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 “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.
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