Translating Science, Translating Empire: The Power of Language in Colonial North India

Translating Science, Translating
Empire: The Power of Language

in Colonial North India
MICHAEL S. DODSON
Department of History, Indiana University at Bloomington
Translation has often been characterized as a ‘central act’ of European colo-

nialism and imperialism.1 For example, it has been argued that translation had
been utilized to make available legal-cultural information for the administra-
tion and rule of the non-West, but perhaps more importantly, translation has
been identified as important for the resources it provided in the construction of
representations of the colonized as Europe’s ‘civilizational other.’ In the con-
text of British imperialism in South Asia, Bernard Cohn has persuasively
demonstrated the first point, namely, that the codification of South Asian lan-
guages in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries served to convert ‘in-
digenous’ forms of textualized knowledge into ‘instruments of colonial rule.’
Translational technology, in the form of language grammars and dictionaries,
Cohn argues, enabled information gathering and the effective communication
of commands, as well as the (at least partial) displacement of European depen-
dence upon interlocutors of perceived dubious reliability.2 Most recent discus-
sions of translation in this context, however, have focused rather more upon the
act of translation as a strategic means for representing ‘otherness’ to primarily
domestic British reading audiences. In this case, the act of linguistic translation
is more clearly being enumerated as a practice of cultural translation. English
translations of the ‘ancient’ Sanskrit texts of India, for example, have been an-
alyzed for the rhetorical work that the text performs in certain contexts.3 On the
one hand, European-produced translations of these texts might serve to re-
inforce the dominance of a European aesthetic sensibility through a process of
Acknowledgments: This essay has benefited from the detailed comments and criticisms of Javed
Majeed and Tim Harper, as well as the comments of Tom Trautmann, Chris Bayly, Eivind Kahrs,
and Francesca Orsini. I am grateful to them all, though the responsibility for the ideas presented
here is of course mine alone.
1 See, for example, E. Cheyfitz, The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from
the Tempest to Tarzan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

2 B. Cohn, “The Command of Language and the Language of Command,” repr. in his Colo-
nialism and Its Forms of Knowledge (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
3 See, for example, T. Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colo-
nial Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
0010-4175/05/809–835 $9.50 © 2005 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History
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810 michael s. dodson
‘naturalization,’ in which the culturally-specific is ‘sanitized,’ subordinated to

a European norm, thereby inherently limiting the ‘artistic achievement’ of the
colonized. The orientalist William Jones’ erasure of the motif of sweat as an in-
dication of sexual interest and arousal in his translation of Kālidāsa’s fourth- or
fifth-century Sanskrit play Śakuntala is a case in point.4 On the other hand, lit-
erary translations from Sanskrit might also foreground the ‘otherness’ of Indi-
an texts and cultural norms through a strategy of ‘foreignization’5; that is, by
registering for the European reader differences in language and cultural con-
tent. For example, European translations from Sanskrit might include anthro-
pological notations which explain the cultural relevance of the text, or might
instead adopt an overly literal rendering of prose, thereby foregrounding dif-
ferences in syntax, vocabulary, symbol, or motif.6 Both such rhetorical devices,
it can be argued, leave the reader tripping over the text, giving him pause to
consider the very strangeness of its appearance and contents.
In each of these cases, the work of translation into English can be seen to op-
erate in colonial contexts to construct European authority, whether that author-
ity be of an eminently practical kind for the extension of the structures of rule,
or as a cultural authority for the effective representation of the colonized as
somehow ‘other.’ This essay, while recognizing the centrality of translation
within European imperialism that these kinds of approaches have highlighted,
seeks to supplement them by historically situating translation as an evolving
discipline. Moreover, it is argued that strategies of translation developed prin-
cipally from European ideas about the status of language within the imperial
project of imposing ‘civilizational advancement’ upon the non-West through
education. The principal context for this study, then, is the practice of transla-
tion into, rather than out of, Indian languages within colonial governmental ed-
ucational institutions of mid-nineteenth-century north India. In particular, I
contend that the connections perceived by Europeans between the features of a
particular language and the collective mind of its speakers, or indeed their state
of civilization, were fundamental in driving the translation of Western English-
language educational text books into Indian languages. Moreover, particular
strategies of translation can be viewed as a key mechanism through which West-
ern concepts of progress through a civilizational hierarchy, at the top of which
stood Britain, were authorized for Indian acceptance. Finally, this focus upon
the translational strategies employed in governmental institutions raises im-
portant questions about the genealogy which lay behind the construction of
4 See K. Teltscher, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India 1600–1800 (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 211–15; also, S. Bassnett and H. Trivedi, “Introduction,” in S.
Bassnett and H. Trivedi, eds., Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge,
1999).
5 This term is adapted from L. Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation
(London: Routledge, 1995), 19 –20.

6 Bassnett and Trivedi, “Introduction.”
translating science, translating empire 811
‘modern’ languages, and in particular their functioning to somehow represent

national or communal identities.
Of course, it may also be pointed out that by focusing upon the European in-
tellectual genealogies that underpinned translation, this essay effectively mar-
ginalizes the impacts that the colonized had upon the development of European
knowledges. Certainly it is true that in many instances (several of which are
enumerated below) European writers and translators working in India derived
much of their linguistic skill, as well as their knowledge of the cultural mean-
ingfulness of Indian languages, from interaction with their tutors and assistants,
who were in many cases brāhman pan d its (high-caste “learned men” trained in
Sanskrit philology and philosophy). In a significant respect, then, the process
of knowledge formation about Indian languages and Indian civilization re-
flected some sort of a dialogic process.7 Yet, simultaneously, and without mar-
ginalizing this important point, this essay seeks to highlight that, within the his-
torical context considered, the impact of ‘native’ knowledge and historical
agency appears to have been greatest when it confirmed, or perhaps coincided,
with European philosophical preconceptions of the connections between lan-
guage and civilization. Furthermore, the important historical question of what
particular uses Indians themselves made of these ideas, or rather, how Indians
drew upon, altered, or contested these ideas in the furtherance of their own dis-
tinct educational, cultural, or nationalist projects, is an open one. Indeed, the
focus here upon European intellectual genealogies does not effectively mar-
ginalize the possibilities for exploring this sort of analysis, a point to which I
will return in my concluding section.
i. british orientalist characterizations

of indian language and civilization
The story of Babel, as it appears in the book of Genesis, tells us that God dis-
persed the unitary population of the globe by confusing their single, common,
or ‘natural’ language. For many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European
thinkers, this narrative lay at the very center of an intellectual tradition that
viewed language as a principal marker for cultural and national difference.8
This difference had always been a productive one for European intellectuals.
For example, in the realm of historical scholarship, the differences perceived
between languages had been utilized to elaborate a methodology for tracing
backwards through time the inter-relationships of nations or peoples. During
the late eighteenth century, Jacob Bryant compared the vocabularies of distinct
languages in an attempt to determine the historical relationships between their
speakers.9 In a similar manner, William Jones offered up in his anniversary dis-
7 See E. F. Irschick, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795 –1895 (London: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1994).

8 Genesis 11, “The Dispersion of the Nations at Babel.” See http://www.bible.org/netbible/.
9 J. Bryant, A New System; Or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology: Wherein an Attempt is Made
courses to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta a more scientific alternative to

Bryant’s speculative etymological method, wherein an examination of lan-
guage structure, together with attendant “extrinsick” evidence (such as archae-
ological evidence), would form the basis of a new historiographical method in-
tended to place Biblical historical narrative upon a more sound and critical
footing.10 Jones, like Bryant before him, sought to understand the historical
connections between Arabs, Europeans, Chinese, Indians, and so forth, by ref-
erence to their common origin with the sons of Noah. As is well known, Jones’
research into the similarities and differences between the Greek, Latin, and San-
skrit languages provided the impetus to continental European linguistic re-
search, thereby giving birth to the field of historical comparative philology.
Yet quite aside from any question of purely historical chronology, eighteenth-
century European discussions of linguistic difference were already invested
with a sense of a ‘national’ hierarchy. This stemmed, it would seem, from philo-
sophical attempts to explain the origins of human linguistic diversity, and to un-
derstand the relationship between thought and speech, outside the realm of
purely Biblical narrative and epistemology. The key text in the development of
this body of thought is John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Under-
standing (1690). Locke’s central thesis in the Essay had been formulated to re-
ject the prevalent philosophical notion of innate ideas. In essence, Locke argued
that language had a human origin, and that its creation and continued use were
“primal expressions of our humanity.”11 In other words, languages “have a his-
tory that reflects the experience and thought of their speakers,” and the study
of language through etymology may reveal “the trains of thought that had been
in the minds of speakers in the course of the progress of the mind.”12 This es-
sential feature of language, as representative of its speakers’ minds, was further
elaborated during the course of the eighteenth century by writers such as
Condillac in his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, and by John Horne
Tooke in The Diversions of Purley.13 One of the most comprehensive expres-
sions of this idea can be found in Wilhelm von Humboldt’s On the Diversity of
Human Language Construction and Its Influence on the Mental Development
to Divest Tradition of Fable; and to Reduce the Truth to Its Original Purity (London: T. Payne,
1774–1776).
10 See especially W. Jones, Discourses, Delivered at the Asiatick Society, 1785–1792 (London:
Routledge and Thoemmes Press, 1993 [1807]). For secondary works on the historiographical
method of Jones, and in particular his relationship to Bryant, see H. Aarsleff, The Study of Lan-
guage in England, 1780 –1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), ch. 4; J. Majeed, Un-
governed Imaginings: James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1992), ch. 1; and T. R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997), ch. 2.
11 H. Aarsleff, “Locke’s Influence,” in V. Chappell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Locke
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 271.

