Author: Subal Chandra Mitra
Foreword/Introduction: R.C. Dutt
Publisher: Rupa
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 537
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788129113221
Description
Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar (b 1820) was one of India's greatest intellectuals and activists of the nineteenth century. He was born into a poor Brahmin family and faced poverty all through his life. He was known variously as an educator, academic, philosopher, reformer and philanthropist. He started his career as the principal of Fort William College at age twenty-one and then joined Sanskrit College in 1850 and became Principal the following year.
Through his writings, Vidyasagar raised many questions about the various ills that permeated society like early marriage and polygamy. He advocated widow-remarriage all through his life and was considered one of the greatest pillars of the Bengal Renaissance.
There is a good biography of the late Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar in Bengali language; but the fame of this venerable pundit is not confined to Bengal. All India claims him as one of the greatest and most earnest workers of the nineteenth century; and there were few Englishmen of the past generation who did not appreciate the high character and the distinguished services of that true-hearted Indian.
Vidyasagar will always fill a unique place in Indian history. Raja Ram Mohan Roy represented the new aspirations and the earnest work of the first generation of his countrymen in the nineteenth century; Pundit Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar reflected their arduous endeavors in the second.
English rule and English education had powerful and far reaching influences which called forth new ideas and new efforts from the people. Ram Mohan Roy responded to these influences in the commencement of the century; Isvar Chandra, during the next thirty years.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Birth and Ancestry
2. Childhood and Early Instruction
3. Advent to Calcutta
4. Admission into Sanskrit College
5. Marriage and Subsequent Studies
6. Further Studies-Conclusion of School Life
7. Entrance into the World: First Appointment
8. Continuance in Fort William College
9. His First Bengali Work: The Vasudeva-Charita
10. First Appointment in Sanskrit College
11. Vetala-Panchavingsati, His first Published Book Re-Entrance into Fort William College
12. Re-Entrance into Service of the Sanskrit College
13. Principal of Sanskrit College
14. Principal of the Sanskrit College Female Education
15. Principal of The Sanskrit College and Special Inspector of Schools
16. Re Marriage of Hindu Widows
17. Retirement from Public Service
18. The Sanskrit Press Depository
19. The Hindoo Patriot
20. Michael M. Datta
21. Ward’s Institution
22. The Metropolitan Institution
23. Bethune School
24. The Great Famine
25. Disasters and troubles
26. Labour of Love in Burdwan
27. Desertion of Ancestral Home
28. Loss of Mother
29. Polygamy
30. Disasters Again
31. The Shoe Question
32. Loss of Father
33. Loss of Consort
34. The Age of Consent Bill
35. Departure from the World
36. Termination
Charactersketch