The Arabic Reading Medical Community

The collapse of the Mughal Empire in the early half of the eighteenth century devolved the patronage of medicine in the hands of the new regional courts, local rajas and zamindars. In the regional states the dignity of medical science in the Persian language was preserved. Its centrality in the making of an accomplished gentleman continued. Regional courts like those of Oudh in the north and Tipu Sultan in the south maintained huge libraries. These were well-equipped both with copies of Mughal Persian medical texts and with fresh eighteenth century texts composed in Mughal style.

In the early nineteenth century, Alloy Sprenger, the assistant to the British Resident at Lucknow, surveyed the ‘Muhammadan libraries’ of Lucknow. He reported that they had thousands of Persian manuscripts. These ranged from history, philosophy and literature to science, astronomy, medicine, archery, hunting and other sports.Footnote ³⁴ In the southern kingdom of Mysore, Tipu Sultan's library too had a huge collection of Persian medical manuscripts.Footnote ³⁵ His collection also included a few Arabic medical texts like Avicenna's Qanun and the commentary on the Sharh-i-Mujiz by Ala-ud-din Ali Bin Abu al hazim al Qureishi.Footnote ³⁶

However, beyond the courts and the capital cities, the rajas, influential families and notables dug their heels into local society and looked for new means to legitimate their authority. Here, both the authoriality and textuality of Persianate medical knowledge began to be realigned. At one level this was critical to break out of the Mughal norms of gentlemanly culture. But more importantly, the vernacularisation and popularisation of Persian weakened its efficacy as a tool through which such families could control medical knowledge. Individuals and families looked towards Arabic to re-configurate their monopoly over medicine. Therefore, outside the capital cities medical learning in Persian lost its pivotal role in the making of a cultured man. In post-Mughal society the dignity of medical science shifted from its Persian vehicle to Arabic, which was now projected as the custodian of the Arabic sciences. As medical communities of Arabic literature evolved one could be a cultured gentleman without having read a single Persian text of medicine.

The drift towards a doctrinaire language, like Arabic, to tightly control the medical knowledge stood out in a period marked by vernacularisation and its linkages with Islamisation and regional identity formations.Footnote ³⁷ But it fitted in with the general orientation of literate Muslim society towards new learning that was streaming in from the Arab lands. In the late eighteenth century the wahabi inspired ideas of Arabic scriptures and the salience of the Prophet gave religious knowledge a new austere Arab orientation. Medical knowledge too succumbed to this trend and dropped its Persianate comportment frill and like the revealed knowledges of the Arabic scriptures became more austere and scientistic. But unlike religious knowledge, which translated into the vernaculars and circulated widely, medical knowledge confined itself to Arabic. It thus remained an exclusive preserve of individuals, families and their select clientele. Islamisation through Arab learning helped communities of medical literature retain their status. It added new dimensions in the formation of regional identities.Footnote ³⁸

In the countryside, rajas, rich families and notables separated Persian and Arabic learning. They made the latter exclusively the language of scientistic medicine and the former the sole language of polite culture and Persianate accoutrement. As the latter slipped beyond their control, they tightly monitored medical knowledge by relegating it to few Arabic family schools. As medicine and theology became the preserve of the Arabic schools and literary norms and etiquette the hallmark of the Persian schools, an exclusivist hakim was created. Unlike the Mughal hakim, he was not necessarily acculturated in the literature of polite conduct and correspondence as exemplified in Persian texts of medical learning. Health for him was about medical wisdom and useful knowledge. It was not about aristocratic virtue.

The confining of medical knowledge to the doctrinal Arabic was deliberate. It was a reaction to the popularisation of Persian, which was no more seen as a language that could ensure the control of the scribe and families over such knowledge. Arabic was seen to exercise the control that Persian had done in the earlier century. Tighter control was most evident in the fewer number of Arabic learning institutes set up by families. These contrasted to the proliferation of Persian language and literature learning schools. Persian schools made the Persianate Mughal cultural norms of conduct and deportment more easily accessible to a greater range of people. But this popularisation also redefined what it meant to be a cultured individual in the late eighteenth-century countryside. Unlike Mughal society, now the markers of a well-heeled individual were no more measured in his knowledge of medical learning, logic or natural philosophy. Instead, Persianate literary knowledge and familiarity with the literature on polite conduct–akhlaaq—and correspondence–insha–was enough to mark status. This new cultured man deficient in medical knowledge emerged alongside a medical ‘professional’ who narrowly specialised in Arabic medical texts. He was trained by scholars in the Arabic schools where he read scientific and medical texts in the Arabic language. These separated healing from individual comportment and made it scientistic.

