IN RESPONSE TO A YOUTH'S PERSISTENT DEMAND FOR AN ANSWER AS TO WHY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA HAD ACKNOWLEDGED AND APPRECIATED MAX MUELLER'S TRANSLATION OF SAYANACHARYA'S COMMENTARY ON THE VEDAS DESPITE HIS APPARENT EARLIER TRANSGRESSIONS IN TERMS OF ATTEMPTED CHRISTIANISING OF INDIA

IN RESPONSE TO A YOUTH'S PERSISTENT DEMAND FOR AN ANSWER AS TO WHY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA HAD ACKNOWLEDGED AND APPRECIATED MAX MUELLER'S TRANSLATION OF SAYANACHARYA'S COMMENTARY ON THE VEDAS DESPITE HIS APPARENT EARLIER TRANSGRESSIONS IN TERMS OF ATTEMPTED CHRISTIANISING OF INDIA

Now coming to your question of Max Mueller and his translation of Sayanacharya's commentary on the Vedas, and Swamiji's appreciation of this monumental achievement. Max Mueller, a German-born scholar settled in Oxford, studied the Sanskrit language for twenty-five long years before spending another twenty years translating the Sanskrit Vedas into English for its wider dissemination in the world. His was an achievement that was not only phenomenal but was a seminal service to the cause of global propagation of the message of the Vedas. Swamiji considered this as a great service that this German professor had done to eternal India, a task that no Indian had attempted in a like manner in English. So, where does Max Mueller's earlier and possibly later lingering allegiance to Christianising India come into the picture so far as Swamiji's appreciation is concerned? Swamiji loved India and what Max Mueller had done was to him the ultimate gift that a foreigner could have given India, then reeling under colonial economic exploitation and attempted cultural conquest. True enough, Max Mueller was seemingly prejudiced against India's social status then with its multifarious caste and creed coming in the way of its rapid development into a modern nation, a trait he had inherited from his boyhood surroundings which was accentuated by his beholding of India's benighted social status, but he was in no way a confirmed colonist with corrosive intentions. Max Mueller, for all his inherited limitations, did wish India well as he evolved fast from initial bigotry to Vedic enlightenment during his protracted period of study and transcribing of India's ancient scriptural text. Swamiji naturally applauded this service of the old Oxford professor, paid a visit to his house in Oxford, was graciously received, treated and seen off when the old couple stood at the doorway with the old man further holding the umbrella over the young monk's head as it drizzled when Swamiji left his apartment. When reproached affably on that, the professor said, "Why, I must do it as everyday one does not get a disciple of Ramakrishna at one's doorstep."

Max Mueller considered Sri Ramakrishna an Avatar or an incarnation of God and had arrived at this conclusion simply intuitively from his reading of terrestrial human conditions and the great transformation that had suddenly occurred in the psyche of the Brahmo stalwart, Keshab Chandra Sen, who had undergone a rapid and thorough metamorphosis in his being and convictions post his interactions with the peerless Paramahamsa of Dakshineshwar. 

Max Mueller did criticise the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna but Swamiji, when apprised by a disciple of his to this effect, said that it was but natural that the professor, a householder, would have some residual traits in ordinary smallness of conception as becomes a householder but that the attention of the children of Ramakrishna must not be on that. They must view with gratitude his monumental service to their motherland in laying before the Western world the wisdom of the Rishis. Swamiji further affirmed that it was his belief -- and Swamiji, do not forget, was a 'trikaalajna Rishi' (a Seer with unobstructed vision of the past, the present and the future) -- that Sayanacharya had himself incarnated in this modern age as Max Mueller to translate his own work on the Vedas into modern European language. Swamiji went on to say that day by day the old professor, who had never visited India but had been steeped in its lore and philosophy for almost his entire life, was experiencing his oneness with Brahman. Swamiji wistfully remembered Max Mueller and his wife as Vashishta and Arundhuti of our Vedic age. 

Now you see, my friend, you must know all these and not enter into puerile perception, proposition, preconception et al but must persist with humility in deep study and reflection even as the venerable German professor did on distant India till his heart and soul had caught the colour of ancient India in all its glory.

Written by Sugata Bose