Deccan College, a home to scholars

The Dakshina Fund, set up by the Peshwa rulers of the erstwhile Maratha empire, used to be distributed every year among Sanskrit pundits. When Lord Elphinstone was governor of Bombay, he used the fund to open a Sanskrit school in 1821. This was elevated to the Hindoo College.

As the college grew, under illustrious principals starting with Major Thomas Candy in 1837, English and other modern subjects were added to the curriculum. An English school, added in 1842, was merged with the college nine years later to form Poona College. Under W.A. Russell, who took over as principal in 1860 from Sir Edwin Arnold, it was renamed Deccan College. In 1864, Sir Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy, the first baronet of Bombay, donated Rs1 lakh and an additional ‘munificent grant’ for the construction of its main building.

Over the years, as the institution looks back during the celebration of its bicentenary year, it has a galaxy of Sanskrit scholars who have passed through its portals. But it was under S.N. Katre, professor, who became director in 1931 and held that position for 31 years – that it became an unparalleled institution in India, says G.B. Deglurkar, an eminent archaeologist, who spent a large part of his life there as a student, a lecturer and later as the vice-chancellor. It was Katre who founded the Department of Linguistics in 1939, making it the oldest Department of modern linguistics in India. For the next 17 years till 1956, it functioned as a research department known as the Department of Indo-European Linguistics, awarding PhD degrees and conducting research projects.

A galaxy students

The third oldest educational institution in the country, the Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute (deemed university) has, over the past 199 years of its existence, produced a galaxy of students who rose to positions of excellence in various walks of life. These include eminent archaeologists like Padma Shri M.K. Dhavalikar, who had been the Reader in ancient Indian history, culture and archaeology, professor, joint director and director.

Dhavalikar, who conducted excavations at Kayatha in Ujjain district of Madhya Pradesh, along with his colleague Z.D. Ansari, dated the discovered site to a period spanning from 2400 BCE to 2000 BCE. He had also undertook excavations at Paunar, Inamgaon, Apegaon, Kandhar, Kaothe and Walki in Maharashtra, Gauhati in Assam, Hoggadehalli in Karnataka and Prabhas Patan and Kuntasi in Gujarat, which encompassed the past from Harappan to medieval history. All these excavations were followed by comprehensively published reports, some of which are recognised as classics of the field. He was a PhD guide for 15 researchers and was also elected a trustee of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in 1987 – a post to which he was unanimously re-elected five times and which he held till 2013.

The institution is unique, especially in lexicography, according to its current vice-chancellor, Prasad Joshi. “Our work in compiling a Sanskrit dictionary has been going on since 1949,” he explains. “One volume is being published every year – but it took us 25 years to finish the first stage.” Describing this as the biggest and most ambitious project, Joshi – who now heads a team of 15 academicians working on it – says the attempt is to finish it “early, in the next 50 years”, if the Maharashtra government provides the necessary manpower and funds. “Sanskrit is the only source to help us understand the past,” he adds.

Immediate priority

The 34 volumes published so far account for about 6,000 pages, covering some 150,000 words. More of an encyclopaedia than a dictionary, it gives not just the meanings of every word but traces the changes in the meaning over 3,500-plus years of literature.

The chancellor, A.P. Jamkhedkar – who is also chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) – says his immediate priority is the restoration of two departments – of anthropology and sociology, as also Maratha history – which Deccan College had lost because the Savitribai Phule Pune University had surrendered the posts. “Today, we have only three departments left as a deemed university; so we are denied so many UGC (University Grants Commission) grants,” he says. “Additionally, our vice-chancellor and the staff provided to us by the state government do not get the same salaries as their contemporaries elsewhere.”

Jamkhedkar, 81, who started his career in Sanskrit and archaeology when he was just 19 years old, would also like to replenish the ‘huge collection’ made by the archaeology department over the past 80 years and lay the foundation for manuscriptology and object conservation to be introduced as subjects in the coming 10 years. “The college should also be a centre of heritage studies, as it has a good faculty for lexicography and archaeology, as well as the facility to teach the classic languages like Sanskrit,” adds the scholar, who was also director of archaeology and museums during in Mumbai for 20 years. “For this, we need to vitalise our museum and set up a lab for conservation.”

Along the way, Deglurkar, an eminent archaeologist, was conferred with the Punyabhushan Award last year for his long-standing contribution to the field of Indian archaeology. The award, instituted by Pune-based Punyabhushan Foundation and presented by Vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu at a special public award function in September 2019, was first given in 1989. Since then, it is awarded every year to an eminent personality from the field of science, art, culture, music, social service, industry or sports. The word ‘Punyabhushan’ in Marathi means ‘Jewel of Pune’.

As it entered its 200th year on 6 October 2020, Deccan College launched a monthly lecture series, publication of a monograph series on these subjects and a number of new certificate courses. The programme for the bicentennial celebration includes a series of workshops on ancient Indian history, culture and archaeology, linguistics, Sanskrit and lexicography, to make ongoing research work in these subjects popular and public-oriented.

The Deccan College Archaeology Museum, founded in 1939, features artefacts collected by eminent archaeologist Padma Bhushan H.D. Sankalia – whose brainchild it was – as well as a collection of vestiges from many other research scholars. Developed for academic purposes, the museum now features a huge collection of artefacts categorised into nine galleries. Each of these is in turn divided into categories: Stone Age or prehistoric period (before 6000 BCE); Chalcolithic or Copper Age (4500-3500 BCE); Megalithic culture; early history; sculptures; epigraphy and numismatics; sciences in archaeology and ethno-archaeology. There is also a second museum, on Maratha history, which contains important historical records of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The library is unique, too, with 200,000 books mainly in the fields of archaeology, ancient Indian history, medieval history, anthropology, linguistics, Sanskrit, philosophy and religion. An important component of the institute, it has a special place in the world of higher learning and research, both at the national and international levels. 

History lives on!