Charles Philip Brown

CHARLES PHILIP BROWN (1798 -1884)

“TO REVIVE THE LITERATURE OF A LANGUAGE WAS AN ARDUOUS TASK FOR ONE MAN AND HE BE A FOREIGNER”
C. P. BROWN

Among the European Scholars who contributed to Telugu Studies, Charles Philip Brown shines very prominently. He rendered an extraordinary service to Telugu with restless zeal and deep interest. His service to Telugu in different branches like Grammer, Prosody, Lexicography and editing and publishing of Telugu classics and critical studies in the history and culture of South India is epochmaking.

He was the first indologist to publish classics with commentaries. He collected a large number of palm-leaf manuscripts from remote corners of the Telugu country. He had in his pay “ten to twenty pandits employed in transcribing native authors, in preparing correct editions, in framing indexes and commentaries. By providing a much needed historical and rational out-look, he taught new insights to the pandits who worked with him. Without confining his labours only to the growth of Literary (Kavya) dialect he was concerned with the much neglected spoken (Vyavaharika) dialect also, and tried to effect a synthesis between them and foster the democratic processes that were long absent in the Telugu literary scene”.

He served as a civilian officer during the gloomy colonial period. He dedicated himself to the service of Telugu language and literature with a missionary zeal and toiled for the alround advancement of Telugu studies. The literary culture in Andhra was then at the lowest ebb. He said “Telugu literature was dying out, the flame was glittering in the socket”. He devoted all his spare time to Telugu and spent every farthing of his earnings for the revival and promotion of Telugu language and literature. C.P. Brown may be aptly described as the father of renaissance in Telugu.

“He successfully battled against the native pedantry and prejudices, against the initial difficulties of mastering a foreign language, against the dishonesty of his own country-men and the apathy of the College Board, against the professional jealousy of rivals, stuck to his Telugu studies, despite multifarious activities and pursuits and remained contentedly poor.” “Want of leisure so often lamented in India, usually denotes want of inclination. I have always had leisure”.

Charles Philip Brown was born in Calcutta on 10th November, 1798. His father Rev. David Brown was a senior Chaplain of the East India Company in Bengal, David Brown was a scholar in Hebrew and was popular as a good Christian, among the European people at Calcutta.

It was Rev. David Brown’s desire to give that bent to his children’s minds and to put them in that track. He gave his children a learned education. They were taught the elements of Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Greek and Latin. From childhood C.P. Brown was taught to correct errata and fill up deficient pages in books. The driest enquiries had a great charm for C.P. Brown.

After the death of David Brown in 1812, his family moved to London. C.P. Brown was educated at Haileybury College to take up service in the East India Company.

He landed at Madras on 3rd August, 1817. He joined the Fort St. George College. Where he studied Telugu and Marathi and passed out of it in June, 1820. His career as a student at the Madras College was not very bright.

“Writing about his initiation into Telugu studies he said in his “English Translation of
the ... Telugu Reader (Madras 1852 P 55)” this Brahmin (Velegapudi Codandarama Pantulu) taught me the Telugu alphabet when I entered the Madras College”.

In 1820 Sir Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras, addressed the College students in a brief speech. He exhorted the students to learn the language of the people.

C.P. Brown was first appointed second assistant to the Principal Collector, Cuddapah in August, 1820. He presided in a Police Office for two years and carried on all the work in Telugu, Kannada, Marathi or Hindustani. He was there for full two years. After four years, he was again posted there on January 10th, 1820 as Registrar to Zilla Court and served there till February, 1829. He bought a bungalow with a garden attached to it (15 acres) which he kept for himself for more than a decade. A portion of the bungalow was rented out while another was kept for a retinue of pandits. He was paying salaries from his private sources for preparing correct manuscript versions of Telugu Kavyas after collecting several palm­leaf copies.

