Many words we use today come from Sanskrit. In the language of the Brahmins (a caste in India), ‘karma’ means ‘action’. The term refers to our physical, verbal, and mental ‘actions’, which, according to Hinduism, condition our reincarnations. Thus, virtuous behaviors are the seed of our future happiness, and harmful ones, the seed of our suffering. From this we get the expression ‘cursed karma!’. There is also the concept of ‘mantra’, which means ‘liberation of the mind’. In Hinduism and Buddhism, it is a sacred formula (a syllable, a word, a phrase, or a text) that is often repeated at the beginning or end of a prayer or meditation. Its purpose is to free the mind from the constant flow of thoughts to achieve maximum concentration. In Spanish, the word ‘mantra’ takes on a metaphorical use that functions as an equivalent of a monotonous and repetitive enumeration. One meditation that has come to us from the homeland of the pacifist Mahatma Gandhi is yoga, ‘union’ in Sanskrit. In Hindu philosophy, it designates a set of physical exercises that allow the ‘union’ between the cosmos and divinity. Sexual yoga is known as tantric (‘to weave’). In the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment, its goal is not ejaculation or orgasm, but to enhance the five senses through kisses, caresses, and gazes so that sexual energy flows. The sex manual for the ancient inhabitants of India was the ‘Kamasutra’ (‘the rules of love’). Its author is Vatsyayana, a religious man who lived at an uncertain date between the 1st and 6th centuries AD. From Sanskrit we also have the word ‘nirvana’ (‘extinction’). It is the state of absolute happiness that can be achieved through meditation. In Eastern religions, spiritual teachers are called ‘gurus’ (‘venerable’), and the bodily incarnation of a god on Earth is called an ‘avatar’ (‘descent’). There are other words that have come to us from India without necessarily being of Sanskrit origin. This is the case of ‘caste’. Of uncertain etymology, in the land of the Taj Mahal, it is each of the generally hereditary strata that form the hierarchical division of society. Those who do not belong to any caste are the ‘pariahs’. In the Tamil language (in the southeast of the country), it means ‘drummer’ in allusion to an activity that could be performed by a certain social class considered untouchable. In Spanish, the term is used to define people excluded from the advantages enjoyed by others. This entire linguistic universe was what Felanitxer Antoni Binimelis (1926-1983) knew closely during his last twenty years of stay in India. Next Thursday, April 9, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, his disciple Gonçal López Nadal will expound on his figure. It will be at 7 p.m. at the Casa de Cultura de Felanitx.
Antoni Binimelis, the Felanitxer guru of India
This month marks the centenary of the birth of one of the 'wise men of Felanitx', who in 1963, having graduated in Classical Languages in Madrid, settled in the Asian country to deepen his study of Sanskrit. In 1983, at the age of 57, Binimelis died in New Delhi. In his memory, in 2006 the UIB promoted the first Sanskrit-Catalan dictionary.
PalmThe Palmesan Gonçal López Nadal, 73, is Professor Emeritus of Economic History at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). He feels indebted to the mastery of the Felanitx native Antoni Binimelis Sagrera. “The first time –he assures– I heard of him was in 1964, when I was 11 years old. It was through my uncle, Guillem Nadal Blanes, who was stationed as a diplomat in India. In a letter he told the family that he had met a Majorcan, a specialist in classical languages and a Spanish teacher in New Delhi. He said he was a rather peculiar person, a man of universal culture, and that he hadn't lost a hair, but, from his condition as a peasant”.
Binimelis was born on April 7, 1926, in Felanitx into a humble family. In 1947, during the well-known hungry years of the post-war period, he was among the first young people from the town to leave to study abroad. The village priest insisted to his parents that his son's great intellectual talent could not be wasted by having him stay to work in the fields. The young Felanitx native, 21 years old, began by studying Philosophy and Letters at the University of Barcelona. After two years, he transferred to the Complutense University of Madrid, where in 1957 he obtained his degree in Classical Philology. Throughout that entire period, he was able to support himself thanks to a scholarship and by teaching Latin and Greek in Jesuit schools. He also found time to study Italian, French, English, and German.
The other Joan Mascaró
In 1959, at 33 years old, Binimelis presented his first doctoral thesis on Sanskrit in Spain. His interest in the sacred language of India had been born in the Indo-European classes of Professor Francisco Rodríguez Adrados. In the 18th century, the study of the language of the Kamasutra was decisive in attempting to create the first linguistic map of the world. In 1788, the British judge Sir William Jones, an expert in the oriental world, related it to Latin, Greek, and Germanic languages. “No philologist – he wrote – could investigate these three languages without thinking that they proceed from a common source which, perhaps, no longer exists”. Jones thus dismissed the prevailing belief at the time that considered Hebrew the primordial language because it was the one used to write the Old Testament. Scholars who followed him also believed it and named that common, now lost, trunk with the name Indo-European, because its derivations extended from India to Europe. Today, Indo-European is considered one of the 17 linguistic families on the planet.
