Refashioning Civilities, Engineering Trust: William Jones, Indian Intermediaries and the Production of Reliable Legal Knowledge in Late Eighteenth-century Bengal

Studies in History

Volumn 17, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 175-209

  Raj, Kapil ^a  

^a ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES   (France)

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EID: 33645695773     PISSN: 02576430     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/025764300101700202     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. W. Jones, ‘On the Hindus’, Asiatick Researches, Vol. 1, 1788, pp. 415–31. This quote pp. 422–23.
2. Almost all of Jones's writings can be found in A.M. Jones, ed., The Works of Sir William Jones (henceforth Works), London, 1807 (13 vols);
3. and in G.H. Cannon, ed., The Letters of Sir William Jones (henceforth Letters), Oxford, 1970 (2 vols).
4. The literature on Jones is too vast to be cited at any length here. See, however, S.N. Mukherjee, Sir William Jones: A Study in Eighteenth-century British Attitudes to India, Cambridge, 1968;
5. G.H. Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones: Sir William Jones, the Father of Modern Linguistics, Cambridge, 1990;
6. G.H. Cannon and K.R. Brine, eds, Objects of Enquiry: The Life, Contributions and Influences of Sir William Jones (1746–1794), New York and London, 1995;
7. D. Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization 1773–1835, Calcutta, 1969.
8. For a more complete, though slightly dated, bibliography, see G.H. Cannon, Sir William Jones: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources, Amsterdam, 1970, pp. 39–64.
9. For the innovative nature of his method and its influence on nineteenth-century linguistics, see H. Aarsleff, The Study of Language in England, 1780–1860, Minneapolis, 1967.
10. For his influence on the fledgling discipline of ethnology, see G.W. Stocking, Jr. Victorian Anthropology, New York, 1987, pp. 50 ff.
11. See also T.R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India, New Delhi, 1997.
12. As to his influence on the European Romantic movements of the early nineteenth century, see R. Taylor, ‘The East and German Romanticism’, in R. Iyer, ed., The Glass Curtain between Asia and Europe, London, 1965, pp. 188–200;
13. also H.G. Rawlinson, ‘India and European literature and thought’, in G.T. Garratt, ed., The Legacy of India, Oxford, 1937, pp. 30–37;
14. G. Cannon, ‘The literary place of Sir William Jones’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, Vol. 2: 1, 1960, pp. 47–61;
15. and more generally, R. Schwab, La renaissance orientale, Paris, 1950.
16. Jones, ‘On the Hindus’, p. 421.
17. See M.L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London & New York, 1992, p. 7.
18. Writing as late as 1821, Sir James Mackintosh described the new ‘philosophy of languages’, as opposed to classical ‘philosophy of language’, as ‘a science so new as to be yet without a name’. See his ‘Stewart's introduction to the encyclopaedia’, Edinburgh Review, XXXVI, October, 1821, p. 264.
19. E.W. Said's Orientalism, London, 1978, although it pays no serious attention to British ‘Orientalism’ in South Asia, triggered off this tradition, engendering a spate of specific writing on India.
20. See, for instance, C.A. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer, eds, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, Philadelphia, 1993.
21. See also B.S. Cohn, ‘The command of language and the language of command’, in R. Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies IV: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Delhi, 1985, pp. 276–329. I have put the term Orientalism within inverted commas because its use in the late eighteenth-century context is as anachronic as that of other disciplinary appellations. Note that the OED identifies its first usage in the sense of ‘Oriental scholarship’ in 1811: ‘Byron, Ch[ilde] Har[old] ii. note, Mr Thornton's frequent hints of profound Orientalism.’
22. See, for instance, C.A. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer, eds, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament.
23. In Foucault's own words: ‘…in thinking of the mechanisms of power, I am thinking rather of its capillary forms of existence, the point where power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives.’ M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–77, ed., C. Gordon, Brighton, 1980, p. 39.
24. S. Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-century England, Chicago & London, 1994;
25. also S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, Princeton, 1985.
26. For a comparative history of sociability and civility in early modern France and England, see C. Licoppe, La formation de la pratique scientifique: le discours de l'expérience en France et en Angleterre (1630–1820), Paris, 1996.
27. See J.P. Rubiés, ‘Instructions for travellers: teaching the eye to see’, History and Anthropology, 9, 1996, p. 142.
28. R. Boyle, General Heads for the Natural History of a Country, Great or Small, Drawn out for the Use of Travellers and Navigators, London, 1692, quotes from pp. 1, 8, 9, 13.