12 Ibid., 272–73.
13 See also Aarsleff, The Study of Language in England. Also, R. Harris and T. J. Taylor, Land-
marks in Linguistic Thought I: The Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure, 2nd ed. (London:
Routledge, 1997), chs. 11–12.
of the Human Species, published posthumously in 1836.14 Humboldt argued

that language was the product of internal human mental states and their natur-
al activity, and he conceived language to be an “involuntary emanation of the
mind, no work of nations, but a gift fallen to them by their inner destiny.”15 But
while there are elements, or characteristics, of human mental activity and lan-
guage which are universal, Humboldt explained the actual diversity of human
language by reference to human freedom and differences in mental endow-
ments, together with the inexorable logic of mental development and the ad-
vancing history of distinct peoples.16 Language was thereby considered to be a
(ceaseless) activity (energeia).17 This basic thesis of language formation could
then be extended from individuals to nations, and further, from language to cul-
ture. In sum, language became closely linked to the minds of the people who
give rise to that language, and the historicity of language itself is borne in
changes introduced by the mental or civilizational development of its common
speakers. The characteristics of language, as such, can be made to mark dis-
tinctions in mental development and civilizational status.
Early British orientalist18 research and writing on Indian languages reflected,
and further reinforced, many of these philosophical ideas. Indeed, the writings
of men such as William Jones, H. T. Colebrooke, Charles Wilkins, and William
Carey significantly institutionalized a particular way of writing about Indian
languages and the people who spoke them. Through the publication of gram-
mars and multi-lingual dictionaries during the late eighteenth century through
to the mid-nineteenth century, these British orientalists built up a powerful vo-
cabulary and imagery to characterize Indian languages, which could then be
deemed as being representative of certain features of its speakers’ ‘culture’ or
‘civilization.’ Moreover, these characteristics were constructed so as to be eval-
uative, such that the status of a language and its speakers may be judged to
be ‘religious’ or ‘scientific,’ ‘weak’ and ‘degraded,’ or perhaps ‘copious’ and
‘powerful.’ In this manner, these representations would come to have a power-
ful influence over the particular strategies employed in later colonial educa-
tional institutions and their programmes of translation.
In the case of Sanskrit, British orientalists recognized that this language was
14
A. Humboldt, On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and Its In-
fluence on the Mental Development of the Human Species, M. Losonsky, ed., P. Heath, trans. (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
15
Ibid., 24. See also Losonsky’s “Introduction,” xi.
16 See Losonsky’s “Introduction”; also Hans Aarsleff’s “Introduction” to the 1988 Cambridge
University Press edition, and Harris and Taylor, Landmarks in Linguistic Thought, ch. 13.
17 Humboldt, On Language, 49. See also M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of
the Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 1970), ch. 8, esp. p. 290.

18 I use the term “orientalist” here to indicate an East India Company administrator-scholar in-
terested in the “orient,” rather than necessarily in the Said’s sense of the word. This is not to say,
of course, that “orientalists” were not Orientalist in significant ways, but simply that one need not
wholly identify the two terms without further consideration. See E. W. Said, Orientalism (New
York: Vintage Books, 1979).
intimately associated with the ‘Hindu’ religion by virtue of it being the medi-
um for their various religious texts, as well as being the language of learned
(i.e., religious) intercourse and religious ritual. In short, orientalists, from very
early on, recognized that Indians believed Sanskrit to be deva-bhās ā—the eter-
nal and uncreated “speech” or “language of the gods”—and as such, in a sig-
nificant sense, India’s ‘national language.’ William Carey recorded in the ear-
ly nineteenth century that “many of the Pundits assert that it is the language of
the gods, and was never used as a common medium of communication among
men, but revealed from heaven as a vehicle for the divine will, all the books es-
teemed of divine authority being written therein.”19 H. T. Colebrooke recog-
nized that Sanskrit “is cultivated by learned Hindus throughout India, as the lan-
guage of science and of literature, and as the repository of their law, civil and
religious.”20 Orientalists considered that Sanskrit was therefore a key compo-
nent to India’s civilization given its intimate connection with Indian cultural
norms. H. H. Wilson commented in 1819 “it is an assertion that scarcely re-
quires proof, that the Hindu population of these extensive realms can be un-
derstood only through the medium of the Sanscrit language: it alone furnishes
us with the master spring of all the actions and passions, their prejudices and
errors, and enables us to appreciate their vices or their worth.”21
In addition to the recognition of Sanskrit’s ‘sacred status,’ orientalists had lit-
tle doubt that Sanskrit was a language of great antiquity. In 1778, Nathaniel
Brassey Halhed described Sanskrit as “of the most venerable and unfathomable
antiquity.”22 While later debates would rage over the exact extent of Sanskrit’s
antiquity, and hence of Indian civilization, as well as over the nature of the in-
terrelationships between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, it was clear to most that
significant parallels existed between these ancient civilizations. In other words,
and without having to delve too deeply into the exact historical connections be-
tween Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, it was apparent to European orientalists that
Sanskrit was the medium for a body of ancient literature, science, and religious
and philosophical thought which corresponded, in some degree, with that which
could be found in the European classical world of ancient Greece and Rome.
This pedigree of a shared place in the ancient world, then, led to attributions to
Sanskrit of a ‘classical’ status, due to its correspondence with a European his-
torical chronology, rather than from any particular Indian characterizations. In
19 W. Carey, A Grammar of the Sungskrit Language, Composed from Works of the Most Es-
teemed Grammarians, to which are Added Examples for the Exercise of the Student, and a Com-
plete List of the Dhatoos, or Roots (Serampore: Mission Press, 1806), iii.
20 H. T. Colebrooke, “On the Sanscrit and Pracrit Languages,” repr. in Miscellaneous Essays
(London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1837), vol. 2, p. 2. Originally in Asiatick Researches 7 (Calcutta:
1801), 199–231.
21 H. H. Wilson, A Dictionary, Sanscrit and English: Translated, Amended and Enlarged, from
an Original Compilation Prepared by Learned Natives for the College of Fort William (Calcutta:
Hindostanee Press, 1819), “Dedication.”
22 N. B. Halhed, A Grammar of the Bengal Language (Hoogly: 1778), iii.
this way, Sanskrit became associated, along with Greek and Latin, with the ‘clas-
sical’ as a valued source of civilizational attributes.23
As European linguistic expertise in Sanskrit spread in the early nineteenth
century, characterizations of the language also became based in Indian and Eu-
ropean philological research. Following the discoveries of Nathaniel Brassey
Halhed and William Jones on the affinity of Sanskrit to Greek and Latin, a large
number of Sanskrit dictionaries and grammars were published, first in India and
then increasingly in Europe. These represented an effort to not only enable the
wider study of India’s textual records, but to further philological research into
the historical relationships of languages, given Sanskrit’s centrality in this re-
gard.24 Charles Wilkins’ 1808 Sanskrit grammar, for example, was hailed upon
its publication as the best of the Sanskrit grammars published to that point, not
only because of its ready availability in Europe, but because it made accessible
to a European audience both a knowledge of Sanskrit grammar upon a largely
European model, as well as the rudiments of Indian grammatical science,
vyākaran a.25 Wilkins noted in the grammar’s opening pages that the term
Sam skr ta, when analyzed according to the dictates of vyākaran a, “denotes a
thing to have been composed, or formed by art, adorned, embellished, purified,
highly cultivated or polished, and regularly inflected, as a language.”26 Sanskrit
is considered, then, in the famous words of Sir William Jones, to be “of a
wonderful structure . . . copious . . . exquisitely refined.”27 Sanskrit’s complex
grammatical structure, its ability to express a range and a depth of meaning
through compounding, its extensive vocabulary, and its ability to allow the
coining of words from verbal roots together with a variety of prefixes and suf-
fixes, rendered the language, according to William Carey, both “copious” and
“expressive.”28 Sanskrit was considered by European orientalists, then, to be a
‘powerful’ language in terms of its expressive capabilities and flexibility. The
subsequent publication of several Sanskrit lexicons and dictionaries further im-
pressed upon Europeans the sheer extent of the range of Sanskrit literature.29
23
Of course, this status of Sanskrit, and of India’s civilizational heritage, was often challenged by
liberal thinkers such as James Mill. See his The History of British India, 5th ed., H. H. Wilson, ed.
(London: James Madden, 1858). See also, for example, Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings, ch. 4; Traut-
mann, Aryans and British India, ch. 4; and U. S. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nine-
teenth-Century British Liberal Thought (London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), esp. ch. 3.
24
Carey, Grammar of the Sungskrit Language; H. T. Colebrooke, A Grammar of the Sanscrit
Language (Calcutta: Honorable Company’s Press, 1805); C. Wilkins, A Grammar of the Sanskri-
ta Language (London: W. Blumer and Co., 1808). Wilkins, in particular, pointed out that the study
of Sanskrit should appeal to those interested in the “structure and affinity of languages,” as well as
those interested in the ancient history, literature, and philosophy of India. See his “Preface.”
25 See Alexander Hamilton’s anonymous review, entitled, “A Grammar of the Sanskrita Lan-
guage, by Charles Wilkins, London, 1808,” in The Edinburgh Review 13, 26 ( Jan. 1809), 367.
26 Wilkins, Grammar of the Sanskrita Language, 1.
27 W. Jones, “The Third Anniversary Discourse, Delivered 2 February, 1786, by the President,”
repr. in Jones, Discourses, 34.

