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Raja Rajendralal Mitra
রাজা রাজেন্দ্রলাল মিত্র
Raja Rajendralal Mitra
Born	(1824-02-15)15 February 1824 Kolkata, Bengal, British India
Died	26 July 1891(1891-07-26) (aged 67) Kolkata, Bengal, British India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Orientalist

Raja Rajendralal Mitra (16 February, 1822 – 26 July, 1891) is the first modern Indologist of Indian origin and was a pioneer figure in the Bengal Renaissance.

Early life

The third among six sons (and a daughter) of Janmajeya Mitra, a noted oriental scholar, Rajendralal was born in a famed Kayastha family at Soora (now Beliaghata), an eastern suburb of Calcutta.

The family traced its roots to ancient Bengal and were devout Vaishnavs. There are records of Rajendralal's 4th great-grandfather, Ramchandra being appointed as a Diwan of the Nawabs of Murshidabad. Rajendralal's great-grandfather Pitambar Mitra commanded the highest fame in the lineage when he served in important positions at the Court of Delhi.

Rajendralal has claimed descent from the lineage of Viswamitra sage, of Adisura myth.

Education

He received his first teachings at a village pathshala as to the Bengali language. At about 8 years of age, his formal schooling was initiated in a private English-medium school at Pathuriaghata. After about two years, he was enrolled at the Hindu School.

His education was mostly sporadic after the school-level. He enrolled at Calcutta Medical College in December, 1837 and fared very well but was compelled to leave in 1841. Thereafter, he tried his hands at legal education, which ended equally abruptly. Pending that, he engaged in the study of different languages including Greek, Latin, French, German et al which later culminated his interest in Indology.

Marriage

In 1839, at about 17 years of age he married Soudamini. She gave birth to a girl-child on 22nd August, 1844 but died of pregnancy related complications. The child perished a few weeks afterwards.

He remarried in 1861 and Bhubanmohini gave birth to two sons:- Ramendralal (26 November, 1864) and Mahendralal (??).

Historiography

Asiatic Society

In April, 1846 he was appointed librarian cum assistant-secretary of the Asiatic Society.He served in the roles until February, 1856.Later he was elected as a Secretary followed by Member of the Council. He also held three Vice-Presidentship-tenures. Finally, in 1885, he became the first Indian to assume the robes of the President.

During the centenary celebrations of 1884, he cataloged a detailed history of the society, despite suffering from ill-health and which was delivered as a speech.

Whilst he received little formal training in history beyond the periphery of school education, his tenures at the Asiatic Society helped in establishing himself as a pioneer in the field of scientific historiography.

Influences and methodology

During his days in the Asiatic Society, Rajendralal was distinctly impressed and influenced by the two lines of Orientalist intellectual thoughts. Noted scholars like William Jones and H.T. Colebrooke propounded a theory of universalism and sought to make a comparative study of different races by chronicling history through the lens of cultural changes rather than political events and in the meanwhile, James Prinsep et al sought for greater cultural diversity and glorified the past.

Rajendralal, in his works did heavily utilize the tools of Comparative philology and Comparative mythology and penned down a narrative of the cultural history of Indo-Aryans. But, he did neither subscribe to a blind adoption of the past and actively asked others to shun tradition, if they hindered the progress of the nation.

Works

He played a substantial role in establishing the relation between Saka era and Gregorian Calendar as well as identifying the year of Kaniska's ascent to throne, which were later agreed upon by modern historians. He also contributed towards a re-construction of the history of Medieval Bengal esp. of the Pal and Sen dynasty.

He intensively studied Gwalileor-ian monuments and inscriptions to discover many unknown kings/chieftains and assign approximate time-spans to them. He was also the only historian, among his contemporaries to near-precisely assign a time-frame to the rule of Toramana.

His affinity for concrete factual observations and inferences along with a dislike for abstract reasoning, (in contrary to most Indo-Historians of those days), helped in establishing himself as the first person to conduct a scientific study of Indian history.

Cataloging, Translation and Commentary

As a librarian, endowed with a charge of cataloging old manuscripts, he traveled extensively across the country to collect Indic manuscripts and provide an extensive catalog, that was published in intervals by the Asiatic Society.

Influenced by the themes of European Reneissance that emphasised on collection of ancient texts (puthi), he along with several other scholars edited and published a variety of Indic Text(s), along with extensive commentaries, in the publications of the Society. Often, they were translated to English upon the lines of Jone's and Colebrook's efforts in translating indigenous literature. Several Vaidic, Puranic and Vaishnav texts were included among them.

