BVT 4. Bhaktivinoda Thakur and his thirst for knowledge
I lost a lot of enthusiasm for learning new things in the last couple of years. I took it that there is too little time left and I should concentrate on essentials, build on perfecting the things I had started earlier in this, the last mile of my life.
The temptations of learning have been greatly exacerbated in this "information age." It seems to me that we are all suffering from an indigestion of knowledge. But this only increases the appetite for more, so the ambitious young want to assimilate everything there is to know about everything. It certainly fueled me in my more energetic periods during life.
One of the things I was meditating on in my studies of Bhaktivinoda Thakur.was his avid pursuit of knowledge. I don't doubt for an instant that he was a man of greatly superior intelligence.
At any rate, here is what I have written in my introduction to the Autobiography. Some of this has already been posted, mostly here.:
4. An English Education
Bhaktivinoda Thakur was born in 1838, not long after Macaulay submitted his influential “Minute on Education” (1835), which directed the British rulers to install an educational system that had the following objectives:
"We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, -- a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. [Para 34]"
It must be said that not long after Kedarnath Datt came to maturity, Macaulay's objectives had been effectively achieved, in great part by virtue of the Hindu upper classes' acquiescence to the logic of the "Minute" and by their voluntary acceptance of British rule. This was not just because British rule was considered an improvement over that of the Muslims, though for many Hindus – including Bhaktivinoda -- that was the case, whether openly stated or not. The general technological and organizational superiority of the British was impressive, and even nationalist stalwarts like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee realized that there would be no meaning to Indian independence without first acquiring the skills that would make the country capable of defending itself from its enemies and surviving. Bhaktivinoda thought, like Bankim, that the British Raj was a Good Thing for India, at least for the time being.
From the Jīvanī we know that Kedarnath Datt was a great Anglophile in his formative years, who immersed himself deeply in an English-language education. He started young, and when his capacities were recognized by an influential relative, Kashiprasad Ghose, he was given the the best opportunities then available. [58ff] He became a participant in the social currents of the Bengal Renaissance. While still a teenager, he wrote English poetry and articles for Ghose’s magazine, The Hindu Intelligencer, loved to give English language speeches in debating clubs about English and European literature, philosophy and religion. He even took lessons in oratory from George Thompson, a British abolitionist MP who was in Calcutta at the time. [72]
Kedarnath's fellow students included Satyendranath Tagore of the famous Joro Sanko Tagores, an older brother of Rabindranath. Satyendranath’s father was Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905), one of the founders of the Brahmo Samaj and its lifelong leader. Kedarnath was a frequent visitor, as Satyendranath’s older brother Dwijendranath became his closest friend [78-82]. The Brahmo Samaj was the most influential religious reform movement of the period, an attempt to rationalize Hinduism and rid it of superstitions and outdated customs and rituals. It had great appeal to many in the educated and progressive sections of Hindu society, but also became locked into controversy with the more traditional sector to which the Thakur himself gravitated.
After twice failing to pass the Calcutta University entrance exams due to sickness, Kedarnath sustained his education through independent reading, propelled by his phenomenal thirst for knowledge. [79-80] His primary areas of interest were literature, philosophy and religion. His study of Christianity was mediated through influential contemporary Protestant missionaries, in particular Unitarians and Presbyterians.
The British were in desperately in need of competent people to help manage their vast empire. Kedaranath Datt took pains to ingratiate himself with the higher-ranked British officers whom he was often able to charm with his learned conversation, and proudly reproduces their testimonials that show how he had won their confidence. The British civil servants in India were highly educated, passing what is often described as the most difficult entrance exam ever devised to take on huge responsibilities in India, and he was able to discuss matters in English on a fairly high level of sophistication, being familiar with European history, culture and philosophy to an extent that was rare among even educated Bengalis.
A lot of things are tantalizing and left without expansion. Bhaktivinoda mentions certain significant historical figures with whom he studied or worked – Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagara, Dwijendranath Tagore, Keshab Chandra Sen, to name only a few – but leaves out many details of his interactions with them. It would be also have been interesting to know more of what he discussed in his long conversations with many of the highly placed British officers with whom he served in the Administrative Service. We know that he made a favorable impression on them despite the limitations of his formal education as he worked his way up the ladder to Deputy Magistrate Second Grade.
