Ramkrishna Bhattacharya
D. D. Kosambi (1907-66) was trained as a mathematician and
used to teach and research in mathematics till 1941. Then he wrote an
‘exasperating essay’ on the Sanskrit epigrams attributed to Bhartrihari. This
essay, Kosambi says, ‘caused every godfearing Sanskritist to shudder’ and
consequently ‘I fell into Indology, as it were, through the roof’.1
The essay ‘upset’, among others, V. S. Sukthankar, the
celebrated general editor of the critical edition of the
Mahabharata.
2 He
was however, not able to give a definite contradiction in any essential of
Kosambi’s basic contention. There were also a few points in the essay that
caused others to be puzzled. Some readers, for example, felt that there was ‘a
seeming inconsistency’ in a passing reference to Shakespeare’s dramas which
‘were assigned a class basis of the rising proto-bourgeoisie’.
3
Kosambi took up the matter in a
short essay written in 1958. Since this piece has not been included in any
collection of writings by Kosambi, it is necessary to quote long extracts from
it and then critique his approach. Kosambi had also touched on the same issue
in a section of his Introduction to an anthology of Sanskrit poetry which was
edited for the first time by him and V.V. Gokhale.4 It will be my
endeavour to show how Kosambi makes use of Marx’s formulation of the
relationship between the base and the superstructure and how Kosambi
demonstrates its validity in two disparate cases, namely, ancient Sanskrit
literature and English literature of the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries. Although Kosambi does not explicitly refer to Marx in this
connection there can be little doubt that he drew his conclusions from Marx.
In his essay on Bhartrihari Kosambi observed:
‘The greatness of an author does not lie in mere handling of
words. Indeed, the finest craftsmanship of such manipulation is impossible
without the expression of a new class basis. This does not mean that every
writer who seeks enduring fame must express only the glory of the dictatorship
of the proletariat: it is doubtful if Shakespeare could have grasped the
meaning of the word (proletariat) itself except perhaps as a mass of Calibans.
But in Shakespeare’s day there were other classes, the new trading gentry for
example, that had begun to force their way to the front and had yet to become,
in their turn, obstacles to human progress. One must remember that, during the
course of its struggle against the old, every new class tends to assimilate and
identify itself with the entire oppressed section of the human race – to take
its own victory as the total desideratum of the progress of
civilisation.’ 5
The question that Kosambi had to face from others is: if
Shakespeare’s plays reflect the class basis of the rising proto-bourgeoisie,
why do they so often portray high nobility and rarely the bourgeoisie? Can we
really ascribe any class basis to Shakespeare other than the feudal?
Kosambi began his reply with the following observation:
‘The
question is of importance in learning to distinguish between form and content,
between the superficial mould and what has actually been poured into it.’ 6
He
then expatiates on the matter in more detail:
‘The main assertion hardly needs proof. Shakespeare made a
comfortable living (without court or baronial patronage) out of the theatre as
a business, where a penny counted as such whether from the apprentice or the
lord. The plays and their author grew in literary stature only with the growth
of the new class. Though his principal characters are so often kings, princes
and leisured aristocrats, the characterization is not done in the manner in
which feudal nobility and royalty liked to visualize itself. This may be seen
by contrast between the Elizabethan dramatists and the Chanson de Roland or Orlando
Furioso. Honour and prowess were essential for a feudal noble while the villain
who lacked these qualities had to be painted in dark monochrome, as for example
“false Ganelon”.’ 7
Kosambi then provides an instance from
Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
‘With Shakespeare, those parts (such as Hamlet) that call
upon the finest histrionic ability are far removed from the older princely
concept. Hamlet does not challenge to mortal combat the usurper king, murderer
of his father and seducer of his mother. The prince of Denmark takes his revenge
as carefully as the head of any successful trading house, with all the
hesitations, doubts, need and planning for evidence that this new type of
humanity would have shown.’ 8
Two other examples are provided by Richard III (Richard III)
and Shylock (The Merchant of Venice):
‘Richard III is a villain, but of unfeudal complexity in his
overriding ambition as no knight, true or false, of the Round Table could be.
The tricky Jewish usurer Shylock is heroic in his desire for revenge against
insults to his race, human in love for his daughter and pathetic in his sorrow.
