Rajendralal Mitra

Raja Rajendralal Mitra (16 February 1822 – 26 July 1891) was among the first Indian cultural researchers and historians writing in English. A polymath and the first Indian president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, he was a pioneering figure in the Bengali Renaissance. Mitra belonged to a respected family of Bengal writers.

Quotes

• To judge of the past from the present, let us take the English nation in India. It has held India for a longer period than the Greeks did Bactria from the time of Alexander to that of As'oka, but yet it has produced no appreciable effect on the architecture of its neighbours. The Bhutanese and the Sikimites have not yet borrowed a single English moulding. The Nepalese, under the administration of Sir Jung Bahadur, are not a whit behind-hand of As ́oka and his people; Sir Jung went to Europe, which As'oka never did; still there is no change perceptible in Nepalese architecture indicative of a European amalgamation. The Kashmiris and the Afghans have proved equally conservative, and so have the Burmese. But to turn from their neighbours to the people of Hindustan : these have had intimate intercourse with Europeans now for over three hundred years, and enjoyed the blessings of English rule for over a century, and yet they have not produced a single temple built in the Saxon, or any other European style. Thus the conclusion we are called upon to accept is that what has not been accomplished by the intimate intercourse of three centuries, and the absolute sovereignty of a century, in these days of railways, and electric telegraphs, and mass education, was effected by the Greeks two thousand years ago simply by living as distant neighbours for eighty years or so.
  • The Antiquities of Orissa, vol 1, Rajendralala Mitra, quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

Quotes about Mitra

• Mitra (1822-91) is famous for his publications on Orissan antiquities (1875, 1880), Bodh Gaya (1878) and a two-volume collection of essays (1881) dealing with different aspects of material life in ancient India. In his Odisha volumes he strongly advocated the independent origin of Indian stone architecture and earned the wrath of James Fergusson, the most established architectural historian of India of that time. In the volume on Bodh Gaya he argued for the existence of true arch in an early context in the Mahabodhi temple, and among his essays on the ancient Indian material life he cited copious data on beef- eating and the practice of spirituous drinking in ancient India.
  • Chakrabarti, D. K. (2021). Nationalism in the study of ancient Indian history. National Security, 4(1), 29-50.