Suniti Kumar Chatterji

Suniti Kumar Chatterji studied at University of Paris, University of London and University of Calcutta. The recorded working language is Bangla. The field of work recorded is philology. Employment is recorded with University of Calcutta. Positions recorded include professor emeritus. Distinctions recorded are Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan in literature & education.

• Born — 26 November 1890 • Birthplace — Howrah, Bengal Presidency, British India • Died — 29 May 1977 • Place of death — Calcutta, West Bengal, India • Occupation — Linguist, Educationist and Litterateur • Awards — Padma Vibhushan (1955)

Chatterji was born on 26 November 1890, at Shibpur in Howrah. He was the son of Haridas Chattopadhyay, an affluent Bengali Kulin Brahmin. According to the family history, their ancestors were originally residents of a village named chatuti in the Rarh region of present-day West Bengal. During the Turkic invasion of Bengal in the thirteenth century, the Chatterji family left their ancestral village in West Bengal and took shelter in East Bengal. Later Professor Chatterji's great-grandfather Sri Bhairab Chatterji, migrated to a village in the district of Hooghly from his ancestral village home in the district of Faridpur in East Bengal, now in Bangladesh. Bhairab Chatterji, like many other Kulin Brahmins of the day, subsisted mainly on polygamy. Bhairab had a few wives, but he lived with the one who had belonged to the village in Hooghly. Bhairab's son Isvarchandra, the grandfather of Chatterji, had served the East India Company in North India during the Mutiny. After retirement, he built a modest one storied house for himself in Calcutta and shifted there the residence of the family from the Hooghly village. Isvar's son Haridas Chatterji was the father of Suniti Kumar Chatterji.

Chatterji was a meritorious student, and passed the Entrance (school leaving) examination from the Mutty Lal Seal's Free School (1907), ranking sixth, and the FA (pre-university examination) from the renowned Scottish Church College, standing third. He did his Major (Honours) in English literature from Presidency College, Kolkata, standing first in the first class in 1911. His childhood friend was the famous industrialist Nagendra Nath Das founder of Power Tools And Appliance Co. Ltd. In 1913, he completed his M.A. in English literature, again standing first. The same year, he was appointed lecturer in English at Vidyasagar College, Kolkata where his colleague was the thespian, Sisir Kumar Bhaduri.

In 1914, Chatterji became assistant professor of English in the Post-Graduate Department of the University of Calcutta, which he held till 1919. He went abroad to study at the University of London where he studied Phonology, Indo-European Linguistics, Prakrit, Persian, Old Irish, Gothic and other languages. He then went to Paris and did research at the Sorbonne in Indo-Aryan, Slavic and Indo-European Linguistics, Greek and Latin. His teacher was the internationally acclaimed linguist, Jules Bloch. After returning to India in 1922, he joined the University of Calcutta as the Khaira Professor of Indian Linguistics and Phonetics. After retirement in 1952, he was made professor emeritus and later in 1965, the National Research Professor of India for Humanities. He was Chairman of the West Bengal Legislative Council (1952–58) and President (1969) of the Sahitya Akademi.

In 1927, Chatterji accompanied Rabindranath Tagore to Malaya, Siam, Sumatra, Java, and Bali on a fundraising mission for Tagore's Visva-Bharati University and to study the legacies of ancient Indian art, culture and religion in Southeast Asia. His travelogue was serialised in Prabasi and the Modern Review and he became an active member of the Calcutta-based Greater India Society, co-founded by his friends Kalidas Nag and Prabodh Chandra Bagchi in 1926.

His opinion on the historicity of the Ramayana is quoted by Anil Kumar Kanjilal in his introduction to Chatterji's work, The Ramayana: Its Character, Genesis, History, Expansion and Exodus (1978). Chatterji says: 'There is evidently no historical core below the surface-no scholar of Indian history now thinks that Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, was a historical person, who can be relegated to a particular period of time.' On the question of author of the Ramayana, Chatterji says, 'The mythological saint Chyavana, described in the Satapatha Brahmana and the Mahabharatha, initiated the composition of this epic (Ramayana). Valmiki... later imparted poetic lustre to the composition of his predecessor'.

Suniti Kumar died on 29 May 1977 in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). A large part of his house 'Sudharma' সুধর্মা, an architectural marvel, in South Calcutta has been converted into a Fabindia store.