MARC AUREL STEIN IN KASHMIR
"Stein was the bedrock of India's archaeology, India's history, India's strategic interest in Central Asia." ….Dr Lokesh Chandra
Sir Marc Aurel Stein is commonly known the world over for the translation of Kalhana’s , Rajatarangini, “The River Of Kings” into English from Sanskrit, was a Hungarian scholar, polyglot, explorer, archaeologist, and geographer. Born on November 26, 1862, to a Jewish parents in Budapest, he was baptized in Christianity to get him exposed to the European culture, education, and sciences. Jewish religion did not allow Jews in those days to take part in European Christian culture which created obstacles in their way of getting education in the educational institutions of Europe.
In Dresden University , Germany , he mastered German ,Greek, Latin, French and English languages . He also graduated in Sanskrit and Persian at the Universities of Vienna and Leipzig. He received PhD in Sanskrit in 1883 at Tubingen University in Germany. During his studies , he came under the influence of Prof Rudolph Von Roth ( his brother ) and Prof George Buhler. Rudolf von Roth was a German Indologist, founder of the Vedic philology. His chief work is a monumental Sanskrit dictionary, compiled in collaboration with Otto von Böhtlingk. Prof Buhler was an Indologist who happened to be an outstanding and influential Austrian scholar of Sanskrit and Prakrit apart from being a member of Asiatic Society . Bühler held a chair at Elphinstone College, Bombay, and was keeper of the oriental manuscripts in the Bombay Presidency. He returned to Europe to the Sanskrit chair at Vienna, where he helped to set up the Oriental Institute. Perhaps his best known work in the English-speaking world is his translation of ‘The Laws of Manu’ (Manusmṛti) (1886) for the Sacred Books of the East series. Together with Judge Sir Raymond West he published the Digest of Hindu Law of Inheritance, Partition and Adoption, third edition, 1884. Buehler toured Kashmir in search of manuscripts .He also gave details about hitherto unknown authors and their works. Among them were Kalhana,Bilhana and Ksemendra, the Kashmir poet and polyhistorian whose works are important for the study of the history of literature and the epics. He discussed Rajatarangini, the chronicles of the Kings of Kashmir. His plan of undertaking translation of the manuscripts could not be carried out on account of his early death.
KASHMIR VISIT
In 1887 when Stein was only 26 years old, he left home and came to India where he worked at Punjab University and Oriental College, Lahore for some time. He visited Kashmir first in August 1888 and continued his visits to Kashmir till the last year of his life .In summers, he would come and usually stay at his favourite alpine meadow, Mahand Marg in Ganderbal. A tent would be pitched for him where he would read, write and contemplate in the company of his learned and scholarly Kashmiri Pandit friends.His brother, Prof Rudolph Von Roth and George Buhler were guiding and inspiring spirits behind his scholarly pursuits in studying Sanskrit manuscripts of Kashmir. From Prof Rudolp Von Roth and Prof Buhler, Aurel Stein had come to know about Rajatarangini and some more manuscript of Kashmir that needed translation.
PROJECT RAJATARANGINI
William Moorcroft was the first European to see the manuscript of Rajatarangini during his Kashmir visit in 1822. Prof Buhler had visited Kashmir in 1875 during the reign of Maharaja Ranbir Singh. All noted Sanskrit scholars of Kashmir contacted him and showed him Sanskrit manuscripts for examination. However, he was not shown the manuscript of Rajatangini fully. Buhler was permitted only a glimpse of Rajatangini manuscript before the owner took the manuscript away. George Buhler left Kashmir and India without having been given the manuscript of Rajatarangini. In the colophons of the manuscript, Buhler saw the name Sivarama as the representative of the Kashmiri Pandit family which alone had always preserved a copy of the Rajatarangini. Stein had heard about the whole story and had also read about it in Buhler’s published critical notes on Kashmir’s Sanskrit manuscripts.The Pandit who had denied George Buhler the Rajatarangini manuscript had died already when Stein arrived on the scene. The three sons of the late Pandit had cut and divided the manuscript into three parts. Stein’s endeavours and negotiations for the delivery manuscript bore fruit with the efforts of a Pandit who was a member of the State Regency Council and whose son was a pupil of Oriental College Lahore. Stein was able to get codex archetypes of all extant manuscripts of the chronicle. In 1892, he first published the “critical edition” of the text of the chronicle only. Then, in 1900 he published through Westminster, the text with commentated translation under footnotes of the Pandit Kalhana’s Shloks of the Kavya, titled Rajatangini. In his long and comprehensive introduction to the chronicle, he has acknowledged his gratitude to Prof Buhler under whose guidance he had developed into a world-reputed Sanskrit scholar.Stein devoted himself to the task of translating Kalhana’s Rajatarangini in the summers from 1888 to 1898, he had also, in between gone for archaeological and geographical expeditions in Kashmir. Stein had the company and “help” of well-known Pandit Sanskrit scholars that included Pandit Damodhar, Pandit Govind Koul and others . Pandit Govind Koul accompanied him at Mahand Marg .
