Eminent sinologist Prabodh Chandra Bagchi was born on this day.
After studying ancient Indian history and culture from Calcutta University, he joined the department as lecturer.
Later, at Visva-Bharati, he studied Buddhism and Chinese language under the French scholar Sylvain Levi. He brought to the study of Indian culture and history new perspectives: he studied them against the larger Asian context. He travelled to China, Japan, Cambodia, Nepal and other places and discovered Tibetan and Chinese manuscripts of Sanskrit texts.
He worked with several other French scholars in Paris and was awarded the Docteur es Lettres degree by the University of Paris.
He taught for almost two decades at Calcutta University.
His works, including Le Canon Buddhique en Chine, a critical edition of two ancient Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionaries and India and China: A Thousand Years of Sino-Indian Contact, are considered to be of great value.
In 1954, he was appointed vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati, where he dedicated himself to carrying out Rabindranath Tagore’s vision.
His untimely death in 1956 was deemed an immense loss to his field and scholarship.
He was also remembered as a wonderful human being. His 110th birth centenary was observed in Beijing, China.