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My Friendship with D. D. Kosambi
That two such
different persons as D. D. Kosambi and I should have become friends is remarkable.
But Kosambi was a remarkable man. I should like to share my memory of him,
but I despair of sketching his personality in the brief compass of an
article. Instead, I shall let Kosambi, for the most part, tell how the
friendship arose. By quoting from his early letters to me, as occasionally
interrupted by summaries or fragments of my letters to him, the reader may
feet something of the biting satire, the passionate energy, and the abiding
scholarship of my late friend.
My first letter from
Kosambi was in response to a review that I had written of his book The
Epigrams Attributed to Bhartrhari. His letter began with thanks,
proceeded, despite his disclaimer, to pounce on one of the points where he
disagreed with me, and ended with a characteristic flash of ridicule.
Bombay, January 6,
1951
Dear Dr lngalls,
Many thanks for the
most sympathetic and even flattering review of my Bhartrhari, which came
yesterday. I shall not join issue with you on the points where we differ,
but one day, if you study the background of Sanskrit literature in its
social and historical context, I think you will come to much the same
conclusions as mine. Incidentally, "office-seeker" bears a
connotation (to my foreign ear) which I should not apply to Bhartrhari.
...He was a man without regular means of livlihood, or regular course of
action that would qualify him for one. Davour of kings in that period,
their patronage, meant reward but not office; at least, not for a poet who
wasn't much else.
... In any case is is
extremely gratifying to find anyone who takes the trouble to go so
carefully through both text and preface! Accept my thanks for the good
words.
... There are many
supplementary discoveries and additions that will need a paper by
themselves.... The Udaipur kings did not read all of Bharatihari so
carefully as the sringarapart
and the bound codex naturally openedto a worn page of the Anangarnga's section on the
aphrodisiacs. Draw your own conclusions !
Yours sincerely,
D.D. Kosambi
Our correspondence continued.
Kosambi thanked me for a book of mine. He wrote asking about his father's
posthumous Visuddhimagga, which after years of delay had appeared in
the Harvard Oriental Series just two weeks before the date of his enquiry.
Later, when our acquaintance had ripened into friendship, Kosambi was often
to speak to me of his father. Dharmanand Kosambi had lived for some years
in America in the course of an extraordinary journey in pursuit of truth
that took him on the circuit of the globe. He had returned to Maharashtra a
Buddhist, who by his forceful writings inspired those who were
intellectually strong and antagonized those who wanted their sanatana
dharma without intellectual effort. D. D. Kosambi always expressed an
intense admiration of his father. He felt that his father had been mistaken
in the goal of quietism that he chose; the son chose a far different goal.
But the passion for the search and the scorn of non-searchers were common
to both men.
It was because of
the father's sojourn that the son had taken his high school and college
education in the United States. Why Kosambi failed to go on to the
doctorate he explained in a letter where he first suggested that we drop
our titles in writing each other. The letter also refers to the plan I was
forming of spending the year, from June onward, in India.
Bombay, February 14, 1957,
Dear Ingalls, .
Let us agree to drop
the formalities, particularly as I never achieved the doctorate with which
you regularly credit me. I had to work my way through Harvard and took the
bachelor's degree in February 1929, giving up the attempt to get on with my
formal education in May 1929, for the depression was about to break and
casual jobs were vanishing before the debacle. Incidentally, I had no
fellowship either, being "interested in too many things", not to
speak of my uncouth appearance, rude manners, and the rest. This preamble
is for your private information.
I should be sorry if
you left India without our being able to meet. June is the last month of
our holidays, so that I should-in the normal course of events- be back here
on July 1. My programme is very simple in that I arrive from Poona on
Monday mornings if Monday is a working day and leave again on Friday
evening. The week-ends at Poona give me time to do some thinking, while the
five working days at Bombay are spent mostly on "scientific"
pursuits. ...
[Most of the
holidays] I again spend at Poona, though I make two trips of a fortnight
every year to Bangalore where my mother is spending the final years of her
life. ...