Archaeology

His archaeological interests, though deemed to have been quite motivated by the locus of establishing Indo-Aryan superiority, consisted of significant work as to chronicling the development of Aryan architecture in prehistoric times and utilizing them to establish the view that the ancient settlement place of Aryans corresponded to Northern India.

Under the patronage of Royal Society of Arts and the colonial government, Rajendralal led an expedition into the Bhubaneshwar region of Odisa during 1868-69 and produced a magnum opus about Odisan architecture titled The Antiquities of Orissa. Modeled on Ancient Egyptians by John Gardner Wilkinson and published in two volumes, they consisted of his own observations followed by a reconstruction of the socio-cultural history, in light of the architectural depictions.

Buddha Gaya: the hermitage of Sakya Muni was another major contribution that collated the observations and commentaries of various scholars about Bodh Gaya.He also contributed immensely to the study of varying forms of temple-architecture across the Indian landscape.

Whilst, much of his archaeological observations and corresponding inferences were later refined and/or rejected, he did pioneer work in the field and his works were often substantially better than that of the European counterparts.

A standard theme of Rajendralal's archaeological discourses was to rebut the notion that India's art of architecture and esp. the art of building in stone was derived from the Greeks. He oft-conflicted with European scholars who supported the notion and engaged in an acrimonious dispute with James Fergusson, that has since-interested many historians. Ferguson would later write a book titled Archaeology in India With Especial Reference to the Work of Babu Rajendralal Mitra.

He noted the architecture of pre-Moslem India was equivalent to the Greek architecture and propounded the racial similarity of the Greeks and the Aryans, who had the same intellectual capacity.

Criticism

He often accepted legends and myths at their face-value as was evident from his Antiquities in Orissa. That he often intented to prove the ancient origin of the Hindus also affected his works. In the reconstruction of the history of Sen dynasty, he had to self-construct and rely upon a wide number of propositions whilst accepting genealogical tables (whose authenticity was highly doubted by himself) and even tried to assign a historical status to the Adisura myth. Remarkably though, his inferences were not found to be extraordinarily absurd in light of later studies.

He also held the Indo-Aryan civilization to be superior than others and wrote numerous discourses that covered spans, which were (self-admittedly) far away from the realms of authentic history. A preface of one of his book mentions:-

The race of whom it is proposed to give a brief sketch in this paper belonged to a period of remote antiquity, far away from the range of authentic history....The subject, however, is of engrossing interest, concerning, as it does, the early history of the most progressive branch of the human race.

He also shared a veneration for the Hindu rule and a profound dislike for the Muslim invasion of the nation. Rajendralal writes:-

Countries like Kabul, Kandahar and Balkh from where Muslims had flooded India and had destroyed Hindu freedom, had sometimes been brought under the sway of the kings of the Sun (Saura) dynasty. Sometimes peoples of those country had passed their days by carrying the orders of the Hindus. The dynasty had a tremendous power with which it had been ruling India for two thousand years.......

Moslem fanaticism, which after repeated incursions, reigned supreme in India for six hundred years, devastating everything Hindu and converting every available temple, or its materials, into masjid, or a palace, or a heap of ruins, was alone sufficient to sweep away everything in the way of sacred building.

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar had criticized Rajendralal's command of Sanskrit grammar and he was often portrayed as having exploited Sanskrit Pandits in the collecting and editing of ancient texts, without giving them the required credit, though it has been refuted. Much of his commentaries, were faulty and was later rejected by scholars. His equating extreme examples of Tathagata Tantric traditions, from GuhyaSamaja Tantra-scriptures as an indicator of mainstream Buddhist Tantra and mentioning them as ......the most revolting and horrible, that human depravity could think of....... were criticized and rejected esp. in light of the fact that such texts were long disconnected, in a historical sense, from the culture that created and sustained them.

Some of the extreme biases might have stemmed in, as a response to European scholars like Fergusson et al, who were extremely anti-Indian in their perspectives and furthermore, there were also unavoidable limitations within the perspectives of an orientalist scholarship.

Lingustics

Rajendralal was the first Indian who tried to establish philology as a scientific discourse before the common populace and indulged in a study of the phonology and morphology of Indian languages. He debated European scholars on the locus of linguistic advances in Aryan culture and propounded that the Aryans had their own script, which was not derived from Dravidian culture. Rajendralal also did seminary work in the fields of Sanskrit Buddhist language and literature and Gatha dialect, in particular.

