I am on my way to Chennai, the southern city in Tamil Nadu, "the Land of the Tamils". Tamil is an old community in India having a reconstructed history of at least three thousand years. An independent, industrious and culturally rich people, they dominated the Indian Ocean through their sea voyages and trade. Tamils are spread around the world and have a significant presence in the south Asian countries like Srilanka, Malaysia and Singapore. They also populate several States in India besides their home State of Tamil Nadu.
The land of Tamil is associated with the Tamil language, It is a literary language with inscriptions and literature spanning more than two thousand years. The land developed its own social philosophers and the Tamil literature appears to have evolved through its local roots and settings. A deep foundation in philosophical thinking has made people reflective and scholarly. The land has given rise to prominent artists, poets, musicians and dancers in course of time. Tamil language is called Dravidian to separate it from the north Indian languages. Some people think that the separation of north and south is more with the appearance than with the analytic substance. Tamil words are seen in the Vedas, the oldest literature in the north. Import of Sanskrit words to Tamil was late but is regular these days. While north India has been affected by Muslim influence, the Tamil culture has remained conservative. There has been competition by the Tamil people for power sharing in India. Language influence does play a role. There were massive agitations in the '60s against the imposition of Hindi as a national language in India. I had my special fancy to Tamil culture and Tamil cuisine. Some of the Tamil temples have specially designed stone columns carefully arranged such that the columns act as reeds in an instrument.
The flight left a little after 10 AM. It is a two hour flight. I would be met by a driver who would have come from Puducherry which was my destination for the night halt. Puducherry is a three hour taxi ride from Chennai and is known for the monastic residence of Sri Aurobindo, the fierce rebel of India, who became a mystic in his later age. The driver was supposed to take me over to Puducherry after a halt with my Sanskrit faculty friends at University of Madras. Chennai and Madras are synonymous. The origins of these words are unknown to me.
Domestic travel in India is easier than in the US. There is more per-person care and there is a sense of dutifulness unlike the Government bureaucracy. The air travel industry is new and there is good competition. I picked up my luggage and proceeded out. To my delight I saw a man with a sign with my name printed. To find somebody waiting in a remote land is a relief. It is occasionally connected to good luck! Event certainty is connected to astrological calculations in India.
We proceed to an area called Adyar, in the south of town where my friend Professor lives. I had gone through those roads before in connection with my many visits to Mahabalipuram on the sea which is further south. Chennai had been named as the most livable city in India by a national news magazine. Livability is determined by schools, hospitals, traffic, recreation and environment. Marina beach in the area is considered as one of the finest urban beaches in the world.
Finding a house in India is not the most easy task. We entered the right road but we did not see the numbers we had. The problem here was with a corner plot, the entrance was on an intersecting road where the number was printed. Everything in India has a history. The plot demarcation might have its own life and the roads have their life. The professor graciously guided us by coming out of his apartment and waving at us. Another relief after a run around in the tropical heat!
Professor Siniruddha Dash is a mild-mannered deeply cultivated scholar who had specialized in Linguistics and Grammar. After serving the Department of Sanskrit in University of Madras as a teacher and Chair for thirty years, he had just retired. He is known for his grand love of labor in continuing to catalog the unpublished Sanskrit manuscripts in India. The task is arduous since locating the manuscripts is a hard task. The program of editing and publishing of New Catalogus Catalogorum (NCC) was started in 1949 and thirty nine volumes have been published. The last twenty five volumes are produced by Professor Dash. The release if the last two volumes had brought him to the World Sanskrit Conference at Bangkok, where I happened to meet him. The effort needs support from many quarters. The catalog is a resource of significant importance to the scholars worldwide.
His wife Dr Mamata Dash(Mishra) is also a Sanskrit scholar. She managed the Library and the publications of Prof. K. V. Sarma Research Foundation, a private institution in Chennai. Through a long and successful career in teaching and research, Prof. Sarma had amassed a large library which was being expanded to become a specialized library on Indian contributions to Mathematics and Astronomy.
With another young scholar in company, we went to a local restaurant for lunch. We were possibly late for a Monday lunch. The food was well served but lacked the famous Tamil culinary touch. We discussed a bit on the young scholar's project ideas and he described how he was trying to catalog the prosody patterns in the scriptural work. I advised him to look at the neurological angles of prosody to understand its biological manifestation. Most of the late research on Indian Studies both in India and broad has been more on "what" than "why". I have a strong feeling that the modern youth must apply themselves to discover why certain things work. Escaping assumptions is the core of science.
I visited the Foundation library next door and met the curator/librarian. I saw a few books relating to the Kerala School of Mathematics. Kerala School flourished between fourteen and sixteenth century AD and had made fundamental contribution to trigonometric expansions, infinite series, and calculus. The material written in Sanskrit had limited circulation in India until the manuscripts were discovered by an English scholar in the nineteenth century. There is the claim that the ideas of Fluxions making up Newton's Differential Calculus were prevalent in Kerala school two hundred years earlier.
A young friend teaching the Department of Physics showed up. Dr P. K. Tripathi was interested in the books. I had thought he could be of help to the Foundation's work. Apparently the city of Chennai is well populated with such specialized libraries in various disciplines. I admired the research. Chennai maintains the respect for the books and the knowledge. Then we were joined by another Sanskrit scholar Dr Godavarish Mishra, who teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Madras. Dr. Mishra was in Bangkok to present his paper and he attended my presentation. Our discussion warmed up with tea and snacks. We had free ranging discussion on research, scholarship, support, Government, world-wide interest in Sanskrit and training the future scholars. It was a meeting of mutual appreciation and admiration.
My taxi driver had been sending messages because of the approaching darkness. It was difficult to break a discussion among the friends and scholars. I finally left Prof Dash's house about 6 PM on my journey to Puducherry. Dr Mishra and his wife stayed back for more extended time with Prof. Dash and his wife. I called my friend in Puducherry to intimate him of my departure from Chennai.
I am attaching a few pictures of the Prof K V Sharma Research Foundation Library.