28 Carey, Grammar of the Sungskrit Language, iv.
29 See Wilson’s 1819 A Dictionary, Sanscrit and English, as well as Colebrooke’s 1808 Trans-
While Sanskrit’s copiousness and grammatical ‘perfection’ could be viewed

as a reflection of the relatively exalted status of ancient Indian civilization, in
addition to its standing as a marker of India’s antiquity and inherent religiosi-
ty, the increased interest in Indian vernacular languages manifest in the early
nineteenth century resulted in the subjection of these, as well, to philological
analysis and a searching critique of their character. During the course of his re-
searches, William Jones had recognized that although Hindi and Sanskrit dif-
fered markedly in their grammatical structures, they shared a significant per-
centage of their vocabularies. He believed that “the pure Hindi, whether of
Tartarian or Chaldean origin, was primeval in Upper India, into which the San-
scrit was introduced by conquerors from other kingdoms in some very remote
age.”30 This notion was soon overturned, however, as Colebrooke’s early nine-
teenth-century studies of Sanskrit established that it was the ‘fountainhead’
from which all of India’s vernacular languages had been derived. 31 Colebrooke
analyzed the large shared vocabulary of Sanskrit and Hindi, and persuasively
argued in 1801 that, “where similar words are found in both languages, the Hin-
di has borrowed from the Sanscrit, rather than the Sanscrit from Hindi.” The
historical relation between Sanskrit and Hindi was further solidified by its cor-
respondence to the accepted general rule that, over time, “the progress has been
from languages rich in inflections, to dialects simple in their structure.” This
relative simplification, or perhaps ‘degeneration,’ of language structure, in
which “auxillary verbs and appendant particles supply the place of numerous
inflections of the root” was clearly in evidence with respect to Hindi and San-
skrit.32 The notion that Hindi was a ‘derivative language’of Sanskrit, in the same
way that Italian was of Latin,33 soon became a generally accepted maxim.
By the second decade of the nineteenth century, a series of new vernacular
dictionaries and grammars were being published in India which were able to
take full account of the established historical relationship between them and
Sanskrit. William Carey’s 1815 dictionary of Bengali, for instance, noted that
the majority of Bengali’s vocabulary was derived directly from Sanskrit. His
dictionary purported to provide an etymology for all its words, and included an
lation of the Sanskrit Lexicon, the Amerakośa, for Use at the College of Fort William. H. T. Cole-
brooke, trans., Cosha, or Dictionary of the Sanscrit Language, by Amera Sinha. With an English
Interpretation, and Annotation (Serampoor: n.p., 1808).
30 Jones, “Third Anniversary Discourse,” 33 – 34.
31 Colebrooke substantiated his argument by reference to etymology. For example, he noted that
the word sat in Sanskrit means “existent,” from which can be derived in Sanskrit the word satya,
meaning “true” or “truth.” The Hindi word for this is sac, which Colebrooke argues is derived from
satya by dropping the final vowel, substituting “j” for “y,” and then transforming “tj” to the more
harmonious “ch.” See Colebrooke, “On the Sanscrit and Pracrit Languages,” 24–25. See also
H. H. Wilson, An Introduction to the Grammar of the Sanskrit Language, for the Use of Early Stu-
dents (London: J. Madden and Co., 1847), x.
32 Colebrooke, “On the Sanscrit and Pracrit Languages,” 25.
33 Hamilton used this analogy in his review article, “A Grammar of the Sanskrita Language,”
369.
appendix that listed all the Sanskrit roots (dhātu) from which much of the Ben-
gali vocabulary was thought to have been derived.34 Yet Carey also noted the
irregularity in the way Bengali was spoken, and even in how it was written (or
spelled). He expressed the hope that with the increased study of Bengali, and
eventually the translation of a variety of literary and scientific texts into that
language, Bengali would soon “be enriched by many words borrowed from oth-
er tongues.”35 The comparison of the vernacular languages with Sanskrit, in
particular, led many orientalists to claim that the vernaculars possessed very
little in either expressive capability or refinement which could not be traced
directly to Sanskrit. Wilkins noted, for example, that “the several dialects con-
founded under the common terms Hindi, Hindavi, Hindostani, and Bhasha, de-
prived of Sanskrit, would not only lose all their beauty and energy, but, with re-
spect to the power of expressing abstract ideas, or terms in science, would be
absolutely reduced to a state of barbarism.”36
While the comparison of the vocabulary and grammatical structure of the
Indian vernaculars and Sanskrit contributed to the perception of the former’s
‘degraded’ status, the increasing publication during the course of the early
nineteenth century of bilingual dictionaries, and several multilingual technical
vocabularies, served to further highlight and systematize either the dependence
of the vernaculars upon Sanskrit for their expressive capability, or those sub-
ject areas in which the vernaculars lacked any sort of vocabulary at all in com-
parison with English. The ideological work that comparative dictionaries do has
been discussed in a quite different context by Lydia Liu. She argues that bilin-
gual or multilingual dictionaries proceed upon the inherent assumption that
“languages are commensurate and equivalents exist naturally between them.”37
But when these equivalences are not forthcoming, that is, when there is no word
in language B for a particular word in language A, this can be interpreted as one
language possessing a “lack,” which, in turn, lays the foundation for compara-
tive constructions of the collective mind of other civilizations, as well as one’s
own identity.38
Comparisons of the respective vocabularies and grammatical structures of
Sanskrit and the Indian vernaculars tended to highlight, then, a process of de-
generation and reliance upon the intellectual achievements of an ancient age,
while dictionaries that included English could be made to highlight India’s rel-
ative lack of scientific and civilizational progress in relation to Europe. Peter
Breton’s 1825 medical vocabulary is an illustrative example of this latter
process. Breton, a surgeon in the service of the East India Company, surveyed
34 W. Carey, A Dictionary of the Bengalee Language, in which the Words are Traced to Their
Origin, and Their Various Meanings Given (Serampore: Mission Press, 1815), see “Preface.”
35 Ibid., viii–ix.
36 Wilkins, A Grammar of the Sanskrita Language, x–xi.
37 L. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—
China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), esp. 3–6.

38 Ibid., 4.
a series of medical texts, dictionaries, and vocabularies in Arabic, Persian, San-

skrit, Hindi, and English in an attempt to highlight possible sources of cross-
lingual misunderstanding among medical practitioners.39 The vocabulary lists,
which cover everything from basic anatomy to surgical instruments and dis-
eases, begin with the English terms, thereby setting the standard against which
all others are compared, and then present in adjacent columns the correspond-
ing words (if any) in the other languages. Apart from the purely visual aspect
of this arrangement, which would highlight the ‘lack’ of a particular language
with a blank space, Breton noted that many “Oriental languages” either utilized
the same terminology to describe quite different anatomical entities, or had a
variety of terms (or a vagueness of terms) to refer to the very same thing. Bre-
ton attributed the perceived inadequacies of the technical vocabularies that
could be found in Indian languages solely to the speakers’ ignorance of mod-
ern, Western medical science. For example, he noted that, “they [i.e., the “Asi-
atics”] have no distinct words for nerve and therefore call it Nus, Asub, Shirra,
etc. in common with Ligaments and Tendons. . . . they do not know the dis-
tinction between an Artery and a Vein and consequently the appellation of Rug
and Shirra are indiscriminately applied to both. The Hindee word Rug and
Shirra according to the Soosrut, a Sanskrit work on Anatomy and Pathology,
means blood vessels or tubular vessels of any kind.”40
These early orientalist characterizations of Indian languages, and the poten-
tial extension of these characterizations to the collective mental or civilizational
state of India, can now be further analyzed with reference to ways in which they
found renewed influence in the educational programmes of the government col-
leges at Delhi and Benares during the middle of the nineteenth century. Both of
these colleges undertook the large-scale translation and publishing of Western
scientific texts with a view to the ‘intellectual and moral improvement’ of north
Indian society. While the European superintendents of these colleges agreed
that the vernacular languages of India also required ‘improvement’ in order to
make them suitable vehicles for the transmission of Western knowledge, they
took radically different views of the translational strategies which were to ef-
fect this improvement. While this difference reflected their distinct views on
how best to produce cultural authority for their translations of Western knowl-
edge, both men agreed that European intervention was required in the first in-
stance to effect this linguistic improvement, and, further, that linguistic im-
provement was an essential prerequisite to India’s civilizational progress.
39 P. Breton, A Vocabulary of the Names of the Various Parts of the Human Body and of Med-
ical and Technical Terms in English, Arabic, Persian, Hindee and Sanscrit, for the Use of the Mem-
bers of the Medical Department in India (Calcutta: Government Lithographic Press, 1825). Breton
was assisted in making this compilation by H. H. Wilson, who had originally come to India on the
Company’s medical service.
40
Ibid., “Preface,” n.p. Yet somewhat incongruously, Breton also noted that despite the “inad-
equate knowledge of medical science and Anatomy,” the “natives” were still able to perform “ad-
mirable cures and delicate operations” with great success.
ii. the power of english: translating science

into urdu at delhi college
Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “Minute” on education, issued in Calcutta on 2
February 1835, advocated the abandonment of ‘oriental’ subjects in govern-
ment-sponsored educational institutions in north India in favor of a renewed
emphasis upon the teaching of Western knowledge imparted solely through the
medium of the English language.41 While Macaulay’s Minute is rightfully fa-
mous, or rather infamous, for its intemperate tone and dismissal of any intrin-
sic value attributable to Indian languages and literature, many recent historical
analyses have lent it too much in the way of actual influence over British colo-
nial educational policy. While acknowledging the cultural arrogance which mo-
tivated Macaulay, his direct influence was rather short-term. The sentiments
that lay behind Governor-General Lord Auckland’s Minute of four years later,
issued on 24 November 1839, held far greater importance in determining actu-
al educational policy in northern India during the middle decades of the nine-
teenth century.42 Lord Auckland advocated a more conciliatory educational
policy whereby Western ‘useful knowledge’ would be introduced to Indians
through the medium of Indian languages. Here he drew upon the experiences
of Lancelot Wilkinson, the British political agent in the native state of Bhopal,
who had undertaken a series of apparently successful “educational experi-
ments” at the pāthśālā (school) in Sehore. There, pan d its and students were ed-
ucated in Western astronomical knowledge by reference to the ‘rational’ and
‘scientific’ Sanskrit texts known as the Siddhāntas.43 Educational policy in
northern India during the mid-nineteenth century came to reflect a combination
41
British Library, London (henceforth BL), Oriental and India Office Collection of the British
Library (henceforth OIOC), Board’s Collection, F/4/1846, No. 77633, “Minute” of T. B. Macaulay,
2 Feb. 1835, 144. The Governor-General, William Bentinck, later enshrined many of Macaulay’s
suggestions in government education policy. See BL, OIOC, Board’s Collection, F/4/1846, No.
77633, “Resolution of the Governor-General of India in Council in the General Department,” 7
Mar. 1835, 161–63.
42 BL, OIOC, Board’s Collection, F/4/1846, No. 77638, “Minute by the Right Honorable the
Governor General of India,” 24 Nov. 1839, 5 –75. The contents of this Minute were confirmed by
the 20 Jan. 1841 despatch of the Court of Directors. See BL, OIOC, Public and Judicial Depart-
ment Records L/P&J/3/1015 (Public Department No. 1 of 1841), “Despatch of the Honorable the
Court of Directors to the Governor General of India in Council.” Note also that in 1844 responsi-
bility for education in northern India was transferred from Calcutta to the Government of the North-
Western Provinces (NWP) at Agra. James Thomason, the Lieutenant-Governor of NWP, endorsed
Auckland’s position through his continued support of education in “useful knowledge” in Sanskrit
and the Indian vernaculars.
43 See, particularly, L. Wilkinson, “On the Use of the Siddhantas in the Work of Native Educa-
tion,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 3 (1834), 504 –19. See also, for analyses of Wilkin-
son, C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in
India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ch. 7; G. Prakash, “Science
Between the Lines,” in, S. Amin and D. Chakrabarty, eds., Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South
Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996); and C. Z. Minkowski, “The Pan-
dit as Public Intellectual: The Controversy over Virodha or Inconsistency in the Astronomical Sci-
ences,” in, A. Michaels, ed., The Pandit: Traditional Scholarship in India (Delhi: Manohar, 2001).
of interests under Auckland’s impetus. The liberal concern to impart Western

