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Posted
on 27-Jul-03 03:28 AM
Lecture Series III
Dr. Ramesh Dhungel
on
Opening the Chest of Nepals History
The Survey of Brian Houghton Hodgsons Manuscripts from
the British Library and Royal Asiatic Society
Ramesh Dhungel, of the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University, is currently Research Fellow and Adjunct Faculty, Department of Languages and Cultures of South Asia, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, working on the Hodgson Manuscripts Project.
Organised by
Social Science Baha
and
Institute for Social and Environmental Transformation (ISET)
Time: 5.30 pm
Date: 1 August, 2003 (Friday)
Venue: Baggikhana, Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka
(Admission open to all. Please direct queries to 5542544/5543017.)
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| ashu |
Posted
on 27-Jul-03 03:32 AM
From the Nepali Times
(18-24 July 2003)
Looking for Mr Hodgson
A Tribhuban University scholar delves into the papers of a British Resident and finds a treasure trove of Nepali history.
KANAK MANI DIXIT
In his cubicle number 39 in the grand new edifice of the British Library, which houses all the papers of the erstwhile India Office Collection, Tribhuban University academic Ramesh K Dhungel is engaged in a scholarly exercise of a lifetime.
For the next three years, he will be sifting through the archives on Nepal left behind by Brian Houghton Hodgson, British resident to the Court of Nepal. In the process of cataloguing and cross-referencing, he has privileged first hand access to largely unearthed and little understood material which will help us enrich, and in some cases, rewrite the history of Nepal.
Hodgson came as a diplomat to a turmoil-ridden Kathmandu court as representative of the East India Company, and played his part in the intrigue and skulduggery between a mad king, an ambitious queen regent, the Pandes, the Thapas and the Bahuns. But he also evolved as a geographer, pioneering ethnographer, linguist, student of Himalayan Buddhism and naturalist with special flair for ornithology. Said one author, Hodgson enriched museums, enlarged boundaries of more than one science&while upholding British diplomacy in a hostile military state.
Hodgson was a rennaissance man. Born in Cheshire in 1800, he came from an English household visited by hard times, attended a school (Haileybury) established by the Company for educating administrators for the dominion. There, he came under the wings of Thomas Malthus, and even boarded in the house of that great pioneer of the study of political economy (besides population). In later life, he was also a champion of vernacular education in India and was a challenger of Macaulay as well as the Orientalists who, respectively, pushed for English or Sanskrit.
Pride and poverty
So, it was to the long-term benefit of Nepal that this chronicler, archivist and multidisciplinary scholar was assigned to Himalayan climes to recuperate from the fevers that would surely have killed him in the plains. After serving some time in Kumaon trying to undo the ravages of the imperial Gorkhalis, Hodgson first came to Nepal in 1820, was Assistant Resident 1825-33, and Resident from 1833-43. This was the cut-throat era during and following reign of strongman Bhimsen Thapa, just before the massacre at the Kot.
Ramesh Dhungel poses in front of a painting of Hodgson at the British Library
Of Hodgsons personal life in Kathmandu, little is known other than that he lived a recluse with his books for company and some local scholars who came calling. But at some point he married a Nepali Muslim woman named Mehrussin, who he must have left when he departed Kathmandu, retired to England and then to Darjeeling (1845-1858), where he married an Englishwoman.
Assigned to a court marked by, in his own words, pride and poverty , Hodgsons carefully gathered collections in just about everything related to Nepali life in the 19th century, from military intelligence to study of Buddhist iconography. These, as well as his extensive notes, were deposited in various libraries in Calcutta, Paris, London and Oxford.
When these archives are delved into and fully understood, Nepali history will receive the depth and breadth for a discipline that till now has been too closely linked to the chronicles of kingly successions and national bahaduri .
While the personal papers and the Buddhism-related documents are kept elsewhere, Hodgson gifted all his papers on Nepal-specific diplomacy and statecraft to the India Office Collection. These are the papers that Ramesh Dhungel is now studying, in a project made possible by the efforts of Nepal scholars Michael Hutt and David Gellner and the head of the Asia-Pacific and Africa collection of the British Library, Graham W Shaw. Dhungel himself is a cultural historian with particular interest in Mustang,Tibet and Bhutan, and the Hodgson Manuscripts Project is funded by the London-based Liverhulme Foundation.
Hodgsons interest was endless and his research was endless, says Dhungel. Unlay kati doko, kati doko kagajaat jamma parey, kay bhannu. These papers are an encyclopedic record of 19th century Nepal. He collected anything and everything, from inscriptions to family histories and religious texts. Sometimes he bought them outright, at other times he had them copied at his own expense."
Hodgson befriended pandits and gubhajus of Kathmandu Valley (in particular the great Patan scholar Amritananda, who became a valued informant), who were impressed by his knowledge of Sanskrit and Farsi as well as his ascetic lifestyle devoted to learning. Dhungel believes Hodgson revived the interest of Kathmandus powerful in their family histories, or bamshabalis, and received copies from many chautaria families, and even King Rajendra Bikram.
Hodgson's own handwritten bamshabali notes in Nepali and English
Two of the most detailed aspects of Hodgsons work were on Nepal's judicial system commerce. He also studied the military strength of the army, and is considered an architect of the Gurkha induction into the British Indian Army. Hodgson is also credited, while already in retirement in Darjeeling, with having convinced a reluctant viceroy to allow an eager Jang Bahadur to participate in the quelling of the Sepoy Mutiny 1857-58.
Ramesh Dhungel: Hodson was probably the first scholar to get excited about ethnic diversity of the country. He called in members of ethnic groups from far and wide to the Residency at Lazimpat (from Lodging Part, according to some) and
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