown, 15. 2. 1917. EUR 223/261, Grierson, ‘Note on Knowles’ Pamphlet “A National Alphabet for India”’, March 1913. At one point, Gandhi expressed a similar view, see Mohandas K. Gandhi, Our Language Problem, Karachi: Anand T. Hingorani, 1942, p. 57. EUR 223/261, Grierson, ‘Note on Knowles’ Pamphlet “A National Alphabet for India”’, March 1913. King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 130–131. EUR 223/220, Grierson to F.H. Brown, 15. 2. 1917. On the Kayasths and the Urdu-Hindi conflict, see King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 110–114, and on the leaders of the Hindi movement coming from nonKayasth communities, 116. EUR 223/220, Grierson to F.H. Brown, 15. 2. 1917. Gandhi, Our Language Problem, pp. 46–47. Robert D. King, Nehru and the Language Politics of India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 197. EUR 223/228, W. Hoey, ‘Memorandum for Conference on the subject of Hindustani-teaching’, 26. 4. 1912. Ibid., David Mair to Grierson, 12. 6. 1912. LS Files S/1/5/5, Babu Syam Sunder Das to Grierson, 8. 5. 1900. King, One Language, Two Scripts, p. 149, endnote 93. LS Files S/1/2/4, Note signed ‘GAG’, 30. 10. 1900, on Debi Parshad’s Note in Urdu, 19. 10. 1900. EUR 223/261, Grierson, ‘Note on Knowles’ Pamphlet “A National Alphabet for India”’, March 1913. George A. Grierson and Mahamahopddhydya Sudhakara Dvivedi, The Padumāwati of Malik Muhammad Jaisi, Calcutta: Bibliotecha Indica, 1896–1911, p. 1. King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 181–182. Ibid., pp. 67–68. EUR 223/227, Grierson to Senior Examiner, Civil Service Commission, 4. 6. 1902 & 11. 5. 1904. EUR 223/228, Grierson to Edward Gait, 14. 2. 1927. Ibid., David Mair to Grierson, 10. 5. 1912, Grierson to Mair, 9. 2. 1927, Grierson to Edward Gait, 11. 2. 1927, and Gait to Grierson, 12. 2. 1927. EUR 223/227, Grierson to Civil Service Commission, 16. 5. 1901. EUR 223/228, W. Hoey, ‘Memorandum for Conference on the subject of Hindustani-teaching’, 26. 4. 1912.

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124 EUR 223/227, Grierson to Bonar, Senior Examiner, Civil Service Commission, 25. 6. 1902. 125 Ibid., Grierson to Civil Service Commission, 16. 5. 1901. 126 Ibid., Grierson to David Mair, 17. 4. 1908 & 23. 12. 1908. 127 Ibid., Grierson to David Mair, 24. 4. 1908 & 12. 10. 1908. 128 Ibid., Mair to Grierson, 25. 3. 1912, with agenda attached. 129 Ibid., Grierson, ‘Nāgarī’, note attached to papers for Hindustani Conference, April 1912. 130 EUR 223/228, see the syllabi for the 1923 intermediate ICS examinations, and the 1924 final examinations. 131 Ibid., Grierson to David Mair, 30. 11. 1923. 132 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 49. 133 EUR 223/227, Bonar, Senior Examiner, Civil Service Commissioner, 22. 9. 1904 & 7. 10. 1904. 134 Ibid., Civil Service Commission to Grierson, 14. 5. 1901. 135 Ibid., see the correspondence between Grierson and the examiners at the Civil Service Commission, from 14. 5. 1906 to 4. 5. 1912. 136 Ibid., David Mair to Grierson, 16. 12. 1908 & 22. 12. 1908, Grierson to Mair, 12. 12. 1908 & 23. 12. 1908. 137 EUR 223/228, Civil Service Commissioners to Grierson, 12. 2. 1927. 138 EUR 223/227, J. Bonar, Civil Service Commissioner to Grierson, 11. 3. 1902. 139 Ibid., Grierson, ‘Separate Note on the Hindostani [sic] Examination’, attached to Bonar’s response, 2. 10. 1905. 140 Ibid. 141 LS Files S/1/3/1, Grierson to Sir Andrew Fraser, 20. 6. 1907. 142 LS Files S/1/1/28, Grierson, ‘Ouseley Scholarship (Hindostani). Note on the Experience Gained at the Examination Held in 1909’, 21. 7. 1909. 143 LS Files S/1/1/28, ‘Confidential. SOS, London Institution. Report of Inspectors of Research, Teaching and Equipment’. Grierson was one of the inspectors who wrote this report, see ibid., P. Hartog, Academic Registrar, University of London to Grierson, 8. 3. 1917. 144 EUR 223/228, Grierson to David Mair, 14. 5. 1912. 145 Ibid. 146 Ibid., Grierson to Blaikie, 15. 10. 1925. 147 EUR 223/227, Grierson’s note, ‘I.C.S Final Exam. 1907. Hindostani’, 28. 9. 1907. 148 EUR 223/228, 228 Final Examination 1924, p. 4. 149 EUR 223/227, Grierson to David Mair 17. 4. 1908. 150 Ibid., Grierson to Bonar, 26. 6. 1903. 151 Ibid., Grierson to Bonar, 8. 5. 1908. 152 EUR 223/228, Grierson to David Mair, 30. 11. 1923. 153 EUR 223/282, Grierson to J.O. Roach, Assistant Secretary, University of Cambridge, Local Examinations Syndicate, 18. 11. 1926. 154 For which see Imre Bagha, ‘Rekhta: Poetry in Mixed Language. The Emergence of Khari Boli Literature in North India’, in Francesca Orsini (ed), Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2010, Ch. 2. 155 Ibid., pp. 20–27.

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156 Ulrike Stark, An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the Printed Word in Colonial India, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2008, p. 437. 157 Allison Busch, ‘Riti and Register. Lexical Variation in Courtly Braj Bhasha Texts’, in Orsini (ed), Before the Divide, Ch. 3. 158 Sarma, ‘Grierson’s Literary Hindustan’. 159 Ibid., pp. 194–195. 160 Grierson, Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, pp. xx–xxi, 43. 161 George A. Grierson, ‘Tulsi Dāsā, Poet and Religious Reformer’, JRAS, July 1903, p. 447. 162 George A. Grierson, The Bible in India, Anarkali, Lahore: Punjab Bible Society, c. 1904, p. 13. 163 For this view of Tulsi Das, see Francesca Orsini, ‘Tulsī Dās as a Classic’, in Rupert Snell and I.M.P. Raeside (eds), Classics of Modern South Asian Literature, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998, Ch. 1, and Hindi Public Sphere, p. 189. 164 Christopher A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 356, Grierson, Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, p. 49; Grierson, ‘Tulsi Dāsā, Poet and Religious Reformer’, p. 450 where Grierson draws a comparison between Tulsi and Luther. 165 Grierson, Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, p. 49, Grierson, ‘Tulsi Dāsā, Poet and Religious Reformer’, p. 452 and Orsini, ‘Tulsī Dās’, p. 124. 166 Busch, Poetry of Kings, p. 238; Orsini, Public Sphere, pp. 108–109, 230. 167 Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 358, and see EUR 223/299, Hoernle to Grierson, 11. 5. 1886 & 27. 4. 1886, Chhota Ram Tirani to Grierson, 11. 11. 1885, 26. 1. 1886 & 15. 3. 1886. 168 Ananya Jahanara Kabir, ‘Reading Between the Lines: Whitely Stokes, Scribbles, and the Scholarly Apparatus’, in Elizabeth Boyle and Paul Russell (eds), The Tripartite Life of Whitley Stokes (1830–1909), Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011, pp. 80–81. 169 EUR 223/292, Grierson to Babu Syam Sundar Das, 4. 9. 1923; EUR 223/316, Grierson to Octavia Murray Browne, 9. 3. 1933. 170 Orsini, ‘Tulsī Dās’, p. 127. 171 Grierson, Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, pp. xvii, xx, 43. Grierson, ‘Tulsi Dāsā, Poet and Religious Reformer’, pp. 457–459, 462–463. 172 Grierson, ‘Tulsi Dāsā, Poet and Religious Reformer’, p. 459. 173 Grierson, ‘Bhoj’pūrī folk-songs’, p. 211. 174 See Ch. 5 of my Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 175 Busch, Poetry of Kings, pp. 209, 232–233. 176 Grierson, Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, pp. xx–xxi, 43. 177 India Office Records, IOR P. 2058, Major Pitcher and Mr. Grierson’s Inquiry into Emigration, August 1883, Ch. 8, Ch. 10. 178 Orsini, Public Sphere, pp. 89–104. 179 King, One Language, Two Scripts, p. 16.

