Jun
29
2009
Dharmananda Kosambi
Author: SamFor travelers looking for a beautiful holiday on the beach, in a city with a lot of character and history, five-star hotels in Goa should be on the list. These are fabulous hotels, with a splendid combination of old-world charm and new-world amenities. Guests will be connected to the world at large with state of the art technologies, and also pampered in the traditions of hospitality that go back many generations. Goa has a warmth and generosity of spirit that permeates everything. It is a real travelers paradise, offering beautiful views, a lively urban center, and a complex and complicated history that is evident in the architecture and the decor. The sense of style is obvious in the interior of the hotels, where tradition meets innovation.
There are many famous people who have passed through Goa at one time or another. One of its most famous residents was the great expert on India, and Buddhist scholar, Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi. By all accounts, his was a most fascinating life. He was born in Goa in 1876, and died in 1947 after deciding to die by fasting. There is an interesting correspondence between Kosambi and the great M.K. Gandhi about his fasting, where Gandhi continually urged him to desist, but in the end the wishes of the Mahatma were not heeded. It is an interesting question to ask why he would choose this end for himself, and the answer might be found somewhere in his life.
Dharmananda Kosambi was interested in study and travel from a very early age. He traveled all over studying both Buddhism and Jainism. His son, D.D. Kosambi, Jr., would go on to become a very prominent scholar in his own rite. But Kosambi, Sr., was very interested in studying Buddhism in its original Pali language. He is one of the great Pali scholars in India, but many of his efforts were fruitless, or at the very least, extremely frustrating. He would follow ideas all over India, pursuing possible avenues for scholarship in Pali and in Sanskrit. He taught widely, and in later years, was able to bring his wife and children with him. There is no doubt that he was extremely devoted as a scholar, and translated many texts that were still widely unknown. He was also deeply influenced by Marx, and many of his critical studies of Indian culture take on a Marxist perspective. It is perhaps here that he began to really connect the different strands of scholarship, and he started to examine the colonial legacy left by the Portuguese on his native Goa. It haunted him, and perhaps was partially what inspired him to become more committed in his religious and political life.
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