SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE : A BRIEF SURVEY
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Swami Vivekananda’s Thoughts on
Language : A Brief Survey
SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYA
S
wami Vivekananda’s thoughts on
language have been explored in this
essay through a brief survey of his
philosophical approach, his historical
observations on Sanskrit and its affinity with
other languages, his personal experience as a
student of languages, and his approach to his
own mother tongue, the Bengali language.
His philosophy of language was expounded
by him in his commentary on Patanjali’s
Yogasutras. One may consider language to
be coeval with human history for man is a
thinking animal and no thought is possible
without words. Shabda (sound), artha
(meaning) and jnàna (knowledge) form a
triad in traditional theory of knowledge.
Vivekananda brings to the discourse a new
scientific dimension in looking at shabda or
sound as a vibration that creates responses in
the nerves, and in turn mental responses.
Thus the traditional philosophical view is
juxtaposed by him with the view from the
angle of physics and physiology. As regards
the history of languages, he was familiar
with Sir William Jones’s discovery of
affinities between Sanskrit and old Persian
and Greek and Latin, and thereafter some
modern European languages. Vivekananda
was however skeptical of racial theories then
being propounded in Europe. He emphasized
repeatedly the historical evidence of
admixture of races. As far as the evolution of
Sanskrit language is concerned, he suggests
that Sanskrit ceased to be an everyday
spoken language three thousand years ago.
When it was a spoken language, the style
was direct and simple, but it became ornate
and difficult in those times and places where
it became a dead language. He admired on
the one hand the simple language of
Patanjali or Shankaracharya, and on the
other, the language of preceptors like
Buddha or Chaitanya or Ramakrishna
Paramahansa who spoke in the language of
the common people. In his brief life
Vivekananda mastered Sanskrit and English
and Bengali and it is an evidence of his
unquenchable thirst for knowledge that only
three years before his death he acquired a
working knowledge in another language,
French. He was an admirer of Western
scholars like Max Muller who translated
India’s cultural treasures for the benefit of
the world; he himself tried his hand at
translation occasionally, but in his hyperactive life he never had the requisite leisure.
However, he applied his mind to the task of
reconstituting Bengali language, to get rid of
ornate Sanskritic style; he himself practised
what he preached but it is a paradox that
sometimes he wrote in a majestic Sanskritic
style. We surmise that he did so when the
theme so demanded and an inspiration took
hold of him. His contribution to Bengali
language has not received sufficient
recognition. And that is equally true of his
thoughts on language from the philosophical,
historical and pragmatic point of view.
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SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYA
Vivekananda’s philosophical
thoughts on language
I will begin with the most difficult part
of my task. What was the basic element in
Vivekananda’s theory of language? I believe
this is to be found in Vivekananda’s
exposition of Patanjali’s Yogasutra. These
sutras translated by him with his
commentaries or teekà form part of his book
on Ràja Yoga. He comments on Patanjali’s
aphorism: Tasya vàcakah pranavah. ‘Every
idea that you have in the mind has a
counterpart in a word; the word and the
thought are inseparable. The external part of
one and the same thing is what we call word,
and the internal part is what we call thought.
No man can, by analysis, separate thought
from word.’1 Vivekananda goes on to say
that one cannot think of a time when man
did not have thoughts and thought meant
words. He says: ‘So long as man has existed
there have been words and language’. The
words find expression in sounds and these
sounds may differ from one human group to
another. ‘Although we see that there must
always be a word with a thought, it is not
necessary that the same thought requires the
same word. The thought may be the same in
twenty different countries, yet the language
is different. We must have a word to express
each thought, but these words need not
necessarily have the same sound. Sounds
will vary in different nations.’2
The next step in Vivekananda’s
exposition of the theory of language is to
elaborate the idea that words are sound
(shabda) carrying a meaning (artha) which
evoke or reflect thought that constitutes
knowledge (jnàna). Words are symbols of
which the external manifestation is sound,
a physical phenomenon,—indeed science
will see them as vibrations. ‘The
connection between thoughts and sounds is
24
good only if there be a real connection
between the thing signified and the symbol;
until then that symbol will never come into
general use. A symbol is the manifester of
the thing signified, and if the thing
signified has already an existence, and if,
by experience, we know that the symbol
has expressed that thing many times, then
we are sure that there is a real relation
between them. Even if the things are not
present, there will be thousands who will
know them by their symbols.’ 3 Further
Vivekananda elaborates this idea in his
work on Karma-yoga. ‘We hear a sound.
