Acharya Dharmananda Kosambi

Acharya Dharmananda Kosambi was a prominent Indian Buddhist scholar and a Pali language expert. He was born in Sankval village of Goa in 1876 in a Saraswat Brahmin family. He was lecturer of Pali language in archeology temple of Gujarath Vidyapeeth.

Career
After the birth of his child, he left his family and went to Pune with an intention to learn Sanskrit. From Pune, he travelled to Varanasi after brief sojourns in Ujjain, Indore, Gwalior and Prayag. At Varanasi he learnt Sanskrit under the tutelage of Gangadharpant Shastri and Nageshwarpant Dharmadhikari. Later he moved to Nepal to study Budhism and traveled to Calcatta and then Ceylon. There he studied for 3 years and was ordained Budhist monk. Later he went to Burma and undertook comparitive study of Budhist Text in Burmese language. After spending 7 years abroad, he started working as a reader at University of Calcutta. Later he went to Baroda to work as a research fellow and finally moved to Fergusson college in Pune. Dr. James Wood invited Kosambi to Harvard University, to complete the Visuddhimagga, a book on Buddhist philosophy. He travelled to USSR and taught Pali at Leningrad University. When Indian Independence movement was at its peak, Kosambi came back to India. He started to recruit volunteers for salt satyagraha, for which he was imprisoned for 6 years. Besides Buddhist works, Kosambi also studied and translated many Jain works. He authoured Bhagwan Budha in Marathi. It was later translated in English and in other Indian languages by Central Sahitya Akademi. He has also authored 11 books on Buddhism and Jainism. He also wrote a play “Bodhisatva” in Marathi. His autobiography written in Marathi – “Nivedan” was a serialized column published in a Goan periodical Bharat. Kosambi founded “BahujanaVihara”, a shelter house for Budhist monks in Bombay.