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Pandit Sastri was ever anxious to serve some Sanskrit Library or other in
India. So he offered his service to the D.A V. College Library and to the University
Library at Lahore. The work he did for these libraries was honorary, for he
took pleasure in that work and considered it him sacred duty to preserve
what our ancient Rishis had left to us. He collected 6,000 to 7,000
manuscripts for these libraries, too.
Every year he would spend a few months in Banaras which he always used
to say was a store-house of Sanskrit learning and the stock of manuscripts
in that area was inexhaustible. He later worked for the Travancore
University Library, for which also he collected about 7,000 manuscripts.
Thus Pandit Sastri had worked in most of the Sanskrit Libraries of the
country. Very few villages were left by him unvisited in his quest for
manuscripts. He toured every year from Himalayas to Cape Comorin and from
Lahore to Chittagong. He was never tired of this travelling so long as he
could get some manuscripts. His one ambition in life was to get up-to-date
the 'Catalogus Catalogorum' of Aufrecht.
Pandit Sastri was anxious to teach all that he knew to those who were
anxious to hear him. Wherever he stayed he held classes in the mornings and
evenings. The classes would be on Gita on which he was quite an authority
or on the Upanishads. He would very often repeat that according to
Vanaprastha vow he must impart knowledge and never seek remuneration of any
kind. He would demonstrate as to how Pranayama should be done in his
classes. He was a zealous believer in these Yoqic exercises. He generally
finished his bath before sunrise whatever the might be and did these exercises
himself. These he considered as a part and parcel of the Pooja he performed
every morning.
He had a Lingam made of mercury presented by Sri Sankaracharya of
Sringeri and also a Meru made of copper. These were always with him
wherever he went. In whatever place he camped1 whether in the verandah of a
Dharmasala or in the palace of a Maharaj, he never failed to do his morning
Pooja.
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