| Rajendralal Mitra রাজেন্দ্রলাল মিত্র |
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Rajendralal Mitra |
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| Born | 15 February 1824 Kolkata, Bengal, British India |
| Died | 26 July 1891 (aged 67) Kolkata, Bengal, British India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Ethnicity | Bengali Hindu |
| Occupation | Orientalist |
| Religion | Hinduism |
Rajendralal Mitra (Bengali: রাজেন্দ্রলাল মিত্র) (1823/24-1891) was the first modern Indologist of Indian origin, and was a key figure in the Bengal Renaissance. [1][2] He was pioneer in scientific study of history and contributed substantially in the field of archaeology.[3] Eminent Historian Professor R.S. Sharma writes of him as, "A great lover of ancient heritage, he took a rational view of ancient society and produced a forceful tract to show that in ancient times people ate beef."[4] He was the author of Antiquities of Orissa (1872). In 1846 he was appointed librarian of the Asiatic Society, and to that society the remainder of his life was devoted—as philological secretary, as vice-president, and as the first Indian president in 1885.[1]
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The Mitra family is one of the oldest families of Bengal and received various honors from the Bengal Nawab. Raja Pitambar Mitra migrated to Oudh after the disaster at Palashi, and the family was settled there for many generations. When the family was under Ajodhyaram they received many honors from the Nawab Vizir of Oudh and the emperor at Delhi as well. Many members of the Mitra family were well known in literary circles. Pitambar and his grandson, Janmejay Mitra wrote Brajabuli poems. Remarkably, Janmejay was an Urdu poet of distinguished standing as well. Rajendralal Mitra, third son of Janmejay Mitra, was the first Indian President of The Asiatic Society and one of the pioneers of the Indian Renaissance
Rajendralal Mitra was born in 1823 (or 1824) in a respectable Kayastha family at Soora, an eastern suburb of Kolkata, India. Rajendralal who later became famous as one of the most learned men of India of the time and one who was famous for his mastery of the English language had however a sporadic schooling. After his schooling in Gobinda Chandra Basak's Free Hindu School, he joined Calcutta Medical College in December 1837. In the year 1841 he was involved in a strong students' movement. The agitating students sent a memorandum to the authorities and declared a strike. David Hare proposed to mediate, but the students refused. The deadlock was finally broken by Sir Edward Ryan who proposed to abolish the College unless the students called the strike off immediately. This drastic measure scared the students as the stipend from the college was quite handsome in those days, and many of the students in fact supported their family on that money. Ultimately all the students, except three, returned to the College accepting the personal humiliation. However, Rajendralal Mitra, Kartikeyachandra Roy and Madhab Chandra Bysack never returned to Medical College. [3]
After leaving the medical college he tried to become a lawyer but his legal education also was not completed. Thus to a large extent he was self-educated, studying Sanskrit and Persian in the library of his father. Then his family tradition of learning many languages took hold of him and he applied himself wholeheartedly to mastering different languages - Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu and Hindi - which all stood him in good stead in the career that was awaiting him in the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, the sheet-anchor of his fame and life work. He later became fluent in French, Greek and Latin.
In November 1846 Rajaendralal was appointed Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the Asiatic Society. His connection with the Asiatic Society attained its apogee with his election in 1885 as its first native-born President. He had also been its Secretary in 1857 and 1865 and Vice-President from 1861 to 1865 and from 1870 to 1884. He was again its Vice-President between 1886 and 1891. Thus honors were heaped upon him, an Indian, by an institution that was very much British at the time-indeed his achievements could not be ignored. Very fittingly it was he who wrote its centenary history, published in 1885.
Mitra resigned his job with the Asiatic Society in 1856 to take up the post of Director of the newly set up Wards' Institution for the education of the wards of the zamindars. He stayed in this job till 1880 when the Wards' Institution was abolished.
Under the celebrated Bibliotheca Indica series of the Asiatic Society Mitra edited no less than fourteen texts between 1854 and his death in 1891. Meanwhile the work of discovering, collecting, cataloging and describing Sanskrit MSS in Bengal and other provinces and in the libraries of the native princes and even in Nepal was going on in full swing under the auspices of both the Asiatic Society and the Government of India and to some extent at his behest. Several catalogues and translations made by him followed and were highly appreciated at home and abroad. His The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal published in 1882 indeed marked an epoch. Besides editing, translating and cataloging, his two important works, The Antiquities of Orissa (1875, 1880) and Buddha Gaya, the Hermitage of Sakya Muni (1878), were pioneering works. However it is to be kept in mind that besides these main works he delivered numerous lectures on different occasions both in English and Bengali and wrote nearly 120 articles in the Journal and the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. He was a contributor to the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; Journal of the Anthropological Society; Journal of the Photographic Society of Bengal; Calcutta Review and Mookerjee's Magazine. He also contributed to The Englishman; The Daily News; The statesman, The Phoenix, The Citizen, The Friend of India, The Indian Field and The Hindu patriot. He edited The Hindu Patriot for several years. He also wrote many articles and books in his own mother tongue. Rajendralal also rendered assistance to Prof. Max Muller in the task of editing ancient Sanskrit literature. He also deciphered some ancient inscriptions. He corresponded and communicated with the greatest of the European indologists of the time on equal terms. Max Muller himself wrote in Rajendralal's appreciation when Rajendralal was hardly forty-five years old. His contribution to the early development of photography in India was also immense.He was the first Secretary and Treasurer of the Indian Photography Society.A fearless crusader against British hegemony, as he always was,he was later expelled from the organization.