29. See also F. Bacon, ‘Of Travel (1597)’, in J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis, D.D. Heath, eds. The Works of Francis Bacon, (14 Vols), London, 1861: vi, pp. 417–18;
30. J. Woodward, Brief Instructions for the Making of Observations and Collections, in order for the Promotion of Natural History in All Parts of the World, London, 1696.
31. R. Boyle, General Heads for the Natural History of a Country, p. 101.
32. L. Rocher, ed., Ezourvedam. A French Veda of the Eighteenth Century, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, 1984, English translation p. 13.
33. W. Jones, Letters: i, p. 176.
34. See also ‘Genuine account of Omiah’, Annual Register, or, a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, 1774, pp. 61–63.
35. ‘Glory I shall pursue through fire and water, by night and by day,’ he once wrote in a characteristic outburst of verbose candour, Letter to Charles Reviczki dated 5–6 March, 1771, in Letters: i, pp. 86–87. Cf. the proclamation of another eighteenth-century parvenu, Nelson, on the eve of the Battle of the Nile: ‘Before this time tomorrow, I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey.’
36. The expression ‘self-fashioning’ comes from Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, Chicago, 1980;
37. and Mario Biagioli's account of the coproduction of Galileo's career and his science in his Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago & London, 1994.
38. C.A. Bayly, Information and Empire: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870, Cambridge, 1997.
39. See S. Schaffer, ‘Defoe's natural philosophy and the worlds of credit’, in J.R.R. Christie & S. Shettleworth, eds, Nature Transfigured: science and literature 1700–1900, Manchester, 1989, p. 13.
40. See L.H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens, New York, 1979.
41. See K. Raj, ‘Christian confessions and styles of science in 19th century Bengal: their impact on the emergence of the social sciences in Britain’, in P. Petitjean, ed., Les sciences coloniales: Figures et institutions, Paris, 1996, pp. 285–97.
42. See R.E. Frykenberg, Guntur District 1788–1848: A History of Local Influence and Central Authority in South India, Oxford, 1965, p. 7.
43. A comprehensive list of these ‘most atrocious abuses that ever stained the name of civil government’ [Burgoyne Report, quoted in N.K. Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal, Vol. 1, Calcutta, 1962, p. 186]
44. may be found in ‘Reports from the committee appointed to enquire into the nature, state and condition of the East India Company and of the British affairs in East India’, Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, 1772–1773, Vol. III, London, 1803.
45. D. Kumar, ed., The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 2, Cambridge, 1982, p. 299.
46. It is noteworthy that the transformation of state power in Britain during the latter half of the eighteenth century led directly to the creation of the Bank of England and the City. See J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688–1783, London, 1989.
47. G.R. Gleig, ed., Memoirs of the Life of Right Honourable Warren Hastings (3 vols), London, 1841: i, p. 214.
48. W. Hastings, letter dated 4 October 1784 to Nathaniel Smith, Chairman of the East India Company, reprinted in P.J. Marshall, ed., The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge, 1970, pp. 184–92, this quotation p. 189;
49. also reprinted in C. Wilkins, tr., Bhagavad Gita, London, 1785, Preface, p. 13.
50. See M.J. Cullen, The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain. The Foundations of Empirical Social Research, New York. 1975, pp. 10–11.
51. A.J. Farrington, The Records of the East India College Haileybury and Other Institutions, London, 1976, p. 4.
52. For a description of the daily life of the British in India during this period, see P. Spear, The Nabobs, Oxford, 1963.
53. See R.M. Ogilvie, Latin and Greek: A History of the Influence of the Classics on English Life from 1600 to 1918, London, 1964, pp. 46 ff.
54. See J.H. Plumb, ‘The Grand Tour’ in his Men and Places, London, 1963, pp. 54–66.
55. J. Lawson and H. Silver, A Social History of Education in England, London, 1973, pp. 217–18.
56. Letter from William Jones to Richard Johnson dated 15 December 1783, in Letters: ii, p. 624.
57. A. Dow, ‘Dissertation concerning the customs, manners, language, religion, and philosophy of the Hindoos’, in Mahummud Casim Ferishta, The History of Hindostan: From the Earliest Account of Time, to the Death of Akbar (2 vols), tr. Alexander Dow, London, 1768, pp. i, xxxviii.
58. For élite attitudes to common people in Europe, see for instance, T.G. Smollett, Travels through France and Italy (2 vols), London, 1766, especially ii, pp. 197–98.
