S.M. Tadkodkar, Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika during the 17th Century

An extraordinary book: S.M. Tadkodkar, Goan Christian Marathi Vilapika during the 17th Century. Delhi: B.R. Publications, 2009.

Tadkodkar, who is HoD of Marathi at the Goa University, proposes that 2 of the 3 Paixao de Christo found at the end of the MS of the Khristapurana preserved in the State Central Library, Panjim, Goa, were written by Thomas Stephens himself.

The book - which is practically sold out - contains transcriptions of many other parts of the MS: the Censures and Licences, for example.

Tadkodkar teaches a course called "Christian Marathi Literature" every year to his students. Every year, he told me, he has problems from his students: Sir, why do we have to study this stuff? And every year, by the end of the course, they say: This is the best course we have attended.

The Professor is full of admiration for Thomas Stephens. His writings are able to move people even today, reaching out across temporal, religious and community barriers to touch the hearts of those who read and hear.

Review of Falcao's Khristapurana

My review of Falcao's edition of the Khristapurana has just appeared under the title, “Review Article: A Significant Publication.” [Review of Phādara Thomasa Stīphanskṛta Khristapurāṇa, ed. and tr. Nelson Falcao (Bangalore: Kristu Jyoti Publications, 2009.] Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection 74/4 (April 2010) 307-314.

VJTR has a circulation of some 4000; that is very good publicity indeed!

Swami Amalananda, SJ (1919-2008)

A piece of information sent me by Mr Maurice M. D'Mello, which he accessed from an Indian Jesuit website:

Swami Amalananda was born Anthony Prabhu in Belmannu, in South Karnataka on February 2, 1919. During High School, in history, he read about Ignatius of Loyola and developed an admiration for him.

His main work has been his Khrista Purana, somewhat on the lines of Fr. Thomas Stephens’ book of the same name. Unfortunately, his poor health compelled him to leave this work incomplete. He passed away on August 29, 2008 the feast of St. John the Baptist.

So that makes one more Khrista Purana!

For more information, see http://www.goajesuits.in/events/20080829swamiamalananda.htm

Bibliography

Bhakti Marg
Kaavya Gaanadi Divya Bali Vidhi
Gaana Katha - Bhakti Sudhaa (a prose life of St. John the Baptist).
Translation of all 150 psalms of Scripture (first draft).
Khrista Purana

Richard V. De Smet: dissertation

Going through some correspondence of Richard De Smet that was recently discovered among the papers of Paul Kehres, SJ, I came across a letter from George McLean, speaking about the publication of De Smet's dissertation.

Fortunately there was an email, and I tried my luck. To my great surprise and pleasure Prof. McLean responded almost immediately to my queries. This is what he wrote (28 Feb 2010):

The project of the dissertation is something like this: .
a. I edited the work when in India in the mid 70s.
b. Brad reconstituted the work (ms was unclear) and sent it to Notre Dame Univ. Press.
c. The Press held up on publication for absence of agreement by Richard to publication of the edited version.
d. I found the from Richard (one of his last two letters the night before his final operation) telling me to go ahead with the publication, which I am ready to do.
e. I thought that Brad was getting a release from NDU press for this publlication, but have been distracted and have not followed up.
f. I will write to Brad about this and look forward to making this work available.

Brad Malkovsky had earlier written to me (19 August 2009):

As to the original De Smet thesis, I put a lot of time and effort into it many years ago, trying to get it ready for publication. I used a copy of the original manuscript, which was riddled with problems involving English, Sanskrit, organization, incomplete source citations and incomplete bibliographical entries. I tried tidying it up as best I could. Along with that manuscript I worked with another, one that was alleged to be an improved later version by De Smet. It turned out it wasn't. I had wanted to publish De Smet's work, synthesizing the two versions. When I learned the second version was spurious I gave up the project out of frustration.

In retrospect I no longer feel that De Smet's dissertation is worth publishing, though it was his desire to do so, even at the end of his life. Proving that Shankara was a theologian rather than a philosopher is already well established (though still not usually accepted by Hindu Advaitins) by other scholars, including Frank Clooney, SJ of Harvard. Also many of the sources De Smet thought were from Shankara are no longer counted as genuine today, e.g. the Vivekacudamani. So the work is very much out of date and no longer eye-opening in its insights. What is more important is to get De Smet's essays published, especially those from the last twenty years of his life. They are far superior to his dissertation in terms of precision and insight.

Richard V. De Smet: missing items

Daniel De Smet, nephew of Fr Richard De Smet, got in touch with me yesterday, thanking me for the copy of Brahman and Person that I had sent him, and asking me to send him, once again, a list of items he could look for. Going through one of his earlier mails to me, I found, to my great surprise, that he had listed the following items as being in his possession:

3. no date but written for St. Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India
title: THE CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTER WITH ADVAITA VEDANTA
a survey of Four Centuries
40 pages +notes

4. a small pack from p 33 till 65 + notes
starting with
point 6. The Creative Assimilationists
7. The Apophatists
8. Christians in Dialogue with Advaitins

5. "Trajectory of My Dialogical Activity"

This is amazing! I think we have managed to trace at least part, if not the whole, of the missing MS about the Jesuit Contribution to Vedanta. Or perhaps the Christian Encounter with Vedanta! I am excited. I hope Daniel manages to send me copies.

