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INTRODUCTION
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of this Gore family, too, previously or subsequently held high offices under rulers of various small states in Bundelkhand including the Peshwas of Chitrakot who were interned at Bareilly after the Mutiny of 1857. N's mother Girijā Bai, too, hailed from an aristocratic Citpāvana family surnamed Dámle holding a small jagir at Kāšīpură in Bundelkhand. N was invested with sacred thread c. 1833 and since then he began to perform with ardent devotion the rites and worships ordained for Brāhmaṇas. C. 1837 he was married to his first wife Pāryati Bai who, however, died after a few months. He had to lead subsequent six or seven years as a young widower until in 18411 he married his second wife Lakşmi Bai. He began his studies in Veda and Sanskrit in his very childhood and as a very shining student attained proficiency in Vyākarana, Nyiya-Vaiseşika, Vedānta and other Darsanas and in other branches of oriental learning, too, at an early age. He also simultaneously picked up English. Urdu and Bengali. besides, of course, Marathi and Hindi, and versed himself in the available important literatures of all tliose languages. For some reasons he disapproved of the Deity” that was hereditarily worshipped in the family
1. It appears that N's second marriage took place in this year after he had commenced the composition of the Sāstratattvarinirnaya since cherein we meet passages like II. 111ff. (HAITIFİ Thara!zulaकम् । तनिरासात्तन्निरास इत्येतदपि निश्चितम् ॥ बढ्यः सन्ति स्त्रिया लोके न तन्नाशेन naglo i facharaphar af g aaratT:CATÒ Il etc.) speaking indirect ly for the author's state of bereavement at that time
2. The Hindi biography mentions Mahadeva or Śiva to be N's old family-deity. However, all the present members of this Gore family say that their hereditary family-deity is Bhairava-Jogeivari
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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