The Essential Writings

by Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi, Meera Kosambi

Dharmaananda Kosambi (1876–1947), a pioneer scholar of Pali and Buddhist studies, was born in rural Goa and came under the spell of the Buddha's teachings during his adolescence. At an early age he set off on an incredible journey of austere self-training across the length and breadth of Britain's Indian Empire, halting to educate himself at places connected with Buddhism.

Dharmananda subsequently blended Buddhist ethics, Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of truth and non-violence, and the ideals of socialism. He exchanged letters with the Mahatma, worked for his causes, and died in the approved Buddhist/Jain manner by voluntary starvation at Sevagram ashram. Arguably, no Indian scholar's life has been as exemplary as Dharmananda's, or his approximated as closely to the nobility and saintliness of the Mahatma's.

In this collection of Dharmananda's most important writings, Meera Kosambi shows that manifold dimensions of his personality and the profoundly moral character of his intellectual journeys. Her introduction contextualizes the life, career, and achievement of one of the modern India's greatest scholar-savants.

438 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi (31 July 1907 – 29 June 1966) was an Indian mathematician, statistician, philologist, historian and polymath who contributed to genetics by introducing Kosambi map function.He is well known for his work in numismatics and for compiling critical editions of ancient Sanskrit texts. His father, Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi, had studied ancient Indian texts with a particular emphasis on Buddhism and its literature in the Pali language. Damodar Kosambi emulated him by developing a keen interest in his country's ancient history. Kosambi was also a Marxist historian specialising in ancient India who employed the historical materialist approach in his work.He is particularly known for his classic work An Introduction to the Study of Indian History.

He is described as "the patriarch of the Marxist school of Indian historiography".Kosambi was critical of the policies of then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, which, according to him, promoted capitalism in the guise of democratic socialism. He was an enthusiast of the Chinese revolution and its ideals, and, in addition, a leading activist in the World Peace Movement.