It was some time
before this that I had suggested that Kosambi edit for the Harvard Oriental
Serics Vidyakara's Subhasitaratnakosa, the oldest of thc great
anthologies of Sanskrit verse. He and V. V. Gokhale had ascertained that
this collection contained several verses of the Bhartrhari canon. At first
they had photographs of only one manuscript of the anthology. These
photographs, takcn by Rahula Sankrityayana at the monastery of Ngor in
Tibet, crowdcd so many pages onto a single plate that they were almost
indccipherable. Soon Kosambi found a library listing of a second manuscript
in Kathmandu; then it was reported that Professor Tucci in Rome had a
second sct of photographs of the Ngor manuscript. Kosambi had accepted my
invitation to edit the work on the condition that V. V. Gokhale be made
joint editor.
Now my interest in
the anthology was mounting, and with it my eagerness to see Kosambi and
examine the photographs at first hand. So my original plan of basing my
Indian visit on Calcutta, where I had lived many years before, gradually
changed to a plan of staying for the greater part of my time in Poona.
Kosambi offered me advice on my preparations at the very moment that he was
preparing for a strenuous but brief trip of his own to China. He hoped to
get the Ngor manuscript of our text from Tibet through Chinese mediation,
but the main object of his trip was connected with the Chinese Peace
Committee. I was interested in the first object and disapproved silently of
the second.
Poona, May 17,1952
Dear Ingalls,
Yours of the l2th
just received. ...
I told you of my
hopes of getting something directly from China. Unfortunately, I had to
refuse an invitation to China last year, and may have to repeat the
performance now. I am supposed to fly not later than a week from today, at
the invitation of the Chinese Peace Committee. The Prime Minister informs
me through his First Secretary that there will be no obstacle in my way but
(and the real reply begins always after such a "but") the
others whom I am supposed to lead in a delegation of three will not be
allowed. In addition, it is made unmistakably clear that the PM would be
very happy to see me refuse. I have asked him to re- consider; if he
refuses, I shall have to stay back in protest. Going alone is still a
possibility, but to tell you the truth I hate travelling and do not want to
go just for the MS. In the Peace Movement we put the Movement first and
work as sincerely as possible in spite of all sorts of filth thrown at us
by enemies. You see the difficulty, namely that a MS is not likely to be
located in distant Tibet for one who refuses invitations again and again.
However, I shall try by letter. The last letter was lost by the agent, and
this one may be too.
Your decision to come
to Poona will be, I think, wiser than the former one. As you know, your
Embassy keeps close tabs on most U.S. citizens here and will not be too
happy if you advertise your association with me. [Ed. note: the U.S.
Embassy never paid me the slightest heed.] But you can count on me for
whatever help you need. ...You should write immediately. ..and ask for full
access to the facilities of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute and
also for a suite of rooms at the BORI Guest House. They are
tolerable and I can always help out as I live nearby. .
The letter continued
with thumb-nail sketehes of various scholars :
X, a windbag. Y works
hard but has sacrificed what ability he had to his cupidity and dishonesty,
as well as arrogance. ...Z has now only one trade of which he still
preserves any mastery, namely, sliding out of obligations once the maximum
advantage has been secured.
These bursts of
scorn were followed by expressions of admiration for others:
However, you can find
less well advertised but far better people even in Poona, as I have told
you. Gode does fine work. ..at the BORI, and is in charge of the MSS. I
have already written to you about Gokhale, who could also help you with the
Bengali. ...At Madras Raghavan's great Catalogus Catalogorum deserves
your attention, as does Raghavan himself, one of the absolute masters of
classical Sanskrit in India and one of the best- read men in Sanskrit] have
met. There are many other people and placcs you should visit, but that can
come after you arrive.
If, by some miracle,
I gct off to China next week, I shall be back in harness by July 1. Of
course, I may be dismissed one of these days for daring to think that
public opinion should be mobilized for Peace, even in my spare time. But
then I shall have all the more time to devote to research. ...
