विभूतिमूर्ति

Published to mark 121^st Birth Anniversary of Acharya Shivpujan Sahay

[9 Aug 1893 – 21 Jan 1963]

My Life Story

ShivapujanSahay

This is an early chapter, in selected extracts, from the autobiographical memoirs of ShivapujanSahay translated from Hindi by Dr BSM Murty. It begins with a genealogical account of his migrant forefathers and presents glimpses from his childhood days.

My grandfather’s name was Devidayal and VageeshwariDayal was my father.  It was my father’s great-great-grandfather, Suthar Das (four or five generations up in my family tree) who had migrated with his parents from a village called Sherpur, near Gazipur in U.P. to Unwans,another village about 50 miles south, across the Ganga river, in Bihar, and settled there.This must have been anytime towards the end of the 18^th century.

In his memoirs and diaries ShivapujanSahay records that his father, VageeshwariDayal, died in 1906. ShivapujanSahay was then only 13 years old and at school in Ara (Bihar). Before his birth in 1893, three of his siblings had already died in infancy. If these deaths had occurred within a period of 10 years, it can then be presumed that VageeshwariDayal may have been married around 1880 when, as was customary in those days, his age could have been not more than 16 years, which would imply that he may have been born around 1850. If we assume that the average age of VageeshwariDayal’s forefathers was, like his own, around 60 years, and their marriage age is also assumed to be averagely 16 years, then Devi Dayal must have been born around 1830, his father, Leela Das, around 1800 and his grandfather, Suthar Das, around 1780.  SutharDas’s unnamed parents, similarly, may have been born around 1750. It was only after their marriage, which may have happened sometime around 1770, that SutharDas’s parents migrated from Sherpur to Unwans as the former’s  maternal grandparents only had a daughter (SutharDas’s mother). It was the mother who had inherited the landed property and her husband (SutharDas’s father) had to finally shift there to manage that property. In the genealogical table maintained in the family the names of SutharDas’s father or his forefathers remain unrecorded. But from the accounts given by ShivapujanSahay both in his autobiographical memoirs ‘MeraJeevan’ and his (largely autobiographical) novel ‘DehatiDuniya’ it appears that Suthar Das was born in Unwans (around 1780) only after his parents had finally migrated there. During all these years the family remained largely a lower middle-class farming family with some landed property in and around Unwans which went up to about 200 acres when VageeshwariDayal served as the Patawari of an Arazamindar, BukhshiHarihar Prasad

Unwans today is still a small village about 15 kms south of present day Buxar, famous for the battle of Buxar (1764) where the British had finally defeated the Mughals. At that time Buxar (now a district town in Bihar) was a small town in the Shahabad district on the extreme western flank of what was then undivided Bengal from which Bihar was separated as a province only in 1912.

There was a Panditji in my village. He was a good scholar of Sanskrit. His name was RamprakashPandey. He was the favourite disciple of the chief priest Pt DurgaduttaParamhans, the royal guru of the Maharaja of Dumraon. Paramhansji was a yogi of the highest order and a great devotee of Lord Shiva. I wrote a short introduction to a Hindi biography of Paramhansji written by Prof. AkshyavatMisha in which I have briefly narrated the story of my birth.

There was also another Panditji in my village by the name RamyatnaPandey. He, too, was a good Sanskrit scholar and a kathavachak by profession. Pt Ramyatnaji was our family priest.

Once Durgaduttaji visited our village as a guest of Pt Ramprakashji. My parents went to pay their obeisance to the great saint, but they could not spell out the boon that they wanted from him. Earlier three of their issues had died in their infancy. Paramhansji conveyed to my uncle that worship of Lord Shiva would fulfil their wish for a child. On his bidding, Ramyatnaji conducted Lord Shiva’s worship for several months both at Kashi and Deoghar. On completion of the yajnyaParamhansji called my uncle and gave some holy vibhuti from his agnikundto be given to my mother which helped her in conceiving me.

My uncle went to convey the happy news of my birth to Paramhansji who named me, the new-born child, as Shivapujan, and made a prophecy that cameliterally true in future. Just a pinch of ash from the holy agnikundhad made an afflicted womb productive. Every single particle of ash in that vibhuti charged with divine benediction led to implanting the seeds of deep devotion in my being and gave me all my contentment and subsequent renown in my life.

My mother would vividly describe the godly personality and the divine aura of Paramahansji, and I can recollect that portrait almost in her own words here.

