Vishnu Sitaram Sukthankar, also known as V. S. Sukthankar (4 May 1887 – 21 January 1943), was an

Indologist Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') i ...

and scholar of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...

. He is principally known as the General Editor of the Critical Edition of the

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the K ...

published by the

Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) is located in Pune, Maharashtra, India. It was founded on 6 July 1917 and named after Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar (1837–1925), long regarded as the founder of Indology (Orientalism) in Ind ...

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

Early life

Vishnu Sitaram Sukthankar was born on 4 May 1887 to Sitaram Sukthankar, his father, a civil engineer, and Dhaklibai, his mother. He married Eleanor Bowing (1889–1927) on 29 July 1908. Together they had children named John (1908), Kathleen (1912) and Maurice (1913).

Education

Sukthankar was educated at the Maratha High School and later at St. Xavier's College in

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

. After passing his Intermediate Examination, he left for England and studied mathematics during the years 1903-1906 at

St. John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corporation established by a charter dated 9 April 1511. The ...

and passing his

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. It is the oldest Tripos examined at the University. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was ...

. In 1909, he studied at the University of Edinburgh. Meanwhile, his interests had turned to Indology. He completed a doctorate between 1911–14 at the

Humboldt University Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiati ...

in Berlin under the supervision of

Heinrich Lüders Heinrich Lüders (25 June 1869 in Lübeck – 7 May 1943 in Badenweiler) was a German Orientalist and Indologist known for his epigraphical analysis of the Sanskrit Turfan fragmentary manuscripts. Biography From 1888 to 1894, he studied a ...

. He was also a student of

Hermann Jacobi Hermann Georg Jacobi (11 February 1850 – 19 October 1937) was an eminent German Indologist. Education Jacobi was born in Köln (Cologne) on 11 February 1850. He was educated in the gymnasium of Cologne and then went to the University of Ber ...

. The subject of his thesis was the grammar of Shakatayana, together with the commentary of Yaksavarman. The outbreak of the First World War forced him to leave Germany, and he was formally awarded his degree only in 1921.

Work

In 1915, having returned to India, Sukthankar took up the post of Assistant Superintendent of the Western Circle in the

Archaeological Survey of India The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is an Indian government agency that is responsible for archaeological research and the conservation and preservation of cultural historical monuments in the country. It was founded in 1861 by Alexand ...

. In 1919, he returned to Britain, and re-joined his family. In the years 1919-21, Sukthankar and his young family lived in New York. In 1920, he lectured at the annual convention of the American Oriental Society. During the early 1920s, he wrote a series of papers on the plays (presumptively) by Bhasa, and moreover published a translation of his 'Svapnavasavadatta'. This material, together with Sukthankar's papers on epigraphy have been posthumously collected in the 2nd volume of the 'Sukthankar Memorial Edition'. In 1925, Sukthankar assumed the General Editorship of the Critical Edition of the

at the

in Pune. After years of tireless labour and the assistance of several copyists and fellow scholars, the first fascicule of the

Adi Parva The ''Adi Parva'' or ''The Book of the Beginning'' is the first of eighteen books of the Mahabharata. "Adi" ( आदि, Ādi) is a Sanskrit word that means "first". Adi Parva traditionally has 19 parts and 236 adhyayas (chapters). The critical edi ...

(i.e., first of the eighteen Books of the

) was published in 1927, followed by the entire

in 1933. The work involved collating about 60 partial manuscripts of the

in ten different scripts belonging to two major recensions (Northern and Southern). A lucid and detailed account of his methods of

Textual Criticism Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...

may be found in the `Prolegomena' to the 1933 volume. Some of his writings on the

have been collected in the first volume of the 'Sukthankar Memorial Edition'. The subsequent Parvans were edited on the basis of his framework by a legion of scholars at the Bhandarkar Institute during his tenure and after his death, and the publication of the entire Critical Edition was finally complete in 1966. This work has proved to be immensely valuable for all subsequent scholarship on the

. An English translation of the Critical Edition was undertaken by

J. A. B. van Buitenen Johannes Adrianus Bernardus van Buitenen (21 May 1928 – 21 September 1979) was a Dutch Indologist at the University of Chicago where he was the George V. Bobrinskoy Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizat ...

, who completed five of the Parvans before his death. This work is now being carried forward by other scholars. Sukthankar's principles of textual criticism were also put to use towards the Critical Edition of the

Ramayana The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages ...

, prepared during the years 1951-1975 by the Oriental Institute at the

Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, formerly Baroda College, is a public university in the city of Vadodara, in Gujarat state, India. Originally established as a college in 1881, it became a university in 1949 after the independence ...

. In January 1943, Sukthankar was invited to deliver a series of four lectures on the

at the

University of Bombay The University of Mumbai is a collegiate, state-owned, public research university in Mumbai. The University of Mumbai is one of the largest universities in the world. , the university had 711 affiliated colleges. Ratan Tata is the appointed h ...

. However, on the eve of the fourth and final lecture, he died suddenly due to complications arising from a cerebral thrombosis. The lectures were later published as a book. Contemporary accounts describe him as an aloof and reticent scholar, whose early mathematical training had led him to an insistence on precision in his philological studies.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sukthankar, Vishnu Sitaram 1887 births 1943 deaths Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge