Journeys Across India

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About the Book Durgacharan Rakshit (1854-1938) was a scholar and a business owner. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, he set out on an unprecedented set of travels that took him to nearly all corners of India. Travelling by foot, boat, train, carriage and more, he traversed the length and breadth of the country-quite literally.

In this detailed journal written over several years, Rakshit recounts seeing the temples of Orissa and the small towns of Assam; he describes the mountainous heights of Kashmir, the beauty of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the magnificent Jain temples near Mount Abu, and the transcendent Taj Mahal. He lives for a while in Mumbai (then Bombay), getting to know a city that is rapidly changing, driven by commerce. In the south, he travels through Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, visiting cities, temples and towns, describing in detail what were for him unknown customs and ways of living.

Everywhere, Durgacharan Rakshit turns his enquiring eye on the way men and women look, dress, and their religious and traditional beliefs. From the elaborate rituals of major temples, to the price of coconuts and betel nuts, nothing escapes his meticulous notice. Along the way he meets poets, administrators, wandering sadhus, businessmen, householders and more all of which he records in his journal.

Journeys Across India, first published in Bengali as Bharat Pradakshin in 1903-and still in print-is an invaluable and exhaustive portrait of India and Indian society rooted in history, and will be of immense interest to both scholars and the lay reader.

About the Authors Durgacharan Rakshit was born in 1854, at Khantura, Gobordanga, in the district of Nadia (West Bengal). It is said that his ancestors had migrated from Saptagram in Hooghly district. Later the Rakshit family set up a large business of ghee and sugar in Kolkata, in Burabazar. Durgacharan was sent to a Sanskrit school in Varanasi. He completed the unfinished work of Bipin Behari Chakraborti, The History of Khantura and Kushdeep in 1901. After this, he toured across India and wrote his famous travelogue Bharat Pradakshin, in 1903. He also wrote The Relation of Tambuli Community (1901), Tambuli Merchant (1901), The Vaishyas of Bengal (1903). In 1906 he handed over his business to his sons and moved permanently to Varanasi. There he established a school for girls, Durgacharan Girls' School. He was one of the pioneers of the Bangiyo Sahitya Samaj. Durgacharan passed away in 1938.

Dr Sarbani Putatunda was a teacher at East Calcutta Girls College. She is a Shakespeare scholar and has several academic papers to her credit which have been published in both national and international journals. She has also authored, translated and edited several books. After her superannuation, she is simultaneously working for the welfare of rural communities in West Bengal and continuing with her passion of writing.

Foreword My appreciation of this noble effort to bring to light a long- lost significant work of my great grandfather Sri Durgacharan Rakshit. Commenting on the work by me shall be superfluous for a number of reasons. Firstly, when the original work was being published part by part in various Bengali periodicals, there were ample observations, comments and appreciations in the form of reviews which appeared in those and other periodicals of the time. Moreover, the respected translator has touched upon every aspect of his work in the preface. Lastly, given my limited experience in literary appreciation, my eligibility is in question. What I would venture here is to introduce Sri Durgacharan Rakshit, the person, to the readers.

Introduction Durgacharan Rakshit (DCR) is my maternal great grandfather, born in 1854, near Calcutta. The ancestors of his father, Umesh Chandra Rakshit, had migrated from their roots in Saptagram in the wake of the Bagri attacks (the Maratha Expeditions 1741-51) which had led to widespread economic losses besides instilling a sense of deep fear in the people of Bengal.