learning and science to affect India’s civilizational progress continued to dom-
inate the content of educational curricula, while earlier orientalist expertise in,
and appreciation for, Indian languages and cultural forms were adapted for the
purpose of more readily facilitating the introduction and acceptance of this
body of knowledge among India’s learned elites.
Yet while a variety of Indian-language textbooks in Western learning had al-
ready been written for exactly this purpose, European educators realized in the
late 1830s that these initial attempts were inconsistently translated, largely un-
readable, or insufficiently tailored to suit ‘native’ taste and sensibility.44 For ex-
ample, Rev. J. J. Moore, Secretary of the Agra School Book Society, noted in
1839 that “bald and unadapted translations of English works” did not hold the
attention of the “native reader,” nor command his respect.45 Lord Auckland
called for an investigation into the best means for constructing a comprehen-
sive corpus of textbooks “under one general scheme of control and superinten-
dence,” which resulted in the formation of a sub-committee of the government’s
General Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI) to look into the matter.46 Yet
while this sub-committee pondered at length how best to initiate a systematic
programme of translation and textbook composition which would ensure their
unproblematic reception, without coming to any substantive recommendations,
Felix Boutros, the Superintendent of Delhi College, had already undertaken the
initial steps in constructing a corpus of elementary school textbooks in Urdu.47
By the mid-nineteenth century, it was generally agreed by British educators
in India that the ‘vernacular’ dialects of the subcontinent were not, in the words
of Macaulay, to be considered “fit vehicles” for the conveyance of Western
knowledge in their current state.48 Indeed, nearly a decade after Macaulay’s
44 Among the texts meant are the mathematical works in Marathi of George Ritso Jarvis, of the
Bombay Engineers. See par. 12, “Minute” of Lord Auckland, 24 Nov. 1839.
45 J. J. Moore, “Proposal for Printing by Subscription, the Following Sanscrit Works, Recom-
mended for Publication by L. Wilkinson, Esq., of Sehore,” in, L. Wilkinson, ed., The Gunitadhia,
or A Treatise on Astronomy, with a Commentary Entitled The Mitacshara, Forming the Third Por-
tion of the Siddhant Shiromuni, by Bhaskara Acharya (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1842), 8.
46 This sub-committee was composed of E. Ryan, H. T. Prinsep, F. Millett, J.C.C. Sutherland,
and Prosonocoomar Tagore. See General Report of the Late General Committee of Public Instruc-
tion for 1840–41 and 1841– 42 (Calcutta: William Rushton and Co., 1842), App. VI, “Report of
the Sub-Committee, Appointed at the Meeting of the General Committee of Public Instruction, Held
on the 29th July, 1841, for Collecting and Arranging the Information Necessary for the Preparation
of the Scheme of Vernacular School Books,” xxxv–li.
47
Indeed, by late 1843, with the imminent devolution of educational responsibilities from the
central government at Calcutta, it was decided that the responsibility for preparing all vernacular
textbooks in Urdu and Hindi was to be transferred to the NWP Government at Agra. See letter No.
432, 20 Nov. 1843, from Under Secretary to the Government of Bengal C. Beadon to Secretary to
the Government of NWP R.N.C. Hamilton, quoted in General Report on Public Instruction in the
North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1843–44 (Agra: Agra Ukhbar Press, n.d.),
3–4.
48 BL, OIOC, Board’s Collection, F/4/1846, No. 77633, “Minute” of T. B. Macaulay, 2 Feb.
1835, 144.
Minute was issued, it was stated in an annual General Report on Public In-
struction for the North-Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency (NWP) that
“the Hindostanee language [i.e., Urdu] is at present exceedingly deficient in
compass, in precision, and generally in its power of expression for what we pro-
pose to teach by its means.”49 Yet at Delhi College Felix Boutros also felt that
Urdu was clearly the most appropriate language to use for educational transla-
tions in NWP, given that it was widely spoken throughout northern India, and
that it was now the official language of the courts.50 Moreover, Boutros argued
that the very character, and indeed history, of Urdu itself recommended it as the
most suitable language for the transmission of European scientific knowledge,
especially given the translational strategy which he had in mind. Urdu simply
required improvement.
The programme for vernacular textbook production at Delhi College was
first outlined in an educational Minute written by Boutros in 1842. After de-
scribing his plan for publications, which included an edition of Dr. John Aber-
crombie’s general works, William O’Shaughnessy’s chemistry text, elements
of Dugald Stewart’s moral philosophy, and William Robertson’s History of
America, Boutros then suggested guidelines for the maintenance of consisten-
cy across the translational scheme. These included the direct transfer of translit-
erated English-language scientific terms into the text in cases where no direct
equivalent in Urdu could be found, such as for “sodium” or “chlorine.” As well,
he recommended the maintenance of attested “scientific” terms in Urdu, such
as loha for “iron,” wherever an equivalent could be found; and similar guide-
lines for the composition of compound terms. Interestingly, Boutros also sanc-
tioned the inclusion of Greek prefixes such as “mono,” “di,” “proto,” “hypo,”
or “peri,” in the composition of compound Urdu words, though he gave no ex-
amples of how this might be effected.51
In essence, Boutros felt that it was the English language which should be con-
sidered as the most suitable “feeder language” for the introduction of scientif-
ic terminology into Urdu. This was a policy that reflected views of English as
a ‘powerful’ vehicle for the expression of scientific truths, but also, and more
importantly, the desire to reaffirm within the colonial educational context the
civilizational ascendancy of Britain through its historical connection with sci-
entific discovery and progress. Indeed, it was this history that authorized the
entire colonial translational project. Moreover, Urdu recommended itself as the
most appropriate Indian vernacular language for the spread of Western ‘useful
knowledge’ due to its peculiar ability to easily absorb foreign nomenclatures.
Urdu’s already-syncretic character, and its status as the product of historical
cultural interaction (between the former ruling elite, the Mughals, and the
49 General Report on Public Instruction . . . 1843 – 44, 7.
50 “Minute of F. Boutros on Delhi College,” 1 July 1842, in General Report of the Late Gener-
al Committee of Public Instruction for 1840 – 41 and 1841– 42, App. XV, cxxv–xvi.
51 Ibid.
‘mass’of Hindus), together were thought by Boutros to render Urdu all the more
easily amenable to the engraftment of English scientific nomenclatures into its
vocabulary.52 It was thought that, in time, this engraftment of scientific terms
direct from English would result in Urdu being rehabilitated for the task of con-
veying Western ‘useful’ knowledge.
Yet the perceived ‘lack’ in Urdu—the absence of equivalent terms for the ex-
pression of Western scientific knowledge—was in Delhi College interpreted as
indicative not only of the degraded status of the language but, by extension, the
degraded status of its speakers, and the civilization which it somehow repre-
sented. Linguistic comparison inevitably invited in this context an attendant
civilizational comparison. For instance, it was argued in contemporary official
accounts that the responsibility for the translation of English scientific works
into Urdu, and the attendant improvement of the language, must, in the first in-
stance, be carried out by Europeans in the employ of government. The actual
task of “drawing out” the linguistic resources of the vernaculars, by a careful
selection of English terms for engraftment during translation, was thought to
require a “correct knowledge” of scientific and other ‘useful’ topics, but also
the possession of a “critical taste” that was thought to be “more readily . . .
found among European minds than among those of Natives.”53 This claim was
strengthened by assertions that there existed a great paucity of qualified ‘na-
tive’ teachers, and that the lack of appropriate vernacular textbooks only exac-
erbated this shortage.54 The situation thus described created a vicious cycle of
sorts, which, it was thought, could only be broken by European intervention-
ism.
As noted above, Boutros’ scheme for translating English textbooks into Urdu
soon found official government sanction with its wide-ranging publication in
the NWP Government’s reports on public instruction during the first half of the
1840s. By 1844, the year before Boutros left Delhi College, it would seem that
his activities largely determined, or perhaps constituted, governmental views
on vernacular publishing. There was a veritable explosion of Urdu-language
textbooks prepared at Delhi, which were then published by either the College
itself or the Agra School Book Society.55 Publication lists for this period show
that the majority of vernacular textbooks of ‘useful’ knowledge published in
NWP were composed in Urdu.56 This expansion of publication, in itself, led the
52 General Report on Public Instruction . . . 1843 – 44, 7.

