Abstract
The late lamented B.N. Mukherjee (birth 1 January 1932, death 4 April 2013) will be best remembered for a very long time to come as one of front-ranking experts in the history of the Kushans, a subject extremely close to his heart ever since he became engaged in it as a research student under A.L. Basham in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in the 1960s. As an examiner of his massive two-volume Ph.D. thesis, the famous archaeologist F.R. Allchin commented, as Mukherjee would later reminisce, that it was ‘an extra-large thesis from an extra-large man’. We take the cue from this expression as it sums up perfectly Mukherjee’s stature, physical and intellectual, and also illuminates the broadness of his heart. As an M.A. student of Ancient Indian History and Culture in the University of Calcutta he built his foundation in epigraphy, numismatics and iconography from celebrated stalwarts like S.K. Saraswati, J.N. Banerjea and R.G. Basak. To this A.L. Basham added the crucial historical perspective that broadened his outlook and sharpened his skill in handling primary source materials. A long stint with the celebrated Iranologist and Sanskritist, Sir Harold Bailey of the Cambridge University, opened up for him the rich world of historical linguistics of West and Central Asia, especially Iranian, Saka, Saka–Khotanese and Aramaic. The salience of Mukherjee’s studies of the Kushan history lies in his highlighting the importance of Central Asian factors in the transformation of the Kushan state and society from the Central Asian nomadic Yuezhis to the flowering of a far-flung territorial power.
Although he never lost sight of the significance of north India in Kushan politics, he repeatedly underlined the centrality of Bactria in Kushan history in his several works on the Kushans. This comes to the fore especially in his magnum opus, The Rise and Fall of the Kushanas (Calcutta, 1989) and also in his last book on the Kushans (Kushana Studies, New Perspectives, Calcutta, 2004). To this should be added his India in Early Central Asia (New Delhi, 1996). In other words, he unravelled the many ties and connections the subcontinent shared with its borderlands which did shape the contours of the subcontinent’s pasts. In a way Mukherjee demonstrated the futility of imaging the ancient past of the subcontinent in terms of a modern nation state with well defined frontiers. Even where there were geographical barriers in the borderlands, the porosity of the borders also loomed large in his writings.
While Mukherjee’s claim to fame stems from his contributions to Kushan studies, his academic interests spread to many other areas, a few of which need to be mentioned in this brief piece. His familiarity with the north-western borderlands of the subcontinent paved the way for his remarkable work, Studies in the Aramaic Edicts of Asoka (Calcutta, 1984), where he drove home the uniqueness of the Aramaic and Greek edicts of Asoka without which no adequate understanding of the Maurya empire is possible. The only Indian scholar to have been adept in Aramaic, Mukherjee’s masterly use of Asokan Aramaic and Greek edicts remains unparalleled and unsurpassed. He demonstrated that these edicts were translations, transliterations and occasional summaries of Asoka’s Prakrit inscriptions. That Asoka’s Dhamma had distinct political orientations, in addition to its being a broad code of social and ethical conducts, strongly emerged from Mukherjee’s work.
A wonderful numismatist, Mukherjee did use coins for studying conventional political and dynastic histories, especially the Saka–Kushan history (for example, The Kushana Genealogy and Chronology, Calcutta, 1967; An Agrippan Source: Studies in Indo-Parthian History, Calcutta, 1969 and Kushana Coins in the Land of Five Rivers, Calcutta, 1978). But more importantly, he read numismatics to offer many insights into India’s past. One such area was the study of Indian minting technologies which he covered over a breathtaking time span from the punch-marked coins of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE to the modern minting of coins (Technology of Minting Coins jointly with P.K.D. Lee). Thematically it has close linkages with his Indian Gold (Calcutta, 1990), a mega study of gold coins from the Kushan times to the British coins in the Indian Museum collection. He aptly pointed out that while it is common to look for a political power as the sole authority to strike coins to mark its sovereignty, there was a long tradition in India of minting non-dynastic coinage. He evidently connected numismatics with the study of currency systems in early India and thereby made lasting contributions to economic history, particularly the early history of trade in India. It was Mukherjee who most effectively, and for the first time, demonstrated beyond a doubt that the easternmost part of the Bengal delta experienced the uninterrupted minting of high-quality silver coins from c. 600–1200 (the Harikela coin series: Coins and Currency System in Post-Gupta Bengal, Calcutta 1993; The Media of Exchange in Early Medieval North India, New Delhi, 1992). This strongly challenged the dominant historiographical position of R.S. Sharma, B.N.S. Yadava, D.N. Jha and K.M Shrimali (among others) regarding the ‘monetary anaemia’—coupled with ‘urban anaemia’—as integral elements in feudal formation in early medieval India.
