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Art. VII.—The Source of Colebrooke's Essay “On the Duties of a Faithful Hindu Widow.”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
In the second volume of his Chips from a German Workshop, p. 34, foot-note, the distinguished Professor Max Müller adverting to the above-mentioned dissertation, the earliest of the invaluable series which we owe to the most illustrious of English Sanskritists, makes the remark: “This Essay, I find, is a literal translation from Gagannâtha's ‘Vivâdabhangârnava,’ MS. Wilson, 224, vol. iii., p. 62.”
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References
page 183 note 1 This foot-note originally formed no part of the article, first published in 1856, to which it is now attached; and, it must, therefore, be considered as the outcome of later and riper researches.
page 183 note 2 A Digest of Hindu Law, on Contracts and Successions, etc., Calcutta, 1797, 1798, 4 vols. folioGoogle Scholar; London, 1801, 3 vols. octavo.
page 183 note 3 Asiatic Reaearches, Vol. iv., p. 209 (1795)Google Scholar; or Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. i., p. 114.
page 184 note 1 Vol. ii., pp. 451–465 (London edition).
page 184 note 2 This quotation gives the widow's sankalpa, or ‘declaration of resolve’ to burn with her deceased husband, that was used in Bengal. A formula extremely like it may be read in Eaghunandana's S'uddhitattwa; one less like it, but of corresponding purport, in the Âchâachandrikâ. Out of Bengal, the formula prescribed is widely different in expression.
page 184 note 3 “‘O'm! Let these women, not to be widowed, good wives, adorned with eollyrium, holding clarified butter, consign themselves to the fire. Immortal, not childless, nor husbandless, excellent, let them pass into fire, whose original element is water.’ (From the Rǐgvéda.)”
Where this is reprinted in the Miscellaneous Essays, “ excellent” is exchanged for “ well-adorned with gems.”
It was prior to April 18, 1794, that Colebrooke's first Essay was presented to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The revered author, in one of the latest of his Essays, read in 1826, speaking of various modes of suicide, formerly or still in use among the Hindus, remarks, that “they are not founded on the Ve'das, as that by burning is.” And his context shows, that he intended, no less than the self-cremation of males, the concremation of females. Essay On the Philosophy of the Hindus, Part iii. (Mímánsá), Transactions of the Soyal Asiatic Society, Vol. i., p. 458; or Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. i., p. 321.
page 184 note 4 “‘O'm! Let these wives, pure, beautiful, commit themselves to the fire, with their husband's corpse.’ (A Pauráńica mantra.)”
“Wives” is amended into “faithful wives,” in the Miscellaneous Essays.
The passages quoted in the last note and in this are introduced and followed, in the Essay, by such sentences as one would reckon on meeting with in any Directory of Concremation. They correspond, almost literally, to sentences in the S'uddhitattwa and elsewhere.
page 184 note 5 The S'uddhitattwa adduces them, one just after the other, in this form, as printed:
This is from Eaghunandana's Institutes of the Hindoo Religion (Serampore, 1834, 1835), Vol. ii., p. 136Google Scholar. I hare no access to any earlier or later edition.
As to the first of these stanzas, we here find a substitute for 
the ungrammatical 
the unmeaning 
, and the immetrical 
.
In the written Bengalee characters, l and n, differing by only a dot, as 
and 
are easily confounded. Hence, with the omission of a syllable, which some ignorant meddler struck out, as an erroneous repetition, 
for 
, the true reading.
Colebrooke's MS. of the S'uddhitattwa exhibits these variations: 
and 
.
Instead of the foregoing, the late Raja Râdhâkânta Deva published, in this Journal (Vol. xvii., p. 213), the following reading, professedly taken from the S'uddhitattwa,—as printed, likely enough, with exceptions that will be specified:
At the end of the second line there is, it may be surmised, one typographical error, if there are not two; for even 
would be nonsense. The Raja's argument necessitates 
; and the hint of this lection, with 
and 
was borrowed, I suspect, from Professor Wilson.
The reading of the Raja, as copied above, is the only one that has been edited from his manuscript.