59. W. Hastings, ‘A plan for the administration of justice, extracted from the proceedings of the Committee of Circuit, 15th August, 1772’, in G.W. Forrest, ed., Selections from the State Papers of Governors-General of India (2 vols), London, 1910: ii, pp. 295–96.
60. For a list of expressly commissioned works, see J.D.M. Derrett, ‘Sanskrit legal treatises compiled at the instance of the British’, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, 63, 1961, pp. 72–117, 86.
61. W. Jones, A New Compendium of the Whole Art of Practical Navigation, dedicated to the mathematician John Harris, F.R.S., London, 1702;
62. W. Jones, Synopsis Palmoriorum Matheseos: Or, a New Introduction to the Mathematics, London, 1706.
63. J. Shore, Lord Teignmouth, Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence of Sir William Jones, printed as Vols 1 & 2 of Works: i, p. 21.
64. A. Galland, Les mille et une nuits (12 vols), Paris, 1704–17.
65. J. Shore, Memoirs, in Works: i, pp. 70–71.
66. W. Jones, Histoire de Nader Chah connu sous le nom de Thahmus Kuli Khan, Empereur de Perse, traduite d'un manuscrit persan, par ordre de sa Majesté de Roi de Danemark, avec des notes chronologiques historiques géographiques et un traité sur la poésie, London, 1770.
67. See L.F. Powell, ‘Sir William Jones and the Club’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 11, 1946, pp. 818–22.
68. Letter to W. Bennet, dated 10 November 1771, in Letters: i, pp. 103–4.
69. Letter to H.A. Shultens, dated 6 October 1774 translated, with the Latin original, in Letters i, p. 166.
70. Letters to Lady Georgiana, dated 28 February 1774 and 24 May 1778, in Letters.: i, pp. 143, 271.
71. Published in London by John Nichols for Charles Dilly. Of this work it has been said that it is ‘as obscure as the original’. Besides, being ignorant of the fact that the Shafi'i law of inheritance only prevailed in the Dutch East Indies, Jones also shows his ignorance of the distinction between the various schools of Sunni law, of the predominance of the school of Abu Hanifa in India, and even of the fact that the word Imam is used by Sunnis and Shi'as with entirely different connotations. See S.G. Vesey-FitzGerald, pp. 813–14.
72. Letter to Robert Orme, dated 10 April 1772, in Letters: i, pp. 112–13.
73. Letter to Edward Gibbon, 30 June 1781, in Letters ii, p. 481.
74. Also letter to Edmund Burke, 17 March 1782, in Letters ii, p. 521.
75. J.D.M. Derrett, ‘Sanskrit legal treatises compiled at the instance of the British’, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, 63, 1961, p. 82.
76. ‘Objects of enquiry during my residence in Asia’, dated 12 July 1783 and written on the frigate Crocodile, quoted in J. Shore, Memoirs, in Works: ii, pp. 3–4.
77. Asiatick Researches, 1, 1788, p. x.
78. W. Jones, ‘A discourse on the institution of a society for inquiring into the history, civil and natural, the antiquities, arts, sciences and literature of Asia’, Asiatick Researches, 1, 1788, pp. xii–xiv.
79. Reprinted in Works, iii, pp. 6–7.
80. As to the inutility of languages in themselves, Jones had always held a Miltonian conception; witness the following sentence from Lettre à Monsieur A*** Du P***: ‘Ne savez-vous pas que les langues n'ont aucune valeur intrin séques? et qu'un érudit pourrait savoir par cœur tous les dictionnaires qui ont jamais été compilés, et pourrait bien n'être à la fin du compte que le plus ignorant des mortels?’ in W. Jones, Lettre à Monsieur A*** Du P*** dans laquelle est compris l'examen de sa traduction des livres attribués à Zoroastre, London, 1771 (henceforth Lettre à Monsieur A*** Du P***), p. 11.
81. Letter to Charles Wilkins, dated 24 April 1784, in Letters: ii, p. 646.
82. G.H. Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones, Oxford, 1990, pp. 13, 23.
83. W. Jones, ‘Preface’ to A Grammar of the Persian Language, 1771, in Works: v, pp. 177–79 (my italics).
84. A.H. Anquetil-Duperron, Zend-Avesta, ouvrage de Zoroastre, contenant les idées théologiques, physiques & morales de ce législateur, les cérémonies du culte religieux qu'il a établi, & plusieurs traits importants relatives à l'ancienne histoire des Perses (3 vols), Paris, 1771.