53 Ibid.
54 “Minute of F. Boutros,” 10 Jan. 1844, in General Report on Public Instruction . . . 1843 – 44,
App. N, lxxii–xix.
55
The yearly General Report on Public Instruction normally listed in an appendix titles that had
been published in the previous year, either at Delhi College or by the Agra School Book Society.
See, for example, “Appendix A” in General Report on Public Instruction in the North Western
Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1844 – 45 (Agra: Secundra Orphan Press, 1846), i.
56
This is not to say that Hindi books were not published, nor widely available, for they were.
The number of Hindi books available for educators in the NWP, however, tended to be much small-
NWP Government to establish a centralized clearinghouse at Agra to provide a

“general office of reference” for educational officers.57 Further, at both Delhi
and Agra, several Urdu journals were published in the mid-1840s from the Gov-
ernment’s colleges, including the Qiran al-SaGādain,58 which were reported to
“discuss in Oordoo scientific and other subjects, and endeavor to make known
all kinds of practical European inventions.”59 By the mid-1840s, then, Urdu had
become the principal vernacular medium for the publication of ‘useful’ knowl-
edge, and Delhi and Agra, with their large Muslim and Urdu-speaking popula-
tions, had become important locations of textbook translation, publication, and
distribution.
iii. the power of sanskrit: translational strategy

at benares college
In 1845, Felix Boutros left the position of Superintendent of Delhi College, and
with his departure the impetus behind the Urdu translational project waned. As
unsold ‘improved-Urdu’ textbooks began to pile up in the NWP Government’s
book depository during the later 1840s,60 the focus of both textbook produc-
tion and translational activity shifted eastward, to the city of Benares, where
James Robert Ballantyne had taken over as the superintendent of Benares Col-
lege. During his tenure, Ballantyne undertook a comprehensive educational
project in Benares, in which the impartation of Western philosophical and
scientific knowledge was intended to engender the civilizational and moral
progress of his young brāhman students. Ballantyne’s primary interest was in
bringing Christianity to his students. He viewed Christian doctrines as integral
to Western knowledge systems, and as simultaneously supporting and support-
ed by Western philosophy and the sciences. At its root, the ‘secular’ pedagogi-
er than Urdu books, and sometimes also of a much older vintage. Adam’s translation of Stewart’s
Historical Anecdotes, which first appeared under the Hindi title Upadeśa Kathā in an 1825 publi-
cation from Calcutta, was still being offered in 1844 as a standard Hindi text in NWP. See General
Report on Public Instruction . . . 1843–44, App. S, “List of Books in Hindi Generally Used in Schools
and Colleges of the North Western Provinces.”
57 The Rev. J. J. Moore, the Urdu Translator to Government, and Secretary of the Agra School
Book Society, was appointed Curator of School Books in September 1844. See General Report on
Public Instruction in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1844–45, 2–3; also
App. B of the same report, which reprints a letter from J. Thornton, Sec. to Govt. NWP, to Rev. J.
J. Moore, 2 Sept. 1844, ii–iii.
58 The publication of this journal is discussed in G. Minault, “Qiran al-Sagādain: The Dialogue
Between Eastern and Western Learning at Delhi College,” in, J. Malik, ed., Perspectives of Mutu-
al Encounters in South Asian History, 1760 –1860 (Leiden: Brill, 2000). The publication of this
Urdu periodical is first suggested by Boutros in “Minute of F. Boutros,” 10 Jan. 1844, in General
Report on Public Instruction . . . 1843 – 44.
59
General Report on Public Instruction in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presi-
dency for 1845–46 (Agra: Secundra Orphan Press, 1847), 5.
60
Rajendralal Mitra notes that Boutros’ translations “never were touched beyond the four walls
of the college premises.” See R. Mitra, A Scheme for the Rendering of European Scientific Terms
into the Vernaculars of India (Calcutta: Thacker Spink & Co., 1877), 4.
cal project at Benares College was the creation of a preparatory knowledge base
for the rational acceptance by Indians of God’s special revelation.61
The translation of key Western scientific and philosophical texts formed a
cornerstone of Ballantyne’s project, and he believed that the ‘proper’ transla-
tion of these English works was fundamental to extracting their maximum
educational value for his Indian students. In this regard, he disagreed with the
earlier translational strategy outlined by Felix Boutros, particularly the translit-
eration, or “engraftment,” of English technical terminology directly into Indi-
an languages. Ballantyne thought this would bring about a “barbarization” of
language. For example, he once commented that the use of English-language
terminology in Indian-language textbooks would inevitably “degenerate into a
gibberish,” such as had already happened in the case of “the digarı̄ of our law-
courts, for a ‘decree,’ the tārpı̄n-kā-tel of our laboratories, for ‘turpentine,’ or
the māmlet of our kitchens, for an ‘omelette.’”62 Ballantyne’s ideas about trans-
lational strategy, even more comprehensively than those of Boutros, reflected
the characterizations of Indian languages propounded by British orientalists
in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. That is, Ballantyne stressed, to a
greater extent than many of his predecessors in education, the orientalist-in-
spired component of Lord Auckland’s 1839 Minute. While Brian Houghton
Hodgson, who defended “orientalist” education policy in a 1835 series of pub-
lished letters, had characterized Urdu as possessing “great resources” on ac-
count of its historical connections with the more powerful languages of Persian,
Arabic, and Sanskrit,63 this point was never significantly developed in con-
nection with the language, due to Boutros’ continuing focus upon using En-
glish as the powerful and culturally authoritative “feeder language.” Ballan-
tyne, therefore, is best viewed as the first of a new generation of “constructive
orientalists,” due to his use of early orientalist methodologies to bring about the
liberal imperialist project of India’s civilizational progress.64
Ballantyne believed that the translation of Western science and ‘useful
knowledge’into Indian vernacular languages for use in mass education required
that it first be rendered into Sanskrit. At the most fundamental level, it was
61 For further details of J. R. Ballantyne and Benares College, see M. S. Dodson, “Re-Present-
ed for the Pandits: James Ballantyne, ‘Useful Knowledge,’ and Sanskrit Scholarship in Benares
College during the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in Modern Asian Studies 36, 2 (2002), 257– 98.
62 J. R. Ballantyne, A Discourse on Translation, with Reference to the Educational Despatch of
the Hon. Court of Directors of the 19th July 1854 (Mirzapore: Orphan School Press, 1855), 5. A
revised and abbreviated version of this text can be found as an appendix to J. R. Ballantyne, Chris-
tianity Contrasted with Hindu Philosophy: An Essay, in Five Books, Sanskrit and English: with
Practical Suggestions Tendered to the Missionary among the Hindus (London: James Madden,
1859).
63
B. H. Hodgson, Preeminence of the Vernaculars; or the Anglicists Answered. Being Two Let-
ters on the Education of the People of India (Serampore: Serampore Press, 1837), 18–19. These
letters were originally published in August and September of 1835 in Friend of India.
64
This is a phrase used by C. A. Bayly in his “Orientalists, Informants, and Critics in Banaras,
1790–1860,” in, J. Malik, ed., Perspectives of Mutual Encounters in South Asian History. The terms
“neo-orientalism” and “practical orientalism” have also often been used synonymously.
thought necessary to initially present Western knowledge in Sanskrit so that it

would be readily available, and attractive, for the traditional intellectual lead-
ership of India, the pan d its, “none of whom seem to like to read any thing but
Sanscrit.” In other words, the use of Sanskrit was considered to be an “indis-
pensable condition” to conciliate the “class of men” whose co-operation in con-
structive orientalist educational practices Ballantyne very much needed to gain
those practices intellectual and social legitimacy among India’s masses.65
Moreover, the predominant orientalist characterizations of Sanskrit—as deva-
bhāsā, the “language of the gods,” revered by the pan d its and the medium for
their religious and scholarly discourse—were thought to invoke a further mea-
sure of cultural authority for the presentation of Western ‘useful knowledge’ to
these men. In this regard, Ballantyne once remarked that Sanskrit represented
the “key” to the “hearts” of Indians.66
Nevertheless, Ballantyne believed that Sanskrit itself had to be “developed,”
or rather, improved, to make it adequate for the “reproduction of European
thought.”67 This “development” was to be effected, quite simply, through the
processes of translation from English, and in the end the process would result
in what Ballantyne described as Sanskrit “paying tribute instead of scowling
defiance.”68 From this perspective, Sanskrit may be said to have also possessed
a ‘lack’ when compared to English, for although it was an ancient language of
refinement and representative of a ‘classical’ civilization, its speakers were
thought to have impressed upon it very little in the way of a significant pro-
gression, for it still possessed a limited vocabulary to express the advanced sci-
entific knowledge of Europe.
However, the translation of knowledge expressed through the English lan-
guage into the Sanskrit presented Ballantyne with several fundamental method-
ological difficulties. On the one hand, it was thought that the use of already-ex-
isting Sanskrit terms to express Western notions, such as technical terms from
the jyotiśāstra for treatises of Western algebra and mathematics, would further
demonstrate to the pan d its the points of connection between their own philo-
sophical ‘traditions’ and Western ‘science’ and scientific methodology, and also
facilitate the introduction of that knowledge.69 In this way, the use of a com-
mon terminology allowed for a common ground of dialogue and comparison
between adherents of ‘Western’ and ‘Indian’ learning, while simultaneously
65 General Report on Public Instruction in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presi-

66
J. R. Ballantyne, First Lessons in Sanskrit Grammar, Together with an Introduction to the Hi-
topadeśa (London: Trübner and Co., 1885 [1850]), 105.
67
J. R. Ballantyne, “Advertisement,” in his A Synopsis of Science, in Sanskrit and English, Rec-
onciled with the Truths to be Found in the Nyāya Philosophy, 2d ed. (Mirzapore: Orphan Press,
1856), i.
68
BL, OIOC, NWP, General Proceedings (of the North-Western Provinces) (GP), P/215/43 (20
Apr.–31 May 1855), No. 404 (26 Apr.), J. R. Ballantyne to J. Thomason, Lt. Governor of NWP, 20
Oct. 1852, par. 2.
69
Ballantyne, A Discourse on Translation, 12–13.
highlighting the point of departure of European knowledge. On the other hand,