The Rigveda (x., xviii., 7,) really has:
“Let these women, unwidowed, having good husbands, and with anointing butter on their eyes, enter their houses. Let the mothers, untearful, unmiserable, possessed of excellent wealth, go up to the house first.”
I have here followed Sâyana, save in not rendering 
by “approach,”, 
What is meant by 
Sâyana's “house,” is not obvious.
At all events, widows are not here addressed. In the next stanza, the object of address is changed: it is no longer a plurality of living women, but one woman, and that a widow, who is exhorted to “ come to the world of life.”
“If the custom of widow-burning had existed at that early period, there would have been no vidhavâs, no husbandless women, because they would all have followed their husbands into death. Therefore the very name indicates, what we are further enabled to prove by historical evidence, the late origin of widow-burning in India.”—Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. ii., p. 34.
Scarcely so. Suppose that the self-immolation of widows had had place in the days of the Ṛigveda: if it had been optional, as it has long been among the Hindus, there would have been vidhavds, all the same. As to “the late origin of widow-burning in India,” if Diodorus Siculus may be relied on, it must have antedated the third century before the Christian era.
Sir T. E. Colebrooke has been so good as to bring to my notice what were, presumably, the originals, barring a single word, of the two passages in question, as known to his father. The verses are entered, in MrColebrooke's, H. T. handwriting, in the margin of a copy of the Asiatic Researches, Vol. iv., p. 211Google Scholar, oppositethe translations of them. A punctual transcript is subjoined:
Imá nárír avidhawáh supatrnír anjanéna sarpisha
Samviśantu vibhavasum
A.nasaró' naríráh suratná áróhantu jalayónim agné.
This is written at the top of the page. At the side follows:
Asterisks have been supplied, to show how many letters have been cut off by the bookbinder.
With regard to the stanza from the Ṛigveda, it is tolerably clear, from several facts, that Colebrooke took it from no book, but was indebted, for it, to private communication. A learned Hindu would not readily admit into his work a passage containing a word destructive of all metre, as 
here is. 
is an interpolation; and, apparently, it was suggested by a remembrance of the “Pauráńica mantra,” which ends with that vocable. Again, anasaro, as uttered by a Bengalee, might easily be mistaken for anaswaro, which Colebrooke, as he interprets it “immortal,”no doubt thought an error for anaśwaro (
) supposed to be an irregular plural, instead of the 
ordinary Further, Colebrooke's 
, expanded into “not childless, nor husbandless,” is much the sort of venture that an indifferent Pandit would make, as a presumed safe emendation, in lieu of the archaic and strange 
; especially as the letters 
and 
differ, in the local characters, in 
and 
or 
, by only a dot or a bar. The inflection 
, “fire,” if not mentally read 
, must have been accounted an anomalous accusative; for just before it stands what was, to Colebrooke's mind, its epithet, 
“whose original element is water.” Nor, with 
to dispose of, would the case have been in the least bettered by reading 
;. This, it has been unquestioningly affirmed by Professor Wilson, and implied by Professor Müller, Colebrooke did read; and, in turn, they translate the words by “to the place of the fire” and “to the womb of fire.”
Professor Müller will have it, however, but quite gratuitously, that the Brahmans read, concurrently with the sophisticate 
, the uncorrupted 
:. Colebrooke's “water,” and the fact that the words he had translated were known to his above-Tiamed eucoessors by divination only, should have precluded such categorical positiveness. See this Journal, Vol. xvi., p. 203; and Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. ii., p. 36: also, Elphinstone's, History of India, edition of 1856, p. 50, note 8Google Scholar; and Chambers's, Encyclopedia, Vol. ix., (1867)Google Scholar, article Suttee. That the two learned Professors had no guidance from Raja Râdhâkânta Deva is proved by a comparison of dates. Professor Wilson, as just adduced, wrote in 1854; Professor Müller, in 1856; the Eaja, in 1858. Nor, for reasons already given, and still to be produced, can I look upon the Raja's evidence as of weight to corroborate the view of the other two.
