Archaeologist, epigraphist and authority on Chola bronzes R. Nagaswamy passed away at his Chennai residence on January 23. He was 91.
I had the opportunity to meet and learn the Tamil-Brahmi script and other medieval Tamil inscriptions from Nagaswamy when he was in his early 70s at his residence in Chennai. I was pursuing my M.Phil degree at the University of Hyderabad in 2004 when I met him to discuss my work on early Tamil poetry.
For a month, I visited him almost every day and he patiently taught me Tamil-Brahmi script and other inscriptions. He would give me extensive homework to practice the script and ask me in each class to identify the letters and words he used to draw in a slate. As part of his everyday teaching, he would compel me to memorise and recite the Meykirti (Sanskrit Prashasti) of the medieval Chola emperors.
When asked for a rationale for memorising such lengthy pieces of eulogy, he would say that it may come in handy in the field while encountering a fragment of an inscription on temple walls or elsewhere. I understood that this was part of his own training and must have been implemented during his tenure as head of the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology.
I observed Nagaswamy from close quarters for a month. Adorned with sacred ash (vibuti) on his forehead and chest and wearing the veshti (dhoti), he used to sit in his study at the front of his house holding one or the other books on epigraphy or history. I remember one day discussing with him the readings I did as part of our coursework on medieval south India, highlighting the works of historians such as Burton Stein, Noboru Karashima, Subbarayalu, Champakalakshmi, and others. I told him casually that earlier generations of historians like K.A. Nilakanta Sastri merely focused on the political history of South India without paying adequate attention to socio-economic processes and changes. He was visibly offended by this and rushed to the first floor of his house where he kept his collections of books.
To my surprise, he brought the volumes on Chola history by Sastri, placed them on the table in front of me, and asked whether I read all of them carefully. He picked up a volume and started reading the pages that dealt with the taxation system and trade. I realised that he was expressing his affiliation to the mode of historiography whose concerns were long abandoned in the newer varieties that asked fresh questions about the early historic and medieval past of south India.
On another occasion, while reading a medieval inscription, Nagaswamy would argue that without knowledge of the Dharmasastra, certain meanings associated with rituals found in inscriptions cannot be understood. I found him comfortably navigating between the world of Sanskrit and Tamil sources ranging from inscriptions, literary and grammatical texts, coins, and other archaeological finds. In our conversations, he always emphasised the influence of the Sanskritic tradition on Tamil from the early historic period and pointed out the inseparability of the two. This prioritisation of ‘Sanskrit’ of the Brahmanical tradition over Tamil by Nagaswamy was not only met with contestation from some Tamil scholars but also landed him in several controversies.
Also read: Why the Andhra Pradesh Government Banned a 100-Year-Old Play
Long after, on the verge of the submission of my M.Phil thesis, I wrote to him about his views on the periodisation of early Tamil Sangam literature, especially the need to identify the layers within the corpus and temporally segregate the texts within based on language and content as followed by such scholars like Kamil Zvelebil, George Hart and A.K. Ramanujan. He was not willing to concede to such a method but followed the conventional author-centric dating of texts adopted by historians like Sastri.
There was no doubt that he was orthodox in his approach, prioritising the Brahmanical strand of Sanskritic tradition in his reading and interpretation of texts and practices. Whether it was early Tamil literary work like the Thirukkural or the medieval Tamil Ramayana of Kamban, for Nagaswamy, they were mere translations of Brahmanical Sanskrit versions and ideas.
He equally emphasised the Vedic influence in the making of early Tamil history and literature contrary to the interpretations of Dravidian ideologues and other Tamil scholars. His paper in the early 1980s announcing the discovery of a long-running early Tamil inscription at Pulankurichi that documented the earliest known land grant to Brahmins during the 3rd century CE – ‘An Outstanding Epigraphical Discovery in Tamil Nadu’ – showcased his enthusiasm for a Brahmanical history and settlements in the early historic period in Tamil Nadu.
Such utterances in his publications correspond well with my observation during my interactions with him that he remained committed to Brahmanical interpretations of pan-Indian and Tamil history and tradition.
The response of the Hindutva camp led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the death of Nagaswamy is indicative of the Brahmanical caste character of Hindutva and their enthusiasm for a Brahmanical Sanskritic reading of Indian history and tradition. In the Dravidian party-led Tamil Nadu and among the leaders and supporters of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), however, Nagaswamy was understood as a stumbling block for Tamil purity and antiquity, an impositionist of Brahmanical Vedic Sanskrit into Tamil literature and history.
Perhaps one of the exceptions seems to be the response of D. Ravikumar, writer and politician from Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) and endorsed by his party chief Thol. Thirumavalavan. Ravikumar in a tweet message, while noting down the obvious bias of Nagaswamy towards Sanskrit, pointed out his sincere efforts in recording and preserving the inscriptions in various districts of Tamil Nadu and countering the late dating of Sangam literature by Dutch Indologist Herman Tieken in a paper he read at the conference on Classical Tamil in Coimbatore. He also appealed to chief minister M.K. Stalin to allow state honors in the funeral of the deceased archaeologist.
In marking the life and death of Nagaswamy as a scholar, we must recall not only his contributions but also his selective interpretation of Tamil culture and history from the Vedic Sanskritic point of view. That is why he was completely silent on the histories and traditions of resistance to Brahmanical hegemony and the existence of other schools of philosophical and historical thought.
In my classes, I tell students that resistance to the Vedas and their authority in Indian civilisation is as old as Vedas. It is worth recalling that at a time when Nagaswamy was documenting and reading the inscriptions to showcase the Vedic influence in Tamil history and tradition during his stint as head of Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, another scholar, Narayanan Vanamamalai, (known in Tamil scholarly community as Na.Va) from the south of Tamil Nadu, inspired by the Left, was collecting folk songs and other oral literature documenting the popular culture and histories of resistance to authority.
If history, as E.H. Carr put in his celebrated work What is History, is an interpretation, then Nagaswamy’s version is not the only one.
Rajesh Venkatasubramanian is the author of Manuscripts, Memory and History: Classical Tamil Literature in Colonial India and teaches history at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IISER Mohali.