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180 For the Hindi curriculum at universities, see Orsini, Public Sphere, pp. 105–111. 181 EUR 223/292, Babu Syam Sundar Das to Grierson, 16. 9. 1923. 182 Ibid., Das to Grierson, 27. 2. 1923, Grierson to Das, 19. 3. 1923. 183 EUR 223/317, Secretary, SOS to Grierson, 9. 4. 1923. 184 LS Files S/1/5/2, Dhirendra Varma to Grierson, 6. 5. 1925. 185 EUR 223/308, Longmans, Green and co., Bombay to Grierson, 29. 3. 1915, Macmillan, Calcutta to Grierson, 5. 9. 1916. 186 EUR 223/317, Grierson to Denison Ross, 12. 4. 1923. 187 LS Files S/1/5/1, C.F. de la Fosse, DPI, UP to Grierson, 27. 6. 1916. 188 LS Files S/1/5/2, A. Shiroff to Grierson, 22. 4. 1916. 189 EUR 223/282, W.N. Williams, General Secretary, University of Cambridge, Local Examinations Syndicate to Grierson, 12. 12. 1924. 190 Ibid., W.N. Williams to Grierson, 17. 12. 1924 & 5. 2. 1925. 191 Ibid., Grierson, ‘Note on Hindi School Certificate Examination’, attached to letter to W.N. Williams, 5. 2. 1929. 192 Ibid., Grierson’s Note on Junior Local Examination, attached to letter to W.N. Williams, 2. 2. 1925. 193 Ibid., W.N. Williams to Grierson, 12. 3. 1925, 25. 3. 1924, & 26. 3. 1926. 194 Ibid., Grierson to W.N. Williams, 17. 3. 1925, 24. 1. 1927. 195 Ibid., Grierson to W.N. Williams, 5. 2. 1929 & 6. 2. 1929. 196 Ibid., Grierson to W.N. Williams, 4. 2. 1927, 4. 2. 1928, 20. 4. 1928 & 23. 4. 1928. 197 Ibid., J.O. Roach to Grierson, 17. 11. 1926, Grierson to W.N. Williams, 29. 1. 1927. 198 Ibid., Grierson to Roach, 18. 11. 1926. 199 Ibid., W.N. Williams to Grierson, 12. 12. 1924. 200 Ibid., ‘University of Cambridge Local Examinations December. 1928. Table of Numbers sitting additional subjects’. 201 Ibid., ‘University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate Preliminary Examination for Overseas Centres’. 202 Ibid., J.O. Roach to Grierson, 17. 11. 1926. 203 Ibid., W.N. Williams to Grierson, 12. 3. 1925 & 20. 3. 1925. 204 LS Files S/1/1/30, E.E. Clarke to Grierson, 25. 1. 1912. 205 Gandhi, Our Language Problem, p. 56; for Gandhi and the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, see Gupta, Language Conflict, pp. 118–123; Orsini, Public Sphere, pp. 359–363. 206 LS Files S/1/14/10, Assistant Commissioner, Ajmer to Census Superintendent, Ajmer, 6. 4. 1901. 207 EUR 223/282, Grierson, ‘Preliminary Examination for Overseas Centres. Special Report’, attached to letter to W.N. Williams, 29. 1. 1927. 208 Ibid., Grierson to W.N. Williams, 8. 2. 1927. 209 EUR 223/228, David Mair to Grierson, 22. 11. 1923, attaching note ‘Indian Civil Service. Intermediate Examination of Two Year Probationers Selected in 1922’. 210 Ibid. 211 Ibid., W. Hoey’s remarks on ‘Hindustani for Burma’, attached to David Mair to Grierson, 28. 5. 1912, Hoey to Grierson, 31. 5. 1912.

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212 LS Files S/1/6/2, Captain M.W. Douglas, Deputy Commissioner, Delhi to LSI office, Calcutta, reporting Kirthee Singh’s views to that effect. 213 LS Files S/1/7/3, Deputy Commissioner, Chhindwara to Grierson, 27. 7. 1896, with attached lists. 214 LS Files S/1/14/2, Edward Gait to Grierson, 6. 7. 1911, and paragraph 3 of ‘Notes for Report’. See also Lelyveld, ‘Fate of Hindustani’, p. 667. 215 B.P. Mahapatra, ‘The Written Languages of India’, in B.P. Mahapatra and G.D. McConnell (eds), The Written Languages of the World: A Survey of the Degree and Modes of Use, Vol. 2, Pt. 1: Constitutional Languages, Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989, p. 200. 216 George A. Grierson, ‘In Self-Defence’, Calcutta Review, 1882, 75: 256–261. 217 Richard Burghart, ‘A Quarrel in the Language Family: Agency and Representations of Speech in Mithila’, Modern Asian Studies, 1993, 27 (4): 778–779. 218 George A. Grierson, ‘A Plea for the People’s Tongue’, The Calcutta Review, 1880, 71: 154–156. 219 Ibid., pp. 155, 158, 159, 160 and see Ch. 1 of Colonialism and Knowledge. 220 LS Files S/1/2/10, Grierson to H.W. Orange, Director General of Education in India, 9. 9. 1904. 221 LS Files S/1/4/4, Grierson to Captain Philip R. Gurdon, 5. 7. 1901. 222 Grierson, LSI, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 55. 223 LS Files S/1/2/10, Grierson to H.W. Orange, Director General of Education in India, 3. 11. 1904. 224 Gupta, Language Conflict, p. 182. 225 LS Files S/1/5/2, Grierson to Wright, 8. 5. 1904. 226 See Ch. 5. 227 For this shared culture, see Orsini, Before the Divide; Busch, Poetry of Kings. 228 Thomas de Bruijn, ‘Dialogism in a Medieval Genre. The Case of the Avadhi Epics’, in Orsini (ed), Before the Divide, Ch. 4. 229 Busch, Poetry of Kings, p. 222. 230 Orsini, Public Sphere, p. 132. 231 King, Nehru and Language Politics, pp. 216–223. 232 For which see Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974, Chs. 3–5; King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 160–161, 164. 233 Amrit Rai, A House Divided: The Origin and Development of HindiUrdu, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991, Chs. 5–6. 234 Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, Noida, India: Harper Collins, 2015, p. 17. 235 Grierson, Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, Chs. 10–11.

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CONCLUSION The Survey’s legacy

In some ways, by drawing attention to India as a linguistic region per se, the Survey was at odds with the colonial state’s conceptualisation of India, in which religious and caste differences were key in its understanding of Indian society. One section of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report of 1918 referred to ‘linguistic or racial units’ in India, but the Government of India Act of 1919 did not consider redrafting India’s map according to its languages. Only a small part of the Report of the Indian Statutory Commission of 1930 dealt with India’s languages.1 The LSI, on the other hand, brought into focus India as a linguistic region, which was given less weight in overall terms than caste and religion in the Raj’s ‘sociology of multiple ethnicity’.2 Its mapping of Indian languages was also at odds with the colonial state’s cartographical imagination. It complicated the notion of India as a single, coherent, self-referential geography, and it centralised the subcontinent in a global linguistic geography. For Grierson, India was a series of gradations rather than a neatly bordered entity, as his use of the terms ‘Further India’, ‘Greater India’ and ‘India Proper’ shows. Here there were some overlaps between the Survey’s conception of India as a linguistic entity and other broadly conceived notions of India in a later period that were eventually marginalised by the territorialisation of the nation-state after Partition, such as Shriman Narayan Agarwal’s Gandhian Constitution for Free India with a Foreword by Gandhi (1946). The Survey also contributed to the shaping of regional languages and cultures in India, in which language became a multi-congruent symbol.3 Some aspects of it were closely involved in the emergence of linguistic regions, in which standardised languages provided the basis for a bounded and territorialised shared identity in individual and collective consciousness, to the extent that these language territories 200

