Raya: Krshnadevaraya of Vijayanagara

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Raya:Krishnadevaraya of Vjayanagara
Srinivas Reddy
New Delhi: Jaggernaut, 2020

Raya Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara

Srinivasa Reddy, a scholar of South Asian Literature trained in USA has tried his hand at writing history after a fairly successful run as a trasnslator. His earlier work Giver of Worn Garlands was an excellent translation of the putative work attributed to the Tuluva ruler Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara. The present work presents itself as a historically informed biography of the ruler but in reality it is a readable but badly researched work mixing legend, popular tradition and even cinematic renditions to create a pastice of historical narrative. Of course he has come with the proper credentials displayed prominently on the dusk jacket. It is certainly "engaging" but is it "exemplary" is a differnt question altogether.

Vijayangara history is complex in that it self consciously procalimed a template of Statecraft that was predicated upon the negation of the disruptions wrought by the onset or invasions of the turushka. In fact the trope of destroying the turushka appears even in the inscriptions of Krishnadeva Raya and to ignore the underlying political ideology animating Vijayanagara statecraft is merely a surrender to the kind of identity politics India has seen in the years follwing Independence. Turushka meant Turk and did not imply a religious identity at all and to shy away from this issue on the grounds that it may be offensive to present day sensibilities of political correctness is not merely being anachronistic by historically inaccurate.When Vijayanagara began its slow but steady march toward Empire it projected its raison d'tre as the Restoration of Worship in temples destroyed by the turushka. The raids of Kafur and the Tughlaqs had resulted in a virtual collapse of the moral order. The language of Apoclypse is deployed in an early Copper Plate Inscription: "When the sun. Prataparudra set, the world was enveloped in the turushka darkness".

Srinivasa Reddy begins his narrative biography of Krishnadevaraya with the famous Hampe Inscription which was trasnlated by Eugene Hultzsch in Epigraphia Indica Vol I. Generally recognised as a danasasana, issued on the occasion of his coronation the Inscription states in its 11th verse that Krishnadeva Raya connquered the Chera, Chola, the proud Pandyas, the brave Turushka, the Gajapathi king and others. This claim of conquest of the Gajapathi or for that matter even victory over the Turushka is merely rhetorical, a statement of intent rather than of accomplishemt an Krishdevaraya took control over the Empire upon the death of his half brother, Vira Narashimha in 1509 and there is no evidence that he had participated in any major campaign with his fater Narasa Nayaka. Again there is no hstorical evidence to suggest that Gandikota, Vinnukonda and Nagarajakonda were suggested as likely targets of Vijayanagar acquisition by Narasa Nayaka. Srinivas Reddy cannot resist the temptation of including an intersting myth, story fable even cinema  dialogues. Thus he accepts the story of Vidyaranya ad his association with Harihara and Bukka even though there is compelling evidence that this myth came to the fore only in the decades after 1565 as shown by Hermann Kulke. A historian will not allow an intersting story to structure his narrative.

The most impressive part of the book are the chapters dealing with the conflict with the Gajapathi rulers of Orissa. Reddy keeps harping on the "low caste" status of Krishnadevaraya. He calls him "dasi putra". There is absolutely no historical evidence to show that caste perceptions in any way influeced the conflict. Gajapathi, Narapathi and Ashwapathi remained the trypych around which the polity of the medieval South Indian empire revolved. And the Gajpathi king himself came fom a dynasty of usurpers and so would not have thow such caste laden invective against Krishnadevaraya. It appears tht identity politics of today and caste laden social sciences inflused with identity politics makes such outlandish interpretations not only possible but academically rspectable. The fact is that such labels were unknown in the Vijayanagara period.

Krishnadevara raya presided over an Empire that was linguistically diverse, complex in terms of religious and sectarian composition and the social structure of the Vijayanagara polity was certainly stratified. However caste was still not the deciding factor as the very diversity of the Great Captains, the amaranayankara-s. demonstrates. Only one Historian has attempted a prosopographical study of Nayakas. Krishnadevaraya bore the biruda, Hindu raya Sutrranna or Sultan of HinduKings a title which underscores the tremendous influence of the Islamic political formations of the Deccan.

The book under review is certainly interesting. But its claim to be History can be contested.

John Goldingham FRS: Astronomer, Architect and Scentist in Madras

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Goldingham with his two Assistants

The advent of the East India Company and uts military and political domination over India has been the subject of a recent book by William Dreflect detail the inteigues, violence and pillage that accompanied the rise of the Empire, there is another story waiting to be told. The story of men, mostly from Scotland who entered the Company service and spent a good part of their lives in the pursuit of scientific knowledge, historical research and Antiquaran pursuits. The name of Col Colin MacKenzie comes immediately to mind when we reflect on the formative decades of Company rule in India. For very Robert Clive there was a Mark Wilks, a William Roxburgh a Colin MacKenzie and therefore the historical context of early Company ule must also encompass the work of these men who were in many ways the products of the Scottish Enlightenment.

John Goldingham a Fellow of the Royal Society came to India in the early years of the nineteenth century when the great geodesic project like the measurement of the Meridian Arc, the Trignomentrical Survey and terrestrial mapping of India was underway. A practical problem all these projects faced was the determination of the Longitude which could be used to caliberate all their maps and calculations. Navigation on the high seas also depended on the determination of the Longitude as that wouldenable safe sailing. The loss of 4 battle ships near the Isle of Scicylly near the coast of Cornwall and the loss of 2000 sean men made the English Government intervene and John Harrison in1748 succedded in making the Chronemeter that enabled ships to carry the local time with them while sailing.The Longitude is the angular distance between the Equator (latidute) and the Prime Medidian which was the Observatory at Greenwich. Until Harrison invented his very sophisticated Chronometer sailors were at the mercy of the sky, the stars and extremely poor astronomical instruments like the sexton and the qyadrant.Harrison's instument was a robust chronemeter that allowed the Longitude to be determined by the difference between local time(on the sailing ship) and the time in a fixed meridian. Thyco Brahe (1546-1601) and Johhanes Kepler (1571-1630) kept detailed observations os the stellar objcets and these tables were used as aids in navigation. However, navigation by the help of the stars was both risky and with the southern hemisphere becoming the new frontier of exploration with the several voyages of James Cook a reliable method was needed. In India, this meant determination of a meridian that could be used as a base for accurate reliable mapping.

John Goldingham succeeded Michaek Topping as the Astronomer of the East India Company and he undertook extensive work at Topping's Observatory at Nugambakkam on the banks of the Cooum. Being a trined Astronomer, John Goldingham decided to use the Ecpises of Jupiter in order to determnie the Longitude of Madras. He had at his disposal the excellent series of astronomical data collected over several decades by William Petrie between 1787 to 1782. He also had the data of Michael Topping and his own. He presented his method in a lenghty paper in which he discussed the eclipses of Jupiter as a possible determinat of the Longitude on Earth.His findings were published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society vol 112 (1822). He cross checked his finding by comparing the result with Lunar Eclipses in which the use of Kepler's table becomes the base for calculation. Goldingham was able to estblish the Medidian for Madras' His Indian assistants perhaps depicted in the illustration above were Srinivasachary and Tiruvenkatachary.

Banquetting Hall designed by Goldhinham before it became ugly

John Goldingham was an Astronomer and he was the first Principal of the Madras School of Survey that grew into the famous Guindy Engineering College' Edward Clive as Love points out in Vlume III of his Vestiges of Old Madras was keen on establishing a distinct Depatment of Civil Engineering separate from the Military and John Goldingham was appointed the Architect to design the Garden House of the Madras Governor and a Public Hall which stands today as the Banquetting Hall after a series of "rennovations" which have altered the character and concept of the architect. Goldingham's drwaing have been presevered in Netehlands and thes structures were meant to proclaim the invincibility of the Company after its victories over the usurper ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan.Lord Clive who was the Governor from 1798 to1803 sanctioned 58,000 pagodas and the Architect was paid a 15% commission giving him a permenant stake in cost escalation. Finally Goldingham was dismissed and the project completed.