Five weeks later
Kosambi had been to and returned from China. He wrote me to Calcutta, where
I had arrived and was stopping over briefly. After advice on the further
stages of my trip, he reported on his own. Not a word of the hopcd- for
manuscript; but his enthusiasm was running strong on China.
China was a
revelation in many ways. The Peace Movement has two classes of delegates,
tourists and workers. I was in the latter. In spite of the lack of time for
sightseeing, and even for sleep, I managed to see Chin K'e-mu, Dschi
Hian-Jin (Mahavastu specialist) , and other scholars; only the two
above are Sanskritists, but the rest were impressive. The whole university
atmosphere is strange to any of us who have been trained in Europe, the
U.S.A., or India. Incidentally, there are not many students now for
Sanskrit, but interest in modern Indian languages is rising fast. Hindi
classes are popular.
The most impressive
thing about China is the total change of character after the liberation:
people do not bother to lock up houses at night any longer and nothing is
missing. The coolie stands up and exchanges smiles with the policeman.
Using the same old hand methods, land yield on the same plots has risen by
twenty per cent; buildings rise up in half the time. Sanitation is greatly
improved and the country well ahead of India in all ways. You can still see
old China-at Hong Kong!
His last letter
before we met reached me in Madras.
Bombay, July 21, 1952
Dear Ingalls,
It is clear that you
are in India and will come to Poona via Madras, not via Bombay as I
expected. My house is less than a furlong away from the BORI Nizam Guest
House and my wife will supply you with any urgent necessities that we
possess but which happen to be absent in the Guest House. I myself hope to
be back the night of the 24th, Thursday. In case you call at our place
before then, beware
of the dog. He belongs to the neighbours, but has adoptcd us. His
ear-shattering bark, unfortunately, is no worse than his bite. ...
Yours sincerely,
D. D. Kosambi
There followed four
months during which I saw Kosambi nearly every week-end. I puzzled with him
and Gokhale over the text of the anthology. I took no hand in its editing,
but the three of us decided "that it must be annotated and for that
purpose I was chosen. As matters turned out, years later, the annotation
grew into a translation; but in 1952 I was not thinking so far ahead. Most
of my time with Kosambi was spent in talking of matters that were miles
removed from our common endeavour. We would take all day hikes over the
hills about Poona and comi.l".1e our conversation in the courtyard of
his house, on through supper into the night.
I have never met a
man with whom I disagreed on such basic questions, yet whose company I so
constantly enjoyed. Kosambi was a Marxist; I am an anti-systematist and by
nature conservative. Kosambi insisted that art should be subservient to
social betterment; I that it must break away from political subservience in
order to be art. Curiously, we loved many of the same books, often for
quite different reasons, and when we found our taste to converge we found
it to be strengthened. At least it was so with me; I think it was so with
Kosambi also. Blake's Milton had always affected me by its brilliant
images :
Bring me my bow
of burning gold !
Bring me my arrows of desire!
The poem has
affected me more deeply since my discovery that it was Kosambi's favourite.
Kosambi, of course, loved it for its leading up to the revolutionary
conclusion :
Nor shall my
sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
But there must have
been more than poetry to bring us together. Each of us found in the other
certain qualities that he valued. Again, I can speak with certainty only of
my own view. What I admired in Kosambi was his instinctive respect for
facts, I would almost call it a reverence, that would come into play even
when I least expected it. To listen to him theorize on Indian history you
might think that he believed himself to have a complete understanding of
its every turn. But no; he still had the patience to weigh on a jeweller's
scale each new lot of punch- marked coins that came into his hands; he
would still worry for hours over which of five manuscript variants to
choose for a critical text. This side of Kosarnbi's character, the truly
scholarly side, made no great flash in the world. Most of his
acquaintances, I think, regarded it as a foible. But to Kosambi it was part
of his inner morality and he was comfortable with other scholars only wlien
he saw something of the same reverence in their hearts.
