Peter Brown's Journey of the Mind: Autobiography and Historiography. conjoined twins

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

Peter Brown

  Peter Brown the well known and     celebrated Historian has just published   his autobiography, Journeys of the   Mind, in which he traces his     intellectual development from an   undergraduate student in Oxford to his   present status as the preeminent historian of Late Antiquity. He arranges his life, as does his alter ego, Edward Gibbon, as though there is a pattern and inevitability to his life and career. His choice of "special subjects" his acquisition of reading ability in foreign languages, the fortuitous presence of teachers and a father who supported all his decisions, morally and financially conspired to charm him along the yellow brick road to academic eminence. 

Cover Journeys

 Born in 1935 to an Irish Protestant family,   Brown never tires of drawing attention to the   discrimination he faced at the hands of the   English. He belonged to a family that   prospered in the colonies as an engineer in   the Sudan Railway. Brown lived his early   years in the Empire and in  his youth saw   the   Empire fade into History. The famines   faced by the Irish epitomised the callousness   of the the English regime and Sir Charles   Trevelyan (1807-1888) presided over the   death of nearly a million people, as the Famine  Relief Authority of Ireland. The collapse of the idea of progress in the historical profession meant the Historians were open to other ideas and in the case of Brown a brave new world of "social science" was opened up as he explored the Roman past with insight from Evan-Pritchard, Mary Douglas, and a French anthropologist whose insight helped Brown as he struggled with the controversies of the Donatist Church in North Africa'

Peter Brown devoted his professional life to the cusp between the end of the Roman Empire and the advent of Islam and its triumph in the Middle East and Africa. And in this he was following the footsteps of Edward Gibbon, who wrote two hundred years earlier on the same theme. Rather than see the Late Empire as an age of decline and decadence, Brown views the period as one of change and transformation characterized by new social classes and new sources of wealth. The newer social classes found Christianity attractive and flocked to the new religion. He does not really address the question of the Great Persecution and the relentless thirst for martyrdom displayed by the early Christians. The Eastern Churches were flourishing until the rise of Islam put an end to the Donatist, Nestorian and Chaldean churches in Syria, Mesopotamia and Egypt. 

The questions raised by Brown are important and there is need to reflect on the stupendous success of the Easter Churches in keeping Christianity alive in the Middle East. Islam did not arise in a vacant desolate land land of jaliliya, as early Moslem historians like to portray the pre Islamic past. His work is of interest to scholars working in the history of the Near East, Mediterranean region and  the Balkans. The intellectual influences on Brown are many but two Historians are important in shaping his understanding of the past: Mikhail Rostovtzeff (1870-1952) and Arnaldo Momigliano, his long suffering doctoral guide. Brown spent his time writing his famous biography of Augustine of Hippo that he did not complete his dissertation. It was a different world then. A successful academic life could still be launched without the doctorate. The only other case I remember is Eugen Weber, the great historian of the Third Republic. 

At some point Peter Brown decided to move to USA where he felt he had better prospects. 

Peter Brown is a prolific writer and his output is impressive and so too is his command over languages: Latin, Greek, German, Hebrew, French and a few more, However, his use of functionalist models fir explaining important social changes in the Roman Empire lead me to wonder if historical change is being misinterpreted as functionalism invariably see static social behaviour. Therefore the appearance of the holy man, a sure sign of social change is interpreted from the standpoint of functionalism, which imposes a rationality to what is in reality a sign or symptom of change in society.

I enjoyed this book and having heard AJP Taylor's autobiography and also E J Hobsbawm's Interesting Times, the Journeys of the Mind is an solid addition to the growing number of autobiographies penned by Historians.

Madras in an Eighteenth Century Poem: Temples, Patrons and Urban landscape as seen in Sarva-deva-vilasa

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

Several decades back Dr V Raghavan published the Sarva-deva-Vilasa in the Adyar Library Series. This Champu, written in both prose and poetry, does not rank high for its literary merits as it is replete with violations of the rule of Sandhi, intersperses Sanskrit with Tamil and Telugu colloquialisms, and there are grammatical bloopers as well. However, it provides us a glimpse of the City of Madras as it fell under the growing influence of the s'veta mukha palita, the white faced as this poem rather inelegantly calls the English. 

The author is as yet unknown but the two protagonists are referred to as Vivekin and Ativivekin, intelligent and more intelligent, respectively. Both are in search of new patrons for their craft, the kathakalakshepa, religious and ethical discourse. And as astute observers of the social and economic changes in the City, they latch on to three or four men, all of whom were connected in some form or other with the East India Company and its trading activities. Some of the men appear in Historical Records put together by Love and so we can date the poem circa late 18th century as the Mayor's Court was established in 1753 and one of the personages mentioned was a Kanakkappa,  the dubash ( Interpreter) to the Court. Kalingaraya, Srirangaraya, and Vedachala were the prime patrons and the poems revolves around them and the social network in which they lives circled. These three men belonged to the socially dominant community that arose to prominence in the late Vijayanagara period: the Tondaimandala Vellalas. 

The poem provides a list of temples in and around the city of Madras,and even Ramalinga Swamiar, called it, "dharma migu Cennai". Vaisnava and Saiva temples received patronage from these upcoming magnates who sought opportunities for social and economic advancement by collaborating with the East India Company and its traders. Textile trade, pearl and diamond trade, beetle leaf monopoly, money lending were all part of the portfolio of interests that this new group commanded in Madras, Pulicat, Pondicherry and Nagapattinam. As agents controlling the textile trade at both the production and distribution points, these men became immensely wealthy and replaced the kings and chieftains who had patronised literature and art earlier. In fact all three patrons mentioned in the poem were dharmakarttas, temple controllers    

Perumal Temple Tirunirmalai

The temple at Tirunirmalai is a divyadesam and the poem describes the palace as Toyadri thereby indicating its high status among Vaishnava holy places .Our poets visited this temple along with Vedachala and in the evening there was organized a sadas in which

  music and dance were exhibited. The poets were gratified to receive gifts from their patron.

 The Krishna Temple in Coral Merchants Street was an important place of worship in the 18th century.  Along with the Chenna Keshava Perumal Temple, this temple too was built towards the middle of the 18th century, after the "native" population had been evicted from the Fort. 

Agastesvara Temple

Nungambakkam, looked far different in the 18th century than now.  The Long Tank which stretched from Mylapore to Tennampet and spread into Nungambakkam, gave the names by which these parts are known today: Spur Tank Road.  The Agastyeesvara Temple was an important shrine and our poets visited it and they refer to the Big Lake along side this temple. The Long Tank was drained in the last quarter of the 19th century and the vestiges of the Long Tank disappeared when Karunanidhi decided to build the Valluvar Kottam.

Vasavi Kanyaka Perumal Temple 
Kotwal Chavadi Black Town

The Vasavi Kanyaka Temple was one of the most important  shrines associated with the Beri Chetti Community of South India. A detailed description of this temple is given in the poem and before Kotwal Chavadi yeilded its importance to Koyembedu, this was a thriving commercial centre.  In all the sites visited, the poets participated in the religious festivities which often culminated in all night Katha Kalekshepa 

The Sarva deva Vilasa offers us a unique glimpse into the social and cultural life of the indigenous population in the cusp of colonial rule. There are references to the influence of Military Band music on Carnatic Music, the early use of violin, a western instrument, in the emerging repertoire of Classical compositions, and we find adequate enough information about the landmarks of Old Madras.