A lot of the Jīvanī, especially the portion covering the period post-1880 seems to be taken from Bhaktivinoda Thakur's diary notes – where he went, where he was stationed, his physical illnesses and so on. He diligently catalogs the various posts and promotions he was given while in service. He cites the many letters of recommendation he received from his superiors at various stages of his career. From this we get some idea from him of the professional life of a highly placed "native" civil servant in the latter part of the 19th century. But by the time the Thakur reached a pensionable age, he wanted only to dedicate his life completely to the service of Mahaprabhu, in writing and publishing, then in forming Namahattas, and then in the revelation, not long before his retirement from service, that he was to become in sort an architect of the Nabadwip of the future, and finally in exclusive Nam bhajan, free from all worldly involvements.
Therefore, intertwined with the story of Kedarnath Datt's career, and of far greater significance, is that of his spiritual awakening. The first part of his life can be characterized as one of discovery, the second that of absorption in Gaudiya Vaishnava thought and literature, of outreach, and finally increasing inwardness – a period that is not covered in the Autobiography.
For Kedarnath, his becoming a Vaishnava must have been as much a surprise for him as it would have been for all the influential bhadralok who were the primary movers of the Bengali Renaissance, in which Vaishnavism had little place to speak of. All the other prominent Bengali officers in the bureaucracy were headed in quite a different direction: at first to the Brahmo Samaj and then later to the Ramkrishna Mission and secular nationalism. But somehow, it was the traditional Bengali Hindu in him that asserted itself.
His first interest became to preserve the accumulated knowledge of the great Sanatan tradition stretching back to the Vedic seers, especially as it had been most recently manifested in the particular divine blessing brought to this world through the descent of Bengal's own Avatar, Prophet or Savior, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
In view of Macaulay’s stated intention, then, Bhaktivinoda Thakur is a kind of interesting failed experiment. As to all his assiduous assimilation of an English education, he gives his judgment in a song from Saranagati.
To say this does not mean, however, that Bhaktivinoda did not make use of the skills that he had imbibed in his long life of involvement with the British. His enthusiastic embrace of printing, of organizing outreach with Nama-hattas, his belief in the progressiveness of thought even in matters of spiritual insight, his assimilation of certain Protestant ideas, an area that is still in need of research. In the end, he did as Macaulay exhorted, he enriched the Bengali language with new terminology for religious discourse, much of which he was able to adapt from the extant scriptures, but nevertheless were created for concepts, ways of thinking and analysis that often came out of his English education.
If one thing seems to have been a ruling principle for Bhaktivinoda Thakur, it is that the primary intellectual exercise is to grasp the essential meaning of a thing, and that this exercise of reason should be applied to the study of scripture. One must separate which texts are subject to mundane perception and reasoning, and which are only accessible through samadhi, This approach may have been more natural to him, because he first approached the scripture from a purely critical direction, and only later fell in love with it directly, even before he had taken initiation or been overwhelmingly influenced by any specific Vaishnava.
But one cannot underestimate the difference in Bhaktivinoda Thakur's post-1880. He gradually became more focused on the essence -- bhajana -- accessing the realm that can only be known through bhakti, as exemplified in some of his last writings like Bhajana-rahasya, Harināma-cintāmaṇi, Sva-niyama-dvadaśakam, Saṅkalpa-kalpa-druma, indicate.
Other articles in the introduction
BVT 1-2 : Invocation and Introduction to the Autobiography
BVT 3 :: Modern Scholarship on Bhaktivinoda Thakur
BVT 4 :: Bhaktivinoda Thaku and his thirst for knowledge.
BVT 5 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Christianity
BVT 6 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur in Jagannath Puri
BVT 7 :: Bhaktivinoda and the Meat-eating issue
BVT 8 :: Initiation from Bipin Bihari Goswami
BVT 9 :: Bipin Bihari Goswami in the Thakur's Writings
BVT 10 :: Lalita Prasad Thakur
BVT 11 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Sampradaya
BVT 12 :: The Authenticity of the Autobiography
Other articles inspired by the Autobiography:
A Bengali Zamindar's education in the 1840's
Bipin Bihari's testimonial to his best disciple Kedarnath Datta
Longfellow and Bhaktivinoda Thakur's poems
And also,
Hari-nama-cintamani related posts
Siddhi-lalasa
The temptations of learning have been greatly exacerbated in this "information age." It seems to me that we are all suffering from an indigestion of knowledge. But this only increases the appetite for more, so the ambitious young want to assimilate everything there is to know about everything. It certainly fueled me in my more energetic periods during life.
