Kitabı oku: «Truths», sayfa 10
*****
Helmine von Hastfer, we remember her, lived in 1803 in the house of Dorothea and Friedrich von Schlegel in Paris. Alexander Hamilton lived there too. Rosane Rocher, the only biographer of Alexander Hamilton, has tried to establish with the help of two quotations by Helmine de Chèzy that Alexander Hamilton was married in Kolkata (p. 10):
“In an often quoted passage from her autobiography (p. 270, 2nd volume, Leipzig 1858), she says: ‘The famous Indianist Hamilton who lived many years long in East India and had a native woman as wife and a hopeful son there.’ But she gives much more detailed information in one of her other writings, which is less known (p.86, Freihafen III, 4, 1840): ‘His heart had remained in India, where tender, holy bond made him happy for thirteen years long, he had taken a native for marriage, and a son of her, often he spoke of his bond with this sweet creature, with that, I would like to say, ashamedly emotion and tenderness, which was like an emblem of authenticity of a deep feeling.’”
Rosane Rocher takes these two quotations to construct that Alexander Hamilton was married for 13 years, before he left India. Then she applies her skill and art of reckoning. He could not have reached India before the end of 1783, she maintains. Thereafter he needed some time to marry an Indian woman, so Rosane Rocher. Then she concludes with her inimitable precision that he could not have left India before 1797. We could better quote Rosane Rocher than arouse suspicions that we are distorting her writing (p. 10):
”The important element in this passage is that, according to Helmine von Chezy, Hamilton would have been married for thirteen years before he left India. Assuming that he could not have come to India before the end of 1783 (Why 1783? What should he have done in Kolkata without resources before he became ensign at the beginning of 1785? She does not put these or similar questions.), and allowing some time before he decided to marry an Indian woman, one may conclude that he cannot have left India before the year 1797. It is the more interesting to arrive at the year 1797 as the terminus post quem for his departure from India, because the year 1797 at the same time is the terminus post quem given by another source for his arrival in Edinburgh. Indeed, according to a statement of Lord Cockburn: ‘In particular, between 1797 and 1800, some conspicuous young men had come to Edinburgh, to whom, being strangers, the merits of Jeffrey were more apparent than they hitherto had been to many of those among whom he dwelt. Some of these have been already named in mentioning the Speculative Society ... In addition to these were Lord Webb Seymour, Mr. Sydney Smith and Mr. Hamilton, also strangers.’”
We don’t feel an urge to raise here our standard question whether Rosane Rocher cared to check how Lord Cockburn arrived at this conclusion in 1852. However, we must confess that we are dumbfounded by these acrobatics. We read the quotations of Helmine de Chézy again and again to find the alleged statement that Alexander Hamilton had lived together with his Indian wife for thirteen years and had left behind a grown up son. It may be, we don’t possess enough fantasy not to read again and again the simple statement: Alexander Hamilton missed his native wife and his son also after 13 years and he kept them in memory. Accordingly, he, most probably, had to leave behind his “wife” and son in 1791 or 1792 in India. This wouldn’t be a singular case. It was a question of material survival. The left–behinds did get a name too, the “Anglo-Indians”. Rosane Rocher could also have wondered as we do, why Alexander Hamilton didn’t call his family to Great Britain after he became a “great and famous scholar”.
We are also astonished to note how insolently “history” is being forged. Rosane Rocher completed this “reconstruction” in the first ten pages of her book of 128 pages. Then on pages 11–33 under the subtitle: “Great Britain: The first publications” she ascribed to Alexander Hamilton as many anonymous articles published in the Edinburgh Review and in Asiatic Annual Register as she needed to make in a learned way a great and famous scholar out of him. In the following pages wondrous metamorphoses occur. All shaky speculations and forgeries connected with his biography become hard facts. Not only for Rosane Rocher who dealt in the pages 11 ff. with “facts” only.
That was just what other “historiographers” were waiting for. A classic example of how (hi)stories are “made” in the “wonder that is” modern scientific culture. We mean example and not a singular case of making “scholar extraordinary”.
Hard to believe, but unfortunately true. We read on page 33 of that well-known book that appeared in 1997 in the University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London. Title: Aryans and British India. Author: Thomas R. Trautmann, a professor at the University of Michigan, a favourite pupil of the renowned “historian” Arthur Llewellyn Basham (highlighted by us):
“...the Orientalist Alexander Hamilton reviews A journey from Madras, through the countries Mysore, Canara and Malabar, whose author, Francis Buchanan, ‘possessed no means of communication with the natives but through an interpreter’ ...”