One could never put him into the Charlemagne cycle nor the Arthurian.’ 9
Do all heroes and villains in Shakespeare’s plays correspond
to this kind of interpretation? Kosambi admits an exception for Othello (Othello)
but rather summarily dismisses him in this fashion: ‘One hero of the plays who
could fit into the uncomplicated antique mould is Othello; but his story is
purely that of a jealous, easily duped Negro condottiere for the merchant republic of Venice.’ 10
What was the source of Shakespeare’s portrayal of his
central characters in a mould quite unlike that of the past? Kosambi singles
out Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince as the indirect source of
influence:
‘We know today that the inspiration for these heroes who are
above every traditional moral restrained comes indirectly from
Machiavelli’s Principe (The Prince), with its new renaissance prince
to whom murder, ambush, poison and betrayal were frankly normal, convenient
tools for policy. That book supplied (in manuscript copies, even before its
general publication) the theory upon which Thomas Cromwell and the officers of
Henry VIII sequestrated the great ecclesiastical foundations in England,
thereby putting a considerable amount of most useful capital into the pockets
of the new and rising gentry. It was the same book which inspired Marlowe and
is ultimately the ancestor of Nietzsche’s superman – originally the man who
unhesitatingly tramples all social conventions into the mire of limitless
personal ambition. Yet, at the bitter end, Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus [in Dr.
Faustus] paid for its wonderful fling with his precious soul like any upright
bourgeois, were Goethe’s Faust [in Faust, part 2] cheats the devil’s
painful contract.’ 11
In support of his contention Kosambi draws our attention to
another significant event of those days, the discovery of the New World:
‘Finally when the most fantastic adventure was to be sought,
Shakespeare did not send his people to quest after the Holy Grail or a-tilting
just to break a lance, but cast them upon an unsuspected isle in the far seas [The
Tempest ]. Such isles were then been discovered by intrepid voyagers who
did not let the thrill of magnificent adventure into the vasty (sic) unknown
interfere with their insatiable appetite and keen scent for profit and loot.
Feudal prowess, on the other hand, was meant to impose respect for the upper
class upon the common people; discovery or invention play (sic) no official
part in it.’ 12
In order to set the action of his plays in such
hitherto-unknown isles, it was not enough to have resort to bold imagination.
The discovery of a new continent provided Shakespeare with this kind of
setting. Here again Kosambi refers to history – not merely to geographical expeditions
but to the appearance of a new class called the bourgeoisie which was forced to
undertake such risky adventures into the open sea in search of gold:
‘To break with tradition, however, new discoveries in the
Western hemisphere and the fabulous wealth of the Americas did
not suffice by themselves; the rise of a new class was necessary.’ 13
If this could happen in England,
why did it not happen in Spain,
the pioneer of sea voyages in the fifteenth century? Secondly, does the whole
of literature in Renaissance England exhibit the new spirit rather than the
old? Kosambi’s response to these questions is as follows:
‘Spain retrogressed
with the Inquisition. Its most appealing lay figure, Don Quixote, is after all
a failure and misfit, precisely because he tried to experience the adventures
then fashionable in feudal literature. The plays of Lope de Vega fail to move
us in spite of their prolific elegance. In England itself, the older
trend survives in Lyly’s Euphues which models the punctilious but
empty superficialities of a courtier upon Castiglione’s Cortegiano [The
Courtier].’ 14
Kosambi concludes his essay by contrasting Edmund Spenser
with John Donne. In the last sentence he refers to Sanskrit literature as
another case in point:
‘Spenser’s Faerie Queene with its unquestioned
literary merit looks backward. The reason why John Donne is read rather than
Spenser is precisely because his philosophy and his expression are both more
acceptable to the bourgeoisie. In the same way, when the Sanskrit mahakavya [epic]
tradition is analyzed, it shows devotion not to the gods and to religious life
but to the feudal rulers whose life is lived in idealised form by Rama, or some
other Puranic deity.’ 15
The last line comes rather abruptly but Kosambi had already
written on the class basis of Sanskrit literature (more specially, the subhashita literature)
in his Introduction to the Subhasitaratnakosa. He said:
‘[N]ew types of literature cannot be expected without the
rise of new classes. The English reformation under Henry VIII shows the
unmistakable beginning of such a new class, along with that of new literature.
