Adityaram Bhattacharya
Pandit Babu Adityaram Bhattacharya (first name also spelled "Aditya Ram") was an early member of the Theosophical Society in India. His brother was Benemadhab Bhattacharya, the first President of the Prayag Theosophical Society. Little is known of their personal lives. Note that many Theosophists have shared this surname over the years, and even in the present day.
Educational work
Professor Bhattacharya was an erudite Sanskrit Professor at the Muir Central College, in Allāhābād. When Annie Besant was staffing Central Hindu College in 1904, she appointed him to the important position of Vice-Principal.[1]
He was also the founder of the weekly Indian Union, in 1885.
Theosophical Society involvement
Bhattacharya probably joined the Theosophical Society in 1880, but the exact date is not available. He was Vice-President of the Society between 1881-1888, along with thirteen others.
In Old Diary Leaves, Colonel Olcott wrote of the Founders' stay with in the Sinnett home late in 1880 when Madame Blavatsky was recovering from rheumatic fever:
During our brief stay with the Sinnetts a number of notable visitors called, and we enjoyed many hours of improving conversation with Prof. Adityaram Bhattacharya, the erudite Sanskritist, and others, upon Indian Philosophy.[2]
In a letter written around October 17, 1881, Madame Blavatsky passed a list of instructions to A. P. Sinnett from her Master Morya. Sinnett lived in Allahabad, where Professor Bhattacharya was located, so it was logical to have Sinnett study with him. Morya had HPB write:
Mr. S. is advised, now that he will be alone, to put himself in communication through Adytyarum B. with some Hindu mystics, not for the sake of philosophy but to find out what mental phenomena can be produced. At the Mela there is a number of such visiting the town.[3]
Olcott paid the professor a visit in 1898 in Benares, referring to Bhattacharya as an "old friend."[4]
Notes
- ↑ "Cuttings and Comments" The Theosophist 25 no.10 (July, 1904), 638-639.
- ↑ Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves Second Series (1878-83), Chapter XX.
- ↑ H. P. Blavatsky letter to A. P. Sinnett, ca. October 17, 1881. Barker’s transcription was published as letter 4 in The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett. London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1925.
- ↑ Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves Sixth Series, Chapter XVII.