A Polyglot’s Love of His Mother Tongue (K K Handiqui 20 July 1898—7 June 1982)

A Polyglot’s Love of His Mother Tongue – K K Handiqui

Sanjeev Kumar Nath

An old story about the Ahom kingdom in Assam : The Ahom king and some of his men were moving through a forest when they came upon a stream. To make it easy for the king to cross the stream, one of the officers cut a tree in such a way that it fell right across the stream, becoming a sort of a bridge for the king to walk on. The king crossed that tree-bridge, and conferred the title of bridge-builder, “Hon-di-qui” (in the Ahom language) on that officer. That was the first Ahom aristocrat to be named Handiqui (or Handique as is usually spelt by most people who have this name).

Centuries after that incident in which a resourceful Ahom aristocrat came to be known as a Handiqui, another Handiqui became an extraordinary bridge-builder, but the bridges he built, the linkages he established were in the domain of ideas and languages.

Born on 20 July, 1898, Krishna Kanta Handiqui distinguished himself as an extraordinary polyglot comparatist, Indologist and Sanskrit scholar. Besides his mother tongue Assamese, languages he knew very well included Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Hindi, Bengali, Greek, Latin, English, French, German, Spanish, and Russian; and he even read ancient Hebrew and ancient Sumerian texts.

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His Naiṣadhacarita of Śriharṣa is a scholarly translation of an extremely dense Sanskrit epic of the 12th century. Handiqui’s translation of this text—often considered the most difficult of all Sanskrit epics—was greeted with profuse praise and applause from Sanskrit scholars around the world. A 613-word vocabulary of difficult words that he appended to the translation is considered to be a vary valuable contribution to Sanskrit lexicography. The publication of this book from Lahore resulted in Ananda Coomaraswami the Head of the Indian Section of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, communicate with Krishna Kanta Handiqui on matters related to the descriptions of certain paintings in the Museum, purportedly about the Nala-Damayanti story, the story of Naiṣadhacarita. It is exhilarating to think of the linkages/bridges built by this text, connecting not just 12th century Sanskrit with a world language, modern-day English, but also Jorhat-Lahore-Boston, and even literary scholarship and fine arts. Handiqui worked relentlessly during the writing of this book, studying ancient manuscripts, reading, comparing, and so on from 1927 to 1934, when he was also working as the first principal of Jagannath Barooah College, Jorhat, a work for which he did not draw any salary.

In 1949, one year after Handiqui became the vice-chancellor of Gauhati University, he published Yaśastilaka and Indian Culture, once again an internationally acclaimed scholarly translation, this time of a Jaina campu kavya of the 10th century by Somadeva. During the composition of this book, mainly from 1939-1945, Handiqui again immersed himself in work, studying, among other things, numerous rare manuscripts, and ancient texts on archeology and palaeography preserved in the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, the Provincial Museum, Lucknow, and the Rajputana Museum, Ajmer. During the summer vacation of Jagannath Barooah College, Handiqui would be touring India, particularly South India, studying archeological details of ancient temples.

We need to remember that Handiqui was working so hard for scholarly excellence alone, and without any thought of monetary gain because when the Head of the Department of Prakrit and of Jaina Archeology, University of Mysore, Adinath Upadhye requested Handiqui to publish the book through the Jaina Sanskriti Sangrakshak Sangha, Handiqui gave the copyrights of his book to this organization.

Handiqui’s last major work of scholarship is his translation of the fifth-century (and the most ancient) Prakrit epic Setubandha, based on the Ramayana story of Sri Ram and his vanara army building the causeway linking the Indian mainland with Sri Lanka. Once again, Handiqui worked extremely hard, reading through and comparing the North Indian, South Indian and Gauriya recensions of the ancient text. Among other things, he studied many manuscripts (including palm leaf manuscripts) preserved in institutes like the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, Oriental Centre, Baroda, the Trivandrum Oriental Research Centre, Madras Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, and the University of Mumbai. It was after working through numerous texts and manuscripts, and also reading a lot of critical matter on Setubandha, that Handiqui produced a text and translation of Setubandha that found universal scholarly approval.

What I have briefly said here about the three great scholarly works of Krishan Kanta Handiqui is like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to assessing his scholarship, but in stead of going on in this vein, I would like to address a different issue. Occasionally, one encounters a modern-day relevance-obsessed scholar asking questions like, “Of what use is that kind of scholarship today, which busies itself with fifth-century and 10-the century texts in languages no one uses today?” The best answer to that question is of course that Handiqui’s scholarly texts are certainly not for those who cannot value scholarship and seek some other value in it, but I am not in a mind to get into a quarrel with relevance-seekers here. Instead, I present small portions of one or two speeches that Handiqui delivered on specific occasions. These speeches show his concern for his mother tongue and the mother tongues of people of small language groups. (Our linguistic space today is dominated by English, the most powerful global language, and by Hindi, the third largest language in the world. We are also in close contact with Bengali, the seventh largest language in the world.)