See the following from De Smet, "Samkara Vedanta and Christian Theology," Review of Darshana 1 (1980) 33:

This survey of the attitudes adopted by Christian scholars towards Śāṅkara Vedānta in this century is summed up from a monograph (now in the press) in which I have studied the four centuries of encounters between Christians and Vedānta beginning with Robert de Nobili (1577-1656).

I recall distinctly De Smet telling me that he was working on the text while in Rome in 1990. He said he had the basic matter, but was enriching it with material found in the Jesuit Archives. He was staying that year first in the Jesuit Casa degli Scrittori near their Generalate, and then in the Civilta' Cattolica house near the Borghese Gardens. Perhaps it in that year that he left his manuscript with his nephew.

Release of 'Brahman and Person' in Pune

I was happy that Brahman and Person: Essays by Richard De Smet, ed. Ivo Coelho (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2010) was released at De Nobili College, Pune, on 2 March 2010, which happened to be, fittingly, the 13th death anniversary of Fr De Smet.

The book was released at the hands of Dr Noel Sheth, SJ, former President of Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, and well-known Indologist. Dr Sheth paid homage to Fr De Smet in glowing terms. Dr John Vattanky said a few words also about the person of De Smet and about the book.

The book contains 14 essays by De Smet spanning a period from 1957 to 1996, a veritable campaign on the notion of person. (One essay could not be traced: "Contemporary Philosophical Anthropology," New Consciousness 1973.) De Smet's concern was (1) to trace out the history of the term 'person' as it emerged in the West; (2) to use this history to highlight the inappropriateness of translating nirguna Brahman as impersonal Absolute; (3) to raise a notion of person from within Indian thought, drawing upon both orthodox and heterodox streams, not discounting also the contribution of great contemporary Indian thinkers.

De Smet's thesis is that the term 'person' was fleshed out in the Christian effort to speak precisely about God, and that this meaning was lost in the modern age of the West, so much so that an obscure German philosopher called F.H. Jacobi could decide that 'person' could be applied only to beings having qualities, and therefore only to finite beings. This choice influenced a certain number of German philosophers, and also, eventually, the great, mostly German, translators of the Sanskrit works, who rendered saguna as personal and nirguna as impersonal. This fateful choice led to the still current situation in India, where the para Brahman is regarded as impersonal, and, conversely, the Christian God is regarded (with condescension) as personal and therefore as somehow anthropomorphic.

This thesis, presented several times at various meetings of Indian philosophers and Indologists, led to the declaration by no less a Vedantin than T.M.P. Mahadevan that the Brahman of the Upanisads was nothing if not personal. For person is an analogical term, a term that is capable of being applied not only to human beings but also to the divine Absolute, though of course in a super-eminent way.

The problem is that India does not have a proper and adequate equivalent to the notion of person, especially to that notion worked out by Thomas Aquinas, "a singular subsistent of an intellectual nature," one capable of interpersonal relationships and therefore intrinsically social. Vyakti is rooted in the idea of manifestation and leans towards 'modalism'; purusa really means male human being, and has its own history heavily coloured by Samkhya; jana has no philosophical tradition behind it. In the end, if we go by the article De Smet contributed to the Marathi Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it would seem that he settled for vyakti as best rendering 'person'; the felicity of this choice seems to be borne out by the current usage of vyakti in Marathi and related languages not only as 'individual' but also as 'person.'

The 14 essays that make up Brahman and Person include one translated from the German (earlier published in Kairos), and 7 entries translated from the Marathi Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

This publication is a first step towards making De Smet's rather voluminous output more easily accessible and available, his publications being mostly in the form of articles in a variety of rather inaccessible and mostly Indian journals. That was part of his 'ascetical' option to write for people of other faiths rather than for Christians, and for an Indian public rather than for a Western one.

Hopefully De Smet's Sankara essays, his doctoral dissertation on Sankara, and his notes for students (Guidelines in Indian Philosophy) will be made available in the same way.

Thomas Stephens' Khristapurana: publicity

The Mangalore magazine run by the Catholic Association of South Kanara has kindly published my piece on the Nashik book release of Nelson Falcao's edition and translation of the Khristapurana. I am happy, because I hope this publicity will lead to the discovery / recovery of manuscripts that might be lying around in Mangalore, in the possession of private individuals and families. I am hoping at least to get news about the families of Mr. Jerome A. Saldanha (sub-judge of Alibagh, Bombay Presidency, at turn of the 20th century), Mr Julian Coelho, Fr. S.B.C. Luis, and Messrs. Dunbar Brothers, Parel. These were the people who lent their manuscripts to Prof. Joseph L. Saldanha, whose edition of the Khristapurana was published in Mangalore way back in 1907.

In the meantime, my feature review of Falcao's edition has appeared in Divyadaan: Journal of Philosophy and Education 20/3 (2009), and is due to appear also in Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection in March 2010.