Sprigg, R. K.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereM. J. Hutt: Nepali: a national language and its literature. xii, 252 pp., map. London: School of Oriental and African Studies; New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Ltd., 1988. £12.R. K. SpriggBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 53 / Issue 01 / February 1990, pp 155 ­ 157DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00021595, Published online: 24 December 2009Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00021595How to cite this article:R. K. Sprigg (1990). Review of M. J. Hutt 'Nepali: a national language and its literature' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 53, pp 155­157 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00021595Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 17 Oct 2012REVIEWS 155of the thirteenth-century Vaisnava Varada'sSribhasyaprameyamdld. Half of the first volumeis given to an account of the texts, an explana-tion of the points of controversy, and a discus-sion of their aims and methods. The rest of thisvolume contains four Advaita texts, in roman-ization and translation, and the second volumecontains five Visistadvaita texts and a set ofindexes.The points of controversy concern the initia-tion and way of life of the samnydsin. They areapparently superficial but, like similar points inother religious traditions, have far-reachingtheological implications. That according toAdvaita a samnydsin should discard his topknotand sacred thread, while according toVisistadvaita he should retain them, isnot hardto understand; it is of a piece with Sankara'sunderstanding of the old opposition betweenknowledge and action, for the topknot andsacred thread are the badges of one who per-forms Vedic ritual, the action par excellence,and the performance of ritual presupposesassumptions which are incompatible with thehighest knowledge. On the other hand, it seemsto be purely arbitrary that the Advaita asceticshould carry a single staff, while theVisistadvaitin should carry a bundle of three.Yet this is a difference on which the texts expendconsiderable ingenuity and polemical force.Olivelle shows that the reason for theirinsistence on this apparently arbitrary dif-ference is that the triple staff was originally aportable tripod, used by ascetics, Buddhist aswell as brahmanical, to keep their water potsfrom being polluted by contact with the ground,a concern which should not affect the samnydsinaccording to Advaita Vedanta. The situation iscomplicated by the fact that Visistadvaita textssometimes, but not always, distinguish betweenthe tridanda or triple staff and the trivistabdha,literally' fixed apart three ways', or tripod. Theopposition between tridandin and ekadandinascetics is much older than Visistadvaita as wenow know it, being found in the Mahdbhdrata.It seems that the original function of the triplestaff has been lost, and it has become a mereemblem, like a pharmacist's coloured bottles;but it remains associated with the view that thesamnydsin is not exempt from ritual rules. If wemay venture beyond Olivelle's arguments, thetripod may have once been both a piece ofequipment and a symbol of the samnydsin'shomelessness; for householders hang their potsfrom the rafters, but a man with no roof over hishead needs something else to hang his pot from.Once samnydsins took to living in houses ormaths, the function of the tripod disappeared.The arguments are conducted in terms ofscriptural authority and its interpretation,rather than in terms of perception andinference; this is natural when dealing withritual questions which are not amenable toworldly proof. Texts can be found to supportboth the wearing and the discarding of thetopknot and sacred thread, or the carrying ofboth the single and the triple staff. This inciden-tally shows that these variations in ascetic prac-tice are more ancient than the existing schoolsof Vedanta; but this of course is not the theolo-gians' concern. As Olivelle shows, the twoschools of Vedanta exemplified here usedivergent forms of argument when faced withVOL. LIII. PART 1.texts which contradict their own views. Neitherof them resorts to the usual Purva-MImamsaexplanation that contradictory texts indicate anoption (vikalpa); for in a dispute of this kind it isnecessary to prove that one's opponent is notjust different but wrong. Advaitins treat textsenjoining the topknot, the sacred thread or thetriple staff as applying to lower grades ofsamnydsin; Visistadvaitins, on the other hand,treat the contrary texts, not always plausibly, asdpaddharma, applying only in emergencies.Occasionally the authenticity of a text isimpugned, and such arguments throw interest-ing light on the nature of authority as viewed bythese thinkers.Olivelle discusses the views and methodsshown in the texts with great clarity. Thetranslations are clear and