Scholar, linguist and polyglot Harinath De was born on this day. De knew 34 languages and left many works. He died when he was only 34. He was a child prodigy. He is said to have mastered the Bengali alphabet from his mother as she made letters for him with vegetable peels. He studied at Raipur High School, and later at Presidency College, Kolkata and then at Christ’s College, Cambridge University, UK.
The first Indian to enter Indian Education Service, he taught at Dhaka University and at Presidency College. He was the first lecturer of the department of Linguistics of Calcutta University in 1907. He was the first Indian librarian of the Imperial Library, which later became the National Library.
Among the languages he had mastered were Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, Arabic, English, Greek, Latin, Chinese and Tibetan. He translated Ibn Batuta’s travelogue and many Sanskrit texts.