First, I present an English translation of a portion of his speech as the president of the 17th convocation of the Asom Sahitya Sabha, with the hope that, at least some of the things that he says about Assamese language and culture in this lecture may enable relevance-seekers to connect with present-day debates about language and mother-tongue, and find something of interest. As the president of the Asom Sahitya Sabha some nine decades ago (1937), Handiqui said:

“Representatives of the Sabha and everyone gathered here,
It is a moment of pride and happiness for us that we have all gathered today in this ancient town with a desire to serve the Assamese language and literature. It would not be an exaggeration to assert that the Asom Sahitya Sanmilan is the only national organization of the Assamese today. It is also time to find ways of ensuring the participation of the communities of people living around Asom besides the Hindus, Muslims and Christians of Assamese society. Propagating the Assamese language among these people who live near us should be the main responsibility of the Asom Sahitya Sabha. In this hour of national crisis for the Assamese, it is necessary to form a publicity committee of Asom Sahitya Sabha and increase the number of Assamese speakers by educating the people. It has also become our responsibility to encourage people who come from other states to learn and like the Assamese language. It will be good if the knowledgeable and experienced people talk about ways in which this publicity work can be made successful.
One excellent thing to do would be establishing small schools to be directed by the Assamese. It will be very good if the authorities of the Sahitya Sabha take steps so that the representatives of the hill tribes of Assam can join the annual conventions of this Sanmilan. Considering out present situation, it would not be bad at all it this Sahitya Sanmilan turns very much into a language Sanmilan. If we cannot attract these people who live so near us and yet do not know the Assamese language, it cannot be hoped that they will pay attention to our language and culture on their own.
We have not yet sat together to think about the necessity and the method of attracting these people. Trade, commerce, propagation of religion, and even music, drama and films are extremely useful tools for disseminating a language. Unfortunately, we lag behind in these things. But to propagate religion we have the nāma dharma of Mahāpuruṣ Śaṅkaradeva; if we can propagate this nāma dharma, our language will also expand. In this, our satrādhikārs have a big role to play. If some religious organization using other languages take up this task, that will have a great negative impact on our language. A Śaṅkara Mission ought to have formed in Asom long ago. I believe religion and national consciousness have to work together in this case. For national progress and the propagation of the language, it is more essential to establish a Śaṅkara Mission than to observe the tithis.”

That Handiqui gave much thought to questions of language, mother tongue and identity is borne out by what he said on many important occasions, as in his speech during the first convocation of Gauhati University on January 3, 1951—

“……..Assam is the meeting ground of diverse racial and linguistic groups. The policy of the University is to harmonize and give due recognition to the legitimate demands of all such groups who, in their turn, are expected to regard the University as their own. It was primarily on this ground that the University of Gauhati opposed the proposal to give extra-territorial jurisdiction to the Universities to help in the solution of educational problems of linguistic minorities. The proposal was rejected by the Standing Committee of the Inter-University Board at its meeting held on the 24th October, 1949, but, as it is being mooted again, it is the duty of the University to reiterate its protest. The University of Gauhati supports the opinion of the Standing Committee that no University should be invested with extra-territorial jurisdiction, nor is it necessary for the solution of the language problem as there should be no difficulty in special provision being made for the study of different languages in the Universities. A regional University should, in fact, be able to solve the educational problems of the area under its control without any outside interference.”

Then, in his address at the second convocation of Gauhati University on January 31, 1955, Handiqui said—

“…… The proposal to make Hindi the sole medium for the IAS and other competitive examinations from 1965 onwards will be viewed by many of us with regret and disappointment. We have submitted our views to the Government and suggested that the proposal should not be carried into effect……. The simultaneous introduction of a modern Indian language as a compulsory subject in these examinations will not in any way be a compensation for candidates who will be required to answer the questions in all other subjects in a language in which they have not been thoroughly trained at the University level. Unfortunately, such candidates will be placed at a greater disadvantage in comparison with those whose mother tongue is Hindi.”

To remember Krishna Kanta Handiqui is to be filled with pride that such an extraordinary polyglot scholar was an Assamese, and to understand his views about mother tongues is to appreciate the beauty and the distinctiveness of all languages, irrespective of the number of people who use it.

Sanjeev Kumar Nath
sanjeevnath21@gmail.com

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