Parallel to the very important work being done at the Asiatic Society Rajendralal Mitra was also contributing to educative journalism by editing from 1852 to 1859 the popular and the only illustrated monthly magazine of the time, the Vividhartha Sanggraha, published under the auspices of the Vernacular Literature Committee. Vividhartha Sanggraha won the heart of young rabindranath tagore. In 1863 the Vividhartha Sanggraha was replaced by another illustrated monthly magazine of the same kind, the Rahasya Sandarbha and this too was entrusted to the editorship of Rajendralal. He edited it for six years till its 66th number. Much before this, as early as 1848 and again in 1850 he was selected as one of the members of the committee for reviewing papers for publication in the tattvabodhini patrika. He was also chosen as the President of the Sarasvat Samaj established by the Tagores in 1882 for the general purpose of the development of Bangla language and with the specific idea of developing Bangla equivalents of English technical terms, particularly in geography.
Rajendralal lived in the social milieu of the Bengal Renaissance and in the environment thus created, in spite of his primary pre-occupation with antiquarian studies, the question of the spread of education among his fellowmen could not be far from his mind. He contributed to that need by looking after some organisations supervising the education of the young such as the Central School Book Committee, Vernacular Literature Society, calcutta school-book society, Sarasvat Samaj, bethune society, Society for Promotion of Industrial Art, Association of Friends for the Promotion of Social Improvement. He himself wrote text-books in Bangla on different subjects, particularly geography and grammar. He laid particular stress on the spread of geographical knowledge. He was also a member of the Photographic Society, Philharmonic Academy of Bengal and a Calcutta University fellow. By writing on technical subjects he was also developing the Bangla language as a vehicle for expression of different disciplines unknown before. Another of his pioneering publications was the first Bangla atlas, which he prepared for the Calcutta School-Book Society between 1850 and 1858. Another of his achievements in the field of atlas making in the vernacular languages was a series of maps of the districts of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in Bangla and Oriya, published in 1868. He also prepared for the government of Oudh (present-day Uttar Pradesh), between 1853 and 1855, maps of India in Hindi and Urdu and also a map of Asia in Persian. His other important Bangla books were a life of Shivaji (1860) and a collection of his technical essays (1860) published in the Vividhartha Sanggraha.
Rajendralal laid the foundation of the tradition of the study of Indian antiquities by Indians themselves. His hard and unsparing labour extending over more than fifty years started bringing him honour from home and abroad. He was one of the first Indians to be honoured by scholarly and learned bodies in Europe in colonial times. He was admitted as an honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He was also honoured in Vienna and Italy. The government honoured him with the title of 'Ray Bahadur' (1877), 'CIE' (1878) and 'Raja' (1888).
Rajendralal had a very extensive involvement with public life and in fact he did attain national status as a public leader. From 1863 to 1876 he was a 'Justice of the Peace' and in 1876 he was elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the Calcutta Municipality. He was associated with the British India association almost from the beginning; was its President (1881–82, 1883–84, 1886–87) and Vice-President (1878–80, 1887–88, 1890–91). But with the birth of the Indian national congress in 1885 he truly rose to the status of one of the national leaders of India. The second session of the congress was held in Calcutta in 1886 and Rajendralal, the then President of the British India Association was chosen as Chairman of the Reception Committee.
He received the honorary degree of LL.D from the university of Calcutta in 1875, the companionship of the Indian Empire when that order was founded in 1878, and the title of Raja in 1888. He died at Calcutta on the 26th of July 1891.[1] He is still acclaimed as the pioneer historian of the Indo-Aryan race, and his work on the State of Orissa is detailed and excellent. Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Laureate in Bengali literature, called him ‘an uncompromising Crusader’.
Apart from very numerous contributions to the society's journal, and to the series of Sanskrit texts entitled "Bibliotheca indica," he published three separate works: