New Perspectives on Science, Medicine, and Language in Modern South Asia

In this essay commissioned by Associate Editor Fa-ti Fan, Andrew Amstutz reviews “Indigenous Knowledges and Colonial Sciences in South Asia,” a special issue of the journal South Asian History and Culture (Volume 13, Issue 1, Routledge, 2022). With the readership of EASTS in mind, this essay offers an excellent review with a special focus on historiographical and methodological issues relevant in the field of STS. It provides us with a much-needed update of recent scholarship on STS in South Asia.

—EASTS Editorial Office

1 Introduction

Over the past few years, scholars of South Asia have taken up the “entangled fabric of science and society,” in Banu Subramaniam’s eloquent terms (2019: 36). A special issue, “Indigenous Knowledges and Colonial Sciences in South Asia,” which was published in 2022 in South Asian History and Culture, draws on impressive archival, ethnographic, and linguistic work to follow the many threads running through this “entangled fabric.” Specifically, the special issue tackles three long-standing themes in the study of science and medicine in South Asia: the interface between European categories of scientific knowledge and existing categories in India during British colonization, the question of how different languages shaped the production of scientific and medical knowledge, and the examination of how Indian knowledge cultures were radically transformed under British rule and were also the sites of significant continuities. In addressing these connective threads, the authors move between different textual genres and sites in the Indian subcontinent. While the articles are centered on the period of British colonial dominance from the late eighteenth century until the 1940s, the authors also address what comes before and after.

The special issue in South Asian History and Culture (or SAHC) is part of wider transformations in the histories of science and medicine in South Asia. Specifically, it responds to the shift away from frameworks of dissemination and dispersal of scientific knowledge and towards sustained attention to local agency, adaptations, and creative redeployment. In turn, the SAHC special issue contributes to a growing focus on small and everyday technologies in the making of modernity in South Asia (Arnold 2013; Mukharji 2016), rather than the impact of big, charismatic technologies, as well as to studies of the sciences and traditional medicines in South Asia as ‘multi-stranded spools selectively braided together’ (Mukharji 2016: 27). It also contributes to an exciting new wave of scholarship on the production of scientific knowledge in South Asian languages in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Qidwai 2019; Lanzillo 2021; Singh 2022b). Said another way, the six articles in the special issue are part of renewed explorations of the many modernities of science in South Asia.

The SAHC special issue opens with two articles on traditional forms of astronomy and astrology in India. First, Kim Plofker explores the creative ways in which practitioners of the Sanskrit astral sciences incorporated European knowledge on their own terms. Second, Caterina Guenzi follows the career of the concept of “useful knowledge” for two centuries in India through the case study of astrology as an academic discipline (2022: 34). The next two articles take-up the work of language. First, Charu Singh examines the making of an influential science glossary in Hindi in the early twentieth century. Minakshi Menon then addresses how botany and linguistic research were entangled in the efforts of early colonial officials. The final two articles turn to Ayurveda, probably the most globally recognized of South Asia’s many traditional medicines. First, Cristina Pecchia investigates the intertwined practices of philology and printing in the transmission of medical knowledge and community formation in Bengal in the nineteenth century. And finally, Anthony Cerulli examines Ayurvedic pedagogical and medical practices in contemporary Kerala.

In what follows, I will address the three connective threads running through the “entangled fabric” of the sciences and South Asian societies that were mentioned above: (1) the interface between European colonial and indigenous categories of scientific knowledge; (2) the role of language in the production of scientific and medical knowledge; and (3) continuities and ruptures in scientific and medical knowledge traditions in South Asia.

2 Colonial Sciences and Indigenous Knowledge

The British Empire certainly looms large in these scientific undertakings. As the title of the special issue notes, the authors take seriously the themes of “indigenous knowledges” and “colonial sciences.” And in offering a useful series of case studies of how scientific concepts were translated and transformed in India under British colonial rule, the SAHC special issue adopts a pragmatic approach to conceptual terms. In so doing, the special issue contributes to wider efforts to attend to how non-Western knowledge traditions incorporated Western knowledge on their own terms.

So, what does this pragmatic approach entail? As Menon notes, “‘Indigenous knowledges’ is used here primarily (and pragmatically) to mark a chronological divide—between the thought worlds of South Asia before and after the arrival of European colonialism” (Menon 2022a: 3). Similarly, she proposes a working definition of “colonial sciences” as “think[ing] of different knowledge forms being brought together … for purposes of resource extraction or governance” (Menon 2022a: 7).

