Rahul Sankrityayan
| Rahul Sankrityayan | |
|---|---|
| Born |
9 April 1893 Pandaha Village,Azamgarh District, Uttar Pradesh, British India |
| Died | 14 April 1963 (aged 70) Darjeeling, West Bengal, India |
| Occupation | Writer, essayist, scholar, sociology, indian nationalist, history, Indology, philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, Lexicography, Grammar, Textual Editing, Folklore, Science, drama, Politics, Polymath, Polyglot |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Notable awards | 1958: Sahitya Akademi Award 1963: Padma Bhushan |
Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan (9 April 1893 – 14 April 1963), who is called the Father of Hindi Travelogue Travel literature because he is the one who played a pivotal role to give travelogue a 'literature form', was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India, spending forty-five years of his life on travels away from his home. He travelled many places and wrote many travelogue approximately in the same ratio. He also famously known for his authentic description about his travels experiences, for instance- in his travelogue "Meri Laddakh Yatra" he presents overall regional, historical and cultural specificity of that region judiciously. He became a Buddhist monk (Bauddha Bhikkhu) and eventually took up Marxist Socialism. Sankrityayan was also an Indian nationalist, having been arrested and jailed for three years for creating anti-British writings and speeches. He is referred to as the 'Greatest Scholar' (Mahapandit) for his scholarship. He was both a polymath as well as a polyglot. The Government of India awarded him the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan in 1963.
He was born as Kedarnath Pandey on 9 April 1893 in Pandaha village, Azamgarh district, in Eastern Uttar Pradesh . He received formal schooling at a local primary school, though he later studied and mastered numerous languages independently, as well as the art of photography.
In his initial days he was a keen follower of Arya Samaj of Swami Dayananda Saraswati. Buddhism came to him and changed his life.He lost faith in God's existence but still retained faith in reincarnation. Later he moved towards Marxist Socialism and rejected the concepts of reincarnation and afterlife also. The two volumes of Darshan-Digdarshan, the collected history of World's Philosophy give an indication of his philosophy when we find the second volume much dedicated to Dharmakirti's Pramana Vartika. This he discovered in Tibetan translation from Tibet.
His travels took him to different parts of India including Ladakh, Kinnaur, and Kashmir. He also travelled to several other countries including Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and the former Soviet Union. He spent several years in the "Parsa Gadh" village in the Saran District in Bihar. The village's entry gate is named "Rahul Gate". While travelling, he mostly used surface transport, and he went to certain countries clandestinely; he entered Tibet as a Buddhist monk. He made several trips to Tibet and brought valuable paintings and Pali and Sanskrit manuscripts back to India. Most of these formed a part of the libraries of Vikramshila and Nalanda Universities. These objects had been taken to Tibet by fleeing Buddhist monks during the twelfth and subsequent centuries when the invading Muslim armies had destroyed universities in India. Some accounts state that Rahul Sankrityayan employed twenty-two mules to bring these materials from Tibet to India. Patna Museum, Patna, has a special section of these materials in his honour, where a number of these and other items have been displayed.
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