Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963) was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India, who spent forty-five years of his life on travel and away from home. He became a buddhist monk 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 (Great scholar). His name was Rahul Sankrityayan.
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. 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.
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, Maithili, Braj, Rajasthani and Nepali. He learned photography as well.
He started touring all pilgrim-centres 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 travelled with loads on mules. Disguised as a Buddhist mendicant, He entered Tibet via Kashmir, Ladakh, 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.
Late in life, he married Dr. Kamala, an Indian Nepali lady. 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.