After this work Goldhimham returned to England where he died in 1849. Havell suggests that Goldingham was the first architect to use Indian elements in his building a trnd tken forwatd by the likes of Chilsom.

The Redoubt at Egmore: Possible Location and History

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

1733 Map of Madras showing the Egmore Redoubt

Redoubt Pic Story of Madras

The Map given on the left is an important histoical document in that it gives us on overview of what Madras looked like in the first quarter of the eighteeenth century. More importantly, it illustrates the exact location of the Egmore Redoubt: the square bounded area outside the dark boundary lines towards the left top corner of the map. This Map was apparentlydone during the Governorship of Pitt when Madras underwent dramatic expansion. Right below we have the only surviving illustration of theEgmore Redoubt. The location geneally identified with the Redoubt is the Egmore Railway Station on theGandhi Irwin Road, opposite the Archives. This identification which was suggeted by Professor Srinivasachari in his "Place Names Of Madras"which he published in 1936 in the volume of essay commemoration the 300 years of the foundation of the City in 1636.

The identification seems to be slightly off the mark because there are historical documents that when sifted carefully give us a better site.

The location of the Redoubt was outside of the Bounded Hedges that surrounded the East India Company's self procalimed limits of its possessions. There was a Choultry in the place where the Redouby was constructed. And the purpose was strictly military. If we keep these factors in mind we get a better understanding of the location. The documents sate clearly that the Redoubt will have a brick wall around the Choultry in order to lodge such "forces as we shall send to defend peace". While there were frequent skirmishes with Dawood Khan, Mafuz Khan and even on ocassion with the Portuguese, the English faced only one serious contender, the French located in Pondicherry.And the defence of Madras implied guardingthe access points to the City. The obvious attacks from the sea were warded off as Love points out in his Vestiges of Old Madras by strengthening the Sea Gate with heavy weapons. And popular memory has it that the Fortification Walls were constructed with money collected from the Residents of the Black Town, that is the indigenous people and hence the name Wall Tax Road, The attaks on Madras by Dadood Khan prompted Thomas Pitt, whose granson was to become the Prime Minister of England, to seriously consider the issue of defenses.Kanchipuram and and Poonamalee were importantl towns frequently attacked by the Maharattas who controlled the Fort of Ginji and Vellore. Adding to the owes of the East India Company were polegars like Lingappa who commanded considerble armed following in the vicinity of Madras and preyed upon the trade and mechaindise passing through the area. It was during the invasion of the French under Count de Lally that we hear of the military role of the Egmore Redoubt.

The Consultations of the Governor in Council of the year 1710 state that a sum of 350 pagodas was sanctioned for the maintenance of the Choultry clearly a recognition that it was a useful asset. However the location of the Choultry in Egmore presented some thorny issues. Did East India Company have jurisdiction over thie area. Dawood Khan claerly a most colorful figure in the history of the time one one of his visits to Madras with the sole purpose of cadging liquor from the Governor, remarked that if the English came to trade why did they need fortifications, guns and cannon. A question that the Governor parried. By July 1711 a furter 563pagodas was spent in strngthening the Choultry and making it a Redoubt, a masonary fort.Apart from naking it a fort, the Company decided to build a Powder Mill in the same locaton. The reason recorded in the Consultations for the Year 1711 is the poor quality of gun powder available and the erratic supply from Europe which was involved in its usual seasonal conflicts. Brohiers was put in charge f the Powder Mill which was located within the Redoubt. By 1713 a total of 5060 pagodas had been expended on the Fortifications and th Powder Mill. The Redoubt had a dual purpose: to hold the Choultry Plains and was a Signal Post to alert the forces atFort St. George should an Army or Cavalry be seen. If these aspects are kept in mind it is clear that the location at the Egmore Station would have been quite futile to its stated purposes.

We have some other cluse about the location of the Egmore Redoubt in Robert Orme's Military Transactions of the British Nation in Hindustan. Wrting about the defense of Madras by Col Lawrence during the invasion of Lally he sates that the Choultry Plain extends two miles west of the Enclosures which bound St Thomas Mount and this plain extends right up to Mylapore. There is a reference to Chindradipettah as being close to the Redoubt and this is obviously a weaving village, chinna tari pettai. And there is a settlement by that name close to where we have located theRedoubt.

The Choultry Plain consisisted of (1) Puddupakkam (2) Chindradripet (3) Roypettah (4) Nungambakkam (5) Triplicane. Egmore itself came under the shifting sands of competing claims and various warlords of the time lid claim to it. The claim was finally setteld when Egmore was acquired by the Comapny.

Given these factors, and the location of the Redoubt given in the Map it appears that the location was much further west from where Srinivasachari located it.

  (This is only a tentative identification as this Historian has not had the opportunity of traveling to Madras and making an on the spot assessment)

Slavery and Fort St George: Does Madras under the East India Company have a Slaving Past

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Reynolds Painting

The Black Lives Movement in the US and across the white world has drawn attention to the enduring legacy of involuntary servitude or Slavery. In Madras, Forst St. George built on a strip of land acquired from the last ruler of the Vijayanagara Empire even as it was losing its elan to the might of the Mughals and their surrogates, remained along with Pulicat under he Dutch, Tanquebar under the Danes and Karaikkal under the French as important centres of Slave Trade in the Indian Ocan Region. The history of the Slave Trade is obviously not a pleasant subject and even the foremost authority on the Europeans Companies in India, Professor S Arasaratnam makes passing references to the prevalence of the Slave Trade. However even a cursory gkance through the Consultaions of the East India Company, Vestiges of Old Madras and of course Madras in Olden Time gives us enough material to begin a detailed study. Of these the last named compiled by James Talboys Wheeler is the most reliable and provides several insatnces of Slave Trade. Even as the debate over abolition was gaining ground in the English House of Parliament, the Court of Directors wrote that the financial problems of the Company stemmed from a "want of labouring people"and the same document states that the Company Officials in Madras were able to procule slaves for their Sumatarn outpost, Benkulen ( Richard Allen, Euroean Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, p1)..

In Love's Vestiges of Old Madras there are a few documents relating to the prevalence of teh Slave Trade and efforts made to bring the notorious trade under some legal framework:
1 An Agreement was signed between the English and the Portuguese authorities to restore slaves who had escaped from the teritories of the contracting parties
2 An Office was opened under the Town kanakkapillai to register slaves at the Choultry Building located on Market Street of Fort St George
3 A document from the Company to Elihu Yale published in Volume I of Vestiges p 546 refers to a need to ascertain the number of Slaves in Fort St George and the Black Town
4 Times of famine and they were frightfully common were times of distress and Children were sometimes sold into slavery with the connivance of Indian middlemen
5 Reference exists of young men and women sold to the Dutch at Pulicat for a bribe of 5 pagodas and the document hints that the Governor Henry Greenhill was aware of the trade and was conniving at it
6 A document registering the affadavit of John Leigh against Kannppa accusing him of procuring children for slavery and sold to "Hollenders" at Pulicat
7 Slaves had to be registered according to a document on p 80, Vestiges of Old Madras
8 "In 1687 the trade was sanctioned under regulation a duty of one pagoda exacted for each slave sent from Madras by sea". Vestiges Vol I p 545

The Slave Trade from Madras perhaps was not on the same scale and extent as the Atlantic Slave Trade but that does not absolve the various European Companies from bearing the responsibility for this Obnoxious Commerce. There were sporadic attempts on the part of Indian rulers to put an end to this menace just as the nayaks of Tanjavur who intervened to check the French Slave Trade at Karaikkal but given the superior military force at the command of the Europeans did not always succeed and also the invasion of Shvaji created extreme conditions of famine in the region and periodic shortages of foodgrain were opportune moments for the Slaving sharks, both white and Indian.

In the interest of Historical Truth it must also be mentioned that after the famous Mansfied Judgment an attempt was made to suppress the Slave Trade, However given the fragmented nature of legal jurisdiction and contesting interpretations of what constituted Slavery, the attempts to suppress Slavery had to wait the Passage of the Slaveru Abolition Act in 1834. After that the Royal Navy dployed a ship, an old Steamer for search and seizure of Arab and other ships involved in the Slave Trade. A series of treaties were signed with the sultans of Muscat, Zanzibat, Oman, the Immam of Mecca and a number of local chiels along the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to ensure compliance of the treaties. The Jeddah Massacre of Europeans in 1858 may be linked to the resntment felt against what the Arabs regarded as legitimate commerce.

Take a close look at the painting above. It was painted by Reynolds and depicts Clive with his daughter. You will find a dark Indan face in the painting. Such traces do exist in addition to the documents ; It is high time for Indian historians to wean themselvs away from the garbage of Post Colonial theories and adopt rigorous time tested methods of Historical Research,

Charles Umpherston Aitchison Administrator, Diplomat Historian (1832-1896)

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The Victorian Age was replete with monumental historical projects like the History of the Parliament, Calendar of State Papers, Victoria History of the Counties of England and witnessed prodigious publication of Historical records. Stubbs and Maitland were keen investigators of Anglo Saxon political institutions, particularly in the two centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066 AD. In India too the British adopted a similar policy either to fends off challenges to their regime in the post Mutiny era when India was taken over by the Crown or as a intervention in preservation of Historical Documents and this project is associated with Charles Umpherston Aitchison. He was the Foreign Secretary of India, the first "President" of the Public Service Commission, the precurson of the UPSC and he was appointed to the Covenanted Civil Service soon after the Compettitive examinations were introduced and so was a pioneering competition wallah. Apart from these disctinctions, he was also the Lt. Governor of the Punjab and was closely associated with Sir John Lawrence.

C U Aitchisons

Charles Umperston Aitchison was born in Scotland in 1832 and was educated in the University of Edinburgh like the others we have studied in this series: William Roxburgh. He graduated with a Masters' degree in what was then quaintly described as Moral Philosophy and he was the only candidate selected from Scotland for appointment in the Covenenated Civil Srvice in India. His first appointment was inHissar in May 1857 but was providentially transferred to the Punjab and hence escaped the massacre that followed the Mutiny in May 1857, He was in Lahore when the Mutiny began. After the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, Aitchison was sent to Calcutta where he worked as an Under Secretary in the "Political Department".

The Mutiny was a turning point in Indian History in that it represented a significant movement towards national aspiration, although in an incohate fashion. For the English it was a moment of reckoning in that the violence that they had seen expereinced at the hands of their beloved "natives" was on a scale that shook the foundations of the political order that bound India to England or Great Britain as it styled itself then. And it is here that the work of C U Aitchison is reembered.

Historians have seen the rise of the East India Company to politcal and military power as a consequence of the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Treaty of Allahabad signed in 1765 merely ratified an pre existing reality. But in the "Narrative" part of his XIII volume Treaties, Sanads and Engagemets, a different and more sophisticated understanding of the process of territorial conquest of India is developed. We can call that process: Conquest by Treaty. Nearly 2500 individual documents are found over the XIII volumes that for some strange reason continued to be published under the editorship of C U Aitchison even after his death. The conflict between Paramountcy and So vereignty  lay at  the heart of this gigantic venture. Was the status of the East India Company in India until its takeover by the Crown in 1858 that of a Sovereign or the Paramount Power. The East India Company like any corporate body derived its charter to trade from the English Parliament but by the middle of the eighteenth century had transformed itself into a major political and military power largely on the strength of its huge land army and deft diplomacy. And the net result were Treaties which were signed by the Company with major political powers of the indigenous people like the Nizam, the State of Mysore, the states of Rajputana, the states of Central India etc. In most of these cases the Subsidiary Alliance from the time of Warren Hastings meant the accptance of a "Resident" and a detachment of Company forces which were o be maintined by the states in hih they were deployed.  Sannads were of a different order. They were documents issued by the Paramount Power in reply to or in response to an existing situation or dispute on the ground. The right of succession to the Gaddi was usually recognized through the grant of a sannad bearing the seal and signature of the Company. Engagments is a dubious category. Salt manufature, fishing and custom duties, forest grazing rights, native customs and practices were all governemed by the term Engagement. The English Administration both during the reign of the Company and the Viceroys communicated with "Native Chiefs" through the Political Department and it raises the question whether the Administartion then considered Natice chiefs to be "sovereign" entities. This question also has bearing on the later political history of India in that when the Transfer of Power took place in 1947 all the 616 entities that constituted the fabric of India became at one fell stroke "Independent"'.

C U Aitchison collected the documents which were widely dispersed in various territories and offices of the then regime and published them in order to demonstrate the legal validity of English authority to govern. The English Administration was particular that they nested and varying degrees of Sovereignty did not clash with the authority to governern India. And the Administration was based on consent in the strictly political sense in that it rested on the Treaty signed between the Native States and Princely States. The latter was a category that emerged only after the 1911 Durbar.

In the late nineteenth century, a major shift took place in the strategic thought that influenced the British policy in India. The security of India resided not only in the capability of defence on land but also the ability to intervene in the wide maritime worls stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Mlacca, a vision most eloquently articulated in Lord Curzon's celebated Address to the Royal Geographical Society, London and a vision whose wisdom in only now being understood after 70 years of neglect. Hence the Engagments with the Sultans of the decaying Ottoman Empire on the Gulf were brought into the imperial horizon: Muscat, Aden, Zanzibar and host og Arab sultans signed agreements including the Emir of Kuwait, a document they used to demonstrate their Independence when Saddam Hussein invaded the territory.

C U Aitchison was appointed President f the Public Service Commission in 1886 and he reccomended the establishment of the Imperial Civil Service, the nomenclature of which was changed to the IndianCivil Service. He also took interest in establishing educational insitutions in the Punab and the Aitchison College in Lahore is a good example. Upon his return to England he was created Knight Commander of the Star of India and he died in 1896.

Indian diplomats who have to answer challenges from a vaiety of different sources have to dpend heavily on Sir Aitchison's monumnetal work including the challege over Sir Creek.

George Floyd and the Death of American Democracy

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Police officer kneeling on his neck

USA is erupting in a race war that should show to the world the ugly face of American Liberlism. White liberalism has presented itself as a friend of the Blacks and has essentily hi jacked the Black Lives Matter Movement for serving its own decietful political agenda. This may sound strange, but the fact is that unlike the Ku Klaux Klan and the Southern Red Neck, who do not present themselves of friends of the Blacks, the white liberal is said to be  alet to discrimination, oppression and inequality, slogans that they deploy to deflect attention from any attempt at scrutinizing their record vis a vis the Blacks. In the Universities, the white liberals thunder to ther students about the "politics of race" "racial profiling" " white privilege" etc a rhetoric tht sometimes seduces the blacks to support the white liberal agenda: the Woke Agenda. And the same is replicated across the world. The support extended by these miserable white liberals to the agitations against a perfectly legal and democatic Citizenship Ammendment Act (CAA) passed by the Indian Parliament to extend the benefits of citizenship to the dispossessed minorities in the Islamic Republics in th neighbourhood of India also stems from the same perverted understanding of the moral centrality of the "white" race in negotiating the complex problems of the world today. A control over the acedemia and the Press has made woke liberalism thrive in the exalted ether of Post Colonialism. Now back to USA.

