52 Facts About Rajendralal Mitra

Raja Rajendralal Mitra was among the first Indian cultural researchers and historians writing in English.

Raja Rajendralal Mitra was born in Soora in eastern Calcutta, on 16 February 1822 to Janmajeya Mitra.

Rajendralal Mitra was the third of Janmajeya's six sons and had a sister.

Rajendralal Mitra was raised primarily by his widowed and childless aunt.

The Mitra family traced its origins to ancient Bengal; and Rajendralal further claimed descent from the sage Vishvamitra of Adisura myth.

The family were members of the Kulin Kayastha caste and were devout Vaishnavs Rajendralal's 4th great-grandfather Ramchandra was a Dewan of the Nawabs of Murshidabad and Rajendralal's great-grandfather Pitambar Mitra held important positions at the Royal Court of Ajodhya and Delhi.

Raja Digambar Rajendralal Mitra of Jhamapukur was a relative of the family, as well.

Rajendralal Mitra received his early education in Bengali at a village school, followed by a private English-medium school in Pathuriaghata.

Rajendralal Mitra then began legal training, although not for long, and then changed to studying languages including Greek, Latin, French and German, which led to his eventual interest in philology.

Rajendralal Mitra was appointed librarian-cum-assistant-secretary of the Asiatic Society in April 1846.

Rajendralal Mitra held the office for nearly 10 years, vacating it in February 1856.

Rajendralal Mitra was elected as the Secretary of the Society and was later appointed to the governing council.

Rajendralal Mitra was elected vice-president on three occasions, and in 1885 Mitra became the first Indian president of the Asiatic Society.

Rajendralal Mitra went on to utilize the tools of comparative philology and comparative mythology to write an orientalist narrative of the cultural history of the Indo-Aryans.

Rajendralal Mitra was a noted antiquarian and played a substantial role in discovering and deciphering historical inscriptions, coins, and texts.

Rajendralal Mitra established the relationship between the Shaka era and Gregorian calendar, thus identifying the year of Kanishka's ascent to the throne, and contributed to an accurate reconstruction of the history of Medieval Bengal, especially that of the Pala and Sena dynasties, by deciphering historical edicts.

Rajendralal Mitra studied the Gwaliorian monuments and inscriptions, discovering many unknown kings and chieftains, and assigned approximate time spans to them.

Rajendralal Mitra was the only historian among his contemporaries to assign a near-precise time frame to the rule of Toramana.

Rajendralal Mitra was one of the few archivists who emphasized the importance of cataloguing and describing all manuscripts, irrespective of factors like rarity.

Rajendralal Mitra did significant work in documenting the development of Aryan architecture in prehistoric times.

Unlike his European counterparts, who attributed the presence of nude sculptures in Indian temples to a perceived lack of morality in ancient Indian social life, Rajendralal Mitra correctly hypothesized the reasons for it.

Rajendralal Mitra often noted that the architecture of pre-Muslim India is equivalent to the Greek architecture and proposed the racial similarity of the Greeks and the Aryans, who had the same intellectual capacity.

Rajendralal Mitra often came into conflict with European scholars regarding this subject, such as his acrimonious dispute with James Fergusson.

Rajendralal Mitra was the first Indian who tried to engage people in a discourse of the phonology and morphology of Indian languages, and tried to establish philology as a science.

Rajendralal Mitra debated European scholars about linguistic advances in Aryan culture and theorized that the Aryans had their own script that was not derived from Dravidian culture.

Rajendralal Mitra did seminal work on Sanskrit and Pali literature of the Buddhists, as well as on the Gatha dialect.

Rajendralal Mitra was a pioneer in the publication of maps in the Bengali language and he constructed Bengali versions of numerous geographical terms that were previously only used in English.

Rajendralal Mitra published a series of maps of districts of Bihar, Bengal, and Odisa for indigenous use that were notable for his assignment of correct names to even small villages, sourced from local people.

