Abstract
I first learnt about Ji Xianlin in 1956. My father, Tan Yun-shan, visited China that year, and spent many days in Beijing to see his old friends (including Chairman Mao). As the Head of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature of Peking University, Ji Xianlin played the role of an enthusiastic host in welcoming my father to the prestigious university. My father also brought back many books presented by Ji Xianlin.
I must add a footnote about Ji Xianlin’s importance in the development of modern Sino-Indian relations. He went to Germany in 1935 to study Sanskrit and other languages and got stuck there during World War II, returning to China only in 1946. In 1949, even before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Chairman Mao’s secretary and think-tank, Hu Qiaomu, who joined Tsinghua University in 1930 along with Ji Xianlin (but later they pursued different careers), asked and helped Ji Xianlin establish a strong Department of Oriental Languages and Literature in Peking University. Behind all this was clearly Chairman Mao’s attaching great importance to developing studies on the languages and cultures of the East, especially India. From that time onwards, Ji emerged as the doyen of Indian studies in China.
In 1978, an important Chinese friendship delegation led by Wang Bingnan, veteran Chinese diplomat and the President of the Chinese People’s Association for Foreign Contacts, visited India—the first ever such event after the 1962 conflict. Ji Xianlin was in the delegation, which was a significant gesture to the Chinese studies circles in India. I was Head of the Department of Chinese and Japanese Studies of Delhi University, and organised a warm reception for Professor Ji in the old building of the Arts Faculty in collaboration with the Department of Buddhist Studies. This was my first meeting with Ji Xianlin.
I still remember the speeches in that reception. Professor Rajni Kothari, Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), in his speech welcoming Professor Ji, said that in the past it was China that had learnt from India, while today, it was India that had to learn from China. Professor Ji, while delivering a learned address, mildly and sophisticatedly contested Kothari’s proposition by saying that international learning had to be both ways, whether in the past or in the present. It has been Ji Xianlin’s consistent stand that in the course of millennial interactions between the two great civilisations of China and India, both of them had benefited from each other. I fully agree with this, and have maintained a brave stand to this effect whenever I am confronted with doubters. But, I must confess that neither Ji Xianlin nor I have convincingly shown in our writings that the historical mutual indebtedness between China and India was an even flow of two-way traffic. We have illustrated overwhelmingly convincing evidences of China’s indebtedness to India than vice versa. This unsatisfactory status of our research has been bothering me for a long time. Earlier, I used to attribute it to ancient India’s predilection for oral tradition and paucity of written records—hence China’s cultural influence on India could not be documented. I now realise a more important asymmetric phenomenon, that is, while China had been a ‘civilization state’ since Emperor Qin Shihuangdi unified China in 221 BCE till today, India had always been an abstract civilisational identity until the founding of the Republic of India in 1950. In other words, India was not ‘India’ on the ground, socially and politically in yesteryears—it was, as a matter of fact, the Indian civilisation intangibly covering the numerous different ‘intra-Indian’ sociopolitical entities within the Indian subcontinent. Faced with such a situation, we cannot establish a one-to-one mutual learning case during the long course of Sino-Indian civilisational interaction.
In 1980, the Marga Institute of Sri Lanka paid for my passage to go to Beijing to attend the first-ever conference on South Asia under the joint auspices of the Marga Institute and the newly established Institute of South Asian Studies that was under the joint jurisdiction of Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)—with Ji Xianlin as Director. It was a completely unexpected invitation as I did not know anyone in the Marga Institute, so did they not know me at all. I learnt later that it was on Ji Xianlin’s insistence that I was included. I had already joined Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) then, and Mr K.R. Narayanan, Vice-Chancellor of JNU was also invited but could not go. My wife, Huang I-shu, paid her own passage and attended the conference as an observer. During that visit, my wife and I extended our stay in Beijing after the conference. We had many opportunities to visit Peking University and had get-together with Professor Ji and his colleagues. I went back to China again in 1983 to attend the second conference of the Chinese Association of Dunhuang and Turpan Studies headed by Ji Xianlin. I first went to Beijing and stayed at the Shaoyuan Guest House on the campus of Peking University through the arrangement of the Institute of South Asian Studies, then travelled together with Ji Xianlin and many other scholars to Urumqi for the conference. In Beijing, Professor Ji declined my initiative to call on him at his home, but bicycled to the Guest House to see me. At that time, he was Vice-President of Peking University and a member of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress.