Vernacularization

He was a pioneer in the publication of maps in Bengali language and translated (or rather constructed) the definitions of geographical terms from English into Bengali.

As a member of the shortlived Sarasvat Samaj, (which was set up as a literature society by Jyotirindranath Tagore with some help from the colonial government, for publication of higher-education books in Bengali medium) he wrote A Scheme for the Rendering of European Scientific terms in India that imparted the earliest set of ideas, to be followed in the vernacularization of scientific discourse.

He was also a member of several other societies (Vernacular Literature Society, Calcutta School Book Society et cetera) which advocated and played important roles in the propagation of Bengali literature.

Many of his Bengali texts were adopted for school-education. One of his texts on Bengali Grammar and Patra-Kaumudi (Book of Letters) attained widespread popularity.

Publication of magazine

From 1851 onward, under a grant of Vernacular Literature Society, he started publishing the Bibhidartha Sangraha, an illustrated monthly periodical devoted to educating the general native populace in western knowledge, without coming across as too rigid. The first of it's kind in Bengal, it had a huge reader base. It also introduced the concept of literary criticism and reviews in Bengali literature.

Mitra retired from its editorship, in 1856 citing health reasons and Kaliprassana Singha took over the roles.After the magazine was compelled to withdraw from active publication in 1861, (post it's criticising the Colonial Government, Rajendralal) came back to the fold in 1863 and restarted a similar publication under the name of Rahasya Sandarbha, maintaining the same form and content.It continued for about five and a half years before being voluntarily called off.

He was also involved with the Hindoo Patriot for a long span of time and held editorial duties, for a while.

Socio-political activities

Rajendralal was a prominent social figure during his times and was close to several contemporary thinkers. His name has been regularly located in wide forms of social activities ranging from hosting condolence meetings to presiding sabhas and giving political speeches.

He held important roles in a variety of societies and had a role in the management of the Tattwabodhini Sabha. He also served as a translator in Calcutta Photograhic Society and was an influential figure in the Society for the Promotion of the Industrial Art, which took major roles in the development of voluntary education in Bengal. He also served for many years as the Vice-President and President of British Indian Society and gave several speeches on the broader locus of regional politics.

His oratory and writing skills have also been exceptionally praised by many contemporary authors.

At the same time, he has been noted to not speak out against the conservative society or for the need of any social reform. When the British Government sought for the views of notable Indian thinkers as to establishing a minimum legal of marriage with an aim to abolish child-marriage, Rajendralal spoke against it, emphasizing upon the social and religious relevance of child-marriage and Hindu customs. But, he wrote essays that choose to chronicle widow-remarriage as an ancient societal norm and against it's potrayal as a corruption of the Hindu culture. He also wrote numerous discourses on the socio-cultural history of the nation including on the topics of beef-consumption in ancient India, prevalence of drinking et al; the latter at a time when Moslems were increasingly blamed for the social affinity for drinking.

He has been noted to be apathetic as to religious stuff but seeking for a disassociation of religion from state spoke against the proposals of the Colonial Government to tax the natives for spread of Christian ideologies,.

He was an appointed member of Wellesley's Textbook Committee set up in 1877. From 1856 to 1881 (till it's closure), he was also the Director of the Wards' Institution, an establishment formed by the Colonial Government for privileged education of the wards of Zamindars and upper classes.

He was associated with the British Indian Association since it's inception; serving as the President for 3 terms (1881-82, 1883-84, 1886-87) and Vice-President for another 3 terms (1878-80, 1887-88, 1890-91).He also served as the Commisioner of Calcutta Municipal Corporation from 1876 till his death(??).

Last years and death

Rajendralal spend the last years of his life at the Wards' Instituition, Manicktala which he turned into his residence, (post it's closure). Till his last days, he was extensively involved with the Asiatic Commitee and was a member of multiple sub-committees.

On 26 July, 1891, at around 9 PM, Rajendralal died in his own home after suffering from bouts of intense fever. Contemporary news-reports mention that the fevers have been common occurrences for the last few years, since Rajendralal suffered a stroke that subsequently induced paralysis and that they had grossly affected his health.

Numerous condolence meetings were held across different places and newspapers were filled with obituaries. A huge gathering took place at the Kolkata Town Hall under the auspices of Lt. Gov. Charles Eliot to commemorate Rajendralal as well as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (who has recently expired) and was the first of it's type to be ever presided by a Lieutenant Governor.

