Thread by @dhruvkotru

Kashmiri Pandits owe it to Sir Marc Aurel Stein.

The caption sounds a bit unrealistic but nothing is more truer. The #KPs had produced in the past an enormous amount of literature written in Sanskrit but all that lay secretively (1/14) A Thread

in the possession of their owners who guarded them like sacred amulets.Everything lay hidden and unknown about Kashmir's Hindu era until the last quarter of the 19th century. Even the KPs themselves were ignorant of the glorious achievements of their ancestors. It was (2/14)

the fortuitous visit of the German Indologist, Georg Buhler, to Kashmir in 1875 that brought the ancient Sanskrit treasures of Kashmir before the world for the first time. At the time he collected 300 manuscripts and thus the world for the first time ever became familiar (3/14)

with the great corpus of Kashmir's ancient Sanskrit literature through the identification of iconic works like the #Rajatarangini, #Tantraloka, #Nilamatapurana, and several Saiva texts and more importantly the world for the first time heard of great Kashmiri names like (4/14)

#Kalhana, #Abhinavagupta, #Somadeva , #Kshemendra etc. However, the matter stood there until the arrival of his pupil, #AurelStein in Kashmir 13 years later Inc.1888. Stein followed the steps of his mentor,Buhler in collecting the remaining Sanskrit manuscripts in Kashmir (5/14)

With the assistance of native Pandits. Stein procured as many as 368 Sanskrit manuscripts from Kashmir between 1888 and 1905.
Between them they collected nearly 700 Sanskrit manuscripts comprising the original titles of Kashmir's Sanskrit literature. In addition, (6/14)

Stein also edited the Rajatarangini in 1892 followed by its masterly translation into English in 1900. Nothing actually moved in this scholarly enterprise of the late 19th and early 20th century scholarship in Kashmir without Stein's great hand. It is hard to talk about (7/14)

Kashmiri scholarship and its ancient Sanskrit wealth without mentioning the name of #Stein. He did so much for bringing KP learning and scholarship to the attention of world that perhaps it may not be wrong to state that he may have been a KP himself in the Poorva Janma (8/14)

A reincarnated Kashmiri Pandit.

To put it in precise words it may well be stated that Aurel Stein was one of those high minded Western scholars who keenly appreciated Kashmir's cultural greatness and literary traditions at a time when few were aware of it. His (9/14)

incessant labours for the promotion of Kashmir's culture, history, literature and language have immortalised him before the civilized world.These will be forgotten by the future while services of #Stein to unearth the cultural and literary legacy of Kashmir will ever (10/14)

be remembered by posterity. Stein was the first among the Europeans to understand the ethos of Kashmiri culture and recognize the value of its contribution to the history of world culture.
He showed that in the higher reaches of human spirit , there is neither East nor (11/14)

West; that humanity is one beneath the trappings of custom and skin, that in a sense, in quest of learning and knowledge, man is classless, nation-less King over himself.
This great European savant who dedicated his life to the task of exploring the inner essence and (12/14)

beauty of Sanskrit literature in Kashmir and will ever be remembered with gratitude by generations of scholars all over the world and particularly by Kashmiris for ensuring their motherland a glorious and permanent place in the estimation of the world. Born on (13/14)

Novement 26, 1862,this great Hungarian born naturalized British citizen, Aurel Stein breathed his last in Kabul on October 26, 1943! (14/14)
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