Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/48

This page needs to be proofread.
30
THE LIFE AND SAYINGS OF RÂMAKRISHNA.

England and America well, and perfectly understood what I meant. Yet even his unvarnished description of his Master discloses here and there the clear traces of what I call the Dialogic Process, and the irrepressible miraculising tendencies of devoted disciples. And I am really glad that it does so, if only it helps to teach us that no historian can ever pretend to do more than to show us what a man or a fact seemed to be to him or to the authorities whom he has to follow, and not what he or it actually was. I have also, as far as I could, consulted another account of the life of RdmaWsha published in the late numbers of the Brahmav&din. But I am sorry to say that this account stops with No. 19, and has not been continued.

Life.

Rmakshfla, we are told, was born in the village of Kamrpukar, in the Zillah Hugli, situated about four miles to the west of the Jah^nSbad subdivision, and thirty-two miles south of Burdwan. His life on earth began on the aoth of February, 1833, and ended the i6th of August, 1886, i a.m. 1 The village in which he was born was inhabited chiefly by people of the lower castes, mostly blacksmiths, Karmakars, or in familiar abbreviation, Ka- mars, and hence called Kam&pukar, with some sprinkling of carpenters, cowherds (Gowalas), husbandmen (Kai- vartas), and oilmen (Telis). His father was the head

1 Even dates are inaccurate in the biographical notices of R&na- krrsh*a, as published in various Indian papers immediately after his death.