On Retirement in 1909, Age 49

EaI saItaramaaByaaM nama:

THE LATE RAI BAHADUR LALA SITA RAM, B.A., Retired Deputy Collector & Author

“ O Bulbul ! shouldst thou chance to find a rose,

“Do place it on the tomb where I repose.”

HE above verse in Urdu, which is jotted

down by my father on the margin of an

old manuscript and is presumably his,

gives in a nutshell the kind of man he was and

the life he lived. The predominant idea of his

life, as with most souls, was LOVE, and this

was manifested in all the various aspects of his

existence whether as a father, as an author, or

as a public servant. At home he was an ideal

family man, cool and collected under all

emergencies and severe only up to a limit

according to the needs of the moment, but

ever getting his wishes carried out by loving

words and remarks. As an author he always

T

selected for the topics of his books the same

sublime human emotion. As an executive

officer he was never seen either to lose his

temper or use abusive language, both of which

tend to be the common failings of many

officers in the executive line.

The following is a brief survey of his life,

mainly of his literary life, since he is

remembered chiefly through the services he

rendered to the mother tongue. Portions of

this survey have already appeared in the

Leader of February 16, 1937.

Ours is a very old family who had been

residents of Ajodhya from almost pre-historic

times. The old family name is “Saravaswi-

Pande” and that adopted during the

Mohammadan times is “Rai-zada Kara-

Manikpuri,” the head of the family having

migrated temporarily to Kara, in Allahabad

district, in the time of Sher Shah Sur, as would

appear from the following verse in the

bansawali:

“raya naraotma ko pu$saaotma ho itnako saut gaaoivand raya kDo ko”

The tradition in the family is that we are

descended from Sumanta, the chief counsellor

of King Dasharatha of the Ramayana. No

family records exist except the “ bansawali”

with the family bhat, which I hope to bring out

with a fuller life of my father later on. Our

own records were destroyed in the time of our

grandfather Rai Shiva-ratna Ram who had

become a recluse and cared only for some

sacred texts in Sanskrit and a manuscript copy

of the famous Masnavi of the Sufi cult, which

have come down to us as heirlooms. The

names best remembered in the later pedigree

are those of Raja Raghunath Sahai who had

migrated to Delhi in the reign of Emperor

Farrukhsiyar, and Raja Amrit Lal of the court

of King Ghaziuddin Haider of Oudh.

Father was born in Ajodhya in 1861. He

was therefore seventy six years of age at the

time of his demise which took place on

January 2, 1937.

The late Babu Girija Kishora, B.A.

He was never laid up with serious illness

within our recollection, and his last sickness,

if it could be called sickness, lasted only a few

hours. He died as he had lived, quietly and

without showing the least emotion.

He had the first great shock of his life

when my elder brother Babu Girija Kishor, the

eldest and in all respects the best of his four

sons, died suddenly in 1934 when hardly fifty

years of age. He was a splendid-looking man,

tall and fair and manly, and like father very

good at mathematics as a student. At the time

of death he was an Assistant Commissioner of

Excise in these Provinces. In private life he

was a very saintly man. He lost his wife in

1902 after he had been married only a few

months but cherished her memory to the end

of his days and never thought of marrying

again.

This great shock possibly hastened my

father’s end as he was in perfect health and

might well have lived another twenty years. I

cannot say if the following sketch of my

father’s life which I am presenting is correct in

every detail, for as a younger member of the

family I never had the courage to question him

on the incidents of his literary life which

began some twelve years before I was born. I

shall be very grateful if any of his old friends

or those who have a knowledge of the events

of these days will give me further information.

Educational Career

His career as a student was

exceptionally brilliant. His school education

began in a middle school at Ajodhya from

which he passed to the High School in

Fyzabad. His university education he received

at the Canning College, Lucknow. He stood

first in all the examinations which he took,

whether school, departmental or university,

except once, and this, strange as it may

appear, was indirectly responsible for creating

in him an inclination towards a literary life.