Pandit Govind Koul was a close friend of Pandit Isvara Koul who had partially prepared Sir George Grierson’s dictionary. Govind Koul was a polymath and a scholar from Kashmir .In 1874, when Maharaja Ranbir Singh set up his Translation Department, Pandit Govind Koul was made its incharge. He was tasked to translate the Sanskrit chronicles of Kashmir into Hindi together with Pandit Sahaz Bhatt. George Buhler had seen Pandit Govind Koul’s erudition and scholarship and accordingly, it was he who recommended Govind Koul to Aurel Stein .
From Pandit Govind Koul, Stein picked up the Kashmiri language and many folktales. Stein had various geographical and archaeological tours of Kashmir and his book Memoir on Maps: Illustrating the Ancient Geography of Kasmir was published in 1899. It was in sharp contrast to all books written on the geography of Kashmir by other European explorers and scholars of sciences of geography and archaeology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was not his geography book on Kashmir that earned him a name but his translation of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini that gave him recognition.
CENTRAL ASIA AND CHINA TRAVELS
In 1901, after the completion of the translation of Rajatangini, he was appointed Inspector of Education by the British Resident in Kashmir to supervise the progress of education in Kashmir. Instead of taking the Kashmir education seriously, Stein set out on antiquarian searches in 1900-1901 and thereafter intermittently till 1930, in Central Asia, Kashghar, Yarqand, Eastern Turkestan and many more places. He is credited with making several major archaeological excavations in the old cities of Khanates in the Xingjian province of China. Stein made four major expeditions to Central Asia—in 1900–1901, 1906–1908, 1913–1916 and 1930. He brought to light the hidden treasure of a great civilization which by then was practically lost to the world.He was a great traveller too who visited the Central Asian countries and recorded his experiences in his letters to his brother Ernst Stein. He had a spectacular archaeological expedition into Chinese Turkestan .He visited Taklamakan desert ,Miran, Khotan,Dunhuang, Mogao Caves ( known as "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas"), and many places in Central asia in search of manuscripts, sculptures , paintings and artefacts. It was there that he discovered a printed copy of the Diamond Sutra, the world's oldest printed text, dating to AD 868, along with 40,000 other scrolls. He brought 24 cases of manuscripts and 4 cases of paintings and relics. The art objects he collected are divided between the British Museum, the British Library, the Srinagar Museum, and the National Museum, New Delhi. Archaeology, a journal published by the Archaeological Institute of America writes this (volume 50 number 6, November/December 1997):-
"The most daring and adventurous raid upon the ancient world that any archaeologist had attempted ." Stein's three expeditions over freezing 18,000-foot Himalayan passes and across the scorching deserts of Chinese Turkestan, tracing ancient caravan routes while documenting the spread of Buddhism from India to China, had filled whole rooms in London's British Museum and Delhi's Museum of Central-Asian Antiquities (now the National Museum). It took 182 packing cases to hold the finds of his third expedition (1913-1916) to the region, which he called Serindia (the Greeks referred to China as Seres, from the word for silkworm).”
Encyclopedia Britannica mentions this :-
“For British and Europeans he had unearthed the hidden archaeological treasures of the region, but Swedish author, Jan Myral, though known for his Maoist ideology, who travelled to Sinkiang region in 1976, has written that the Central Asian Muslims, Khojas of Turfan city, had a different perception about Marc Aurel Stein and other European archaeologists who travelled the region at the turn of the last century. They were all “thieves and spies. What else could you call men like Aurel Stein…….they travelled, researched and dug, and they were called scientists and they knighted and given medals and rewards. …… how could anyone explore countries, roads, and towns that had been known for two thousand years …… had traded with Europe long before Berlin or Stockholm or St Petersburg had even been thought about? We had cities when those were forests, marshes and wilderness”, Khojas of Turfan told him. They told him that “thieves” stole from them sculptures, paintings and precious antiquarian items.”
