TWO UNMET VEDIC FRIENDS

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TWO UNMET VEDIC FRIENDS

By Brigadier Chitranjan Sawant, VSM

The Vedas were the common bond of friendship between the two. Both

contributed to the 19th century Indian Renaissance by opening doors

of Vedic studies to commoners. The non-priestly classes carried the

word of god to all and sundry beyond the hallowed precinct of

pathshalas. The Ved was the new household word.

 

Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the friend-philosopher and guide of both

the urban and rural folks in India and the German-Aryan Friedrich Max

Muller, who brought the Rig Veda from cloistered closets to libraries

and studies of English speaking intellentisia were both

contemporaries. Swami Dayanand Saraswati was born in 1824 at Tankara

in Gujarat in a Brahmin family. F. Max Muller was born in 1823 at

Dessau in Germany in a scholar's house. The former revolted against

his father's orthodoxy, renounced the world in his youth voluntarily

and pursued the Vedic studies the hard way till he was 39. He took to

teaching the Vedas to those who cared to learn.

 

He was drawn to the masses. The latter lost his father at the age of

four, lived in penury but went to college in Leipzig, fought duels

but earned a Ph.D at 20. The Vedic Sanskrit was his first love. In

pursuit of Vedic knowledge Max Muller traveled to Berlin, Paris and

London before finally settling down at Oxford.

 

Swami Dayanand Saraswati and Friedrich. Max Muller never met each

other face to face. And yet they were friends. Their mission was a

common one: make man a good human being. ``back to the Vedas,'' was

the clarion call given by Swami Dayanand Saraswati. Max Muller

regarded Vedanta as ``acme of human thought. Of his 77 years of life

Max Muller had devoted almost a quarter of a century to the editing

and publication of the Rig veda. Swami Dayanand Saraswati devoted

almost all his 59 years in this world to the study, interpretation

and writing of a commentary on the Vedas. Both were devoted souls.

 

Swami Dayanand Saraswati devoted his entire time and energy to

upliftment of the downtrodden, both the dalits and the women. He was

both a religious reformer and a social reformer. The impact of his

reforms was felt far and wide, even beyond boundaries of India. But

the Rishi-Sanyasi never left the shores of his motherland. He

encouraged his followers of the Arya Samaj to travel far and wide to

achieve the aim, of universal brotherhood as enunciated by the Vedas.

His disciple Shyamji Krishna Verma – a revolutionary and a freedom

fighter – propagated the Vedic philosophy of life all over Europe in

the late 19th century. Max Muller heard of and read about Swami

Dayanand Saraswati just about that time. In his book, ``my Indian

friends,'' Max Muller devoted an entire chapter to the Swami. Max

Muller had not met most of his Indian friends but only heard of them.

In some cases like that of Swami Dayanand Saraswati ,Ved was the

common factor of friendship. In other cases it was Christianity which

drew Max Muller to his Indian friends. Many a time Max Muller saw

himself as an evangelist and a crusader charged with the mission with

converting Indians to Christianity lock, stock and barrel.

 

In his boyhood days Max Muller's imagination was fired by a picture

portraying the Ganges lapping Varanasi ghats. He longed to see the

real scene himself. How sad, his wish was never fulfilled. In his

younger fays he had no money to defray travel expenses and when he

became a man of means, he was too old to travel to India around the

Cape of Good Hope as the Suez Canal had not been dug then. Max Muller

started learning language in his early student days. He was thrilled

that his compatriots and classmates knew nothing about the alphabets

of the language he was mastering obviously it is a fallacy to think

that Germans are past masters of Vedas and Sanskrit. Swami Dayanand

Saraswati has written in his treatise ``Satyarth Prakash,'' that a

German principal who was in correspondence with him found it

difficult to get the Sanskrit letters translated into German

language. No wonder Max Muller had to move to Berlin, Paris and

London looking for original Sanskrit texts and teachers before

finally settling down in the oxford university where he realized his

dream.