Even for the Elizabethan age, only the authors that look forward with the new
gentry attain permanence, as, for example, dramatists like Marlowe and Shakespeare
who did not scorn to display their wares to the London theatre audiences, or
the keen-witted John Donne; the authors who look backwards to the court and its
entourage wrote with no less skill, effort, mastery of words, but the Faerie
Queene and Lyly’s Euphues seem comparatively insipid.’ 16
Kosambi then believes that only the coming of a new class
can give rise to a new type of literature and, conversely, in spite of all
talents, writers who remain tied to the old class fail to produce any work of
lasting merit. It is to be noted that during the period of transition all
authors do not tend to look forward; some continue to cling to old mores and
stick to outworn ideas. Hence both kinds of authors co-exist for quite some
time. Kosambi does not deny that poets like Spenser were highly gifted; they
had ‘no less skill, effort, mastery of words’ than Shakespeare or Donne. But
their adherence to the old, outgoing feudal mode of writing ultimately made
them fall short of such poets who had adopted the outlook of the new class.
Thus the writer vis-à-vis the class position he or she adopts during a period
of transition is of seminal importance. Other things such as skill, effort, and
mastery of words that constitute literary merit may be equal, but the outcome
will not depend on these factors alone. The extra-literary issue, namely, the
class position adopted by the writer, is the ultimate determinant.
By way of instance, Kosambi refers to the condition of
Indian literature before and after the advent of the British rule:
‘In India, the new literature had to await the passage of
centuries, till the great social novels in Bengal with Bankim Chandra
Chatterji, matched by those of Rabindranath Tagore whose incomparable poetry
speaks of completely new social aspirations. The social drama in Marathi hardly
antedates the First World War. I am not qualified to speak in detail of
contemporary Indian literature, but it will be admitted that these vigorous
manifestation had been preceded by centuries of dreary classical imitation,
even in the vernaculars. To those who could write, the ten-headed Ravana had
remained more real than their living human neighbors, the woes of the Pandavas
indistinguishable from their own.’ 17
Instead of resorting to the class question, could one not
explain this stagnancy by other factors, such as foreign aggression and
occupation? Kosambi makes short shrift of the suggestion:
‘Foreign conquest explains nothing, for where is the
corresponding influence of Persian, though that had become a court language all
over the country, to be cultivated by learned Hindus. The Fisana
Ajayab and Bagh-o-Bahar might as well have been written at the
time of the Arabian Nights.’ 18
How could the British rule make such a radical difference
which the Mughal rule could not? Kosambi’s answer is as follows:
‘The difference is that the British introduced a
fundamentally new, advanced mode of life, the bourgeois, as against Muslim
feudalism which had meant a comparatively trifling readjustment of the way in
which people lived. With Ghalib come new problems and new writing. The verse of
Akbar Allahabadi shows what life nationalism could infuse; Mohammed Iqbal’s
great days gave us an Urdu poem that became a national song, his words Hindostan
hamara hai stirring every person who heard them – except the
British’ 19
The new Indian literature that emerged in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, however, was no less class-oriented than before. Kosambi
points out:
‘Yet this is unmistakably class literature. Munshi Premchand
has many admirers, but no worthy successor, though the modern Urdu and Hindi
short story begins with him. Iqbal’s later years showed higher Persianization,
greater introspective detachment from the problems of the country, and a
British knighthood! Competent writers increase, but the framework is now set,
foreign models cheap and easy to imitate, profoundly original writing
unnecessary as well as uneconomical, “progressive” writing no less imitative,
though more dangerous and liable to be suppressed by police action.’ 20
Kosambi continues in this vein and reflects on the modern
literary development in the west. But we have quoted enough to show that
Kosambi takes his stand on Marx’s formulation concerning the relationship
between the base and the superstructure. In his Preface to A Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). Marx wrote:
‘In the social production of their existence, men inevitably
enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of
their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of
production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation
on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond
definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life
conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It
is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their
social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of
development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with
the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing
in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they
have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces
these relations turned into their fetters. Then begins an era of social
revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner of later to the
transformation of the whole immense superstructure.’ 21
Kosambi creatively applies this general formula to interpret
the radical changes both in form and content in Indian literature in the new
bourgeois era and, as a parallel case, cites the case of English literature
after the advent of capitalism. He does not lay the responsibility for the
dreary monotony of premodern Indian literature at the door of individual
authors, nor does he deny their literary merit. He blames the socioeconomic
milieu that produced them. He demonstrates why new forms such as social novels
could not arise in the old mould – not because some author or authors suddenly
wished to opt for a new form of writing but because a radical change in the
class relations had brought forward the replacement of old genres by the new.