85. W. Jones, Lettre à Monsieur A*** Du P***, pp. 12–13 and 47–48.
86. Letter to Lord Cornwallis, 19 March 1788, in Letters: ii, p. 797.
87. Letter to Lord Cornwallis, 19 March 1788, in Letters ii, pp. 801–2.
88. Letter to Charles Wilkins, c. March 1785, in Letters ii, p. 666.
89. Letter to Charles Wilkins, c. 1785, in Letters.: ii, pp. 667–68.
90. Letter to Sir John Macpherson, 26 May 1785, in Letter to Charles Wilkins, c ii, pp. 675–76.
91. Letter to William Pitt the Younger, 5 February 1785, in Letter to Charles Wilkins, c ii, p. 662.
92. Letter to Charles Wilkins, 6 June 1785, in Letter to Charles Wilkins, c.: ii, pp. 677–78.
93. Works: vii, pp. 8–12.
94. Jones to Charles Wilkins, 17 September 1785, in Letters: ii, p. 682.
95. Letter to Robert Orme, 12 October 1786, in Letters.: ii, p. 716 (my italics).
96. See T.R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India.
97. W. Jones, ‘On the Hindus’, in Works: iii, p. 28.
98. J. Bryant, A New System; or an Analysis of Antient Mythology (3 vols), London, 1774–76.
99. I. Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended to which is Prefixed a Short Chronicle from the First Memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great, London, 1728.
100. W. Jones, ‘On the Hindus’, Works: iii, p. 32.
101. W. Jones, ‘On the Hindus’, Works iii, pp. 42–43.
102. W. Jones, An Essay on the Law of Bailments, London, 1781, p. 114.
103. For his attitudes towards common people in Britain, see his letters written around the time of the Gordon Riots (June 1780) in which he refers to the rioters as the ‘populace’ and advocates vigilantism on the part of the upper classes. Letters: i, pp. 402 ff.
104. Works: vii, p. 25.
105. W. Jones, ‘The best practicable system of judicature’, c. April 1784, (Sheffield Central Library, Wentworth Woodhouse MSS, Burke Notes 9 c.)
106. quoted in Letters: ii, pp. 643–44.
107. Letter to Lord Cornwallis, 19 March 1788, in Letters.: ii, p. 795.
108. Letter to Lord Cornwallis, 1788, in Letters.: ii, p. 798.
109. Letter to Lord Cornwallis, 1788, in Letters ii, p. 799.
110. Indeed, Jones had already portrayed himself on more than one occasion as ‘the Justinian of India!’, see Letters: ii, pp. 699, 723.
111. Commonwealth Relations Office, Bengal Letters Received, Vol. 27, pp. 288–89
112. quoted in Letters: ii, p. 803.
113. Letter to the Supreme Council, April 1788, in Letters.: ii, pp. 801–2.
114. J. Shore, Memoirs, in Works: ii, pp. 154–55.
115. See, for instance, B.S. Cohn, ‘The command of language’, p. 283.
116. J.D.M. Derrett, Religion, Law and the State in India, London, 1968, pp. 247–48.
117. J.D.M. Derrett, Religion, Law and the State in India, London, 1968, p. 253.
118. Jagannatha's influence apparently reached as far afield as Madras Presidency. Religion, Law and the State in India, 1968., p. 260.
119. S. Lindqvist, ‘Labs in the woods: the quantification of technology during the late Enlightenment’, in T. Frängsmyr, J.L. Heilbron, R. Rider, eds. The Quantifying Spirit in the 18th Century, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1990, pp. 291–314 deals with the crucial role of centralized institutions in large-scale knowledge production.
120. o 5, septembre-octobre 1997, pp. 1153–1180. It is interesting to see that the entry for ‘Pundit’ in the Oxford English Dictionary tells a very similar story
121. See N. Luhmann, Truth and Power: Two Works, Chichester, 1979;
122. and A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, Standford, 1989.
123. Quoted by T.R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India, p. 5.
124. See, in particular, the contributions of R. Rocher, D. Ludden and N.B. Dirks in C.A. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer, eds, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament;
125. and B.S. Cohn, ‘The command of language’. Even Bayly, who, in bringing to the fore native Indian collaboration in the culling of information in his recent book (note 23 above), is far more nuanced than the naively romantic position of these authors, finally betrays the same essentialist dichotomy between Indians and British: ‘…indigenous police descriptions and sociological understandings of the classes of beings were incorporated into the British canon by means of the testimony of native informants. Of course, this information was reclassified and built into hierarchies which reflected the world view of the Britons of the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Indian sociologies…were active, not passive elements within these constructs, and Indians almost immediately began to critique them from the inside’ (p. 179).
126. See N. Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge, Mass. … London, 1991.