First, there is the external vibration;
second, the nerve motion that carries it to
the mind; third, the reaction from the mind,
along with which flashes the knowledge of
the object which was the external cause of
these different changes from the ethereal
vibrations to the mental reactions. These
three are called in Yoga, Shabda (sound),
Artha (meaning), and Jnàna (knowledge).
In the language of physics and physiology
they are called the ethereal vibration, the
motion in the nerve and brain, and the
mental reaction.’ 4 Thus Vivekananda
presents to us a combination of a scientific
understanding of a sound as a vibration at
one end, and at the other the word that
helps constitute all knowledge from the
point of view of yoga.
In Karma-Yoga Vivekananda develops
the same theme, words in a language. It is
important, he says, to understand ‘the
relation between thought and word and what
can be achieved by the power of the word. In
every religion the power of the word is
recognised, so much so that in some of them
creation itself is said to have come out of the
word. The external aspect of the thought of
God is the Word, and as God thought and
willed before He created, creation came out
of the Word.’5 The implicit reference to the
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SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE : A BRIEF SURVEY
famous passage in the Bible is obvious: in
the beginning was the Word.
According to Vivekananda the role of
the Word is important also in everyday life,
but we are not aware of it. ‘Apart from the
higher philosophic and religious value of the
Word, we may see that sound symbols play a
prominent part in the drama of human life. I
am talking to you. I am not touching you; the
pulsations of the air caused by my speaking
go into your ear, they touch your nerves and
produce effects in your minds. . . . Think of
the power of words! They are a great force
in higher philosophy as well as in common
life. Day and night we manipulate this force
without thought and without inquiry’. 6
However apart from the everyday life, there
is the higher role of words in Vivekananda’s
interpretation. Vivekananda also points out
that the Bible teaches that ‘In the beginning
was the Word’. In many belief systems and
in the Sanskrit traditions in India, the word
carries the imprint of God. ‘. . . every word
is the power of God. The word is only the
external manifestation on the material plane.
So, all this manifestation is just the
manifestation on the material plane; and the
Word is the Vedas, and Sanskrit is the
language of God.’7
Vivekananda’s historical
approach to language
Let us now turn from Vivekananda’s
philosophical approach to language to his
historical views on language. He was aware
of Sir William Jones’s work in this regard.
As you know, in the 1780s Jones, a judge in
the highest court of British India in Calcutta
and the founder of the Asiatic Society of
Calcutta, discovered affinities between
Sanskrit and classical Greek and Latin
languages and hence the link with the
majority of European languages and
Sanskrit. Vivekananda repeatedly refers to
this link. ‘With their tremendous power of
analysis, the Germans found that there was a
similarity between Sanskrit and all the
European languages. Among the ancient
languages, Greek was the nearest to it in
resemblance. Later, it was found that there
was a language called Lithuanian, spoken
somewhere on the shores of the Baltic—an
independent kingdom at that time and
unconnected with Russia. The language of
the Lithuanians is strikingly similar to
Sanskrit. . . . Then came the theory that there
was one race in ancient times who called
themselves Aryans. . . . Vast masses of
literature are existing in all these Aryan
tongues: in Greek, in Latin, in modern
European languages—German, English,
French – in ancient Persian, in modern
Persian and in Sanskrit.’8
However, we must note that
Vivekananda, a deeply learned man, was
skeptical of racial theories. He said, these
are theories and have not been proven yet.
