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.