the use of extant Sanskrit terms could confuse readers rather than lead them to
the conclusion desired in a comparative exercise, since these terms often re-
tained their ‘Hindu’ philosophical or religious connotations. In other words,
while Sanskrit’s ‘depth of meaning’ was considered a virtue for the expression
of Western knowledge, the fact that this meaning was often already determined
within self-referential philosophical systems presented a potential hurdle to the
realization of ‘progress.’
Ballantyne was well aware of this problem, and discussed it in the “Preface”
to his Christianity Contrasted with Hindu Philosophy. Here he warned that in
producing a translation into an Indian language, one must ensure that one’s
words are “rightly comprehended” by the target audience, and he gave as a cau-
tionary example the first Bible translation into Sanskrit (the dharmapustaka) of
the Serampore Baptist missionaries, executed under the leadership of William
Carey. The first verse of Genesis in the dharmapustaka, Ballantyne noted, states
that God created heaven and earth, but by reference to the terms ākāśa and
pr thivı̄. This was problematic because in the nyāya philosophical system these
terms refer to just two of the five elements—“ether” and “earth”—and so when
the “learned Hindu reader” comes to the next verse and reads about God’s spir-
it moving upon the face of the “waters”—considered as a third element—he
“is staggered by the doubt whether it is to be understood that the waters were
uncreated, or whether the sacred penman had made an oversight.”70 Indeed,
Ballantyne related how one pan d it, thinking within “the categories of the
nyāya,” had told him upon reading these verses that the Bible contained a “pal-
pable contradiction.”71 Therefore, he argued that this translation could in no
measure be considered as conducive to the spread of veridical knowledge about
Christianity in India.
Ballantyne thus recommended that already-existing Sanskrit terminology
only be used in translations from English with a full understanding of the es-
tablished nuances those terms had in “Hindu thought”: “only by tracing the de-
velopment of Hindoo thought, and of the terminology in which it clothed itself,
can we hope to avoid completely all such misappropriation of terms, as that
which has, to a certain extent, baffled all European attempts at translation into
the Hindoo dialects whenever the subject of discussion transcended the palpa-
ble.”72 Ballantyne’s strategy for the use of already-existing Sanskrit terminol-
ogy in his translations was seemingly derived directly from William Carey’s
successor in the Baptist Bible translational project, William Hodge Mill. In
1828, Mill published his Proposed Version of Theological Terms, with the help
of H. H. Wilson, in order to explicitly consider the established nuances of mean-
ing for all Sanskrit terms proposed to render Christian concepts, and to suggest
70Ballantyne, Christianity Contrasted with Hindu Philosophy, v–vi. 71 Ibid., 194.
72General Report on Public Instruction in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presi-
ways to harness and employ those meanings in the propagation of Chris-

tianity.73 For example, Mill suggested that the term deva be used for “God,” for
although it was sometimes used in a polytheistic sense in Sanskrit literature, in
many instances it also implied “the supreme all-pervading Mind.”74 However,
Mill also suggested that the phrase “son of God” should not be rendered as
deva-putra, since putra implied, etymologically, “one who redeems his father
from that hell to which the childless are condemned.”75 Ballantyne’s own trans-
lation of the first verse of Genesis reflected this etymologically and contextu-
ally nuanced translational methodology:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
āditah sasarjeśvaro divam
bhūmim
ca76
Here Ballantyne used the terms diva for “heaven,” derived from the verbal root
div, which is also the basis for deva (‘God’), and as well as bhūmi for “earth,”
which carries the dominant meaning of “place” or “territory.” Through these
usages, Ballantyne managed to avoid confusion with the latter term, since it has
no distinct philosophical associations, and with the former term he invoked a
connection with the divine through an implicit etymological association.77
That said, Ballantyne also believed that there were significant portions of Eu-
ropean science which could find no exact correspondent within the corpus of
Sanskrit literature, known as the śāstra, and that therefore the translation of this
knowledge into Sanskrit would require the “devising of new terms.”78 Trans-
lation here served to highlight the differences, or deficiencies, of Sanskrit-based
knowledge systems through the perceived need for ‘supplementation’ and the
improvement of Sanskrit’s vocabulary. These fields of knowledge were thought
to include formal logic, described as “a subject neglected or overlooked by the
Hindus,”79 physics, and chemistry, which in the śāstra was thought by Ballan-
tyne to amount to little more than “purified alchemy.”80 The question that need-
ed to be addressed in the production of translations was how exactly to devise
these new terms, and thereby ‘supplement’ Sanskrit with the requisite termi-
nology.
73 W. H. Mill, Proposed Version of Theological Terms, with a View to Uniformity in Transla-
tions of the Holy Scriptures etc. into the Various Languages of India (Calcutta: Bishop’s College
Press, n.d. [1828]).
74
Ibid., 1, 25–26. 75 Ibid., 4, 29.
76 J. R. Ballantyne, The Bible for Pandits, the First Three Chapters of Genesis, Diffusely and
Unreservedly Commented, in Sanskrit and English (London: James Madden; Benares: Medical
Hall Press, 1860), 3.
77 Ballanynte’s use of the term diva for “heaven” is even more “neutral” than that of Mill, who
wished to “Christianise” the Sanskrit term svarga away from its association with “the third heav-
en of Indra and the gods.” H. H. Wilson, in contrast, preferred the use of the term dyu, which is a
derivation of diva. See Mill, Proposed Version of Theological Terms, 23, 37.
78
J. R. Ballantyne, Lectures on the Sub-Divisions of Knowledge, and Their Mutual Relations.
Delivered in the Benares Sanskrit College, Part 1 (Mirzapore: Orphan School Press, 1848), “Pref-
ace,” n.p.
79
Ballantyne, A Discourse on Translation, 11. 80 Ibid., 15.
I have already noted that Ballantyne had explicitly rejected the direct impo-
sition of English scientific terms into Sanskrit, because he worried that the lan-
guage would degenerate into “gibberish.” However, several other, more funda-
mental, considerations drove this translational strategy. On one basic level,
Ballantyne clearly considered such a transliteration of English to be simply un-
necessary, for he thought Sanskrit to be a powerful language by its very sub-
tlety and complexity, able to express a wide range and a depth of meaning; that
is, he adopted the orientalists’ (and pan d its’) characterizations of Sanskrit as
sam.skr ta, “that which is perfected.” In particular, Sanskrit’s organization into
a large number of verbal roots (dhātu) meant that nearly endless new vocabu-
laries could be easily coined.81 In this regard, Sanskrit’s very structure was
thought to be particularly suited for the expression of scientific knowledge, and
Ballantyne often compared it to Latin and Greek, languages that still supplied
English with many of its technical terms.
A further rationale behind Ballantyne’s innovative translational methodolo-
gy is best glimpsed through an examination of his attempt to construct a San-
skrit vocabulary for the Western science of chemistry. Western knowledge of
chemistry had already been treated, to some extent, in William Yates’ 1828
Padārthavidyāsāra,82 as well as in John Mack’s 1834 English and Bengali text
Principles of Chemistry83 and in a simple primary school textbook in Hindi
published by the Agra School Book Society in 1847.84 Yet these texts all fol-
lowed the translational methodology first systematized by Boutros in Delhi, uti-
lizing transliterated English technical terms. For example, aksijān or āksajin
were used for “oxygen,” haidrajān or hāid rojin for “hydrogen,” and phospho-
ras or phāspharas for “phosphorous.” Ballantyne discussed this methodology
in his writings, with particular reference to Mack’s text, and while he ques-
tioned the notion that English terminology could ever become fully naturalized
in an Indian language, the principal concern that drove him to reject this strat-
egy was that it diminished educational value.85 That is, Ballantyne believed that
the memorization of English technical terms served not to educate India’s
youths, but rather to “make a convenience” of them through a mere technical
training. He noted that the study of chemistry in German, the speakers of which
language had “indigenated for themselves the language of chemistry,” was far
81
Ballantyne, “Advertisement,” in his A Synopsis of Science, ix. Also, General Report on Pub-
lic Instruction in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1850–1851, 52.
82
W. Yates, Padārthavidyāsāra: Elements of Natural Philosophy and History; in a Series of
Familiar Dialogues (Calcutta: School Book Society’s Press, 1828 [2d ed. 1834]). Technical terms
included lavan amaya (“consisting of salt”) for “saline,” and tārapinākhya (“one with the name
tārapina”) for “turpentine.”
83 J. Mack, Principles of Chemistry (Serampore: Serampore Press: 1834).
84 Rasāyan Prakāś: Conversations on Chemistry in Hindi (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press,
1847).
85 J. R. Ballantyne, A Synopsis of Science; from the Standpoint of the Nyaya Philosophy, San-
skrit and English, Vol. II (Mirzapore: Orphan School Press, 1852), “Preface;” also, Ballantyne, A
Discourse on Translation, 15 –16.
more profitable as a “mental exercise,” than it was for the “English villager who
does not know Greek and Latin.”86 An appropriately coined Sanskrit terminol-
ogy in scientific textbooks, therefore, would serve to maximize the potential
within education for India’s intellectual and civilizational progress.
On this basis, Ballantyne outlined a comprehensive chemical nomenclature
in Sanskrit. Several words for metals and other common substances already ap-
peared in Sanskrit, and Ballantyne suggested maintaining the use of those. For
example, gandhaka and loha for “sulfur” and “iron” both appeared in the Ama-
rakośa,87 a revered Sanskrit lexicon, while terms such as suvarn a for “gold”
and am gāra for “carbon” were also well known.88 Otherwise, the nomenclature
created anew was entirely descriptive, and “self-interpreting.” For example,
“hydrogen” was rendered jalakara, “the maker of water”; “nitrogen” became
jı̄vāntaka, “that which puts an end to life”; while “chlorine” was translated as
harita, “greenish-coloured.” Reflecting the evolving nature of his endeavour,
Ballantyne had originally translated “oxygen” as amlakara, “one which forms
an acid,” but later changed this to prān aprada, “that which gives breath,” lest
the former term “preserve the exploded theory that there is no generator of acids
besides oxygen.”89 This quite extraordinary translational strategy was further
applied to the construction of compound words. Here, Ballantyne noted, the
similarity of terminations such as “-ic,” “-ate” and “-ous” in Latin and Greek
to those in Sanskrit (-ika, -āyita and -ya) was sufficient to provide the basic
model. “Sulphuric acid,” therefore, became gandhakikāmla (where amla de-
notes “acid”), while “sulfate” was rendered as gandhakāyita. Moreover, the use
of the Sanskrit suffix ja, indicative of the use of the verbal root jan, “to be born,”
in an upapāda tatpurus a compound, resulted in the coining of such terms as
prān apradaja, “that which is born from oxygen,” or an “oxide.”
While Ballantyne’s translational scheme was relatively straightforward, it
could also produce rather lengthy compounds that, in effect, served to express
the process by which a material was produced rather than simply the material
itself. A good example of this is Ballantyne’s translation of the word “mag-
nesia,” which in Sanskrit became the rather cumbersome adāhyapatamūla-
janakasya prān apradaja, or, “that which is born from oxygen, i.e. an oxide, of
that which produces the basis of cloth, i.e. fibre, which cannot be burned,” re-
ferring to the magnesium component of asbestos.90
Once the translation of key English scientific and philosophical texts into
Sanskrit was underway at Benares College, Ballantyne undertook to superin-
tend the further translation of these texts into Hindi and other Indian vernacu-
86 Ballantyne, Christianity Contrasted with Hindu Philosophy, 213–15. This section does not
appear in earlier versions of this discussion, either in A Synopsis of Science, or A Discourse on