And further he surmised that possibly
Sanskrit was the spoken language when the
Vedas were composed. But ‘. . . the Sanskrit
that we have now was never a spoken
language, at least for the last three thousand
years. . . . It was not spoken in the homes; it
was only the language of the learned. Even
in the times of Buddha, which was about
560 years before the Christian era, we find
that Sanskrit had ceased to be a spoken
language. . . . And that is how it has come
about that the Buddhistic literature is in Pali,
which was the vernacular of that time.’9
Vivekananda observes that Shankaràchàrya,
despite his intellectual brilliance, ‘could be
of little service to the masses’ because of
‘making Sanskrit the only vehicle of
communication. Ràmànuja on the other hand
. . . appeals through the popular tongue [and]
completely succeeded in bringing the masses
back to the Vedic religion.’10 Apart from the
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SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYA
issue of language, Vivekananda was critical
of Shankara because the sage had
commended casteism and excluded Shudras
from sacred knowledge. In 1889 in a letter to
an eminent Sanskrit scholar of those times,
he exclaims, ‘Why should the Shudra not
study the Upanishad?’ Shankaràchàrya
depended on the authority of the Smriti texts
and the Mahàbhàrata. Vivekananda rejected
that evidence and argued that in the
Mahàbhàrata ‘. . . we find clear proofs
about caste being based on qualification’
and not birth. Further he states, ‘The
doctrine of caste in the Purusha-Sukta of the
Vedas does not make it hereditary.’11 On the
whole Vivekananda rejected the caste-based
bias in Shankara’s writings and other
authorities, and desired the end of exclusion
of certain castes from shastric studies. One
major reason for his admiration for Buddha
(‘The Lord Buddha is my Ishta—my God!’)
was the fact that he broke ‘wide open the
gates’ which had been closed to some castes,
as well as the deliberate choice Buddha
made in talking to his disciples in popular
language rather than Sanskrit.12 This is a
quotation from a letter to his monastic
brother Akhandananda, and incidentally
such letters serve to illustrate the high
intellectual level of the company
Vivekananda kept in the Math of the
Ramakrishna Order in his times.
Vivekananda had a veneration for the
Sanskrit language which he called ‘the
miracle of language which was called
Sanskrit or “perfected”’.13 India’s ‘religion,
its philosophy, its history, its ethics, its
politics, were all inlaid in a flower-bed of
poetic imagery. . . . The aid of melodious
numbers [ie rhyme] was invoked even to
express the hard facts of mathematics.’14
Here Vivekananda is talking about Sanskrit
works of science which were written in
rhyme, partly a consequence of the literary
26
tradition and partly a consequence of the
practices of preserving and dispersing
knowledge in oral form in metrical
compositions to aid memorizing and
recitation. An important point to note is that
the language of the Aryan became the
vehicle of preservation and transmission of
culture and Vivekananda insightfully notes
the emergence of a nation united by culture.
He wrote in words which remind us of the
words of the song ‘Jana-gana-mana’ by his
contemporary Tagore. ‘We catch a glimpse
of different races—Dravidians, Tartars, and
Aboriginals pouring in their quota of blood,
of speech, of manners and religions. And at
last a great nation emerges to our view—still
keeping the type of the Aryan—stronger,
broader, and more organised by the
assimilation. We find the central assimilative
core giving its type and character to the
whole mass, clinging on with great pride to
its name of “Aryan”, and, though willing to
give other races the benefits of its
civilisation, it was by no means willing to
admit them within the “Aryan” pale.’15
What I find remarkable in this statement
is Vivekananda’s objectivity in admitting
that on the one hand a ‘great nation’ was
emerging in the intermixture of various
ethnic groups and castes, and on the other
the persistence of principle of exclusion did
not admit everyone ‘within the Aryan
pale.’16 An objective mind can be seen in
Vivekananda’s pronouncement, and that
objectivity is also reflected in his consistent
skepticism regarding racial theories. In his
memoirs of his European travels he records
the racial theories current in Europe in the
1890s but he adds a caveat; ‘Pray, do not lay
the blame on me.’ Further, he emphasizes
the admixture of races.’17 Thus he distanced
himself from Aryan racism which was
gaining ground in Europe and in the long
run led to the rise of Nazism.