From the late 1820s to the mid-1830s, the English Company conducted many surveys on the state of native education in north India. Almost all the reporters commented on the proliferation of family-run Persian and Arabic schools in the towns and countryside of north India. These were said to be of recent origin and exemplified the change in post–Mughal society. In 1829, the education committee reported that the Bareilly district topped the list in instruction as compared to other parts of India. More than 300 seminaries existed in the district, which included Persian schools (maktabkhanas), Hindi schools (chutsals), Sanskrit schools (putsals) and seventeen teachers who hawked their services teaching the Arabic language and sciences.Footnote ³⁹

The Arabic schools were few and had limited students. This reflected the exclusive clientele that families strove to maintain for the medical knowledge they imparted. M. Boulderson, the collector of Bareilly, reported that the seventeen persons who hawked their services as Arabic teachers collected students in their houses, which were then called the madrasas. On the whole, 114 students in the district obtained instruction from them in the language and sciences. Such family schools received no endowments from regional rulers. They relied on individual or family investments. This ensured their hold over the limited clientele. Houses of notables and families doubled as schools. They were designated madrasas or seminaries. In many such madrasas, Persian and, occasionally, English were also taught. But sciences were taught exclusively through Arabic texts. In 1827, Boulderson reported that in his district there existed seventeen such individuals who instructed the youth in the sciences and the Arabic language in their home madrasas. They also taught the Persian language on demand. I. Davidson, sub-secretary to the Board of Revenue, reported to the government the details of Arabic teachers and their instruction styles. Most came from reputed Arabic-knowing families. Many came from theological families with long traditions of mastery over Arabic religious knowledge. They were all keen to control medical knowledge and restrict it to the chosen few.

His list of medical instructors using Arabic texts ran as follows: Maulvi Niaz Ahmed—he was a ‘learned man’ and an ‘excellent astrologer’ and instructed twelve youths in the various sciences. Hafiz Ghulam Ahmed Qazi and Maulvi Ghulam Hazrat were ‘good’ Arabic scholars and instructed people in sciences and ‘whatever they wanted’. Maulvi Ghod Muhammad–he had ten pupils for Arabic instruction. Maulvi Syed Mahomed, Maulvi Suttullah, Maulvi Muhiuddin and Maulvi Yaqub Ali had pupils ranging from four to fifteen. Maulvi Mullook Shah had ten pupils and instructed them in the sciences. Akbar Abdul Rahim had two pupils whom he educated in the medical art exclusively. Muzzur-ud-din Hussain Sheikh had fifteen students whom he instructed in Arabic, Urdu and Persian languages. He was supposed to be a ‘good’ mathematician. Boulderson pointed out one Kunwar Rutten Singh as one of the Arabic teachers in the city who also gave instruction in English. His son Kunwar Dowlat Singh was also an Arabic teacher of the area.Footnote ⁴⁰

In contrast, the Persian schools were more in number and had far greater number of students. There were reported to be 1,485 students in the district studying in such schools in 1827. Persian literary learning was not monopolised by individuals and families. Ordinary people opened their houses as sites for Persian instruction. They hired teachers to instruct students. Even though their salary was as low as Rs. 3–4 per month to Rs. 8–10 per month, they were highly respected. They obtained gifts and nazars, food and clothes from their students and families. Boulderson gave a detailed break-up of the schools in every pargana of the district and concluded that the major change that had set in from the Mughal times to the early nineteenth century was that both Persian language and learning and the knowledge of sciences in the Arabic had become relatively more accessible to ordinary people than before. This was particularly true of Persian learning. He wrote, ‘we gather that under the former governments none but ushrafs viz Brahmins, Rajputs, Bukkals, Kaits and Khattri among Hindus and Sheikhs, Syuds, Moguls and Pathans of the Muhammadans were permitted to study sciences or even learn Persian language. But now all learn Persian’.Footnote ⁴¹

However, all who learned Persian did not accomplish themselves in the sciences. Literary accomplishments in the Persian language, readings on proper conduct—akhlaaq—and correspondence–insha–were segregated as never before from scientific knowledge of medicine. Knowledge of medicine and science was now controlled by storing and teaching it in doctrinal Arabic. As Persian lost its monopoly over medical knowledge, the change was noted by Company officials. In the 1820s, the education committee set up by the Company to survey native education lamented that the texts taught in the Persian schools were of little relevance to present day requirements since they are, ‘chiefly epistolary compositions or compilations’. Their object was the ‘acquirement of skill in correspondence, or rather in the use of approved modes of phraseology and address, an accomplishment of some value under the Muhammadan administration, but little calculated to exercise and invigorate the intellectual faculties’.Footnote ⁴² This was corroborated by Boulderson who noted that Persian schools taught no medical texts. They concentrated on literary texts of high culture associated with the Mughals. These included Mughal favourites like the Boostan and Goshtan (Gulistan), romance texts read and enjoyed by the Mughal Emperors and nobles. They also had texts like Zuleikha, Neel Daman, Leila Majnu and Bahar Danish. Also listed in the curriculum were texts of court historians like Abul Fazl, and the Mughal Insha literature like Insha Khalifa. The Masnavis of important poets, the divan of the Persian poet Hafiz, Divan Nasir Allee, Divan Shumsher Khan and the Rookat Alumgiri,Footnote ⁴³ were also important readings.