On page 110: “Several of the new Orientalists, such as Alexander Hamilton and Sir John Shore, had Indian wives, and it cannot but have helped them to develop a fluency, if not in Sanskrit or Persian, at least in Hindustani and other modern languages.”
Sir John Shore hasn’t mentioned Alexander Hamilton at all in his 13 volumes on Sir William Jones published in 1804. We continue reading Thomas R. Trautmann, a favourite pupil of the renowned “historian” Arthur Llewellyn Basham. Page 115:
“Alexander Hamilton, member of the, Asiatic Society and retired officer of the East India Company’s army, became, by virtue of his appointment to the East India College, the first Sanskritist to hold a professorship in an institution of higher learning in Europe.”
On page 138–139: “Alexander Hamilton, the first Sanskrit professor in Britain (at the East India College), became the conduit by which knowledge of Sanskrit passed from Calcutta to Paris and thence to Germany. Hamilton, who had served as an officer in the army of the East India Company, learned Sanskrit in Calcutta and became a member of the Asiatic Society (did he learn Sanskrit before he became a member?); in 1790 he had petitioned the government for facilities to study Sanskrit. He resigned his commission and returned to Britain in 1796, where he lived off the proceeds of journalism, writing for the Monthly Review for a time, and then for the Edinburgh Review, of which he was one of the founders (Thomas R. Trautmann is capable of wondrous fantasies, isn’t he?). By the peace of Amiens (25. March 1802) hostilities between Britain and Napoleonic France were suspended, and Hamilton like many other Britons, took the opportunity to travel to France, only to become a prisoner of war by the decree of 23 May 1803, when war resumed. Hamilton was however treated most liberally by the French authorities, being allowed to live wherever he liked in Paris and to move about freely. He spent the time in the company of Orientalists, especially Louis Mathieu Langlès, with whom he collaborated in cataloguing the Indian manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which service was probably the reason of his liberty. He also taught Sanskrit to a few students, of whom the most notable was Friedrich Schlegel, whose Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier” (On the language and wisdom of the Indians, 1808) had a vast effect in fomenting German Indomania and Sanskrit study. Schlegel’s brother August Wilhelm Schlegel later repaired to Paris to study Sanskrit, going on to become the first professor of Sanskrit in Germany (1818), and his student (Thomas R. Trautmann’s wonder-some discovery!) Franz Bopp also went to Paris for Sanskrit study, as did Friedrich Max Mueller somewhat later.”
Why do we meet swindlers only? A forgery of history par excellence. We are not dealing with singular cases. In this area, we are yet to find a singular case of academic correctness and honesty. We assume that our findings are only a peak of the general dirty morass.
We are still dealing with the same Alexander Hamilton who wrote that application. Thomas R. Trautmann doesn’t run any risk spreading eloquently false (hi)stories. After all, he is a “renowned historian” with “profound knowledge” in anthropology too. Anthropology is that branch of “science” which followed the “philology” to which we owe “racism”.
And if the false presentations get exposed, nothing will happen to Thomas R. Trautmann. Because here he makes a footnote to shun off his responsibility. Though, this is his first remark relating to Alexander Hamilton: “For the information in this paragraph I rely on Rosane Rocher’s biography (1968) and article (1970) on Hamilton, and on Jane Rendall’s work on the Scottish Enlightenment.” A fine state of affairs, isn’t it?
Later on page 148–149 he quotes Alexander Hamilton more than once. These are quotes from Edinburgh Review, from articles ascribed to him by Rosane Rocher. Here are a few samples of how nicely they are presented:
“Hamilton embraced Colebrooke’s (We shall deal with Colebrooke also, but in due course in a later chapter.) unity of origin theory and deployed it in his Edinburgh Review piece...
He believed it not improbable that the Brahmins entered India as conquerors...
He thought however that the Paiśāci or demons’ language spoken of by the ancient Indian grammarians was totally distinct from the Sanskrit in its origin...that one great nation formerly peopled Hindustan, and were driven, by invaders, to those hilly countries which they still occupy. (Hamilton 1808:93).”
Statements of this category are, leniently spoken, products at best of sick fantasy. Again extremely leniently spoken, such statements express cultural prejudices of the writers of their culture rather than the chronicler reports of a Megasthenes. However, for the “scholars” like “Thomas R. Trautmanns” any printed word in the Edinburgh Review or anywhere else is a “reliable” source. And it is a rather cheap trick when he just refers to quotations in brackets like: (Hamilton 1808:93). In this case, it is a no-named article in the Edinburgh Review. What do these “Thomas R. Trautmanns” and “Arthur Llewellyn Bashams” do when they do not find the needed printed words for their “scholarly” deliberations? We leave this question unanswered, but keep it in memory.
