Max Arthur Macauliffe (11 September 1838 − 15 March 1913), originally known as Michael McAuliffe, was a senior Irish administrator, prolific scholar and author in British India. Macauliffe is renowned for his partial translation of the Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib, and Sikh history into English."Studies in the History of Religions" Page 170, 1912 His magnum opus was The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors, published in 1909 by the Clarendon Press. He was skilled at languages, being proficient in a number of them. He is regarded as one of the most influential Western scholars on Sikhism.
Name His birth or baptismal name was Michael McAuliffe, which he changed to Michael Macauliffe in the 1870s and finally to Max Arthur Macauliffe later on after 1909. He may have changed his name to Max in honour of the famous scholar Friedrich Max Müller or to escape scandals he was involved in.
Early life and education
Macauliffe was born in Ireland at Glenmore, Monagea, Newcastle West, County Limerick on 11 September 1838 (although some sources incorrectly claim he was born in 1841) into a Roman Catholic family to parents John McAulliffe and Julia Browne. He was baptised as a Roman Catholic and was the eldest of a family of eleven or twelve children, with the family shifting from Monagea to Templeglantine as his father John was a principal at a local school. According to Tadhg Foley, the family consisted of five sons and seven daughters, with Michael being the oldest. He was educated at Newcastle School, Limerick, and Springfield College. He attended Queen's College Galway between 1857 and 1863, being awarded junior scholarships in the Literary Division of the Arts Faculty for 1857–58, 1858–59, and 1859–60. He was awarded a B.A. degree with first class honours in Modern Languages in 1860. He obtained a senior scholarship in Ancient Classics for 1860–1, and a senior scholarship in Modern Languages and History for 1861–62. He also served as Secretary of the college's Literary and Debating Society for the 1860–61 session. He studied ancient classics, modern languages, and modern history. After his education, he had some proficiency in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian.
Civil service Macauliffe entered the Indian Civil Service in 1862 after passing an examination he wrote at London in June 1862, picking the career as it paid well and would provide a pension. He arrived in Calcutta on 9 February 1864, staying there probably for a year or two to likely complete tests in Urdu and Bengali at Fort William College. Macauliffe originally aimed to work in Bengal but decided instead to go to Punjab due to an exchange about climate and salary he had with a civil servant who served in Punjab. He arrived in Punjab in circa 1865 and had to write further tests in Urdu and Persian. He first worked as an Assistant Commissioner of succeeding classes and later as a Judicial Commissioner. From 1865 or 1866, he worked in Gurdaspur as an Assistant Commissioner (third class) until 1870, with his working until 1872 in Multan as an Assistant Commissioner (possibly second class). Between 1872 and 1874, he was in Britain. He returned to Punjab, with him working from 1875 to 1878 in Montgomery as an Assistant Commissioner (either second or first class), after which he was appointed as a Judicial Assistant (first grade). In 1878, he again returned to Britain. He was appointed Deputy Commissioner of the Punjab in 1882 and he became a Divisional Judge in 1884, with him continuing to work in this role until 1893. He was awarded the degree of M.A. (honoris causa) by his alma mater in 1882. He retired from the Indian Civil Service in 1893 after the Khalsa Diwan offered him money for his work on Sikhism, receiving a pension thereafter. While him leaving the civil service has been characterized as a resignation, it was more comparable to a retirement. Indeed, E. D. Maclagan writing in 1908 criticized Macauliffe for characterizing his leave of the civil service as a "resignation". He lived in Amritsar for around three years after his retirement. He residence in Amritsar was located on 2 Cantonment Road. He had lost around a lakh rupees around this time due to commercial failures.
Research on Sikhism
His interest in the Sikhs began after he attended a Diwali celebration in Amritsar shortly after he arrived in Punjab. What interested him regarding the Sikhs were their egalitarianism in regards to women and caste, their martialness and modernism, and their lack of a clergy class. However, he considered Hinduism to be polluting Sikhism and wished to reform the Sikhs to rid them of Hindu influences, comparing Hinduism to a boa-constrictor hunting prey. Desiring to make Sikhism more known to the Western world, he would state:
In his career as a civil servant, Macauliffe showed sympathy with the native Sikhs, which brought him into some conflict with his British peers, with the colonial government refusing to financially support Macauliffe's Sikh research. He may have been introduced to Sikh studies by Bhai Gurmukh Singh, a Sikh reformer and scholar he may have met between 1879 and 1884. Macauliffe was known to and worked with other contemporary Sikh scholars and writers, such as Attar Singh of Bhadaur, Kahn Singh of Nabha (who became one of his closest Sikh assistants, first meeting in 1885), Bhagat Lakhsman Singh, and Ernest Trumpp. Macauliffe also knew Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner since 1870, with both meeting in 1885, 1886, and 1899. Macauliffe's first four articles researching Sikhism were published in the Calcutta Review between 1875 and 1881. Eventually, he reconciled the fact that he could not fully delve into Sikh studies without leaving his job in the civil service. After he retired from the Indian civil service in 1893, he had more time afforded to himself to devote to Sikh translations and history. Macauliffe was concerned that the original essence of the Sikh religion was being lost with the onset of linguistic shift, elderly traditional Sikh teachers and interpreters not passing on their knowledge to the next generation and subsequently dying, religious syncretism, modernity, and technology, thus he rushed to record what remained. Traditionally, Sikh expositions were carried out by the Gianis, Udasis, and Nirmalas but there was a dearth of published works covering the subject, especially due to Sikhs feeling guarded about their scriptures and non-Sikhs writing about them, especially due to the offences caused by Ernest Trumpp's poorly received work that was biased by odium theologicum, an undue emphasis on Sanskrit, and him smoking tobacco in the presence of the Sikh scripture. Sikh knowledge was therefore passed down orally rather than through writing. The scripture was written in various linguistic sources, with no dictionary for the most part being available to assist with comprehending the language of the scripture. The Raja of Faridkot, Bikram Singh, started a project in 1877 to publish a commentary on the Sikh scripture.