Hunbury the Collector of Cuddapah, spoke Telugu fluently. His example filled Brown with emulation. “Impelled by zeal as well as necessity in two years he became very fluent in Telugu and excelled Hunbury in Telugu Scholarship. In 1824, he was transferred to Masulipatnam. He began making a regular study of Telugu poets. He was a Judge in the court there. He began to collect a library of Telugu and Sanskrit manuscripts.

In June 1836, he wrote that “The Library of Sanskrit and Telugu manuscripts numbering 5000 which I have collected cost me more than 30,000 rupees”.

In the course of his study of Telugu classics, he observed that “Books alone will not teach the living language. I therefore studied the every day dialect in the police office or in the court where I presided. There cannot be a better school. And whenever I had a conversation with a plaintiff, witness or prisoner with a learned native judge of an ignorant menial, everyone became my teacher for the time. His passion for the accumulation of knowledge was very strong. He saved no money. He employed native authors in preparing correct editions, in framing indexes or commentaries in Telugu. He also attempted to establish a printing press at Masulipatnam in 1832. He had to give up the project because of the deceit of an Englishman he employed.

While at Masulipatnam, he read about Vemana in the book “Hindu manners, customs and ceremonies” and began collecting palm-leaf copies of verses of Vemana. He translated 693 verses and published them in 1829.

Brown’s magnumopus was his Dictionary Telugu-English; English-Telugu and mixed dialects and foreign words used in Telugu which appeared in 1852, 1853 and 1854 at the expense of the Society for promoting Christian knowledge. The Telugu-English Dictionary contains a long array of quotations from the Telugu classics in support of the various meanings of each word. His dictionaries in Telugu are still considered prominent and are reprinted often.

Though he did not spare the vain pedantry of the pandits, he was not without a word of appreciation for them. “I discovered some excellent scholars, poets, grammarians and critics, half of whose learning I never attained, living in poverty, mere mendicants and they were glad to be thus employed on wages as moderate as those we pay to our menials”. He had to face many hurdles because of the prejudices of the pandits. He wrote letters to distant villages for manuscripts and secured manuscripts through gentle persuasion. He came to know that the Hindus regarded printing a profenation. He explained to Telugus the advantages of printing. As Krishnadevaraya did in the past, Brown presided over scholars’ disputations to renovate a great book. We find in all such things the scientific attitude of the Westerner operating amidst the difficult oriental conditions.

The way in which he settled the text of a classic is interesting. Every manuscript was faulty and the learned pandits adjudged-them by guess. He devised a plan to tackle the problem in a scientific manner.

It will be but interesting to know how he carried out the task of getting the manuscripts corrected by the pandits. He employed scribes to make a fair copy of 60 to 70 stanzas daily on average and paid one rupee each towards wages for 200 stanzas. He paid Rs.15/- monthly to a pandit and Rs.12/- for correcting the script, and Rs.8/- for reading out and one rupee towards making a fair copy of 100 stanzas. He fixed responsibility for testifying to the correctness of these fair copies to a pandit who could examine and sign them. He gathered information from the other institutions in India regarding the wages paid there in order that his pandits might not incur any financial loss. He used to impose a fine on those who were negligent of their duty and who failed to identify the errors and who did not correct the variations in different texts.

He wrote “My leisure for these pursuits was chiefly between five and ten in the morning, six days every week”.

While his monthly salary was then only Rs. 500/- he spent on a fair copy of “The Mahabharata” (Telugu) Rs. 2,714/- which amounted to a hard - earned five months salary .

All this was a labour of love. He was not the richer by a penny. His books never brought him money. “By some I lost the money I expended,” he says cheerfully, “but I looked for this result and was satisfied”.

Among other books written by Brown for students, may be mentioned his Telugu Reader, Telugu and English dialogues, English irregular verbs explained by Idiomatic sentences in English and Telugu. The vakyavali or Exercises in Idioms English and Telugu, the wars of the Rajas and Insputations on village Business in English and Telugu. Some of these were translated in Canarese, Tamil and Hindustani.

