Tributes to Prof. Dr. Satya Vrat Shastri

In 1973, I was appointed the Head of the Department of Eastern Languages of the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. A few years later, in January 1976, I had the honour of being a touring guest of India, under the auspices of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, to visit a number of educational institutions, archaeological remains, and other cultural monuments. It was during this trip that I had the opportunity to visit the home of Professor Satya Vrat Shastri, then the Head of the Department of Sanskrit and Dean of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Delhi. That was 24 years ago, but the day was memorable because that was the starting point of my acquaintance with a kind and understanding scholar and his erudite wife, Professor Satya Vrat Shastri and Madame Usha Satya Vrat, an acquaintance which I have always cherished.

Professor Shastri came to Chulalongkorn University in October 1977 as a Visiting Professor of Indian Studies under the aegis of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. He was in charge of a number of Sanskrit courses in the Graduate School. At the time H.R.H. Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn was working for her M.A. in Pali and Sanskrit, and Professor Shastri at once became one of her Sanskrit teachers.

In a sense it is difficult to define the rare quality of his teaching. The medium of teaching in his class was necessarily English, and granting that the majority of the students were able to follow his English instruction with relative ease, some were not. Professor Shastri was a true model of a kind and understanding teacher who combined the spirit of the enlightening Adhyapaka with leniency and patience towards all his students. He would persist in his explanation and not allow students to leave him until all the doubts in their mind had been cleared. Being the scholar of Indological Studies, he was always ready and he got never tired to explain any question directed towards him. This spirit of a teacher in him is a true merit that makes him highly respectable and well liked by all his Thai students. Personally, he was friendly and kind towards his Thai colleagues and very understanding with his Thai students, who mention his name with respect and admiration even these days.

After finishing a two-year term as Visiting Professor at Chulalongkorn University, he continued his stay in Bangkok further, again as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Oriental Studies, Faculty of Archeology, Silpakorn University. Being a poet at heart, Professor Shastri could not let the time pass by without having Sanskrit poems flowing out of his pen. His first stay in Thailand coincided with the time we were preparing the celebration for the 200th anniversary of the founding of the city of Bangkok as the capital of the country, due in the early part of April of 1982. Although a newcomer to Thailand, when part of his time was spent in touring the countryside and in studying about Thailand in detail, he was able somehow to spare some of his busy moments composing a lovely Khandakavya on Thailand entitled Thai-desha-vilasam which he finished in the following year. What he reported in that poem was partly what he had acquired through his own observation of the life style of the Thai urban and rural folks at different places. His poem also shows that he read a great deal, evidenced by the popular anecdotes concerning places of touring interest, and by his report of literary activities of several kings of the Royal House of Chakri. His writing, even in poetic garb, is precise, although at times necessarily brief as required by the exigencies of metrical schemes. His interpretation of what he reported was supported by an insight which was objective and in the same time sympathetic.

The book is tri-lingual, namely, Sanskrit, Thai and English, and, as a matter of fact, could be a brief introduction to prospective serious tourists to Thailand. As it was the first Sanskrit work specifically written on Thailand, the translator of the work into Thai was no less than H.R.H. Princess Mahachakri Sirindhorn of Thailand herself, with Dr. Prapod Assavavirulhakarn, now Head of the Pali-Sanskrit Section in the Department of Eastern Languages, Chulalongkorn University, as co-translator. M/s Eastern Book Linkers, Delhi, published the book in early 1979.

We know that Professor Shastri came from a family devoted to Sanskrit erudition. He told us that his revered father, Professor Charudeva Shastri, used to recite the whole Valmiki Ramayana to his mother. Thus, being an authority on Sanskrit literature himself, and highly interested in the spread of Indian culture in South East Asia, he was always looking with sharp eyes and was active in acquiring knowledge about the intellectual and cultural aspects of Thailand. It is therefore natural that the Thai Ramakien (Sk. Ramakirti) could not pass unnoticed by him who had the Ramayana in the bottom of his heart from his childhood. This Ramakien is the Thai version of the Ramayana; its main thread follows the work of Valmiki, but it includes a large number of extraneous episodes not found in the critical edition of the epic. Some of these episodes can be traced back to the regional Bengali and Tamil recensions, some additions probably came from the Srivijaya Empire, and, of course, a number of exotic episodes were the contributions devised by popular Thai story-tellers of olden days.

