Tamil scholar from France

A look at the work and achievements of Dr. Francois Gros and the French Institute of Pondicherry.

THE "Navarathiri" or Durga Puja holidays were around the corner. This is a time when women in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry arrange exhibitions of dolls called "golu" and invite their friends home. We were in Dr. Francois Gros' elegant flat, close to the beachfront in Puducherry. "This is my `golu'," he said, smiling and pointing to a short wooden cupboard with glass doors that had rows of painted dolls arranged neatly on the shelves. They were made by artisans in Andhra Pradesh.

"I bought them 18 years ago. They belonged to the family of a Chettiar," said Gros. The Chettiar's family was relocating and wanted to sell off the dolls piece by piece. "I bought all of them. But there is no Saraswathi [goddess of learning] here. They kept the Saraswathi doll with them. You cannot sell Saraswathi, can you?" said Gros.

The seventy-three-year-old Gros, an Indologist from France, is a Tamil scholar. He is as much at home with classical Tamil literature such as Silappadhikaram, Paripadal and Pathupattu as with contemporary Tamil literature, including Dalit literature.

For sheer depth of scholarship, he is ranked with foreign scholars such as George L. Hart and Kamil Zvelibil. Today, Gros is Professor of South Indian History and Philology, L'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, the Sorbonne University of Paris, France.

Gros has translated into French Tamil classics such as Paripadal and Tirukkural and devotional Saiva literature such as the verses of Karaikaal Ammaiyar. He has also translated several Tamil short stories. He has published books on medieval South Indian history and archaeology, including deeply researched volumes on the history of temple towns such as Uttiramerur. These volumes also deal with the inscriptions of the temples in Uttiramerur and Thiruvannamalai. M. Kannan, a researcher in the Contemporary Tamil Studies section of the Indology Department, French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), Puducherry, and Gros are now engaged in translating contemporary Tamil poems into French. They are going to cover a wide range of poems, beginning with those of the great Tamil nationalist poet Subramaniya Bharathi. They will also cover 200 poems of Atmanaam (S.K. Madu), Pramil (Dharmu Sivaramu) and S. Vilvaratnam, a Sri Lankan Tamil poet, and those belonging to the Tamil diaspora and others. Gros and Kannan have translated 20 Tamil short stories into French and published them in the form of a book. The book is dedicated to the late Munuswamy Naidu, who was the first person to teach Tamil to Gros. Gros and Kannan have brought out a research article on Dalit literature in Tamil.

If Gros is fascinated by great academic scholars such as T.P. Meenakshisundaram Pillai, Ca. Vaiyapuri Pillai, M. Varadarajan (Mu.Va., as he is popularly known) and V.I. Subramonian, he praises the contribution made to the study of Tamil literature by non-academic scholars such as P.N. Appuswamy, N. Kandasamy Pillai and Ku.Pa. Sethuraman. "They were not faculty members of universities but were outstanding figures in their devotion to Tamil literature although they had different occupations... ," he said. They were advocates, zamindars and industrialists.

Appuswamy was a lawyer by profession and was closely associated with Vaiyapuri Pillai, editor of Tamil Lexicon, Madras University. Appuswamy worked towards popularising science in Tamil, and he published in magazines such as Manjari and Kalaimagal and in the Tamil daily Dinamani.

Kandasamy Pillai was a zamindar, a lawyer and a film-producer. Gros called him "a multi-faceted scholar", who worked on the history of Siddha medicine. He was associated with Karanthai Tamil Sangam. It was Kandasamy Pillai who made it possible for the IFP to have an index of ancient Tamil literature. This was published in three volumes, and "it is an essential tool for anyone who wants to seriously study Tamil literature," said Gros. The IFP is planning to publish Kandasamy Pillai's English translations of Tamil Sangam classics.

S. Rajan, an industrialist, published ancient Tamil classics, at Rs.1 a volume with "santhi" split, that is, splitting syncopated words to enable beginners to relish the poems. The New Century Book House has republished these volumes. Rajan worked with a team of scholars to compile an index of the Tamil inscriptions found in Tamil Nadu into a dictionary. This dictionary was published by Dr. Y. Subbarayalu, who is now the coordinator of the project in the IFP on the Historical Atlas of South India. Sethuraman, an industrialist from Kumbakonam, made his mark in epigraphy.

Gros recalled his association with Tamil scholars such as V.N. Subramania Iyer and Ki. Va. Ja (Ki.Va. Jagannathan). "V.N. Subramania Iyer and Ki. Va. Ja were the two eyes of U.V. Swaminatha Iyer," he said. While Subramania Iyer was a quiet man, Ki.Va.Ja became popular because he lectured a lot on classical Tamil literature. U.V. Swaminatha Iyer was a great Tamil scholar and discovered many texts of Tamil Sangam literature in palm-leaf manuscripts.

"These are some of the examples we can give of people who wanted to do something for classical Tamil. I want to highlight the true devotion of these people, who were not academics and who contributed greatly to get Tamil recognised as a classical language."

The Indologist has a flair for Dalit literature in Tamil. In his essay "Why Dalit literature on the premises of the French Institute" in the book titled Dalit Literature: My Experience, edited by Kannan, Gros says with remarkable insight, "... In fact, today, a majority of non-Dalit critics go to the extent of saying that Dalit literature is a literature of frustration, revolt and/or lament and agony... There is, truly, much more to discover. Dalit communities have a very rich and deep cultural heritage, a folk tradition of tales, songs and performing arts, an amazing variety of practices and usages in their daily life, martial arts, popular medicine, entertainments and craftsmanship and a wonderful world of gods, goddesses and devils, and all elements that contribute to the creation of an original imaginary world that is in no way less important or less fascinating than classical mythology or orthodox manners and customs. Dalit writers have often, in the quest for their identity, paid a high price for mastering such an inheritance."