Colebrooke, as has already been stated, dissatisfied with the term “excellent,” discarded it for “well-adorned with gems,” an expression which answers to 
. Previously he may have had some other word before him, and one indicating that his first text of the passage was even more incorrect than the second. On the whole, it appears conjecturable, that, subsequently to printing bis Essay, being desirous, from the unappealable authority of the stanza, of preserving its original, he recovered the words, by the aid of some Brahman, and nearly as they had before been given to him. Moreover, taking account of the time and circumstances, it is not improbable, that, when Colebrooke commenced Sanskrit student, his Brahman assistants were unwilling, or unable, to point out a Vaidik text to him in a book, and that he was, therefore, obliged to rely on their memory, such as it was. More than one of the corruptions dwelt on above is such as we might expect from a person recalling what is unfamiliar.
Colebrooke's text is, doubtless, a depravation based on one resembling Raghunandana's. And what was Eaghunandana's? Raja Râdhâkânta Deva's reading of it differs, as edited, most essentially from that printed in Raghunandana's Institutes. The former would have had no pertinency whatever to Raghunandana's context, as not containing even an allusion to fire or burning; and nothing in favour of concremation can be wrested from the lection 
, which, for the rest, as I have pointed out, is not the word that was supplied Colebrooke, nor that in his MS. of the S'uddhitattwa.
Provided with a less vitiated text than that of Colebrooke, the Rev. William Ward, conceiving, apparently, that he could improve on his translation, has offered the following, of his own: “O Fire, let these women, with bodies anointed with clarified butter, eyes (coloured) with stibium, and void of tears, enter thee, the parent of water, that they may not be separated from their husbands, but may be in union with excellent husbands, be sinless, and jewels among women.” A View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos, London edition of 1822, Vol. iii., p. 308Google Scholar.
On the licences which pervade this it is needless to descant. But Mr. Ward surely had before him 
, “in union with excellent husbands,” and 
“void of tears;” and his “sinless,” hypothetically, answers to 
What is of much greater importance to us, “the parent of water” presupposes 
; and “O fire,” 
, —a vocative, and that only, in correct grammar.
A translation varying but very slightly from MrWard's, , and palpably niched from it, is given in the London Asiatic journal, Vol. xxvi., (1828), p. 536Google Scholar.
Avowedly receiving the passage from the Ṛigveda as represented in the S'uddhitattwa, Mrityunjaya, in his elaborate opinion on widow-burning, quoted to the following effect, if we may trust the fidelity of Sir W. H. Macnaghten: “ Let these women, not to be widowed, good wives, adorned with collyrium, with dry eyes, devoid of affections, and well-ornamented, ascend the fire.” Much of this, no question, is simply copied from Colebrooke. At the same time, it comes out, on the faith of Mrityunjaya, that MSS. of Raghunandana know the readings 
;, “good wives”, and 
“with dry eyes.” “Devoid of affections ” is, possibly, a guess at the meaning of 
;, and, though the end of the stanza is only partially interpreted, we can trace the acceptance of a word for “fire,” taken to be in the aceusative, or else in the locative.
But it signifies very little on what minor points the text accepted by Raghunandana was right or wrong. That he saw, in the stanza, something about fire, in connexion with the suicide of a widow at her husband's death, is what I have been chiefly concerned to prove. And he, like many after him, was, with little of unlikelihood, satisfied with the gross mislection 
.
Let us revert to Professor Müller. “It is true,” he says, “that, when the English Government prohibited this melancholy custom [widow-burning], and when the whole of India seemed on the verge of a religious revolution, the Brahmans appealed to the Veda as the authority for this sacred rite; and, as they had the promise that their religious practices should not be interfered with, they claimed respect for the Suttee. They actually quoted chapter and verse from the Rig-veda; and Colebrooke, the most accurate and learned Sanskrit scholar we have ever had, has translated this passage in accordance with their views:
“‘Om! Let these women, not to be widowed, good wives, adorned with collyrium, holding clarified butter, consign themselves to the fire. Immortal, not childless, not [Colebrooke has ‘nor’] husbandless, well adorned with gems, let them pass into the [Colebrooke has no ‘the’] fire, whose original element is water.’ (From the Rig-veda).