Professor Ji’s modest and frugal lifestyle was a household word in China. On the Peking University campus, he was often mistaken as a ‘worker’ (‘gongyou’ in Chinese)—even when he was Vice-President of the university. In China’s post-Mao era, status consciousness and stratification in people’s minds have grown to extra-ordinary proportions. I remember once I stayed in a three-or-four-star hotel near the airport as the guest of CASS in the 1980s. When I went to the dining hall dressing casually I was taken as a chauffer and ushered to a side table without courteous treatment. Another time, just after a meeting, I was fully dressed and in the company of another CASS guest from a Western country, I received the full VIP treatment that I was entitled. Yet, in such a social vogue, Ji Xianlin went on with his usual ‘proletarian’ style of the Mao Zedong era. I never saw him don any other clothing than the Mao jacket—even when I met him in India and Hong Kong. After South Korea developed a warm relationship with China more than a decade ago, Ji Xianlin enthusiastically welcomed many South Korean friends, but declined a gift of a luxurious car from a South Korean foundation. That was the time when he had not yet given up bicycling within the Peking University campus, and he was not destined to join China’s first generation car-owners’ tribe as it were.
In 1985, I got a grant from the ICSSR and travelled to China. While in Beijing and staying in my favourite Shaoyuan Guest House, I decided to give Professor Ji a surprise and to avoid the recurrence of his bicycling to call on me. Zhang Minqiu, one of Ji Xianlin’s disciples and colleagues, was a close friend of mine (she had studied in JNU for a couple of years). She lent her husband’s bicycle to me and both of us bicycled to Professor Ji’s residence in the evening without appointment. Professor Ji was not surprised because he had been used to gate-crashers all the time. Of course, he was glad to see me.
It was that visit which has revealed to me the golden personality of Ji Xianlin. The three-room apartment he had lived virtually throughout his career on the Peking University campus—his beloved ‘Langrunyuan’ (garden of light and smooth feeling) beside a small pond—had this romantic name only euphemistically. In reality, it was like the warehouse of a bookshop owner. There were books everywhere in the drawing room and bedroom, on the stacks, tables and floors. Some book parcels had just arrived or half unpacked. Some books were bought by him; others were the complimentary copies from publishers. There were books and journals in Chinese and English and German, as well as in other languages. I have seen scholars’ houses in India and America with impressive bookracks fully packed. They gave an impression of magnificence and dignity. In Professor Ji’s house, it looked a little casual, even disorganised, but the environment was cozy and full of affection. The affection here was between the man and the books, between the mind and wisdom. This atmosphere reminded me of the Confucian adage of ‘guzhixuezhe wei ji, jinzhixuezhe wei ren’ (while the ancient learners did it for themselves, today’s learners do it for showing to others). Professor Ji was a typical learner who bought books, kept books, leafed through books and wrote books just for his own happiness and enlightenment. In this sense, his house was, indeed, the garden of light and smooth feeling.
However, Ji Xianlin never lived in the ivory tower, but was happy to share with as many people as possible his joy and love with books, with knowledge and wisdom. In that very visit, he presented me with a good number of books, some were his own writings, others were the writings of renowned scholars, like Xiang Da and Chen Yinke (both were his gurus)—out-of-print books so important to my study on the history of Sino-Indian contacts. Xiang Da’s book, Tangdai Chang’an yu Xiyu wenming (Chang’an and the civilisations of the western regions during the Tang Dynasty), published by the Sanlian Bookshop in 1957 was probably the only copy in his own collection, and he let me have it, anticipating that it would be enormously useful to me. It indeed was, and still is. I must have read it hundreds of hours on a hundred occasions and mentioned it in my footnotes a dozen times. Every time when I made use of this highly scholarly and valuable book, I felt bathed in the affection of Ji Xianlin, my senior, friend, philosopher and guide.
That visit was not only fruitful for me in the material sense, but also spiritually. We talked for hours about what had happened between China and India, about Sino-Indian studies, about Tagore, about Visva-Bharati and Cheena-Bhavana, and about my late lamented father, Tan Yun-shan. We were on the same wavelength on almost all the issues we had in mind. I suddenly realised that it was my misfortune that I had never been his student. But, on his part, he treated me as if I knew as much as he did on China and India, and he never placed himself in the position of a teacher, or guide, or adviser, or critic (all such gestures I unconsciously assume when I talk to any one much younger than me). By that time I had already attended a couple of seminars along with him (one at Urumqi, and another in Hong Kong) during which I had enjoyed his Sino-Indian academic camaraderie. I remember on one occasion I was accused by a Chinese scholar from Lanzhou University for having stayed abroad for too long to understand Chinese culture—as I had pointed out that the Chinese bianwen literature (unearthed from the Dunhuang caves) showed Indian influences. Ji Xianlin intervened with his typically genteel and sophisticated style not seemingly defending my proposition, but in effect strongly refuting my detractor’s charges against me.