Translation.
87 See Colebrooke, trans., Cosha, or Dictionary of the Sanscrit Language, by Amera Sinha.
88 Ballantyne, A Synopsis of Science, Vol. II, “Preface” (1852 ed.).
89 Ibid.; also Ballantyne, A Discourse on Translation, 16.
90 Ibid.; also Ballantyne, A Discourse on Translation, 16 –18.
lars. In particular, he advocated the direct engraftment into the vernaculars of

the newly coined and heavily Sanskritized technical scientific vocabulary,
which would render these languages sufficient for the task of expressing West-
ern ‘useful’ and scientific knowledge. A substantial number of Hindi textbooks
were published under the auspices of Benares College during the 1850s which
incorporated highly Sanskritized vocabularies, including Hindi versions of Bal-
lantyne’s A Synopsis of Science,91 and several of the “reprints for the pandits”
series.92 Several of the pan d its employed at Benares College also published
vernacular textbooks on Ballantyne’s model. Bāpū Deva Śāstrı̄, for example,
wrote books on algebra93 and world geography in Hindi,94 while his Sanskrit
Elements of Plane Trigonometry was translated into Hindi in 1859 by Venı̄
Sam kara Vyāsa.95 Another of the College’s pan d its, Mathurā Prasād Miśra,
translated Mann’s Lessons in General Knowledge into Hindi, as well as Bal-
lantyne’s edition of the Sanskrit grammatical text Laghu Kaumudi.96 The high-
ly Sanskritized vocabulary utilized in all of these texts was further consolidated
by the publication of a series of Hindi dictionaries prepared by pan d its em-
ployed in Benares College during the 1860s, including the 1865 English-Urdu-
Hindi dictionary of Mathurā Prasād Miśra, and a 1870 Hindi translation of H.
H. Wilson’s Sanskrit dictionary by Rām Jasan.97 Miśra’s tri-lingual dictionary,
in particular, served to highlight the importance of the Sanskritic components
of Hindi by a comparison to, and lexical separation from, Urdu’s Arabic or Per-
sian influence.98 Miśra listed almost all of Ballantyne’s constructed Sanskrit
chemical nomenclature as Hindi vocabulary, including amlakar and prān aprad
for “oxygen,” as well as attested terms such as gandhak for “sulfur.” In this re-
91 See BL, OIOC, NWP, GP, P/215/26 (Aug.–Sept. 1853), No. 119 (18 Aug.), “Statement of a
Work which It Is Proposed the Government Should Print or Subscribe For,” regarding “Hindee Syn-
opsis of Science.”
92 BL, OIOC, NWP, GP, P/215/16 (Mar.–Apr. 1852), No. 69 (7 Apr.), J. R. Ballantyne to Sec-
retary to Government NWP W. Muir, 1 Apr. 1852. Ballantyne reports on the progress made in the
“Hindi Version of the Treatise on Physical Science.”
93 BL, OIOC, NWP, GP, P/215/12 (18 July–30 Sept. 1851), No. 46 (13 Aug.), Secretary to Gov-
ernment NWP J. Thornton to J. R. Ballantyne, 13 Aug. 1851. Also, B. D. Śāstrı̄, Bı̄jagan ita: the El-
ements of Algebra (Bombay: 1850); and B. D. Śāstrı̄, Vyaktagan ita: Elements of Arithmetic
(Benares: 1875).
94 B. D. Śāstrı̄, Bhūgolavarnana: Geography of the World, Consisting Chiefly of the Geography
.
of India (Mirzapore: Orphan Press, 1853). See also R. Jasan, trans., Bhūgola-Candrikā: Geogra-
phy of the World (Benares: 1859).
95 B. D. Śāstrı̄, Trikonamiti, V. S. Vyāsa, trans. (Benares: Medical Hall Press, 1859).
.
96 M. P. Miśra, trans., Vāhyaprapañca-darpana (Benares: Medical Hall Press, 1859); J. R. Bal-
.
lantyne, ed., Laghu Kaumudi, M. P. Miśra, trans. (in Hindi) (Benares: 1856).
97 M. P. Miśra, A Trilingual Dictionary; Being a Comprehensive Lexicon in English, Urdu, and
Hindi, Exhibiting the Syllabication, Pronunciation and Etymology of English Words, with Their Ex-
planation in English, and in Urdu and Hindi in the Roman Character (Benares: E. J. Lazarus and
Co., 1865); R. Jasan, A Sanskrit and English Dictionary, Being an Abridgment of Professor Wil-
son’s Dictionary, with an Appendix Explaining the Use of Affixes in Sanskrit (Benares: E. J. Lazarus
and Co., 1870).
98 See also, V. Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and
Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 190–91.
gard, Miśra noted that “Sanskrit words are given rather profusely . . . both by
choice and necessity: by choice, in order to make it generally useful, . . . by ne-
cessity, because the Hindi vocabulary is rather poor.” Here Miśra reiterated Bal-
lantyne’s basic argument, noting that “the expression of the nobler sentiments
and finer sensibilities of a busy mind, and of philosophic and scientific truths,
is far beyond its [Hindi’s] genius and capability.” Miśra then elaborated, as-
serting that Hindi, “like a child,” must resort to its parent, the Sanskrit, rather
than to some “foreign aid.”99
This final stage of Ballantyne’s translational strategy represented its most
fundamental and important aspect, for it was realized that the mass of the Indi-
an population would never have access to Western knowledge in Sanskrit. In
official parlance, translation into the vernaculars was thought to demonstrate
that “the Government of Great Britain in India recognizes no hereditary dis-
tinction in the realm of intellect, but wishes that all knowledge that is valuable
should be placed within the reach of every man in the country who has a mind
capable of appreciating its value.”100 India’s civilizational ‘improvement’
could only be effected when the vernacular languages used in the education of
the mass of the people were rendered capable of expressing scientific ‘truth.’ It
was thought that the European-sponsored translation of Western knowledge
into the vernaculars, through a process of naturalization and authorization
through Sanskrit and the offices of the pan d its, would therefore serve to ‘de-
mocratize’ knowledge throughout Indian society. The translational scheme un-
dertaken at Benares College fundamentally represented a conscious attempt to
reproduce the intellectual history of Europe in India by recreating the process
by which scientific knowledge had been released in Europe from Latin and
Greek, as well as from the clutches of a clerical elite. The latter process had en-
hanced the European vernaculars, such as English and German, and simulta-
neously allowed for a wider proliferation of textualized knowledge through so-
ciety, thereby enabling Europe’s scientific revolution and its material and moral
‘improvement.’
But as in Delhi College, it was thought that European initiative was neces-
sary to effect this revolution in language, and subsequently, in thought within
India. This is clearly demonstrated by the official appointment of Fitz-Edward
Hall to the position of Anglo-Sanskrit Professor of Benares College in 1853,
charged with overall responsibility for the rendering of ‘useful knowledge’ into
“pure and classical Hindi.”101 It was noted that Hall possessed sufficient knowl-
edge of Sanskrit and Hindi “for enriching the latter with the accurate mode of
expression as well as the deep train of thought which are to be found in the for-
99Miśra, A Trilingual Dictionary, 4.

100 General Report on Public Instruction in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presi-
dency, for 1846–1847 (Agra: Secundra Orphan Press, 1848), 33–34.
101 BL, OIOC, NWP, GP, P/215/23 (15 Mar.–26 Apr. 1853), No. 226 (24 Mar.), Secretary to
Government NWP W. Muir to J. R. Ballantyne, 24 Mar. 1853.
mer.” This, the Government thought, would result in the “moulding upon an ap-
proved classical model the Vernacular language which more and more is daily
becoming [the] medium through which the intelligent Natives of the Country
acquire useful knowledge themselves and communicate it to others.”102 Sub-
sequently, in an 1854 “Memo on Hindee” to the Lieutenant-Governor, Hall duly
reiterated Ballantyne’s principal ideas. First, that the pan d its represented the
principal impediment to improving Hindi, and thereby wider Indian civiliza-
tion, by their obstinacy and love of Sanskrit alone, but at the same time they
were the principal means by which Sanskrit vocabulary could be ‘naturalized’
into Hindi to improve its expressive capability. Second, Hindi, rather than Urdu,
was singularly well suited to expressing ‘useful knowledge’ given its close re-
lationship with Sanskrit. Third, and most importantly, Hall argued that the task
of improving Hindi to render it capable of expressing Western science must fall
to Europeans, since “the natives . . . unaided will never unfold or discover the
powers of their language to the satisfaction of just views of exactness and pro-
priety.”103
iv. assessing the importance of government-sponsored

translation in north india
Up to this point, this essay has largely been concerned with tracing the intel-
lectual genealogy that lay behind the colonial government’s strategy for trans-
lating scientific and otherwise ‘useful’ knowledge from English into Indian lan-
guages. Yet Ballantyne’s plan to Sanskritize Hindi also needs to be assessed by
its reception among Indians and its longer-term success, as well as by reference
to the actual processes and wider initiatives involved in the production of Indi-
an-language textbooks.
There can be little doubt that many Hindi texts, as well as the Hindi dictio-
naries produced throughout the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, forged a close link
with the vocabulary of Sanskrit. However, there was inevitably some measure
of opposition to the wholesale importation of Sanskritic terms into the vernac-
ular. For example, in March of 1853 the government distributed a Hindi ver-
sion of A Synopsis of Science throughout NWP in order that its suitability as a
textbook might be assessed.104 The response received from British educators
and their Indian assistants clearly indicated that, for many of the vernacular
speakers of NWP, it represented an example of “harsh and unidiomatic lan-
guage,” and that it was not within the comprehension of those who could not
already read Sanskrit.105
102
Ibid.
103
BL, OIOC, NWP, GP, P/215/54 (1 Apr.–10 May 1856), No. 228 (19 Apr.), “Memo,” by
F.-E. Hall, 4 Dec. 1854.
104
BL, OIOC, NWP, GP, P/215/23 (15 Mar.–26 Apr. 1853), No. 205 (22 Mar.), Secretary to
Government NWP W. Muir to Local Committee of Public Instruction (LCPI) Agra, Bareilly,
Ajmere, and Saugor, Secretary Roorkee College, and Visitor General NWP Schools, 22 Mar. 1853.
105 BL, OIOC, NWP, GP, P/215/24 (16 Apr.–31 May 1853), No. 270 (27 May), Secretary Agra
Moreover, Ballantyne’s advocacy of a highly Sanskritized vocabulary for

