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The manuscripts that Pandit Sastri got were of different kinds. Generally
they were in palm leaves written about three or four centuries back. The language
was usually Sanskrit though the script was in different local dialects.
Some of them had even wonderful drawings. I had seen one got from the Hampi
area which had on each page at one end a circle of about one inch radius
and either had a number of concentric circles in It or had many arcs
passing through the centre, so carefully done that there was not a single
flaw. Even with the latest mathematical instruments it will be difficult to
do such accurate work. Manuscripts from North India were generally written
on hand-made paper. One manuscript was discovered near Mt. Abu, which
consisted only of seven leaves but had the whole voluminous Ramayana
written in it in very minute characters. Many had even paintings on them.
Mr. Sastri adopted all kinds of tactics to secure manuscripts. In one of
the villages in Gujarat there was a learned Pandit who had a huge
collection of manuscripts handed over to him by him ancestors. Nobody could
persuade him to part with them even though he was repeatedly told they would
be cared for and also edited and printed if they were useful. So Sastri had
to adopt new methods to get these manuscripts for the Baroda Library. One
evening he put on a bigger kumkum mark on his forehead than usual and with
a rudraksha in his neck, walked with his wife along the village street in
which the Pandit lived. The local Pandit was doing his sandhya seated on a
pial. The sight of a middle aged couple dressed in a garb not worn in that
part of the country naturally attracted his attention. Sastri while just in
front of the house, went on telling his wife in Sanskrit that in that house
learned men had been living for ages. This still further roused the aged
Pandit's curiosity. Some strange people, coming from a distant place and
that a husband and wife apparently very orthodox but going together,
talking perfect Sanskrit and telling in the very front of his house, that
this was the abode of Goddess Saraswati - this was too much for him. So he
invited them, though they were strangers. This little breach in the
defence, this small crack in the wall, was enough for the intrepid
strategist. He waxed eloquent in Sanskrit and within a short time had
persuaded the old man to donate all the old manuscripts, which were lying
moth-eaten, to the Central Library of Baroda. He knew the fickleness of
human nature and the peril from second and third thoughts to generous
impulses. Ha never allowed any time lag between promises and fulfilment. So
he immediately took over the manuscripts, which to him were more precious
than all the wealth of Ormuz or of Ind, and packed them up without any
assistance. So the manuscripts in that remote village of Gujarat were soon
lying in gunny bags at the railway station next morning.
Many such interesting Incidents he met in his quest for manuscripts.
These anecdotes he used to relate to his grand-children later in life. Once
he asked me to meet some Pandit in a village near Conjeevaram and get from
him some manuscripts. Out I went with great enthusiasm thinking that it was
a chance to imitate Sastri's conversational ability and his cleverness and
that I would surprise him with a bundle of manuscripts. I reached the
village in the afternoon, met the Pandit, gave a long talk on the Sanskrit
libraries in India and the Gaikwar of Baroda, the low ebb to which Sanskrit
had descended, and at last about the Pandit, and so on. The net effect of
it all was only a plateful of not quite hot pulyorai and some cold water!
And he sent me off empty handed, though with a solicitous and tender adieu,
remarking that it was getting very dark and late. Only then did I come to
know how difficult it was to wrench a few manuscripts from the conservative
Pandits. They were so sentimental that they would rather allow their
manuscripts to decay, eaten by termites, than to donate them to a Public
Library.
The Gaikwar of Baroda was always fond of Sastri though he was
unsophisticated. He would always call him in just before leaving for any
public ceremony and ask for any suitable Sanskrit quotation that he might
render there. Mr. Sastri was always prompt in supply these as most of the
subjects were in his memory and his memory was an inexhaustible storehouse
of verses-gay, grave and philosophic. He was a living example to the
sceptical generation of the efficiency of the old system of memory-training
which enabled works of stupendous magnitude to be handed down by word of
mouth from generation to generation. Whenever he left on tour, the Gaikwad
used to advise Mrs. Sastri that it was her responsibility to bring back her
husband in perfect health, because the Gaikwad knew that Sastri was apt to
forget everything in the fervour of his search for manuscripts.
Mr. Sastri worked from 1912 to 1922 in Baroda. During this period he
collected 13,000 manuscripts, some of them very rare ones. He edited a few
of them himself. By 1922 he was already over 55 and he felt he should not
thereafter engage himself in paid work, but that he should carry out the
sacred mission of his life in an honorary capacity. Meanwhile he was getting
calls from Santiniketan, the centre of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore's
activities. This was too much for him to resist. So he left Baroda and
joined Santiniketan late in the year 1922.
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