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SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE : A BRIEF SURVEY
On theories concerning the Aryans
It should be noted that Vivekananda’s
views about the theory of ‘Aryan’ migration
to India changed over time. In 1894 he
seems to have supported the view that they
had migrated to India: ‘To the great
tablelands of the high Himalaya mountains
first came the Aryans’ and then they settled
in the country properly and spread over its
vast areas.18 In 1896 in a lecture on the
‘History of the Aryan Race’ in London he
says that there is ‘the theory that there was
one race in ancient times who called
themselves Aryans . . . [who] spoke Sanskrit
and lived in Central Asia’; their migration,
according to this theory, led to the birth of
nations speaking Greek, German, French etc
and that explains linguistic links between
Sanskrit, ancient Persian and some European
languages. But Vivekananda adds that
‘These are theories and have not been
proved yet.’ 19 In 1900 in a lecture in
California
on
the
Mahàbhàrata,
Vivekananda states: ‘The Aryans came into
India in small companies. Gradually, these
tribes began to extend, until, at last, they
became the undisputed rulers of India.’20
Among the papers discovered after
Vivekananda passed away there were notes
containing forty-two points of a syllabus he
made for studying Indian philosophy and
civilization; among these points, reproduced
in his Complete Works, was his comment:
‘The Aryas in their oldest records were in
the land between Turkistan and the Punjab
and N.W.Tibet.’21 The Complete Works also
contains, among ‘Notes of Class Talks and
Lectures’, a note on ‘Hindu and Greek’
civilizations: ‘When the Aryans reached
India . . . they became introspective and
developed religion. . . . Another branch of
the Aryans went into the smaller and more
picturesque country of Greece. . . .’22
In the article ‘The Problem of Modern
India and Its Solution’, which he wrote for
the Udbodhana published on 14 January
1899, there was a long passage on the Aryan
migration theories and their validity.
Whether this race slowly proceeded from
Central Asia, Northern Europe, or the Arctic
regions, and gradually came down and
sanctified India by settling there at last, or
whether the holy land of India was their
original native place, we have no proper
means of knowing now. Or whether a vast
race living in or outside India, being
displaced from its original abode, in
conformity with natural laws, came in the
course of time to colonise and settle over
Europe and other places—and whether these
people were white or black, blue-eyed or
dark-eyed, golden-haired or black-haired—
all these matters—there is no sufficient
ground to prove now, with the one exception
of the fact of the kinship of Sanskrit with a
few European languages. Similarly, it is not
easy to arrive at a final conclusion as to the
modern Indians, whether they all are the
pure descendants of that race, or how much
of the blood of that race is flowing in their
veins, or again, what races amongst them
have any of that even in them. However, we
do not, in fact, lose much by this
uncertainty.23
That it is of no great importance, is an
important statement of his attitude. Instead
of giving dubious judgements on racial
history, Vivekananda preferred to focus
upon the civilizational values he saw in
history, the confluence between various
civilizations and the ‘universal brotherhood
among men’.24 It is also clear that he was
questioning the veracity of the theories he
describes. He pushed forward this
questioning further in his article ‘Prachya o
Paschatya’ in the second year of the journal
Udbodhana in 1900 (Ashadh, 1307
Bangabda). In this article he was critical of
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SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYA
the absence of evidence in favour of the
theory that Aryans migrated into India. He
emphasizes the contrast between European
civilization and Indian civilization and says:
And what your European Pundits say about
the Aryan’s swooping down from some
foreign land, snatching away the lands of the
aborigines and settling in India by
exterminating them, is all pure nonsense,
foolish talk! Strange, that our Indian
scholars, too, say amen to them; and all
these monstrous lies are being taught to our
boys! . . . I am an ignoramus myself; I do not
pretend to any scholarship; but with the little
that I understand, I strongly protested
against these ideas at the Paris Congress.
