‘Like Embers Hidden in Ashes, or Jewels Encrusted In Stone’: Rāhul Sāṅktyāyan, Dharmānand KosambĪ And Buddhist Activity In Colonial India

Abstract

Two of the most important modern Indian Buddhist pioneers are the polyglot explorer and Marxist revolutionary, Rāhul Sāṅktyāyan (1893–1963), and the Pali scholar and Gandhian nationalist, Dharmānand Kosambī (1876–1947). Although best known as scholars of Buddhism, it is their lesser-known personal lives—namely, their political involvement in anti-colonial efforts, social reform projects, and travels abroad—that are of primary focus in this study. Through an examination of their activities and writings, this essay reveals the methods they employed and the networks of support they utilized in order to propagate Buddhism. In particular, it focuses on two features common to both of their lives: first, their relations with transnational Buddhist organizations and Euro-American and other Asian intellectuals, and second, their collaborative efforts with Indian elites whom they shared similar social, educational and national concerns. These two factors, I argue, were essential to their reconfiguration of a modern Indian Buddhism that was relevant to contemporary Indian concerns.