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came to be viewed as distinct units in the spatial structure of society.4 Grierson helped lay the foundations for the emergence of some of these regional languages as discrete entities and objects of study. In the LSI’s correspondence, intergenerational bonding, the metaphorical extension of familial connections, and links of friendship are woven together around languages such as Maithili and Kashmiri. This was often combined with nostalgic narratives about the recovery of forgotten roots and of geographical extensiveness in the past in contrast to contemporary spatial constraints as in the case of Siraiki. Grierson’s letters with his Indian interlocutors also dramatise how the personal biographies of individual actors and their multiple subjectivities are intermeshed around specific languages which became endowed with their own biographies. Here the relationships of mutual endorsement between Grierson and his Indian correspondents in this context were paralleled by this mutual generation of overlapping biographies between Grierson, language activists, and the languages in question. The Survey therefore played an important role in the creation of affectively charged fields around some regional languages. Furthermore, in some ways its loose vocabulary of rights was a preliminary to the more extensive definition and expression of these rights in the Indian Constitution and the creation of linguistic states in India after Independence. The LSI’s volumes were published in the same period that the INC grappled with the regional territorialisation of languages, as reflected in its acceptance in the 1920 Nagpur meeting of provincial boundaries being drawn along language lines, its 1927 resolution in favour of linguistic states, and its endorsement of this principle in the Nehru Report of 1928.5 Whatever the differences between Nehru’s and Grierson’s priorities, in one respect at least the Survey resonates with Nehru’s and the INC’s own concern to recognise in more formal terms Indian languages as emerging and newly charged regionalised entities in the subcontinent. At the same time, the State Reorganisation Committee’s Report of 1955 was guarded about language as the sole criterion for reorganisation and Nehru persuaded it to take a cautious approach. The report had to balance linguistic regionalism against the political and economic supremacy of the Indian Union, and for the SRC linguistic homogeneity could not outweigh administrative, financial or other political considerations.6 Hence, as we saw in Chapter 2, it tended to invoke Grierson’s stress on the indistinct boundaries between languages in order to forestall some of the demands for linguistic states.7 It also followed the Survey in emphasising the provisional nature of the classification of languages and drawing attention 201

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to the linguistic complexity of the border areas between languages.8 Here, then, the LSI’s narrative of provisionality and its cartographical imagination resonated in the SRC’s own cautious attitude towards the demarcation of language as discrete entities with clear-cut boundaries. In this context at any rate, the LSI was useful in the Commission’s attempt to contain linguistic sub-nationalism in the aftermath of Partition while at the same time giving it some cautious leeway. The Survey was a complex multi-stranded project. On the one hand, it articulated a narrative of the regionalisation of languages in India but on the other hand it also contained countervailing narratives which were at odds with this regionalisation, both in its mapping of Indian languages and in its focus on the provisional nature of language names in India where it eschewed the temptation to reify languages by fixing their names. Different strands of the LSI were therefore used for different purposes by different groups. In overall terms, the Survey’s volumes encapsulated in preliminary form some of the key language issues which the post-colonial successor states to the British Raj faced after 1947. It articulated two sets of relationships which these states had to grapple with: those between regional languages and their recognition at the subcontinental level, and the relationship of Indian languages as a whole with English. The LSI volumes are written in English as if the latter were a neutral idiom which can encompass the many languages of India without its neutrality being compromised; that is, it also dramatises and reinforces the status of English as a link language in the subcontinent in relation to the very languages which are its rivals.9 As I argue in Colonialism and Knowledge, Grierson tried to safeguard English from becoming a ‘pidgin’ language, and there are only marginal references to the Indianisation of English in the subcontinent. However, at the same time, the Survey demonstrates the complex nature of English’s relationships with Indian languages, in so far as it is difficult to ascertain where English ends and Indian languages begin in its volumes.10 The LSI encapsulates another key issue which the subcontinent’s post-colonial states had to face, namely how much value to assign to language-based regions within the borders of the nation-state. In the Survey’s volumes and correspondence, the ground-level empirical detail through which regional languages and cultures take shape interacts with a narrative about what constitutes being Indian. Here there are some overlaps between Grierson’s interventions and a broader Indian nationalist position. In chapter 4, I showed how in one forum Grierson articulates an Indian epistemological nationalism, where 202

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he asserts the distinctiveness of Indian learning and its traditions of knowledge and their contribution to world knowledge. In these interventions and those of his interlocutors, we begin to see the lineaments of a world philology emerging in which India has a crucial role to play. However, ultimately Grierson opts for a distinctive notion of the Indian nation, which overlaps with some of the key elements of Hindu nationalism. Here parts of the LSI and some of Grierson’s writings contribute to a ‘schismogenesis’ in which the variables of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’, and ‘Hindi’ and ‘Urdu’, mutually amplify each other in a spiral of self-fulfilling prophecy with increasing intensity.11 Grierson also shares and to some extent anticipates one of the main issues advocates of Hindi as India’s national language were to face after 1947, namely the conflict between its status as a regionally rooted language and its aspiration to be the national language for a newly independent nation. This conflict is apparent in Grierson’s work; on the one hand, he regionalises and disaggregates Hindi, making it more locally rooted through a series of dialects, yet on the other hand he shapes it into an ideological symbol for an emerging Hindu nation. It can be argued that in the LSI there is a dialectical interplay between its openness to uncertainty and its stabilising narrative of an Aryan India. The more uncertain India is and the more complicated and doubtful the production of knowledge there, the greater Grierson’s need for the overarching rubric of Aryan India. For him only a form of Hindu nationalism can stabilise India and its uncertain heterogeneities. In the early 1950s the Hindu right opposed the reorganisation of the states along linguistic lines because it demonstrated ‘the hold of our culture is loose’. It also wanted the new linguistic states to be divided into the janapadas delineated in Sanskrit texts.12 In 1924 Dhirendra Varma sent Grierson two of his articles on just this subject, in which he argued that the INC’s linguistic divisions of India formulated in 1920 should be guided by these ancient texts.13 These positions resonated with Grierson. There are also overlaps between Grierson’s invocation of a Hindu sacred geography, its holy land and the Madhyadésá, and the Hindu right’s sacred geography of the Indian heartland which uses visceral language reminiscent of Grierson.14 In this context Grierson’s politics were radically at odds with Nehru’s secular nationalism, in which being Indian was not exclusively equated with being Hindu and the trope of a monolithic ‘Muslim invasion’ was critiqued. Grierson’s views on Indian Islam were also in sharp contrast to some of those on the Indian left, for whom Islam in India had played a progressive role. M.N. Roy’s Historical Role of Islam (1939), for example, represented 203

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Indian history in terms of cultural fusion and focused on the constructive consequences of the Mughal period,15 whereas for Grierson cultural fusion was ruled out by his preconceived binary opposition between Muslims and Hindus. However, India’s heterogeneity was a problem for many Hindu nationalists. In contrast, for Grierson India’s heterogeneity keeps Aryan India in play. As we have seen, for him India is a site which produces many names, including many names for India itself. Savarkar likewise grapples with the multiplicity of names for India. In Hindutva, he ventures into what he calls the ‘borderland of conjecture’ to answer the question about the ‘origin of the names by which they [the Aryans] called the new scenes of their adopted home’. His etymologies and reflections on sound changes lead him to conclude it is quite probable that the great Indus was known as Hindu to the original inhabitants of our land and owing to vocal peculiarity of the Aryans it got changed into Sindhu when they adopted it by the operation of the same rule that S is the sanskritised equivalent of H.  .  . . Thus Hindu would be the name that this land and the people who inhabited it bore from time so immemorial that even the Vedic name Sindhu is but a later and secondary form of it. He then traces how ‘the old generic name of the Sindhus or Hindus was first overshadowed and then almost forgotten’. When discussing ‘Hindutva at work’ in the context of foreign invasions, he writes: Both friends and foes contributed equally to enable the words Hindu and Hindusthan to supersede all other designations of our land and our people. Aryavartha and Daxinapatha, Jambudweep and Bharatvarsha, none could give so eloquent an expression to the main political and cultural point at issue as the word Hindusthan could do. All those on this side of the Indus who claimed the land from Sindhu to Sindhu, from the Indus to the seas, as the land of their birth, felt that they were directly mentioned by that one single expression, Hindusthan. The enemies hated us as Hindus and the whole family of peoples and races, of sects and creeds that flourished from Attock to Cuttack was suddenly individualised into a single Being. . . . This one word Hindutva, ran like a vital spinal cord through our whole body politic.16 204

