Kolkata: Presidential Award winner and renowned scholar of Buddhist studies Suniti Kumar Pathak died on Thursday at his residence in Bolpur-Santiniketan in Birbhum district of West Bengal. Pathak was associated with the Department of Indo-Tibetan Studies of Visva Bharati University founded by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. He also served as the Dean of the university from 1972 to 1986.
He worked as a guest faculty in the Department of Buddhist Studies at the University of Calcutta and for Buddhist and Indo-Tibetan studies in several universities in India and abroad. Apart from the Presidential Award, his academic career has also been honoured with the Manjushri Award and the Sahitya Parishad Award. He received the title of ‘Bhanak’ (reciter of Dharma) from the Mahabodhi Society. The author of about 200 books, he has command over nine languages. After graduating from Sanskrit College in Kolkata, he studied Pali (Mahajana Goshti) at the University of Calcutta.
After his postgraduate education, he joined the Department of Sino-Tibetan Studies at the University of Calcutta as a research scholar. At one point, he also served in the Indian Army as a language teacher, translator and interpreter.
He retired from Visva Bharati University in 1984 and lived in Bolpur-Santiniketan until his death. Some of the famous books written by him include ‘Tantric Tradition in the Himalayas and Tibet’ and ‘Nagananda’s Bilingual Glossary’. He travelled widely in remote Himalayan villages to collect field notes for his research and books.
The most interesting thing was that despite being offered a vehicle by the government for his research-related fieldwork, he refused to accept it. Instead, he preferred to travel on foot to remote Himalayan villages to collect field notes.
(IANS)