Going beyond political and economic history, Mukherjee made pioneering studies of numismatics for the study of art in coinage. Way back in 1969 he opened up the possibilities of the study of numismatic art in his Nana on Lion. His sustained engagement in numismatic art reached its culmination with a superbly illustrated Numismatic Art of India in two volumes (2007 published by the IGNCA, New Delhi). This was a truly heroic work as Mukherjee’s health badly deteriorated around late 2000; his right hand became crippled, but undeterred, he took to writing with the left one! (he belonged to the old generation and never used a computer). Nothing could have been more emblematic of his unflinching commitment to academics.
One of his landmark works was his extensive Commentary to H.C. Raychaudhuri’s classic Political History of Ancient India (8th edition, New Delhi, 1996). As a tribute to Raychaudhuri, he kept the original text intact and untouched, but updated the book by a nearly 300 page Commentary at the end. With a formidable command over primary source materials, an eye for detail and a broad overview of ancient Indian history, he actually infused new life into this book.
An indefatigable scholar, B.N. Mukherjee was a premier empiricist historian who would not write a word without double-checking all the available evidence. The hallmark of his approach to evidence was to bring into play as diverse sources as possible for the study of a given period, without merely depending on a single type of evidence. Epigraphic and numismatic data, the bedrock of most of his researches, would seamlessly mingle with diverse textual accounts in his researches. As an epigraphist he was not only an expert in deciphering the Brahmi script, but undoubtedly the best Indian scholar of Kharoshti inscriptions. To him goes the credit of establishing that the correct spelling of this script is Kharoshti and not the more popular Kharoshthi. Beneath this apparently minor change in spelling lies his fascinating explanation that the name Kharoshti literally stood for ‘empire-placed’ or ‘empire-put’, implying that it was an imperial script meant to meet the needs of communications in an emergent empire (Khar/Shahr= realm/empire; and ost+i= put to service: significantly both are Iranian words). Defying his failing health and increasing infirmity he duly completed the project on the corpus of Kharoshti Inscriptions, under the auspices of the ICHR which, it is hoped, will soon bring out this corpus.
In the forty books and nearly 600 research papers he authored, one sees that his method was to critically examine the mutual referrability of a number of sources, usually contemporaneous, before proceeding to pronounce his historical observations. Sometimes he could have appeared and sounded a little bit extra-cautious while analysing his available evidence, thereby precluding the rich possibilities of offering broader generalisations. Unlike many historians of recent times who have shot to limelight by upholding controversial historical formulations, Mukherjee seems to have preferred accuracy to generating historical debates. That is why his style of writing occasionally appeared somewhat dry with a heavy dose of notes, footnotes and appendices which, to a discerning reader, however, dished out immense food for thought.
The most creative phase of his life was his tenure in the coveted position of the Carmichael Professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture, University of Calcutta, for more than two decades (1975–1998). Deeply respected and loved by his students, he was a wonderful teacher who was as committed to teaching as to painstaking research. He was, of course, a hard taskmaster to his research students from whom he expected a high degree of professionalism and industriousness. In his own way he would occasionally provoke a researcher to engage in a debate with him in a frank and open manner and without imposing his own thoughts on the relatively inexperienced younger scholar. He won many laurels and honours, including the Presidentship of the Indian History Congress, the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the Padmashri. He was also awarded the H.C. Raychaudhuri Centenary Medal by the Asiatic Society, Calcutta.
An utterly simple man, usually attired in simple dhoti and kurta (this writer saw him in formal Western clothing only once or twice), he was indeed a very large-hearted person, known for unstinted—but often, silent—support (including financial) to a needy friend, colleague and student. His fabulously rich library was accessible to anyone interested in historical studies to promote which he would walk many a mile with a child-like glee. With his passing away the rich tradition of empiricist history will become poorer and he will be sorely missed.