The man who got the West to fall in love with India’s sacred literature

The first European translation of the Bhagavad Gita, a dialogue between Prince Arjuna and Lord Krishna, appeared in English in 1785. Strangely, this classic of Indian spirituality, which is much concerned with liberation, was prefaced with talk of conquest, rightful dominion and chains of subjection.

The translation had been produced under the auspices of the English East India Company, then in the process of claiming for itself ever-larger swaths of territory in India. The first edition incorporated a letter written by the governor-general in Calcutta, Warren Hastings, in which he compared the Gita with Homer and Milton. He also noted its usefulness as a source of intelligence on a newly subject people and the potential for English interest in the Gita to soften Indians’ hearts towards their rulers.

Hastings even hoped that some of the young men going out to India to earn some fast money as Company traders might read the Bhagavad Gita and be drawn away from what he rather diplomatically described as ‘meaner occupations’. These included alcohol, opium, gambling, mistresses, prostitutes, tobacco, illicit money-making and violent crime.

When, in our own times, conversations about the British empire tend to degenerate into the asserting of polarised positions – ‘stain on our history’ versus ‘what about the railways?’ – it is remarkable to look back and find colonial politics intertwining with appreciation for India’s sacred literature.

This year marks the 250th anniversary of a milestone in that process: the publication, by the lawyer and linguist Sir William Jones, of a ground-breaking argument – made first in English and then again in scholarly Latin, garnering him a wider audience – in favour of ‘Asiatic poetry’. 

European poetry had become dry and repetitive of late, Jones claimed: the same old images and allusions.