The American Police treats the Native Aerican and the Black Americans as the enemy or in woke lino, the "Other". Barack Hussein Obama made the situation worse for the African Americans by creating a huge industry of Prisons for Profits and by introducing madatory sentencing for non violent crimes such as drug dealing. A life imprisonment for being caught with 5 gms of drugs is unfair to say the least and that was the contribution of the dreamboy of the woke liberals, Obama. There are three basic problems within the African American community: lack of educational opportunities and skills, lack of positive role models and excessive state intusion in the lives of African American communities and the Police or th social welfare organs of the American state are the most egresious invaders of Back social and cultural space. Black mothers are routnely threatened to have their babies taken away for "neglect" and that too because she has to work to support the baby in the first place and most work spaces for low skilled jobs do not have creches or day care centres.

White liberals who are so eloquent about Inequality and are likely to have read a rave review of Thomas Pikketty have not said anything worthwhile on the Skilling of the African American youth. I remeber when I was a Ph D student at a well known American University I studied History and got my PhD in Medieval History way back in 1987) an African American gratudate student who went by the unfortunate name E Pluribus Unnum was repeatedly discouraged and humiliated until he exhausted his savings from doing a construction job in New York and then he faded away. The man responsible was one with an implacable liberal credentials. And I can say that when it comes to frothing at the mouth with liberal platitudes, there cannnot be anyone better than white liberals with their manifestos denouncing Inequality Racism Oppression and the like and they carry this toxic ideological cocktail into academic witngs in the name of post colonialism. All the while we must remember they are the poducts of white privilge and use that privilege to batten themselves at the expense of others,

There have been nearly 100 deaths this year alone of Black men who have been killed by policemen. Is their training at fault? We have no answer? Is the system of White Privilege so entrenched that the woke liberals cannot do anything maningful? I cannot udndertand how political leaders like Nancy Pelosi who has been so hyperactive against Donal Trump has done nothing for the under privileged in her own society. Even here after the killing of Geoge Floyd she was busy denouncing Trump who said quite categorigally tht rotest should not deenerate into Anarchy. Now the rioting that is taking place in New York, Washington, Richmond, Los Angles and scores of other cities is bringing a collapse of American society which is already been battered by COVID 19.

American Racism has two faces the ugly face of the KKK and the pretty face of the Woke Liberals and I feel I am safer with one whose malefesence I understand.

William Roxburgh and Indian Botany Plants Empire and Trade: Roxburgh and the Royal Botanical Garden Calcutta

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PART III

Wiki Commons Roxburg Mansion Howrah

After the terrible diasater faced by William Roxburgh, he was called upon to the Superindendent of the newly established Botanical Garden at Calcutta. His great work on Indian flora, Flora Indica was undertaken here and was published by the Serampore Baptist Press under the stewartsip of William Carey.The influence of the Linnean System of Taxonomy and Nomenclature is embodied in this work' William Roxburgh took charge of the Botanical Garden in 1793 and in his first stint remained till 1797 wnen he returned to England to regain his health.In October 1799 he returned to Calcutta and remained in India till 1805 and left for his native Scotland in 1805 after spending a few months at St. Helena, the Company Island.In 1813 he left India for good to settle in Scotland. At the time of his depature he left his botanical collection and the Manuscripts of his Flora Indica with Carey anf they formed the basis of the two major publications of william Roxburgh: Hortus Bengalensis, a catalogue of plants in the botanical Garden and Flora Indica the outstanding classica work on Indian plants which till this day is regarded as the starting point of Indian Botany.

One of the first taks that he accomplished at Calcutta was the construction of hie Residence and Herbarium that also housed his Library, With the help of his extensive network of collaborators strewn all over the World, Roxburgh was able to bud up a good library of Botanical works, thereby replacing the one that he lost at Samalkotta.Roxburgh was particularly interested in commercial plants like Cotton and Indigo which would enable the East India Company increase its profits. Though he was not a founding member of the Asiatic Society of India which was created by Sir William Jones in 1784, Roxburgh publihed many of his researches in the Journal of the Asiatic Society and in Asiatik Researches. It has become fashinable for historians of Science writing under the pernecious shadow of Saidian, Foucouldian and Post Colonial theories to argue that such scientific enterprises as for instance the one presided over by Roxburgh or that of his contemporary Colin Makenzie were in reality elaborated trophies of power and Imperial Domination. The  argument being that Empire seeks to classify,rationalise, and ultimately appropriate the local knowledge in order ro subserve imperial ends. Joseph Banks and William Roxburgh are viewed as marionettes on a stage pre determined by economic and technological actors. Such an approach to History is both teleological and deterministic and denies the agency of human actors involved. The work undertaken by men uch as these must be seen in the light of their own acions and perceptions within an overarching framework provided by the East India Company.

When Robert Kyd left the botanical garden, there were only around 335 species of plants, trees and ferns in the Royal Botanical Garden. When Roxburgh retired after serving the Garden for nearly two decades the number had passed 3335 species. A  number of plants were introduced from China, South East Asia especially the Mlay Peninsula, West Indies, Canary Island, St Helena. Effort was made to introduce Mahogony and the Garden still has the trees planted by Roxbergh and as if by mircale survived the recent Cyclone Anpham. SriLanka, Bhutan, Andaman Islands were some of the other places from where plants were secured. The logic behind such exchanges was the pesrvation of seed and plant types so that a better understanding of nature could be obtined. Al this, of course, was predicated on the pious assumption that by careful study the Garden of Eden could be recreated here on Earth.

Of great interest was Sugar to the early pioneers. The politics of the East India Company collided head on with that of the entrenched Sugar lobby in the House of Commons who wee represntative of the West Indies Sugar interests who used African Slave labour to grow their commercial crop. The American War of Independence and the problems in the Aylantic in the early nineteenth century gave Indian sugar some respite and India started exporting Sugar by the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, Another issue that the Company faced was the drain of silver caused b the voracious demand fro Tea in England. The trade with China was financed by the export of Silver and until the Company hit upon Opium and forced it upon the Chinese from 1832 onwards, effort was made to grow Tea in India. Ut was Roxburgh who got 272 tea cuttings from Canton and tried to acclamatize Ta to Indian conditions.

The lasting contibution of William Roxburgh lay i his Plants of the Coromandel and Flora Indica. 
Another commercial crop in which Roxburgh showed great interest was Hemp which was used in packing and cordage. In the 310 acres that constituted the Botanical Garden, a part was dedicated exclusively to commercial crops and it may not be out of palce to point out that Rxburgh was the founder of Plant Research in India.

William Roxburgh died in 1815 but his name lives on.

William Roxburgh and Indian Botany Plants Empire and Trade From Samalkotta to Calcutta

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Part II

From Samalkotta to Calcutta

From Plants of the Coromandel

William Roxburgh was appointed as a Surgeon seconded to the Norther Circars and he set up a botanical garden at Samalkotta, at the estuary of the River Godavari, not far rom Coringa, the bio diversity hot spot and the French territory of Yanam. He reached Sanalkota in 1781 and established his ressidence near the Garden and collected a large number of plants which were eventually published in Plants of the coromandel several years later. It is quite likely that the Herbariusm of Robert Koneig was inherited by Roxburgh. Collecting plants all over th Norther Circars at a time when the East India Company had not fully esatblished itself must have been quite challenging. While he was at Samalkta, Roxburgh initiated the training of "natives" into the making of botanical drawings which drew heavily on the Deccan School of natural drawings and paintings which in turn were derived from Mughal examples. The Deccan Sultanates especially of Bijapur and Bidar had a rich background of naturalistic painting. 

