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In the nineteenth century, Bengal witnessed an extraordinary intellectual flowering. Bengali prose emerged, and with it the novel and modern blank verse; old arguments about religion, society, and the lives of women were overturned; great schools and colleges were created; new ideas surfaced in science. And all these changes were led by a handful of remarkable men and women. For the first time comes a gripping narrative about the Bengal Renaissance recounted through the lives of all its players from Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore. Immaculately researched, told with colour, drama, and passion, Awakening is a stunning achievement.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	02 décembre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184002485
Langue	English

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SUBRATA DASGUPTA
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Published by Random House India in 2011
Copyright Subrata Dasgupta 2010
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B, A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, U.P.
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184002485
Contents
Acknowledgements
A Chronology
Prologue
In the Midst of So Noble an Amphitheatre
A City of Two Towns
Translators, Printers, Teachers, Preachers
Warrior-Raja
Bhadralok in Class, English in Taste
Enfant Terrible
Humanist by Creed, Humanist in Deed
A Jolly Christian Rhymer of Exquisite Graces
Voices of Their Own
Where the Intellect May Safely Speculate
Bachelor of Arts, Master of Letters
The Sound of Monistic Music
Breaking the Wall of Western Contempt
Epilogue: The Most Impossibly Gifted of Them All
Bibliography
Index
To Shome, Tabby Deep
Acknowledgements
In writing this book I have felt rather like a lawyer marshalling the evidence and then preparing a coherent narrative to present to judge and jury. That evidence lies quite explicitly in the notes and the bibliography that accompany this narrative. But the story I have told here does not reveal the influences of the thoughts, conversations, remarks, and commentaries of and by various persons I have encountered over many years.
Sometimes, I was merely an eavesdropper on their conversations; other times I would listen to them in those sessions of sweet but unsilent thought that Bengalis call adda ; or over lunch and dinner at people s homes and restaurants; or in coffee breaks at conferences; or in the aftermath of lectures and seminars. And, in more recent times, there have been the emails.
This is then the time to acknowledge my debt in one way or another to: Rukun Advani, Robert Anderson, Amiya Bagchi, Jasodhara Bagchi, Tirthankar Bose, Donald Cardwell, B. Chandrasekaran, Dhritiman Chatterji, Rosinka Chaudhuri, Sarbananda Chaudhuri, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Supriya Chaudhuri, Sisir Kumar Das, Deepanwita Dasgupta, Malay Dasgupta, Barun De, Jonathan Feinstein, John Gero, Wenceslao Gonzales, S. Irfan Habib, Richard Hills, Norman Holland, Rajesh Kochhar, Deepak Kumar, Bimal Matilal, John Meriwether, Thomas Nickles, Lewis Pyenson, William Radice, Burton Raffel, Dhruv Raina, Tapan Raychaudhuri, Herbert A. Simon, Alan Smith, Abha Sur, and Robert Weber.
I must mention three other persons in particular, all now deceased.
It was impossible to write about the Asiatic Society, Hindu/Presidency College, and nineteenth-century Indian science without thinking of Jatis Chandra (J.C.) Sengupta. His image-complete with cigar and robust voice-would intrude insistently into my consciousness.
The spirit of Rabindra Kumar (R.K.) Dasgupta permeated my entire mental space while I was engaged in the writing of this book. Over almost forty years I have been privy to his profound knowledge, and learning on and insight into all things pertaining to the intellectual history of nineteenth-century Bengal (and more). I was also fortunate to have access to his remarkable library.
Long before my awareness of the Bengal Renaissance, I have been listening to its music, as rabindra-sangeet, in the voice of Pratima Dasgupta from as far back as I can remember.
Jasodhara Bagchi and Rosinka Chaudhuri read certain chapters in preliminary form and responded with valuable comments. I thank them. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for the content of this book.
Writing, as writers of all persuasions know, necessitates a critic other than the one within the writer. That critic for this book was my editor Chiki Sarkar. The book evolved through multiple drafts in which she goaded me to add this, delete that, and forced me again and again to reconsider the text just when I thought it was all done. I thank her for her editorial acumen.
I thank Anton Rippon, my schoolmate from over half a century ago. From across the Atlantic and via cyberspace he has been a sympathetic witness to the evolution of this book.
For almost three decades, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has offered me a liberal environment to freely live the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural life. I thank, in particular, Ray Authement, Steve Landry, Bradd Clark, and David Barry for affording me the liberty to cross at will the boundaries between the sciences and the humanities, and between the cultures of East and West. My colleagues in the Institute of Cognitive Science-Claude Cech, Michael Kalish, Anthony Maida, Michele Feist, Istvan Berkeley, and Clay Rice-helped create a multidisciplinary academic unit rare in this age of hyper-specialization.
