Rahul Sankrityayan
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Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963) was one of the most widely traveled scholars of India, who spent forty-five years of his life on travel and away from home. He became a buddhist monk(Bauddh Bhikkhu) and eventually drew towards Marxist Socialism. He was given the title of Mahapandit (great scholar).
India is known as land of great saints and scholars. But it is yet to witness a person who knew more than thirty languages,travelled more than tens of thousand of miles(at times on foot), taught at well-known universities without formal education, a freedom fighter who was jailed thrice, and whose published works numbering more than 135 ranged from travelogues, sociology, history, religion, philosophy, autobiography, biography, Tibetology, lexicology, folklore, fiction, science, drama, essays and even pamphleteering. It was but natural that he was known as Mahapandit (Greatest scholar). His name was Rahul Sankriyayan.
Born as Kedarnath Pande in an Orthodox Bhumihar Brahmin family in a small village in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh, he lost his mother Kulawanti very early. His father Govardhan Pande was a farmer; the boy was brought up by his grandmother. All the formal schooling he got was at the primary school in the village. That was the basic knowledge of Urdu and Sanskrit. A restless soul, he ran away from home at the age of nine, to ‘see the world’. He did odd jobs, moved with Sadhus (mendicants) mainly living on alms. After some years came back home briefly and left. He studied Sanskrit at the monastery in the traditional way. He also taught himself various Indian languages and English. He mastered various dialects of Hindi, like Bhojpuri, Malavi, Avadhi, Maithilli, Braj, Rajasthani and Nepali. He learned photography as well.
He started touring all pilgrim-centers of India. He stayed at Madras, and learnt Tamil. He visited Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh and visited Bangalore, Hampi and Bagalkot in present day Karnataka.
He returned to monastic life and stayed at Arya Musafir Vidyalaya at Agra and mastered Sanskrit language, and started reading books on Christianity, Islam and various sects of Hinduism. His writing career started in his twenties; he mainly wrote in Sanskrit and Hindi for periodicals.
The Jallianwalah Holocaust (1919) turned him into a strong nationalist and he plunged into India's independence struggle. He was arrested for anti British writings and speeches. He was jailed for three years, wherein he translated the Quran into Sanskrit.
He studied Pali and Sinhalese languages and started reading Buddhistic texts in the original. He was slowly drawn to Buddhism and changed his name to Rahul (after Buddha’s son) Sankrityayan (Assimilator).
After his release, he went to Bihar and worked with Dr. Rajendra Prasad (later President of free India) who became a close friend. In those days social service was part of freedom struggle and he engaged himself in constructive activities laid down by Gandhiji. He became President of Azamgarh District Congress as well.
But the travel bug never left him. He undertook hazardous journey to the forbidden land of Tibet. There were practically no roads. Only nomads and petty merchants traveled with loads on mules. Disguised as a Buddhist bhikku (mendicant), He entered Tibet via Kashmir, Ladak, Kargil and started his journey on foot.
Rahul's main purpose was to collect lost works in Sanskrit on Indian culture in general and Buddhism in particular. After Bakhtiyar Khilji’s burning the libraries of Nalanda and Vikramshila universities in the 13th century C.E, not many ancient texts in Sanskrit survived in India. Some were smuggled out on time to Tibet. There was general belief among Indian scholars that these were well preserved in Tibetan monasteries, but not explored. But Rahul found out most of these had disappeared. With great difficulty, he could salvage some from the ruins of a monastery, which were all in Bhot language and not in Sanskrit. He returned with the valuable manuscripts and some Thanka paintings which are preserved in Patna museum.
Rahul visited Tibet, three more times. He mastered Tibetan language, wrote Tibetan primers, grammar and Tibetan-Hindi dictionary. Only first part of the last was published posthumously.
He again took to travel and visited Sri Lanka (where he taught Sanskrit), Japan, Korea, China, Manchuria and proceeded to Soviet Russia. He saw a fire temple in Baku and discovered an inscription in Devanagri script. From there he went to Tehran, Shiraz and Baluchistan and finally came to India.
His writings continued. He maintained daily diaries in Sanskrit which were utilized fully while writing his autobiography. In spite of profound scholarship, he wrote in very simple Hindi, so that a common man could follow. He wrote books of varied interest. He was aware of limitations of Hindi literature and singularly made up the loss in no small measure. He wrote 146 books, some of which are voluminous. Many works remain unpublished.