Thomas R. Trautmann continues (p. 149)
“Jones, in his eighth discourse, had spoken of the Indian mountaineers as ‘many races of wild people with more or less of that pristine ferocity, which induced their ancestors to secede from the civilised inhabitants of the plains and valleys.’ He thought they sprang from the old Indian stem, although some of them soon intermixed ‘with the first ramblers from Tartary, whose language seems to have been the basis of that now spoken by the Moguls’ (Jones 1807, 3:172–173). Hamiltons proposal of the unitary language and aboriginal character of all the ‘mountaineers’ goes considerably further than this. But taken all together, the testimony of Jones, Colebrooke and Hamilton is that British belief in the ethnological and linguistic unity of India was never complete.”
How did Sir William Jones come to know all these? Sources? Is there any need ask for sources? Is there any need of sources? Are not ‘Jones, Colebrooke and Hamilton’ enough? We are dumbfounded, indeed.
Thomas R. Trautmann has decorated his book Aryans and British India with a dedication: “In memory of A. L. Basham, British Sanskritist, historian of India, guru, friend”. We remember the blessings Arthur Llewellyn Basham brought us at the beginning of this chapter:
“In 1795 the government of the French Republic founded the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and there Alexander Hamilton (1762- 1824), one of the founding members of Asiatic Society of Bengal, held prisoner on parole in France at the end of the Peace of Amiens in 1803, became the first person to teach Sanskrit in Europe.”
*****
The whole scenario of these celebrated scholars seems to be a dirty morass of darkness, dishonesty and deception. Recent “scholars” attribute Alexander Hamilton the lofty height of powerful language like that of Francis Jefferey, Sydney Smith and Henry Brougham. However, there is not a single essay bearing his name. We recall his application dated March 4, 1790. Our imaginative capacity fails absolutely to grasp how and where he could have improved the quality of his writing. Was he not battling for physical survival, compelled to desert his wife and son?
It just doesn’t enter into our head why Alexander Hamilton didn’t write a single “scholarly discourse” after he ascended as an expert on oriental questions to the editorial team of the Edinburgh Review? Not even after having become a “Professor of Sanskrit” (Sorry. There is no document in the archives on his being a “Professor of Sanskrit”.). He published merely his Terms of Sanskrit Grammar in 1814. Charles Wilkins published in 1815 The Radicals of the Sanskrita Language. Scholarly pieces? Both of them were rather copying intermediaries. In the style of beginners.
Alexander Hamilton’s involuntary Parisian intermezzo tells also many stories like his application of March 4, 1790. It is remarkable that some stories went round in Paris, which was unknown in Edinburgh. Lord Cockburn only knew that: "Mr. Hamilton was a Scot, was in India, an easy to get along with person of small stature, excellent in the conversation and great expert of oriental literature.” Or that in the inner circle he was also called“Sanskrit Hamilton” or “Pandit”.
In Paris remarkable stories went round. Alexander Hamilton had lived long years in India and was the master of oriental languages including Sanskrit. He belonged to the excellent scholar group of Sir William Jones. He had lived long in Bengal with Brahmins. As a Sanskrit scholar, he ranked equally with Charles Wilkins and William Jones and so forth. Who did have have these stories to do the rounds in Paris? Obviously, Alexander Hamilton had lost his innocence of March 4, 1790. In Paris, he seized the opportunity and placed himself in the centre of Orientalists who knew not much more beyond Egypt but did hear a lot about Sanskrit literature from India.
For his “career” in Paris Louis Mathieu Langlès was the key figure. We remember. Louis Mathieu Langlès is in charge of the oriental manuscripts in the royal library. He published a lot, yet is not regarded as a scholar. His original contributions are restricted to footnotes. Mainly he translates English texts into French. How he came to know Alexander Hamilton is not known. But the fact remains that he marketed Alexander Hamilton quite effectively in Paris and thereby himself as well. It is said that he always discussed his translations of oriental manuscripts from English to French with Alexander Hamilton. But the strange thing is that Alexander Hamilton does not speak any French. Louis Mathieu Langlès never forgets to immortalise his footnotes by reference to his discussions with the great scholar Alexander Hamilton. He is keen to get those “Bengali” and“Sanskrit” manuscripts (We do not know how the great Orient fan could discriminate these two languages) from India under his administration into a “systematic” catalogue organised by Alexander Hamilton.
