Rajwade and His Thoughts

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The present volume is a small tribute to the founder of this institution. It is our pleasant duty to record our gratitude for the co-operation and assistance we have received from the scholarly world.

First and foremost are the authors of the various papers included in this volume. The papers were initially scrutinised by Professor K.N. Chitnis, Head of the History Department of the Poona University. However, due to his other preoccupations, further work was entrusted to Dr. M.R. Kantak. He has taken great pains in editing the papers as is evident from the Introduction.

Above all, it was entirely the substantial assistance rendered by one of Rajwade's disciples and reputed authority a on Bakhar literature, Professor R.V. Herwadkar, that the Mandal is able to publish this volume. No words would be enough to express our sense of gratitude to him.

To Shri Madhav Joshi of the Anand Mudranalaya goes the credit of the excellent production of this book. We thank him.

Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade was one of the most extraordinary, colourful and controversial personalities that modern Maharashtra has produced. He was a versatile genius par excellence. He was a historian, a collector and editor of historical documents, a political and social thinker, an essayist, a linguist, a grammarian, a lexicographer, an epigraphist and a founder of various institutions, all rolled into one. He had acquired preliminary acquaintance with various languages such as Persian and French. In roaming over different parts of India in general and Maharashtra in particular, under extremelys trying circumstances and great hardships, in pursuit of historical sources and first hand knowledge of geographical and social conditions, he has no equal.

Rajwade's original contributions to different branches of knowledge should have been evaluated in proper perspective long back. However, this did not happen due to two or three reasons. Firstly, because of Rajwade's excessive individualistic bent of mind, his apparently eccentric behaviour and some irritating idiosyncracies in his character, traits which are often associated with a specially gifted person he was misunderstood as an intelligent but very queer man by the contemporary intellectual class of Maharashtra. As a result of this, his fundamental researches did not receive their due share of attention from most of the Maharashtrian scholars. The only exceptions to this are works like Dr. P.N.Joshi's book entitled Rajwade Vichara-darshan, Dr. C.N. Parchure's unpublished thesis on Rajwade from the literary point of view and some stray articles relating to Rajwade's thoughts by scholars like Sardesai and Puntambekar. The few admirers and followers Rajwade had in the field of historical research in Maharashtra were so busy with their own researches that they found little time to judge his all round performance. The scholars outside Maharashtra were not able to take into account Rajwade's writings, as all these were in Marathi. Thus Rajwade's work has remained neglected for quite a long time.

The present volume is a tribute to Rajwade's stupendous work and an acknowledgement of his debt. The volume is a collection of nine papers that present and examine various aspects of Rajwade's writings. These are written by scholars who have specialised in their respective fields of research. Out of these nine articles, the first is a general one on Rajwade's personality and his contribution to the institutional life of Maharashtra. From the remaining eight, seven pertain to Rajwade's views on historiography (philosophy of history), historical research methodology, Marathi Bakhars, Maratha history, political economy. linguistics and lexicography. One article deals with Rajwade's indebtedness to Auguste Comte with regard to his social philosophy and ideas. Inclusion of some more articles relating to such aspects as social ideas, literature, grammar, folk-literature and folk songs etc. would have done full justice to Rajwade's work. Unfortunately these articles were not received in time form authors who were entrusted with that task and they could not be included in the present volume.

**Contents and Sample Pages**