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Shri Purohit Swami ( – 1941) was a
Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
teacher from
Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...
, India. Purohit was born in Badnera, Vidarbha, India to a wealthy Maharashtran Brahmin family. His parents gave him the name Shankar Gajannan Purohit. As a child he became proficient in Marathi, English, and Sanskrit. He was well educated, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy at Calcutta University in 1903 and a law degree from Deccan College and Bombay University. As a teenager, he decided to be
celibate Celibacy (from Latin ''caelibatus'') is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both, usually for religious reasons. It is often in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, th ...
(as a
Brahmacharya ''Brahmacharya'' (; sa, ब्रह्मचर्य ) is a concept within Indian religions that literally means to stay in conduct within one's own Self. In Yoga, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism it generally refers to a lifestyle charac ...
), but in 1908 he accommodated his parents' wishes and married Godu Bai. After the birth of daughters in 1910 and 1914 and a son in 1915, he resumed his vow of celibacy. A year or two before his marriage, he met a young man only four years older than himself named Natekar. Purohit says this meeting "was love at first sight," and Natekar, who later took the monastic name Bhagwan Shri Hamsa, became Purohit's guru. In 1923 his guru directed him to embark on a mendicant pilgrimage the length and breadth of India. Begging bowl in hand, he passed several years in this way. He travelled to Europe on an extended visit in 1930. Purohit is known in the West principally for his work on translations of major Hindu texts, and his '' The Autobiography of an Indian Monk: His Life And His Adventures'' (1932) written with an accompanying introduction by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who has befriended and collaborated with him from then on, until Yeats's death . Subsequently, in 1934 he was mentioned in Bhagwan Shri Hamsa's book The Holy Mountain, supplemented with an introduction by Yeats. He worked with
W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
during 1935 and 1936, in
Majorca Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest island in the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain and located in the Mediterranean. The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Bal ...
, on the translations to ''The Ten Principal Upanishads'' (1938,
Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...
). Another book, which have been written as a result of the joint collaboration between W.B Yeats and Shri Purohit Swami, is the Swami's own version to Patanjali's Aphorisms of Yoga, published also in 1938, with a handful of illustrated Yoga exercises and postures, as an appendix to the theoretical and spiritual principles of Yoga teachings, which by convention, constitute the majority of the book pages. Yeats included him as a respectful gesture, in the Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935. He translated the ''
Bhagavad Gita The Bhagavad Gita (; sa, श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता, lit=The Song by God, translit=śrīmadbhagavadgītā;), often referred to as the Gita (), is a 700- verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic ''Mahabharata'' (c ...
'' into English, and this translation can be viewe
here
Unlike most translations, Shri Purohit Swami's translates every word into English and avoids the use of Sanskrit concepts that may be unfamiliar to English-speakers, for example translating the word ' yoga' as 'spirituality'. He also avoids mentioning the
Caste system Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...
; where the original Gita mentions the different castes he interprets this as different occupations within society. He represents a very important but largely unremembered link between the generation of
Swami Vivekananda Swami Vivekananda (; ; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta (), was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the intro ...
and the Post World War II society in which eastern thought has become an accepted element of spiritual life. Writers from Maharashtra 20th-century Hindu religious leaders 1882 births 1941 deaths People from Amravati district University of Calcutta alumni {{Hindu-bio-stub