The Matriculation Examination of his day

consisted of two separate examinations, and

the students had the choice to appear at one

or at both of the examinations. One was

conducted by the Education Department of

U.P. (then known as the North-Western

Provinces) and the other was controlled by the

Calcutta University. He stood first in the

provincial examination. Being very

religiously minded even as a young boy, he, on

hearing the news, decided to make a

circumambulation (pirËmaa) of Ajodhya in

thanks-giving. The parikrama is fully twenty

eight miles but he accomplished it successfully

in about eight hours. The exertion, however,

brought on a fever which lasted a whole

fortnight. The university examination was to

be held only a month later and to add to his

annoyance he began to suffer from

inflammation of the eyes when only a week

was left for the examination. The

examination was held at Lucknow and the

other candidates of the province, both Indian

and European, flocked round the

distinguished student, who though naturally

very nice-looking, presented at this time a

sorry figure on account of his bandaged eyes,

and recent sickness. He won their esteem,

however, in no time by his urbanity of

manners and conversational powers which he

ever possessed in a remarkable degree. I have

heard it said that father was seen to write his

answers blind-fold and that he removed the

bandage occasionally to see what he had

written.

As was expected his achievement in the

examination was very short of expectations,

although he was still able to secure the

coveted scholarship. The boy who stood first

in the examination was a student of the High

School at Gonda. Both of them joined the

Intermediate classes at the Canning College.

The Gonda student somewhat ungenerously

made a shot at father by remarking that the

Fyzabad High School was notorious for foul

play. Father bore it quietly but his friends

took it up seriously and gave an unpleasant

retort. The matter did not drop there but led

to the formation of two parties in the class.

Father’s party was headed by the late Mirza

Sajjad Husain and that of the Gonda student

by the late Pandit Tribhuan Nath Hijra who

later on became one of the foremost writers

and poets of Lucknow. Day after day in the

unoccupied periods the budding geniuses of

either party read and recited their

compositions, both prose and verse, utterly,

denouncing the activities and compositions of

the opposite party. The subdued satire of

father’s compositions was appreciated by the

geniuses of both the parties.

In the class examination which was held

at the close of the year father again topped the

list and the rivalry came to an end.

Literary Beginnings

Mirza Sajjad Husain unfortunately

failed and decided to give up studies. He

approached father and other class friends and

suggested that if they would help him he

would start a journal and his aim would be to

expose the undesirable features in the lives of

the nobility of Oudh and of the Government

officials. The first help which father rendered

him was to introduce him to Munshi Kali

Prasad Kulbhaskar, the founder of the

Kayastha Pathshala and a leading lawyer of

Lucknow, who generously agreed to read

through Mirza Saheb’s articles to see if they

would not render him liable to prosecution.

The journal started was the famous Awadh

Punch and it contained from time to time

contributions from the pen of my father.

His first genuine literary venture,

undertaken in collaboration with Mirza Sajjad

Husain, was a translation of Help’s ‘Friends in

Council.’

As principal, Intermediate College, Fyzabad, in 1893,

Age 32

By this time the news of his ability as a

journalist had reached Munshi Nawal Kishore,

C.I.E., the famous publisher of Lucknow, and

he prevailed upon father to send contributions

on scientific subjects for his Awadh Akbar,

another famous journal of Lucknow. His

favourite subject, however, as a student was

mathematics and the articles he wrote had for

their theme generally the history of the

development of mathematics in India and

other countries. His brilliant successes at

examinations were due mainly to his

proficiency in mathematics and many

anecdotes are told of the hits he made in

mathematical competitions both as a student

and a teacher.

In the B.A. examination which father

took in due course in 1879 he stood first in the

Calcutta University and broke the tradition of

the Presidency College, Calcutta, whose

students had ever stood first since the

inception of the university. Father was then

only 18. The whole of Lucknow was jubiliant

at his success and Mirza Abbas Beg, who was

among the leading raises of Lucknow, became

especially interested in him. A durbar was

held in the Safed Baradari in order to present

to him the diploma. Mr. Fendall Currie, the

then Commissioner of Oudh, presided.

