1 Eventually I hope to use these autobiographies and other similar sources as the basis for a more extensive review of the social, economic, and religious changes associated with the life of pandits in colonial Calcutta.
2 Vidyasagar-carit (svaracit), edited by Narayancandra Bandyopadhyay (Calcutta, 1891). A second edition was published in 1893. For a complete translation from the second edition, see Appendix One of my dissertation, "Yatna-dharma: The Religious Worldview of Pandit Isvaracandra Vidyasagar" (Harvard University, 1992).
3 His sketch comprises the first chapter of Hariscandra Bhassacarya Kabiratna, Girisacandra-Vidyaratner jivan-carit (Calcutta: Manika Press, 1909).
4 From the preface to Girisacandra-Vidyaratner jivan-carit.
5 Vidyasagar was a Rarhi Kulin Brahman from the district of Midnapur, while Girisacandra was a Daksinatya Vedik Brahman from the district of 24 Parganas.
6 I have explored this idea in my essay, "No Slave to Custom," in: The Golden Book of Vidyasagar: A Commemorative Volume, edited by Manik Mukhopadhyay, et. al. (Calcutta: All Bengal Vidyasagar Death Centenary Committee, 1993), pp. 127-134.
7 However, while Vidyasagar's father had been forced to forego full training as a pandit in order to find work in Calcutta to support his family, Girisacandra's father.
8 As translated in my "Yatna-dharma: The Religious Worldview of Pandit Isvaracandra Vidyasagar," p. 386.
9 Interestingly, they recommended an English-language college. Why this is so, and why Vidyasagar's father opted instead for the Sanskrit College is material for another discussion.
10 See their Kinship in Bengali Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 17-18.
11 My translation of Girisacandra-Vidyaratner jivan-carit, p. 27.
12 My translation of Girisacandra-Vidyaratner jivan-carit, p. 21.
13 For a different reading of the imagery of the milestone, see Asok Sen, Vidyasagar and His Elusive Milestones (Calcutta: Riddhi-India, 1977), which views the milestones as symbolic of Vidyasagar's failure to complete his reform projects due to the constraints placed upon him by the colonial context.