Indeed in the Persian schools of the North West provinces and Agra so much was the emphasis on ‘polite education’, and the neglect of arithmetic and the sciences that the course of study was considered incomplete if it did not include the usual forms of ‘address and correspondence’. In the 1830s, J. Kerr, who reviewed indigenous schools in the area, lamented that ‘large fields of knowledge which would open and improve the minds of the pupils are left uncultivated, such as to go no further in history, geography and natural philosophy’.Footnote ⁴⁴

A similar trend was evident in Punjab as well. At the time of annexation, British commentators reported that medicine was taught only in the Arabic schools along with Arabic law and literature. The better Arabic schools were housed in exclusive buildings. Here teachers taught Aristotelian natural philosophy, logic, rhetoric and philosophy through Arabic texts like Aristotle's Shifaa. But medicine was taught by Arabic-knowing individuals in exclusive enclaves as well. These ranged from family homes to school sheds. Indeed in Punjab, Arabic was also used by influential families to tighten their control over the fast popularisation of high etiquette Persian culture. In Punjab, families tried to monopolise their control over comportment as well by the use of Arabic. Many of the seminaries taught Arabic texts on polite conduct and correspondence rather than leave the students to Persian literary influences. Thus the polite Arabic letter writer, the Ajab-ul-Ajaib, was taught in schools along with Arabic medical texts of Avicenna.Footnote ⁴⁵

In the 1830s, William Adam, who reported on the state of native education in Bengal and Bihar, noted a similar trend in the area. He noted that medical knowledge was narrowly controlled, which was evident from the fewer number of Arabic schools where it was taught. For instance, in the south Bihar district there were 291 schools, of which 279 were Persian and only 12 were Arabic. In the former there were 1,424 Persian students and the latter had only 62.Footnote ⁴⁶ And again like in Bareilly, many Persian schools had endowments from the local raja. In contrast, the Arabic schools were established by families, individuals and notables eager to preserve the knowledge of medicine. The endowments for Arabic schools ranged from modest, Rs. 250–Rs. 200, contributed by an individual teacher, to large, Rs. 15,000–50,000, contributed by local Muslim notables.Footnote ⁴⁷ There was a near absence of medical texts in the curriculum of Persian schools. They focused on Persian literary texts like Insha-i-Herkern—on forms of correspondence, verses of Persian poets like Urfi, Hafiz Ghani and Khakani and the works of Khusro.Footnote ⁴⁸ Only in rare instances was the austere style Persian medical texts of the later Mughal period listed. These included the more simplistic Persian translations of Arabic texts like the Tibb-i-Akber of Emperor Aurangzeb's Hakim Muhammad Arzani.Footnote ⁴⁹ The Mizan-i-Tibb of the same author, which was also austere in style, was sometimes used.

As medicine withdrew into the Arabic fold, the religious divide was also noticeable. Of the Arabic students, two were Hindus and the rest were Muslims. In contrast, in the Persian school, there were 865 Hindus and 559 Muslims. The reason for more mixed population in the Persian schools was that they taught more elementary and grammatical works, forms of correspondence, popular poems and tales and almost no sciences. These were relegated to the Arabic schools. Similarly, in the district of Burdwan, in Bengal, there were ninety-three Persian schools with 899 Hindu and Muslim students and only eight Arabic schools with fifty-one Muslim students. Out of these, only four were Hindus.Footnote ⁵⁰ Arabic was widely perceived as a universal language of medical science by the Muslims. And at the fag-end of the Mughal innings when regional identities were being sharply articulated in local languages, the Muslims established the pan regional links in science, medicine, astronomy and astrology in Arabic. Thus the preservation of Arabic medical knowledge added a new element in the simultaneous process of vernacularisation of religious knowledge, Islamisation through assimilation and regional identity formation.

Indeed the predominance of Arab language as the vehicle of science in the region prompted British observers to suggest that medical books in the Arabic language taught at the Calcutta madrasa be introduced in Punjab schools. This they felt would only reinforce and systematise their medical instruction.Footnote ⁵¹ In 1829, the education committee similarly suggested that the medical instruction going on in the Arabic family schools of Bareilly could also be improved and systematised by the introduction of the Arabic scientific texts used in the Calcutta madrasa.Footnote ⁵²

In Bareilly, Boulderson gave a list of Arabic texts that the students read in the family schools. Significantly, medicine was taught in conjunction with other doctrinaire disciplines like law, logic and theology. These included texts on law and jurisprudence like the Ilm Fiqh, commentaries on the Hidaya–Shareh Hidayah, logic–Ilm Mantaq, Arabic language primers—the qaidah. Such texts rubbed shoulders with medical texts in Arabic like the Sharh-i-Mujiz. All these texts oriented towards the revealed Arabic sciences were influenced by the new learning that flowed in from the Arab lands. They were austere and hived medical and scientific knowledge from its Persian-derived comportment and wider cultural frills. Thus it was no surprise that the only Mughal medical text included here was the early eighteenth century Persian text the Mizan-i-Tibb of Hakim Arzani. The Mizan as we saw above was different from the average Mughal text. It was brief, austere in style and scientistic. It saw medicine separate from individual comportment.