WORK AT SRI RAGHUNATH TEMPLE SANSKRIT LIBRARY, JAMMU
To protect rare manuscripts and texts lying in private hands, Maharaja Ranbir Singh opened the Raghunath Temple Sanskrit Manuscript Library at Jammu.Pandit Asananda of Jammu ,who was connected with the royal family of Jammu did some wonderful work by collecting manuscripts from the people by spending about fifteen thousand rupees from the treasury as per instructions of Maharaja Ranbir Singh.The Maharaja entrusted manuscript collection from Kashmir to Pandit Rajkak who was assisted by Pandit Balbadhra, Pandit Sahib Ram ,Pandit Krishna Bhat ,Pandit Daya Ram and Pandit Sukh Ram. These Pandits also procured some rare birch bark manuscripts for the Raghunath Library.
At present, the Library has more than 6000 manuscripts, of which around 2000 have been digitised . It also houses more than twenty thousand books .Many manuscripts preserved in the Raghunath Temple Sanskrit Manuscript Library have been written in Sharda script. The collection at the Raghunath Temple Sanskrit Manuscript Library includes books on grammar, lexicography, prosody, music, rhetoric, Kavya, drama, fables, Dharmasutras, Mimamsa, Vedanta, Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Jyotisha, architecture, medicine, epics, Puranas, Bhakti and Tantra.
From Professor Buhler's write ups, Aurel Stein came to know about Maharaja Ranbir Singh's private collection of manuscripts held inside Sri Raghunath Ji Temple complex, Jammu. Stein had come to Kashmir to collect Sanskrit and Sharda manuscripts .After completing his task with the help of his many Pandit friends, he left Srinagar in August 1888 and arrived in Jammu. In Jammu, he inspected the manuscripts that were held in shabby condition in two locked rooms inside Sri Raghunath Ji Temple.He was more than certain that if not catalogued, segregated and scientifically preserved, this treasure may be lost due to harsh climatic conditions ,termites and other insects .He sought help from the British resident in Kashmir and together they impressed Maharaja Partap Singh for cataloguing and scientific and proper preservation of the treasure.
Credit goes to Aurel Stein for getting the manuscripts catalogued using services of some expert Kashmiri Pandits proficient in Sanskrit and Sharda .Stein again visited Jammu in 1889 for this work and was given full cooperation by Pandit Radhakrishen ,the then Governor of Jammu who got a separate building constructed for this library inside Sri Raghu Nath Ji Temple complex . Maharaja Partap Singh issued orders for this task and sanctioned special pay of Rs75 and Rs 50 per month respectively to Pandit Govind Koul and Pandit Sahaj Kak Bhat ( Sahaz Bhat ) who catalogued more than six thousand rare manuscripts in a scientific manner for this library. These experts were assisted by Pandit Mukandram Shastri from Kashmir who was also tasked by an order of Maharaja Partap Singh on the recommendations of Aurel Stein. These experts had already worked with Stein and were well known to him.Sahaj( Sahaz ) Ram Bhat and Govind Kaul stayed in Jammu for about 18 months to complete the task. They were in regular correspondence with Aurel Stein who stayed at Lahore. This correspondence done in Sanskrit is also preserved in the British Museum, London. Stein visited the library again in 1940. His diaries are preserved in the British Museum . The Jammu visit of 1940 in his diary reads this:-
" I visited Jammu again after 50 years the Raghunath Temple Library. Its six thousand old Sanskrit manuscripts had been catalogued by me with the help of Pandit Govind Koul and another excellent scholar friend Sahaz Bhat in what seems now like a previous birth. It had been a dreary task but it saved the collection from being lost. I had a very attentive reception, had to talk Sanskrit again for an hour or so thus purifying my tongue by use of the sacred languages after all my peregrinations in the barbarian North and West. It was a quaint experience to find myself in the end garlanded in the traditional Kashmiri Hindu fashion for the first time in life....December 12, 1940."