I recall my
departure from Poona. Kosambi rode with me down to Bombay on the
"Deccan Queen". I, the American capitalist, had never travelled
in India by other than second class fare. My Marxist friend insisted that I
join him in his first class compartment.
For two years after
my return to America letters passed be. tween us nearly every week. Most of
them concerned the text of the anthology, the difficulty of getting new
photographs, and the problems of getting the text set up at the Nirnaya
Sagar Press in such fashion that it could be reproduced by offset in
America. But often we would throw in a paragraph or two on other affairs
and sometimes a whole letter. The following was occasioned by a letter of
mine giving news of my permanent appointment at Harvard and complaining of
how an application for a research grant which I had supported had been
turned down.
Bombay, May 23, 1953
Dear Ingalls,
Yours of the 16th
reached me last night. Let me hasten to congratulate you, and even more
Harvard University, on your permanency. It is not likely they can get
anyone else for a job like yours and you will carryon with credit. ... As
for your doing anything un-American during the next thirty years, I have
grave doubts; learning Sanskrit as well as you have is un-American enough
for one lifetime.
What you say about
the grant comes painfully home in several ways. Our fertile but whimsical kamadhenu,
the government, can be milked for streams of cash if one does it on a
sufficiently large and useless scale. The man who needs 500 for some really
useful work is a common swindler; a schcme for 10,000 might get through
with heavy backing. In the hundred thousands it becomes routine; and by the
million, you not only get everything you ask for, but are certainly a
public benefactor, provided the money all goes down the drain.
The letter ends by
complaining of a visiting American historian:
In three hours of
cross-examination I could not get a solitary definite statement from him on
any point in the history of India of any period. Your country does need
some real propaganda to counteract this kind, just as we need a lunatic asylum
for curing most of our lads who want to go to America.
Toward the end of
1953 an argument arose between Kosambi and me that I feared might undo our
joint undertaking and destroy our recent friendship, As events proved, the
undertaking, as concluded, and the friendship ripened into maturity.
Kosambi had begun
writing his Introduction to Vidyakara's anthology. He sent it to me in two
instalments. With the first instalment of four sections I was delighted,
for he had managed to ascertain Vidyakara's date and place with accuracy,
and by this means was able to assign dates for the first time to a number
of Sanskrit authors whose verses the anthology contained. He warned me on
November 5th that "the next four sections, mailed to you from Bombay
this morning by air, will appear less agreeable to you than the
first". His fore- boding proved correct, not because of the Marxist
theory of Sanskrit literature which he there set forth- I was prepared for
that- but because of the passionate denunciations of non-Sanskrit
literature into which he digressed.
In this first draft
I found on pages 16 to 18 a diatribe against the detective stories of
Mickey Spillane, which Kosambi took as typifying the decadence of a
socially destructive United States. In a footnote he had added the comment:
"I am told that his books were made compulsory reading for the Army at
one time, to inculcate the true martial spirit of an atomic age, which de-
fends human values by mass extermination."
I replied by a long
letter of criticism. I was willing to print any theory of literature that
he wished to frame, but I insisted that "the fireworks must come
out". As slightly abbreviated the conclusion of my letter was as
follows :
As regards compulsory
reading in the U.S. Army, I served in thc Army for three years and never
heard of cornpulsory reading. Actually it was my impression that a good
many of my fellow soldiers were unable to read. Be this as it may, it does
not raise the credibility of a scholarly text to have such bits of
propaganda dropped around in the Introduction. Again. the diatribe against
Mickey Spillane fails to produce the effect you wish. It reads like a Jain
pamphlet on the horrors of fox-hunting.
It may appear curious
to you that I should take exception to one passage rather than another in
this last instalment. Certainly most of my colleagues, if they were asked,
would say: "You're already printing a communist interpretation. What
more is there to stop at?" For every day more of us fall into this
antinomy. Here it is communism or truth. And in the other half of the world
it is communism or falsity. Perhaps it is a Quixotic gesture to swim
against this stream, but I intend to do so.