Adam reported a similar trend in the Arabic schools of Bengal and Bihar. These schools too concentrated on texts on astronomy and natural philosophy that included medicine. It was significant that the same families and individuals who preserved medical knowledge in Arabic continued to earn their living by popularising literary knowledge in Persian. Indeed they used their knowledge of Arabic to write different kinds of popular literary texts in Persian. For instance, in the district of south Bihar, Adam reported two maulvis who were highly rated in Arabic learning and had authored many texts. Maulvi Ghulam Hussein of Sahibgunj wrote the Persian text Jam-i-Bahadur Khani, which he culled from a range of Arabic works on arithmetic, astronomy, algebra and natural sciences using his extensive knowledge of Arabic. He also compiled the astronomical tables called the Zij bahadur Khani. Another Arabic scholar, Maulvi Mohiyuddin, of Erki in the Thana of Jehanabad composed a 288-pages long Persian text Sharh-i-Abdul Rasul on Arabic syntax. He also wrote in Arabic a thirty-two pages long manuscript called Majmua Taqrir Mantiq Amani, which is a text on logic.Footnote ⁵³

Medical knowledge taught in family schools thus articulated the new idea of health as medical wisdom—science, rather than aristocratic virtue. As medicine withdrew into the Arabic fold its popularisation was checked. Families disseminated knowledge in Arabic to few. And as Boulderson, the Collector of Bareilly, said here, ‘both the masters and pupils are of a higher grade and have given their attention to scientific pursuits’.Footnote ⁵⁴ According to him, this was in sharp contrast to the Persian schools.

The Calcutta Madrasa

In 1781, Warren Hastings extended patronage to Arabic learning of all kinds by setting up the Calcutta madrasa. Its main purpose was to train a class of maulvis in Islamic law. But it instructed students from elite Muslim backgrounds in Arabic language and medical sciences as well. Medical knowledge in Arabic had been a part of the madrasa curriculum ever since its inception.Footnote ⁵⁷ But in the early nineteenth century a separate medical class was added that taught medical science to students from Arabic medical literature. It also familiarised them with facts culled out from Western medical tracts.Footnote ⁵⁸ Indeed these hybrid intellectuals were expected to be the bridge to cultivate a taste for European medical knowledge in society.

In 1829, John Tytler, the orientalist scholar and Presidency Surgeon, declared that madrasas did not merely produce public servants. Their job was, he declared, to teach Arabic medical texts as well as ‘diffuse among them [students] a taste of European literature and science [in Arabic]. If the latter is accomplished colleges would have said to have done their duty’.Footnote ⁵⁹ He conducted the medical class and saw no contradiction in teaching both the Arabic and European sets of literature.

Tytler took full advantage of the shift to Arabic learning that had been initiated by individuals and families locally. He observed ‘that the orientals are always disposed to receive a work written in it [Arabic] with respect which they might reject or despise in a vernacular tongue’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Like the notables of the countryside he was convinced about the significant role Arabic would play as a language that would preserve medical learning in the hands of select clientele. Like the notables, he too saw Arabic as the universal language of science and medicine and contrasted its wider appeal with the narrow geographical confines of Persian, Urdu and the other vernaculars. Arabic, he said, was understood ‘from Malacca to Morocco’, whereas the vernaculars were understood only in a few provinces of India.Footnote ⁶¹ Its wider connectivity meant that it could be an effective language of medical science.

Tytler realised the immense potential of Arabic as a conduit through which medical knowledge could be weaned out of its earlier Mughal-style encasement. Thus, he not only learnt the language himself but also set about the task of studying and editing Unani medical texts in Arabic.Footnote ⁶² This was required not only because Arabic texts were taught at the madrasa but also because Tytler felt that European medical tracts could be understood best by the students if translated into Arabic. Arabic could lend them much needed legitimacy.Footnote ⁶³

Tytler collected Arabic medical texts from family schools and associates. He edited them for the use of the students. In 1832, he edited two manuscripts of the Arabic translation of Hoanin Ben Motawukkue's, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates called Fusool-i-Abkrat. One of these copies he procured from a native physician in Patna, and the other was loaned to him by his trusted hakim assistant Abdul Majeed.Footnote ⁶⁴ Other Arabic texts used by him for teaching included the Sharh-i-Mujiz by Muhammad Kazim, the Uksari and the Sudeedi.Footnote ⁶⁵ He included all these in the madrasa curriculum. They all lacked the Persian comportment frills. In contrast to Persian texts they were prescriptive and comprehensive. They made Unani scientistic by their concentration on disease, symptoms and medication. They gave advice on disease and medication, rather than the details of the body and its philosophical relations with nature. For instance, the Sharh-i-Mujiz is divided into four sections that dealt with the general principles of medicine, compound medicines and treatment of local and general diseases. It focuses on medicine as science rather than comportment.