Legacy

Rajendralal has been widely viewed as the first modern historian of Bengal in the sense of applying a rigorous scientific methodology to the study of history. Those who preceded him including the likes of Govind Chandra Sen, Gopal Lal Mitra, Baidyanath Mukhopadhyay et al, despite well-aware of the modern concepts of mainly Western History, depended upon translating and adopting Europe an history-texts. From a pan-Indian perspective, R. G. Bhandarkar who trod an equal path was one of his contemporaries.

He has influenced a generation of historians including Haraprasad Shastri. His 'Sanskrit Buddhist Literature', was heavily utilised by Rabindranath Tagore for many episodes of his poems and plays.

Eminent Historian Professor R.S. Sharma has described him as "a great lover of ancient heritage, he took a rational view of ancient society...."Rabindranath Tagore commented of him being a Sabyasachi, who could work with both hands and was an association, condensed into one man.

Honors

In 1864, the German Oriental Society appointed him as a corresponding fellow. In 1865, the Royal Academy of Science, Hungary appointed him as a foreign fellow. In 1865, the Royal Asiatic society of Great Britain appointed him as a honorary fellow. In October 1867, the American Oriental Society appointed him as a honorary fellow. In 1876, the University of Calcutta honoured Mitra with a honorary doctorate degree.

He was awarded with the honorary titles of Rai Bahadur in 1877, C.I.E in 1878 and Raja in 1888. Rajendralal had expressed displeasure about the awardings.

Works

Apart from very numerous contributions to the society's journal, and to the series of Sanskrit texts entitled "Bibliotheca indica," he published four separate works:

• The Antiquities of Orissa (2 vols, 1875 and 1880), illustrated with photographic plates
• Buddha Gaya : the hermitage of Sakya Muni (1878), a description of a holy place of Buddhism where Buddha attained Enlightenment.
• a similarly illustrated work on Bodh Gaya (1878), the hermitage of Sakya Muni.
• Indo-Aryans (2 vols, 1881), a collection of essays dealing with the manners and customs of the people of India from Vedic times.
• The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal (1882), a summary of the avadana-literature.

References

1. ^ Imam, Abu (2012). "Mitra, Raja Rajendralal". In Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A. (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
2. "HISTORY". The Asiatic Society.
3. . p. 260 http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/29127/11/11_chapter%204.pdf. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
4. Sengupta, Subodh Chandra and Bose, Anjali (editors), 1976/1998, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan (Biographical dictionary) Vol I, Template:Bn icon, p. 471, ISBN 81-85626-65-0
5. Asher, Catherine Ella Blanshard; Metcalf, Thomas R. (1994). Perceptions of South Asia's visual past. American Institute of Indian Studies, New Delhi, Swadharma Swarajya Sangha, Madras, and Oxford & IBH Pub. Co. ISBN 9788120408838.
6. ^ Kapila, Shruti (31 May 2010). An Intellectual History for India. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521199759.
7. Wedemeyer, Christian K. (4 December 2012). Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian Traditions. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231530958.
8. ^ Bose, Pradip Kumar (7 February 2006). Health and Society in Bengal: A Selection From Late 19th Century Bengali Periodicals. SAGE Publishing India. ISBN 9789352802715.
9. Bose, Pradip Kumar (7 February 2006). Health and Society in Bengal: A Selection From Late 19th Century Bengali Periodicals. SAGE Publishing India. ISBN 9789352802715.
10. ^ "Heidelberg University Library: Bibidhartha samgraha (Calcutta, 1851-1861)". www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de (in German). Retrieved 4 November 2018.
11. Bose, Pradip Kumar (7 February 2006). Health and Society in Bengal: A Selection From Late 19th Century Bengali Periodicals. SAGE Publishing India. pp. 17, 18. ISBN 9789352802715.
12. Majumdar, A. K. Basu (1993). Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet of India. Indus Publishing. ISBN 9788185182926.
13. Sharma, R.S. (2005). India's Ancient Past. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-568785-9.

External links

• Rajendralal Mitra Endowment Lecture at Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata (IACS)
• Prehistoric India (1923), Calcutta University (Calcutta)

• Indian orientalists
• Indian Indologists
• 1824 births
• 1891 deaths
• Scientists from Kolkata
• University of Calcutta alumni
• Brahmos
• Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire
• Presidents of The Asiatic Society
• Writers from Kolkata
• 19th-century Indian historians
• 19th-century Indian essayists
• Bengali writers
• Bengali historians
• Scholars from Kolkata