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From the Brown to Cotton story
GIVEN THAT his grandparents and parents were missionaries in the Krishna-Godavari region in what is today Andhra Pradesh, it is no surprise that Peter Schmitthenner, Associate Professor of History and Humanities at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, has been focussing on Sir Arthur Cotton's work in the course of his American Institute of Indian Studies-supported project on the technological history of South India.
His grandparents were missionaries in the region long before they got married. When his grandfather died, Schmitthenner's grandmother in 1947-48 became housemother at the Kodaikanal International School that had been set up in 1901 for the children of American missionaries.
His parents had studied there in the 1930s and 1940s and Kodai-born Peter too studied there till he graduated in 1974 before going back to the U.S. and doing a doctorate in Indian studies from the University of Wisconsin. Out of those studies came the Telugu-speaking Schmitthenner's first book, Telugu Resurgence - C.P. Brown and Cultural Consolidation in 19th Century South India.
Brown, who was associated with the College of Fort.St. George - that training institution for 19th Century Civil Service recruits - has time and again been described as "the great Telugu scholar". A versatile and prolific writer, his Telugu works from the mid-1820s - most of them published by the College - included "grammar, prosody, cyclic tables of Hindus and Mohammedan Chronology, Nistara Ratnakaram (Ocean of Salvation) and translation of the verses of Vemana", amongst others. Writing of the time he started his scholarly activities, he recorded, "When I began these tasks, Telugu Literature was dying out, the flame was just glimmering in the socket; the Madras College founded in 1812 preserved a little spark". That spark "roused the native scholars from their slumber and provoked them to an outburst of literary activity".
It was while studying this Telugu revival that Schmitthenner discovered, and was "drawn to", Arthur Cotton who he found was "a much revered and almost worshipped figure in coastal Andhra". In studying Cotton's work, he discovered that they were not Western innovations but adaptations of venerable Indian dam-building technologies; the major difference was that the ancient weirs "acted mainly to divert the passage of river waters, whereas those by Cotton also acted to store water for perennial use". Cotton's work, Schmitthenner says, resulted in improving the agrarian economy, increasing wealth in rural society and, to some extent, helped revive the regional culture. What, however, was entirely Cotton's idea was the linking of the major rivers in India.
As usual, we have to wait for someone from America to come along to document parts of our history.
S. MUTHIAH
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