He was proficient in a number of Asian languages, such as Sanskrit, Prakrit, Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Marathi, Gujarati, and Punjabi and its dialects. He would shift from Amritsar to various settlements, such as Nabha, Mussoorie, and Dehradun. His local patrons included Hira Singh of Nabha, Ripudaman Singh of Nabha, Rajinder Singh of Patiala, Ranbir Singh of Jind, Ranjit Singh of Chhachhrauli, and Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda. He consulted the earlier works of Henry Colebrooke, John Malcolm, Joseph Davey Cunningham, Horace Hayman Wilson, Monier Williams, Friedrich Max Muller, and Ernest Trumpp. Macauliffe criticized Trumpp's earlier translations as not taking into account traditional Sikh interpretations, instead relying on Sanskritic interpretations and being unsuitably rendered in English. He also relied on a number of native Sikh scholars, bhais and gianis. Some of these Sikh helpers were Kahn Singh of Nabha, Nihal Singh of Sialkot, Sant Singh of Sialkot, Ditt Singh, Gurmukh Singh, Rajindar Singh of Lahore, Nihal Singh of Lahore, Sardul Singh Giani, Prem Singh, Fateh Singh of Amritsar, Darbara Singh of Amritsar, Bhai Sant Singh of Kapurthala, Bhai Bhagwan Singh of Patiala, and Bhai Dasaundha Singh of Firozpur. These Sikhs did not always agree with one another, lacked English ability, and communicated in dialectal Punjabi, making Macauliffe's task more challenging. Macauliffe had difficulty locating Sikhs who were both conversant in English but also possessed advanced knowledge in the scripture, with him claiming there only being ten such men in the world and they all failed to interpret the Sikh scriptures in English without restoring to relying on native language. He was also distrustful regarding the accuracy of some of the information parted on him by learned Sikhs. Some Sikhs considered an English translation of the Sikh scripture to be blasphemous and asserted that they would lobby for a government ban if such a translation was published. Instead, Macauliffe claimed that the Sikh gurus and Bhagats, if they were alive, would be pleased to see their verses being translated into English and made more accessible to the world. By Christmas Day in 1899, he had been indebted to the amount of 35,000 rupees due to employing Sikh teachers.
In 1897, he performed a lecture in Paris, which led to an 1898 book on Sikhism. At a lecture at the annual session of the Lahore Singh Sabha, Macauliffe proclaimed that the Guru Granth Sahib was matchless as a book of holy teachings.Max Arthur Macauliffe - He Introduced Sikhi to the English-Speaking West by Harbans Singh, published on SikhChic (First published: 26 May 2007; Republished: 8 February 2013) He literally stated: "the sublimity of their [Sikh gurus] style and the high standard of ethics which they inculcated were unmatched". However, Macauliffe claimed that only around fifty learnt Sikhs remained in Punjab who could properly interpret the scriptures. While Macauliffe is connected to the Tat Khalsa, in reality he worked with and maintained ties with both the Sanatan Sikhs and Tat Khalsa. However, Macauliffe had a partial falling out with the Sikhs for not being paid for his English translation by the reformers and maharajas despite being promised this by Gurmukh Singh. Furthermore, Macauliffe wanted to maintain friendly relations with the Amritsar Singh Sabha, which was opposed by the Lahore Singh Sabha. By 1897, Macauliffe was writing to the government warning them of Gurmukh Singh, who was his competitor as both vied for the patronage of the Patiala ruler. In 1902, the work that Macauliffe had done regarding Sikhs was praised by Max Müller in Auld Lang Syne, Second Series.
Translation work Macauliffe is held in high esteem by the Sikh community, for his translation into English of major parts of the Sikh scripture under the review of native Sikh scholars, published under the title The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors (six volumes, Clarendon Press, 1909), running nearly 2,500 pages in length. Macauliffe is purported to have used two lakh rupees of his own funds to support the 1909 work. He was assisted in his works by Pratap Singh Giani, a Sikh scholar. The 1909 work is a translation of select portions of the scripture, combined with traditional narratives and stories involving the Sikh gurus and bhagats. All together, he dedicated sixteen years to his Sikh translations with little resources to support him. A major portion of the Guru Granth Sahib was therefore translated by him. He would later state: