In Prof G Venkatasubbaiah's legacy, an abiding love for Kannada and awareness of its role in a globalised world

When I learnt of Prof G Venkatasubbaiah’s death, my first reaction was that of surprise. Surprise at learning that he had died – at the ripe old age of 107! It may sound strange, but GV’s longevity had made him seem like a chiranjeevi – an immortal who would always be around to celebrate his next birthday. And though I never had the privilege of meeting GV awaru in person, I, like millions of other Kannada speakers, met him in his works. Looking back, I see that I first “met” GV when I began teaching myself to read Kannada properly several years ago. My greatest aid at the time was the Kannada Ratnakōsha, a pocket-sized Kannada-Kannada dictionary first brought out in 1973 by the Kannada Sāhitya Parishat, Karnataka’s leading literary organisation. I cannot recall how many times I thumbed through that little red book’s pages, looking for the meaning of one or another Kannada word. Nor can I tell how many hundreds of words I learned (or relearned) from doing so. Indeed, so profound and intimate was my connection with that dictionary in those early days, I reckon I could still point out some words whose meaning I first learned within its pages. I say that book was my first encounter with GV’s work. I do this despite his name not being mentioned in the list of the Ratnakōsha’s editors. The reason is simple: GV might not himself have compiled the Ratnakōsha, but it, like almost every other Kannada-Kannada, English-Kannada, and Kannada-English dictionary to have been published in the latter half of the 20th century, had his imprint. (Indeed, the Ratnakōsha can be considered a branch of the giant Kannada-Kannada Nighanṭu tree.) With profound respect for his mentors (who included literary luminaries like TS Venkanayya, BM Srikantaiah, AR Krishnashastry, and DL Narasimhachar) and their vision; his deep and abiding love for the Kannada language, its history, and its literary tradition; his predilection for scholarship and teaching; and his unrelenting dedication towards the Kannada language’s development and growth, it was only fitting that GV came to be known as the shabdarshi (the rishi of the word) — a ‘walking dictionary’, and the undisputed doyen of modern Kannada lexicography. GV’s magnum opus would be the approximately 10,000-pages long Kannada-Kannada Nighanṭu, published in eight volumes between 1970 and 1993. Involved with the project since its conception by AR Krishnashastry and DL Narasimhachar, he would become its chief editor after the death of DL Narasimhachar in 1971. Modelled on the Oxford English Dictionary but also borrowing from the Amarakōsha of Amara and the Nirukta of Yaska (two foundational lexicographical Sanskrit treatises), the mammoth dictionary’s compilation and editing would be GV’s crowning achievement. “We collected some 10-15 lakh paṭṭis (lists) of words and phrases over the course of the work,” GV once said in an interview. Though modest about his achievements, he was justifiably proud of the work he and his team had done in compiling the eight-volume dictionary. “It is the largest, most comprehensive dictionary to have been created in any Indian language,” he often said. Outside of his influential participation in the compilation and editing of the Kannada-Kannada Nighanṭu, GV took on several other linguistic and literary pursuits. This included the publication of several smaller dictionaries including the Kannada-Kannada Sankshipta Nighanṭu (The Concise Kannada-Kannada Dictionary), the Eravalu Padakōsha (The Dictionary of Borrowed Words), and the Kannada Klishṭapada Kōsha (The Dictionary of Complex Kannada Words); critical works like Sāhitya mattu Shikshaṇa (Literature and Pedagogy) and Kāvya Chintana (Musings on Poetry); and a collection of books for children. But none of these works came close to rivalling the popularity of the Sunday column — titled Igō Kannada (Behold, Kannada!) — he wrote for the Kannada daily, Prajavani. Begun in 1991 to help the student and the teacher of Kannada with their questions regarding the language, the weekly column would go on to become a household name, attracting readers from every socioeconomic class, hundreds of thousands of questions and responses, and thousands of letters of appreciation (sent directly to GV himself). Relishing this role as the arbiter of the language he loved so much, grateful for the overwhelming response, and acutely aware of the responsibility that came with it — laudably and unusually — GV was not some hardened linguistic purist, but a realist who understood the position of Kannada in a globalising, English-dominant world, and recognised the need for it to both borrow from and navigate this world on its own terms. He would go on to write the column uninterruptedly for 18 years, stopping only as he neared his 100th birthday! Later, as he reached a 100 and then passed it, he would oversee the publication of three book-length collections of the columns and come to call the multi-volume series a Sāmājika Nighanṭu or Sociolinguistic Dictionary. If the Kannada-Kannada Nighanṭu was his magnum opus, the Sāmājika Nighanṭu was the fruit of his love, dedication, and passion for language in general, and Kannada in particular. ‘[When] the gods themselves do not know the origin of words, how can men hope to,’ goes a Sanskrit aphorism; one quoted by GV himself. That is to say, the origin of a word — of words, of the collective of words that is a language — is not some box that can be unlocked with the right key, but a profound mystery whose investigation will always hide as many secrets as it reveals. All the diligent and intelligent lexicographer can do is to follow words, look for patterns, trace connections and search for roots. In a documentary about GV, the late litterateur UR Ananthamurthy had said, “GV could have been a poet [had he not become a lexicographer]”. While I cannot be certain what Prof Ananthamurthy meant, it is possible he was referring to the similarities between the poet and the lexicographer (especially the creative lexicographer). To wit, both the poet and the lexicographer are inextricably bound up with words. To the former, it is a means of creation, to the latter, it is a creation in itself. To both, though, the word is the crux, the quintessence, the seed. In the 20th century, the Kannada language was fortunate enough to produce both a poet and a lexicographer of singular genius. If Da Ra Bendre was the language’s varakavi (heaven-touched poet) and one of the greatest lyric poets to have lived, Ganjam Venkatasubbaiah (GV) was its lexicographical giant; the man who dedicated his life to studying, understanding, appreciating, and spreading an appreciation for the Kannada language. Confident until the very end about Kannada’s strength and immortality, to honour and uphold this confidence of GV’s would be the best way for the Kannada people to pay him their respects. Madhav Ajjampur is a writer and translator. His original work can be found here. His translations from Kannada to English can be found here and here.