The present monograph on the life, works and the personality of Anundoram Borooah grew out of a number of lectures delivered by me in course of the last eighteen years. The first of these lectures was delivered on the occasion of the unvailing of a portrait of Anundoram Borooah by me in the Tezpur Sahitya Sabha Bhavan on 16 September, 1973. The last of these lectures was delivered on 27 November, 1987, when I had the privilege to deliver the first Annual Anundoram Borooah Memorial Lecture instituted by the Assam Government Sanskrit College, Guwahati. The text of all these lectures, barring one, was in Assamese. The occasion for preparing the first draft of the present monograph in English, so to say, came when I was invited to deliver in the University of Bombay on 8 and 9 July, 1982 the third biennial Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Memorial Lecture on Anundoram Borooah. It was, indeed highly laudable on the part of Professor N. Mukherji and others to think of founding the said Memorial Lectureship "for perpetuating the memory of those men and women of this country who by their contributions in matters of social and cultural importance have raised the edifice of modern India and yet for their self-effaced nature are little known outside their home states." The idea is commendable more particularly because Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was a great humanist. He was a rare exception to the time and clime to which he belonged. He was a traditional brahmin Sanskrit scholar, and yet he had a rare degree of catholicity of outlook. Ishwar Chandra hailed from Bengal, and yet he belonged to the whole of India, nay, to the whole world, the one undivided home of the human community. In the present monograph it will be seen that a good deal of significance may be attached to the association of the two names Ishwar Chandra and Anundoram. Hence, it is a matter of great pleasure for me to put on record my hearty compliments to the founders of the said endowment, and a deep sense of gratefulness to the University of Bombay and to Professor Dr. J. M. Choudhuri, the then Vice-Chancellor of Gauhati University and Professor Dr H. P. Das, the then Rector of Gauhati University for giving me the opportunity to talk on the life and works of Anundoram Borooah, the most illustrious son of modern Assam and undoubtedly one of the worthiest sons of Mother India and one of the most ideal citizens of the world of letters.