Eloquent speeches were made by the Principal

and the raises. After the diploma had been

handed over the first to shake hands with him

was the late Raja Amir Ali Khan of

Mahmudabad who was followed by the other

taluqdars.

Shagird of Qadra

After passing his B.A., my father

remained in Lucknow for a whole year and

was welcomed in the courts of all the leading

taluqdars. Mirza Abbas Beg appreciated his

compositions and recommended him to the

notice of the poet Ghulam Hasnain ‘Qadra’

Bilgrami whose shagird he forthwith became

and took ‘Azm’ as his takhallus.

It was the fashion in those days among

the Urtu poets to write ghazals or short erotic

poems. It is regrettable that his Urdu ghazals

are lost to us since when a year later he joined

the Education Department, he considered that

they were unbecoming of his profession and

accordingly burned them. In his Urdu

transalation of Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado

about Nothing’ the following verse occurs

which is presumably extracted from a ghazal.

If it should be his composition it is not

difficult to see that he was an Urdu poet of very great possibilities.

Although it would not have been

difficult for him to have secured an

appointment to the higher services in the

executive or the judicial departments, he, on

the advice of my grandfather, a very saintly

man and a contemporary and disciple of the

famous Baba Raghunath Das of Ajodhya,

elected to be a schoolmaster. His first

appointment was as the Headmaster of

Sitapur High School. He was then only

nineteen years of age and he taught students

older than himself. He was later headmaster

of the Meerut and Cawnpore High Schools.

During this time he translated into Urdu the

following dramas of Shakespare : King Lear

(“ ”), Comedy of Errors

(“ ”), Much Ado about Nothing

(“ ”), and The Tempest (

“ ”). A notable feature of his

books was that they were the first to be

printed on good paper and in crown octavo

size which gave them the appearance of

English books. For years later the vernacular

books still continued to be printed on the

time-honoured badami paper in quarto size.

At Benares

Although Sanskrit had always been read

in the family and he had taken it as a subject

in the Intermediate class he had not yet

developed a taste for Hindi literature. When

in 1883 he was transferred to Benares he

found himself translated into a different world

as it were. His proficiency in mathematics

brought him to the notice of the late Pandit

Bapudeva Shastri, C.I.E., and through him to

all the pandits in the Sanskrit College. About

this time the following three controversies

appear to have been in progress among the

pandits of Benares:

1. The Mantra-Mimansa

2. Raj-Rajeshwari-stotra-ratnasamiksha

3. Pratisvika Ashaucha

The late Pandit Ram Misra Shastri, who

took a prominent part in all the three

controversies, invited father to join his party

which father did very enthusiastically. He

became in fact the right hand of Pandit Ram

Misra, since he was the only one in the party

who possessed a fair control of both Sanskrit

and English and corresponded on their behalf

with eminent orientlists like the late Prof. Max

Muller and Dr. G. Thibaut. In the third

controversy he took the help also of Swami

Dayanand, who was a frequent visitor to

Benares at this time and who had known

father since his visit to Lucknow in 1879. This

was really an indirect way of bringing about a

reconciliation between the Swamiji and the

pandits of Benares. We have still in our

possession some manuscripts from which it

would appear that his share in the

controversies was not an inconsiderable one.

About this time at the suggestion of

Pandit Ram Misra Shastri he decided to

prepare for the M.A. examination in Sanskrit.

Pandit Ram Misra went so far as to

recommend one Pandit Kula-yashaswi Shastri

to teach him the Vedas. This was probably the

first occasion in the history of modern

Benares when a man of our caste was taught

the Vedas by a Shastri of Benares. He had all

but prepared for the M.A. examination when

news reached him that our grandfather was

sick and accordingly he had to arrange for his

transfer to Fyzabad. Our grandfather passed

away very shortly after his arrival in Fyzabad.