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This passage displays the closeness of Savarkar’s and Grierson’s ideas as well as their key differences. For Savarkar, recovering the name ‘Hindu’ is a project of national remembrance. The hatred others held for Hindus created a ‘single Being’ for which an appropriate name is required – here the relationship between signifier and the signified cannot be arbitrary. The Aryan nation’s name must mirror its very being and its singular oneness. However, Savarkar cannot arrive at one name easily; multiple names swirl around and are referenced in the search for the right name. The ‘old generic name’ is Sindhu or Hindu, ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindusthan’ supersede other names which at the same time are bracketed with it, and ‘Hindu’ slides into ‘Hindusthan’ and ‘Hindutva’. As we have seen, Grierson accepts the self-designation of the Aryans, whereas in the case of Dravidians and Munda and other tribes, he adopts the names used by Aryan speakers to label them. In this he reflected a larger trend. While there were many names for the Indo-Europeans, the term ‘Aryan’ was used in all major European languages throughout the 19th and up to the middle of the 20th centuries because it was perceived as springing organically from the people themselves.17 The acceptance of this self-designation therefore has an organicist dimension to it and further buttressed a sense of organic unity in Savarkar’s and Grierson’s notion of the Aryan nation. However, for Grierson the Aryan name’s stabilising potential is dependent on the existence of the multiplicity of names in and for India, and it is necessarily imbricated with them. Its unifying potential exists because of, and is demonstrated through, these other names. For Savarkar, the search for a single magical name is ultimately impeded by this proliferation of other names and while he uses these other names he also needs to disavow them. In the debates over the name of UP in the UP legislature after 1947 this multiplicity of names was a problem which had to be overcome through the adoption of a single name like Āryāvarta.18 Grierson, on the other hand, acknowledges these multiple names and keeps them in play to stabilise India as an Aryan civilisation. It is worth pointing out that Grierson makes no reference to the decipherment of Hittite in 1917, which is now accepted to be the earliest of the Indo-European family of languages.19 The implications of Hittite’s discovery took some time to filter through. A greater understanding of Hittite and of the Anatolian languages led to the designations of ‘satem’ and ‘centum’ languages being discredited, and some of the assumptions in the 19th-century model of the nominal system of Indo-European were re-thought. Similarly, the Greco-Aryan model of the Proto-Indo-European verb was substantially modified.20 The LSI 205

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was conducted when the Greco-Aryan paradigm dominated philology, and comparative philology was almost exclusively restricted to the Indo-European family; the development of historical linguistics was closely associated with the study of Indo-European.21 The Survey also reflects the dominance of historical linguistics per se in European linguistics in the 19th and early 20th centuries; it was in this area that the most spectacular progress had been made in the study of language in the 19th century.22 The Survey was thus rooted in the heyday of Indo-European philology. As such, Grierson’s affinity for Sanskrit also reflects its pre-eminent place in the field before the discovery of Hittite, and not his political views alone. The final volume of the Linguistic Survey was also published three years after the discovery of the Indus civilisation. This discovery opened a new chapter in the history of India prior to the Aryans and the Vedas.23 Grierson’s Aryan-centric view of India was formulated before this discovery, and the question of the relationship between Vedic and the Indus Valley civilisation continues to be debated. The standard view which has emerged is that the Indus civilisation predates the Vedas; the more problematic view, in terms of evidence, is that it is Vedic.24 In opposition to Georg Bühler’s argument that the Indus Valley script was modelled on a Semitic script, proponents of the Vedic nature of the Indus civilisation argue that the Brahmi script evolved out of the Indus script.25 The latter view, or views allied to it, are expressed in Grierson’s correspondence. Turner, for example, mentions that he had a student working on the Mohenjodaro seals; he agreed with this student’s views that ‘the inhabitants were Vedic Indians, the picture writing is in Sanskrit, and is the origin of the Brāhmī alphabet’. He added that Sir John Marshall is ‘obsessed’ with the ‘Sumerian idea’, that is, the view that the Indus valley civilisation was closely connected to the Sumerian civilisation.26 For Grierson, Turner’s letter was of ‘absorbing interest’ and he assumed it would upset Bühler’s theory of the derivation of the Brahmi script.27 Stein, on the other hand, speculates in passing on a possible connection between Dravidian Brahui in Baluchistan and Mohenjodaro.28 On the whole, though, Grierson’s correspondence suggests that he and his interlocutors sought to reconcile the discovery of the Indus Valley civilisation with their Aryan-centric narrative of India. The prestige of Sanskrit and of Vedic civilisation led them towards what is now seen as the non-standard view. We have seen how Grierson refers to the River Sarasvati in India’s ancient geography; the centrality of this river in one form of the Indian cultural imagination meant some adopted the 206

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term Indus-Sarasvati civilisation in lieu of the Harappan or Indus Valley civilisation in an attempt to ‘Vedicise’ the valley.29 It is important to stress that Grierson’s political position does not invalidate the LSI, which remains one of the most complete and impressive sources on South Asian languages and their varieties. Grierson’s persistence and self-discipline in seeing such a massive project to its conclusion is admirable. It is only in a few cases that we can detect Grierson’s political views interfering with his philological scruples. This applies especially to Kashmiri, Siraiki and Panjabi, although future scholars may find evidence showing other cases where his politics interfered with his scholarship as a linguist. In the case of Grierson’s approach to Hindi-Urdu, there is a split between his attention to philological detail and his sensitivity to the dialectal continuum encompassed by the rubric Hindi-Urdu, which generates much useful information, and the way in which Hindi is pressed into service for Hindu nationalism. Nonetheless, some of the Survey’s narratives are detachable from its more rigorously honed linguistic imperatives, and together with some of Grierson’s other texts, these contributed to the way in which such nationalism appropriated and reshaped languages as one of its strategies, making them religiously charged ideological symbols of specific versions of India. Given Grierson’s references to the two-nation theory and the question of Muslim citizenship, parts of the Survey and some of Grierson’s texts need to be reframed as a set of discourses which normalised the idea of two nations. Grierson’s move towards one kind of Indian nationalism also needs to be contextualised in relation to Grierson’s Irish background. In the 1880s and 1890s, it appears that Grierson, like Crooke, held Irish views of tenant rights.30 Charles O’Donnell, another Irishman, had criticised a British ally, the Raja of Hutwa, for inadequate land tenure policies and the mismanagement of famine relief. In this context, he had evoked memories of the Irish famine, and was subsequently reprimanded and demoted.31 Grierson ran into similar problems with his The Geography of the Gaya District (1890). Sir Charles Elliott wrote to Grierson about this book contesting its sections on consumption and production. He issued a reprimand to Grierson: ‘I feel strongly the danger of putting such a weapon as yours into the hands of the Congress party – the Dadabhais and Bannerjees & c’. He also asserted that a government officer ought to write with great caution on economical matters, & think carefully about the political effects which may flow 207

