Darwin, the Asiatic Society and illusory pigeons
By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - Nineteenth century pioneers who opened ancient India and Asia to the
Western world are starring in an international seminar hosted by the Asiatic
Society of Kolkata from February 10. The event marks Charles Darwin's birth
bicentenary and the 150th year of his epochal book On the Origin of Species.
The three-day conference ends on February 12, which is celebrated worldwide as
Darwin Day. It features scientists from India, China, France, the United
States, Britain, Australia and Canada. They plan to revisit the path-setting
work of the Asiatic Society and its lesser-known lights, including museum
curator Edward Blyth's collaboration with Charles Darwin.
"Twenty-five scientists are expected to be part of the conference," Ranjana
Ray, anthropology secretary of the Asiatic Society, told
Asia Times Online. "During the days of Darwin, the Asiatic Society in Calcutta
[Kolkata] was well known around the world, and Darwin had gathered much
information from sources here."
Detailed, extensive correspondence from contacts in Asia like Edward Blyth gave
Darwin the voluminous information he sought on living creatures, as well as
specimens for Darwin to study directly.
Blyth (1810-1873) was a self-trained zoologist from London who found his life's
work in Calcutta as a researcher to Darwin. He sent Darwin detailed information
about Indian and Asian wildlife - animals, plants and birds - from breeds of
silky fowl in China and Malaya to Indian horses. Much of Darwin's focus in
India was on pigeons and cattle.
In this e-mail age, it's difficult to fathom that a letter that was sent to
India by Darwin from the London Shipping Letter Office on March 28, 1832,
reached Calcutta on September 5, 1832. Nearly six months later. Darwin
exchanged more than 15,000 letters with his sources worldwide.
Blyth's letters give a sample of detailed observations of living beings
reaching Darwin, as well as a fascinating medley of tangential information. In
a 3,400-word letter dated April 21, 1855, Blyth writes to Darwin:
To
make a short digression, the name Tibet was unknown in the actual country till
lately, where it has been introduced by Golab Singh's people! [1] The country,
however, is styled Bhote in India, & there is the province of Bhoot or
Butan, enabling us to recognize the second syllable of Tibet. Is not the
Tibetan Mastiff a development of the T Wolf, as the Newfoundland Dog is of the
Arctic, & the St Bernard's dog of the European W?
Blyth's
letters to Darwin continued for a decade from September 22, 1855. They were
important since Darwin did not depend on solely on laboratory studies, but on
observing, questioning and collecting very detailed information. Even now,
after the human genome has been mapped and modern biotechnology made its
impact, Darwin's On the Origin of Species continues to be relevant, says
Asiatic Society anthropologist Ranjana Ray. "Darwin taught us much of the
methodologies we use today," she told Asia Times Online from Kolkata.
Keeping with his remote research, Darwin had never visited India or Asia. The
closest he reached was Port Louis, the bustling capital of the Indian Ocean
island nation of Mauritius, during his five-year voyage around the world aboard
the British navy research ship HMS Beagle [2].
The Asiatic Society still stands where it did in Blyth's days, as it has stood
since 1805, in the corner of Park Street off Chowringhee Road, a living tribute
to visionary India scholar Sir William Jones (1746-1794) who established the
Asiatic Society on January 15, 1784.
Jones aspired to create a center of Asian exploration and studies. His example
inspired others, such as the Asiatic Society of Bombay (Mumbai) that James
Mackintosh founded in 1804. The Archaeological Society of India warmly
acknowledges Jones' contribution to India, saying, "Archaeological and
historical pursuits in India started with the efforts of Sir William Jones." He
termed Asia the "nurse of sciences" and the "inventress of delightful and
useful arts".
More than 200 years later, the dark brown wooden doors of the Asiatic Society
still open onto Kolkata's landmark Park Street atmosphere. The varied street
food stalls around the corner near the metro station, traffic through the grey
winter evening, or under rain glimmering through the lights of Park Street
coming alive at night with restaurants like Trinca's, Flury's, Mocambo, Moulin
Rouge and Waldorf. In their heyday 50 years ago, some of them were ranked among
the finest eateries in South Asia.
