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 here 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), which is often repeated at the beginning or end of a prayer or meditation. Its aim is to free the mind from the constant flow of thoughts to achieve maximum concentration. In Catalan, the word 'mantra' acquires a metaphorical use that functions as an equivalent of a monotonous and repetitive enumeration.A meditation that has reached 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 manual of sex for the ancient inhabitants of India was the 'Kamasutra' ('the rules of love'). Its author is Vatsyayana, a religious man who lived on 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 masters are called 'gurus' ('venerable') and the bodily incarnation of a god on Earth is called an 'avatar' ('descent'). There are other words that have reached 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 refers to each of the estates, generally hereditary, 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 'drum beater' in allusion to an activity that could be performed by a certain social class considered untouchable. In Catalan, the term is used to define people excluded from the advantages enjoyed by others.All this linguistic universe was what the Felanitxer Antoni Binimelis (1926-1983) came to know 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 celebrate 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 the study of Sanskrit. In 1983, at 57 years old, Binimelis died in New Delhi. In his memory, in 2006 the UIB promoted the first Sanskrit-Catalan dictionary
PalmaThe Palma native Gonçal López Nadal, 73, is an emeritus professor of Economic History at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). He feels indebted to the mastery of Antoni Binimelis Sagrera from Felanitx. “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 serving 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 professor of Spanish in New Delhi. He said he was quite a peculiar person, a man of universal culture, and that he hadn't lost a bit of his farmer's disposition."
Binimelis was born on April 7, 1926, in Felanitx, into a humble family. In 1947, during the well-known years of hunger in the post-war period, he was one of the first young people from the town to leave to study abroad. The town priest insisted to his parents that his son's great intellectual talent could not be wasted by him staying to work in the fields. The young man from Felanitx, 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. The interest in the sacred language of India had been born in his Indo-European classes with 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 Eastern world, related it to Latin, Greek, and Germanic languages. “No philologist –he wrote– could investigate these three languages without thinking that they come from a common source which, perhaps, no longer exists.” Jones thus discarded the majority belief of the time, which considered Hebrew the primordial language because it was the one used to write the Old Testament. The scholars who followed him also believed this and named that common, now lost, trunk 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 lecturer at the University of New Delhi, awarded 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 his senior. 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 from the University of Cambridge (England), where he had accompanied one of the sons of the banker Joan March, his fellow countryman, to study. From the same university, where he worked as a professor, Mascaró dedicated himself body and soul to translating the sacred books of India into English, 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 37 years old, the Felanitxer native 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 leadership of the charismatic pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi – five months later, on January 30, 1948, he was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic, at 79 years old. Binimelis would also teach classes to future Indian diplomats from the School of International Studies. He soon encouraged himself 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 the associate professor position there through competitive examination, 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 the prime minister Indira Gandhi. He also published numerous research articles and translations of Sanskrit poems into Spanish for the magazine Papeles de la India, published in New Delhi. During 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 found himself in 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 granted in January 1983, one month before his death, he made the following statement: "Because of their 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 karmic, as if it were caused by acts performed in previous lives and which offers the appropriate environment to be freed 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 diplomatic uncle convinced my father to let me travel alone to New Delhi, where Don Toni (that’s how 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 much-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 street life. 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 hippy movement, which so admired 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 to the West. On this topic, George Harrison and John Lennon had already discussed it in October 1967 with Mascaró on a BBC television program. “Don Toni –assures the disciple– strongly 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' by 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 transversal 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, the worst possible news arrived. “I was at the family estate in Son Servera. My brother called me 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 closed 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 89 years of age.
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 financing of 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”.