[The reference is to the Paris Exposition of
1900.] I have been talking with the Indian
and European savants on the subject, and
hope to raise many objections to this theory
in detail, when time permits. . . . Whenever
the Europeans find an opportunity, they
exterminate the aborigines and settle down
in ease and comfort on their lands; and
therefore they think the Aryans must have
done the same! . . . In what Veda, in what
Sukta, do you find that the Aryans came into
India from a foreign country? Where do you
get the idea that they slaughtered the wild
aborigines?25
We see here Swami Vivekananda
reconsidering the theory of Aryan migration
and extermination of the original inhabitants
and he rejects the view that the latter were
expelled from their land or slaughtered like
the aborigines in European colonies.
One final point in this connection is to
remember that while Vivekananda admired
the original Sanskritic culture of ancient
times, he was not a worshipper of everything
in that glorious ‘Aryan’ past. He was firmly
opposed to ‘slavish panegyrists who cling to
every village superstition as the innermost
essence of the Shàstras’, at the same time
he condemned the ‘other extreme of
28
demoniacal denouncers who see no good in
us and in our history.’26 In the same spirit
Vivekananda also denounced the politicians’
tendency to use an ancient religion for
political purposes: ‘People in these days are
apt to take up religion as a means to some
social or political end. Beware of this.
Religion is its own end.’27 This assertion of
the autonomy of the spiritual domain and his
denunciation of the political misuse of
religion is of prime importance.
Vivekananda as a language learner
Since we are considering Vivekananda’s
approach to language, it will be interesting
to pose the question: What was
Vivekananda’s personal experience as a
student of languages? It seems that even
before he began to go to school he was
taught elements of Bengali, English and
Sanskrit. According to the authoritative
biography published by the Ramakrishna
Mission, Narendranath learned from his
mother, before he began to attend school, the
Bengali alphabet and the First Book of
English by Pyari Charan Sarkar. But the
most important part of his education in early
childhood was being taught by a senior
relative Nrisimha Datta. Nrisimha taught
him to memorize the Sanskrit grammar
Mugdhabodha, some passages from the
Ràmàyana and the Mahàbhàrata as well as
some hymns to gods in Sanskrit. 28 His
youngest brother Bhupendranath Datta
(1880-1896) has recorded that young
Narendranath took his entrance examination
from Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar’s
Metropolitan Institution and secured good
marks in English and Sanskrit and overall
First Division in the year 1879.29 Later as
Vivekananda’s interest in Sanskrit became
deeper he began to study along with his
colleagues in the Ramakrishna Ashrama the
authoritative grammar by Pànini; since they
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SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE : A BRIEF SURVEY
had no money to buy it, Pànini’s work was
borrowed from a Sanskrit scholar,
Pramadadas Mitra, in 1888. Vivekananda
wrote to him that ‘a full measure of
proficiency in the Vedic language is
impossible without first mastering Pànini’s
grammar’.30 Vivekananda tried to ensure that
in his ashrama the study of Sanskrit was
given due importance with a view to opening
the possibility of cultivation of knowledge of
Sanskrit classics and philosophical works.31
Vivekananda’s interest in learning
languages was undiminished even when he
had reached his late thirties. When he was
thirty-six year of age he began to learn a new
language. We find him writing to Josephine
MacLeod in 1899: ‘Now I am going to study
French if you give me a lesson every day;
but no grammar business—only I will read
and you explain in English.’32 Next year the
great Paris Exposition was to be held and he
writes to Mary Hale ‘. . . I am going to learn
French. If I fail to do it this year, I cannot
“do” the Paris Exposition next year
properly.’33 In March 1900 he writes again
to Mary Hale that he expected to meet
friends in Paris soon ‘. . . and parler
francaise! I am getting by heart a French
dictionnaire!’34 Next month he writes to
Sister Nivedita again about studying French
and says in jest, ‘. . . and in Paris we are
going to conquer the Froggies.’35 Six months
later in October 1900 we find him writing a
long letter in French to Sister Christine;
among other things he reflects on his own
language learning: ‘It may be that I shall
give a few lectures in Paris . . . , but they
will be in English with an interpreter. I have
no time any more, nor the power to study a
new language at my age. I am an old man,
isn’t it?’36 It appears that he had acquired
enough French to read and write but did not
feel confident to speak in public in French.