It should be said here that Buddhism has been the main religion of Thailand and it was firmly recognized so during the composition of the Thai Ramakien. The superiority between the sectarian Vaisnavism and Saivism, in the eye of the Thai people in general, was only theoretical and rivalry between the two sects never existed. The early court of Cambodia preferred Saivism and the Ramayana epic very likely came to that part of the world during that period. Thus, it should not be confusing to any student of Indian sectarianism to find that Ramakien, the name of which openly professes the affiliation with Vaisnavism, would hold that the God Isuan (Sk. Isvara, i.e. Siva) in several passages in the Ramakien is the supreme member of the Trimurti. Professor Shastri studied this Thai Ramakien, and came up in 1989 with the Sri Ramakirtimahakavyam, a work divided into 25 sargas, (the first sarga being an introduction), consisting of a little more than twelve hundred stanzas composed in fourteen metres. Although the main thread of this Ramakirti follows the Ramayana of Valmiki, Professor Shastri's Mahakavya is not a Sanskritized reproduction of just another recension of Ramayana. Professor Shastri makes it clear that he has chosen to concentrate on the episodes of the Ramakien as are not to be met with in the Valmiki Ramayana, or other Indian Ramayanas. This means that this Mahakavya is not the complete edition of the Thai Ramakien. Professor Shastri retained the main backbone of the epic, then expertly had the extraneous episodes woven neatly along in such a manner that the work could be read from the beginning to the end as a complete unit with no sense of discontinuity. He remarked about the work: “As a story, the Ramakien is of gripping interest. Told through a variety of incidents and episodes,... it has an appeal of its own. It is a good insight study of the human imagination at play in inventing chips of different hues and sizes, of possibles and impossibles and putting them together....

It is this mosaic that makes the Ramakien stand out as an independent entity and not a pale shadow of the pioneering work of Valmiki, who might have been the first to tell the Rama story, but as the Thai Ramakien...prove(s), was not the last. It is the Rama story everywhere but not the same. And that is the beauty of it. Professor Shastri deserves congratulations in accomplishing this pioneering work. No one could predict the outcome of the small shoot of the original Valmiki Ramayana when it first went to South East Asia, but Professor Shastri has now collected the colourful blooms and savory fruits of that shoot, which has developed and grown in those foreign lands for a long time, and is now bringing them back to their original homeland, in the language of its parent in particular.

Thus are the two beautiful literary works produced by Professor Satya Vrat Shastri during his stay in Thailand. We are grateful to him from the academic point of view as well as from the fact that by means of his literary efforts he has effectively been an ambassador whose ultimate aim is to strengthen the cultural bond between our two countries, India and Thiland.

Professor Satya Vrat Shastri : The Grammarian and the Poet
Juan Miguel de Mora

Professor Satya Vrat Shastri is one of the very few experts who truly masters the Sanskrit language at all levels, both that of the Pandits and that of the most knowledgeable and eminent academics. Neither Vedic nor Epic Sanskrit, nor the Astadhyayi, nor its exceptions have any secrets for him. But to stop at Panini is to barely scratch the surface of Satya Vrat's erudition. He is a Mahakavi. The art of poetry he masters so absolutely that his poetry may be compared to Kalidasa.

Wonderful Moments with Professor Satya Vrat Shastri
(Late) Paul Thieme

I had the rare opportunity of teaching at Tubingen the same class. We differed on many points sometimes. Every time I found that he was invariably right. He is the tallest of the Sanskrit scholars of India. His knowledge of Sanskrit grammar is unbelievable..