Gros is one of the founders of an ambitious project to prepare the Historical Atlas of South India, which will depict the history of South India in maps from prehistory to A.D. 1600. A bibliophile, he has one of the finest collections of books on India and Tamil literature in his home in Lyons, France. Kannan calls it "one of the best collections in the world and a rare collection".

Gros never fails to pay a tribute to Dr. Jean Filliozat, an eminent Indologist, who was the first Director of the IFP when it was founded in 1955. Dr. Filliozat was simultaneously the Director of the Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO), which is also located in Puducherry. A medical doctor by training, Dr. Filliozat was a Sankritist who was deeply interested in Saiva Siddhantha and Ayurveda. "It was Dr. Filliozat who opened the doors of modern India to me," Gros said.

It is not Tamil literature alone that fascinates Gros but Indian history and culture as well. He is a friend of Romesh Thapar, founder and editor of Seminar; his sister Romila Thapar, an eminent historian; Bipin Chandra, also an historian and one who has written on India's freedom movement; and Lokesh Chandra, whom he describes as an eipgraphist and a historian "with a very broad outlook". He cherishes his friendship with Kapila Vatsayayan, historian of the arts. She and Gros have commissioned books on the Brihadiswara temples of Thanjavur and Gangaikondacholapuram, both situated in Tamil Nadu. "Kapila is one of the persons in the cultural itinerary whom I met most often with pleasure and some usefulness," he said.

Gros graduated in classical humanities in French, Sanskrit, Latin and Greek; obtained M.A. degrees in social anthropology; and then received a D.Litt. in Ancient Greek, all from Lyons University. How was he attracted to India and Tamil studies? After learning Greek, Latin and Sanskrit in Lyons, he came to Paris to study Hindi and Tamil in the School of Oriental Studies. Initially, he was better in Hindi than in Tamil, and he was also learning sociology, and economic history from Daniel Thorner. He learnt prehistory from Andre Lerois Gouran, whom he calls "an outstanding personality". All the while, anthropology remained his "real private interest". In Paris, Gros became president of the Society of Friends of India, which organised dance and music programmes by artistes from India. "We were the first to develop cultural tourism in a systematic way," he said. He was receiving lessons from Louis Dumont, an eminent anthropologist, and listening to Filliozat's lectures. "For Filliozat, India was very much alive", and he regularly came to India, unlike other professionals who "sat in their rooms and had no direct approach to this country," Gros said.

He came into Tamil studies when a professor in Paris who was teaching a course in Tamil invited him to study Tamil. "There was a good, old tradition of teaching Tamil in Paris," he said. But the lessons were too elementary for research purposes. "This was unfortunate because we were more interested in Tamil as a classical language than in spoken Tamil", he said.

Filliozat asked him to choose a classical Tamil text and concentrate on it. He suggested that Gros concentrate on Paripadal. Gros said, "So, I struggled for many years to make a translation of Paripadal [into French], which remains a landmark on my curriculum vitae". He cherishes the memory of the translation receiving an award in 1969 from the Academie des Inscription et Belles-Lettres, Paris. The translation took eight years to complete, and he accomplished it when he was on the faculty of the FIP.

Except for the one held in 1974 in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, Gros has attended all the international Tamil conferences organised by the World Tamil Conference, from the first one held in 1966 in Kuala Lumpur to the last one held in 1995 in Thanjavur. Although these conferences had serious academic sessions, he wished that they would evolve better teaching methods in Tamil and come up with educational tools in the language. Besides, more research should be conducted in Tamil linguistics.

On Tamil being recognised as a classical language, he did not mince words. "Announcing Tamil as a classical language is not enough," he said. "You have classics [artefacts] in the museum, which are dead. You have to take them out of the museum and bring them into the mainstream of general culture. To do this, you need all the tools [research, better teaching methods and educational tools in Tamil] that I have enumerated. It would make sense for Tamil Nadu to contribute to the teaching of Tamil abroad," he said. Gros is a passionate advocate of the holistic approach to studying literature or studying anything on India. Study of any literature should involve not only classics and epics but also epigraphy, archaeology, anthropology, philology and contemporary literature.

"The holistic approach has helped me. It is still helping me with a vision. He imbibed the importance of the holistic approach from the teachers who taught him Greek in Lyons University. They were not satisfied with just reading the texts. They had a variety of interests. One of them was an epigraphist who conducted archaeological excavations as well. He had a deep understanding of Plato. Another was a specialist on Napoleon Bonaparte. "It was just the pressure of place that made me take to the holistic approach," he said. "We were solicited by so many things at the same time. You open a newspaper and you find that new inscriptions had been found. You could not ignore them." He regretted that there was no holistic curriculum for students to undergo now. He called it "a big lacuna", which is true of classical studies. The dearth of holistic approaches has become "a world phenomenon now". A recent book, Negotiations with the Past: Classical Tamil in Contemporary Tamil, edited by Kannan and Carlos Mena and published by the IFP and the Tamil Chair, University of California, Berkeley, United States, is an attempt to fill this lacuna.