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from his conclusions: not to conceal the truth certainly, but not to spread about revolutionary doctrine without great consideration in consulting other experts. In his response, Grierson reiterated his conclusion, that that the average Gaya holding is not sufficient to support its holder, and the cultivator survives because he has other sources of income besides cultivation.32 By the early 20th century, though, Grierson strongly identified and sympathised with Hindu nationalism. It is possible that the increasing bitterness of the sectarian divide in Ireland influenced Grierson’s approach to India as consisting of two monolithically opposed communities of Hindus and Muslims. Although Hindu nationalist groups had links with the INC, they were fundamentally opposed to the Nehruvian vision of a secular, composite India, and of course to Indian communism. The Gita Press, with which Grierson had links, was also strongly opposed to communism; its first editorial in the inaugural issue of Kalyan of August 1926 was critical of communism and the press saw the spread of communist ideology as a serious threat to the idea of the Hindu nation.33 On one occasion Grierson expressed fears about the spread of communism.34 However, Grierson’s affinity with Hindu nationalism was a controlled one; unlike James Cousins, who was also from Dublin, or Margaret Noble, an Ulsterwoman from Dungannon, he did not formally become a Hindu. Both Noble and Cousins went ‘native’ in a way in which he did not, and both changed their names. The efficacy of Grierson’s name, as we have seen, was key to the way the LSI operated; even when it was Indianised, it was still recognisable and its part hybridisation reflected his role as a go-between. In Chapter 3 of Colonialism and Knowledge, I examine Grierson’s hyphenated identity. This hyphenation meant that Grierson was neither a straightforward colonial orientalist nor a decolonising radical critic of empire, and as a member of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, he was also unsympathetic to Irish nationalism. Some of his correspondence suggests he was sympathetic to the Black and Tans, and therefore to the British government’s campaign against the IRA.35 In general, it is true to say that Indomania and Celtomania went together, and conversely, anti-Irish feeling tended to go with hostility towards Indians on the part of the English.36 In Grierson’s case, though, Indomania ultimately ran together with Celtophobia, and his hostility to one part of Ireland may have translated into hostility against one version of India and his openness to another more circumscribed image of it. 208

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Notes 1 Robert D. King, Nehru and the Language Politics of India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 60, 65–66. 2 For this sociology, see David Washbrook, ‘Ethnicity and Racialism in Colonial Indian Society’, in Robert Ross (ed), Racism and Colonialism, The Hague: Leiden University Press, 1982, pp. 156–157. 3 For the conception of language as a multi-congruent symbol, see Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. 4 See Bernard S. Cohn’s useful typology of regions, ‘Regions Subjective and Objective’, in An Anthropologist Among Historians and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 100–135, and Anssi Paasi, ‘Region and Place: Regional Identity in Question’, Progress in Human Geography, 2003, 27 (4): 475–485. 5 King, Nehru and Language Politics, pp. 60–64. 6 Report of the State Reorganization Commission, New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1955, p. 39, 40, 43, Ch. 5, Ch. 6 (hereafter SRC Report). For how there were clear deviations from the linguistic principle in the reorganisation of boundaries, see Joseph E. Schwartzberg, ‘Factors in the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States’, in Paul Wallace (ed), Region and Nation in India, New Delhi: IBH Publishing, 1985, pp. 171–172. 7 SRC Report, pp. 141–145 on Panjab. 8 SRC Report, pp. 175–176, 180. 9 For a useful discussion of how the Indian state dealt with the question of English as a link language, see Jyotirinda Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India, Berkely: University of California Press, 1970, p. 36, 137. 10 See Ch. 1 and Ch. 3 of Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. 11 King, Nehru and Language Politics, p. 189. 12 Louise Tillin, Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins, London: Hurst & Company, 2013, p. 37. 13 EUR 223/284, ‘Dhirendra Varma to Grierson, 30. 1. 1924’, European Manuscripts, Asia and Africa Collections, British Library, London. 14 Gyanesh Kudaisya, Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic, New Delhi: Sage, 2006, pp. 25–29, 391–395; Tillin, Remapping India, pp. 43–44. 15 Kris Manjapra, M.N. Roy: Marxism and Colonial Cosmopolitanism, New Delhi: Routledge, 2010, pp. 50, 135–137. 16 Christophe Jaffrelot (ed), Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 92–93. 17 Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, transl. Sonia Wichmann, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006, pp. 20–21. 18 For these debates, see Kudaisya, Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’, pp. 352–356. 19 James Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 2.

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20 Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics, pp. 91–92, Ch. 5; see also Pieter A.M. Seuren, Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, p. 104; Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004, p. 393. 21 Seuren, Western Linguistics, p. 83; Campbell, Historical Linguistics, p. 155ff. 22 For this dominance, see Seuren, Western Linguistics, pp. 52, 81. 23 Thomas R. Trautmann, ‘Introduction’, in Thomas R. Trautmann (ed), The Aryan Debate, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. xx, xxvi– xxvii, xxxv–xxx; John Marshall, ‘The Indus Civilization’, ibid., Ch. 3. 24 Trautmann, ‘Introduction’, in Trautmann (ed.), Aryan Debate, pp. xxxv– xliii; S.P. Gupta, ‘The Indus-Sarasvatī Civilization’, in ibid., Ch. 11. 25 Trautmann, ‘Introduction’, in Trautmann (ed.), Aryan Debate, pp. xlii–xliii. 26 Following Sir John Marshall’s ‘First light on a long-forgotten civilization’ in the Illustrated London News of 20 September 1924, in the same magazine two weeks later G.J. Cadd and Sidney Smith argued that the makers of the Indus seals must have been in close contact with Sumerian civilisation; see Marshall, ‘The Indus Civilization’, pp. 14–15. 27 EUR 223/333, R.L. Turner to Grierson, 2. 6. 1931, Grierson to Turner, 9. 6. 1931. 28 EUR 223/324, Sir Aurel Stein to Grierson, 30. 9. 1926; for this possibility, see Trautmann, ‘Introduction’, in Trautmann (ed.), Aryan Debate, p. xxviii. 29 Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The IndoAryan Migration Debate, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 167. For some Indian advocates of regional languages, on the other hand, Mohenjodaro played differently. The secretary of the Maithili Sahitya Parishad refers to how Maithili and its script would pass into oblivion like the scripts of Mohenjodaro and Harappa if it was not recognised, see EUR 223/231, Secretary, Maithili Sahitya Parishad Darbhanga, ‘The Case of Maithili Before the Patna University’, p. 7. 30 Nigel Chancellor, ‘“Patriot Hare or Colonial Hound?” Whitley Stokes and Irish Identity in British India 1862–81’, in Elizabeth Boyle and Paul Russell (eds), The Tripartite Life of Whitley Stokes (1830–1909), Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011, p. 73. 31 Ibid., p. 73. 32 EUR 223/300, Sir Charles Elliott to Grierson, 7. 5. 1890, Grierson to Elliott, 10. 5. 1890. 33 Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, Noida, India: Harper Collins, 2015, pp. 28, 101, 328–337. 34 See Ch. 1 of Colonialism and Knowledge. 35 Ibid., Ch. 3. 36 Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans in British India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, pp. 96–97.

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Manuscript sources European Manuscripts, EUR 223 Grierson Collection, Asia and Africa Collection, British Library, London. India Office Records, IOR P. 2058, Major Pitcher and Mr. Grierson’s Inquiry Into Emigration, August 1883, British Library, London. Linguistic Survey of India, S/1 Correspondence. Linguistic Survey of India, S/2 Gramophone Recordings.

Primary printed sources Barnett, Lionel D. See George A. Grierson Lallā-Vākyāni. Crooke, W. See George A. Grierson Hatim’s Tales. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Pt. 1: Introductory, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publications Branch, 1927. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Pt. 2: Comparative Vocabulary, Calcutta: Government of India Central Publications Branch, 1928. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 2: Mōn-Khmēr and SiameseChinese Families (Including Khassi and Tai), Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1904. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 1: General Introduction, Specimens of the Tibetan Dialects, the Himalayan Dialects, and the North Assam Group, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1909. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bodo, Nāgā, and Kachin Groups, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3: Tibeto-Burman Family, Pt. 3: Specimens of the Kuki-Chin and Burma Groups, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1904. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 4: Muṇḍā and Dravidian Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1906.

