Pandit Govind
Kaul
"Another
Kalhana"
Pandit Govind Kaul
| [ A
profound Kashmiri scholar of the late 19th
century. Pandit Govind Kaul, who rendered
most valuable assistance to Aurel Stein in
translating Rajatarangini, is today almost
a forgotten man. There are hardly a
handful of Kashmiri Pandits who may be
aware of his great erudition and the range
of his scholarly pursuits. Here is a brief
sketch of the life and works of the man
whom Stein offered fulsome tributes and
hailed as " another Kalhana".
] |
Born
in 1846 in Srinagar as the eldest son of Pandit
Balbhadra Kaul, a universally respected scholar of
his times (1819-96), Govind Kaul (G.K) had
scholarship running in the family. His
grandfather, Pandit Taba Kaul, too was a reputed
scholar, having family ties with the famous Pandit
Birbal Dhar who persuaded Ranjit Singh to free
Kashmir from the tyranny of Afghan rule. G.K. and
Birbal Dhar's grandson Ramjoo Dhar, maintained the
ties as friends. G.K. not only studied Persian and
Sanskrit in keeping with the family tradition, he
also acquired a good knowledge of English as well
as western ways of life. To keep the record of
history straight, it must be stated that G.K. and
Ramjoo Dhar learnt English much before Pandit
Anand Kaul and Pandit Shiv Ram Bhan. G.K. came to
know a good deal about world affairs also through
Ramjoo Dhar who held an important administrative
position . Soon G.K. acquired fame for his
erudition, particularly as a scholar of Alamkara
Shastra (poetics), Vyakarna (grammar), Nyaya
(logic), and Shiva Sutras. He was equally well
versed in the knowledge of the epics and the
Puranas.
By the time he was 28,
G.K. was already regarded as a scholar of
considerable stature. In 1874, he was appointed
incharge Translation Department set up by Maharaja
Ranbir singh. It was around that time that he
undertook, jointly with Pandit Sahaz Bhatt, to
translate the Sanskrit chronicles of Kashmir into
Hindi- a project which he, unfortunately, was not
able to complete.
With the winding up of
the Translation Department in 1884, it was a
trying time for G.K. He lost his job and could not
find any alternative avenue to pursue his
scholastic goals. Eventually, he had to settle for
a teacher's job at the state run Sanskrit
Pathshala in Srinagar. But that too did not last
and he was again without a regular job.
In the meanwhile,
however, George Buhler, that doyen of European
Indologists, had spotted the Pandit for his great
learning and eruditon. It was Buhler's
commendatory reference that attracted Sir Aurel
Stein's attention towards G.K. and he solicited
his assistance in translating Kalhan's
Rajatarangini-a job that G . K along with Pandit
Sahaz Bhatt did with utmost competence from 1888
to 1896, and to stein's great satisfaction.
G.K. went into another
collaboration with Stein and fellow scholar Sahaz
Bhatt when they classified and catalogued more
than six thousand Sanskrit manuscripts for
Maharaja Ranbir Singh's library at Raghunath
Temple, Jammu.
Yet another contribution
G.K. made was to compile Kashmiri folk tales with
Stein, which the latter formally edited with
George Grierson and publishcd in 1917 as "
Hatim's Tales". The tales, supposedly told by
one Hatim Tilawony, were interpreted by G.K. G.K.
also rendered assistance to Grierson in the
compilation of his Kashmiri dictionary, but did
not live to see the work completed. Grierson went
on to reeord later that G.K's assistance to him
was "one of the many debts he ever owed to
Stein".
On G.K's death in June
1899, a shocked Stein lamented that G.K., ''like
another Kalhana departed as my best Indian friend
beyond all hope of reunion in this Janma".
Paying fulsome tributes to him, Stein wrote:
"Whenever Govind Kaul was by my side, whether
in the dusty exile of Lahore or alpine coolness of
Mohand Marg in Kashmir, I was in continuity with
the past as the historical student of India. His
personality embodied all that change of ages
indicated and showed as the mind and psyche of
India."
Source:
Unmesh
- Monthly Newsletter of N.S.
Kashmir Research Institute
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