Digital Rare Book:
A History of Civilization in Ancient India, based on Sanscrit Literature
By Romesh Chunder Dutt
Published Thacker Spink & Co., Calcutta - 1889
Volume 2 - Rationalistic Age

Read book online:

http://bit.ly/SRynqi

Download pdf book:

http://bit.ly/2DwXfQ6

Romesh Chunder Dutt, CIE (Bengali: রমেশচন্দ্র দত্ত) (August 13, 1848 – November 30, 1909) was an Indian civil servant, economic historian, writer, and translator of Ramayana and Mahabharata.

He entered the University of Calcutta, Presidency College in 1864. He passed the First Arts examination in 1866, ranking second in order of merit and won a scholarship. While still a student in the B.A. class, without his family's permission, he and two other friends, Behari Lal Gupta and Surendranath Banerjee, left for England in 1868.

At that time, only one other Indian, Satyendra Nath Tagore, had qualified for the Indian Civil Service. Dutt aimed to emulate Tagore's feat. For a long time, before and after 1853, the year the ICS examination was introduced in England, only British officers were appointed to covenanted posts.

He entered the Indian Civil Service as an assistant magistrate of Alipur in 1871. A famine in Meherpur, District of Nadia in 1874 and another in Dakhin Shahbazpur (Bhola District) in 1876, followed by a disastrous cyclone, required emergency relief and economic recovery operations, which Dutt managed successfully. He served as administrator for Backerganj, Mymensingh, Burdwan, Donapur, and Midnapore. He became Burdwan's District Officer in 1893, Commissioner (offtg.) of Burdwan Division in 1894, and Divisional Commissioner (offtg.) for Orissa in 1895. Dutt was the first Indian to attain the rank of divisional commissioner.

Dutt retired from the ICS in 1897. In 1898 he returned to England as a lecturer in Indian History at University College, London where he completed his famous thesis on economic nationalism. He returned to India as dewan of Baroda State, a post he had been offered before he left for Britain. He was extremely popular in Baroda where the Maharaja, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III and his family members and all other staff members used to call him the Babu Dewan, as a mark of personal respect. In 1907, he also became a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Decentralisation.

He was president of the Indian National Congress in 1899.

He served as the first president of Bangiya Sahitya Parishad (Bengali: বঙ্গীয় সাহিত্য পরিষদ) in 1894, while Rabindranath Tagore and Navinchandra Sen were the vice-presidents of the society.

- Wikipedia

Image:
Head of Buddha Shakyamuni
Afghanistan, Gandhara region, Hadda, 4th-5th century
Sculpture
Stucco with traces of paint

Credit: Museum Associates, dba Los Angeles County Museum of Art