Such scientistic literature was complemented by the translations of European literature on body anatomy into Arabic. Anatomy only reinforced the new idea of health as science. It made the ideas of health even more scientistic and distant from individual comportment. Such translated literature introduced the importance of body anatomy into the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Since body anatomy had universal referents, medical knowledge that was based on it saw all individuals as equals. Health was now about levelling social differences between people. It questioned hierarchies between those with similar body anatomies. The new Arabic literature based on European texts thus made the idea of aristocratic virtue and individual comportment even more irrelevant to healing. Tytler hoped that the inclusion of body anatomy in medical knowledge would make people question the social hierarchies created by the Persian medical texts.

Most of the European texts he translated were on anatomy and chemistry. These included the brief twenty-two pages text, ‘a short anatomical description of the heart’ (Tashreehul kalb) to the larger work of Robert Hooper called the ‘Anatomist's Vade-Mecum’. Here, Tytler offered a scathing critique of the Mughal idea of health as aristocratic virtue. He justified the translations of anatomy texts by arguing that the study of body anatomy brought out the similarities of all castes, religions and communities of India. The discipline he argued was a social leveler. It underlined that all human beings had the same body anatomy. Thus, healing was about offering the correct inputs to make all individuals retain similar body functions. He argued that medicine that depended on anatomy was different from the individual comportment-driven ideas of healing that perpetuated social hierarchies.

He contrasted the Mughal Persian texts with the new anatomical literature in Arabic when he said,

He went on to emphasise the change in the medical culture that the study of anatomy would introduce when he said,

Tytler's anatomical texts reinforced the idea of medicine as science that had been initiated by Arabic texts. He used the printing press to popularise this idea. He hoped the press would help break the monopoly of families and individuals on this kind of medical knowledge. The government lithographic press churned out multiple copies of his Arabic translations of European texts. It demystified medical knowledge and moved it out of its single copy encasement. This was true both for the Unani manuscripts in Arabic and for the Arabic translations of European texts.

Tytler translated Robert Hooper's text on anatomy, called the Anatomist's Vade-Mecum, into Arabic. Several copies of the Arabic version, called the Anis ul Musharrahin, were produced by the lithographic Education Press. Tytler emphasised the great advance that this style of Arabic book production represented over the earlier forms of knowledge dissemination. He wrote,

He reiterated the advantages of the printed book as he said, ‘I may also add as perhaps the most advantageous circumstance of all, that thousands are able to purchase a few books who might be utterly unable to afford the expense of the teacher’.Footnote ⁶⁹

The press weakened the monopoly of families over Arabic knowledge. Yet, the madrasa never severed its links with the individuals and families of Arabic learning. D. Ruddell, secretary of the madrasa committee, appointed the ‘learned’ Hakim Zulfiqar Ali to teach the students not only Arabic medical texts like the Sharh-i-Mujiz but also anatomical and medical facts from the books composed at the Native Medical Institution (NMI) by both Surgeons Peter Breton and Tytler.Footnote ⁷⁰ Zulfiqar Ali's son replaced him on his death.Footnote ⁷¹ Similarly, Tytler's favourite assistant, Hakim Abdul Majeed, taught Unani texts in Arabic at the Calcutta madrasa. The Company was first introduced to him in Mysore where he was attached as a teacher of over 12 years to the children of Tipu Sultan.Footnote ⁷² His command over Arabic medical and theological texts brought him to the notice of Calcutta's orientalist scholars H. H. Wilson, A. Galloway, Peter Breton and Tytler. The latter employed him as lecturer of medicine at the Calcutta madrasa and also as translator in the committee of public instruction and assistant in the NMI. In all these positions, Hakim Majeed was actively engaged for more than 15 years in either teaching Arabic medical texts or composing and translating medical texts in Arabic.Footnote ⁷³ He earned a decent living through these various services.Footnote ⁷⁴ Tytler said that he was ‘fully competent were he willing both to render intelligible to students the Arabian medical writers and also to explain to them almost any European medical tract which I have seen published’.Footnote ⁷⁵

The 1830s madrasa reforms only underlined the importance of this new invigorated medical knowledge easily available in Arabic. In this period, D. Ruddell, the secretary of the madrasa committee, made the Arabic Sharh-i-Mujiz the core text for student entrance examination.Footnote ⁷⁶ Simultaneously, the reforms also strengthened the stress on anatomical studies. They introduced a regimen of practical training in body anatomy.Footnote ⁷⁷ The linkage of medicine with science and anatomy, which were seen as social levelers, introduced the idea of a larger role that medicine could play in society. It brought the issue of health central to the well-being of society. The pressures to vernacularise medical knowledge followed and so did the move to link medical status with public service.

The Native Medical Institution and the Community of Urdu Literature

The most vocal critic of the madrasa experiment was Charles Trevelyan, the in-charge of the Delhi education committee. He realised the tremendous influence of the Arabic medical texts on Muslim society. He felt that the madrasa only perpetuated their hold. He and his team wanted to bypass the minority Muslim intellectual class and his knowledge base. They wished to target instead Muslims who ‘are entirely uneducated and attached to no previous system’ to create a new class of Muslims educated only in European sciences in the English language. This class could then carry forward the European knowledge in the vernacular to the masses.

