Authors, Bengali -- 20th century -- Biography; Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861-1941
For the purposes of the Asiatic Society's publications and researches,
he had to employ a number of Sanscrit Pandits to do the mechanical work
for him. I remember how this gave certain envious and mean-minded
detractors the opportunity of saying that everything was really done by
these Pandits while Rajendrahal fraudulently appropriated all the
credit. Even to-day we very often find the tools arrogating to
themselves the lion's share of the achievement, imagining the wielder to
be a mere ornamental figurehead. If the poor pen had a mind it would as
certainly have bemoaned the unfairness of its getting all the stain and
the writer all the glory!
It is curious that this extraordinary man should have got no recognition
from his countrymen even after his death. One of the reasons may be that
the national mourning for Vidyasagar, whose death followed shortly
after, left no room for a recognition of the other bereavement.
Another reason may be that his main contributions being outside the pale
of Bengali literature, he had been unable to reach the heart of the
people.
(36) _Karwar_
Our Sudder Street party next transferred itself to Karwar on the West
Sea coast. Karwar is the headquarters of the Kanara district in the
Southern portion of the Bombay Presidency. It is the tract of the Malaya
Hills of Sanskrit literature where grow the cardamum creeper and the
Sandal Tree. My second brother was then Judge there.
The little harbour, ringed round with hills, is so secluded that it has
nothing of the aspect of a port about it. Its crescent shaped beach
throws out its arms to the shoreless open sea like the very image of an
eager striving to embrace the infinite. The edge of the broad sandy
beach is fringed with a forest of casuarinas, broken at one end by the
_Kalanadi_ river which here flows into the sea after passing through a
gorge flanked by rows of hills on either side.
I remember how one moonlit evening we went up this river in a little
boat. We stopped at one of Shivaji's old hill forts, and stepping
ashore found our way into the clean-swept little yard of a peasant's
home. We sat on a spot where the moonbeams fell glancing off the top of
the outer enclosure, and there dined off the eatables we had brought
with us. On our way back we let the boat glide down the river. The night
brooded over the motionless hills and forests, and on the silent flowing
stream of this little _Kalanadi_, throwing over all its moonlight spell.
It took us a good long time to reach the mouth of the river, so, instead
of returning by sea, we got off the boat there and walked back home over
the sands of the beach. It was then far into the night, the sea was
without a ripple, even the ever-troubled murmur of the casuarinas was at
rest. The shadow of the fringe of trees along the vast expanse of sand
hung motionless along its border, and the ring of blue-grey hills around
the horizon slept calmly beneath the sky.
[Illustration: Karwar Beach]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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