One of the things I was meditating on in my studies of Bhaktivinoda Thakur.was his avid pursuit of knowledge. I don't doubt for an instant that he was a man of greatly superior intelligence.
At any rate, here is what I have written in my introduction to the Autobiography. Some of this has already been posted, mostly here.:
4. An English Education
Bhaktivinoda Thakur was born in 1838, not long after Macaulay submitted his influential “Minute on Education” (1835), which directed the British rulers to install an educational system that had the following objectives:
"We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, -- a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. [Para 34]"
It must be said that not long after Kedarnath Datt came to maturity, Macaulay's objectives had been effectively achieved, in great part by virtue of the Hindu upper classes' acquiescence to the logic of the "Minute" and by their voluntary acceptance of British rule. This was not just because British rule was considered an improvement over that of the Muslims, though for many Hindus – including Bhaktivinoda -- that was the case, whether openly stated or not. The general technological and organizational superiority of the British was impressive, and even nationalist stalwarts like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee realized that there would be no meaning to Indian independence without first acquiring the skills that would make the country capable of defending itself from its enemies and surviving. Bhaktivinoda thought, like Bankim, that the British Raj was a Good Thing for India, at least for the time being.
From the Jīvanī we know that Kedarnath Datt was a great Anglophile in his formative years, who immersed himself deeply in an English-language education. He started young, and when his capacities were recognized by an influential relative, Kashiprasad Ghose, he was given the the best opportunities then available. [58ff] He became a participant in the social currents of the Bengal Renaissance. While still a teenager, he wrote English poetry and articles for Ghose’s magazine, The Hindu Intelligencer, loved to give English language speeches in debating clubs about English and European literature, philosophy and religion. He even took lessons in oratory from George Thompson, a British abolitionist MP who was in Calcutta at the time. [72]
Kedarnath's fellow students included Satyendranath Tagore of the famous Joro Sanko Tagores, an older brother of Rabindranath. Satyendranath’s father was Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905), one of the founders of the Brahmo Samaj and its lifelong leader. Kedarnath was a frequent visitor, as Satyendranath’s older brother Dwijendranath became his closest friend [78-82]. The Brahmo Samaj was the most influential religious reform movement of the period, an attempt to rationalize Hinduism and rid it of superstitions and outdated customs and rituals. It had great appeal to many in the educated and progressive sections of Hindu society, but also became locked into controversy with the more traditional sector to which the Thakur himself gravitated.
After twice failing to pass the Calcutta University entrance exams due to sickness, Kedarnath sustained his education through independent reading, propelled by his phenomenal thirst for knowledge. [79-80] His primary areas of interest were literature, philosophy and religion. His study of Christianity was mediated through influential contemporary Protestant missionaries, in particular Unitarians and Presbyterians.
The British were in desperately in need of competent people to help manage their vast empire. Kedaranath Datt took pains to ingratiate himself with the higher-ranked British officers whom he was often able to charm with his learned conversation, and proudly reproduces their testimonials that show how he had won their confidence. The British civil servants in India were highly educated, passing what is often described as the most difficult entrance exam ever devised to take on huge responsibilities in India, and he was able to discuss matters in English on a fairly high level of sophistication, being familiar with European history, culture and philosophy to an extent that was rare among even educated Bengalis.
A lot of things are tantalizing and left without expansion. Bhaktivinoda mentions certain significant historical figures with whom he studied or worked – Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagara, Dwijendranath Tagore, Keshab Chandra Sen, to name only a few – but leaves out many details of his interactions with them. It would be also have been interesting to know more of what he discussed in his long conversations with many of the highly placed British officers with whom he served in the Administrative Service. We know that he made a favorable impression on them despite the limitations of his formal education as he worked his way up the ladder to Deputy Magistrate Second Grade.