His pleas notwithstanding, the Company continued with the madrasa instruction and its scholar–physicians. But it did not ignore Trevelyan entirely. As the ground was prepared for English instruction, of a standard sufficient to impart Western medical knowledge, it looked to the vernaculars for help. It chose a locally spoken vernacular language–Urdu—to move the new medical learning produced at the madrasa beyond individual well-being. Medical knowledge was all set to embrace societal well-being.

Urdu was a pigeon language that borrowed from Arabic, Persian and Hindi. In the 1820s, the Company-sponsored Native Medical Institution (NMI) became the place for medical learning in Urdu, and the government lithographic press became the site for Urdu book production. Urdu print culture, with its thrust on popularising medical knowledge and producing mass scale medical texts for sale to the public servants, only intensified the new ideas of health and body anatomy that the madrasa epitomised. But more importantly, it pushed medical knowledge from its concern with individual well-being to a larger anxiety about societal well-being. It created a native doctor who as a public servant carried forward this new role that medicine was set to play.

The NMI at Calcutta came into being in 1823. It targeted students who did not have the necessary backgrounds to access medical knowledge embodied in family, courtly status, charismatic teachers or doctrinaire languages like Arabic.Footnote ⁷⁸ Students who were not more than 20 years of age and of ‘respectable family background’ were the preferred recruits.Footnote ⁷⁹ They were expected to have basic knowledge of the Hindustani script. Initially not more than twenty students were admitted to the NMI at a time. If more were found fit they were put on a waiting list and inducted when vacancies occurred.Footnote ⁸⁰ Later this number was increased to 50.Footnote ⁸¹ In its last year, before its abolition in 1835, the institution had sixty-seven students.Footnote ⁸² Each student was financially supported at public charge and a sum of Rs. 8 per month was sanctioned for him.Footnote ⁸³ In 1825, this amount was revised and increased to Rs. 10 per month, and at the end of 2 years of study it was further raised to Rs. 12 per month.Footnote ⁸⁴

The NMI systematised medical instruction and laid out strict codes of medical apprenticeship and training. Indeed it linked medical instruction with professional public service, and that too under the superintendence of the military. The superintending surgeon of military divisions was to recommend potential students of ‘unexceptionable caste, character, steady habits and good capacity’ to the medical board. Each recommendation was accompanied with a descriptive roll that notified the name, ‘caste’ if Hindu and ‘tribe’ if Muslim and the age of the application. The students presented themselves to the secretary of the medical board. Once enrolled they were sent to the NMI and placed with its superintendent. Here they graduated as qualified native doctors after a 4-year rigorous regime.

The native doctor as a public servant projected the new medical concern for societal well-being. The press popularised this idea. The government printing press played a critical role in both training the native doctor and educating society on medicine's new role. It was therefore not of little significance that the government-owned lithographic press that specialised in urdu tracts and the NMI got a kick start in the same year—1823.Footnote ⁸⁵ Mr. Rind was made the first superintendent of the government lithographic press in the same year as NMI got its Peter Breton. He was made the superintendent after the untimely death of the founder James Jameson.Footnote ⁸⁶ And both men were trained ‘in the study and practice of surgery’. They were qualified to serve as assistant surgeons in the service of the Company.

Both men were expected to have a good knowledge of Urdu.Footnote ⁸⁷ Indeed the NMI superintendent was the main lecturer for the students and was expected to author medical manuals for his classroom instructions. The superintendent of the lithographic press helped him in discharging medical instructions indirectly by printing the Urdu literature for orders as high as 800 copies of a single tract.Footnote ⁸⁸ The Urdu books disseminated the scientistic ideas of Western medical knowledge. These had already echoed in the Arabic literature of the Calcutta madrasa and family schools. Their additional highlight was the knowledge of body anatomy that questioned the earlier comportment-driven idea of well-being. The long superintendentship of Peter Breton (1824–1830) at the NMI revealed clearly the role of the NMI as the nodal point of Urdu medical book production.Footnote ⁸⁹ Breton, in less than a year of his taking over the NMI, was already asking for free access to the government lithographic press. He wanted several of his medical texts to be printed in Urdu. These included his works on body anatomy, pharmacology, orthopedics and surgery.