The well known historian Kashiprasad Jaisawal compared Rahul Sankrityayan with Buddha. Rahul's personality was as impressive and memorable as are his achievements. He travelled widely and wrote in five languages-Hindi, Sanskrit, Bhojpuri, Pāli and Tibetan. His published works include autobiography, biography, travelogue, sociology, history, philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, lexicography, grammar, textual editing, folklore, science, fiction, drama, essays, politics, and pamphleteering.
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[edit] Childhood
He was born Kedarnath Pande on 9 April 1893 in a simple Bhumihar Brahmin family in Azamgarh district,in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. His father, Govardhan Pande, was a religious-minded farmer. His mother, Kulawanti, used to stay with her parents at the village of Pandaha, where Kedar was born. He spent part of his childhood in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states of India. As his mother died at the age of twenty-eight and his father at the age of forty-five, he was brought up by his grandmother. His earliest memories as recorded by him were of the terrible famine in 1897.
[edit] Travels
His travels took him to different parts of India, including Ladakh, Kinnaur, and Kashmir. He also covered several other countries including Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and the former Soviet Union. While traveling, he mostly used surface transport, and he went to certain countries clandestinely, like Tibet where he went disguised as a Buddhist monk. He made several trips to Tibet and brought from there valuable manuscripts of Pali and Sanskrit, several books and paintings. Most of these formed a part of the libraries of Vikramshila and Nalanda Universities and were taken to Tibet by fleeing Buddhist monks during 12th century and onwards when the invading armies had destroyed these universities. Some accounts state that Rahul Sankrityayan employed twenty-two mules to bring back the loads of part of these materials, from Tibet to India.
In honour of him, Patna Museum, Patna, has a special section, where a number of these and other items have been displayed.
[edit] Personal Life
Rahul's personal life was also unique and interesting. He was married when very young and never came to know anything of his child-wife. During his stay in Soviet Russia a second time, accepting an invitation for teaching Buddhism at Leningrad University, he came in contact with a Mongolian scholar Lola (Ellena Narvertovna Kozerovskaya). She could speak French, English, and Russian and write Sanskrit. She helped him in working on Tibetan- Sanskrit dictionary. Their attachment ended in marriage and birth of son Igor. Mother and son were not allowed to accompany Rahul to India after completion of his assignment.
Late in life, he married Dr. Kamala, an Indian Nepali lady and had a daughter (Jaya) and a son (Jeta). He accepted a teaching job at a Sri Lankan University, where he fell seriously ill. Diabetes, high blood pressure and a mild stroke struck him. Most tragic happening was the loss of memory. He breathed his last in Darjeeling in 1963.
[edit] Books
Rahul Sankrityayan was a multilingual linguist, well versed in several languages and dialects, including Hindi, Sanskrit, Pali, Bhojpuri, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Kannada, Tibetan, Sinhalese, French and Russian. He was also an Indologist, a Marxist theoretician, and a creative writer. He has written at least 150 books and dissertations covering a variety of subjects.
One of his most famous books in Hindi is named Volga se Ganga, meaning “(A journey) from Volga to Ganga” and is an attempt to present a fictional account of migration of Aryans from the steppes of the Eurasia to regions around the Volga river; then their movements across the Hindukush and the Himalayas and the sub-Himalayan regions; and their spread to the Indo-Gangetic plains of the subcontinent of India. The book begins from 6000 BC and ends in 1942, the year when Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader has given a call for quit India movement. The book is remarkable for its historical elements interwoven with fiction.
[edit] In Soviet Union
Although he did not have any formal education, in view of his knowledge and command over the subject, University of Leningrad appointed him Professor of Indology in 1937-38 and again in 1947-48.
[edit] Further reading
- Himalayan Buddhism, Past and Present: Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan centenary volume by D. C. Ahir (ISBN 81-7030-370-2)
- Prabhakar Machwe: "Rahul Sankrityayan" New Delhi 1978: Sahitya Akademi. [A short biography including a list of Sankrityayan's works]
[edit] Works by Rahul Sankrityayan
[edit] In Hindi
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Novels
Short Stories
Autobiography
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Biography
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Some of his other books are Bhago nahin duniya ko badlo, Rhigvedic Arya,Ghumakkar Shastra,Kinnar desh mein, Darshan Digdarshan, Dakkhini Hindi ka Vyaakaran etc.
[edit] In Bhojpuri
- Tin Natak - 1942
- Panch Natak - 1942
[edit] Related to Tibetan
It is not clear what the first two works are about, but the third is a grammar of the Tibetan language.
- Tibbati Bal-Siksha - 1933
- Pathavali (Vol. 1,2 & 3) - 1933
- Tibbati Vyakaran - 1933
(The list is incomplete)