The expansion of the East India Company’s empire in India during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries transformed categories of knowledge in India, while facilitating some notable continuities. Specifically, historians of science and medicine have both addressed how the colonial “contact zone” created opportunities for some South Asians and attended to the role of difference in the calcification of the social hierarchies of colonial rule. And the SAHC special issue contributes to the larger transition away from studies of imperial science as western science and towards the examination of the central, if often unequal, participation of people in colonized societies in the making of global modernity. In so doing, the special issue is part of a sustained focus on scientific processes and practices, or as Charu Singh (2021: 224) puts it elsewhere, “questions about … practitioners, patrons, and publics.” While the actors and audiences are different in each article, most are upper-caste men. However, the diversity of the Indian subcontinent is not just context for the articles, but rather essential to the methods of analysis.

So how were scientific concepts translated and transformed in India? One of the best illustrations of how a distinctive colonial category was reworked is found in Guenzi’s study of astrology. Expanding on scholarship on “useful knowledge” (Dodson 2002; Gurevitch 2021), Guenzi recovers the “usefulness” of astrology on its own terms. She tracks the changing use of the concept of useful knowledge from the early nineteenth century when it was deployed by British officials in relation to “engrafting” Western knowledge on Indian education (Guenzi 2022: 36). Guenzi follows the checkered career of useful knowledge through debates over astrology in university curricula to the contemporary establishment of Vedic astrology departments in India.

The special issue also reconsiders a supposedly ascendant body of European scientific knowledge—mathematical astronomy—from the perspective of an Indian knowledge tradition. In Plofker’s study of Sanskrit astronomy, she takes “a particular Sanskrit knowledge system itself as our central representative of science” (19). In this way, she addresses how mathematical astronomy was interpreted not as an external interruption, but rather as a viable component within Sanskrit astronomy (Plofker 2022: 19). This is a powerful example of what Projit Mukharji (2016: 23) has termed the need to better “explore how ‘Western’ scientific intelligence might have conversely fitted into other, non-Western traditions of natural knowledge.” This leads to the question of what was the role of language in these processes of scientific translation and transformation?

3 Language and Science in Modern South Asia

Language has often served as a powerful tool for political experimentation and activism in South Asia in ways that both challenge and reinforce divisions of region, class, caste, and religion (Ramaswamy 1997; Deshpande 2007; Mitchell 2009; Mir 2010; Datla 2013, among others). For the centuries before British dominance, scholars have explored the work of language, broadly construed, in the production of scientific knowledge (Pingree 2003; Pollock 2011; Gurevitch 2021, for example). The SAHC special issue is part of an exciting new wave of scholarly work considering the role of South Asian languages, other than English, in the production of scientific knowledge in the subsequent eras of colonial rule and independence (the late eighteenth century to the present). Singh (2022a), for example, argues that the archives of the Hindi science glossary that she studies have suffered a dual neglect both by historians of science and scholars of language.

Philology, printing, and translation have long been essential elements in explanations of the expansion of the British Empire in India (Cohn 1996; Dodson 2005). This sustained attention to language is a product both of its prominent place in colonial education policies and its ready mobilization for more localized political projects. Specifically, some South Asians deployed science-related language skills to work with the expanding East India Company state, to challenge the British Empire, and ultimately to think beyond the confines of nationalism.

What the SAHC special issue brings to this existing body of scholarship on philology is renewed attention to how philology—and other forms of language work—served as potent zones of scientific experimentation. As Menon notes, “virtuoso philological practice” was central to the production of botanical knowledge in South Asia (Menon 2022b: 98). For some early colonial official, such as William Jones, philological practice relied upon “observational practices based on trained seeing” (Menon 2022b: 87). The ways in which philology served as a zone of botanical experimentation is illustrated by what Menon (2022b: 97) terms “philological empiricism.” In her telling, “philological empiricism” involved “scrutiny of others’ linguistic worlds,” careful attention to discursive practices, and “observational modes that privileged trained seeing” (Menon 2022b: 105).

In response to the interest, some might say obsession, of early British colonial scholars in discovering the textual origins of South Asian religious traditions, influential Indian intellectuals often attempted to construct ancient roots for the modern sciences in India through philology. Said another way, philology became an important arena for interactions, however unequal, between European scholars and existing Indian elites. In her study of Ayurveda, Pecchia demonstrates how some South Asians deployed philology, lexicography, and translation to challenge both colonial forms of knowledge and dominant national narratives. While this Indian turn to philology challenged colonial knowledge projects, at times, it also bolstered existing hierarchies of gender, class, and caste. In turn, as the nineteenth century progressed, the divide between the use of the English language for university sciences and vernacular languages for mass education profoundly shaped the production of scientific knowledge.

