Researchers led by Selwyn Bye-Fellow Dr Jonathan Duquette are uncovering how 'pundits' kept Sanskrit scholarship thriving in remote Indian villages during British colonial expansion.
While English speakers know the word 'pundit', few know that it comes from the Sanskrit word paṇḍita meaning 'learned'. Jonathan, from Cambridge's Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, is leading a five-year project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), to study the work of pundits, Brahmin scholars, who wrote poems, plays, philosophy, theology, and legal texts in Sanskrit.
Challenging assumptions that British power suffocated Sanskrit learning, the research focuses on the Kaveri Delta in southern India between 1650-1800. Here, hundreds of pundits worked in rural Brahmin settlements (agrahāra) and monasteries (maṭha), producing significant literary and intellectual works.
Jonathan (pictured left) said: "There were literary geniuses among these men, historically significant figures, but many people in India don't know them. We will study texts that have never been translated or printed and it is quite likely we’ll come across texts that have never been studied in Western scholarship or even catalogued.”
These scholars survived colonial pressures partly due to their remote locations and land grants held in perpetuity from the Maratha Bhonsle dynasty. The village of Tiruvisainallur, founded around 1693, housed distinguished figures including Ramasubba Shastri, one of the most original Sanskrit scholars of his day, and the poet-saint Sridhara Venkatesa 'Ayyaval'.
The team will identify twenty or more settlements of intellectual significance, studying land donations, manuscripts, and geographical connections between pundits, temples, and courts.
The project builds on Cambridge's prestigious Sanskrit research tradition dating back to 1867. The University Library holds an internationally important collection of Sanskrit manuscripts.
Information for this article has been taken from a University of Cambridge press release: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/pundit-saviours-of-sanskrit
Ramasubba Shastri (1840 - 1922) Sridhara Venkatesa 'Ayyaval'
Pictures by Dominik Wujastyk
Published on 16 October