A lot of the Jīvanī, especially the portion covering the period post-1880 seems to be taken from Bhaktivinoda Thakur's diary notes – where he went, where he was stationed, his physical illnesses and so on. He diligently catalogs the various posts and promotions he was given while in service. He cites the many letters of recommendation he received from his superiors at various stages of his career. From this we get some idea from him of the professional life of a highly placed "native" civil servant in the latter part of the 19th century. But by the time the Thakur reached a pensionable age, he wanted only to dedicate his life completely to the service of Mahaprabhu, in writing and publishing, then in forming Namahattas, and then in the revelation, not long before his retirement from service, that he was to become in sort an architect of the Nabadwip of the future, and finally in exclusive Nam bhajan, free from all worldly involvements.
Therefore, intertwined with the story of Kedarnath Datt's career, and of far greater significance, is that of his spiritual awakening. The first part of his life can be characterized as one of discovery, the second that of absorption in Gaudiya Vaishnava thought and literature, of outreach, and finally increasing inwardness – a period that is not covered in the Autobiography.
For Kedarnath, his becoming a Vaishnava must have been as much a surprise for him as it would have been for all the influential bhadralok who were the primary movers of the Bengali Renaissance, in which Vaishnavism had little place to speak of. All the other prominent Bengali officers in the bureaucracy were headed in quite a different direction: at first to the Brahmo Samaj and then later to the Ramkrishna Mission and secular nationalism. But somehow, it was the traditional Bengali Hindu in him that asserted itself.
His first interest became to preserve the accumulated knowledge of the great Sanatan tradition stretching back to the Vedic seers, especially as it had been most recently manifested in the particular divine blessing brought to this world through the descent of Bengal's own Avatar, Prophet or Savior, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
In view of Macaulay’s stated intention, then, Bhaktivinoda Thakur is a kind of interesting failed experiment. As to all his assiduous assimilation of an English education, he gives his judgment in a song from Saranagati.
bidyāra bilāse kāṭāinu kāla,
parama sāhase āmi
tomāra caraṇa, nā bhajinu kabhu,
ekhana śaraṇa tumi
I spent my time confidently
taking pleasure in mundane learning
I never worshiped Your Lotus feet, O Lord.
Now You are my only shelter.
paḏite paḏite, bharasā bāḏila
jñāne gati habe māni
se āśā biphala, se jñāna durbala
se jñāna ajñāna jāni
As I studied, my hopes grew, for I considered
material knowledge to be life’s true path.
How fruitless that hope, how feeble that knowledge!
I know now such knowledge is ignorance.
jaḏa-bidyā jata, māyāra baibhaba,
tomāra bhajane bādhā
moha janamiẏā, anitya saṁsāre,
jībake karaẏe gādhā
All material knowledge is a power of illusion;
it impedes one's bhajan;
it causes infatuation in this temporary world, and thus
makes an ass of the conditioned soul.
sei gādhā haẏe, saṁsārera bojhā,
bahinu aneka kāla
bardhakye ekhana, śaktira abhābe,
kichu nāhi lāge bhāla
I became just such an ass and for so long
carried the burden of material life.
Now in my old age, I have lost all strength
and no longer find pleasure in anything.
jībana yātana, haila ekhana,
se bidyā abidyā bhela
abidyāra jbālā, ghaṭila biṣama,
se bidyā haila śaila
Life has now become an agony;
all that knowledge has proven itself worthless,
ignorance has penetrated my heart with
the intolerable, burning pain of a pointed shaft.
tomāra caraṇa, binā kichu dhana,
saṁsāre na āche āra
bhakatibinoda, jaḏa bidyā chāḏi
tuẏā pada kare sāra
O Lord, other than Your lotus feet,
I seek no other treasure in this world
Bhaktivinoda abandons everything
to make Your feet his life's essence.
To say this does not mean, however, that Bhaktivinoda did not make use of the skills that he had imbibed in his long life of involvement with the British. His enthusiastic embrace of printing, of organizing outreach with Nama-hattas, his belief in the progressiveness of thought even in matters of spiritual insight, his assimilation of certain Protestant ideas, an area that is still in need of research. In the end, he did as Macaulay exhorted, he enriched the Bengali language with new terminology for religious discourse, much of which he was able to adapt from the extant scriptures, but nevertheless were created for concepts, ways of thinking and analysis that often came out of his English education.
