The book entitled ‘Probings into Indian Culture: Prof. Vishwambhar Sharan Pathak as a Historian’ is a collection of Papers written by Prof. V. S. Pathak.
Prof. Pathak was a renowned scholar & respected academician. His area of research was not just limited to a micro area. The scope of his research covered India, and the Ancient World Civilizations. He had also worked on linguistic parlances of early civilizations of the ancient world.
A profound scholar of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit Prof. Pathak has acquired working knowledge of Persian, Greek and Latin. He has made an excellent use of this knowledge in his Vedic and proto Vedic studies. Similarly, his knowledge of Bactrian and Sogdian has paid rich dividends in the field of onomastics which attracted his attention only a few years back.
It gives me the greatest joy of my life to know that the department of A.H.Arch & Culture of the D.D.U.Gorakhpur University is going to publish select papers of my teacher, the late Prof.Vishwambhar Sharan Pathak, who remained the head of the Dept. for about two decades. The papers, included in this work would largely, though not adequately, provide an idea about the wide range of his scholarship.
He was an eminent epigraphist, numismatist, etymologist, philologist, Sanskritist and an astrologist. The method which he adopted in the treatment of an academic problem was conspicuously different from that of others. He maintained that the best way to deal with a subject is to establish direct communion with the contemporary and original sources. This method, as will be evident from the persual of these papers, helped him to stand on a different and distinct pedestal. These papers are characterized by Prof.Pathak's talent and above all, his comprehensive mastery of the subject. His insistence on the original sources in the reconstruction of a subject, has unraveled on the one hand, the hitherto dormant aspect of the topic under discussion and, on the other lent an objectivity leaving very little room for controversy. His studies in the Kushana Onomastics, obscure saiva cults, ahat: A semantic study, iconology and semantics, the etymology of Kanishka and the Tokharian origin of the Kushanas, Satavahana: A semantic study, the antiquity of the Sramana tradition, Prayaga, Gaya, Jabalpur, Kasi, pancaratra, to name only a few, bear an indelible imprint of his acumen, ingenuity and originality. Besides these select papers he wrote a number of books and preface to a considerable number of Ph.'D research works of which he was supervisor and which were published subsequently. All these are interspersed with his original approach and ideas.
To Conclude, I can only state that the world of learning will ever remain beholden to the Dept. of A.H.Arch & Culture, especially to Dr. (Smt.)Vipula Dubey, presently Head of the Dept. who happened to be Prof.Pathak's student and had worked for her Ph.D. under his supervision. These papers, I hope will certainly deepen the quality and broaden the horizon of historical studies and will blaze forth a new trail in the field of indological researches.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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