 

“His body was very fair-skinned. His beards were white as cotton which hung down to his thighs as he sat. His eyes looked red. And he would speak very rarely. His whole body was smeared with ash - even his eyes. His whole body – forehead, ears, neck , chest, arms – was almost entirely covered with big rudraksh beads woven into a winding chain of copper. He had long pointed nails which shone like pearls decorated with images of Mahadev-Parvati. If any one had headache in his family, ghee and camphor would be rubbed on Mahadevji’s forehead. When anyone fell ill, the herbal paste would be applied on Mahadevji’s forehead. His Mahadevji would always be in front of him on the argha.A lamp and incense would be kept burning there all the time. And he would always travel on a palaki carried by sixteen kahars who would be constantly chanting JaiMahadev!as they went. When three of my sons died in their infancy then your uncle went to him to ask for his vibhuti. He gave him some vibhutiin a tiny container. It was a milk-white substance, slick and aromatic almost like ghee. I would take it once a month after properly bathing myself. Our Panditji would chant mantras to Mahadevji at Baijnathdham and Kashi  and also do puja here in our house for hoursduring these months. Everything was done as Paramahansji had ordained, and then you were born. When your uncle went to Paramahansji with the good news, he said the child would be a great devotee of Mahadevji.”

My grandfather, Devi Dayal,would spend practically his whole day from morning till evening in his worship of Lord Shiva and reading of scriptures like Shiva Puranaor YogVashishtha. That is why his brothers had separated him from the joint family becausehe would hardly take any interest in normal family obligations due to his devotional activities throughout the day. He was the youngest among his brothers and had been givenas his family share only some odd barren land with some few mahua trees, instead of any share in the family mango groves. Yet he did not quarrel with his brothers and remained contented with his devotion to Lord Shiva. My grandmother also allowed him to pursue his devotional propensities and decided to send my father to take up some job in the town, rather than let him continue with his sudies. The next few years, the years of my early childhood, were full of penury and want for my family, but when my father had a secure job, good days seemed to have returned. Yet during those early years both my mother and my grandmother bore the rigoursof  poverty with equanimity and fortitude. And even when good days returned, they would not forget those days of penury and always pray to God for his kindness.

There is a story in Mahabharat of Ashwatthama, the only son of Dronacharya, who would only get sweetened gruel made of rice powder instead of milk, due to extreme poverty. It was the same for me in those days of penury as my mother said. Rice roasted and crushed into powder and made into a drink sweetened with jaggery was my favourite delicacy. Quite often it would be cooked into a pudding.  At times, however, there wouldn’t even be enough rice and jaggery to make that gruel for me. My grandmother would, then, give me a drink of gram powder with honey which, she said, I would take most unwillingly. In fact I would hold the bowl of that drink till I swallowed the very last drop of the thing. And when it would be cooked as a pudding I would lose my patience till I could eat it all. Whenever I saw something good to eat I would start jumping in joy….

After my birth, however, things started changing for the better. But the early years of my childhood were spent in great indigence….I was only about seven or eight years old whenfor my early education my father sent me away from hometo another faraway village, Bagayn, where his youngest sister was married. His brother-in-law – my phupha - had had English education and I was supposed to pick up my basics of English from him. With him I completed my ‘First Book of English’ and his old father taught me Urdu Amoz, the Primer of Urdu. Quite often my father would come there and would encourage me also to memorize verses and couplets from the Ramayana for which he would always reward me with money – one pice for each verse and two pices for each couplet. And he was quite keen on someone teaching me more about the Ramayana but none in my phupha’s family was good at this as they were all well-versed in Urdu-Persian only. My elder sister’s husband then took up this responsibility of teaching me the Ramayana for improving my Hindi.

Soon my father sent me toBambhawar, another village, a few miles further east of Bagayn,where my elder sister was married. There, besides my brother-in-law, his old father also was a great lover of the Ramayana. During daytime I started going to a madarasathere for my study of Urdu-Persian and in the evenings I would continue with my study of the Ramayana as well as my English. And quite soonI was able to finish my second book of English also under my brother-in-law’s loving guidance. His father, too, was a great lover of Ramayana. Every evening people would gather in his outer verandah to listen to readings from Mahabharata, a bulky volume published under the patronage of the King of Kashi. My brother-in-law had copied out the Bhagawadgeetasection from its Bhishma canto, as also the whole of Rasa Kusumakara published by the King of Ayodhya.

As far as I remember, I was first admitted in 1903 in the K.J. Academy at Ara in the fifth standard – then known as the ‘seventh’ class. The lowest class for school admissions in those days was the eighth class counting upwards to the first class when one could take the university Entrance examination for which the minimum age then was sixteen years. At the time of admission my age, perhaps, was recorded as only six or seven years though my real age must have been about ten years. The school course being of full eight years, when I cleared the eleventh class school test, my recorded age in the school was still only around fourteen, a couple of years short for being sent up for the Entrance examination, and hence I had to wait for another two years before I could take the university examination.

When I had been admitted into the ‘seventh’ class, my father wanted me to study Hindi, but I was more inclined towards Urdu-Persian and he easily consented to my wish. He himself had studied Persian and had a reputation as an accomplished Munshiin drafting documents in Urdu.  In fact, in those days, most students studied Urdu which was taught from class eight till class five in all schools, and Persian teaching startedonly from class four upwards. One of the reasons for my eagerness for studying Urdu was that a number of students where I lived with my father, all studied Urdu-Persian. They were my real councellors. And already I had studied some Urdu-Persian in a Maulvi’smadarasa in the village where I had spent my early childhood.  And even in my early classes in the school I always secured very good marks in Urdu-Persian. Also, when I heard the students in my neighbourhood, all in their higher classes, producing queer sounds as they practiced their Arabic lessons, I was greatly fascinated and I would often amuse myself by repeating those sounds. The Maulvi who gave them tuitions also always prompted me to study Urdu. To my father, he would often praise my Urdu handwriting and speak highly of my great potential as a Urdu student as I had already received a sound foundation of Persian in a Maulvi’smadarasa.

But my father was always keen that I should study Hindi. Being a great devotee of  Tulsidas’sRamayan, he kept persuading me to take up Hindi, now that I had already become rather proficient in reading and writing Urdu-Persian.  Hindi, he said, could give me a sounder acquaintance with our national and cultural heritage. Yet I continued with my Urdu-Persian, of course, with his silent acquiesance, uptil my Entrance class. Then all on a sudden my father’s will prevailed and I finally switched over to Hindi, also because my Hindi-studying friends had all been cajoling me to come over to Hindi.

Unfortunately, my father had expired in 1906 and he could not see his wishes fulfilled. But his pious spirit surely kept blessing me from his heavenly abode for I always kept doing well in Hindi even as I continued with Urdu-Persian till my Entrance class. It was, indeed, my regular reading of  theRamayan under his constant guidance that had helped me in my proficiency in Hindi.

During those days there was no turbulence of any political movement, nor were any such newspapers published. Bihar of those days was totally untouched by such sensational happenings. The very few newspapers published in the Indian languages or in English had a miniscule readership at best. There was no popular political leader known among the people at large. Even among the students there was no political awareness, and they had no organizations of their own. Only the Bengali students, in groups, organized meetings of the swadeshi movement. There was also very little awareness for Hindi as a popular language. English ruled the roost everywhere. More than half the school teachers in Bihar were Bengalis. Up to 95 percent students studied Urdu-Persian and as soon as the maulvisaheb entered the classroom, the three or four Hindi students would go out to sit  elsewhere with the Hindi teacher. Their Panditji would then take them to teach in some obscure small room at the extreme corner of the verandah. The Hindi students would also  generally look like simpletons and the maulvisaheb would often taunt that the Hindi students are all rustic bumpkins and dolts.

Corporal punishment was the order of the day. Even students of the higher classes were not spared. The Headmaster would keep a strict watch over the general behaviour of each student. Students of bad character were severely caned personally by the Headmaster, and without any count. This would happen twice or thrice almost every week. It was literally black and blue -  the stripes on their bodies. But the Headmaster – ShivanathGupt was his name - was also famous as a fine teacher in the whole town. Even the most wicked and roguish students dare not misbehave with their teachers. On the other hand the good and the diligent students were always loved and rewarded. The more studious and promising among them had a direct access to the Headmaster.

There was, of course, an Association of Bihari students and its Annual Conference was held in the AraZila School where  I had first seen Dr SacchidanandSinha and  the eminent barrister Hasan Imam Saheb and heard their speeches in English. The speeches were all in English.