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Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of the Bengali and Assamese Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 5: Indo-Aryan Family (Eastern Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Bihārī and Oṛiyā Languages, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1903. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 6: Indo-Aryan Family (Mediate Group), Specimens of the Eastern Hindī Language, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1904. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 7: Indo-Aryan Family (Southern Group), Specimens of the Marāṭhī Language, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1905. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8: Indo-Aryan Family (North-Western Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Sindhī and Lahndā, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1919. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 8, Pt. 2: Specimens of the Dardic or Piśācha Languages (including Kāshmīrī), Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1919. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 1: Specimens of Western Hindī and Pañjābī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 2: Specimens of the Rājasthānī and Gujarātī, Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing India, 1908. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 3: The Bhīl Languages, including Khāndēśí, Banjārī or Labhānī, Bahrūpiā, & c., Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1907. Grierson, George A, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 9: Indo-Aryan Family (Central Group), Pt. 4: Specimens of the Pahārī languages and Gujurī, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1916. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 10: Specimens of Languages of the Eranian Family, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1921. Grierson, George A. Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 11: Gipsy Languages, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922. Grierson, George A. ‘The Song of Mánik Chandra’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1878, xlvii (1): 135–238. Grierson, George A. ‘A Further Folk-Lore Parallel’, Indian Antiquary, 1879, 8: 288–289. Grierson, George A. ‘A Plea for the People’s Tongue’, The Calcutta Review, 1880, 71: 151–168. Grierson, George A. An Introduction to the Maithilí Language of North Bihár Containing a Grammar, Chrestomathy and Vocabulary, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1881.

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Grierson, George A. Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of Bihárí Language Spoken in the Province of Bihár, in the Eastern Portion of the North-Western Provinces, and in the Northern Portion of the Central Provinces, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1883–1887, 8 Parts. Grierson, George A. Bihār Peasant Life, Being a Discursive Catalogue of the Surroundings of the People of that Province, With Many Illustrations From photographs Taken By the Author, Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat Press and London: Trübner and Co., 1885. Grierson, George A. and Mrs. Grierson (first name not given) ‘An EnglishGipsy Index. Compiled by Mrs. Grierson: With an Introductory Note by G.A. Grierson’, Indian Antiquary, 1886, 15: 14–19. Grierson, George A. ‘Some Bhojpūrī Folk Songs’, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1886, 18 (2): 206–267. Grierson, George A. The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1889. Grierson, George A. and Mahamahopddhydya Sudhakara Dvivedi The Padumāwati of Malik Muhammad Jaisi, Calcutta: Bibliotecha Indica, 1896–1911. Grierson, George A. ‘Tulasī Dāsa, Poet and Religious Reformer’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1903, 35 (3): 447–466. Grierson, George A. The Bible in India, Anarkali, Lahore: Punjab Bible Society, c. 1904. Grierson, George A. ‘A Folk-Tale Parallel’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1909, 41 (2): 448–449. Grierson, George A. ‘In What Degree Was Sanskrit a Spoken Language?’ Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, July 1904, 36 (3): 471–481. Grierson, George A. ‘The Modern Hindu Doctrine of Works’, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1908, 40 (1): 337–362. Grierson, George A. ‘Gleanings From the Bhakta-Mala’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1909, 41 (3): 607–644; 1910, 42 (1): 87–109; 42 (2): 269–306. Grierson, George A. and Lionel D. Barnett Lallā-Vākyāni or the Wise Sayings of Lal Ded, London: RAS, 1920. Grierson, George A., A Grammar of the Chhattisgarhi Dialect of Eastern Hindi: Originally Written in Hindi by Hira Lal Kavyopadhyaya, Headmaster of the Anglo-Vernacular School, Dhamtari and translated by Sir George A. Grierson, of the Bengal Civil Service, Revised and Enlarged by Pandit Lochan Prasad Kavya-Vinod Under the Supervision of Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, of the Provincial Civil Service, Central Provinces and Berar, Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1921. Grierson, George A. The Lay of Alha: A Saga of Rajput Chivalry as Sung by Minstrels of Northern India, Partly Translated in English Ballad Metre by the Late William Waterfield of the Bengal Civil Service, Oxford: H. Milford, 1923. Grierson, George A., Pandit Govind Kaul, Aurel Stein, and W. Crooke, Hatim’s Tales: Kashmiri Stories and Songs, Recorded With the Assistance of Pandit

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Govind Kaul, Edited With a Translation, Linguistic Analysis, Vocabulary, Indexes, ETC. by Sir George A. Grierson, K.C.I.E, With a Note on the Folklore of the Tales by W. Crooke, C.I.E., London: John Murray, 1923. Grierson, George A. ‘On the Tirahi Language’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1925, 25 (3): 405–416. Grierson, George A. Torwali: An Account of a Dardic Language of the Swat Kohistan. Based on the Materials Collected in Torwal With a Note on Torwal and Its People and a Map, London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1929. Grierson, George A. The Test of Man Being the Purusha-Parīkshā of Vidyāpati Ṭhakkura, London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1935. Kaul, Pandit Govind. See George A. Grierson Hatim’s Tales. Kavya, Pandit Lochan Prasad. See George A. Grierson A Grammar of the Chhattisgarhi Dialect, Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press. Kavyopadhyaya, Hira Lal. See George A. Grierson A Grammar of the Chhattisgarhi Dialect. Lal, Rai Bahadur Hira. See George A. Grierson A Grammar of the Chhattisgarhi Dialect. Report of the State Reorganization Commission, New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1955. Stein, Aurel. See George A. Grierson Hatim’s Tales.

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Bayly, Christopher A. ‘Ireland, India and the Empire: 1780–1914’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2000, 10: 377–397. Bayly, Christopher A. Recovering Liberties: Indian Political Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Bayly, Susan Caste, Society and Politics in India From the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Bell, Morag, Robin Butlin, and Michael Heffernan (eds) Geography and Imperialism 1820–1940, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. Bierwisch, Manfred Modern Linguistics: Its Development, Methods and Problems, The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Bose, Sugata A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Bowern, Clare and Harold Koch Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004. Boyle, Elizabeth and Paul Russell (eds) The Tripartite Life of Whitley Stokes (1830–1909), Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011. Brass, Paul Language, Religion and Politics in North India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Breckenridge, Carol A. and Peter van der Veer (eds) Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. Brown, David Blayney ‘Mapping and Marking’, in Alison Smith, David Blayney Brown, and Carol Jacobi (eds), Artist and Empire, London: Tate Enterprises, 2015, pp. 15–38. Brown, Michael E. and Sumit Ganguly (eds) Fighting Words: Language Policy and Ethnic Relations in Asia, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Bryant, Edwin The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Buettner, Elizabeth Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Burbank, Jane and Frederick Cooper Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010. Burghart, Richard ‘A Quarrel in the Language Family: Agency and Representations of Speech in Mithila’, Modern Asian Studies, 1993, 27 (4): 761–804. Busch, Allison Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Busch, Allison ‘Riti and Register: Lexical Variation in Courtly Braj Bhasha Texts’, in Francesca Orsini (ed), Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2010, pp. 84–120. Butlin, Robin A. ‘Historical Geographies of the British Empire, c. 1887–1925’, in Morag Bell, Robin Butlin, and Michael Heffernan (eds), Geography and Imperialism 1820–1940, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 151–188. Campbell, Lyle Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.

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INDEX

aborigines 126 Agarwal, Narayan 66 Ahom-Assamese-English Dictionary (1920) 19 All-India Maithil Mahasabha 12 Amin, Shahid 114 Amrita Row, K. 42 ancient India 111–115; language sound recordings 114–115; Sanskrit and Indian civilization 122, 127 Anderson, J.D. 93 Anglo-Irish 6, 136, 146, 208 Arische Religion (1914–1916) 147 Aryan 115–120, 136; mobility 120–124 Aryanisation 116, 137 Aryanism 119, 122, 136–158, 174; Anglo-Irish 6, 136; anti-Semitism 147; bhakti 140–143, 152, 174, 183, 191; concepts of home 124–127; Hindu nationalism 136, 146, 147–153, 158, 203, 207, 208; Hinduisation 136–137; Lahnda 153–155; Panjabi 136, 153–157; Punjabi 154; Siraiki 136, 153–157; race 120–123 Aryan languages 59, 73, 75 Asamiya 18–21, 43 Asiatic Society of Bengal 112 Asom Sahitya Sabha 19 Assamese 18–21, 23, 44, 78, 79, 189 Assamese, Its Formation and Development (1941) 19