If one thing seems to have been a ruling principle for Bhaktivinoda Thakur, it is that the primary intellectual exercise is to grasp the essential meaning of a thing, and that this exercise of reason should be applied to the study of scripture. One must separate which texts are subject to mundane perception and reasoning, and which are only accessible through samadhi, This approach may have been more natural to him, because he first approached the scripture from a purely critical direction, and only later fell in love with it directly, even before he had taken initiation or been overwhelmingly influenced by any specific Vaishnava.
But one cannot underestimate the difference in Bhaktivinoda Thakur's post-1880. He gradually became more focused on the essence -- bhajana -- accessing the realm that can only be known through bhakti, as exemplified in some of his last writings like Bhajana-rahasya, Harināma-cintāmaṇi, Sva-niyama-dvadaśakam, Saṅkalpa-kalpa-druma, indicate.
Other articles in the introduction
BVT 1-2 : Invocation and Introduction to the Autobiography
BVT 3 :: Modern Scholarship on Bhaktivinoda Thakur
BVT 4 :: Bhaktivinoda Thaku and his thirst for knowledge.
BVT 5 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Christianity
BVT 6 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur in Jagannath Puri
BVT 7 :: Bhaktivinoda and the Meat-eating issue
BVT 8 :: Initiation from Bipin Bihari Goswami
BVT 9 :: Bipin Bihari Goswami in the Thakur's Writings
BVT 10 :: Lalita Prasad Thakur
BVT 11 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Sampradaya
BVT 12 :: The Authenticity of the Autobiography
Other articles inspired by the Autobiography:
A Bengali Zamindar's education in the 1840's
Bipin Bihari's testimonial to his best disciple Kedarnath Datta
Longfellow and Bhaktivinoda Thakur's poems
And also,
Hari-nama-cintamani related posts
Siddhi-lalasa
Comments
भ (bha) “f. light or a beam of light, lustre, splendour” (see 4):
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=742.gif
From √ भा (bhā) 1. “to shine, be bright or luminous; to shine forth, appear, show one's self, to be splendid” 2. “light, brightness, splendour:”
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=750.gif
अक्ति (akti) “ointment”, see अक्त (aktá) “smeared over, diffused, bedaubed, tinged, oil, ointment” (see 2.):
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=2.gif
From √ अञ्ज् (añj) “to honour, celebrate; to cause to appear, make clear; to be beautiful; to go; to apply an ointment or pigment, smear with, anoint; to honour, celebrate; to shine; to cause to go:”
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=11.gif
Go and read the rest of the entry on Page 1001 of Monier-Williams Jagadananda Das (think of the yogic anointing of abhiṣeka):
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=1001.gif
सृज् (sṛj): “to let go or fly, discharge , throw, cast, hurl at; to cast or let go ( a measuring line ); to emit, pour forth, shed, cause to flow ( rain, streams etc. ); to utter ( a sound ); to turn or direct ( glances ); to let loose, cause ( horses ) to go quickly; to speed, run, hasten; to release, set free; to open ( a door ); to publish, proclaim; to draw out and twist ( a thread ), twist, wind, spin ( lit. and fig.); to emit from one's self, i.e. create, procreate, produce, beget; to procure, grant, bestow; to use, employ; to get, acquire, obtain, take; to hang on, fasten to; to be let loose or emitted or created, to cause to let loose, let go, create; to wish to send forth or hurl or throw:”
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=1245.gif
नोद (noda) √ नुद् (nud) “pushing away, repelling”:
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=571.gif
नुद् (nud) “to push, thrust, impel, move; to push on, urge, incite; to push or drive away repeatedly; pushing, impelling, driving away, removing:
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=567.gif
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=430.gif
कु (ku) 3. See √ 1. Kū:
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=285.gif
कू (kū) “to sound, make any noise, cry out, moan, cry (as a bird), coo, hum (as a bee); to move; to cry aloud:”
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=299.gif
र (ra) 3. mfn. (√ रा [rā]) “acquiring, possessing, giving, effecting, m. (only L.) fire, heat; love, desire; speed; amorous play; giving; gold; f. going, motion; brightness, splendour:”
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=859.gif
रा (rā) “to grant , give, bestow, impart, yield, surrender; granting, bestowing;”
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=871.gif