I first embarked on what is now called cognitive history during my time at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. In telling this story of the awakening of the nineteenth-century Indian mind to new creative possibilities I remembered, with much affection, that pivotal period spent in Manchester.
Every effort was made to secure permission from publishers to quote passages from their copyrighted works. I thank in particular the following publishers.
Advaita Ashrama, for permission to quote from Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, 2001.
Cambridge University Press, for permission to quote from P.J. Marshall (ed.), The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century, 1970.
Macmillan Publishers India, for permission to quote from Rabindranath Tagore, Glimpses of Bengal, 1997 and Rabindranath Tagore, Reminiscences, 2001.
Oxford University Press India, for permission to quote from: E.J. Thompson, Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist, 1989; Sukanta Chaudhuri (ed.), Calcutta. The Living City. Volume 1, 1990. Ghulam Murshid, Lured by Hope: A Biography of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, 2003; Ghulam Murshid (ed.), The Heart of a Rebel Poet: Letters of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, 2004; C. Lokug (ed.) Toru Dutt: Collected Prose and Poetry, 2006.
Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, for permission to quote from S.D. Collett, The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy, D.K. Biswas and P.C. Ganguli (ed.), 1988.
Sahitya Samsad, for permission to quote from J.C. Bagal (ed.), Bankim Rachanabali, Volume III: English Works, 1969.
Writers Workshop Calcutta, for permission to quote from Rassundari Debi, Amar Jiban, Enakshi Chatterjee, (trans.), 1999.
Finally, a note of gratitude to my family: To Mithu, who as always, bore with phlegmatic forbearance my preoccupations and obsessions while this work was in progress. To Shome, who in the midst of his own writing, frequently rescued me from the vagaries of my laptop software and Deep who kept a quizzical filmmaker s eye on my progress.
A Chronology
1750
Warren Hastings arrives in India.
1761
William Carey is born.
1772
Hastings is appointed governor of Bengal. Nathaniel Halhed arrives in India. Rammohun Roy is born.
1773
Fort William completed by Hastings. James Mill is born.
1774
Warren Hastings becomes first governor-general of India.
1775
David Hare is born.
1776
Halhed s A Code of Gentoo Law is published.
1778
Halhed s A Grammar of the Bengali Language is published. The Bengali type font is invented by Panchanan.
1781
Calcutta Madrasa is established by Warren Hastings.
1783
William Jones arrives in Calcutta. Henry Colebrooke arrives in India.
1784
Formation of the Asiatic Society with William Jones as President.
1785
Warren Hastings leaves India. Charles Wilkins s translation of Bhagvada Gita is published. Nathaniel Halhed leaves India. Jones delivers his second annual anniversary discourse at the Asiatic Society. David Drummond is born.
1786
Jones delivers his third annual anniversary discourse at the Asiatic Society.
1788
Warren Hastings s impeachment trial begins. Volume I of Asiatick Researches published. Lord Wellesley is appointed governor-general.
1789
Jones s translation of Sakuntala is published.
1793
William Carey arrives in India.
1794
Jones delivers his eleventh and last annual anniversary discourse at the Asiatic Society. The death of William Jones. Dwarakanath Tagore is born.
1795
Warren Hastings s impeachment trial ends. Henry Colebrooke s On the Duties of a Faithful Hindoo Widow is published in Asiatick Researches .
1799
Joshua Marshman and William Ward arrive in India.
1800
Formation of the College of Fort William, Calcutta. The Baptist Mission is established by Carey, Marshman, and Ward in Serampore. The Serampore Mission Press is established. Ramram Basu is appointed a pandit in the College of Fort William. Carey s translation of the Bible into Bengali is published.
1801
Tarinicharan Mitra and Mrtyunjay Vidyalankar appointed pandits in the College of Fort William. Carey s Bengali-English bilingual Kathopaketan is published by Serampore Press.
1802
John Gilchrist founds the Hindustanee Press.
1803-4
Rammohun Roy s Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhdin is published.
1805
Lord Wellesley s tenure as governor-general ends. The Sanskrit Press is established. Rammohun Roy becomes John Digby s munshi. Henry Colebrooke s On the Vedas or Sacred Writings of the Hindoos is published in Asiatick Researches.
1806
Henry Colebrooke is elected president of the Asiatic Society. William Carey is elected a member of the Asiatic Society.
1806-10
The Ramayana is translated from Sanskrit to Bengali by Carey and Marshman and published by the Asiatic Society.
1807
Carey is appointed professor of Sanskrit in the Colle