Regional voices in the LSI: Maithili
Some regional activists clearly saw Grierson as their advocate or sought to enlist him for their cause. The Maithili Sahitya Parishad, established in 1931 at Lahariaserai, was a turning point in the history of modern Maithili literature.4 Its founder and general secretary, Shri Bhola Lal Das, contacted Grierson, referring to his ‘immortal works’ of the LSI and his texts on Maithili, which included ‘Maithila folk-lore’ (Indian Antiquary, 1881), An Introduction to the Maithilí Language of North Bihár (1881–1882), Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihárí Language (1883–1887), ‘Vidyapati and his contemporaries’ (Indian Antiquary, 1885), and later The Test of Man (1935). Das wanted to secure the future growth of Maithili by getting it recognised as a subject of study at Patna University.5 He also wanted to supply Maithili textbooks to Calcutta and Benares universities where it had been recognised as a subject.6 The case the Parishad put to Patna University for Maithili uses statistics on the number of speakers, adding Magahi speakers and Maithili brahmins in Benares, Aligarh and elsewhere to the number of Maithili speakers. The memorial appends a presidential address by Dr. Umesh Mishra, himself a prominent scholar and advocate of Maithili,7 to the Parishad, arguing that Maithili’s historical inception predated that of Western Hindi and Khari Boli. Interestingly, the Parishad was aware that its push for the recognition of Maithili as a separate language might encourage other language movements in the region. It sought to forestall this by asserting there is ‘no point in recognizing Magahi separately’ as it does not have a literature that marks it off as an independent linguistic entity from Maithili while Sadari has no literature ‘worth its name’. In asserting its claims and pre-empting any claims by Sadari speakers, the Parishad cites from volume 5, part 2 of the LSI to counter potential claims that Sadari is a distinct dialect.8 Bhojpuri is more influenced by Hindi and its speakers have not shown ‘that consciousness of their mother tongue which the Maithils have been showing for Maithili’. At the same time, the memorial is careful not to alienate the speakers of these other dialects, by stressing it has no ‘grudge’ against them.9
The memorial to the university therefore uses the style of argumentation made de rigueur by the British colonial framework for the recognition of cultural, religious and linguistic identities: weight of numbers, historical precedence and importance, and a canon of literary texts. The latter served as an index of the historical evolution of the language and boosted its credentials as a distinctive culture in contrast to adjoining dialects which had no such canon.10 For Maithili activists, the ICS examinations were an equally important site for its recognition. In 1920 at a meeting in the Civil Service Commission office S.K. Chatterji argued Maithili should be added to the list of languages examined in the ICS examinations. One reason he gave for this was its recognition as an MA subject at Calcutta University.11 The institutionalisation of Maithili, then, involved interlocking processes across a range of sites, from universities to the Civil Service. What was at stake was the codification of Maithili through the different protocols operating on these sites in terms of pedagogy, training and the examination curriculum. Grierson also put forward the claims of Maithili in educational contexts. When asked for his views by the director of public instruction on Edwin Greaves and Pandit Shyam Behari’s Hindi Reader for Class VII, he criticised it for marginalising Mithila and ignoring its distinctiveness.12 Advocates for Maithili were to raise similar objections in analogous contexts later. For example, in 1943 Amarantha Jha, who also corresponded with Grierson about Maithili, criticised the fact that Maithili books were being published by the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. In the late 1940s Dr. Umesh Mishra refused to contribute to a three-volume history of Hindi literature proposed by the Council of Hindi at Allahabad University because it subsumed Maithili under Hindi.13
However, Maithili activists did not just objectify Maithili, they also tried to personalise it in their interactions with Grierson. They attempted to create a biography of Maithili, partly by intertwining it with Grierson’s own personal trajectory. Das asked Grierson for a list of his works on Maithili and his biographical details and in response Grierson’s autobiographical narrative focused on his interest in Maithili.14 Another correspondent contacted Grierson about a biography he was writing of Grierson, outlining his contributions to the ‘cause’ of Maithili.15 Thus, one strand of Grierson’s intellectual biography became retrospectively linked with Maithili as a ‘cause’. Maithili was not just an object to be studied, it was also evoked as part of the life stories of multiple actors including Grierson’s own life story. Paul Brass has noted that differences between groups can acquire subjective and symbolic significance, and thereby become the basis for political demands.16 In the correspondence of Maithili advocates with Grierson, we can see fitful attempts to articulate just such a subjective regional consciousness in which Maithili is intertwined with the life stories of multiple actors and there is an attempt to align these life stories, including that of Grierson, with the life story of Maithili itself.
In addition, in Grierson’s correspondence on Maithili, networks of exchange are woven around Maithili as an emerging entity. One pandit sent his novel in Maithili, Rāmesvar, possibly the first in that language, to Grierson as the ‘patron’ of Maithili. Grierson reciprocated with his own work on Maithili.17 Other pandits sent Grierson their work on Maithili,18 while Grierson sent copies of his own work to pandits who had helped him in his studies of Maithili, some of whom offered to translate him into Indian languages.19 Grierson also corresponded with the Maharajah of Darbhanga, who was seen by leaders of the Maithili movement as a living embodiment of the region’s independent history and culture. Grierson refers to the recent revival of Maithili literature under the ‘enlightened guidance’ of the late Maharajah of Darbhanga.20 The latter was also the patron of the oldest Maithili organisation, the All-India Maithil Mahasabha, established in 1910.21 The Maharajah contacted Grierson about his memorial to the viceroy about the ‘restoration of the ruling powers and privileges which my family enjoyed before the Permanent Settlement’.22 In the memorial he refers to Grierson, ‘the famous Orientalist’, as having brought to light the battles his ancestors fought in maintaining Mithila’s distinctive character.23 Grierson expressed his interest in and sympathy for the memorial.24 Here, then, Grierson played a role in the way the Maithili cause was entangled with the restoration of the Maharajah’s power, seen as synonymous with a recognition of Mithila as a distinctive region with its own language.
Both the Maharajah and Grierson sent each other texts on and in Maithili, and Grierson asked for the Maharajah’s help in locating Maithili manuscripts.25 Grierson also pressed learned societies into participating in this nexus of exchange of works on and in Maithili.26 Thus, Grierson, pandits and the Maharajah gifted each other their works in and on Maithili. They embedded Maithili in a gift economy and an ethos of generosity, thereby elevating it (in their view) above the grubbiness of political and economic self-interest. Their interaction with each other also reflects the upper caste character of the Maithili movement at the time.27 Grierson’s interaction with pandits also points to his broader political position, which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 6.
Grierson was also a strong intergenerational presence for the Maithili cause. Some activists refer to his relations with their fathers as a basis for their own interaction with him.28 This included not just the Maharajah but also Amarantha Jha, professor of English literature at Muir Central College, whose father Grierson had known and who was entrusted with the editing of Mahesh Thakur’s work discovered in the India Office Library (IOL). Amarantha Jha, described by Brass as an influential spokesman for Maithili,29 was involved in the networks of Maithili learning, having sent Grierson as a ‘keen scholar’ of Maithili a copy of the songs of Chandrakavi.30 There is thus a filial cast to the network ...
