October 16, 1935. “I am hard pressed by work and must therefore address you by dictating in English.”
And perhaps the most profound tribute Stein paid to Sanskrit is preserved in what he wrote to his friend Percy Allen’s wife Helen Mary Allen.
 |
|
Regretting the roits in Srinagar (Stein to Nityanand) |
|
|
Nityanand Shastri Library Collection |
|
|
|
|
|
Sanskrit letter by Aurel Stein to Pandit Nityanand |
|
|
Nityanand Shastri Library Collection |
|
|
| |
|
"December18, 1940.“ My old clerk, Ram Chand Bali, now up the State’s ladder, arranged for me to get through all my tasks. I visited again after 50 years the Raghunath Temple Library. Its 6000 old manuscripts had been catalogued by me with the help of Pandit Govind Kaul and another excellent scholar friend in what seems now like a previous birth. It had been a dreary task but it saved the collection from being lost. I had a very attentive reception, had to talk Sanskrit again for an hour or so, thus purifying my tongue by use of the sacred language after all my peregrinations in the barbarian north and west. It was a quaint experience to find in the end garlanded in the traditional Hindu fashion for the first time in my life.” |
|
|
Sanskrit letter by Aurel Stein to Pandit Nityanand |
|
|
Nityanand Shastri Library Collection |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Sanskrit correspondence in Sharada character by Pandit Kashiram to Aurel Stein |
|
|
|