Assamese Grammar and Origin of the Assamese Language (1936) 19 Assamese Students’ Welfare League 20 Australo-Dravidians 126 Austric languages 60, 61 Austro-Asiatic languages 61 Axomiya Bhaxa Unnati Xadhini Xobha 20 Bailey, T. Grahame 92 Bake, A.A. 115 Bali 65 balkanisation 111 Baluchis 18 Baluchistan 206 Bannerman, A. 31 Barphuknar Git, or the Ballad of Badan Chandra Barphukan in Assamese (1925) 19 Barua, Golap Chandra 19 Barua, Hemchandra 20 Baruah, Sanjib 20 Behari, Shyam 11 Bengali 18–20, 26, 35–38, 40, 43, 57–59, 64, 66, 68, 77–79, 81, 90, 96, 97, 103, 110, 111, 125, 170, 177, 182, 184, 189 Bengali Language, The Origin and Development of (1926) 38 Bengali Ramayanas, The (1920) 37 bhakti movement 141 Bhandarkar, R.G. 117 Bhojpuri National Anthem 18 Bhojpuris 18

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INDEX

Bhoslas 110 Bhuyan, S.K. 19 Bihari 18 Bihari-Bengali dialect 125 Bihār Peasant Life (1885) 2, 15, 16, 24, 113, 114 Bodo group 58, 76, 137 Brahmanical Hinduism 112 Brahui 68, 206 British-Indian friendship 4, 13, 15, 32, 35, 43, 64–65, 149 British-Indian knowledge nexus 98 Britons 147 Burghart 189 by-names 76 cartographic sensibility 56–63 Chatterji, S.K. 10, 37, 98, 150 Chrestomathy and Vocabulary (1882) 17 citizenship 168 Clark, E.E. 187 Colonial Christianity 140–143, 152, 184 colonial grammar 89, 91 Colonialism and Knowledge 114, 202 colonial linguistics 2, 3, 5, 80, 88, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 206; Young Grammarians 2 colonial nostalgia 4, 12, 28, 35, 37, 43, 100 colonialism and race 74–75, 122 Comparative Vocabulary (1928) 1, 60 Coorg national anthem 18 Cotton, J.S. 119, 137 Cowell, E.B. 3 Crane, Walter 62 Cust, Robert Needham 3 Dardic languages 34, 75, 79, 119 Das, Babu Jagannath 172 Das, Babu Ratan 174 Das, Banarsi 23, 24 Das, Bhola Lal 9, 10 Das, Narendra Nath 14 Das, Tulsi 137, 141, 157, 175, 181, 184, 186 Devanagari script 166, 176–178

dialect names 74, 76 Dictionary of Pahari Dialects and Dictionary and Grammar of Kanwari, A (1909) 23 Dictionary of the Kāshmīrī Language (1916–1932) 28 distinctive regional voices 9 Dogras 32 double immigration 122 double names 73–87; language names index 75–76 Dravidian 41–43, 62, 68, 116, 117, 119, 120–123, 125–128, 177, 205, 206 Dravidian Culture 42, 43 Dravidian language 68 Dravidian tribes 121 Eastern Bengal Ballads (1923) 36 Edney, Matthew H. 59, 63 Elliott, Charles 207 Emigration Report of 1883 74, 124, 125, 152 Encyclopaedia Britannica 61 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1909) 174 epistemological balkanisation 43 Essays on Kāshmīrī Grammar (1899) 29 Etymological Dictionary of the Assamese Language, An (1900) 20 Fernandez, Thomas C.N. 39 Fisher, H.L. 89 Folk Literature of Bengal (1920) 37 Forbes, Duncan 97 foreign in India 110–111 Further India 65 Gandhian Constitution for Free India with a Foreword by Gandhi (1946) 66, 200 geography, genre of writing 63–65 Geography of the Gaya District, The (1890) 207 George, H.B. 61 ghost-names 76 Gilchrist, John 88 Gita Press 150, 208

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INDEX

Gonds 120 Goswami, Manu 60 Government Committee on Modern Languages 89 Government of India Act of 1919 200 Government Resolution, 1900 178 Govindacharya, Alkondavilli 42, 142 grammar, politics of 88–109 grammatical reform 5, 88, 89 grammatical representation 5, 88 Greater India 65, 66, 68, 113, 128, 151, 200 Greater India (1921) 65 Greaves, E. 11, 185, 188 Greco-Aryan model 100, 101, 205 Greco-Roman grammar 88 Greece, Rome and ancient India 112; language sound recordings 115; migration 124; Sanskrit and Indian civilization 122, 127 Grierson, George Abraham 1–6, 9, 11–44, 56–68, 73–83, 88–104, 110–128, 136–158, 166–191, 200–208 Gujaratis 18 Gupta, Jyotindra 44 Handbook of the Kaithi Character, A (1899) 178 Hatim’s Tales (1923) 28, 33 Hem Kosha 20 Herodotus 112 Hindi 2, 3, 6, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 21, 25, 26, 40, 42, 44, 60, 77, 79–80, 96, 97, 138, 149, 150, 153, 158, 166–168, 170–176, 178–191, 203, 207; in educational sphere 184–188; ICS exams and 3, 179–184 Hindi and nationalism 6, 44; Hindi in Britain 185, 187; Hindu nationalism 6, 136, 146, 147–153, 158, 189, 203, 207, 208; Indian Civil Service 3; Kaithi 166, 176, 177, 178; Nagari 166, 171, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182, 186, 188; Nagari Pracharini Sabha 171–175, 176, 177, 178, 183–184; Tulsi Das 167, 183, 184, 190

Hindi Grammar (1921) 188 Hindī kī unnati par vyākhyān (1877) 174 Hindi organisations 171–176 Hindi Reader for Class VII 11 Hindī sāhitya kā itihās (1929) 173 Hindi-Urdu, Grierson’s approach 207 Hindu-Christian parallels 140–143, 145 Hindostān 113 Hindu grammarians 97 Hinduisation 136–137 Hinduism 140–143, 145, 152 Hindu Kashmiri 170 Hindu nationalism 6, 136, 146–153, 158, 203, 207, 208 Hindu Polity (1924) 140 Hindu science 102 Hindustani 2, 26, 77–78, 88, 95, 154, 169, 171, 177–180, 182, 187, 188 Hindu Superiority (1906) 148 Historical Geography of the British Empire (1904) 61 Historical Role of Islam (1939) 203 History of Tirhut (1922) 14 Hittite 205–206 Hodgson, B.H. 115 immigration in India 110–111 Imperial Federation Map (1886) 62 Imperial Gazetteer 3 Indian Antiquary (1897–1899) 41 Indian Aryans 5 Indian civilisation 5 Indian Civil Service (ICS) 3, 24, 117 Indian Civil Service (ICS) exams 10–11, 24–25, 35–36, 117, 120, 154, 179–184 Indian Grammarians 91–96 Indian knowledge nationalism 5, 88, 96, 102 Indian linguistics 41, 92, 101 Indian naming practices 78–81 Indian nation 110–135 Indian nationalism 96 Indian regional languages: Asamiya 18–21; Assamese 19–21; Bengali

225

INDEX

35–38; Dravidian 42, 62, 68, 116, 117; Kashmiri 27–35; Konkani 39–40; Lahnda (Siraiki) 6, 21–23, 27, 57, 59–60, 64, 77, 136, 153–157, 201, 207; Maithili 9–18; Panjabi 23–27; Telugu 40–42 India Proper 65 India’s antiquity 111–115 India’s Past: A Survey of Her Literatures, Religions, Languages, and Antiquities (1927) 81 Indo-Aryan languages 90, 93, 103, 137, 138 Indo-Aryan Races, The (1916) 150 Indo-Aryan realm 67 Indo-European languages 61, 122 Indologists 3 Indus Valley Civilization 206, 207 Introduction to the Maithilí Language of North Bihár, An (1881–82) 14, 16, 166 Islam 136, 138–140, 144 Ivermee, Robert 146 Jaffrelot, Christophe 148 Java 65 Jayanti, Vidyapati 14 Jayaswal, K.P. 14 Jha, Amarantha 12 Jha, Chandra 13 Jones, Daniel 98 Jones, William 112 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1885) 13, 29, 36 Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Society (1917) 13 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 142 Kaithi script 18 Kanauji 77 Kashmir 32, 33 Kashmiri 18, 24, 27–35, 43, 60, 79, 80–81, 103, 157, 167, 168, 170, 201, 207 Kāshmīrī Dictionary (1916–1932) 24, 29 Kashmiri Lyrics (1941) 28 Kashmiri Shaivism 31, 168

