From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi

Portuguese scholar and language expert (1876–1947)

Field	Value
name	Dharmananda Kosambi
image	धर्मानंद दामोदर कोसंबी.jpg
image_size	175px
birth_date	9 October 1876
birth_place	Sancoale, Goa, Portuguese India
death_date
death_place	Sevagram, British India
signature	File:Dharmananda Kosambi signature.png
nationality	Portuguese
occupation	Buddhist scholar and Pāli language expert
spouse
children	2 including, Damodar
relatives	Meera Kosambi (granddaughter)

Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi (9 October 1876 – 4 June 1947) was an Indian Buddhist scholar and Pāli language expert. He was the father of the mathematician and prominent Marxist historian Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi.

Biography

Kosambi was born in the Sancoale village of Portuguese Goa in 1876 in orthodox Gaud Saraswat Brahmin (GSB) family. He was married at the age of sixteen.{{cite web |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180412030445/http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/itihas/4444.htm |archive-date = 12 April 2018 |url-status = live

Over the next three years, he traveled to Nepal to study Buddhism in its original language, Pāli. However, he was rather disappointed with the dismal state of Buddhism there and instead continued on to Calcutta and then to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where he enrolled himself in the Vidyodaya College. He studied there for three years under the tutelage of Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Thera and was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1902. Later, he went to Burma (Myanmar) and undertook comparative study of Buddhist texts in Burmese language. After spending seven years abroad, Kosambi returned to India.

He started working as a reader at the University of Calcutta and brought his wife and daughter Manik to Calcutta. His son Damodar was born in 1907. Later, Dharmananda gave up his university job to work as a research fellow in Baroda. Later, he started lecturing all over Western India, and finally moved to Fergusson College in Pune. In Bombay he met Dr. James Woods from Harvard University, who was seeking a scholar adept in Sanskrit, Ardhamāgadhı̄, and Pāli. Woods invited Kosambi to Harvard, to complete the task of compiling a critical edition of Visuddhimagga, a book on Buddhist philosophy. Kosambi traveled via England to Harvard in 1910, and was due to stay for two years. At Harvard, Kosambi learned Russian and took a keen interest in Marxism. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1929 and taught Pāli at Leningrad University.

When the Indian independence movement was at its peak, Kosambi returned to India and taught at Gujarat Vidyapith without remuneration. He also started recruiting volunteers for Salt Satyagraha. He was imprisoned for six years for participating in the Salt Satyagraha, which certainly took a toll on his health.

Besides Buddhist works, Kosambi also studied and translated many Jain works. Later, Kosambi founded Bahujanavihara, a shelter house for Buddhist monks in Bombay, which exists to this day.

Death

Under the influence of Jainism, Kosambi decided to give up his life through sallekhana (voluntary fasting). Gandhiji requested that he move to Wardha for naturopathy and reconsider his decision to fast unto death. He moved to Sevagram, near Wardha, but kept his diet to a spoon of bitter gourd (karela) juice in order to respect Gandhi's wishes. He wanted to die on Buddha Pournima but lived beyond it for a few days. The end came after 30 days of fasting in June 1947.

Works

He authored one of the most popular biographies of Buddha, Bhagwan Buddha (1940) in Marathi.{{cite web |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160303215557/http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Religions/paths/BuddhismRevival.doc |archive-date = 3 March 2016 |url-status = dead

Bibliography

Dharmanand Kosambi: The Essential Writings, ed. by Meera Kosambi. Orient Blackswan, 2013.
Bhagawan Buddha by Dharmanand Kosambi, Sahitya Akademi.
Nivedan: The Autobiography of Dharmanand Kosambi, trans. by Meera Kosambi. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011.

References

(12 July 1910). "Personal and Pertinent". [[The News Journal.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

marathi-language-writers harvard-university-alumni 1876-births 1947-deaths academic-staff-of-the-university-of-calcutta academic-staff-of-saint-petersburg-state-university scholars-from-goa

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report