This does happen. Alexander Hamilton sorts out the manuscripts, provides explanatory notes in English and Louis Mathieu Langlès makes the French version. He writes in the catalogue:
“I translated it into French and added to a large number of essays more or less extensive remarks. Some of these remarks were provided by Alexander Hamilton himself, the others resulted from ‘Recherches Asiatiques’, from my own footnotes to the French translation of the first two volumes of this erudite collection, (i.e.) the works of Mr Jones, the English translation of Indian laws by Mr Colebrooke, from the works of padre Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomeo and from other oriental manuscripts of the Imperial Library.” (Translated from original French.)
Well, once again, the crux of the matter is that Louis Mathieu Langlès was unable to judge the quality of Alexander Hamilton’s work. In fact, no one in Europe could. And Alexander Hamilton could not read French. Louis Mathieu Langlès was not interested in learning Indian languages, but he propagated Alexander Hamilton in Parisian parlours. He made it possible for Alexander Hamilton to teach “Sanskrit” in Paris. As life would have it, Dorothea and Friedrich von Schlegel lived there for a short while, because Friedrich von Schlegel, 32 years old, wanted to learn oriental languages. Why in Paris? “... because the richest collections of literature in oriental languages are stored there.”
How this collection was connected with the learning of oriental languages? We have raised this question. We are enormously surprised. It goes like this:
Take a translated version and the original book. It doesn’t matter whether this translated version is also a translation from a translated version. It can be a repeatedly translated version. The main thing is that one has some vague ideas about the contents of the original book. Now the guessing acrobatics begin. To put it mildly: This was the time of literate acrobats and salespeople.
“The Schlegels” had rented a large floor at a reasonable price. They didn’t have enough money. They had planned to sublet furnished rooms. On January 15, 1803, Friedrich writes to his elder brother August Wilhelm (We remember him. He taught Hermann Brockhaus Sanskrit in Bonn, so it is said.): “The grammar of the ordinary Indian languages (Which ones? How should he know them?) I have acquired already (how?); but the Sanskrit I shall be able to begin in the spring only. Because the libraries are not being heated.”
Isn’t it interesting? Friedrich von Schlegel also gets inkling about the collection in the royal library in Paris, as did Alexander Hamilton. On May 15, 1803, he reports to his brother on a lucky coincidence:
“I am perfectly fine. Because I learnt much, very much. I have not only made progress in Persian, but I am also nearing my great objective, that I master Sanskrit. I will be able to read the Sakontala within four months in its original text, though I will presumably still need the translation. Enormous effort was required because of a great complication and I had to develop my own method of guessing (Divinierens); since I had to learn the elements without elementary books. I was finally fortunate that an Englishman called Hamilton, the only one in Europe except for Wilkins who knows, and very thoroughly knows, could at least help me with advice.”
We couldn’t have described this adventurous method of learning the Sanskrit language more vividly. Friedrich invents this wonder-some method to learn this classical ancient language. And in just three months, on August 14, 1803, Friedrich lets his brother August Wilhelm know:
“I worked through Sanskrit uninterruptedly and now I have achieved a sound fundament. I have by now at least a hand high Manuscripts there which I copied. Now I am occupied in copying the 2nd encyclopaedia. Writing Sanskrit daily for 3–4 hours and another one or two hours to work through with Hamilton; and whenever in the evening I felt like it, I had still work for 2–3 hours.”
We try to understand the procedure. Friedrich von Schlegel made handwritten copies of Sanskrit texts and worked them through with Alexander Hamilton who seemingly knew the characters a little better. How did it function? How could it function? “Scholars” of our time do not explain it to us. They just assert.
*****
As already said, the Schlegels had to sublet furnished rooms. Thus, something like a “flat sharing community” emerged. And Alexander Hamilton was there. This is just imponderability of life! We know, again from a letter of Friedrich to his brother August Wilhelm dated November 26, 1803:
“I live now quite pleasantly here – as pleasant as it can be abroad. Since several months Hamilton lives with me, who was my teacher for Sanskrit; also Hagemann, a young Hanoverian, who is not only proficient in Greek and Arabic, but also knows a lot of and very thoroughly Persian, is our house mate. In addition there are three young men from Cologne taking private lessons from me. Thus I have a pleasant society in the house.”
The three inhabitants from Cologne were: Sulpiz and Melchior Boisserée as well as Johann Baptist Bertram. “From the Schlegel–circle” there is also a mention in the autobiography of Sulpiz Boisserée:
“The house community at Schlegel’s included, beside the great expert of Sanskrit, A. Hamilton, a small German colony; to which belonged the ten years old son of Mrs. Schlegel, Phillip Veit, a young philologist Hagemann from Hanover who studied Sanskrit too, we three friends from Cologne and Mrs. von Hastfer from Berlin who had come to Paris with Mrs. von Genlis and was editing the French Miscellanea for Cotta in Tuebingen. Usually only Hagemann and Mrs. von Hastfer joined us at the table.”