The most important of his other works were the Zilla Dictionary, Cyclic Tables of Hindu and Mussalman chronology, and Ephimeris showing the corresponding Dates according to the English, Telugu, Malayalam and Mahommedan calendars from A.D. 1751 until 1850, the memories of Hyder Ali and Tipoosultan, translated from Mahratta and the Tatachari Tales. He wrote a Latin translation of twenty two cantos of the “Lalitopakhyanam”.

Brown made valuable collection of documents, extracts from newspapers and research material running to 54 volumes of over 20,000 pages which he donated to India office Library. He gave 5751 manuscripts to Government Oriental Manuscript Library, Madras. He took care to see that the Mackenzie manuscripts were neatly written on paper and published in Madras journal of literature and Science’ serially.

He had tolerance and sympathetic understanding. He removed an attack on Hinduism when he was printing “Nistara Ratnakaram” - short account of Christianity in Telugu metre.

From 1820 to 1829, he remained in the subordinate service. He was elevated to the status of 1st class servant in 1852. He was the Acting Collector of Guntur district at the time of devastating ‘Guntur Famine of 1832-33’ and it was he who first reported about the gravity of the famine and deaths due to starvation. For the sin of using the term “famine” in one of his communications to government, Brown had to face the displeasure of the Secretary of the judicial department”.

Brown was interested in arts and crafts. He had a rich collection of antique and museum pieces from different parts of south India. He opened free schools for the native children at Cuddapah, Masulipatnam and Madras, where he worked as a British Officer in Madras Civil service. He was a Philanthropist. His European friends whose life style in India was luxurious and quite different from “Brown’s considered a Character”. In fact Brown himself thought at times, as he recorded in his Literary Autobiography, that he was not sane but reassured himself that he was sane and sensible. No wonder that Brown, a great intellectual, who had the traits of a genius, was considered odd and idiosyncratic by his fellowmen. He lived and died a bachelor. He was a humanitarian who made it his mission in life to help people, in distress.

Bishop Caldwell described Brown as a ‘Restless Pandit’.

Brown was employed for upwards of twelve years in revenue magisterial and judicial work in the Telugu districts. In 1838 he was appointed Persian translator to Government and in 1846 he became Post­master General and Telugu Translator to Government. He resigned from the service in 1855 and left for London. He was regarded as a Living Authority in 1865. He delivered lectures in 12 towns on the post-Mutiny India. His work as Telugu Professor in the University of London and as Telugu Examiner for the LC.S. recruits has not been clearly traced out. He brought out a revised edition of his Literary Autobiography in 1872. C.P. Brown died an octogenerian on 12th December, 1884.

C.P. Brown was the first man and perhaps the only notable foreigner, who paved the way for “the European method of study” in Andhra for subsequent generations of writers and critics to follow. To perpetuate his memory and thereby promote Telugu research as well, C.P. Brown Research project was started in the Department of Telugu of Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati.

“Books predominantly in or on Telugu, whether printed or Ms., were always a staple food for C.P. Brown, who all through his long life preferred to remain a dedicated Telugu Scholar. It is but natural that even in his testmentary arrangements they figured .. prominently.

            To perpetuate the memory of that great savant of Telugu Literature, a Library Building was constructed in Cuddapah on the very site of Brown’s Bungalow known then as “Brown’s College”.

            The C.P. Brown Memorial Trust was formed in 1986 with the Dist. Collector as Chief Patron, Mr. C.K. Sampath Kumar as President and Mr. J. Hanumath Sastry as Secretary and eight other leading men as members of the governing body. The Trust has been managing the affairs of this library.

            Dr. J.P.L. Gwynn, I.C.S. (Retd.) London donated 3 valuable Dictionaries of C.P. Brown and enrolled himself a patron of the library. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has released a special grant of Rs. 5 lakhs for extending the building. This Library has been serving the reading public since 1991.

            A separate wing with all the necessary study material for students preparing for several competitive Examinations conducted by the UPPSC, APPSC,  LIC, etc is functioning.