Meeting Bhartendu

My father remained at Benares for close

upon eight years. His activities on the Hindi

side were continued along with his other

activities. The late Munshi Baleshwar Prasad,

his closest friend, was then headmaster of the

Normal School, Benares. He had recently

started a journal, the Kashi Patrika, which

was published both in Urdu and Hindi.

Munshi Baleshwar Prasad was a magnetic

personality and very soon the elite of Benares,

including Bharatendu Babu Harish Chandra,

the father of modern Hindi, were attracted

towards him. Father was welcomed to this

society and became a regular contributor to

the Patrika. These were his first ventures in

Hindi literature.

The late Srimati Chetana Devi, wife of Lala Sita Ram

On the poetry side his first attempt was a

metrical translation of Kalidasa’s Meghduta

which was revised by his mathematical friend,

the late Pandit Sudhakara Dwivedi.

Translations of a few cantos of the

Raghuvansa were brought out later and

published under the title of Shri Ram Charita

Amrita. This was very favourably reviewed by

the press. It was followed some months later

by a translation of the Nagananda which

confirmed in him the decision to take to

authorship in Hindi since it was admired by

no less a person than the Bharatendu himself.

At Fyzabad – in His Element

He had drawn up a scheme at Benares

for translating into simple Hindi all that was

to be had in the ancient Sanskrit learning of

the Hindus and he felt that it should be the

heritage of every Hindu to know what

advances had been made in the various

branches of learning in this country of ours.

His chief idea in limiting his Urdu activities

and adopting Hindi was that Hindi was the

language of the masses and it was only

through this language that he could hope to

reach the desired objective. He had formed

the idea of bringing out a series of six volumes

in each of the following subjects:

1. Our ancient epics.

2. Our ancient theatre.

3. Our ancient mathematics.

4. Our ancient philosophy.

He had made a start at Benares on all

the volumes of the series and had almost

finished the second series when he was

transferred to Fyzabad.

At Fyzabad the Hindi and Sanskrit

atmosphere was wholly wanting but the

deficiency was more than made up by the

patronage extended to him by the late Sir

Pratap Narain Singh, Maharaja of Ajodhya.

The Maharaja had been a class-fellow of father

at the Ajodhya school and was himself a great

scholar of Hindi and Sanskrit. He was then

engaged on his Rasakusumakara, a

monumental work on the poetic rasas, the like

of which has not been produced in India.

Father was of great help to him in the

compilation of this book.

Father completed his translation of the

Raghuvansa at the Maharaja’s suggestion and

asked for his permission to dedicate the

translation to him which was given gladly.

The Maharaja was so well pleased with the

dedicatory poem that he forthwith expressed

his intention to publish the work at his own

expense.

As Deputy Collector, Cawnpore, in 1900, Age 40

At this time father’s powers of versification

had reached their peak. He composed for the

Maharaja in his presence the

Shankaroprasnachinha, a poem consisting of

about 150 verses, in the record time of two

hours. The Ritusanhara was translated in four

days. The four years spent at Fyzabad were the

happiest days for him and honours were

forthcoming from all directions. He was

appointed Principal of the Fyzabad

Intermediate College. His students year after

year secured distinctions in the examinations

and the then Director of Public Instruction,

Mr. J. C. Nesfield, referred to him in his report

as ‘the best educated man in India.’ About the

same time too he was elected a Fellow of the

Allahabad University. In a private capacity he

was unanimously elected secretary of the

Fyzabad municipal board, while on the

literary side his reputation as a Sanskrit and

Hindi scholar spread far and wide.

At Cawnpore

He was appointed Deputy Collector in

1894. As a Deputy Collector he had little

enough time to pursue his literary activities.

Some years later when he was posted to

Cawnpore there was once again a small circle

of literary friends. This circle consisted mainly

of some members of the Rasika Samaja which

flourished at Cawnpore at the time. They were

generally Kavis of a parasitical type but one or

two were genuine pandits and evenings were

spent happily in their society.