The past few years have witnessed sustained attention to different archives for the history of science in modern South Asia in languages other than English. Singh, for one, argues that the production of scientific glossaries in Hindi generated a rich archive of political and intellectual experimentation. The Ayurvedic printing house also emerges as an important site for overlapping philological and medical practices. Pecchia not only attends to the different approaches of Ayurvedic publishers and philologists, but also to their diverging cultural politics. In turn, Cerulli (2022) presents the home-based Ayurvedic clinic and classroom in Kerala as a dynamic space in which linguistic practices were essential to medicine, or as Menon (2022a: 14) frames it, “philology as clinical practice.” In summary, the SAHC special issue reveals continued experimentation in language for scientific knowledge and medical practice well into the present. This brings us to the final theme, that of continuities and ruptures in scientific and medical knowledge cultures in South Asia under British rule.

4 Continuities and Ruptures

The SAHC special issue contributes to wider efforts to demonstrate how scientific and medical knowledge traditions in South Asia were inherently dynamic and already transnational before colonial contact. In a recent study, Sabrina Datoo proposes a model of sustained “persistence” of medical courtly cultures in India from the precolonial period into the twentieth century (2020: 86). In turn, the SAHC special issue reveals significant creative “persistence” in scientific and medical knowledge traditions across the Indian subcontinent.

Ayurveda—a prominent body of traditional medicine in South Asia—is the site of significant continuities. Moreover, moments of change are less dictated by government policies, whether that of the colonial or post-colonial states, but rather by longer-term shifts in learning practices. In the case of Ayurvedic education in Kerala, home-based (gurukula) education continued from the late eighteenth century into the present despite various reform movements. Cerulli argues that in these home-based clinics, premodern texts continue to shape Ayurvedic education. However, this is not a static form of learning. Rather the standardization of curricula in Ayurvedic colleges in the twentieth century gradually sidelined some philological practices. Significant changes are underfoot in the present not only in terms of the much tighter integration of Ayurveda with biomedicine but also the increasing importance of textbooks in home-based education.

The astral sciences are another important arena for creative persistence. In her analysis of how Sanskrit astral sciences incorporated European knowledge, Plofker argues that ultimately the demise of traditional forms of astrology and astronomy in India was not due to “any intrinsic weakness” when faced with European astronomical research. Rather it was the determination of British colonial officials to strip out existing internal mechanisms for “adaptations” and “coexistence” in the Sanskrit astral sciences, as part of their insistence on recovering a purified textual core of Indian religious traditions, that contributed to the diminished use of the Sanskrit astral sciences (Guenzi 2022: 31). In turn, a compelling element of Guenzi’s account of the career of “useful knowledge” is the creative ways in which South Asians redeployed this category for their own ends.

When changes did occur, they were more often due to internal dynamics within South Asian knowledge traditions than external pressures. Take, for example, the much-discussed colonial education reforms in the 1830s. In 1835, following debates over whether the British government in India should focus on funding Sanskrit and Persian-medium instruction or English, the English Education Act was passed to support English-medium learning. Often quoted passages from Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “Minute on Education” have retrospectively framed this shift in linguistic policy as a key moment in the calcification of British disregard for Indian literature and languages. While historians have demonstrated that the impact of these reforms was less drastic than often assumed, the 1835 English Education Act has served as a key reference point in narrating shifts in the production of knowledge in South Asia.

Refreshingly, the SAHC special issue both addresses these colonial reforms and destabilizes their significance with more localized developments. Pecchia  (2022) argues that the 1835 changes in education policy did end limited colonial support for nascent Ayurvedic publishing in the 1830s. However, the lack of printed Ayurvedic medical texts was not only a result of changes in colonial policy, but also due to enduring local learning practices centered on memorization and manuscripts. In fact, when Ayurveda finally enjoyed a printing boom a few decades later in the 1870s, this was due both to commercial printing opportunities and to new attitudes towards the printed book.

5 Conclusion

In conclusion, I would be remiss not to mention that this special issue tackles the looming issue of majoritarian nationalism in South Asia and its relationship to claimed scientific pasts. Many of the topics that this special issue takes up—from Sanskrit and the astral sciences to Ayurveda and Hindi—are often deployed in contemporary constellations of religious nationalism. One of the many admirable elements of the special issue is that the authors simultaneously challenge colonial categories of knowledge and critique religiously defined cultural nationalisms, or what Mukharji (2016: 30) terms the importance of recuperating other modernities that were “neither autochthonous nor authentic.”

In summary, the special issue “Indigenous Knowledges and Colonial Sciences in South Asia” in South Asian History and Culture provides important new insights into the histories of science and medicine in modern South Asia. The six articles contribute to ongoing efforts to better understand the distinctive modernities of traditional medical and scientific knowledge cultures in the Indian subcontinent as well as to exciting new work on the role of language in the making of the modern sciences in South Asia.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Amstutz

Andrew Amstutz is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He received his PhD from Cornell University, and he was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 2021. He has published articles in South Asia and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.