Western science was largely ignored by the emerging class of Indian educators
in their publication of Hindi school books in subsequent decades in north In-
dia, as these writers reverted instead to a transliterated English vocabulary.
These men were often employed by government educational institutions, but in
time, many of them would also come to form a culturally significant group of
agitators for the promotion of Hindi and a strengthened form of Hinduism in
northern India. For example, pan d it Sevaka Rāma’s 1873 Śabda Prabandāvalı̄
used terms such as arsenik for “arsenic,”106 while pan d it Śivdyal Upādhyāy,
employed by the Mayo College at Ajmere, wrote a basic scientific reader which
incorporated terms such as megniśiyā for “magnesia” and phāsphorik esid for
“phosphoric acid.”107 In 1877, Rājendralāl Mitra, a prominent Bengali orien-
talist and antiquarian, outlined in an English-language pamphlet his own trans-
lational scheme for the rendering of European scientific terms into Indian ver-
nacular languages. Mitra agreed partially with Ballantyne’s methodology in
that he advocated the retention of attested Indian terminology for common sub-
stances such as sulfur and gold, and the translation into Indian languages of
chemical processes, such as precipitation or crystallization. Yet he also recom-
mended the direct transliteration of “scientific crude names,” such as “oxygen.”
Here Mitra referred back to Ballantyne’s attempt to translate this term, noting
that “no good” could possibly come of it.108 Indeed, even the official śuddh (or
“pure”) Hindi scientific lexicon published in 1906 by the Benares-based Nāgarı̄
Pracārinı̄ Sabhā (“Society for the promotion of the Nāgarı̄ script”) effectively
advocated the use of English terminology in the absence of attested Hindi
equivalents, and even the adoption of suffixes based upon an English, rather
than a Sanskrit, model. For example, while amlajana was recommended as the
equivalent of “oxygen” (a still-current term), “carbon” became karban, and “ni-
trogen” was rendered natrajan. Moreover, the suffixes “-ate” and “-ous” were
to be written “-it” and “-as,” so that “carbonate” became karbanit and “ferrous”
lohas.109 Indeed, it would have been much to Ballantyne’s consternation to dis-
cover that in a single 1878 issue of the Hindı̄ Pradı̄p, a monthly Hindi journal
published in Allahabad by Bālkr sna Bhatt , a prominent promoter of the Hindi
language, that the term jalkar, (“hydrogen”) which had been coined for Bal-
LCPI J. Middleton to W Muir, 1 Apr. 1853; and No. 272 (27 May), Secretary Delhi LCPI J. Cargill
to W. Muir, 4 Apr. 1853.
106
S. Rāma, Śabda Prabandāvalı̄ (Allahabad: Government Press, 1873).
107
S. Upādhyāy, Hindı̄ kı̄ Dūsrı̄ Kitāb: Second Hindi Reader, Containing Literature, Grammar,
Arithmetic, Geography and Science Lessons, with English and Persian Equivalents for Its Techni-
cal Terms (Benares: Medical Hall Press, 1881).
108
Mitra, A Scheme for the Rendering of European Terms into the Vernaculars of India, esp.
19–27.
109
S. S. Das, ed., The Hindi Scientific Glossary, Containing the Terms of Astronomy, Chemistry,
Geography, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics and Political Economy, and Their Hindi Equiva-
lents (Benares: Medical Hall Press, 1906), 151– 52.
lantyne’s The Sub-Divisions of Knowledge, was used alongside that of tārhpı̄n

kā tel for “turpentine.”110
Despite this evident dead-end to Ballantyne’s translational scheme, it is ap-
parent that the conceptions and ideas which drove the project continued to have
important influence in the construction of a ‘national’ language and communal
identities in India. In this regard, the ‘Sanskritization’ of Hindi during the 1850s
at Benares College as a means to bring about civilizational improvement, in-
extricably grounded within notions of a ‘classical’ Sanskrit and its ‘mothering’
relationship to the vernaculars, has been largely overlooked as an important
contributing factor in discussions of the evolution and politicization of Hindi
during the later nineteenth century. Both Vasudha Dalmia and Christopher
King, in their recent studies of Hindi language and culture, have invoked Bal-
lantyne’s official reports to demonstrate that in the late 1840s there existed lit-
tle in the way of a systemized language known as “Hindi” in Benares, and that
the language itself had no necessary connection to any sort of religious nation-
alism: being a Hindu, in other words, did not necessitate speaking Hindi.111 The
politicization of language, especially in the 1870s and particularly the Hindi-
Urdu controversy centered in Allahabad and Benares, as well as their connec-
tion with the formation of religiously based communal identities, has been dis-
cussed by Dalmia as being linked with the process of language codification, and
the lexical separation of Hindi from Urdu necessitated by the practical demands
of education and official communication.112 Yet the essentially European ori-
entalist preconceptions which underpinned translation into Hindi during the
1850s and 1860s under Ballantyne and Hall in Benares College, and the for-
mation of a ‘pure’ and ‘classical’ Hindi by reference to Sanskrit, have largely
been elided from discussions of, for example, Bhāratendu Haris’candra’s for-
mulation of Hindi as India’s “national language” (deśbhās ā), or his notion that
the linguistic improvement of Hindi must necessarily precede north Indian so-
cial evolution.
Questions of religious and national identity construction in the nineteenth-
century colonial world were inextricably bound to the politics of language.
Speakers of Hindi in the later part of that century increasingly used the language
as a mode of self-description, to invoke an array of civilizational associations
with the Sanskritic, which would come to have, certainly by the early twenti-
110
“Padārth bād,” in Hindı̄ Pradı̄p 1, 6 (Feb. 1878). In addition, one should note the exertions
of Rāja Śivā Prasād, who consciously attempted to forge a Hindi vernacular without reference sole-
ly to Sanskrit as a feeder language. In this regard, however, he was motivated by a desire that Hin-
di be an inclusive medium for both Hindus and Muslims. See his Vidyankur, or an Adoption from
Chamber’s “Rudiments of Knowledge,” and the first few pages of “Introduction to the Sciences,”
4th ed. (Allahabad: Government Press, 1881), “Preface.”
111
Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions, 174 –75; C. R. King, “Forging a New Lin-
guistic Identity: The Hindi Movement in Banaras, 1868 –1914, in, S. B. Freitag, ed., Culture and
Power in Banaras: Community, Performance and Environment, 1800–1980 (Delhi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1989), 184 – 85.
112
Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions, 181– 91.
eth century, relevance for the emergence of communalist politics and reli-
giously based forms of anti-colonial nationalism. This essay has attempted to
trace a potentially important and influential genealogy of ideas about the nature
of civilization, language, and, ultimately, progress, between British colonial
educators such as J. R. Ballantyne, ‘traditional’ Indian scholars and intermedi-
aries, and emerging cultural commentators such as Bhāratendu Haris’candra.
This genealogy has yet to be adequately traced in its full complexity, a com-
plexity moreover, that must encompass both continuity and discontinuity, in-
fluence and irruption. This is a historical process that may also find resonance
with other contexts, such as in China, where ‘tradition,’ understood as a partic-
ular vision of civilizational heritage, represented an authoritative force for
adapting social and cultural norms, and ultimately held an ambivalent relation-
ship to dominant European, orientalist ideas.

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Translating Science, Translating

Empire: The Power of Language

Translation has often been characterized as a ‘central act’ of European colo-

the Tempest to Tarzan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

nial Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

‘naturalization,’ in which the culturally-specific is ‘sanitized,’ subordinated to

(London: Routledge, 1995), 19 –20.

‘modern’ languages, and in particular their functioning to somehow represent

i. british orientalist characterizations

versity of California Press, 1994).

courses to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta a more scientific alternative to

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 271.

of the Human Species, published posthumously in 1836.14 Humboldt argued

the Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 1970), ch. 8, esp. p. 290.

repr. in Jones, Discourses, 34.

While Sanskrit’s copiousness and grammatical ‘perfection’ could be viewed

China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), esp. 3–6.

a series of medical texts, dictionaries, and vocabularies in Arabic, Persian, San-

ii. the power of english: translating science

of interests under Auckland’s impetus. The liberal concern to impart Western

52 General Report on Public Instruction . . . 1843 – 44, 7.

NWP Government to establish a centralized clearinghouse at Agra to provide a

iii. the power of sanskrit: translational strategy

thought necessary to initially present Western knowledge in Sanskrit so that it

dency for 1847–1848 (Agra: Secundra Orphan Press, 1849), 21.

highlighting the point of departure of European knowledge. On the other hand,

ways to harness and employ those meanings in the propagation of Chris-

73 W. H. Mill, Proposed Version of Theological Terms, with a View to Uniformity in Transla-

appear in earlier versions of this discussion, either in A Synopsis of Science, or A Discourse on

lars. In particular, he advocated the direct engraftment into the vernaculars of

Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 190–91.

99Miśra, A Trilingual Dictionary, 4.

Government NWP W. Muir to J. R. Ballantyne, 24 Mar. 1853.

iv. assessing the importance of government-sponsored

Moreover, Ballantyne’s advocacy of a highly Sanskritized vocabulary for

lantyne’s The Sub-Divisions of Knowledge, was used alongside that of tārhpı̄n

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