Damodar dharmanand kosambi biography of william

Thanks to Arvind Gupta for sending this paper.

A SCHOLAR IN HIS TIME: CONTEMPORARY VIEWS OF KOSAMBI THE MATHEMATICIAN

RAMAKRISHNA RAMASWAMY

University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, TS 500 034

“Kosambi introduced a new method into historical scholarship, essentially by application of modern mathematics.” J. D. Bernal [1], who shared some of his interests and much of his politics, summarized the unique talents of DDK [2] in an obituary that appeared in the journal Nature, adding, “Indians were not themselves historians: they left few documents and never gave dates. One thing the Indians of all periods did leave behind, however, were hoards of coins. [...] By statistical study of the weights of the coins, Kosambi was able to establish the amount of time that had elapsed while they were in circulation . . . ”

The facts of DDK’s academic life, in brief are as follows. He attended high–school in the US, in Cambridge, MA, and undergraduate college at Harvard, graduating in 1929. Returning to India, he then worked as a mathematician at Banaras Hindu University (1930-31), Aligarh Muslim University (1931-33), Fergusson College, Pune (1933-45), and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (1945-62), after which he held an emeritus fellowship of the CSIR until his death at the age of 59, in 1966.

Today the significance of D. D. Kosambi’s mathematical contributions [3–71] tends to be underplayed, given the impact of his scholarship as historian, and Indologist. His work in the latter areas has been collected in several volumes [72] and critical commentaries have appeared over the years [73, 74], but his work in mathematics has not been compiled and reviewed to the same extent [75, 76, 77, 78]. Indeed, a complete bibliography is not available in the public domain so far [79]. This asymmetry is unfortunate since, as commented elsewhere [75], an understanding of Kosambi the historian can only be enhanced by an apprecia

Mon, 2008-08-04 15:17 | Meera Kosambi

Some have greatness thrust upon them, and some have expectations of greatness thrust upon them as do I, being a third-generation Kosambi. All my academic life has been a struggle to live up to the iconic name that locates me immediately within an intellectual context in any academic circle in the world. I will mention just one telling incident that happened during my first visit to Columbia University in the early 1980s. I was then based at Rutgers University, New Jersey, as visiting research faculty in urban studies and paid a courtesy call on Ainsley Embree who was chair of Asian studies at Columbia. After establishing my ancestry, he took me around and introduced me to the other faculty members, saying: This is Dr Kosambi, and yes, she is. This last was in response to the unasked question immediately apparent on everybodys face: Is she the daughter of ? It is not an easy task to lay claim to this intellectual heritage. This is therefore not a critical analysis of D D Kosambis multiple intellectual contributions to a wide range of academic disciplines. There are scholars far better equipped to do so, in any one of the fields of his intellectual activity (while I do not have expertise in any of them). What I would like to do is to indicate the amazingly wide range and scope of this activity. Kosambi has often been described as a genius, a Renaissance man, a towering intellectual giant and I myself would not have believed that such a man existed if I had not seen him at close quarters. Here I will only attempt to outline the vastness of his intellectual canvas, prefacing it with a short biographical sketch and end by touching upon some facets of his personality. The first two sections are inevitably drawn largely from secondary sources, given my lack of adequate intellectual credentials and Kosambis general unwillingness to share personal reminiscences or work- related matters with his family. 1 D D Kosambi w

(By Tsem Rinpoche and Pastor Shin Tan)

One of the greatest intellectuals of India, Acharya Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi (9 October 1876 – 24 June 1947) was a Buddhist, Pali and Sanskrit scholar.

The youngest of seven children, Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi was born in Sankhval (or Sancoale) village in the Indian city of Goa in 1876 to Damodar and Anandibai. He was not able to eat food on his own till the age of eight or nine, and was considered the least intellectually-capable of all the boys in the village. However, his parents were hopeful as an astrologer had predicted that he would become intelligent later in life.

Kosambi studied in Madgaon before enrolling in a school run by Bhik Bhatji at Chikli. He then attended Raghoba Gopal Prabhu’s school in Aroba for around three months. It was here that he developed a liking for mathematics. However, ill health forced him to return home to Sankhval.

After about a year of recuperation, Kosambi was admitted to Standard Two at a Marathi-medium school in the Belgaum district. He was promoted to Standard Five after the annual examination when he came first in his class and scored distinctions in every subject. Unfortunately, Kosambi’s ill health returned, and again he was forced to return to Goa.

Kosambi’s father had leased a coconut farm near his house in Goa and Kosambi was given the responsibility of taking care of the coconuts there. In 1891, Kosambi was married.

He started to read books of various genres written by great thinkers. Among them were Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, a great writer who had a strong influence on modern Marathi prose; Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, a Brahmin social reformer and thinker from Mahara

South Asia's Freedom in Global Perspective Seminar

Speaker: Professor Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, IIT, Delhi; Associate, Harvard University Asia Center

Chair: Professor Sugata Bose, Harvard University

Abstract: Dharmanand Kosambi, the preeminent Pali Buddhist scholar who edited Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosacharya, vol. 41 of the Harvard Oriental Series, was an Assistant in Indic Philology at Harvard from 1910-12 and 1918-1922. Working with Charles Lanman and James Woods of the Department of Sanskrit at Harvard, he produced the definitive edition of this classic text. His daughter, Manik, was the first South Asian woman to graduate from Radcliffe, in 1922 (Philosophy, cum laude), and his son, Damodar, graduated from Harvard in 1929, summa cum laude in Mathematics.

Dharmanand, a Marxist and a Buddhist, worked closely with Mahatma Gandhi for the cause of Indian freedom and was a major figure in the twentieth-century Buddhist revival in India. He was an advocate for the abolition of caste as well as women's emancipation. In addition to mathematics, Damodar went on to work in archaeology and history, using statistics to analyze ancient coin hoards. He fundamentally changed Indian historiography by introducing a scientific approach, Marxist analysis, and what he termed "combined methods." During their years in Cambridge, both Dharmanand and Damodar found their own ways of coping with the racism and discrimination they experienced, primarily through academic achievement and by finding a cohort of like-minded individuals. Lawrence Arguimbau, a housemate, became a member of the Communist Party and had to resign from MIT during the McCarthy era. Another contemporary, the Marxist economist Paul Marlor Sweezy, became a good friend in later years.

Many of Damodar Kosambi’s research interests were seeded in the educational environment of Harvard in the 1920s. He studied under mathematician