Rahul Sankrityayan

Rahul Sankrityayan (born Kedar Pandey; 9 April 1893 – 14 April 1963) was an Indian author, essayist, playwright, historian, scholar of Buddhism who wrote in Hindi and Bhojpuri. Known as "father of Hindi travel literature", Sankrityayan played a pivotal role in giving Hindi travelogue a literary form. He was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India, spending forty-five years of his life on travels away from his home in locations like Russia, Tibet, China, Central Asia, etc.

Knowing around 30 languages including English, Hindi, Bhojpuri, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali, Russian, Arabic, etc., Sankrityayan almost always wrote in Hindi. The honorific mahapandit ("Great scholar" in Hindi) has been applied before his name since his lifetime.

Sankrityayan wrote extensively, his collection of works spanning more than 100 books on various subjects like Indology, Communism, Buddhism, and philology as well as various short stories, novels and plays. He was awarded the 1958 Sahitya Akademi Award for his 2 volume "Madhya Asia ka Itihaas" (History of Central Asia). The Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, the country's third-highest civilian award, in 1963. He died the same year, aged 70.

Childhood
Rahul Sankrityayan was born as Kedarnath Pandey to a Brahmin family on 9 April 1893 in Pandaha village. His ancestral village was Kanaila Chakrapanpur, Azamgarh district, in Eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Philosophy
After taking Diksha in Sri Lanka he became Rahul (son of Buddha) also used his gotra (Sankritya) with his name and was finally called “Rahul Sankrityayan”. Later he became a Socialist and rejected the concepts of reincarnation and the afterlife. The two volumes of Darshan-Digdarshan, a collected history of the world's philosophy give an indication of his philosophy where the second volume is much dedicated to Dharmakirti's Pramana Vartika. This he discovered in a Tibetan translation from Tibet.

Travels
Rahul Sankrityayan's travel history began in 1910, when he set out for the Himalayas. He traveled with monks at first, but later journeyed alone. Sankrityayan's 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 traveling, 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 were 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 has a special section of these materials in his honor, where a number of these and other items have been displayed.

Books
Sankrityayan understood several languages, including Bhojpuri, Hindi, Sanskrit, Pali, Magahi, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Kannada, Tibetan, Sinhalese, French and Russian. He was also an Indologist, a Marxist theoretician, and a creative writer. He started writing during his twenties and his works, totaling well over 100, covered a variety of subjects, including sociology, history, philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, lexicography, grammar, textual editing, folklore, science, drama, and politics. Many of these were unpublished. He translated Majjhima Nikaya from Prakrit into Hindi.



One of his Hindi books is Volga Se Ganga (A journey from the Volga to the Ganges) – a work of historical fiction concerning the migration of Aryans from the steppes of the Eurasia to regions around the Volga river; then their movements across the Hindukush and the Himalayas and the sub-Himalayan regions; and their spread to the Indo-Gangetic plains of the subcontinent of India. The book begins in 6000 BC and ends in 1942, the year when Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader called for the Quit India movement. It was published in 1942. A translation into English of this work by Victor Kiernan was published in 1947 as From Volga to Ganga.

His travelogue literature includes:
 * Tibbat Me Sava Varsha (1933)
 * Meri Europe Yatra (1935)
 * Athato Ghumakkad Jigyasa
 * Volga Se Ganga
 * Asia ke Durgam Bhukhando Mein
 * Yatra Ke Panne
 * Kinnar Desh Mein

More than ten of his books have been translated and published in Bengali.

Personal life and family
Rahul was married when very young and never came to know anything of his child-wife, Santoshi. Probably he saw her only once in his 40s as per his autobiography: Meri Jivan Yatra. During his stay in Soviet Russia a second time, accepting an invitation for teaching Buddhism at Leningrad University, he came in contact with a Mongolian scholar Lola (Ellena Narvertovna Kozerovskaya). She could speak French, English, and Russian and write Sanskrit. She helped him in working on Tibetan- Sanskrit dictionary. Their attachment ended in marriage and the birth of son Igor Rahulovich. Mother and son did not accompany Rahul to India after the completion of his assignment.

Late in life, he married Kamala Sankrityayan, who was an Indian writer, editor and scholar in Hindi and Nepali. They had a daughter Jaya Sankrityayan Parhawk, one son, Jeta. Jeta is a professor of Economics at North Bengal University.

Death
Rahul accepted a teaching job at a Sri Lankan university, where he fell seriously ill with diabetes, high blood pressure and a mild stroke. He died in Darjeeling in 1963.



In Hindi
Novels
 * Baaeesween Sadi – 1923
 * Jeeney ke Liye – 1940
 * Simha Senapathi – 1944
 * Jai Yaudheya – 1944
 * Bhago Nahin, Duniya ko Badlo – 1944
 * Madhur Swapna – 1949
 * Rajasthani Ranivas – 1953
 * Vismrit Yatri – 1954
 * Divodas – 1960
 * Vismriti Ke Garbh Me

Short Stories
 * Satmi ke Bachche – 1935
 * Volga Se Ganga – 1944
 * Bahurangi Madhupuri – 1953
 * Kanaila ki Katha – 1955–56

Autobiography
 * Meri Jivan Yatra I – 1944
 * Meri Jivan Yatra II – 1950
 * Meri Jivan Yatra III, IV, V – published posthumously

Biography
 * Sardar Prithvi Singh – 1955
 * Naye Bharat ke Naye Neta (2 volumes) – 1942
 * Bachpan ki Smritiyan – 1953
 * Ateet se Vartaman (Vol I) – 1953
 * Stalin – 1954
 * Lenin – 1954
 * Karl Marx – 1954
 * Mao-Tse-Tung – 1954
 * Ghumakkar Swami – 1956
 * Mere Asahayog ke Sathi – 1956
 * Jinka Main Kritajna – 1956
 * Vir Chandrasingh Garhwali – 1956
 * Mahamanav Budha – 1956
 * Akbar – 1956
 * Simhala Ghumakkar Jaivardhan – 1960
 * Kaptan Lal – 1961
 * Simhal ke Vir Purush – 1961

Some of his other books are:-
 * Mansik Gulami
 * Rhigvedic Arya
 * Ghumakkar Shastra
 * Kinnar desh mein
 * Darshan Digdarshan
 * Dakkhini Hindi ka Vyaakaran
 * Puratatv Nibandhawali
 * Manava Samaj
 * Madhya Asia ka Itihas
 * Samyavad hi Kyon

In Bhojpuri
Plays


 * Japaniya Rachhachh
 * Des Rachchhak
 * Jarmanwā ke hār nihichay
 * ''ī hamār laṛāi'"
 * Dhunmum Netā
 * Naiki Duniya
 * Jonk
 * Mehrarun ke Durdasa

Related to Tibetan

 * Tibbati Bal-Siksha – 1933
 * Pathavali (Vol. 1,2 & 3) – 1933
 * Tibbati Vyakaran (Tibetan Grammar) – 1933
 * Tibbat May Budh Dharm-1948
 * Lhasa ki or
 * Himalaya Parichay Bhag 1
 * Himalaya Parichay Bhag 2