Truths. Prodosh Aich

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СКАЧАТЬ fixed in his will in favour of his only son, Michael Angelo Taylor, that a part of his huge fortune was to be spent to set up a foundation “for the teaching and improving those European languages … essential to Diplomatic and commercial pursuits” at Oxford. “After various legal complications and the death of Sir Robert's son, Michael Angelo, in 1834, the University inherited the sum of £65,000.” After many controversies “the Taylorian statute finally passed on 4 March 1847” for teaching European languages and started with French and German. Even the newly constructed building of the foundation differs distinctly from that of Oxford University.

      It is known that Oxford University added the Boden Chair for Sanskrit to Greek and Latin in 1832. We are however unable to comprehend how a Taylorian Professor for Modern Languages, in the University of Oxford or just at Oxford, should be qualified to write a scholarly book on “A HISTORY OF ANCIENT SANSKRIT LITERATURE, SO FAR AS IT ILLUSTRATES THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE BRAHMINS.” Was it not a subject for the holder of the Boden Chair for Sanskrit? We have taken this issue as a marker.

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      We also take note of several different status-descriptions in this remarkable list as well: Max Müller, M.A. is “Correspondent” Member, “Foreign” Member, “Honorary” Member, “Corresponding” Member and “Member” of an “Institute”, of an “Academy” in “Societies” in different Countries. What do these different types of membership indicate? It is even more puzzling when we look into the types and details of institutions mentioned. Because we stumbled, we wanted to get more details about these institutions. Here are the results:

      Ø Correspondent de l'Institut lmpérial de France. This Institute is in France happened to be not royal, not national, but it is imperial. Imperial has something to do with empire and empire has something to do with a geographically extensive group of lands and peoples, is something like making a conquest, an occupation, isn’t it? When was the institution founded, by whom, for what purpose? For how long did it exist? Did it really exist? We have reasons to maintain our scepticism as we don’t find answers to our questions.

      Ø Foreign Member of the Royal Bavarian Academy. We assumed Max Müller is a German name. And Royal Bavarian Academy must have been a German institution. Our assumptions are correct. Why then “foreign member”? While trying to collect a little more information on this institution we stumbled again. “Royal Bavarian Academy” of what? Elector of Bavaria Max III Joseph founded in 1769 the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. Then a school of Arts for drawing and graphic in 1770. King of Bavaria Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria elevated this school to an Academy of Fine Arts in 1808 which was also called the "Royal Academy of Fine Arts" and never Royal Bavarian Academy. We wonder about this type of slip in the inner title-page of a scholarly book.

      Ø Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Literature. It must had been: The Royal Society of Literature in Britain, founded in 1820 by King George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent"

      Ø Corresponding Member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. To be accurate Max Müller’s “Asiatic Society” could at best be the “Asiatick Society of Bengal”, founded in 1784 in Calcutta by Sir William Jones. He is considered to be a scholarly demigod. A detailed hi(story) will follow after a while in a separate chapter. At present this much: The “Asiatick Society of Bengal” was the first factory for forging history and for brainwashing. And Sir William Jones was a high-graded swindler.

      Ø American Oriental Society was founded in 1842. This so-called oldest US learned society claimed to deal with basic research in languages and literatures of Asia. It also claimed to deal with subjects like philology, literary criticism, textual criticism, palaeography, epigraphy, linguistics, biography, archaeology, and the history of the intellectual and imaginative aspects of Oriental civilizations, especially of philosophy, religion, folklore and art. Is there any area of so-called Humanities left? Quite naturally all European waves, also the orient enthusiasms, reached the European “colonisers” in “America” too. But learned societies for basic research as well? Who were the “scholars”?

      Ø Asiatic Society of Paris. If one puts Asiatic Society of Paris in the search machines of the web, one gets something else. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Asiatic Society of Japan - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopaedia, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and so on. If one goes deep, one finds in the “Bibliot. Nat. France cat.” a Société Asiatique, founded in1822.

      Ø Oriental Society of Germany. In the search machines of the web there is no reference to a society called Oriental Society of Germany. The nearest approach would be: The Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (DOG), which is an “Eingetragener Verein” - a registered voluntary association -, based at Berlin in Germany. The DOG was officially founded in January 1898 to foster public interest in oriental antiquities. Then there was The Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG), a scholarly organization dedicated to studies on Asia and on a broader Orient. The DMG was established on 2 October 1845 in Leipzig by leading Oriental scholars from Germany, as well as members of other “Oriental Societies” such as the Asiatick Societies in Paris, London and Kolkata.

      We do not know whether others also stumbled so often while studying the inner title-page of this book as we did and/or how they reacted if they did actually stumble. Nothing is handed down on this issue. We are surprised. We have become apprehensive by this simple check-up, which leads us to ask questions like: Are these simple inaccuracies? Don’t they show too many facets to be accounted for as just careless inaccuracies? We remain apprehensive. That is why we raise other questions like: Could there be a system behind these inaccuracies? Who is this Max Müller, M.A.? What is known about his life, work and career? What did he do? How did he earn his living? Which institutions recruited him? We have taken note of all these dissonances arisen in our mind about the author Max Müller, M.A.

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      It has not escaped our attention that there are no references to the sources in the entire text we have cited in the beginning of this chapter. Before we get into the issue of sources, we would like to turn back our attention to the quoted text in the beginning and start reading it more carefully. As mentioned, we are simple-minded persons. We are slow in grasping because we read every sentence and try to comprehend the whole meaning. This is the way how we read. We apologise in advance if our mode of reading should irritate. But we are as we are.

      “No one who is at all acquainted(Max Müller obviously claims to be well “acquainted”) with the position which India occupies in the history of the world (Max Müller claims to be a “global” historian), would expect to find many synchronisms (! ?) between the history of the Brahmins (We shall have to verify his claim to know all about the Brahmins correlating the claims to his biography.) and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India (Had there been ‘nations’ prior to Buddhism?). Although the Brahmins of India belong to the same family, the Aryan or Indo-European family (How has it been established that there was “the Aryan or Indo-European family”, when, by whom and how?), which civilised the whole of Europe, the two great branches of that primitive race were kept asunder for centuries after their first separation (“first separation”? Does Max Müller subtly intend to make us believe that there are Aryans and Aryans who are in fact Indo-Europeans? And that these “two branches of this primitive race” separated at some “pre-historic” period? That one of the branches civilised the whole of Europe? That СКАЧАТЬ