INDIAN SCHOLAR WHO NEEDED NO FORMAL EDUCATION-RAHUL SANKRITYAYAN-

 

I was a book lover when I was at college; but it was pretty difficult to get hold of good books. I studied Chemical Engineering at the Andhra University College of Engineering between 1974-79 at Visakhapatnam. I used to search around in the few book shops that were there at Vizag for buying books. One of the shops was “Visalandhra Book House”. They used to publish many books with a communist slant.

One day when I was browsing books at the shop I found the Telugu Book “Rigveda Aryulu”. I got attracted to it and checked it and found the name of the author Rahul Sankrityayan. The name sort of intrigued me. I checked for more books by the author and found ‘Olga to Ganga”. Both the names of the books as well as the authors name pulled me toward them and I flagged them for purchase later because I had no money then and was just browsing. However, it so happened that I never purchased them later. 

Recently by chance I came across and I downloaded one of the books from the net. I read about 3 stories from the book. His first story was from 6000 BC when humans were yet primitive and the family functioned in a way which is animalistic  and is totally revolting to us. We would find the societal conditions rather revolting, but that was perhaps the way then as civilization has not yet touched them, and they behaved just like animals. But it was a matriarchal society where the mother was the head of the family, because in those days finding who is the father of a child became rather difficult.

The subsequent 2 stories of 3500 BC & 3000 BC slowly made people less barbaric yet they are very primitive compared to what we are today. So this guy approximated the behaviors of that particular age and wove their behaviors into a story which is a very difficult task indeed. So in those stories he acted like a historian of those times while he

Then I read about the author and found his life story rather fascinating. Becoming master in Buddhism and Sanskrit without actually studying them formally speaks of great intellect. That the Leningrad University itself has asked him to be a Professor despite that speaks about his merit. I give below a brief profile of the guy.   

Rahul Sankrityayan was born as Kedarnath Pandey in the year 1893. He was the eldest child in a Bhumihar Brahmin family in the Azamgarh district of UP. His maternal grandfather educated him in Urdu as it was seen as a court language. This district was in the erstwhile Oudh state. He then also attended a Hindu school where he learnt the Devanagari script. In 1902 Sakrityayan started studying Sanskrit with his uncle who was considered a great pandit in that language. In 1909 Sankrityayan completed studying middle school and his grandfather wanted him to go in for English education, Sankrityayan resisted it and preferred Sanskrit. He called English an alien language.

Sankrityayan’s travels began in 1910 with his pilgrimage to the Western Himalayas. He went to Haridwar, Rishikesh, Badrinath and Kedarnath to study Vedanta. Then he went to Varanasi and started his studies there in 1911. Because he has travelled for much time he did not have any formal education and he was a self-taught man in many subjects. Next year he travelled to Chhapra in Bihar where he was initiated as a Sadhu and was made the heir to a mahant of Vaishnava tradition. However, he got bored, left Chhapra and arrived at Ayodhya.

In 1914 he came to know about the Arya Samaj and again he left to Agra where he studied free of cost and where he picked up Arabic and other religions of the world. After 2 years he went to Lahore and studied in a Vedic school. This led to his first introduction to Buddhism as he travelled to spread the Arya Samaj movement. He visited Kushinagar, Sarnath, Lumbini & Bodh Gaya.

His political career started in 1921 when he was jailed several times. During this stay in Bihar he turned to Buddhism. He took up teaching of Sanskrit in Srilanka in 1927 where he immersed himself in the Buddhist texts and the Pali language and earned the title of Tripitakacharya. He left for Tibet in 1928, and such was the nascent state of transport then,  it took him one and half years to reach Lhasa. He learnt the local language and collected Buddhist texts there. He returned to Srilanka and was initiated as a Buddhist monk and was given the name Rahul Sankrityayan. He again travelled to Chhapra, Sindh and Sarnath and returned back to Srilanka in 1931.

In 1932 he visited London as a representative of the Mahabodhi society. The society asked him to promote Buddhism in Europe and the US but he refused and returned back to Srilanka saying that he finds the capitalist life very dreary and there are similar things in the USA so he does not want to waste his time.

In 1933 he spent his time in visiting places and also in writing. He visited Patna, Ladakh & Lahore. Then between 1934 and 1938 he visited Tibet 3 times and Burma, Korea & Japan. He brough back more than 80 Sanskrit works on Buddhism which he translated.

He visited Russia first in 1935 and then in 1937 when he started teaching Ellena Narvertovna Kozerovskaya Sanskrit at the Leningrad University. She was to be his Russian wife later and was a scholar in Mongolian.  They married that year itself and a son Igor was born to them in 1938. Due to the marriage he had to shed his Buddhist monk status and become an Upasaka instead.

In 1938 Sankrityayan joined the Congress Socialist Party. He was also a founding member of the Bihar state Communist party. He was imprisoned several times when he wrote his work ‘Olga to Ganga” in Hindi.

This work consists of 20 historical fiction short stories on the migration of the Aryans from Central Asia into India. The stories start in 6000 BC and end in 1942 spanning 8000 years. This book is now considered a classic in Hindi literature and that is something coming from a man who had very little formal education and is self-taught. This book has been translated into Nepali, Assamese, Marathi, Bengali, English, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Punjabi. It was also published in Russian, Czech, Polish, Chinese and also other languages. This is a great classic. Yes, there was criticism of scholars on distortions, anomalies and loaded history in his work, yet what the man attempted was quite mighty and mistakes have to be accepted as a part of the book. That it has been translated into so many languages alone proves its readability and romanticism of the earlier times.

In his 3^rd stay in Russia from 1945 to 1947 he was invited to take up a Professorship at the Leningrad University. He was considered an authority on Buddhism. Hs family joined him in Leningrad. He wrote a book “25 months in Russia” to narrate his experiences there. He returned back to India after Independence.

His experiences in Russia solidified his belief in Communism and also in his nationalism. In India he was active in literature and politics. His strong advocacy of Hindi and opposition to Urdu as the national language led to his dismissal from the Communist party.

Sankrityayan married very young and never knew his first wife Santoshi. H e saw her once when he was in his 40’s. That may well be because he was never home and was constantly travelling. Then he married Ellena in Leningrad who did not come to India along with him when he came back after Independence..

Later he married Kamala Sankrityayan and they had a son named Jeta and daughter named Jaya.

Sankrityayan knew 30 languages and Bhojpuri was his native tongue. He wrote on Indology, Communism, Buddhism and Philology in some 100 books. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1963 and passed away the same year.