scholarly, but onemight question the habitual translation ofparimoksa as ' nudity ', and vrtti as ' lifestyle '(which usually refers to what one does withone's surplus of time and resources) rather than' livelihood ' (referring to how one acquires thenecessities of life). For Vedic mantras he relieson Griffith, without acknowledgement. By anoversight, notes 55 and 67 of volume I refer tothe same iconographic material, but describe itdifferently. The word ' hypocrisy' is misspelt.But these are minor and infrequent blemishes inan excellent work.D. H. KILLINGLEYM. J. HUTT: Nepali: a national langu-age and its literature, xii, 252 pp.,map. London: School of Orientaland African Studies; New Delhi:Sterling Publishers Private Ltd.,1988. £12.Since the very name Nepali has recently beenrejected by some Indian speakers of the langu-age that they share with a majority of the peopleof Nepal, Dr. Hutt's book can certainly claim tobe topical; but, though he does not ignoreDarjeeling, Dehra Dun, and other parts of Indiawhere emigrants from Nepal have settled, it iswith the Nepali of the Kingdom of Nepal thathe is mainly concerned.The greater part of the book (pp. 71-231) isan account of Nepali literature, as a majorindication of the language's growing strengthand prestige; but the author begins by puttingliterary achievements in Nepali in perspectivewith a chapter dealing with the topography ofthe Kingdom of Nepal within the frontiers fixedin 1816. He follows this with a brief history ofthat area going back in time beyond the con-quests of Prithvi Narayan Shah, King ofGorkha, and his immediate successors(1744-90) to the immigration of the Khas, prob-ably during the ninth century, and of Rajputrefugees about two centuries later.Hutt thinks it likely that it was the Khas whofounded the kingdom of Jumla, in what is nowwestern Nepal, in the twelfth century. Theimportance of this kingdom for Nepali lies inthe fact that it is in the Jumla area, about 200miles to the west of Kathmandu, that thethirteenth- and fourteenth-century inscriptionshave been found that are claimed to be Nepaliin its earliest written form. In addition, his table156 REVIEWSof statistics of' Nepali-speakers in the Zones ofNepal (1971)' shows the highest percentage,96%, for Karnali, the Zone in which Jumla issituated, and the next highest figures, all of thembetween 82.2% and 90.7%, for Dhaulagiri andfor Rapti, adjoining Karnali to the east andsouth-east, and for the Seti and the MahakalZones lying between Karnali and Nepal'swestern frontier with the Indian district ofKumaon (by contrast, the Bagmati Zone, inwhich Kathmandu lies, in central Nepal, hasonly 56.4% Nepali-speakers, a bare majority).With this historical connexion with the Khasin mind it is not surprising that khas kurd shouldappear prominently in the section in which Huttdeals with the various names by which Nepalihas been known during the last 700 years,together with such other names as parbate, orparbatiya, paharl, gorkhdli, and gorkhd bhdsd,eventually giving way to Nepali (it was not until1932, incidentally, that gorkhd and gorkhdsarkdr were replaced by nepdl sarkdr onNepalese postage stamps, which had beenissued since 1881).In a few paragraphs on its relationship toother Indo-European languages the authorcompares Nepali with Hindi, Gujerati, Panjabi,and Bengali; but there is no mention ofKumaoni. Since Kumaoni is also considered tohave developed from the language spoken bythe Khas, and is, moreover, Nepali's linguisticneighbour to the west, as well as being a fellowmember of the Pahari language group, someinformation on the affinity of Nepali toKumaoni would have been instructive. Howwell, for example, does the linguistic boundaryof Nepali with Kumaoni correspond to thepolitical frontier of Nepal to the west?In the Jumla area, not far from that westernfrontier, Hutt has listed 17 inscriptions for theperiod 1245-1591. In trying to establish whetherthe language of these inscriptions is indeed in adirect line of ancestry for Nepali he is influencedby such factors as that it is not until 1498 thatthe ho form of the verb ' to be', together withgarnu as opposed to the kar- root, appears, thatthe first use of the agentive suffix le appears in alalmohar of 1529, and that the perfect participleform in -dko (current-Nepali -eko) first appearsin 1581.The chapter ' Early Nepali literature'(pp. 77-112) contains a list of 17 works writtenbetween circa 1401 and 1798; and 16 Nepalipoets of the early nineteenth century are listed,with the titles of their works. This chapter is aprelude to a chapter on Bhanubhakta Acharya(1814-68) as the 'founder poet' of Nepaliliterature, on his translation of the Rdmdyanainto something approaching the spoken form ofhis mother tongue, and on his biographer,Motiram Bhatt.The three more recent literary figures toreceive individual consideration, LekhnathPaudyal (1884-1965), Balakrishna Sam(1902-81), and Lakshmi Prasad Devkota(1909-59), also demonstrate the Nepali langu-age's debt to Brahmins; for Balakrishna Sam, aChettri, is the only one of the five thus farmentioned not to have been a Brahmin. Each ofthese three receives a pen portrait, in about 20pages, with some mention of influence on hiswritten style from Sanskrit originals or fromEnglish, especially from Shakespeare and Ten-nyson for Sam, but Wordsworth for Devkota.The closing chapter, ' Modern Nepaliliterature ', brings the literary survey up to date,with subsections on fiction, the novel, the shortstory, and poetry. It is in this chapter thatDarjeeling's contribution to Nepali literatureappears; and, partly for this reason, personali-ties from outside the Brahmin and Chettri com-munities come into the picture, Rais, Tamangs,and Thakalis, for example, including LainsinghBangdel, Accha Rai ' Rasik', Parijat, andBhupi Sherchan.A few passages in the nine chapters on Nepaliliterature have been given in both Nepali andEnglish; so those readers with a sufficientknowledge of Nepali can form an opinion ofHutt's skill in conveying the rhythm andsubtleties of Nepali in an English translation,and an estimate of the poetic inspiration andliterary talent to be found in the passages thathe has chosen for his illustrations.Conflict with authority seems to have been arecurring feature of the literary life of Nepalduring the Rana regime (1846-1950):Bhanubhakta, Paudyal, Sam, and Devkota suf-fered detention, censorship, proscription, fines,and voluntary exile, which can hardly have lefttheir literary output unaffected. Another factorrestricting literary production at that time musthave been the limited opportunities for would-be authors to publish; so Hutt's chapter on earlypublishing in Nepali is important for a properunderstanding of the difficulties under whichNepali writers worked, in Nepal at least. It issignificant that Bhanubhakta's translation ofthe Ramayana was published, in 1887, not inNepal but at Benares. With the exception ofGorkhapatra, published continuously since1901, the nine titles comprised in Hutt's list ofperiodicals published in Nepal prior to 1950seem to have had short and erratic careers.Indeed, it was outside Nepal, in Calcutta, thatthe first grammar of Nepali, Ayton's A gram-mar of the Nepalese language, was published, in1820. Hutt has not failed to mention this gram-mar; but he has nowhere mentioned a landmarkin translation into Nepali, The Holy Bible, con-taining the Old and New Testaments translatedfrom the originals into the Nepalg language. TheMission Press, Serampore, printed a thousandcopies of Volume v containing the New Testa-ment a year later than the Grammar, in 1821.The author has listed 31 ' Nepali periodicalspublished in India prior to 1950'. About half ofthese publications are from Darjeeling District;so it is not surprising that names other thanthose of Brahmins and Chettris should appearin this field of literary activity too, as well asthose already mentioned in the chapter' Modern Nepali literature'. Prominent amongthese are the names of Newars, of Tibeto-Burman linguistic ancestry, Ganga PrasadPradhan and Paras Mani Pradhan.Another of Hutt's numerous tables,' Langu-ages of the Nepalese population of Darjeeling(1961)', shows a clear majority for Nepali, with369,100 speakers (approximately 70%), easilyoutnumbering such other immigrant languages,Tibeto-Burman languages, as Rai, Tamang, andLimbu. For Nepal itself his table' Languages ofNepal' (1971) also gives a majority for Nepali,52.44% (6,060,800 speakers), with two otherREVIEWS 157Indo-European languages coming second andthird, Maithili, a distant second, though withover a million speakers (1,327,200; 11.48%),and Bhojpuri third, with 806,500 speakers(6.98%). The increasing importance of Nepalican be seen in the chapters ' Nationalism andthe National Language' and ' The standardiza-tion of the National Language' (pp. 37-70), inwhich Hutt deals with his second main topic,and chronicles a century of attempts to preparethe language for a national role throughstandardizing its orthography and through pro-viding it with a unified grammar and lexicon.He makes it clear that these efforts have been sofar successful during the present century thatNepali has been formally declared the languageof administration and education, and is de factothe language of the law courts. Even so, hequotes Ballabh Mani Dahal as having, asrecently as 1976, ' bewailed the fact that Nepalilexicographers have failed to standardize Nepalispelling as much as is required'. The difficultiesto be faced in any attempt to reconcile Nepalispelling with the facts of Nepali pronunciationcan be clearly seen in the innovations proposedby R. L. Turner more than sixty years ago, andfollowed in printing his Comparative and etymo-logical dictionary of the Nepali language. Hissolution to the problem of