In 1963, after two years working at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Binimelis had the opportunity to delve deeper into the study of the transcendental language of the Brahmins. This was thanks to the first scholarship for a Spanish lector at the University of New Delhi, granted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Around that time, there was already a prominent Majorcan specialist in Sanskrit. He was Joan Mascaró i Fornés from Margalida, 29 years older. As a teenager, he had been impressed by reading a Spanish translation of the Hindu poem Bhagavad Gita. In 1929, at the age of 32, he had graduated in Oriental languages at the University of Cambridge (England), where he had accompanied one of the sons of the banker Joan March, a fellow countryman, to study. From the same university, where he worked as a professor, Mascaró dedicated himself body and soul to the translation into English of India's sacred books, which allowed the West to discover a world full of spirituality. “Binimelis –says López Nadal– never knew him. Surely, however, he knew who he was from his translations”.
“I prefer to be poor in India”
In 1963, at the age of 37, the felanitxer would be a pioneer in introducing the study of Spanish in the lands of the Ganges River. When he arrived, the country had been independent from Great Britain for 16 years under the baton of the charismatic pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi – five months later, on January 30, 1948, he was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic, at the age of 79. Binimelis would also teach future Indian diplomats from the School of International Studies. He would soon be encouraged to found the Society of Hispanic Studies in India. In 1968, at the University of New Delhi, he presented his second doctoral thesis focused on the Alamkaras, important literary figures of Indian lyric poetry. In 1970, he won, by competitive examination, the position of associate professor, which allowed him to create the Department of Hispanic Studies. He would do the same in 1972 at Jawaharlal Nehru University. That environment would lead him to meet the Catalan Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010), a great disseminator of Hinduism.
Binimelis also dedicated himself to giving lectures and participating in international indology congresses. Having learned Hindi, he would often act as an interpreter for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He also published numerous research articles and translations of Sanskrit poems into Spanish for the magazine Papeles de la India, edited in New Delhi. In his free time, the Mallorcan indologist explored his spiritual side by painting, especially mythological themes. He also found time to help patients at a leper colony supported by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who would receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
The man from Felanitx encountered a very poor country, with 800 million inhabitants – today, with nearly 1.5 billion, it is the most populous in the world. In an interview given in January 1983, a month before his death, he made the following statement: “For its way of life, I would rather be poor in India than in a Western country. To live here requires very little [...]. The Indian accepts poverty, which is not a degrading state, but a karmic one, as if it were caused by acts performed in previous lives and which offers the appropriate environment to be free from future reincarnations”.
Against the 'hippies'
López Nadal met Binimelis in person in January 1968. “I –he says– was 15 years old and had finished fourth grade. Then my diplomat uncle convinced my father to let me travel alone to New Delhi, where Don Toni (as we knew him) could give me private lessons in Greek and Latin. My brother Joan Manuel, two years older, had already gone through the same experience.” That teenager from Palma met a 42-year-old man with a lean body, blue eyes, and not very tall. “I immediately realized that he was a well-loved and respected person both inside and outside the university sphere. They considered him a guru, a word that in Sanskrit means ‘venerable’. He was an eccentric professor who, however, shunned vanity. He knew how to combine research with life on the street. His classes were wonderful, full of enthusiasm. On the other hand, Joan Mascaró, whom I met later, was an extraordinary mystic who, however, lived quite isolated in his ivory tower.”
1968 was the year of the explosion of the hippie movement, which looked so much to Hinduism and Buddhism. In February of that year, The Beatles, the British rock group of the moment, traveled to the cradle of those religions to attend some sessions with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the introducer of transcendental meditation in the West. On this topic, George Harrison and John Lennon had already spoken in October 1967 with Mascaró on a BBC television program. “Don Toni –assures the disciple– greatly criticized the fascination that Western youth felt for Eastern philosophies. He considered it a trivial fad that responded to economic interests.”
That kind of ‘Erasmus’ for López Nadal lasted three months. “Don Toni not only took care of my intellectual training. He also took me to meet people from India so I would have a more cross-cutting vision of the country.” The student would repeat the visit seven years later, in 1975, when he had already finished his university studies. At the end of February 1983, he received the worst possible news. “I was on the family farm in Son Servera. My brother called me on the phone to tell me that don Toni had been found dead in his house in New Delhi. He was 57 years old. His body showed signs of violence. The case ended up being shelved without the motives for the crime being clarified.” Mascaró, the other great master of the sacred language of the Hindus, would die four years later, in 1987, in Cambridge, at the age of 89.
In 1992, López Nadal convinced the rector of the UIB, Nadal Batle, a native of Felanitx like Binimelis, to lead an institutional trip to the University of New Delhi to pay homage to his countryman. “On that occasion, we met the Catalan philologist Òscar Pujol Riembau, who had been living in the country since 1986. We proposed the idea of creating, with the funding from our university, the first Sanskrit-Catalan dictionary. The project saw the light of day in 2006. It was the best way to honor the memory of don Toni”.