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VI
FOREWORD
manner under any scholar, he had nevertheless, because of his con stant efforts, his wide travels, and the broad study resulting from these, gained an international fame and status in scholarship. At a stage when our students receive their baccalaureate under modern education, he had hardly begun his study of Sanskrit. When there was not a single person in the whole of India even acquainted with the Pali language, he developed an unquenchable desire for the study of Pali fiterature, went to the then almost unknown countries like Ceylon and Burma, to be initiated into the Buddhist monastic order, and under the greatest hardships of accommodation as well as diet secured an advanced mastery over the Pali language. Thus, he became a devoted follower of the Lord Buddha and a finished scholar
of the Pali Tripitaka which contains his teaching. As a result of his own study and scientific point of view, he became completely familiar with the critical method and from that point of view he approached and penetrated into all works whether the Buddhist scriptures, Vedas, Vedantic writings, or those of the Jains.
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Just as Prof. Dharmanandji was a spiritual personality of the highest type, so also was he a brilliant scholar and sincere lover of his country. He finished his ascetic training in an inspiring fashion, and spread Pali literature as well as Buddhist principles in India with the utmost devotion. His natural ability gained him the enviable position of the first Indian orientalist to be invited by so well known a foreign institution as Harvard University.
Dharmanandji was thus a happy,
middle-class family man. By reason of his
contented, and upright having an excellent wife,
an
able and brilliant son, charming and bright daughters, he was a gentleman member of the class regarded as fortunate in society; nevertheless, his inner personality was impartial, detached, and highly ascetic. He had not the slightest desire for money nor was he excessively partial to his relations. He saw to it that his children had the highest possible type of education, but beyond that he did not show on their behalf the least social cupidity. For the last 15 years he had renounced all sense of personal desire and went wherever he could render the best service in a detached fashion by his mental and physical powers. Although an unceasing worshipper of knowledge, as well as a profound thinker, he was still an absolute patriot. He participated in the country's struggle for freedom with great enthusiasm and trod the path to jail with a light heart. Even after becoming an elder in age, knowledge, and self-control his idea were still youthfully revolutionary. His inner mind always suffered at the sight of the stupidity in thought and ritual by means of which the Brahmin caste has, in the name of the Hindu religion, made India for these
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