With the European interest initiated, in the collection of ancient Hindu popular tales under the title of Panchtantra ,by the famous German Sanskrit scholar, Theodor Benfey, it was however left to Ernst Windisch to arrange for the publication of several treatises of Panchtantra through the journals of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences. Windish carried this work through his pupil Johannes Hertel, beginning in 1903. Hertel began his task by procuring various manuscripts of the Panchtantra. These numbered no less than 90. Of the multitudinous Indian recensions of the work was a Kashmiri Sarada manuscript under the title of Tantrakhyayika. According to Hertel, “Pandit Sahajabhatta discovered the manuscript of the fine old text.”

(seemingly through Aurel Stein)

Acknowledging the help of various scholars in the completion of the edition, Hertel writes, “I can only hope that my edition may prove to be of scientific value and importance commensurate with the kind interest some excellent men have shown in its progress. For this I am greatly obliged to Professor Sylvain Levi of Paris, Professor Jacobi of Bonn, Professor Eugen Hultzsch of Halle, to late Professor C. Bendall of Cambridge, ---- Pandit Sahajabhatta of Srinagar and to Dr M. Aurel Stein of the Indian Educational Services, ---- for their help in providing me the manuscript materials and other resource of their learning.”

(The Panchtantra- Harward Oriental Series, Vol II, 1908.)

In the summer of 1908, the Norwegian linguist Sten Konow came to Kashmir as Government Epigraphist. He helped Grierson in the Linguistic Survey of India by taking the share in the elucidation of Indo- European languages. From 1906 to 1908 he worked as an Epigraphist in Archaeological Survey of India. Prior to his appointment in India as Government Epigraphist, Konow while still at the University of Kristiana, Norway, edited Rajackhera’s Karpuramanjari, a drama by the 900 A. D. Indian poet Rajackhera. The manuscript which bore a commentary by Vasudeva was obtained by Konow from the Raghunath Temple Library at Jammu. Writes Konow,

“I owe the possession of the transcript to the kindness of Dr. Stein who had his assistant, Pandit Sahajabhatta make it for me.”

(in the preface of Rajackhera’s Karpuramanjiri ed by Sten Konow.)

Folios of Pandit Sahajabhatta Sanskrit correspondence

Maurice Winternitz, Professor of Indology and Ethnology at the German University, Prague, arrived in India in 1922 at the invitation of Rabindranath Tagore. About this veritable scholar, whose death occurred in 1937, observed Tagore : “The news of the sudden passing away of Dr Maurice Winternitz were most painful for us, who were used to looking upon him as one of the truest and most respected friends of India in the outer world. During my long life and extensive travels, I never met a savant more worthy of respect than the learned Doctor. His deep and broad humanity, brightened as it was with his amazingly wide scholarship, his devotion to Truth and the courage with which he held fast to his idealism in the midst of a growing hostile atmosphere in central Europe, are his claims to our homage. In him, I have lost a faithful comrade, India has lost one of its truest Pandits and best friends and humanity one of its most sincere champions.”