“Now, this is, perhaps, the most flagrant instance of what can be done by an unscrupulous priesthood. Here have thousands and thousands of lives been sacrificed, and a fanatical rebellion been threatened on the authority of a passage which was mangled, mistranslated, and misapplied. If anybody had been able, at the time, to verify this verse of the Rig-veda, the Brahmans might have been beaten with their own weapons; nay, their spiritual prestige might have been considerably shaken. The Rig-veda, which now hardly one Brahman out of a hundred is able to read, so far from enforcing the burning of widows, shows clearly that this custom was not sanctioned during the earliest period of Indian history.” Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. ii., pp. 34, 35.
This has just been literally reprinted from the Oxford Essays of 1856, p. 22.
Professor Müller would have insurmountable difliculty in fastening the appeal that he speaks of on any Brahmans save a very few. “They actually quoted chapter and verse from the Rig-veda.” I must be allowed to doubt this exceedingly. In so doing, they would have done as Brahmans very seldom indeed do. It would have been most singular, too, if some one, with the aid of so suicidal a procedure, had not turned to the passage in the Ṛigveda, made known its genuine wording, and shown that no plea could be based thereon for burning widows. “If anybody had been able, at the time, to verify this verse of the Rig-veda,” etc. Was not even Colebrooke able to do so; the Brahmans having “quoted chapter and verse,” and he having Sayana's commentary at his elbow?
So far as has been ascertained, the adulterated passage is traceable to Raghunandana, So far as has been ascertained, the adulterated passage is traceable to Raghunandana, and no further. This writer, who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is, according to Colebrooke, “the greatest authority on Hindu law, in the Province of Bengal;” His authority is, however, of secondary rank beyond those limits, and in at least one part of Bengal itself, Tirhoot. That he may have been unconversant with the Veda is quite compatible with his deserved celebrity as a lawyer. His date is so recent, and his works have had such fame and currency, that there seems no good reason to disbelieve that he read, if not 
at least 
. To this conclusion all the trustworthy evidence that I have collected points well-nigh unequivocally. The presumption, to my mind, is, that he took 
for what it really is, a vocative; and the difference between this and 
, the true reading, is scarcely greater in the written Bengalee characters than it is as here printed. Where Raghunandana picked up the passage in its depraved form it would be idle to speculate.
At the same time, it is, I maintain, manifestly unjust to charge this textual corruption on “an unscrupulous priesthood.” India has its full share of priestcraft; but I am convinced that conscious falsification or misattribution of isolated texts has been very rarely practised by the Brahmans, notwithstanding the extent of their pseudonymous literature. As a sacred dictum can be ferreted out in support of almost any conceivable modification of received usage, and as one such is quite enough for the nonce, the dissuasives from dishonesty are maximized.
Especially in Indian commentaries and legal treatises,, we constantly come upon quotations widely deviating from correctness, or credited to a wrong source. To give a single instance, out of several that I have noticed, the topic being the concremation of widows; in the Jatamatta-vilâsa, a Tirhoot authority, there occurs, as Manu's, the following line, to be addressed to a damsel at her marriage, reminding her to accompany her husband in life and in death:
This verse—not in Manu—is quoted, I think, in a work which I have not at hand, the Dampatî-śiksfitâ; but, unlike a Pandit, I scruple to recollect as whose.
The truth, as to these and a thousand citations similarly misascribed, is, believe, that they were recorded without reference to book. The quantity of memorial matter that even a second-rate Pandit will deliver himself of, on demand, connected with any subject that he has made a specialty of study, would astonish a person unaoquainted with the peculiarities of studious Hindus.
To say, as Professor Müller says, that Colebrooke translated the false stanza of the Ṛigveda in accordance with the views of the Brahmans, is language that may easily mislead. It was not that he tied himself to any one's views in translating, bat that he translated an adulterated text, identical, in its essence, with one that has been accredited, without suspicion of its true character, by the most learned Brahmans of Bengal. Nor was the appearance of this translation subsequent to the prohibition of sutteeism,—as we should naturally infer from Professor Müller's phraseology,—but antecedent thereto by thirty-five years. Nor, again, with due advertence, would one speak, without accompanying explanation, of anything in Colebrooke's first Essay, a novitial and—absit verbo invidia—immature performance, in terms so construeable as to convey the impression that we have, therein, a sample of the scholarship of “the most accurate and learned Sanskrit scholar we have ever had.”