Kaul, Madhu 31 knowledge brokers 88, 92, 96, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103 Kodas 126 Konkani 39, 40 Kuki-Chin group 63 Kushta, Maula Bakhsh 157 Laghupaniniya (1913) 95, 99 Lahnda see Siraiki Lallā-Vākyāni (1920) 28 Langah, Nukbah Taj 23 language activists 1 language names 4, 74–78, 81, 154, 155, 202; Assamese 78, 79; Bengali 37, 77–78, 79; defamiliarising 76–78; Hindustani 77, 78, 88, 95, 154; Indian names 79, 81, 112; linguistic ecology; names for India 4, 73, 81, 82, 204 language names index 75–76 Lay of Alha, The (1923) 112, 175 Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889) 147 Lemurian continent 61 linguistic disputes 1 linguistic ecology 82 linguistic nostalgia 13, 22, 43, 201 Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) 1–3, 9, 115; regional voices in 9–18 Lucas, C.P. 61 Ludden, David 158 Lyall, Charles 169 Macdonell, A.A. 81 MacDonnell, A.P. 3 Madhyadésá 27, 113, 118, 170, 203 Magahi 118 Mahābhārata 22, 27, 113, 118, 120 Mahānayaprakās’a (1929) 30 Mahapatra, B.P. 1, 83 Maithili 9–18, 118 Maithilí Dialect of the Bihári Language, The (1909) 16 Maithili Sahitya Parishad 9–18 Malay 66 Malaya 186 Malda 110 Mall, Todar 176

226

INDEX

manual of Sora (or Savara) language, A (1931) 40 Manual of the Kāshmīrī Language (1911) 28 mapping languages 56–72; cartographic sensibility 56–63; colonial cartography 56–63; colonial nostalgia 64–65; geography, genre of writing 63–65; Greater India 65–67; Indian conceptions 65–67; literary geography 63–65; State Reorganization Commission (SRC) 67, 68 mapping of ‘Gipsy’ languages 62 Marathis 18, 110 Marshall, John 206 Masica, Colin P. 67 Medhu, Kaliram 19 Mesthrie, Rajend 68 ‘Midland of Sanskrit geography’ 113 Migration in India 122–123 Mishra, Umesh 10, 11 Misra, P. Sham Bihari 185 Mitter, P.C. 38 Mlechchhas 118 Modern India and the Indian (1879) 3 Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, The (1889) 3, 166, 170, 171, 172, 174, 183, 191 Mohenjodaro 206 Mon-Khmer family 65 Montagu-Chelmsford Report of 1918 200 Morgenstierne, Georg 119 mother tongue 154 Mühlhäusler, Peter 82 Mukul, Akshaya 150, 190 Müller, Max 3, 124, 147 Munda 60, 64, 119, 120, 123

Navalkar, G.R. 99 Nehru, Jawaharlal 34, 66, 123, 124, 139, 151, 201 Nemināhacariu (1921) 38 New Cambridge History of India 124 nick-names 76 Noble, Margaret 208 nomadism, tribes 79 non-violence 66 nostalgic conservatism 100

Naga group 58 Naga tribe 82 Nagpuria speakers 58 naming practices 78–81 nationality 168–171 native village philology 80

Rajasthani 61, 80, 81 Rajpūtanā kā itihās (1927) 139 Ramamurti, G.V. 40 Rāmāvatāracarita 30 Rāmāyaṇa 13, 30, 33, 37, 113, 184 Rāmesvar 11

Ojha, Gauri Shankar 139 Ojha, Gouri Shankar 172 Orange, H.W. 59 Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, The (1927) 37 Oriya 57–60 Orsini, Francesca 190 Pandey, P.S. 175 Panjabi 6, 21–27, 34, 35, 57, 60, 67, 136, 153–157, 174, 188, 207 Panjabi Hindu community 156 Pārijāta Harana 13 pedagogy 11 Persian 25, 26, 30, 34, 65, 77, 117, 138, 152, 167–170, 176–181, 183, 186 Phonetics of Lahndā, The (1936) 155 Pillai, R. Krishna 38 politics of grammar 88–109 Pollock, Sheldon 92, 101 Prashad, B. 102 Prātiśākhyas 92 prodigal son 145 Progress of Science in India during the Past Twenty-Five Years, The (1938) 102 Punjabi 24, 25, 57, 154, 188 Puruṣa Parîkṣā 14, 15

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INDEX

Rāṇā Sūrat Singh (1905) 156 Raychaudhuri, Ambikagri 44 reformation 144, 145 regional assertiveness 9–55 regional languages in India 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 33, 37, 38–43, 169; institutionalisation of 26; Young Grammarians 2 regional patriotism 36 regional voices: in LSI 9–18 Report of the Committee on Emotional Integration (1962) 44 representations of Islam 5, 6, 136, 138–140, 144–145, 158, 189, 190 Risley, H.H. 3, 73 romance languages 61 Rose, H.A. 23 Rost, Reinhold 2 Roy, M.N. 203 Sanskrit 2–3, 5, 16, 25, 29, 31, 62, 77, 90, 92, 94, 96, 97, 101, 111–114, 117–120, 127, 137, 143, 148, 149, 151, 157, 167, 168, 170, 178, 182, 189–190, 203, 206 Sanskrit civilisation 151 Santal Parganas 64 Sarda, Har Bilas 148 Sarkar, Sumit 21 Sarma, Ira 170, 183 Sastri, Mukund Ram 29, 31–32 Savara Reader (1912) 40 Savara Songs (1913) 40 Savarkar, V.D 148, 150, 151, 152, 204, 205 Shackle, Christopher 156 Schmidt, Pater W. 61 Secularism, Islam and Education in India 146 Sedwick, L.J. 142 Selections from Hindi Literature (1921) 174 self-reflexivity 81 Semites in India 138–140 Semitic languages 138 Semitism 136–158 Sen, Babu Dinesh Chandra 36 separatism of nomenclature 94

separatist position, Grierson 91–96 Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihárí Language (1883–1887) 2, 13, 16 Siam 65 Siamese-Chinese languages 65 Sindhis 18 Singh, Budh 157 Singh, Narayan 13, 14 Siraiki 6, 21–23, 27, 57, 59–60, 64, 77, 136, 153–157, 201, 207 Siraiki Literary Conference at Multan 23 Sitapati, G.V. 40, 41 Sketch of the Hindustani Language (1880) 169 Smith, W. Robertson 147 Some Mile-Stones in Telugu Literature (1915) 41 Sonnenschein, E.A. 5, 88, 89–96, 98–103, 110, 117; representations of grammar 88; Standing Committee of Grammatical Reform 89–91; world philology 102 South India and Her Muhammadan Invaders (1921) 140 Śrīrāmāvatāracarita 30 Standing Committee of Grammatical Reform 89–91 State Reorganisation Committee’s Report of 1955 66, 201 State Reorganization Commission’s Report of 1955 1 Steadman-Jones, Richard 88 Stein, Aurel 15, 170 Student’s Marathi Grammar 99 Sumerian civilisation 206 survey’s legacy 200–210 Syrian Christians 144 ‘Teaching of English in England, The’ 89 Telugu 40–42, 78, 110 Telugu-Savara Dictionary (1914) 40 tenses 92–95, 97, 103 Test of Man, The (1935) 14, 16 Thakur, Mahesh 12 Thapar, Romila 149

228

INDEX

Thomas, F.W. 31, 65 Tibeto-Burmese languages 58, 61, 73 Tibeto-Chinese languages 65 Tilinga 110 Trautmann, Thomas R. 136 Turner, R.L. 23, 62, 94 Upadhyaya, Umapati 13 Urdu 6, 25, 34, 77, 138, 154, 158, 166–171, 176, 178–183, 185–190, 203, 207 Vaishnavism 141 vernacularisation 3

vernacular languages 1 vernaculars 3, 4 visceral differences 167–168 visceral language 166–199 von Schroeder, Leopold 147 Webb, Morgan 73 Williams, Monier 3 Woolner, A.C. 25, 27 Written Languages of India, The (1989) 1 world philology 102, 203 Zadoo, Jagaddhar 29

229