<img style="float: left;" title="Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2023/oct/Sumedha_e.jpg" alt="Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre" width="200" height="44" />A dictionary is a book to work with, not a book to look at. Few book lovers read dictionaries or their likes&mdash;glossaries, thesauruses, encyclopaedias and graduses.&nbsp;
People refer to dictionaries and wordbooks as aids and tools to grasp the potency of a living language.&nbsp;
Since the inception of the world&rsquo;s first dictionary&mdash;sun-baked <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/search/mumbai-articles" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Sumerian</a> clay tablets dating back to 2000 BCE&mdash;lexicographers have devoted their lives to decode words, usages and connotations. &nbsp;Samuel Johnson&rsquo;s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) involved a team effort of eight years. The French Encyclop&eacute;die has a longer history; its revised editions (1751) involved several editors and translators over a century. Its mission was massive: enlightenment of the bourgeoisie.&nbsp;
<img title="Molesworth&rsquo;s letter to his military bosses seeking permission to work on the dictionary. He even presented to them a detailed written plan about it" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2023/oct/sume-thirten-oct-op-b_e.jpg" alt="Molesworth&rsquo;s letter to his military bosses seeking permission to work on the dictionary. He even presented to them a detailed written plan about it" width="1280" height="720" />Molesworth&rsquo;s letter to his military bosses seeking permission to work on the dictionary. He even presented to them a detailed written plan about it
But lexicographers, despite their scholarly achievements, are not sufficiently applauded in the popular discourse. That&rsquo;s precisely why Shabdaprabhu Molesworth, the newly released Marathi book (with original English extracts) is dedicated to &ldquo;the unseen tears of little known and renowned lexicographers of the world&rdquo;.
Published by the <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/search/maharashtra-articles" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Marathi Sanshodhan Mandal</a>, and written by Arun Nerurkar, the 375-page hardbound bilingual volume tells the story of James Thomas Molesworth (1795-1872), the passionate British lexicographer of the Marathi language who painstakingly, and in collaboration with British and Maharashtrian experts, birthed the first Marathi-English dictionary (1831) and revised it arduously in 1857. The book illustrates the significance of Molesworth&rsquo;s dictionary through the writings of those who have celebrated and critiqued his work.&nbsp;
Molesworth was a polyglot, a &ldquo;word-worrier&rdquo;, a lover of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Hindi and Latin. He came to India at 16 as a junior military officer, who was soon admired for his linguistic abilities. He helped Major Thomas Candy to compile a glossary of Marathi words in his Solapur home in 1822. &nbsp;He was a devout Christian who made no bones of his intent behind the dictionary&mdash;English translation of the scriptures in Sanskrit for the natives of India, and vice versa.
<img title="Marathi Sanshodhan Mandal director AK Priolkar celebrated Molesworth in his writings " src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2023/oct/sume-thirten-oct-op-c_e.jpg" alt="Marathi Sanshodhan Mandal director AK Priolkar celebrated Molesworth in his writings " width="1280" height="720" />Marathi Sanshodhan Mandal director AK Priolkar celebrated Molesworth in his writings &nbsp;
Shabdaprabhu Molesworth pays tribute to the British military officer serving the East India Company, whose gigantic linguistic exercise, remains unmatched even today. &nbsp;
Molesworth&rsquo;s European predecessors&mdash;Robert Drummond, William Carey, Gidion Hutchingson, David Capen, and Vans Kennedy&mdash;attempted to arrest the Marathi vocabulary in earlier dictionaries, but none could extend beyond 8,000 to 10,000 words. &nbsp;Molesworth&rsquo;s database of 40,000 words, which increased by another 20,000 in the second edition, was a record in itself. &nbsp;The work inspired Protestant Christian reformer Baba Padmanji&rsquo;s abridged compendium in 1863. Pune&rsquo;s Shubhada Saraswat Prakashan printed a revised version of Molesworth&rsquo;s second edition in 1975. &nbsp;Sharad Gogate, the publisher who took personal interest in the reprinting process of the 1,000-page dictionary, says the sheer physical dimensions (13.5 x 10 inch) scared him. &nbsp;Gogate called it a &ldquo;granthraj&rdquo;&mdash;a heavy grand volume weighing 2 kg. The dictionary remained central in public consciousness for decades. &nbsp;
<a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/mrinal-sen-eccentric-irresponsible-adult-23314440" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Also read: Mrinal Sen: &lsquo;Eccentric, irresponsible adult&rsquo;</a>