A week later I heard
from Kosambi: "Your blast of the 2lst was waiting for me at home last
night." After countering most of my objections he rephrased my
conclusion :
Let us put it
as follows: The world is divided into three groups: (1) swearing by
Marxism, (2) swearing at Marxism, (3) indifferent, i.e. just swearing, but
forced by the crisis to shift to 1 or 2. I belong to 1, you and your
colleagues to 2. Under the circumstances, what is the most effective draft
of the Introduction to be?
I have no intention
of propagandizing (for which there would be far better media, surely) nor
of changing my line. The point, however, is not to proye Marxism or support
it, but to use a certain well-proved line of approach to draw conclusions
from such meagre evidence as exists. ...
But on the passage I
had cried out against most vehemently he did not insist.
Pages 16-18 are the
real sore point, as far as I can see. They can be rewritten, and shall be
rather than argue the matter out here. Incidentally, page three will
receive: an added paragraph, for the jativrajya grows upon me with
better understanding of its stanzas.
We both loved the jativrajya,
the section of the anthology that furnishes those inimitable miniatures
of village and field in ancient India. As I look back it seems to me that
the sober vision of the Pala poets forced a corresponding sobriety upon us.
Kosambi agreed to give up the fireworks; I agreed that he might print
whatever social message he could elicit from the Sanskrit poetry. Such
minor flares as "one may see this for himself in the new China" I
allowed to stand.
I find only one recurrence
of disagreement between us about the Introduction, but it was mild. For its
history I have only Kosambi's plea without a copy of my reply. Some of his
words are worth saving for the picture they give of what he admired and
what he hated.
On revisions, page 5,
line 4 from bottom, about control of the press: would you agree to a
footnote about press, mass-produced magazines, comics, radio, television? I
see no reason why a television, radio, or movie script should not be as
good literature as anything Shakespeare wrote. Yet, in all my experience,
the sole occasion on which the chance was taken was the movie ]uarez and
in particular the scenes, in the first of which Juarez (Paul Muni) defines
democracy to Porfirio Diaz and in the second Juarez addresses the
ambassadors who suggest that Maximilian be pardoned in the name of mercy
and civilization. Magnificently acted, the words by themselves had a rugged
simplicity which could have fitted into anything from classical antiquity
down and graced the context. Now is it only a degraded popular taste which
reduces great works of literature to comics! Who controls the outfit? I
recall a take off in Punch some years ago which gave Macbeth as
a U.S. style comic, and though it must have seemed funny to the educated British
conservative who usually appreciates Punch humour, it was exactly
what a publisher of comics would have published without thinking that
anything was wrong. The real cause of the ruin seems to me the position of
advertising and there is no question of who controls that. ...What should
be said here? I feel that something must be said in any case. ...Draft vour
own version of what I mean.
I was not quite sure
whether Kosambi was pulling my leg-- forcing me to reply to an argument
where he knew that my prejudices would agree largely with his own- or
whether he was ingenuous. There was no doubt, at least, of the depth of his
feeling or of the cleanliness of his scorn. I could only reply that the
matter was not pertinent to an edition of a Sanskrit text.
For the rest we
worked smoothly, distinguishing our scholarship from our emotional
involvements. A year and a half later the Introduction was finished, the
printing of the text was nearing completion, and I had begun to transform
my annotations into a translation.
If the year 1955 was
a happy one for the anthology, it was far from happy for Kosambi in other
respects. The arthritis, from which he had suffered for several years,
worsened. The ailment was not only painful but infuriating, for Kosambi had
a strong physique which he had always pushed to the utmost. Among his
keenest pleasures had been the long hikes over the Poona hills. The hikes
were now curtailed. The hand of sickness stretched farther, to two of the
persons he loved most dearly. In 1955 his mother died. His sister, falling
ill, was to be taken from him the next year. Amid these griefs Kosambi's
energy drove him as hard as ever. In the summer he left for Finland and
Russia. He was away for two months and my letters to him accumulated at Poona.