Lest I create an impression that I was a favourite of Professor Ji, I know that he was generous and kind to everyone who became his disciple or acquaintance. I also know that he virtually never refused anyone who requested him for a favour in academic matters. (He never declined my requests for an article on half a dozen occasions.) As a result, he wore more than 300 hats such as president/honorary president of associations, patron, consultant/honorary consultant, chairman/honorary chairman of editorial boards, and so on. One episode I never forget and shall forever feel grateful was in October 1998 when Chinese and Indian friends helped me organise the birth centenary of my father, Tan Yun-shan, in Beijing. Incidentally, Ji Xianlin had long had a problem of sleeping at night, and the doctor had to rotate several scores of prescriptions for him. He was 87 at that time and was under the doctor’s advice to decline public engagements. But, he insisted on inaugurating the centenary function in addition to attending the Indian Embassy dinner in honour of Tan Yun-shan’s memory. I was told afterwards that even triple dosages of sleeping pills could not make him rest for the entire night after returning from the Embassy dinner. I was told about this by his old faithful secretary and helper, Li Yujie, when I met Ji Xianlin several years later. That was our last meeting because soon after he was moved to the special nursing home of the 301 Hospital. Around five years ago, my wife and I were again in Beijing. The two Peking University professors, Geng Yinzeng and Zhang Minqiu, joined us to make an attempt to pay our homage to Professor Ji. Li Yujie who was looking after him in the special hospital suggested that we sent him a gift instead of a meeting lest he become excessively excited. We bought him a Chinese-style quilted jacket, and when he received it he immediately wore it. Li Yujie got photos taken and sent them to us. That was my last ‘meeting’ with him in absentia.
Ji Xianlin was in the crowd of admirers who saw Tagore in Jinan—Ji’s hometown— when he was only 13. (He revealed this on 30 May 2000 when Indian president, K.R. Narayanan, visited Peking University to present a Tagore bust.) He once told me that he was a member of Zhong-Yin xuehui (the Chinese chapter of the Sino-Indian Cultural Society), which my father was instrumental in founding in Nanjing in 1933. He was the last Mohegan of the Chinese chapter of Sino-Indian history. Though Ji Xianlin is no longer with us today, we do not miss him because he always lives in our hearts. The invisible surge of Sino-Indian friendship and understanding he had created in the last six decades in China has opened a new leaf for all of us. Today, Sino-Indian studies are thriving in China thanks to the inspiration and labour of love of the pioneer. The influence of Ji Xianlin has multiplied through the hard work of his disciples.
Ji Xianlin was a monument of Sino-Indian friendship during his lifetime. In 2008, the President of India announced the award of Padma Bhushan for him, which created a warmth of Sino-Indian friendship in the media of both the countries. When Ji Xianlin passed away in July 2009, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sent a condolence message to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, which is a rare diplomatic event. Sonia Gandhi made it a point to pay her homage to Ji Xianlin at his Langrunyuan residence during her visit to Beijing many years ago. It created a partial curfew on the Peking University campus as Gandhi was accorded the VVIP security protection. More interesting is the episode I relate below.
I have alluded to the 1998 celebration of Tan Yun-shan centenary in Beijing. Vijay Nambiar, Indian Ambassador to China, was very kind and helpful. He not only attended the centenary function, but also organised a great evening in the embassy, celebrating the centenary, and releasing my book, Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China. It was arranged at a very short notice. When Ji Xianlin accepted the invitation, Ambassador Nambiar suddenly realised that he had not yet paid his homage to such a senior savant, and both Indian tradition and diplomatic courtesy would not have been properly observed if Professor Ji arrived at his residence prior to his calling on his senior. But, when the ambassador decided to make urgent amends, all the top leaders of Peking University (the president and vice-presidents) were not free to escort him when he was to enter the university campus as the protocol required, and his visit to Professor Ji’s Langrunyuan residence could not be arranged. Then, Vijay Nambiar found a way out by paying a courtesy call to Ji Xianlin as a private person (without his diplomatic status), and the problem was resolved. I think this event is worthwhile to be enlisted in the annals of Sino-Indian relations.