Down the years, the Asiatic Society increased in value with its collection of
artifacts, paintings, coins and over 140,000 volumes of some rare works. They
include ancient manuscripts in palm leaves and in languages from India, China
and Burma (Myanmar). Its journal, Asiatick Researches, started in 1788, was in
demand worldwide.
Jones, Darwin, the Asiatic Society and Blyth were part of a renaissance of
knowledge and freedom of thought in the 18th and 19th centuries. The 200 years
included the French Revolution, the American War of Independence, the Western
rediscovery of Asia and the rediscovery of the Buddha's teachings in India,
Burma and Sri Lanka.
The Darwin years coincided with the life of the Venerable Ledi Sayadaw, born in
1846 in Saing-pyin village, in the Shwebo district (now Monywa district) of
northern Burma. Ledi Sayadaw became the first known in a modern day chain of
teachers instrumental in the spread of Vipassana, the practical quintessence of
the Buddha’s teachings, after it was lost to the world outside Burma for
centuries.
Darwin, Asiatic Society and the On The Origin of Species would have been
served better with the purity of objective observation that the Buddha taught
in Vipassana, the experiential study of laws of nature, laws pertaining to
suffering and the universal way out of suffering.
Conventional science, including studying life forms and continents, barely
includes the mind in the study of matter and vice versa, while the two are
interlinked. The mind forms four of the five aggregates that make up the
changing entity called "I": matter and four parts of the mind - cognition,
evaluation, reaction and conditioning - make up the five aggregates, or five khandhas,
that comprise the corporeal structure of the individual "I".
The evaluation and blind reaction parts of the mind become stronger in an
impure, egotistic mind. Prejudices, pride, delusions and deceptions cloud the
ability to observe the truth. That is when science usually runs into the kind
of mess the current climate change and fraud allegations now are in. The pure
mind, though, objectively sees reality as it is. The strong, objective mind
doesn't slam the door on truth, however unpleasant, saying, "Go away, I'm
looking for the truth."
At the apparent level, Darwin studied the Indian pigeon. At the actual level,
the pigeon and Darwin were only masses of sub-atomic particles arising and
passing away with the rapidity of trillions of times every moment. The speed of
arising and passing away gives the illusion of solidity. At the actual level,
both Darwin and the pigeon existed only as ephemeral entities.
The realization that there is only the observed, and no observer, leads to
subtler truths of nature, like the still, pure waters of a lake revealing its
hidden depths. The subtler realization of everything changing every moment is
the difference marking Buddha's science leading to liberating enlightenment
that was practiced in India and Asia, and the science of studying apparent
realities in which Darwin and Blyth were engaged. Conventional science of
apparent mundane material realities gives physical comforts, but doesn't equip
the mind to peacefully deal with the truth of inevitable changes in life.
So it happened in Blyth's life. In 1857, he was traumatized with his wife's
death. He left Calcutta the next year, and returned to England to formally
retire. In 1865, he was made an honorary member of the Asiatic Society. But a
mental breakdown the next year led to him being admitted to an asylum for some
time. He contributed a few scholarly articles and died in London on December
27, 1873. His Catalogue of Mammals and Birds of Burma was posthumously
published in 1875. For three days this February in Kolkata, Blyth's Darwin
connection will revisit the somber, dark interiors of the 226-year-old Asiatic
Society.
Notes
1. Gulab Singh was the ruler of Kashmir from 1846 to 1857.
2. Stevens Henslow, Cambridge professor of botany, helped the 22-year-old
Charles Darwin get the chance to travel around the world as a gentleman
companion to Robert FitzRoy, the captain of HMS Beagle that
circumnavigated the globe from 1826-1836. Darwin wrote, "The voyage of the Beagle
has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole
career." Darwin's popular travelogue on the journey Voyage of the Beagle
revealed his keen powers of observation, and marked the young man for greater
work.
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