He wrote me directly after his return.
Poona, August 13,
1955
Dear Ingalls,
I got back this
morning from Helsinki and Moscow. The USSR Academy of Sciences had invited
me last year, as you know. This year the invitation was especially repeated
at Helsinki and I went off to attend their conference on atomic energy for
peaceful uses. They have actually begun and have had a 5,000 kilowatt power
station in operation, the current being used for household supply as well
as Industry, for over a year. Thereafter I gave a couple of lectures on
various Indological subjects and got my medical treatment. The treatment
was long overdue and at the end gave a lot of relief, though not a complete
cure as yet.
All this sounds more
impressive than it was. Small matters are not so well organized in the USSR
as the big projects. The people are fundamentally easy- going, even slip-
shod, just like us Indians, though very nice. The war has left a mark upon
every family that I managed to meet: the people as well as their government
rea1ly desire peace. But for all that, my personal affairs were in a mess.
All the scholars were on holiday, summer vacations havlng begun. Even so,
the orientalists came back to hear my lectures, the last of which was held
on their foundation anniversary. They were rather shaken by the harsh
things I had to say about their pseudo-Marxist scholars (or pseudo-
scholars), but the persons concerned to whom I finally tracked down most of
the nonsense emanating from the Oriental Institute were not quite
convinced; one ended on a note of personal abuse, saying to friends in
private conversation that Kosambi's Marxism was only skin- deep. This meant
a lack of argument against the specific, defects that I had to point out in
public sessions. I could only reply that I had a pretty thick skin; perhaps
I was all skin.
In any case, the
Sanskritists in the old line are all dead and the continuity has been
broken. They were mostly based upon Leningrad, where I hadn't time,
strength, or inclination to go. Only Kalyanov is left, the rest being quite
new to the game and rather poor in calibre from their own accounts.
However, they are interested in Indology and if they turn their mind to it
with their characteristic national energy might sweep the field once again.
At present they don't even know what is being done in other countries. My
own reprints had not reached the proper scholars nor the libraries when I
went there. Some of these reprints and the Bhartrhari edition had lain
unnoticed for five years with the biochemist who had agreed to take them
from India. I called on him and recovered them. Finally, there isn't a
library I could get at with the resources and ease of use of Widener [i.e.
the Harvard College Library]. What wouldn't I give, except giving up the Peace
Movement, to spend a few months working away at Widener again!
Gokhale will call
tomorrow. He has sent all your notes and letters to be here with Maya, I
except the last loo stanzas on which he is still working. Studying the
dossier, it seems that you have reached agreement on most points, while I
have gotten very badly out of touch with the work. However, getting back
into harness shouldn't be too difficult. ...
I am grateful for the
condolences. It was painful not to be present when Mother passed away, but
the journey, though physically just possible would in fact have been
killing for me too.
Shall we drop the
remaining formality now and come to the real personal names on both sides.
You have been signing yourself as Dan. I am, to my few friends,
Baba.
I have proposed here
to describe only the forming of a friend, I should be ungrateful, however,
not to add a word on benefit I received from it, for Baba was to become the
best critic I ever had. From 1956 onward the pattern of the criticism our
letters was reversed: where. I had been criticizing his introduction and
text; he was now criticizing the drafts of my translation. I valued his
praise as actors are said to value acclaim in the city of Boston; if they
they can get a round of applause in a Boston theatre, they figure on a full
year's run anywhere And I benefited from his ridicule, for Baba was as
cruel to my occasional flights of mysticism as I had been to his Marxist
gressions. My nature did not change under criticism any more than his did;
but my style was chastened. In all the years we each other we never came to
agree on theory. We agreed, however, well enough on the meaning of a phrase
that I find each of us using in letters that happened to cross: "an
honest job, well done". I had said it of of his finished text; he had
expressed it as his hope of what my infant translation would become.
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