Lala Sita Ram

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.”

T

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

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 “SaravaswiPande” and that adopted during the Mohammadan times is “Rai-zada KaraManikpuri,” 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. 2. 3. 4.

Our ancient epics. Our ancient theatre. Our ancient mathematics. 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 textbooks 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 AkhlaqeAfisqaratisi 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. -----------------