having two symbols,i and f, for the single vowel unit i, and u and u,similarly, for the single vowel unit u, was tomake an arbitrary choice in favour of i and «,except that loan words from Sanskrit shouldfollow their own usage; but it failed to com-mend itself to Nepali writers. To phoneticians,too, his choice, i and u, is likely to seem anti-phonetic, because the two Nepali vowelsgenerally sound closer in quality to the longvowels of Sanskrit, but these are symbolized by Fand u. It seems a little odd to find the Nepali for' Nepali' spelt nepdli in Turner's Dictionaryrather than Nepali.Attractive in its general appearance the booksuffers here and there from letters that havemade only half an impression on the printedpage; especially is this so in Romanizationscontaining a macron, it seems. As regardsaccuracy there are occasional misprints offigures and dates; '1950' , for example, canhardly have been the date on which ChandraShamsher (Prime Minister, 1901-29) was said tohave 'declared Nepali the language of hisadministration' (p. 43). The index seems a littlehaphazard; Jumla, for example, does not appearin it, nor does Kathmandu, nor Prithvi NarayanShah.These, however, are only minor blemishes.Dr. Hutt's survey of the history, status, andliterature of the language that has not onlybecome the rostra bhdsd of Nepal but has alsoextended its sphere of influence well beyond thefrontiers of that country is highly informativeand generously supported with statistics; it isalso highly readable.R. K. SPRIGGPETER SCHREINER AND RENATESOHNEN: Sanskrit indices and textof the Brahmapurana. (PuranaResearch Publications, Tubingen,Vol. i.) xxiii, 826 pp. Brahmapuranaindices on [26] microfiches.Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987.DM 146.This work consists of the printed text of theBrahmapurana, in Roman transliteration,together with full indexes. It is the first of aprojected three-volume set which is to includean English summary with subject indexes, and ageneral bibliography of purana studies.In the introduction, the authors make it clearthat they consider the indexes to be the mainwork, and the text itself merely a concretereference for the convenience of the user of theindexes. However, purana scholars will be gladof the text too, which, apart from being beauti-fully printed, provides advantages over otherexisting editions.The text is a reproduction of theAnandasrama edition (Poona 1895), which wasbased on six manuscripts. The Poona editorspresented manuscript variants in footnotes,although they made no apparent attempt toweigh them. The only other edition of the worknot derived from the Poona edition is theVerikatesvara Press edition (Bombay 1906).based on four unidentified manuscripts. TheBombay editors gave no variants, but only theoccasional passages in parentheses or infootnotes. The present text has been createdintelligently and carefully so as to preserve allthe manuscript and printed text evidence pro-vided by the two earlier editions. Once again,the available textual variants are not weighed,and no attempt has been made to gather furthermanuscript evidence. These policies have notbeen adopted lightly, and are satisfactorilydefended in the introduction. The authors havepreferred to devote their present labours toproviding tools that will make the resolution ofthese and other questions very much easier inthe future. In this, their main purpose, they havesucceeded admirably. It might at first glanceseem that an elaborate set of indexes based onan admittedly unsure textual foundation mightitself be unsure. But there is a major mitigatingfactor: the indexes include all variants. This isunusual enough to be worth remarking upon,and it means that the indexes are in fact notmerely based on the texts as decided upon bythe Poona and Bombay editors, but also uponthe six individual manuscripts that were used bythe Poona editors (inasmuch as they arerepresented in the footnotes). A KWIC index toany of the printed texts alone would be a usefultool: when one uses these indexes, one is scan-ning both the manuscripts and the printed textsfor evidence. This broadens the base of theindexes to an acceptable degree, in relation tothe current state of purana studies. A furthermitigating factor is that the methodologyemployed in creating this work (see below) isflexible enough to permit the seamless additionof more textual evidence in the future and, ifnecessary, a semi-automatic new edition.There are three distinct indexes. The largest,which at 4728 pages is indeed vast, is the KWICindex. ,Let us consider the word vedhyam, as itappears in the linekarandavam cdvedhyanfca trivistapamathaparam |

M. J. Hutt. Nepali: a national language and its literature

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M. J. Hutt. Nepali: a national language and its literature

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