However in Paris he was a guest of a French
author Jules Bois so as to learn the French
language in conversation with him. He
writes that he read in the British Museum the
works of Maspero, a famous French
Egyptologist, in the original French
language because the translation available
was not satisfactory.37 Thus Vivekananda
acquired working knowledge of French just
three years before his death, an evidence of
his unquenchable thirst for knowledge till
his last days.
Vivekananda’s thoughts on translation
Since knowledge is to be found in all
languages and it is not possible to learn them
all, man must depend on translation. In
Vivekananda’s thoughts about language,
translation from one language to another,
specially from Sanskrit to other living
languages, had a central place. He spoke
often about the influence of the translations
of Hindu philosophical texts on
Schopenhauer’s philosophical thinking.38 He
admired the interpreters of India to Europe,
Max Muller, Monier Williams, Sir William
Hunter and German orientalists.39 Among
the latter was Paul Deussen, Professor of
Philosophy at Kiel, who was Vivekananda’s
travelling companion for a while in
Germany, Holland and England. Above all
he admired Max Müller, ‘We Hindus
certainly owe more to him than to any other
Sanskrit scholar in the West. . . . [He] has
done a thousand times more for the
preservation, spreading, and appreciation of
the literature of our forefathers than any of
us can ever hope to do. . . .’ 40 Among
Müller’s works, Vivekananda considered his
translation of Rigveda his greatest
achievement. Vivekananda himself tried his
hand at translation occasionally. One
instance is his translation from Sanskrit to
English in his writings on Patanajli’s
Yogasutra verses in his book on Ràja-Yoga.
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SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYA
Another instance is the translation of
Bhartrihari’s verses on Renunciation which
were published first by Sister Nivedita; later
an expanded version was published in 1968,
after the discovery of a manuscript in
Vivekananda’s own handwriting. An
example of his translation from English was
his work on Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of
Christ. In his hyper-active life he never had
the leisure to undertake lengthy translations
but he urged his followers to do so. For
instance, to Alasinga, the editor of the
Brahmavadin, his advice was: ‘The average
Western [reader] neither knows nor cares to
know all about jaw-breaking Sanskrit terms
and technicalities. . . . Use the translation of
every Sanskrit term carefully and make
things as simple as possible.’41
Vivekananda on the Bengali language
The last question I propose to address is:
What was Vivekananda’s approach to his
own language, Bengali? He was an ardent
admirer of his mother tongue. For example,
he recalled his thrill in observing Bengali
alphabets being used in writing quotations
from Sanskrit mantras on the walls of
temples in Japan. ‘You may imagine the
surprise with which I noticed written on the
walls of Chinese and Japanese temples some
well-known Sanskrit Mantras, and possibly
it will please you all the more to know that
they were all in old Bengali characters,
standing even in the present day as a
monument of missionary energy and zeal
displayed by our forefathers of Bengal.’42
Generally Vivekananda preferred simple
Bengali language close to the colloquial
form so that the message was clear to the
common reader. In a small essay ‘On
Bengali language’ he made four important
points. First, the practice of great saints he
admired was to speak and write in simple
language, the language of the people. He
30
specifically mentions the language of
Gautam Buddha, Sri Chaitanya and
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. ‘In our country,
owing to all learning being in Sanskrit from
the ancient times, there has arisen an
immeasurable gulf between the learned and
the common folk. All the great personages,
from Buddha down to Chaitanya and
Ramakrishna, who came for the well-being
of the world, taught the common people in
the language of the people themselves.’43
Second, he pointed out that in early times
when Sanskrit was a spoken language, the
language was direct and simple; when it
became a dead language it became ornate
and artificial. ‘Look at the Sanskrit of the
Bràhmanas,
at
Shabara
Swami’s
commentary on the Mimàmsà philosophy,
the Mahàbhàshya of Patanjali, and, finally,
at the great commentary of âchàrya
Shankara: and look also at the Sanskrit of
comparatively recent times. You will at once
understand that so long as a man is alive, he
talks a living language, but when he is dead,
he speaks a dead language.’44 Thirdly, he
recommended that a highly Sanskritised
form of Bengali language was to be avoided
for it did not speak to the people and could
not reach their heart. Finally, he said that the
dialect of Calcutta was in his opinion the
most suitable. ‘Of course, scholarship is an
excellent thing; but cannot scholarship be
displayed through any other medium than a
language that is stiff and unintelligible, that
is unnatural and merely artificial?. . . Our
language is becoming artificial by imitating
the slow and pompous movement—and only
that—of Sanskrit. And language is the chief
means and index of a nation’s progress. . . .