Nothing can be greater in accounting for Ji Xianlin’s seminal contribution to Sino-Indian understanding than his highlighting the Sino-Indian neighbourliness as ‘tianzao dishe’ (created by Heaven and constructed by Earth). Nirupama Rao, former Indian Ambassador to China and currently Indian Ambassador to the United States, has appreciated this greatly. I share her appreciation because there is always something mysterious and extraordinary that our two ancient civilisations had maintained their back-to-back relationship for many millennia—while ancient civilisations in the Western Hemisphere in close vicinity had been tirelessly waging wars and destroying each other. In Ji Xianlin’s four characters of ‘tianzao dishe’ there is an unspoken supernatural and supra-geographical element to merit our profound understanding and in-depth research. Incidentally, when Ambassador Rao went to Peking University to express her condolence for the demise of Ji Xianlin on 14 July 2009, she quoted these words in her English message when she signed the visitor’s book. A Chinese reporter flashed this in the Chinese media that Nirupama Rao had called Ji Xianlin the ‘respected Padma Bhushan’, and that she had quoted Ji’s immortal adage ‘Zhong-Yin wei lin, shangtian shiran, jianyu renjian’ (literally, ‘China and India’s being neighbours is caused by Heaven and built among mankind’). 1 The reporter could not reproduce Ji Xianlin’s exact words of ‘tianzao dishe’ (which he/she should have), and retranslated them back with a slight distortion (Ji’s ‘tianzao dishe’ would suggest that it was not by the effort of mankind). We see here that a deeper understanding of Professor Ji’s legacy of the Sino-Indian studies in China is yet to be realised. In the same way, Chinese studies experts in India need to learn enormously from Ji Xianlin’s research in order to carry forward the great and noble cause of India–China friendship and understanding.
As my good friend Professor Amartya Sen of Harvard University aptly observed that ‘greatness always comes with some complexity’ (in his essay in Tagore and China published by SAGE India in 2011), so was the life and career of Ji Xianlin. I was saddened to see the controversy in the Chinese media raging from 2005 onwards about whether Professor Ji deserved to be called ‘guoxue dashi’ (master of Chinese studies). The scholar who started this polemic was a professor of Fudan University who rightly felt that there had been an unhealthy social trend of pursuing status and fame among the Chinese intellectual elite. But, he wrongly singled out the example of Ji Xianlin who was just the opposite of such a category—albeit that many such people had sucked up to him. The professor-critic put the blame on Ji Xianlin who was in his nineties and was under intensive care, saying that he should have clearly declined the attribute of ‘guoxue dashi’ that the sycophants had been projecting him. (In fact, Ji Xianlin did make such a statement some years later when the controversy reached his ears.) This is grossly unfair even when one would so heartlessly disregard the humanitarian factor. We see in nature that both honey and excrement attract flies, while honey attracts not only flies but also bees. We can liken a great savant to honey, and the sycophants to flies. No one would put the blame on honey because of flies surrounding it. The savant is immune to the corruptive influence of the sycophants, but has no way to insulate himself/herself from the contacts of sycophants. This was exactly what had happened to Ji Xianlin in whose vocabulary there was no word like ‘no’ or ‘sorry’. More ridiculous was the professor-critic’s sarcasm that if Ji Xianlin could have assumed the title of ‘Master of Chinese studies’, India should have been a part of China!
I do not think I need to defend Ji Xianlin (though Lianhe zaobao/United Morning Daily, the Chinese language paper in Singapore did carry my signed article criticising the defamation of Professor Ji on 22 August 2005), for history would be the best judge on Ji Xianlin’s greatness. What I wish to say is that there is a sickening mentality in our societies—in China, India, as well as elsewhere—which I describe as ‘boundary-consciousness’ for want of a better description. Why must it be that when one studies India one would not deepen his/her understanding of China—or vice versa? I think that Ji Xianlin’s academic achievement lies in the fact that he could understand India profoundly exactly because he understood China profoundly. His forte was in archival research, and his mastery in so many languages enabled him to live in a boundary-less milieu. Most of his research yielded in the enrichment of Sino-Indian cultural affinity. This itself is a great achievement for both Indian and Chinese studies. In modern times, we have not seen anyone who can surpass him in this respect. In other words, his mastery of Chinese studies is of a high order.
But, after all has been said, I still hold that the polemic is completely meaningless; the victory of neither side can foster or injure the image of Ji Xianlin, which is beyond the approach or reproach of whimsical arguments and jaundiced views (sycophancy included). Ji Xianlin was both ordinary and extraordinary, a fine example of scholar, teacher, friend and human being. For me, he lives forever as my ‘zhiyin’ (one who reads the voice of my heart and vice versa).