By October 1824, he had already produced before the medical board sixteen copies of his vocabulary of medical terms in the Urdu and English language published from the lithographic press.Footnote ⁹⁰ The following year he submitted to the medical board twenty-four copies of his Urdu version of the London pharmacopeias also produced at the same press. He retained another hundred copies at the NMI awaiting government instructions for their distribution.Footnote ⁹¹ By 1829, his list of anatomy tracts composed for NMI included texts on osteology, description of thoracic and abdominal viscera, details of the brain and appendages, eye and appendages, ear and appendages, urinary organs and male generative organs. The texts on pharmaceutical issues included treatises on materia medica, translation of the London pharmacopeias, treatises on the component parts of the air and the posological table. His medical treatises included treatises on vaccination, cholera morbus, vegetable poison, mineral poison and venom of serpents, rheumatism and intermittent fever and the medical topography of the ceded provinces. The surgical treatises included treatises on suspended animation, cataract, hydrocele and dislocation.Footnote ⁹² By 1829, so great was the pressure on the press by the NMI that its superintendent Rind reported that it required the constant use of one-fourth of his establishment, that is, two of the six presses. Breton complained that his orders had to wait because of the rush at the press. And John Adam, the secretary of the medical board, suggested the setting aside of at least one press at the government lithographic establishment for only the NMI orders.Footnote ⁹³

Breton remained dependent on an establishment of pundits, hakims, artists and maulvis in putting his medical literature together. The best ever published anatomical engravings, like the Lizars anatomical plates, were bought by him at a cost of Rs. 130 to aid his staff in the publication of Urdu texts on anatomy.Footnote ⁹⁴ He argued that he needed both maulvis and pundits because the tracts needed to be in Urdu or Hindustani both in the Devnagari and in Persian script. He entertained in his private service Maulvi Asadullah, a former teacher of the Fort William College, to assist him with the Persian script. He also had help from a pundit. Both men were paid Rs. 25 per month. Later both got regular employment at the NMI.Footnote ⁹⁵

Breton had in his service an artist or draftsman—Rahim Buksh. He was hired by him on Rs. 16 per month to paint the blank anatomical sketches produced at the lithographic press.Footnote ⁹⁶ He also employed native surgeons like the Calcutta Muslim Saut Cauree who had been operating on people for cataract by the couching needle, and performing other operations for dropsy, hydorcele and spleen for the last 25 years. He trained students especially in cataract surgery at the NMI. After initial practice on the eyes of goats and sheep, the students successfully operated on human subjects. One of the students, Pursun Singh, was particularly praised for his newly acquired surgical skills. Many of Breton's tracts on cataract and the eye were influenced by the couching technique, which he felt suited the native practitioner better than the Western mode of using the crystalline lens.Footnote ⁹⁷

Breton's successor John Tytler, who took over the superintendship of the NMI in 1830, continued with the tradition of composing anatomical and surgical texts. He too put together as impressive a list of anatomical publications as that of Breton. In 1832, on approval of the medical board, the government sanctioned his text on the vascular and absorbent systems. It ordered 400 copies of the text in Urdu, in Persian and an equal number in the Devnagari script to be produced at the lithographic press.Footnote ⁹⁸

Before this large order was sanctioned he had already translated or composed for the students of the NMI the following Urdu tracts to be published at the lithographic press: translation of the 1824 edition of the London Pharmacopeias in Persian and Nagri script, hundred copies each in Urdu translation in the Persian and Nagri script of J. Hutchinson's Bengali tracts on the fevers, a five-page tract on the anatomy of the fetus and a tract on cataract surgery.

These were in addition to the list of tracts chiefly on anatomy and surgery that he composed and circulated to students in manuscript form. These included Introduction to the materia medica—37 pages; account of the most useful articles of the materia medica—178 pages; a system of osteology that had descriptions of all the bones in the skeleton, attachment of muscles and ligaments, passage of blood vessels and nerves—69 pages; account of the abdominal and respiratory muscles—9 pages; account of the vascular system–41 pages; tract of gunshot wounds that had extracts in translation from Hooper's chapter on gunshot wounds and Tytler's comments on how to use them in practice—6 pages; tract on injuries of the head–14 pages; tract on hernia—36 pages.Footnote ⁹⁹

The NMI received a range of anatomical and pharmacy literature from Europe. Tytler was always enthusiastic to translate it into Urdu. In 1835, a list of books sent for the NMI from England included Claquet's Anatomy descriptions, Fisher on Small Pox, Cooper on Hernia, Tuain's Anatomy, Thomson's Dispensatory, Thomas's Practice of Physic, Cooper's Surgical Dictionary, Paris's Pharmacoloquia, Alison's Pathology, Smith's Botany by Hooker and the Medical Gazette, volumes 1–14.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Tytler argued that translating these was a sure way to diffuse new ideas of medical knowledge.

Urdu texts on anatomy and pharmacy popularised the new idea of medical knowledge being about medical wisdom and science rather than individual comportment. These contrasted to the Mughal encyclopedic medical texts like the Darashikuhi in their production style, and the relatively smaller range they covered. They were also marked out because of the ordinariness of their authors, as well as the pedestrian status they commanded because of being in the military camp language–Urdu. They also differed from the dense Arabic literature, like the Sharh-i-Mujiz, used in the Calcutta madrasa as well as in the family schools. In the Urdu medical literature produced by the NMI, the specialised knowledge of anatomy, surgical skills and chemistry prevailed. They lacked the encyclopedic range, the physical ornateness and the esoteric exclusivity of the Persian and Arabic literatures. Their focus on anatomy, which was seen as a social leveler, underlined the new role of medicine. The Urdu medicine questioned the individual comportment-centered well-being. It embraced the well-being of society as a whole. And it made medical knowledge available to those so far excluded from its ambit.