Friedrich von Schlegel was learning Persian from Antoine Léonard de Chèzy. Louis Mathieu Langlès brings Alexander Hamilton and the Schlegels together. Alexander Hamilton starts living with the Schlegels. Helmine von Hastfer lives there also. Soon she was to marry Antoine Léonard de Chézy. Friedrich von Schlegel learns Sanskrit from Alexander Hamilton from May to November 1803. The Schlegels leave Paris at the end of April 1804. Friedrich von Schlegel publishes the book: On the language and the wisdom of the Indians, Heidelberg 1808. Our impression is, he would have written this book even if he had not met Alexander Hamilton. This book will remain his only contribution to “Indology”. However a significant one. Alexander Hamilton became famous because of this book. His brother August Wilhelm (1767–1845) was also inspired by it.
*****
And: Those who actually had spread Sanskrit in Europe, Antoine Léonard de Chézy and Franz Bopp claimed to have mastered the Sanskrit language without ever listening to the original sound of the language, without ever seeing the original gestures of the people while reciting the texts. On top of it, they also said that they taught the Sanskrit language themselves – who knows how. These two persons, who are known to have spread a language named Sanskrit, could at best learn the alphabets and composition of the letters in words and only on papers in writing. They did not care nor had any opportunity to be in India. The only person who got an opportunity to listen to the sound of Sanskrit, under the assumption Alexander Hamilton could pronounce the words in “Sanskrit”, was Friedrich von Schlegel, he writes a book in 1808 and then exits from the scene. He does not teach anybody “Sanskrit”.
These “scholars” want us to believe that they just turned to Sanskrit texts and could read and understand. The characters were still unknown to them. These “scholars” must have been suffering from dementia or even worse. They did not remember their laborious efforts of learning their own vernacular.
But, as we mentioned earlier, the first four Sanskrit grammar guides in English were available in Paris: by missionary William Carey (1804), by Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1805), by Charles Wilkins (1808) and by senior merchant H. P. Forster (1810). Now we know how a language called Sanskrit, is brought to and spread in Europe. Is it still the original Sanskrit and not a kind of “Pidgin Sanskrit”? We must admit that we are extremely confused. “Pidgin Sanskrit” would mean just badly articulated Sanskrit. We understand that it was much worse.
*****
Now we come down from Alexander Hamiltion, Friedrich von Schlegel, Antoine Léonard de Chézy, Franz Bopp, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Hermann Brockhaus to Friedrich Maximilian Müller. None of them had learnt the Sanskrit language. We come down to those wonder-some years from 1803 to 1844. How much “Sanskrit” Friedrich Maximilian Müller could have learnt from Hermann Brockhaus at Leipzig? He attended courses only up to the end of the summer term, i.e., till July 1843.
The alphabets of the language called Sanskrit, some Texts in Sanskrit original, their translated versions Persian, Arabic and English, a few rudimentary grammar books were available in Germany. Nothing more. For Friedrich Maximilian Müller it was less. He did not have access to the English language. He might have read Friedrich von Schlegel’s book: On the language and the wisdom of the Indians, Heidelberg 1808. He did not mention to have read this book.
Friedrich Maximilian Müller is done at Leipzig University. He goes to Berlin: “My wish to go to Berlin arose partly from a desire to hear Bopp, but yet more from a desire to make the acquaintances of Schelling.” Franz Bopp is considered to be the pope of Sanskrit in Europe.
In this chapter we have documented our first run to ascertain how much of “Sanskrit” was available in Germany that could be learnt at most by Friedrich Maximilian Müller. We shall have to continue our search to find out how, when, by whom the Sanskrit language is brought to Europe and which Sanskrit language does actually arrive to Europe in our later chapters in due course.
Looking a little ahead, we have also dealt with “scholars” of our time who wanted us to believe that Alexander Hamilton brings Sanskrit from India to Paris in 1803. We know by now whatever these “scholars” wanted us to believe on, about and of the Sanskrit language does not corresponds to facts. These are just myths. No, it is worse. These are just deliberate lies.
As logical continuation of our search, we shall have to accompany Friedrich Maximilian Müller to Berlin in his quest to learn the Sanskrit language. We must ascertain here that he does not acquire any of the qualifications at Leipzig University that will justify his deliberations in his book published in 1859: A HISTORY OF ANCIENT SANSKRIT LITERATURE SO FAR AS IT ILLUSTRATES THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE BRAHMINS.
We can wait and watch where and how Friedrich Maximilian Müller acquires those qualifications.