At Cawnpore he was able to bring out

the complete series of Our Ancient Theatre

and two volumes of the Mathematics series.

He also published a metrical translation of the

first six cantos of the Kiratarjuniya, the

Raghuvansa and Kumarasambhava of the

series having appeared before.

Services to Mother – Tongue

As Deputy Collector and after his

retirement he continued to be represented on

the committees of the Education Department,

U.P. and did valuable work. He sat on the

Text-Book Committee as member or president

for over forty years. Although financially never

very well off he always felt diffident about

writing text-books for schools. Having been

associated with the education Department for

about sixteen years and having had ample

time to make himself acquainted with the

capacities of children of various grades, there

is no doubt that if he had written any text

books they would have been very successful.

He was, however, determined that not even a

suspicion should exist that he was taking

advantage of his position and on this ground

alone he declined on numerous occasions very

valuable offers from publishers. What text-

books he has written were all undertaken at

the instance of the Education Department,

and the remuneration he obtained can only be

looked upon as very inadequate.

He wholly dropped the idea of

completing his series of Mathematics. From

the reception which was accorded to the first

two volumes of the series he gathered that

there was no demand for this literature since

the study of mathematics un-like literature

was confined wholly to schools and colleges,

and although personally he could read and

enjoy a treatise on mathematics as well as on

literature, it is possibly only one in a thousand

who possesses such a taste.

Of the other works produced by him,

which taken in all number 46 volumes the

most notable are his Selections from Hindi

Literature which he prepared for the Calcutta

University and which run into 7 volumes. His

History of Ajodhya and the History of Sirohi

Raj, the latter of which is in English, contain

numerous instances of original research. He

served the cause of the vernaculars in other

ways also. In 1916 when the late Sir Aushutosh

Mukhopadhaya, was on a visit to Allahabad

and stayed for a whole month, father used to

meet him occasionally and suggested to him to

consider the introduction of the vernaculars

into the Calcutta University as subjects for the

degree examinations.

Sir Ashutosh, who had ever entertained

a great regard for father, took up the

suggestion and succeeded in getting the

university to agree to it. The letters which Sir

Ashutosh wrote on the subject from Calcutta

Lala Sita Ram at the age of 74

are still in our possession. When the suggestion was adopted father was asked by the university to prepare the courses in Hindi for the Matric, Inter, B.A. and M.A. examinations which he did in an honourary capacity. The example of the Calcutta University was followed by the other sister universities in the course of a few years.

His pen was equally versatile whether he

wrote in Urdu, Hindi or English but his name

is generally associated with Hindi literature. It

is also in this branch of his activities that he

was adversely criticised by a section of Hindi

scholars. I am not a Hindi scholar myself and I

cannot say whether these men were actuated

by a sincere desire to prevent from mutilation

what according to their own standards was

genuine Hindi or merely to advertise

themselves. Time alone will judge. His

enthusiasm remained unabated and his

resolve to bring within reach of the people the

treasures of Sanskrit remained unshaken. The

language he used, both in prose and poetry,

was the easiest he could command and he

gave it just sufficient polish to make it literary,

so that it might be read and appreciated by a

man possessing the most rudimentary

knowledge of the Nagari character.

In Government service he had a

strenuous life and he was among the very few

who could find time to do some service to the

mother tongue. Although an ardent adherent

of Hindi, his interest in Urdu never flagged.

His last work in Urdu was his Akhlaqe-

Afisqaratisi which was a translation with

marginal notes of the Teachings of Epictitus.

He could never believe that the development

of the one was a loss to the other. He even

hoped that a time would come when all the

dialects spoken in the United Provinces would

become cultured individually and develop a

literature of their own. Now that he is gone let

us hope that those who criticised him because

they though that his fame was undeserved and

those who admired him will alike come to look

upon him as one who selflessly devoted

himself to the service of the mother tongue

and was able to achieve something for it. -----------------