Abolition of the NMI and Madrasa Medical Class

In the 1830s age of reforms and financial crisis, both the medical class of the Calcutta madrasa and the NMI came under severe attack from the civil finance committee, which found it an uneconomical experiment and recommended its abolition.Footnote ¹¹⁹ But more importantly, these institutions came under the fire of the anglicist lobby. They attacked oreintalist scholars, like John Tytler, and saw their institutions as an impediment to the introduction of Western medicine and English instruction in India. With the backing of the new governor general, William Cavendish Bentinck, they supported the establishment of a medical institution that would open up Western medical learning, in English to a ‘respectable class’ of Indians.Footnote ¹²⁰ The future of the medical class at the madrasa and the NMI thus got tied up with the education debate between orientalist scholars and the anglicists over the appropriate timing of introducing English instruction in India.Footnote ¹²¹ In 1835, Bentinck, on the recommendation of the native medical education committee, abolished the institution and the medical class of the madrasa. He recommended the establishment of a new medical college in Calcutta.Footnote ¹²²

The Company of course viewed the college as representing a new era in its functioning. From the viewpoint of London, the abolition was viewed as a change of official policy and a victory of the anglicist lobby. Locally, the change was less perceptible. Many of the NMI staffers from its superintendent John Tytler to the native hakims, maulvis, pundits and native doctors like Ram Ishwar Awasthie made pleas to join the new college. They did not see it as representing any major change as far as the content of medical instruction was concerned.Footnote ¹²³ In 1834, John Tytler made it clear to the Company that he did not see any contradiction between the old and the new order. He was neither against the introduction of the English language nor Western medical education. Indeed he said he was ‘clearly of the opinion that European literature should be made a permanent object of study; but I do not think the English language should be made an exclusive medium of instruction’.Footnote ¹²⁴ The Company of course thought otherwise. It therefore turned down Tytler's application to be considered for the superintendentship of the new college, despite his continued pleadings for a reconsideration of his case.Footnote ¹²⁵

British officers in India cautioned against making too much of the change. As late as the 1850s the recommendations of Alloy Sprenger, the principal of the Calcutta madrasa, that urged the Company to show only a philological interest in Arabic learning were opposed locally. The council reporting on the madrasa advised the government against such an ideological shift. It argued that the elite Muslim families continued to pursue a scholarly interest in Arabic sciences. The Company needed to be careful as for many families medical education still was ‘more than just employment’.Footnote ¹²⁶ The note of caution from officers in the field reflected that the medical culture of the period outlived these reforms.

At one level the Calcutta Medical College continued with the NMI agenda to invigorate the Arabic sciences through the introduction of Western-style anatomy and surgery. The similarity of the agendas of the two institutions was reflected in the transfer of medical items of the NMI to the new college for its use.Footnote ¹²⁷ But the NMI had grafted the new knowledge on existing medical communities of literature and the Urdu linguistic culture. In contrast, the new college carved out a less compromised way of operation. Bentinck was of the view that the new institution would impart Western medical learning in its entirety, including human dissections, to Indians. He was convinced that this would be of great political and economic benefit to the Company. It would be more economical, since it would teach Western medicine in the English language and cut expenses on translation. It would churn out better-qualified Indians. This would reduce the cost of maintaining the huge establishment of Western practitioners in India. And costs would also go down when learning of oriental languages would no longer be necessary for ‘Britishers’ posted in India.Footnote ¹²⁸ He appointed M. J. Bramley as the superintendent of the new institution and dispensed with the services of Tytler. He was sanctioned 2 years on an allowance of Rs. 1790.Footnote ¹²⁹

However, in March 1835, Bentinck perhaps did not realise the limitations of his reforms when the medical board reported to him that on the closure of the NMI they propose, ‘to furnish each of the students with a complete set of all the tracts in the native language and to lodge the remainder in our office to meet future demands’.Footnote ¹³⁰ In May 1835, with their Urdu medical texts firmly in place, they ‘left the presidency in boats hired at their own expense under the care of the native assistant teacher Sheikh Waris Ali and Hira Lall’.Footnote ¹³¹

As the students of the NMI and its staffers dispersed in their qasbas and towns of the north Indian countryside so did their new ideas and texts about the fresh ways of articulating medical authority and linking it to welfare of society. These continued to simmer in society alongside the flame of Arabic medical learning ignited by the Calcutta madrasa even though its medical class was abolished. And the patronage to Persian medical learning at the level of regional courts also continued to flicker. All these strands of learning continued to invigorate the medical culture of the region. And this was more than evident in the late nineteenth century when hakims used the Persian, Arabic and Urdu strands of the medical culture to contest colonial medical drives in the period of high nationalism.