Whether in his utterances or in his reticences, Professor Müller, with most infrequent exceptions, displays, greatly to his credit, such anxiety of circumspection, and so constant a presence of purpose, that to try him on the weigh-bridge of ordinary judgment, in company with the herd of the uncritical, would simply betray a lack of all proper appreciation. That he can be inexact is the most that I bere insist on. His eloquence, learning, and eminent success in popularizing oriental and linguistic studies, one must be ignorant to gainsay, and ungenerous not to applaud.
To Professor Müller's thinking, Raghunandana's mislection has borne fruit in most dire disaster. But let us examine the matter a little closely. Out of Bengal, widow-burning was considered as sufficiently justified apart from Vaidik warrant. And we may be sure that the same was the case in Bengal. There, notoriously, the Vaidik tradition was, for many centuries, virtually in abeyance, and has only very recently undergone a galvanized resuscitation. Of this position we have satisfactory proof in the writings of Bengal Pandits. How many among them have commented on the Veda, or expounded the Mîmânsâ? Until very recently, the learned of Bengal have long been satisfied, substantially, to do without the Veda. They were ignorant of it, and they valued it lightly, and they seldom appealed to it. As they set little store by it, so did the commonalty; and it seems entirely unwarranted to imagine that the spiritual prestige of the priesthood would have been affected in the least degree, or that a single widow would have escaped an untimely end, had it been evulgated, ever so widely, that Raghunandana had mistaken a false text of the Ṛigveda for a true one. It would have been quite enough in Bengal, just as it actually was quite enough in parts of India where the Veda was held in higher esteem, to be able to name, in support of widow-burning, such venerable sages as Angiras, Vishnu, Vyâsa, and S'ukra, or even the Mahâbhârata and the Purânas. Nay, in default of all these, a Hindu would fain content himself with the proverbial Paurâṇik line,—incidentally quoted, with approval, by Mṛityunjaya, in his famous placitum on widowburning, —which imports, that “the very convention of the good is authority like that of the Veda:”
According to Professor Müller, in consequence of the Government prohibition of widow-burning, “the whole of India seemed on the verge of a religious revolution.” Was it indeed so?
“The apprehensions which had been entertained of the probable evil consequences of the abolition of the Suttee, and of the violent resentment and tumultuary resistance which it was likely to provoke, were singularly falsified. Some few attempts to evade or defy the law were at first tried, and with occasional success; 
and the people quietly submitted to the law. Enacts ments of a similar tendency were promulgated at Madras and at Bombay, and with the like result as in Bengal. Some feeble attempts were made, in Bengal, to obtain a reconsideration of the measure; and petitions were presented against it by a number of Hindus, chiefly persons of opulence, both in the interior and in Calcutta. As the application to the Governor-General, by the votaries of the ancient superstition, proved unavailing, the petitioners had recourse to the remaining legal source of redress, an appeal to the King in Council. Their cause was deliberately and dispassionately argued before the Privy Council in June, 1832; and, after hearing the arguments of the appellants, and of the advocates of the Court of Directors, as respondents, the Council recommended that the petition should be dismissed; and it was dismissed accordingly. The rejection of the petition was not followed by any excitement. An uneasy and sullen suspicion of the objects and intentions of the British Government continued, for a while, to pervade a considerable portion of the Hindu population; but it never assumed the form of popular agitation: and the progress of time, and the continued caution with which the British Government has abstained from further interposition, have dissipated any alarm and apprehension that might have been generated by its conduct in the prohibition of the Suttee.” ProfessorWilson, , History of British India from 1805 to 1835, Book III., Chapter viGoogle Scholar.
