The Text
The Khudabakhsh Oriental Public Library
Amitava Kumar's essay on Patna, its libraries, its losses, and the worldliness of the word.
Part 1 A World Apart — Inside the Library
Kumar opens with a confession about his hometown: in Patna there is "a general consensus
that culture, like the surrounding economy, lies in ruins." And yet a visit to the
Khuda Bakhsh Library reveals another world — distant from the "cramped,
dusty streets outside filled with rickshaws and cars with loud, blasting horns."
A librarian, his right hand shaky, pulls out a book on medicine written
two thousand years ago — the Kitab-ul-Hashash. The edition he
holds is from the 13th century AD. It was translated from Greek into
Arabic by the order of Haroun-ul-Rashid, and it carries beautiful
illustrations painted with herbal and mineral colours that still appear clean and bright.
The librarian is old; his spectacles sit crookedly over his bulging eyes. He wants to
show you ancient paintings of war scenes where, he says, "no two faces are alike."
He keeps using the phrase "hidden treasures." There are
22,000 handwritten books in this library; about
five thousand to seven thousand of them are rare manuscripts.
He keeps using the phrase 'hidden treasures'. There are 22,000 handwritten books
in this library; about five thousand to seven thousand of them are rare manuscripts.
— Amitava Kumar
Part 2 The Richest Manuscript Library on Islam
A well-known historian, Surendra Gopal, accompanies the author on his
visit. Gopal tells him that the library was gifted to the government in 1891
and is today "the richest manuscript library on Islam in the world."
When Kumar hears this, he is "only conscious of the wretchedness on the streets outside."
A stone's throw away is the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH),
where he had been treated and operated upon as a boy. His mother, too, was a patient
there. Later, his sister worked in its wards as a doctor. Medical procedures in the
hospital were sometimes performed in the light of — the sentence trails off, the
incompleteness itself a comment on the state of public institutions.
The contrast is the heart of the essay: treasure within, decay without.
The library preserves the finest achievements of Islamic and Persian civilisation while
the city around it struggles with crumbling infrastructure and failing public services.
Part 3 The Hafiz Manuscript and the Art of Shakun
The librarian takes out from his safe another book — a priceless book of poems
by the Persian poet Hafiz. The book was presented to the Mughal ruler
Humayun by the emperor of Iran.
The Mughal rulers used the book to read omens, or shakun:
they would turn to a page and try to foretell the future from the words on the page
open before them. Akbar was emperor when his son
Jahangir, banished to Allahabad for his pillaging, sought the help of
the book to divine his future.
1Gham-e-garibi wa mehnat chun barmamitabun
2bashar-e-khud rawam washahier yaar khud bashan
3(If it is intolerable for you to live in the foreign land,
4then you should return home. You will be emperor.)
In the margins of the book, Jahangir had written that he was in
Allahabad and had been perplexed. He returned home to Fatehpur-Sikri
on reading the augury and, a few days later, following Akbar's death, was
crowned emperor.
Part 4 Touching the Emperor's Signature
The librarian's dark finger hovers over the lines that the emperor had inscribed. The
page is filigreed in gold, the bare portions stained with age. Kumar
wants to touch the page himself. He asks the librarian's permission and, when he says
yes, he gently places his index finger where the emperor has signed his
name.
It is a small, almost sacramental gesture — the reader physically entering history.
The moment captures the essay's central preoccupation: the living contact
between reader and text, across centuries, across empires. The book is not
a museum object but a shared presence.
Part 5 The Librarian's Recitation and Tahzeeb
The librarian and the historian talk for a long time. Kumar does not want to leave the
library. It is hot outside — the temperature has exceeded 110 degrees
Fahrenheit. The librarian, who knows Urdu, Arabic and Persian,
is reciting poetry. The words were written by the
last Mughal governor of Bihar.
The poet was addressing the deer in the forest, telling them what they already know —
that Majnun, the lover, has died. But what the poet wants to know from
the deer is what has passed over the wilderness, how the forest has suffered.
The librarian is a man of courtesy — what is called tahzeeb
in Urdu. When Kumar is leaving his office, the librarian gestures towards Gopal and
says, "He is a museum of knowledge. There are very few people left like this in
Patna."
Patna is the wilderness; people like the librarian recall Majnun, who has departed.
— Amitava Kumar
The image is quietly devastating. The city has become a wilderness, and the librarian
is one of the few left who remembers what was lost — like the deer who alone know how
the forest has suffered.
Part 6 Gandhi Maidan and the Loss of Conversation
Gopal has been affected by the conversation about Patna and the loss of cultural
institutions. He says there is a complete absence now of those kinds
of conversations that he felt were essential to civilised life. He is
nostalgic about his youth in a young India.
They pass Patna's Gandhi Maidan, only a mile or so from the Khuda Bakhsh
Library — the place where the most important political gatherings in Patna's history
have taken place. Gopal repeats two lines of poetry that he had heard the poet
Sahir Ludhianvi recite at a socialist meeting there in the 1950s:
1Har cheez yahan bikti hai, har cheez ko bikta dekha hai
2(Everything here is for sale, I have seen everything being sold here.)
The historian is burdened by his memories. He talks about the lack of
funds, the theft of public money, the closing of colleges and libraries.
Part 7 Libraries and the Marketplace — The Writer's Task
Kumar thinks of the librarian with his unsteady hand, lovingly laying out the volume
that was brought to India by Humayun Badshah. The acquisition of these
books was also a part of a process of trade and conquest. It was tied
to commerce and, indeed, to the sale of both precious and ordinary goods.
But this was not all. There are other truths too — like the words
written by a reader in the margins of a text, about hopes, and fears, and the unknown.
There are auguries of the future and melancholia about the
past. Libraries are haunted by the marketplace — but, it can be hoped, the
opposite is true as well.
At the same time, there is the enormous tussle of memory and desire
that cannot all be neatly or fully regulated by the market, or by the rulers of nations
and corporations. Writers bear witness to this uneven battle too; it
is part of the reality of the writer's work, of struggling every day with the
worldliness of the word.
Writers are caught in contradictory tasks: building imaginary worlds
that are removed from everyday life, and at the same time establishing how the
imagination is not detached from the quotidian world and is very much
a vital part of it.
To realise the truth of this condition is to know that books not only offer refuge
from the world, they also return you to it. When I had understood this truth,
I had stopped worshipping paper and become a reader.
— Amitava Kumar
The essay closes with the author's own confession: this book is a record of his
reading practice, bearing witness to his struggle to become a writer.
He views his pages as marginal entries in a book written by others.
In places, he has put his finger on the place where a writer has signed his or her name.
The name he has given this literary journey is Bombay — London — New York.