We must accept that which is gaining
strength and spreading through natural laws,
that is to say, the language of Calcutta. East
or west, from wheresoever people may
come, once they breathe in the air of
Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture  June 2016
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE : A BRIEF SURVEY
Calcutta, they are found to speak the
language in vogue there; so nature herself
points out which language to write in. . . .’45
Vivekananda considered Patanjali the author
of best prose in Sanskrit while Kavikankan
Mukundaram was the best in Bengali.
Among people he knew he regarded the
Paramahamsa the master of a language
which was ‘most colloquial and yet most
expressive’.46 Vivekananda showed a deep
understanding of the Bengali language and
its shortcomings. For example he says
‘Properly speaking it has no verbs. Michael
Madhusudan Dutt attempted to remedy this
in poetry’. Moreover, Bengali lacked
technical terms. ‘In coining or translating
technical terms in Bengali, one must,
however, use all Sanskrit words for them,
and an attempt should be made to coin new
words. For this purpose, if a collection is
made from a Sanskrit dictionary of all those
technical terms, then it will help greatly the
constitution of the Bengali language.’47
While on the one hand Vivekananda
generally advocated a simple colloquial style
in Bengali and adopted that in most of his
popular writings, he also wrote sometimes
Bengali majestically dressed in Sanskritic
ornaments. How do we explain this
paradox? His purpose in recommending to
the readers and writers of the Udbodhana
would be to propagate a simple style to
spread the message to the average reader.
On the other hand, when the idea he was
conveying, or the inspiration he wanted to
impart, so demanded he used his vast
knowledge of Sanskrit and wrote in a
magnificently eloquent language. Hence a
contrast between two styles in his writings.
His simple style is best seen in the stories he
wrote for children; even more colloquial was
his style in his travel accounts, ‘Bilàt Jàtrir
Patra’, or in little journalistic essays he
wrote under the title ‘Bhàbbàr Kathà’ in the
Udbodhana.48 Thus long before the Kallol
era in our literary history or the advent of
Sabuj Patra, Vivekananda adopted the
every-day language. In contrast to this style
we have the majestic might of classical
Bankim Chandra style in ‘Bartamàn Bhàrat’
or in the poem ‘Nàchuk tàhàte Shyàmà’ also
published in the Udbodhana.49 The variation
in style shows Vivekananda’s mastery over
the Bengali language. His contribution to
Bengali language is an aspect of his
achievements which is sadly neglected
today.
In conclusion, I would like to implore
the faculty and students of the School of
Languages to consider the points I have tried
to make, in further studies of Swami
Vivekananda’s thoughts on language.
„
REFERENCES
1 The Complete Works of Swami
Vivekananda, hereafter cited as CWSV,
vol. 1, p. 217, on Sutra no. 27. In this essay
I have limited my references to the original
writings of Swami Vivekananda; the
consideration of secondary works will form
part of the chapter on this subject in the
book I am preparing on Vivekananda’s
intellectual life.
2 CWSV, vol. 1, p. 218. Vivekananda goes on
to elaborate on this to say that the word
‘Om’ is the ‘most natural sound’ and the
‘the matrix of all possible sounds’, apart
from being at the centre of ‘all the different
religious ideas in India.’ (ibid., p. 219).