The young Dr William Roxburgh was schooled in the methods and philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment and believed as did his patrons in the East India Company that along withTrade and other commercial activities the Company must help in the formulation of knowledge and explore the natural word for the exploitation of its resources by England. We mut remember that the British Empire at this time was being challenged across the Atlantic by the American War of Independence and that was soon overshadowed by the looming war with France. Finance Profit and Economic well being were the key elements in the Company's strategy. To that end Roxburgh devoed his energy identifying economically profitable palnts that culd be acclamatised successfully in Indian geographical conditions and also prepare them for transfer to other  scntres in the Joseph Banks' expanding network of botanical gardens: Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena and of course Kew Gardens. 

Plants of the Coromandel 

At Samalkotta, Roxburgh experimented with plants of economic value such as (1) Coffee (2) Cinnamon (3) Nutmeg (4) Arrotto (5) Sappan wood (Breadfruit ( 6) Mulberry and (7) Pepper vines. It is clear that the Company still had its Spice Monopoly in mind while framing its botanical institutions. The VOC controlled the Spice Islands and with the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, the East India Company took advantage of its large military presence in the Southern part of the Peninsula and captured Java. Once again another Scotsman, Col Colin Mackenzie who collected and collated histrical documents in South India, teamed up with Sir Stamford Raffles another Scot to collect documents and historical artifacts from the Island of Java. Some of these artifacts belonging to the SriVijya Kingdom can be seen in the Museum at Calcutta.

William Roxburgh was perhaps married at the time he lived in Samalkota though ater the death of his wife he ook up with an ndian woman in Calcutta and had a son with her who was educated in Edinburg but unfortunately died before reaching the age of 40. He too was a namesake of his father. The idallyic existence was shattered on the night of May 19th and 20th, 1787. What happended on that fateful night; By the time the night of horror was through, Roxburgh had lost his valuable Library, his drawings of botanical specimens, his Herbarium, his house his house and 10,000 pagodas of cloth.And herein lies a tale.

May is generally not cyclone season along the Coromandel Coast, November is the month when the historically devastating Cyclones of the Coromandl hve struck. Yey Roxburgh writes in his acount that he could feel "great convulsion" from the morning of May 17th. The wind he says blew hard from the North East and Roburgh was a keen metreologists as he kept a detailed record of Tides and Winds during his stay at Madras measuing high tide every day. In fact his first published essay in The Journal of the Royal Society was a record of Tides he maintained at Madras, now Chennai. Roxburgh did sate that the weather was unusual at this season. And he goes on to sate that "we did not apprehend that it would become more ferocious, but on the night of the 19th t night it increased to a hard Gale and on 20th in the morning it blew a perfect hurricne". Waves to the hright of narly 15 feet came crashing on the sleeping inhabitants of Coringa and Samalkota. Roxburgh and his wife escaped the storm by taking refuge in ahouse built on top of a hill and in the morning when they ventured  out saw death and devastation all around. He estimated that about 10,000 people had been killed in this freak perfect hurricane in an unsual time of the year.

Can the unusual storm and surge of the Sea which rose to the height of nearly 15 feet be expalined in terms of a tsunami caused by an erruption in the volcano in the Andaman chain, the one in Barren Island. There is a piece of evidnce in the historical record publised by Colebroke that recorded the erruption of the Barren Island volcano just a few days before the Sea surged towatd Samalkotta and Coringa. A sailor saw columns of smoke asending from the summit of the volcano from a distance of 7 leagues.

Thus the unusual fury of the May 19-20 Sea sure recorded by William Roxburgh may have been the effect of this Indian Ocean volcanic eruption'

To be continued in Part III

Sir Rollo Gillespie and the Battle of Nalapani: Why Nepla's Claim holds no water

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Today's Newpaper headline screams about the territorial assertions made by the Prime Minister of Nepal and India has rightly rejected his claim that it lacks historical merit, And what exactly is the historical merit India has so boldly claimed. We will address that issue and History offers us the only correct way of dealing with such controversies. Does Nepal have truth on its side or is the Prime Minister Grand Standing his new Patrons, the Chinese.

Much of Indian political landscape was shaped in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century as the Mughal Empires declined and new powers arose to fill the space evacuvated by the Fall of the Mughal Empire. Sir Jadunath Sarkar was spot on when he arued that the dyning Mughal Empire was more significant to India than the Empire at its peak. The new power of course was the Easi India Company whose "corporate violence and pillage" as Darlymple put is framed the political and military history of India fr nealy a century and to this we maust add the important role played by Maharaja Ranjt Singh and the short lived Sikh kingdom which essentially stopped the Tibetans and the Nepalese from occupyig parts of India east of the Sutlej and if Ladhak is an integral part of India it is due to the successful occupation of Lahsa by the forces of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The Nepal warlord Amar Singh Thapa tried to take the fort of Kangra but the Sikh forces drove him out

Political change was on the horizon in the Kingdom of Gorakh as well. Prithivi Narayan Shah tried unifying the kingdom of Nepal and set his eyes on the land beyon the Ghandaki river especially the region of Gharwal whose ruler suought the support of the East India Company; The expansion into Tibet was repulsed by the Chinese who in turn imposed the Treaty of Betrawati on Nepal by which Nepal agreed to pay tribute to China and lost its sovereignty to the Middle Kingdom. The Prime Minister of Nepal is following the same dangerous game today.

Sir Rollo Gillespie

There is a saying in Nepal: With the merchants come the musket with the Bible the Bayonet. This popular saying refers to the circumstances surrounding the Anglo Nepal War which arose out of territorial disputes and the demand for Down a soft wool a very valuable commodity. The notoriously tempramental river the Mahakali was officially recognized as the boundary and herein lay the oot of the conflict.

The historical considerations that the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India alludes to are the making of one man, Sir Rollo Gillepie.In South India he is reviled as the butcher of Vellore when in July 1806 he led a small contingent of arounf 100 native and European troops scaled the ramparts of the Vellore Fort within which a Mutiny had taken place in the morning of July 8 when the troops massacred around 300 or so Europeans in their beds. Gillespie had earler served with distinction in Jamaica and after the suppression of the Vellore Mutiny he was sent to Java where he succeeded in capturing Jakarta. Gellespie was brutal as he was brave and both in Java and in Vellore he left benind a trail of blood and gore.The first recorded use of the Anglo Saxon method of mass execution by tying soldiers to the cannon and blowing them to bits was introduced by Rollo Gillespie to be followed ears lated by General Neill during the Distrurbances of 1857.

In 1814 Rollo Gellespie commanded the East India Company troops at the Battle of Nalapani where the troops of the the Nepal Army were soundly defeated and that victory paved the way for the signing of the Treaty of Sugauli by which the entire Terrai and the gharwal region of Nepal was annexed in  1816. And so India is quite right in assering its rights over the region that Nepal now claims. As for Rollo Gillespie he died in the Battle of Nalapani in 1814 and his remains were transported to Meerut where he lies burried in the St John's Church.

Gillespie Memorial

In this neglected graveyard is the Grave of the warrior to whom India is indebted for acquiring by conquest the Terrai region of the present day state of Uttarakhand.

I wish Indian Historians will leave their obsession with the so called National Movement and move on to the study of issues like this which have a bearing on India its strategic and domestic interests.

William Roxburgh and Indian Botany Plants Empire and Trade

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

William Roxburgh

The Scottsh Enlightenment had a profound impact on India and historians have failed to study the impact of the intellectual movement that emerged as a consequence of the Act of Union, 1707. I have been studying a number of Scots who worked in India during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Mark Wilks, Colin Mackenzie, and am now beginning a more detailed study of William Roxburgh. My work on Col Mark Wilks has been cited in the latest English Historical Review and have worked earlier on Colin Mackenzie, the first Surveyor General of India. I now hope to write a longer work on the Scottish Nation in India and its contribution to the understanding of India, it History, Literature and the Natural World. Obviously an Intllectual History of the sort we propose sits uncomfortably with the modern notions of post colonial study which negates the very idea that the past is accessible to human knowledge and is open to truthful and rational investigation. With these words let me move on to the study of William Roxburgh.