I distinctly remember that in those days rice of the finest quality was sold five paseri(about 20 kilos) for one rupee. The same quantity of good arahar lentils could be had for two rupees. One ser (little less than a kilo) of potatoes could be had in one anna, and one whole cabbage in two pices. [A rupee at that time consisted of sixteen annas, each anna being of four pice.] The village milkman would come and  sell one ser of pure ghee (clarified butter) for two and a half rupees. I would get one anna for my morning breakfast and another for my school tiffin. One anna would fetch four kachoreesand four jalebis, that is one of each for each paisa. Till then the flour mills had not come even to the small towns, and all available flour was ground in stone chakkis in homes.. Adulteration of any foodstuff was just unimaginable. Dhoti   could be had in ten annas for boys, and in one rupee for men. Everyone seemed to live a happy, contented life.

Both men and women in those days appearedphysically much stronger with greater self-reliance. Very few people appeared to be sick or infirm. Allopathic doctors were much fewer even in towns as compared to hakims and vaidyas. Thefts or even dacoities were rarely heard of. Dowry in marriages was rather uncommon. Trains were much less crowded. Besides the Mail trains, only passenger trains used to run on a regular basis. There was a camel-driven  Dak-carriage, for postal services, that used to ply between Ara and Sasaram. It used to stay in our school premises, and the coachman would charge one pice for a joyride within the school premises. No motor cars were to be seen even in the towns. Only the very rich and affluent  rode in luxurious landaus drawn by two brawny horses of  identical shade. Eminent lawyers and mukhtars would go to the court on a phaeton or a buggy. Even English judges or the Collector would commute on a bicycle!....Oh, how wondrous were those childhood days!

PanditChakrapaniMishra, the Head Pandit in our school, lived inthe MishraTolamuhalla of Ara. Fair, tall and muscular-bodied,  he would always wear a starched angarkha with a well-turned turbanand a silken scarf, with a string of rudraksha beads round his neck. With eyes fashionably kohl-lined and front tooth gold-pointed, brows adorned with multi-colouredtilak and forehead with half a crescent of tripund, lips soaked  scarlet with paan juice, he would alwayscarry a gomukhi walking stick in hand. His voice was somber and grave. He loved his students well, but also chided them with choicest names when out of his temper. Once he had turned out a pupil from a classroom where he was found practising the conjugation of the word ‘dadhi’ in a sing-song manner,tapping his fingers on the desk in befitting beats, as ‘dadhi-dadhini-dadhini-dadhna-dadhna…’

After passing my Matriculation in 1913 I went to Mughalsarai. My second wife’s brother was a railway guard there. His friend, Pt BadariDwivedi, was a Ticket Checker at the Kashi railway station whose elder brother, Pt ShivaprasadDwivedi, was a Head Clerk at the Banaras District Court. It was through him that I was appointed to the post of a Hindi Clerk and copyist that was vacant there. Before my appointment I had to appear for a test. As I had been a student of Urdu-Persian till my penultimate class in school, both my knowledge of the language and my handwriting of its script were found to be excellent…

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Translated into English by Dr Mangal Murty

The full account of Sahayji’schildhood days is published in ShivapujanSahaySahityaSamagra, his Collected Works in 10 volumes, edited by Dr Mangal Murty. His full autobiography is also available there, along with all his selected and edited writings, including 2 volumes of his diaries and 3 volumes of his correspondence. Visit: anamikapublishers@yahoo.co.in Ph. +91-23281655.

The village, Unwas, has not changed much since ShivapujanSahay was born there in on 9 August, 1893 (13, Shravan Krishna).There is a pond to the north, and a river ‘Kochan’ to the east of the village, with two Siva temples to its east and south. There is also a Thakurbari and a Hanuman temple at its centre. Some of these can be seen in the photos here.

The villagers have put up a bust of Sahayji beside the pond which is in disrepair. But the Trust established in Sahayji’s name at Patna has a plan to raise a memorial in the  ancestral house the front part of which is shown here. It used to house his library established by him in 1921, but since the house now lies almost abandoned, all its books and journals are shifted to Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi and parts of it is gifted to Gandhi Sangrahalaya, Patna.

Any queries may be addressed to Dr BSM Murty, Secretary, AcharyaShivapujanSahaySmarakNyas, “Rajanigandha, A-1/9, Virat Khand-1, Gomti Nagar, Lucknow:226010. Ph./Mob. +91-522-2304798 / 9451890020 /7752922938/ 8896013001.

Email: bsmmurty@gmail.com

©All photos and text.