3 CWSV, vol.1, p. 218.
4 CWSV, vol 1, p. 187; also vide ‘Raja-yoga’,
CWSV, vol. 1, p. 229, on Sutra no 42. Our
Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture  June 2016
31
SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYA
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
discussion for the present is limited to the
issues immediately concerning language,
and for a learned discussion on the wider
issues in the theory of knowledge vide
Swami
Atmapriyananda,
‘Swami
Vivekananda’s Concept of Knowledge’,
Bulletin of the RMIC, vol. LXVI, Jan. 2015,
no. 1, pp. 5-16.
CWSV, vol. 1, p. 74.
CWSV, vol 1, pp. 74-75.
CWSV, vol. 3, p. 513.
CWSV, vol. 9, pp. 250-251.
CWSV, vol. 9, p. 257.
CWSV, vol. 6, pp. 164-165.
CWSV, vol. 6, p. 208.
CWSV, vol. 6, pp. 225, 227.
CWSV, vol. 6, p. 158.
ibid, p. 158.
CWSV, vol. 6, p. 159.
ibid, p. 159.
CWSV, vol. 7, pp. 364, 366.
CWSV, vol. 3, p. 506, interview in Detroit,
Tribune, 1 April 1894, a rather poor report,
and even the spelling of his name is
incorrect.
CWSV, vol. 9, pp. 250-251.
CWSV, vol. 4, p. 78, lecture at Pasadena,
California, 1 February 1900.
CWSV, vol. 4, p. 309.
CWSV, vol. 6, pp. 85-86.
CWSV, vol. 4, p. 400, the italics are mine.S.B.
Ibid., p. 401. I would like to thank Swami
Suparnananda, Secretary, RMIC, for his
insightful comment to me on this issue;
currently the theory of Aryan migration and
the theory of their indigenous origins have
been the subjects of intense debate among
historians.
CWSV, vol. 5, pp. 534-35.
CWSV, vol. 4, p. 277.
CWSV, vol. 4, p. 279.
Life of Swami Vivekananda by Eastern and
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
Western Disciples, Advaita Ashram, vol. 1,
1989, pp. 20-21.
Bhupendranath
Datta,
Swami
Vivekananda : Patriot Prophet, Calcutta,
1954, New ed. 1993, p. 87.
Vivekanda to Pramodadas Mitra, 19 Nov
1888, CWSV, vol. 6, pp. 202-03.
CWSV, vol. 6, pp. 202-203.
CWSV, vol. 8, p. 465.
CWSV, vol 8, p. 472.
CWSV, vol. 8, p. 504.
CWSV, vol. 8, p. 512.
CWSV, vol. 8, p. 537.
CWSV, vol. 7, pp. 363-364.
CWSV, vol. 5, p. 191.
CWSV, vol. 5, p. 203.
CWSV, vol. 4, p. 275, an essay in the journal
Brahmavadin on Paul Deussen in 1896.
CWSV, vol. 7, pp. 490-91.
CWSV, vol. 3, p. 440. I may add that when I
happened to be working as the ViceChancellor of Visva-Bharati University,
Santiniketan, I received a delegation of
famous calligraphists of Japan, brought to
India under the inter-government Cultural
Exchange scheme in 1993; the resemblance
between portions of old Japanese scroll
writings and some of the old Bengali
alphabets was indeed remarkable.
CWSV, vol. 6, pp. 187-189.
Ibid.
Ibid.
CWSV, vol. 5, p. 259.
Ibid.
‘Bilat Jatrir Patra’, Udbodhana, 1 Bhadra
1306 Bangabda; ‘Bhàbbàr Kathà’, series
published in Udbodhana in the first year,
nos. 10, 14.
‘Bartamàn Bhàrat’ published in Udbodhana
in the tenth number of the first year; the
poem ‘Nàchuk tàhàte Shyàmà’ was
published in the same journal, 1 Magh 1306
Bangabda.
* This is the text of the Address delivered at the Convocation of the School of Languages, RMIC,
on 2 April 2016 at the Vivekananda Hall. Professor Bhattacharya is the former vice chancellor of
the Visva-Bharati University.
32
Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture  June 2016