Re-Presented for the Pandits: James Ballantyne, ‘Useful Knowledge,’ and Sanskrit Scholarship in Benares College during the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In January of 1853, the Lt Governor of the North-Western Provinces, James Thomason, inaugurated a new building in Banaras, situated perhaps halfway between the European cantonment and the ghats which line the sacred river Ganga. Designed in a high Gothic style by Major Kittoe, this was to be the new home of the Benares College, which incorporated one of the largest, and most symbolically important, Sanskrit departments of any British educational institution in north India. The building itself, which is now incorporated into Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, somewhat resembles a Christian church, for it is a long structure with high vaulted ceilings and a large stained glass window in the wall opposite the main entrance doors. Inscribed into the walls are verses in English and Hindi; one counsels that ‘the lips of truth shall be established forever, a lying tongue is but for a moment.’ Under this roof, it was intended that the knowledges of East and West would, in some sense, be united, for the College's Superintendent during the mid-nineteenth century, James Ballantyne, was pursuing a pedagogy which was intended to demonstrate to the learned Hindu elite that the truths of European philosophy and science, while constituting a significant advancement upon Hindu learning, might also be reached by way of the latter's sound, yet undeveloped, premises. As such, Thomason spoke to the audience present that day of the Benares College as a beacon in the midst of a waning brahmanical system, from which enlightenment would spread forth: ‘one instrument in the mighty change.’