From a foot-note on the above: “One case of serious resistance occurred 1835, in a dependency of the Bombay Presidency, where, upon the death of the Raja, five of his wives were forcibly burned, in defiance of the efforts of the Assistant Political Commissioner to prevent it. Although he had a force of 300 men at his command, a still larger body of armed men was assembled, who were not dispersed without loss of life, and the necessity of calling in regular troops.”
In 1828, Professor Wilson had written: “I should be one of the warmest advocates for the abolition of so inhuman a rite, if I was not strongly impressed with the apprehension that serious evil may attend any measures proposed for its absolute suppression. The attempt, whilst it will be attended with but partial Raghu success, will, in my opinion, inspire extensive dissatisfaction and distrust, will alienate, in a great degree, the affections of the natives from their rulers,” etc. 
“The people will not regard the prohibition.” “If, then, it should be resolved to prohibit suttees, the Government must be prepared to let the prohibition remain inoperative, or to enforce it by measures which will partake very much of the nature of religious persecution, and which, whilst they confirm the adherence of the Hindus to their national superstitions, will diffuse a very extensive dread and detestation of the British authority.”
Mr. Marshman, in his History of India, just completed, says, likewise: “Not the slightest feeling of alarm, still less of resentment, was exhibited in the army, or in the country. Lord William Bentinck was enabled, within a twelvemonth, to assure the Directors that there never was a greater bugbear than the fear of revolt. The only circle in which the abolition created any sensation was that of the rich and orthodox baboos of Calcutta, who resented the decision of Government, and, more especially, the promptitude with which it had been carried into execution, as it deprived them of the gratification of obstructing it. They drew up a petition to the Government, 
demanding the restoration of the rite, as part and parcel of Hindooism, with which Parliament had pledged itself not to interfere. The native organ of the party, in his weekly journal, affirmed that the signataries to the petition for restoring the sacred rite of Suttee’ included ‘the learned, the wealthy, the virtuous, the noble, the polite, and the mild.’“ Vol. iii., pp. 55, 56.
See, further, MrKaye's, Administration of the East India Company, pp. 540, 541; andGoogle ScholarMrMarshman's, Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward, Vol. ii., pp. 417, 418Google Scholar. The cremation of widows has no warranty in the extant Ṛigveda; and it seems most likely that the Hindus, in the earliest ages, did not burn even their dead, but buried them. Still, sutteeism has been more or less in vogue, in India, during the past two thousand years and upwards. For some time before its abolition, Lower Bengal was its favourite theatre. In Central India, however, it must have been, formerly, very prevalent. There, not far from the banks of the Nerbudda, have counted, within the radius of a single mile, several hundred suttee-stones, with their suggestive symbols of obtestation,—an uplifted hand, the sun, the moon, and a group of stars. To these are added the figures of a man and woman. In some representations, the pair stand hand in hand; in others, the wife shampooes her husband's legs. In some instances there is a horse, also. The sculptures are, generally, executed in bass-relief. The oldest of these monuments, bearing dates, that I have examined, were erected in the tenth century.
page 191 note 1 For, in the article of indicating his ancient authorities, so far as they were known to him, though it might be only at second-hand, no one could be more invariably punctilious than Colebrooke.
page 191 note 2 The original words are as follows:—
As will have been perceived, Colebrooke might have corrected his first Essay by his Digest; and, while engaged on the latter, he must, of course, have noticed the misapprehension which he laboured under, concerning these verses, when preparing the other. His collected Essays were published during his last illness, when he was disabled, by blindness, from scrutinizing them anew. It might not, else, have been left to others to observe on the very venial defects of his preliminary effort as an orientalist,—a mere “task,” as he himself has called it.
page 192 note 1 Institutes, Vol. ii., p. 132.
page 192 note 2 Assuming that the stanza actually appertains to this Purâna, the alternative question arises, whether allusion is made, in it, to the corrupted stanza of the Ṛigveda which we have had under consideration, or whether to a like passage that belonged to some recension of the Ṛigveda now lost.
page 192 note 3 Institutes, Vol. ii., p. 133. This is the first of the two places where Raghunandana quotes the stanza referred to.
page 192 note 4 Ibid., Vol ii., p. 132.
page 192 note 5 In this Journal, Vol. xvii., p, 213.