More perceptibly he points out that in case of Elizabethan literature, even
though the characters appear to bear the stamp of old feudal nobility, their
attitudes have undergone a sea change, as in the case of Shakespeare’s tragic
heroes. Thus mere appearance is not enough; one must go beyond appearance and
look at the essence.
It should be emphasized at this point that what Kosambi
succeeds in doing is to contribute only to the sociology of literature; his
judgment in no way affects the aesthetic aspect of the works of the authors he
mentions. His appreciation for poets, dramatists and story-tellers from
Asvaghosha, Sudraka, Kalidasa and Dandin down to Jayadeva is well-attested. 22 While
speaking of the beauty of the jativrajya verses depicting vignettes
of everyday life of the people he notices perspicaciously: ‘These are quite
exceptional topics for Sanskrit poetry, which only too often shows the unhappy
crash resulting from an attempt at far higher flight.’ 23 He also
makes another crucial observation in relation to the development of literature
as a whole:
‘That society has progressed by the development of
successive classes to positions of dominance implies that the progressive
writer is oriented towards the needs of some rising class; his greatness
derives from the inevitable tendency of the class to look upon the interest of
all humanity as its own. It is a corollary that the great writers come far
oftener at the beginning of their period than at any later stage; they are the
ones whose appeal outlasts their times and societies. This is why we do not
dismiss great writing because it is class literature. When the class in
question has gained power, there follows a neat inversion whereby its own
special interests are proclaimed to be those of all humanity. Then writers set
themselves in a far narrower mold.’ 24
Kosambi sums up his evaluation of Sanskrit poetry,
particularly of the authors of epigrams, in the following way:
‘The poetry strives to be and is, at best, exquisite rather
than great. Yet though the voice be thin, it is clear. The field might be
limited as to objectives, vision, or endeavor, but excess is rare. The poets
speak across the centuries in refined musical tones bearing a soft but
indelible charm, visualizing an elegant life. The dominant ideal, frankly
expressed, is tasteful though not placid lovemaking in luxury – without vice,
greed, brutal lust after blood, bourgeois concentration upon money-breeding
profit. It is only fitting that their names and verses should not be
altogether forgotten.’ 25
So Kosambi finds at least one redeeming feature in classical
Sanskrit poetry: in spite of all its limitations it is untainted by the
despicable traits of the capitalist society!
Kosambi had an all-inclusive taste in literature, unaffected
by class considerations; he practised what he preached. Indeed he did ‘not
dismiss great writing because it is class literature.’ This is proved by his
choice of what he considered to be ‘great writing’: the Buddhist Pali Dhammapada,
the fourteenth-century Italian classic, Dante’s Divine Comedy and the
seventeenth-century English prose allegory, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s
Progress.26 Kosambi does not allow his conviction in the class character of all
hitherto existing written literature to interfere with his aesthetic
appreciation. He keeps sociology of literature and literary judgment in two
separate compartments. This distinguishes him from the horde of self-proclaimed
‘Marxists’ who approach literature as a mere mirror, without any inherent value
of its own, and more often than not throw the baby with the bathwater. They
forget (or perhaps are not aware of) Marx’s solemn warning: ‘If you want to
enjoy art, you must be an artistically -cultivated person’ and ‘the most
beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear.’ 27
It cannot be denied that artistically-uncultivated persons
rather than the cultivated ones have long dominated the world of ‘Official
Marxists’ (an omnibus term that Kosambi coined in 1957 to include ‘several
factions of the [then undivided] CPI, the Congress Socialists, the Royists, and
numerous left splinter groups’).28 Consistently and persistently the OM tended
to equate literary criticism with sociology of literature. Yet Engels preferred
to judge a work of art ‘both from the aesthetic and historical points of view’,
a dual yardstick well worth keeping in mind for all times.29
*
Kosambi, it should be remembered, was a polyglot and a
voracious reader of world literature. He was as much at home with Aeschylus and
Kalidasa as with anonymous Old English poets, medieval Italian satirists,
Renaissance dramatists and Villon, Goethe, Blake and Shelley.30 He could
quite casually refer to the Wayland Smith Saga as well as the songs
composed by Russian soldiers in honour of their general, Dovator.31 His
views on literature thus are not those of a dilettante but of one who was as
much accomplished in his own field, mathematics, as in history and literature.