 

Notwithstanding major differences of opinion in the interpretation of

Vedic mantras (Ved Bhashya) between the two Vedic scholars, Swami

Dayanand Saraswati held F. Max Muller in high esteem. The India

ascetic gave the German Indologist an honorific name in Sanskrit,

``Moksha Mooler.'' One may recall that the ultimate goal of a soul as

per the Vedic philosophy of life is `Moksha.' `Moksha' means freedom

from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth and the soul lives in that

blessed state of pristine joy. The Moksha of a soul depends on the

quality of karma, that is action or inaction in the worldly life. One

wonders whether Max Muller really realized the importance of his

Sanskrit name given by Swami Dayanand Saraswati. As per historical

evidence available in India, the two Vedic giants were never in

correspondence. Even ``My Indian Friends'' by Max Muller gives no

indication to the exchange of letters, if any, between the two

scholars.

 

The long distance friendship cultivated in absentia did not deter

Swami Dayanand Saraswati from pointing out major mistakes (minor ones

could be overlooked) in Max Muller edited six volumes of the Rig

Veda, both text and commentary. Understandably Max Muller relied on

the Vedic commentary of Sayancharya on grounds of availability. When

he, however, ventured on his own, he went wrong. In a major work,

``Rigvedadi Bhashya Bhumika,'' (chapter 8) Swami Dayanand Saraswati

writes in Hindi which is translated as under:-`'

 

``…the eminent scholar Moksha Muller and others(Europeans) have not

interpreted mantras correctly…In this context Dr Moksha Muller saheb

has written in his Sanskrit Sahitya that Aryans realized the

existence of GOD much later and that there is no proof that the Vedas

are very ancient…That the mantra was evolved 200 years after the

Chhand part…But the interpretation of Dr Moksha Muller Saheb is not

correct…``Chhand,'' ``Mantra,'' and ``Nigam,'' - these are three

names of Vedas only. Those who differentiate among them are not

trustworthy.''

 

It is worth noting that even while criticizing erroneous

interpretation of the Vedas by Max Muller, Swami Dayanand Saraswati

was correct in etiquettes, courteous and generous. The address was

polite, viz. Dr Moksha Muller sahib.'' During a seminar on Max

Muller, a German scholar was quizzed on the ``how and why,''of the

eminent German Indologist of the 19th century wishing to baptize all

Indians. Was it an antidote to Swami Dayanand Saraswati's Arya Samaj

which was committed to converting one and all to the Vedic Dharma.

The 21st century German scholar laid the blame at the door of those

Indians who came in direct contact with Max Muller in France and

England. They, being the Brahma Samajists, had leanings towards

Christianity and led Max Muller up the garden path. The Evangelist in

Max Muller had the better of the Vedic interpreter and the Indologist

par excellence.

 

Two eminent Arya Samajists admired the extra-ordinary writings and

speeches of Max Muller eulogizing the Vedic religion, culture and

above all the ``Truthful character of the Hindus.'' Swami Dayanand

Saraswati's hear must have been gladdened by F. Max Muller's seven

lectures delivered in 1882 at the Cambridge University for the

candidates of the elite Indian Civil Service. In 1883, before Swami

Dayanand Saraswati's demise, the seven lectures were published by

Longman in a book form titled ``INDIA: What can it teach us?'' The

book was a great morale booster for the Indians and obviously a set

back for racist-imperialists. Swami Vivekanand, after meeting F. Max

Muller in Oxford was appreciative of the German scholar's

unadulterated love for India and said:``…And what love he bears

towards India. I wish I had hundredth part of that love for my own

motherland.''

 

Swami Dayanand Saraswati and F. Max Muller shared one more love,

shared one more passion, name SANSKRIT. Both were great scholars of

Sanskrit and also protagonist par excellence. Both encouraged the

youth to learn Sanskrit in different parts of the world. In the first

flush of his Vedic preachings the great Arya Sanyasi himself founded

Sanskrit pathshalas and exhorted people to donate generously for

their upkeep. On his part, Max Muller advised the young Englishmen

who were ICS candidates to learn Sanskrit, to delve deep into the

rich oriental heritage. The German Indologiast admired: ``the antique

state of preservation in which that Aryan language has been handed

down to us.'' Exhorting the British administrators not to lose sight

to ``our nearest intellectual relatives,'' that is Aryas of India,

Max Muller recalled their contribution to developing the man's mind,

thus:``…the Aryas of India, the framers of the most wonderful

language, the Sanskrit, the fellow workers in the construction of our

fundamental concepts, the fathers of the most natural of natural

religions, the makers of the most transparent of mythologies, the

inventors of the most subtle philosophy and the givers of the most

elaborate laws.''