The book commemorates the lexicographer, and underscores the respect Molesworth wields for putting the &ldquo;boundless chaos of a living speech&rdquo; in an alphabetical word order. It&rsquo;s not just the 60,000-word entries in Molesworth&rsquo;s shabdakosh (priced at Rs 65) that evoke awe, but the attention to every aspect of a spoken tongue that demonstrates a rare deep understanding. Every entry is illustrated by the word&rsquo;s orthography, pronunciation, general/implicit meaning, etymology, derivative offshoots in popular lingo, gender, and corrupt versions.&nbsp;
In the preface to the second edition, Molesworth makes it amply clear that he included Marathi words spoken by the educated classes as well as the &ldquo;provincialisms of the masses&rdquo;. &nbsp;For him the chosen words had to be a mix of &ldquo;the local and the general, the coarse and the neat, the domiciled imports and the genuine home-stock...&rdquo; For instance, veda and yeda both (meaning mad) are included; Brahman and Biraman are represented; and smaran and sumaran (remembrance) coexist. Molesworth includes all variants, and leaves it to the ardent reader/translator to decide which word should be picked up in which social/literary context. &nbsp;He also makes a case for inclusion of the &ldquo;foreign&rdquo; usages&mdash;secretary, note, file, third assistant, notice and handwriter. He was not rigid or dogmatic about any usage, be it the Sanskrit versus Prakrit or the Indian versus Persian/Arabic.
His inclusive idea of a lexicon is as important as the project itself. &nbsp;He factored in the geographical expanse, rise, progress and constitution of the Marathi language, that no other native linguist ever had achieved. &nbsp;Molesworth (with Thomas Candy) was entrusted with the task of the dictionary because it served the British government&rsquo;s interests; Marathi conversation was crucial in administration as well as business circles. &nbsp;But the lexicon&rsquo;s political purpose later became secondary. &nbsp;The seminal work assumed a language appreciation function for the natives. All the subsequent dictionaries in Marathi have drawn from Molesworth.&nbsp;
Arun Nerurkar, 78, the editor-translator (retired banker) known for rendering English fiction and academic works into Marathi, feels Molesworth&rsquo;s methodology sensitised Maharashtrians to the ever-expanding scope of a language. Molesworth&rsquo;s military bosses were not that keen on the dictionary as they were not academically inclined. But he convinced them about its utility in a detailed written plan. &nbsp;He insisted on relocating to Bombay city and Mahabaleshwar from Kheda (Gujarat) during the key word entries; he was ready to forego the Rs 3,000 remuneration for his labour for being allowed to work on his terms and in close cooperation with pandits/Brahmins of Pune.&nbsp;
Nerurkar says that the indefatigable Molesworth consciously served Marathi and non-Marathi readers, by working on both Marathi-Marathi and Marathi-English dictionaries; despite his poor health he worked on the second edition when he was summoned from his homeland. &nbsp;&ldquo;Can there be any other &lsquo;Marathichi seva&rsquo;?&rdquo; asks Nerurkar. Sir Bartle Frere, the governor of Bombay, praised Molesworth&rsquo;s dictionary as an aid for &ldquo;mahratta native student&rdquo; to fix a standard of his/her own language and improve the mother tongue which &ldquo;promises to play an important part in communicating the knowledge of the conquerors&rdquo;.
Shabdaprabhu Molesworth chronicles varied intellectuals and researchers who critiqued Molesworth&rsquo;s dictionary, especially researcher and Marathi Sanshodhan Mandal director AK Priolkar and Dr SM Pinge. &nbsp;The latter commemorated Molesworth in his iconic book (1960) Europeanancha Marathicha Abhyas Va Seva. The Mandal&rsquo;s current director, Nitin Rindhe, in fact is now planning a reprint of the unavailable book, priced at Rs 15 at one point. &ldquo;Molesworth is an institution and a spirit. &nbsp;The Mandal wants the next gen Marathi enthusiasts, the sons and daughters of the soil, to take inspiration from his tireless diligent work,&rdquo; adds Rindhe.
When a Bombay High Court judge wishes to interpret-deconstruct a Marathi word in the current times, he/she refers to Molesworth&rsquo;s compendium. Molesworth lives with the Marathi manoos in small and big ways. &nbsp;Very few dictionaries and their makers can claim such immortality.
Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre is a culture columnist in search of the sub-text. &nbsp;You can reach her at &nbsp;sumedha.raikar@mid-day.com
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A new bilingual book on the first Marathi-English dictionary, written 200 years ago, commemorates a
British lexicographer’s love for Indian languages

The making of a shabdakosh

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The making of a shabdakosh

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