Rahul Sankrityayan is called the Father of Indian Travelogue
Travel literature.
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.
Rahul was born in a traditional Hindu Brahmin family in Pandaha
village in Azamgarh district in Eastern Uttar Pradesh in India on 9 April 1893.
His name is Kedar Pandey.
His father Govardhan Pandey was a farmer. His mother
Kulawanti Devi was a house wife.
His
schooling was not proper. He got education till middle school.
Later he left
home and settled in Varanasi and learnt Sanskrit.
His life took a different turn after
meeting with the Mahant (Head Priest of a Temple) of a wealthy Hindu monastic
order from Bihar, who took Sankrityayan under his wing.
Here he acquired
extensive knowledge of Sanskrit and the major cannons of Hindu traditions.
The
mahant (head
of a monastery)
rechristened him “Sadhu” Ram Udar Das, and anointed him to take over the
monastic order.
However, the explorer in him shunned the
idea and decided to travel south to Tamil Nadu, where he not only explored all
the major religious institutions but also acquired further knowledge of the
Vedantic traditions and learnt Tamil and Kannada.
In 1915, he joined the Arya
Musafir Vidyalaya in Agra, where he learnt Arabic and works of Swami Dayanand
Saraswati.
Later he became a Buddhist
monk and studied Pali and worked at
Buddhist text in Sri Lanka.
Here he adopted the moniker of Rahul Sankrityayan.
He chose Rahul as it was the name of Mahatma Buddha’s son. Sankrityayan means
accumulation.
He later gave up Buddhism after being
influenced by Marxist Socialism.
He became an atheist and no longer
believed in reincarnation and after life.
He travelled to many places and wrote many travelogues
approximately in the same ratio.
He is 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.
Sankrityayan
was also an Indian nationalist, having been arrested and jailed for three years
for creating anti-British writings and speeches during the independence
movement.
One of his most famous books in Hindi 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
Mahatama Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader called for the ‘Quiet 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.
It was translated by K.N. Muthiya-Tamilputhakalayam in
Tamil as Valgavil
irundu gangai varai and is still
considered a best-seller.
The Kannada translation
was done by B.N Sharma as "Volga
Ganga”.
The Telugu translation
(Volga nunchi Ganga ku) inspired many readers.
Volga muthal Ganga
vare, the Malayalam translation,
became immensely popular among the young intellectuals of Kerala and it
continues to be one of the most influential books of its times.
The Bangla version is Volga
Theke Ganga [ভল্গা থেকে গঙ্গা], which is still acclaimed by the critics.
His most important travelogue literature is- "Tibbat me Sava varsha(1933),
"Meri Europe Yatra" (1935), "Athato Ghumakkad Jigyasa",
"Volga se Ganga", "Asia ke Durgam Bhukhando Mein",
"Yatra Ke Panne" and "Kinnar Desh Mein".
More than ten of his books have been translated and published in
Bangala.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1963 and he received the Sahitya Akademi
Award in 1958 for his book Madhya Asia ka
Itihaas ‘ History of Central Asia’.
He maintained daily diaries in Sanskrit which were used fully while writing his autobiography.
In spite of profound scholarship, he wrote in very simple Hindi
that a common person 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.
Sankrityayan’s travel took him to different parts of
India including Ladakh, Kinnaur valley, and Kashmir.
He also travelled to several other countries including Europe,
Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Iran China, and the former Soviet Union.
He spent several years in the "Parsa Gadh"
village in the Saran District, Bihar.
The village's entry gate is named
"Rahul Gate". While travelling, he mostly used surface transport, and
he went to certain countries clandestinely.
Rahul
Sankrityayan was funded by Kashi Prasad Jayswal, an eminent historian from
Patna to travel to Tibet.
He entered Tibet as a Buddhist Monk, which he was, and made several trips to
Tibet and brought hundreds of precious manuscripts, written in palm
leaf with gold and silver powder, valuable paintings and Pali and Sanskrit
Manuscripts back to India. It was a treasure trove of Buddhist literature of a kind perhaps never before seen
here.
And
with the subsequent destruction of Tibetan culture by China, perhaps such a
trove will never be seen again.
In Next Part..............
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