What constitutes Kosambi’s contribution to the sociology of
literature is that he was the first among the Marxists to apply the externalist
approach (originally developed in the historiography of science, then extended
to other, wider fields) to the study of literature.32 In this respect he
was at one with John Bernal, Joseph Needham, Hyman Levy and Lancelot Hogben.
They were inspired by the works of some Soviet historians of science and
technology in the 1930s and consequently adopted the externalist approach in
their studies in the history of science, both of the east and the west. As
opposed to those historians who believe that individual genius alone is to be
credited for all developments in literature (a view known as internalism),
Kosambi worked out a scheme which, without discounting individual talent,
placed literature in its proper historical perspective. The internalist
approach can never account for the fact why Mukunda Chakravarti or
Bharatachandra Ray in pre-modern Bengal,
despite their talents, could not make any breakthrough in Bangla poetry either
in form or in content and remained confined to the age-old tradition of the
Mangalakavya. There can be no room for doubt about their worth. What held them
back was the absence of a new class to which they could link themselves.
Kosambi’s externalist approach emphasizes the fact that in the absence of a new
class and new aspirations, the poets of the past could not but remain confined
to the old groove. His analysis also explains the phenomenon called
Iswarchandra Gupta more satisfactorily than any other. Since Gupta adhered to
the old decaying class and its outworn ideas even in a transitional period when
class relations were being radically transformed in the early
nineteenth-century Bengal, he could not be a
pioneer in the field of literature. His junior contemporaries, Michael Madhusudan
Datta, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya and Dinabandhu Mitra, on the other hand,
succeeded in bringing into operation both new forms and new contents.
Students of art and literature too have much to learn from
Kosambi.
2 Kosambi, 1948, “Editor’s Preface”.
4 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lvii.
5 Kosambi, 1957/1986, 89.
16 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lviii.
17 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lviii-lix.
18 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lix.
22 For a detailed study see R. Bhattacharya, 2010, 21-38.
23 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, xlii.
24 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lvii-lviii.
25 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lxii. Elsewhere Kosambi has
taken pride in ‘hav[ing] rescued over fifty poets [whose epigrams find place in
the Subhasitaratnakosa] from the total oblivion to which lovers of
Sanskrit had consigned them, not to speak of adding to our meagre knowledge of
many others.’ 1986, 9.
27 Marx, 1961, 141 and 108.
29 Engels wrote this in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle (May
18, 1859). Marx and Engels, 107.
30 Kosambi, 1986, 92; Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, lx, xliv,
lxii.
31 Kosambi and Gokhale, 1957, xlviii n.
32 For a brief account of externalism vis-à-vis internalism,
see internet sources.
Bhattacharyya, Ramkrishna. ‘Marxism and Classical Sanskrit
Literature: D. D. Kosambi’s Approach and Assessment’, Revista di Studi
Sudasiatici, No. 4, 2010.
Kosambi, D. D. The Epigrams Attributed to
Bhartrihari. New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2000 (first published in 1948).
Kosambi, D. D. ‘European Feudal and
Renaissance Literature’, New Age (monthly), 7: 10, October 1958.
Kosambi, D. D. Exasperating Essays: Exercises
in the Dialectical Method. Pune: R. P. Nene, 1986 (first published in 1957).
Kosambi, D. D. An Introduction to the Study of
Indian History. Bombay:
Popular Prakashan, 1975 (first published in 1956).
Kosambi, D. D. Science Society & Peace.
Pune: Academy of Political and Social Studies, 1986.
Kosambi D. D. and
V. V. Gokhale (eds.). The Subhasitaratnakosa Compiled by Vidyakara. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957.
Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of
1844. Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961.
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy. Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1970.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1976.
[Acknowledgements: Amitava Bhattacharyya, Arun Ghosh
(Bhowani Sen Pathagar), Subhasish Mukhopadhyay and Tarun Pyne]
This essay was first
published in
Frontier, 45:14-17,
October 14-November 10, 2012, 36-41