Rajendralal Mitra was a member of several other societies, including the Vernacular Literature Society, and Calcutta School-Book Society, which played important roles in the propagation of vernacular books, esp.

From 1851 onward, under a grant from the Vernacular Literature Society, Rajendralal Mitra started publishing the Bibhidartha Sangraha, an illustrated monthly periodical.

Rajendralal Mitra retired from its editorship in 1856, citing health reasons.

In 1861, the government compelled the magazine to withdraw from publication; then in 1863, Rajendralal Mitra started a similar publication under the name Rahasya Sandarbha, maintaining the same form and content.

Rajendralal Mitra was involved with the Hindoo Patriot, of which he held editorial duties for a while.

Rajendralal Mitra was a prominent social figure and a poster child of the Bengal renaissance.

Rajendralal Mitra held important roles in a variety of societies including the famed Tattwabodhini Sabha.

Rajendralal Mitra was an executive committee member of the Bethune Society, served as a translator for the Calcutta Photographic Society and was an influential figure in the Society for the Promotion of the Industrial Art, which played an important role in the development of voluntary education in Bengal.

Rajendralal Mitra wrote numerous discourses on the socio-cultural history of the nation, including about beef consumption and the prevalence of drinking alcohol in ancient India-the latter at a time when Muslims were increasingly blamed for the social affinity for drinking.

Rajendralal Mitra was generally apathetic towards religion; he sought the disassociation of religion from the state and spoke against the proposals of the colonial government to tax Indians to fund the spread of Christian ideologies.

From 1856 until its closure in 1881, Rajendralal Mitra was the director of the Wards' Institution, an establishment formed by the Colonial Government for the privileged education of the heirs of zamindars and other upper classes.

Rajendralal Mitra was active in the British Indian Association since its inception, serving as its president for three terms and vice-president for another three terms.

Rajendralal Mitra was involved with the Indian National Congress, serving as the president of the Reception Committee in the Second National Conference in Calcutta and was a Justice of the peace of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation for many years, having served as its commissioner from 1876.

Rajendralal Mitra often intended to prove the ancient origin of the Hindus; his acceptance of legends and myths at face value is evident in his Antiquities in Orissa.

Rajendralal Mitra held the Aryans to be a superior race and wrote numerous discourses covering time spans that were self-admittedly far removed from the realms of authentic history.

Rajendralal Mitra venerated Hindu rule and had a profound dislike of the Muslim invasion of India.

Rajendralal Mitra's equating of extreme examples of Tathagata Tantric traditions from GuhyaSamaja Tantra scriptures in a literal sense and as an indicator of mainstream Buddhist Tantra, "the most revolting and horrible that human depravity could think of", were criticised and rejected, especially because such texts were long historically disconnected from the culture that created and sustained them.

Rajendralal Mitra has been criticised for not speaking out against the conservative society in favor of social reform, and for maintaining an ambiguous, nuanced stance.

For example, when the British Government sought the views of notable Indian thinkers about establishing a minimum legal age for marriage with the aim of abolishing child marriage, Rajendralal Mitra spoke against the ban, emphasizing the social and religious relevance of child marriage and Hindu customs.

Rajendralal Mitra spent the last years of his life at the Wards' Institution, Maniktala, which was his de facto residence after its closure.

At around 9:00 pm on 26 July 1891, Rajendralal Mitra died in his home after suffering intense bouts of fever.

Rajendralal Mitra's English is remarkably clear and simple, and his arguments would do credit to any Sanskrit scholar in England.

Rajendralal Mitra has been widely viewed as the first modern historian of Bengal who applied a rigorous scientific methodology to the study of history.

Rajendralal Mitra was preceded by historians including Govind Chandra Sen, Gopal Lal Mitra, Baidyanath Mukhopadhyay, Ramram Basu, Mrityunjaya Vidyalankar and Dwarkanath Vidyabhusan; all of whom, despite being aware of the modern concepts of Western history, depended heavily upon translating and adopting European history texts with their own noble interpretations, and hence were not professional historians.