Government House Madras, Chennai

Perhaps the most honoured botanist of his day and was second only to Sir Joseph Banks. William Roxburgh was educated at the University of Edinburgh which was the instirutional centre of the Scottish Enlightenment' Born in 1751 Roxburgh died in 1815 and came from a family that had close ties with Henry Dundas who was the Chairman of the Board of Control of the East India Company and an influential politician in Georgian England. roxburgh stdied under John Hope who initiated the young William into the world of botanical study. Botany was still in its infancy, though the Royal Gardens of Kensington and Kew had been established it was under Sir Joseph Banks that these botanical gardens became centers of an ever widening web of botanical exchange, ropagation of plants and collection of seeds for further reseach and study. Indeed the very establishment of the Botanical Garden at Kew was itself a Scottish foundation as it owed its origin to John Stuart, the Earl of Bute in the 1760s. With the intervention of hs patrons in the Company establihsment, William Roxburgh got a position as Assistant Surgeon in the Madras Headquarters of the East India Company. Arriving in Madras after rounding the Cape of Good Hope in May 1776. The job of the Assistant Surgeo seems to have been extremely light as roxburgh found the time to indulge his passion for collecting botanical specimens.

Botanical nvestigation was rather chaotic in the early eighteenth century, a situation that was destined to change due to the theoretical and empirical work of the great Swedish naturalist Charles Linnaeus. The plants were studied on the bais of their external charecteristics rather than the inherent sexual and reproductive functions which were performed in numerous ways by plants. Linneaus introduced the taxonomic method by which the charecteristic features of plants were studied according to its Taxonomic feature, generic features and thereby the species was identified. The morphology of plants and their parts were studied in a scientific manner and Herberia were manitained for ready reference.

In Madras now renamed Chennai, Roxburgh mt Dr Koenig a pupil of Dr Charles Linneaus. Koenig was associated with the Danish settlemnt of Tranquebar, a notorious slaving station on the coromandel coast run by the Dutch East India Company and of course Protestant missionaries like Ziegenbang did not find anything offensive ethically or morally in the odious trae of indegenous people as slaves. Both Roxburgh and Koenig went of Plant collection expeditions all over the Coromandel region collecting specimens. The East India Company was particularly interested i economically beneficial plants like Teak, Indigo and of course Spices. We do not know what happened to this early collection. When Koenig died he left his papes to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society. In 1781 Roxburgh was transferred to Samalkota, near the estuary of the River Godavari and the wild life reserve Forest of Coringa and it was here that a mounumental tragedy struck.

( to be continued in Part II)

From Hortus Malabaricus to Flora Indica: William Roxburgh and Botany

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Horti Malbarici

"A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible", is a well known Welsh proverb. The worlf of Plants and their place in the Natural World has seized the imagination of Poets, Philosophers and Scientists. And in the eighteenth century with the dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment, the search for botanical specimens and their exploitation for economic or medical purposes became a vital ingriedient of the global network of botanical gardens with Kew Garden at the top of the chain and spreading right round the world to places as far distant as St. Helena, Cape Town, Calcutta, Singapore and Penang. Sometimes called Company Gardens these botanical spaces collected stored and transmitted palnt specimens from across the lobe. Till tis day Kew Garden holds the world's largest seed bank and contains Plant Plasma from almost all known species. Eminent botanists like Sir Joseph Banks the Patron of the famous William Roxburgh ( 1751-1815) were associated with and worked for the Collections now located in Kew and Kensington Gardens. The exchange of seeds and botanical specimens rom the tropical world to the Americas is a story that needs to be revisited as the prticipation of "natives" in this process is largely ignored and white scientists are given almost a divine stature in existing literature.

The expnsion of the European world into parts of Asia and Africa was the first step that enabled the systematic transfer of Asian botanical knowledge acquired over centuries of reflection to networks of knowledge exchange that sprung up all along the maritime routes linking Asia to Europe. India was the first Asian Civilization ro be plundered of its traditional knowledge and once plundered rendered illlegitimate in the eyes of the newwly triumphant West. A good example is the creation and publication of the Hortus Malbaricus whose title page is illustrated.

The Dutch East India Company or the VOC was in Asia even before Queen Elizabeth I granted the Charter to Gentlemen Traders on the last day of December 1600. The VOC comanded the Cape of Good Hope and had a significant presence in Java with Batavia as the centre of an ever expanding web of exchange involving Plants, Slaves and Missionaries. The Spice Islands which produced the spices of the world which were in great demand like Nutmeg, Cinnamon,Pepper and Cloves. And to facilitate the cultivation of such spices and economically useful plants it was necessary to appropriate local knowledge and with Kochi falling into the hands of the Dutch the path was opened for systematic exploitation of indigenous knowledge. The Portuguese had already started the process in Goa but their addicion to religious propaganda and the Inquisition left them with little time to pursue more academic ends'

The Governor of the Dutch territory along the Mlabar with Cochin now Kochi as the capital was Hendrik van Rheede who conceived of the idea of assembling the entire botanical kingdom of the Western Ghats into a lage compendium which would enhance the Materia Medica available to the western world. The capture of local medicinal knowledge was vital as the soldiers from Europe were following seriously ill with tropical diseases for which the dark skinned native seemed to have the cure with herbs plant extracts and the like. Over a period of 30 yeas the Flora of the Western Ghats was collected illustrated and published in Netherlands. It may be added that Hortus Malabaricus which has been translated into English by Dr Manilal, a botanist and Historian from Kerala. The 12 volumes with rich illustrations was one of the most expensive publications of the time and only 6 complete copies of this great work are known to exist and none in India.

Th extract local knowledge and its  medical uses it was necessary to involve local bearers of knowledge: Ranga Bhatt, Vinayaka Bhatt and Appu Bhatt along with a vaidhya of the Ezhava Community Itty Achutan were the ones who collected the specimens and gave the names in malayalam language. Here again we find that the exchange of knowledge was facilitated by men who were willing to collaborate. From Malayalam the name were translated into Portuguese and then a Latin trnaslation was made. The myriad linguistic registers involved and the expense of makinf the Copper engravings of the Plants as illustrations and the publication of the huge volumes all show how valuable the local  knowledge was. If Intllectual Property is claimed over this knowlefge the entire Pharmacuetical Industry of Europe and  America will collapse.

