Memoirs of Days at the American Academy of Banaras (1966-1967)

 Pratapaditya Pal

In the late summer of 1965 after returning from Cambridge University I was sitting at home in Kolkata waiting to hear from Calcutta University about a job when I got an invitation from Dr. Pramod Chandra to visit Banaras. I knew from Porter McCray of the JDR 3^rd Fund, who was a personal friend, that I might do so for the Fund was promoting an art-history institute in the Holy City.

I did visit Banaras for a couple of days as guest of Pramod and came back with a job offer as a Senior Research Associate of the newly founded American Academy of Banaras at the Rewa Palace in Assi Ghat. The consolidated salary was Rs. 800/a month. My responsibility would be to build the library and start the photo archive. The only other colleagues who were appointed by then were I think the chief accountant K. Bharata Iyer and his assistant Mr. Jain, and Dayasharan as the head photographer. I was told by Pramod that Madhusudan Dhaky would be joining as well as a Senior Research Associate in the new year.

By the autumn I still heard nothing about the Reader’s job at Calcutta U. (also starting salary of Rs. 800/per month) and so I accepted Pramod’s offer, packed a bag and arrived in Banaras. Mr. Iyer had arrived a few days earlier and was lodging in a vegetarian hotel in the old town. He invited me to share his room as it was big enough and with two separate beds so that the cost could be shared. I did not hesitate and joined him without realizing that he was a strict vegetarian and a teetotaler. I was neither.

 

Thus was my career launched and for two weeks I too had to eat vegetarian food and imbibe no alcohol before Mr. Iyer found a flat in the new town and I a couple of rooms behind what was known then as the palace of the Maharaja of Vizianagaram which I gather is no more. At last, I could resume a non-vegetarian diet with fish from the sacred river.

My first task at the Academy was to contact all the major booksellers in Banaras to my little office attached to the library and order masses of books for the empty shelves. Needless to say, I was an equal opportunity employer and so distributed the purchase among all equitably. It was a little lonely in the beginning but I quickly found two assistants and Dhaky joined early in 1966.

As a graduate scholar in Calcutta U. I had taught for 3 years MA students in Ancient Indian History and Culture and Archaeology Departments before moving to the UK. Several of the students in 1965 had finished their degrees and were ready to continue with doctorate research. I was able to recruit two of them with the same seniority: they were Prangopal Paul and Mihir Mohan Mukherjee. I must say all of us really formed a congenial group with the administrative and photography personnel, planning and organizing site photography beginning with all local museum collections and archaeological sites. Banaras including nearby Sarnath and Ramnagar was a rich area of Indian art and culture.

For all practical purposes Mr. Iyer was our boss and though he was professionally a finance man being a retired accountant, he was remarkably well-versed in the arts as he was a blind admirer of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. He had taken the lead to organize the festschrift Art and Thought that was presented to the great scholar at his 70^th (and last) birthday in 1947 in Cambridge (Mass.). Needless to say, Bharata Iyer never met Coomaraswamy nor was he present at the occasion. He lived in Burma most of his working life and fled overland to India when the Japanese attacked Burma during WWII. Art history was his avocation and he was an autodidact. I cannot imagine a more empathetic and knowledgeable persona with such financial expertise to run an arts institution.

His task was not easy for Pramod Chandra, the director of the institution, was an absentee chief as he had a regular teaching job in America where we had met first in the summer of 1964. In those days before the age of the internet long distance communication was through mail or telephone. But I don’t remember ever feeling the ship was floundering. Also, Pramod’s family home was in Banaras which was a great advantage. I must further applaud him for beautifully restoring the old palace which then belonged to the Banaras Hindu University which had allowed it to go to seed. Situated as it was on the Ganga, it had great atmosphere and offered an inspiring ambiance for art studies.

A distinct advantage of our location was that we could easily walk to the university and visit the Bharat Kala Bhavan, the repository of the great collection of Indian art that had been formed since the early decades of the 20^th century by the formidable Rai Krishna Das. Meeting him, his son Anand Krishna and the grandsons was a frequent pastime of which I have fond memories. Another giant of my field whom I had the honor to meet at the university was the outstanding scholar of Indian archaeology and art history Vasudev Saran Agarwala.

Sometime in the spring of 1966 the Academy organized a three-day conference which included eminent art historians from India and abroad which remains a memorable event. I also remember making a trip to America perhaps in the autumn of that year to San Francisco for the opening of the Asian Art Museum with the installation of the Avery Brundage collection of Asian art. It was there that I met Jan Fontein for the first time who had just moved to Boston to become the head of what was then known as the Asiatic Department of the Boston Museum.

The museum famous globally for its Asian art collection and its long association with Ananda Coomaraswamy (who was with the institution from 1917 until his death in 1947). I first visited in in the summer of 1964 from Cambridge on a JDR 3^rd Fund scholarship when Milo Beach was in charge of the Indian section. They had just announced the special exhibition of Indian and Himalayan art from the Nasli and Alice Heerameneck collection scheduled for 1966. The organizers John Rosenfield of Harvard University and Milo invited me to write the entries for the Himalayan art objects in the catalogue which I did. On my second visit to Boston in 1966, Fontein offered me the position of Keeper of Indian Art. How could I refuse?

On my return to Banaras, I knew that I did not have more than a few more months at the Academy and was a little saddened to leave. By the fall, the Goan scholar Jose Perreira joined the Academy as my replacement and it was a privilege to have two very accomplished art-historians as colleagues for the last six months of my sojourn there.

What was remarkable is that the Gujarati Jain Dhaky and the Christian Jose from Goa were versatile scholars with deep knowledge of Sanskrit and Indian culture. I will never forget the day when we were all invited to tea at the charming Alice Boner’s house which was nearby. Jose recited the Sanskrit poem “Gangalahari” spontaneously and with the utmost clarity and grace on the terrace of the Boner house overlooking the river. It has remained one of the most lyrical and spiritual experiences of my long life.

As it is said in Sanskrit that all stories must end with honey: madhurena samāpayet. And so too I end by recalling the great sweetmeat seller of Assi who sat wearing only a dhoti before a huge oven constantly stirring the milk in a large, giant karahi to separate the cream a few steps outside the entrance of the Rewa Kothi.

Every evening as Prangopal, Mihir and I (who lodged together in a flat) walked for home, we would invariably stop at the mithaiwallah’s little shop to buy a terracruda pot of the delicious rabri for dessert for our supper.  By the time I was 40 I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

I have always believed that I was fortunate to start my career in the holy city of Shiva on the bank of the holy river, Ganga.

© 2022 Pratapaditya Pal

Los Angeles, July 22.