Rahul Sankrityayan – The Forgotten Musafir of India
India is known as the land of great saints and scholars. But it is yet to witness a person who knew more than thirty languages, traveled more than tens of thousands of miles (at times on foot), taught at well-known universities without formal education, a freedom fighter who was jailed thrice.
His published works numbering more than 135 ranged from travelogues, sociology, history, religion, Tibetology, fiction, science, drama, essays and more. It was but natural that he was known as Mahapandit (Greatest scholar). His name was Rahul Sankrityayan.
A Traveler and Learner
Born as Kedar Pandey in a small village of Azamgarh called Pandaha on April 9, 1893, Sankrityayan ran away from home at an early age.
His quest for learning took him to Varanasi, where he lived with a group of impoverished students and studied Sanskrit.
A chance meeting with the mahant of a well-known Vaishnav math in Bihar changed the course of his life – he soon acquired formidable knowledge of ancient Sanskrit and Brahminical canons.
Chosen as the heir of the math, he took on the name of Swami Ramodardas. But his anarchic energy took him on a voyage to south India where, for some time, he was part of an unbroken tradition of classical Vedantic learning.
Showing a rare heretical willingness to take a stand against Vedantic rituals, he turned to Arya Samaj and began writing in Hindi and Urdu, under the name of Kedarnath Vidyarthi, and, eventually, swerved towards Buddhism in his quest for a rational philosophy.
Later, he turned into a Buddhist monk, went to Sri Lanka, learnt Pali and made a deep study of the Buddhist texts.
Here, he took the name Rahul Sankrityayan and was known for the rest of his life by this name although he later gave up Buddhism in favour of Marxism.
He extensively travelled through Kashmir, Ladakh and Nepal and visited Tibet four times. It was due to his Herculean efforts that thousands of palm leaf manuscripts of Buddhist philosophy that were considered to be lost could be discovered.
He brought them on the backs of 22 mules and handed over to KP Jayaswal. He edited and wrote erudite commentaries on a few of them.
His travels prompted him to write travelogues and he is considered to be the father of this genre in Hindi.
Popular Works by Him
Sankrityayan was a polyglot, which means one who knows several languages. He was an expert in many languages like Hindi, Sanskrit, Pali, Bhojpuri, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Kannada, Tibetan, Sinhalese, French and Russian.
He was also an Indologist as well as a creative writer. He has written more than 150 books on number of subjects like Sociology, History, Philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, Lexicography, Grammar, Textual Editing, Folklore, Science, Drama, and Politics. Several of his books lie unpublished.
His book “Volga Se Ganga” (From Volga to Ganga) continues to remain a very popular collection of stories that offers a panoramic view of the way human society has evolved from 6000 B.C. to 1942, the year Mahatma Gandhi issued the “Quit India” call.
This book was translated into Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and many other Indian and foreign languages.
He wrote biographies of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Akbar and valiantly fought communalism of all hues.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in his lifetime and the Indian government issued a postage stamp to commemorate his birth centenary in 1993.
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