The 12 volumes desribed in detail 742 plants and since the taxa of Charles Linneaus was still a century away, the classification was made using local principles. Unfortunately the herbarium records of this Project were lost and the plants in this splendid volume can be identified only up to the generic level. The morphology of plants was not understood when Hortus was completed. The creation of this spectacular work itself stimulated botanical collections in India and other parts of the world'

                                            (to be continued in Part II)

H C Rawlinson: The DEcipherment of the Cuneiform Script

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Every now and then the Indian newspapers carry the sensational headline stating that the Harppan Script has been deciphered. Tamil enthusiasts have even found a reference to Muruga on one of the seals and others have read the same seal as a reference to one or the other Indiac deity. When identity politics hijacks archaeology strage things happen and the net result is confusion. I am witing this Blog to high light the process of deciphermet on the basis of my study of the methods used by Col. H C Rawlinson, the soldier and epigraphist who unlocked the secrets of the ancient Babylonian script or the Cuneiform system of writing.

a Biography of Rawlinson

Empires of the Plain is an excellent biography of Col. H C Rawlinson and is based essentially on the published letters and the short biography of the Soldier penned by his brother. There is little on the actual process by which H C Rawlinson deciphered the Cuneiform Script,but it does provide adequate material to  help us understand the rigours of deciphermnt. A Script is like a cipher hence the process of reading or unlocking it is called decipherment. The basic and fundamental requirement for any decipherment is a known key that cn be used to unlock the forgotten / mysterious script or code. Joseph Champilion who deciphered the Egyptian Hyreoglypics had as his key the Rosetta Stone discovered by Napoleon's scholars on the banks of the river Nile just before the Battle of Trafalghar. It was written in Egyptian Hireogluphic, Greek and Demotic scripts. Since Greek could be read, Champollion rightly assumed that the proper names in the Greek could appear in trnasliterated form in the Egyptian script and he was able to read Ptolemey and tht started off the whole process of decipherment. Similarly, the earliest script of India is the one used by Ashoka in his Rock Inscriptions and Edicts both minor and major, In spite of the effort of some Tamil nationalists to give the credit to the ancient Tamils or Srilanks, the fact that the lipikara in some of the inscriptions sign themselves in kharoshti, a script derived from the Achemened Empire suggests otherwise. James Princep, used the Gree legends founs in the coins of the Selcucids, the successors of the Great Alexander to extrapolate Greek sound value on Brahmi characters in Kushana coins and thereby rightly read De va namo piya as a titl of Ashoka. This is the real and time tested method of decipherment. Wuthout a known key a language and its script remains eternally locked,

The Beihistun Inscription

The picture on the left is that of the most famous Inscription of the ancient world the Behistun Inscription of the Persian King Darius I (BC 522-486) writeen on the escarpent of the Zagaros Moutains in resent day Iran in three languages: old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. One of th Persian kings Cyrus is even called called annointed of God in the Hebrew Old Testament as he was reposnsible for freeing the Jewish people from captivity when he conquered Egypt. The inscription was essesntially a record of the conquests of Darius I and given te length and details given it raises the legitmate suspicion that Darius like Ashoka waded through blood to seize the throne and then claimed that Ahuramazda had blessed him and thefore his legitimacy was beyond question.

The Cuneiform was a script and not a language and was the earliest script designed to help the ancient Babylonan and Assyrian Empires keep records of their wealth and economic output. This historical conjuncture between writing and  imperial political systems suggets that Empires facilitated record keeping as an instrument of control. It derives its name from the peculiar wedge shaped characters incised on wet clay tablets with a reed flattened at one end to make it capable of inscribing wedge strokes on a clay surface. Sir Henry Austen Layard, the archaeologist who discovered Nineveh, the city of the Assyrians mentioned in the Old Testament found a veritible library of clay tablets recording the activities, politicl and military, of Nebuchednazzer and his successors. Unfortunately on 50 000 of such documents have been published and a vast majority of these clay documents are ichicago's famus Art Institute.

Given the importance of this region in the Old Testament, a number of European scholars took up the study of the ancient records of the Near Esat, Middle East or the Oreint as it was called. In the nineteenth century these palces were under the nominal authority of the Ottoman Empire whose writ was directly propotionl to the armed battalion stationed in these provinces. Persia where Rawlinson worked as Consul was nominally independent and this independence was contingennt upon playing Russia against the British Empire in India. H C Rawlinson was an Officer in the Army f the East India Company stationed in Bombay now Mumbai. Having learnt Persian well form Sir John Briggs and John Malcolmn he was sent to Baghdad as th Consul to represent British economic and military interests there.

Early during his stay, H C Rawlinson visited the Behistun Rock and wondered at the message staring down from a hieght of nearly 400 feet of smooth roch. It was obvious that Darius had taken the precaution of rendering the entire surface of the rocck and its access so smooth that it was impossible for anyone to climb to take a close look. This raises anothe question regarding literary practices in early empires, including the Brahmi Inscriptions of Ashoka. Who could read these Inscriptions and what purose did they serve if they were inscribed so high that they are just barely visible.

COL H C RAWLINSON

In his two important records presented to the Royal Society of London and in his Cuneiform Inscriptions of Old Persia Col Rawlinson has outlined his journey to the decipherment. In the nineteenth century there was almost an unseemly competition among the various "civilized nations" of the world to be the first to unlock the ancient script. Quite early M Burnouf, a Frenchman had published the Inscription of Hamadan. This too was a trilingual record and  was inscribed during the reign of the son of Darius Xerxes and was an enumeration of royal titles. Bournuf also visited the site of Persepollis the capital city which was burnt and destroyed by Alexander as act of innane vandalism. Saint Mrtin another Frenchman and a close understudy and student of Joseph Champollion also started working on the Cuneiform Inscriptions around the same time as H C Rawlinson. In his letters we see a trace of desparation. Rawlinson wanted to be the first to accomplish the great feat.

To to end then, H C Rawlinson did what even we living in the twenty first century would hesitate to do. He had himself suspended by ropes on to the surface of the rock so that he could trce out the chaacters that ran like serried columns all along the face of the rock. Working thus, one small miss step would have resulted  death, Rawlinson trace out/copied the entire record. Now he had the material at hand to decipher the script.

Once again the key was found in the work of an earlier scholar, a Frenchman who lived in Pondicherry for seveal years, Anquetil du Perron who was one of the earliest scholars of the Zens Avesta and Old Sanskrit. Using insight from Du Perron, Rawlinson was able to make out the names of the early kings from the Avestan and trnasposed the to old Cuneiform. The book that he published on the Behistun Inscription provides all the technical details.

H C Rawlinson died on arch 5, 1895.

An Indian Doctor in Imperial Service: Dr Kaiwar Raghvendra Rao and Indian Agency in Times of Crisis III

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

1918-19 were bad years for most of the Globe. The War in Europe that stretched from 1914 to 1918 saw slaughter on an industrial scale. The battlefiels of Verdun, Somme, Flanders are seared into the collective memory of Europeans and India too was not unaffected as soldiers from India participated in the war and nealry a million lives were lost. It is sad that the commonwealth War Memorial Commission does not regard Indian war graves worth of memoralizing. 1918 saw the gradual return of peace and with it came the deadly Pandemic, known as the Spanish Influenza.

Pandemics have been part of history and the historical record is rich in detail about the impact they have had. The Black Death or the bubonic Plague that raced through Europe in the Fourteenth Century taking nearly a quarter of its population has left iys macabre signature in the child's nursery rhyme: Ringa Ringa Roses, Pocket Full of Poises, Hush Busha WE ALL FALL DOWN. The rash on the skin and the fatal bout of sneeze are sharply brought out. 1918-19 saw the spread of the Influenza Epidemic in India and one of the worst affected places was Madras. The year was also ne that was amrked by large scale social and political disturbances as grain price sharply incresed and surpus grain was shipped off to Europe to feed the every hungry Arimes of the Imperial Powers. It is against this background that we have to evaluate the work of Dr Kaiwar Raghavendra Rao who as the Halth Officer of the Madras Corporation had to oversee the Influenza Campaign as well.

Lady Willingdon, the wife of the Governor of Madras Presidency took keen interest in the affairs of the Corporation and we find Dr Raghavendra Rao thanking her for her assistance to the cause of Public Health. One initiative of the Lady that needs to be highlighted is her interventions in matters relating to Maternal and Child health. Lady Willington took personal interest in the Lying=in Hospitals which was the then contemporary usage for Maternity Hospitals. And at this point a remarkable woman enters the picture: Dr L N Virasinghe-Chinappa, a colleague of Dr Rao who is made the Superindendent of the Maternity Hospitals in Madras now Chennai. Unfortunately, in some of the earlier volumes of the Reports her name is inexplicably given as L Vira Singh. But in 1919 her signature appears alongside that of Dr Raghavendra Rao.