The catalogue prepared by the learned Pandits was got published from Nirnaya Sagara Press ,Bombay by Aurel Stein in 1894 and presented to Maharaja Partap Singh. These rare manuscripts are available to research scholars and the library staff may allow photographing using your own camera.The birch bark manuscripts are highly delicate, as such copying of these is not allowed. The library is located on the back side of Sri Raghunath Ji Temple and is easily approachable from Hari Market entrance .It remains open from 9.30 a m to 5 pm.The library is presently known as Sri Ranbir Sanskrit Research Institute ,Jammu.
MEETING HATIM TILIWOIN
Stein had developed a keen interest in Kashmiri language and folklore, especially Kashmir’s folktales. Although he was engrossed in other issues ,yet, after dinner, he would find time to pen down folklore tales from the mouth of a Kashmiri peasant bard, Hatim Tiliwoin. Hatim was introduced to him by Pandit Govind Koul. A resident of Lar Ganderbal, Hatim was a peasant in the little hamlet of Panzil. He owed his surname to the possession of an oil press. He had fame throughout Kashmir’s Sind valley as Dastangou, a professional storyteller. Hatim was the son of Sabir Tiliwoin, also a Dastangou, who had handed down verbally a poem titled Yeli Forsyth Sahib Yarqand Zenini Gov (When Thomas Doughlas Forsyth went to conquer Yarqand), to his son, Hatim. Due to the pressure of his work on Rajatarangini, Stein could not devote more than an hour in the evening, after dinner, to hear and pen down Hatim’s folktales in presence of Pandit Govind Koul. Besides Govind Kaul, Stein also took help from some other Pandits . He also used a phonographic recorder to understand the words he could not understand while stories were being orally recited in song form by Hatim . The stories were edited and published reluctantly by Sir George Grierson as late as 1923.
PANDIT FRIENDS OF AUREL STEIN
Aurel Stein’s closest friends in Kashmir were , Prof Nityananad Shastri ( Sanskrit teacher at S P College , Srinagar ) Pandit Govind Koul (Incharge Translation Department during the rule of Maharaja Ranbir Singh ),Pandit Mukund Ram Shastri ( translator during the rule of Maharaja Ranbir Singh ) ,Sahaz Kak Bhat ( linguist and physician and also father of Hakim Sham Lal Bhat ) and Harabhatta Zadoo ( Sanaskrit scholar and son of Pandit Keshav Bhatta Zadoo , the Royal Astrologer in the Court of Maharaja Ranbir Singh ) . Apart from these, Stein had befriended about 15 Sanskrit scholars from Kashmir.
On Pandit Govind Koul’s 's death in June 1899, a shocked Stein lamented that Govind Koul , '' like another Kalhana departed as my best Indian friend beyond all hope of reunion in this Janma". Paying fulsome tributes to him, Stein wrote: "whenever Govind Kaul was by my side, whether in the dusty exile of Lahore or alpine coolness of Mohand Marg in Kashmir, I was in continuity with the past as the historical student of India. His personality embodied all that change of ages indicated and showed as the mind and psyche of India."
About his association with some learned Kashmiri Pandits , Stein writes this :-
"But perhaps the greatest advantage I derived from Kashmirian Pandit association with my labours was the chance it gave me to study in close contact those peculiarities of traditional Indian thought, belief and conduct which separate Hindu civilisation so deeply both from the West and the East and which no amount of book knowledge could ever fully reveal to a Maleecha (uncouth foreigner) .”
LAST DAYS
A British subject from 1904, he was knighted in 1912.On 31 March 1943, just back from Las Belas tracing one of Alexander the Great's unsurveyed routes, the scholar, archaeologist and explorer Marc Aurel Stein (b. 1862) received a telegram from Cornelius Van Hemert Engert (1887-1985), US Minister in Kabul. It was an entirely unexpected invitation to Afghanistan. Stein was in his 81st year but, characteristically undefeated by age, he immediately started making plans and laying down conditions for his visit: he wanted to visit sites in Bactria and the Helmand valley and also follow ancient routes through Afghanistan.
Finally , Stein reached Kabul on October 19, 1943. That evening he suffered a stroke. He did not fully regain consciousness and died on Thursday 26 October 1943 only a week after his arrival. He was buried in the Christian cemetery in Kabul, Gora Kabur ('white graveyard') in Sherpur which was once Sherpur Cantonment of the British Army.
(Avtar Mota)
CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.
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