Truths. Prodosh Aich
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von Schlegel and Alexander Hamilton. They were engaged with Sanskrit in Paris even before Antoine Léonard de Chézy.
Getting into these two references we come across documents telling incredible stories. Antoine Léonard de Chézy works in the Egyptian department of the Royal Museum in Paris. The administrators of the artefacts from colonial booty were entitled to “study tours” to Egypt. When in 1803 such a trip is due Antoine Léonard de Chézy falls ill. As luck would have it, however, Louis Mathieu Langlès was there, that “news pool” for “Orient enthusiasts” in Paris. We remember him. So, Antoine Léonard de Chézy learns from the young German Helmine von Hastfer (we remember her too), a friend of Dorothea and Friedrich von Schlegel, who were living temporarily in Paris, that Friedrich von Schlegel takes lessons in Sanskrit from an interned Englishman called Alexander Hamilton.
Friedrich von Schlegel puts it on record that he has learnt Sanskrit from Alexander Hamilton. We shall deal with the quality of the lessons a little later. There is also evidence that Alexander Hamilton and Antoine Léonard de Chézy meet each other in Paris rather frequently. Antoine Léonard de Chézy himself maintains repeatedly that he was not interested in Sanskrit at all and knew nothing about Sanskrit before he met Alexander Hamilton. He was an Egyptologist only.
Hereafter there are two different versions of this small (hi)story within history. One version has it that the great misfortune of missing the study tour to Egypt due to sudden illness was more than compensated by the opportunity to learn Sanskrit from Alexander Hamilton. The other version says the meetings with Alexander Hamilton made him curious about Sanskrit. He learnt the language, however, “secretly” and “by teaching himself” and definitely after Alexander Hamilton had left France.
We remember Franz Bopp’s report to Professor Windischmann according to which Antoine Léonard de Chézy has been engaged with Sanskrit since 1808. But does it really matter? Swindles remain swindles, isn’t it? Even with the best of our efforts, we are unable to understand how a Frenchman in Paris could have learnt a perfectly developed language like the Sanskrit without a teacher, without a grammar and without any help whatsoever. But why complain! “Modern historians” and Indologists have not had and do not have any difficulty so far, in putting up with these incredible stories. They just believe in them. One must develop in this culture the ability to believe and forget the necessity of knowing. Why knowing?
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We are now compelled to extend our search. Who is this Alexander Hamilton who brought Franz Bopp, at least indirectly, to Sanskrit and thus contributed to the spread of Sanskrit in Europe? Our search leads us ultimately to the original document and there we read the following lines: “In 1795 (wasn’t it in 1794?) the government of the French Republic founded the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and there Alexander Hamilton (1762–1824), one of the founding members of Asiatic Society of Bengal, held prisoner on parole in France at the end of the Peace of Amiens in 1803, became the first person to teach Sanskrit in Europe.”
Arthur Llewellyn Basham (1914–1986) handed down these lines to the posterity in his best-known book The Wonder that was India, London 1954, p. 6. He wasn’t just an anybody. He wrote quite a few books on the “British colonial period” in India. He was a professor for oriental studies at the university in London, a Mecca for many Indians studying “history” abroad. His senior students occupy almost all leading positions at Indian universities and research institutions for the study of ancient history of Bharatavarsa at present. In return, these disciples have ensured that the “scientific spirit” of Arthur Llewellyn Basham is adhered to in the Republic of India even today.
Arthur Llewellyn Basham does not tell us whether he checked scrupulously the source of his information about Alexander Hamilton. After all, he was writing about a man who lived almost 200 years ago. Obviously he did not check meticulously enough. This is not necessary whenever the information, gathered indiscriminately, serves a useful purpose. Why should he waste time in a meticulous check of sources? Is it not enough, especially after he has made an outstanding career as a “scientist” in the in the blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian culture?
We will rather be busy with Arthur Llewellyn Basham. Nevertheless, there are many others who are out to make career in this “scientific” field. They are prompted by their alpha wolves to detect flaws in the writings of great “scholars” of the past. This is part of a game, called “research in modern science” in this wonder that is this culture.
We came across a publication of the “American Oriental Society”, volume 51 titled “Hamilton Alexander (1762–1824). A Chapter in the early History of Sanskrit Philology, New Haven, Connecticut 1968”. Fourteen years after Arthur Llewellyn Basham published his book: The Wonder that was India, London 1954. A Belgian lady called Rosane Rocher proves that the version about Alexander Hamilton circulated worldwide by Arthur Llewellyn Basham is wrong in some facets. She has written in the “Introduction” of her book:
“It is true that various biographical dictionaries do contain notices about Hamilton, but they often offer erroneous information, as will be seen on more than one occasion below. The reference works about the history of Oriental Studies again and again reproduce the same errors; moreover, they are mainly interested in Hamilton as far as his stay in Paris is concerned; apart from his catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Imperial Library, they essentially refer to him in connection with an apparently more important Orientalist, namely the one who became Hamilton’s most famous student in Paris – Friedrich Schlegel.”
We shall deal with the “wrong facets” in a while. Rosane Rocher starts properly her investigations to trace the origin of Arthur Llewellyn Basham’s error and reports that Theodor Benfey (1809–1881) in his “opus” Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland seit dem Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts mit einem Rückblick auf die Früheren Zeiten (History of linguistics and oriental philology in Germany since the beginning of the 19th century with a retrospect into earlier periods), Munich 1869, pp. 357–361, was responsible for this red herring.
All “scholars” thereafter had just copied Theodor Benfey. After Rosane Rocher made this discovery, she runs out of breath. Or, even worse, she is not interested in finding out how and why Theodor Benfey did write it. She could have asked – we think it is necessary – if it was an “accidental” error. But a scientific discipline and its ethics in this culture did not motivate her enough to look further, to find out how frequent such errors were, whether they were intentional (“malice of intent”) or caused by pressure of work – the rush to publish in a hurry. Therefore, we are still in the dark as to why the German Indologist Theodor Benfey did spread wrong information about Alexander Hamilton. Let us wait and see. We are on look out.
Hadn’t it been so far removed from our search, we would have pursued the matter. Besides, it is not our purpose presently to examine the reliability of sources of current “historical research”, but to describe this wonder-some culture and the way in which celebrated “modern scientists” deal with handed-down sources, secondary sources. Therefore, we must leave this issue unresolved here but also have to admit that we could not suppress a smile seeing this common copy-and-paste practice in all “scientific” books. We apologise for smiling.
We have to deal in depth with Alexander Hamilton because there is no reference that anybody else gave Sanskrit lessons anywhere in Europe