The stress of the Epidemic and the need for a qell equipped diagnostic lab neccisitated the construction of a Laboratory complete with the Clayton's Apparatus which was used apparently for nebulizing sera. Dr Raghvendra Rao writes that 1919 began with " omnious possibilities of sickness and death".By the end of December 1918 itself Plague had started claiming lives in Triplicane and Cholera had spread to the northern part of the city. The disease was notified as an epidemic in January 1919 and it subsided only to be replaced by the Influenza Pandemic by March 1919. The frightful pace at which the Influenza spread, resulted in the formation of a Committee with Dr Lt Col C Donovon IMS as the Chairman and Dr Raghvendra Rao, then Health Officer as the Convener.

The Committee met on the 21st of July 1919 and recommended a series of Public Health Measure to te Government of the Prsidency:

1) Temporary Structures be set up as isolation units Quarintine those affected by the Influenza
2) Requst people to go to the Influenza Homes so that the spread of the disease could be curtailed
3) Requisitioned drugs

For meeting the expenses the Corporation of Madras sanctioned a sum of Rs. 15,000. Public awareness was sought to be increased by printing Influenza Posters both in English and vernacular lnguages which adviced those suffering from the defined symptoms to report to the nearest Infuenza Homes. In just 10 days after the Meeting, the Government notofied Influenza as a "dangerous disease" under the Madras Municipal Act and a GO # 1208 dated 13 August 1919 was passed. Roypuram was chosen as the quarintine zone and we know that it was kept at full capacity as the emigrants bound to South Africa were kept here. Dr Rao took on the challenge of vaccination and spent his energy ensuring that children below the age of 1 year were vaccinated for small pox. Thus, he reduced the morbidity of the disease in Madras which had acquired a dubious fame as the centre of the diseas.

Given the fact that Madras Presidency was the most seriously affected by the Influeza Epidemic second only to Bombay, the eager exwertions of Dr Raghavendra Rao contributed in no small measure in reducing the human toll'

I thank Mrs Sudha Vyas for giving me a photograph f Dr Kaiwar Raghavendra Rao.

An Indian Doctor in Imperial Service: Dr Kaiwar Raghavendra Rao and Indian Agency in times of Crisis

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Part II

Dr K Raghavendra Rao BA, Mb&CM, DPH
(Cantab)

In Part I we traced the intellectual and historical context in which the career of Dr Kaiwar Raghavendra Rao is best studied. He was amongst the earliest Indians to qualify himself as a Doctor and devoted his entire life to public service in that he chose to work within the limits of governmental institutions eschewing the more lcrative pastures of private pratice. He lived through hard but interesting times and at the high noon of Empire carved out a niche for himself in the public realm. The fact that Lord Curzon was the Viceroy of India may have contributed to the steady but relentless entry of Indians into the portals of the Indian public service. Beginning his life as a Malaria Officer, Dr Raghavendra Rao steadily rose in prominence, becoming the Health Officer of the Madras Corporation under Chartes Molony in 1915 and retired as the first Director of Public Health in 1940. Dr Kaiwar Raghavendra Rao medical exertions intersected two very grave challenges: first, the Malaria with its seasonal recrudesence and secondly, the 1918-19 Influenza Pndemic which claimed at least 12 million lives in India and upward of 50 million lives world wide. Today as we live through another Pandemic, the Chinese virus or the COVID 19 virus, we can reflect on the past and learn the impact the Pandemic had on India in the year following the end of World War I.

The English Administration had always identified Malaria as the great disease of India, a killer that struck with alarming regularity contributing to the very high mortality rates both among Indians and the European population. One immediate consequence of the feared morbidity of the disease can be seen in urban town planning: the European part of the cities and towns were sequestered from the main City. Paradoxically, the very measures taken by the British to make Empire pay for itself were  responsible for spreading the dreaded disease, The expansion of irrigation and canal building activites meant that large pools of stagnant water were available for the vector to breed. In 1897 the Venice Conference on Helath and Sanitation threatened embargo (in today's less politile language we would say Sanctions)  on Indian goods if Hygenine and Sanitation were not significantly improved. This measure ould have certainly hurt British interests as it would have curtailed the export of manufactured products from Britain. Immediate action was needed and we find Ronald Ross discovering the Anopholene vector as the cause for the spread of Malaria winning him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1900.

Dr Kaiwar Ragavendra Rao was appointed as the first Malaria Officer of the Coroporation and later became its Health Officer. As the Malaria Officer we find Dr Rao presenting extremely lucid and detailed Reports on the anti Malaria work undertaken by him. From 1914 when Retrenchment had reduced his staff to the barest minimum we find his identifying the breeding brund of malaria infested vectors by catching mosqutoes and identifying them, He identified a number of areas of Madras now Chennai as disease ridden: Washermanpet, Puruswakkam, Triplicane, Buckingham Canal, Saidapet and Egmore. The preence of stagnant water provided ample scope for the larvae to breed and so in consultation with the Authorities Dr Rao enthusiastically introduced a number of measure, In large ponds he introduced Ducks and as he ruefully notes in his Report the experiment with American ducks turned out to be a failure while the native breed was more effective. And he used to power entrusted  to him by the Corporation to have particular ponds or well filled. In Edward Elliot;s Roar and Mobrray's Road were large ponds which were filled at the expense of the owners. Introduction of fish was another measure. I puddles left behind by the monsoon rains he "petrolized" meaning thereby disinfected the puddles using a mixture of crude petroleum and other chemicals. Un doubtedly Dr Kaiwar Raghavendra Rao was a successful and diligent Malaria Officer and his hard work was rewarded whn he was made Health Officer of the Corporation of Madras and when the Influeza Pandemic struck Madras in 1918-19 we see him hard at work in his Ripon Building Office as the Health Officer.

The portofolio of the Health Officer combined Anti Malarial tasks as well as adminstering and overseeing a number of public dispensaries located all over Chennai. Dr Raghavendra Rao points out in his Reports quite frequently that there is season vriation in mortality rates and levles throughout the year. He now has to deal with Cholera and Malaria and they struck at different times and the demographics of the disease were different. The construction of the Madras harbour was a factor that caused considerable damage to the environment and the coast stretching from the Harbour to Ennore was chock a block with health hazzards, Cholera being the most deadly. He now began advocating Housing --well ventilated-- housing as the answer to some of the health issues faced by Madras. Tuberculosis was a a major factor leading to essentially a lowering of the average or mean mortality of the male to a mere 20 years. A significant drop in mortality level. As Health Officer we find him putting the weight of his experience and office behind the Madras Tramway Corporation as he felt that decongestion of morbid areas like Georgetown, Puruswakkam and Triplicane will lead ti improvement in health.

1918 marked the end of World War I. But even before the war ended a strange new disease had entered Madras. Like the present Pandemc caused by the Chinese Virus or COVID 19, the Influenza Epidemic was also cause by a "corona" virus as has been esablished a century later through tests carried out on the tissue samples preserved from that era. Dr Rao is not just a medical professional. He is a statistician as well. He gives detailed breakdown of the age and gender of the victims of the disease and suggests that Quarintie measures be taken to contain the disease. I am not sure from the records available to me if he used the Indian Infectious and Epidemic Disease Act of 1897 but he did recomend strict quaritine as a measure to contai the spread of the disease. Throughout 1919 the toll taken by the Influennza Pandemic was relentless and by 1920 disappeared.

After his success with the Influenza Epidemic, Dr Kaiwar Raghavendra Rao was sent to Cambrigde for the course on Public Health. He seems to have spent at least 18 months in England, and I am unable to determine the exact duration or dtes of his stay there. On his return he was made the Director of Public Health,and occupied the position until he retired.