Jagdish Kashyap

Jagdish Kashyap (born Jagdish Narain) was a Buddhist monk. He was born on 2 May 1908 in Ranchi, Bengal Presidency, India. The name Kashyap was given to him at his bhikkhu ordination in 1933. He played a major role in the establishment of the Nava Nalanda Mahavihara.

Biography Jagdish Kashyap was born in Ranchi, Bengal Presidency (now in Jharkhand) in 1908. His birth name was Jagdish Narain. His early education was in Ranchi and he later pursued his higher education at Patna College. In 1931, he graduated with what would be his first MA from Banaras Hindu University.

Jagdish was highly influenced by the then popular Arya Samaj movement and took up the role as the leader of a gurukul situated near Baidyanath Temple.

In 1947 India became independent and there was a new sense of identity for Indians. In 1949 he toured his ancestral homeland, the ancient province of Magadha, which was also the centre of ancient Buddhism. For the first time in many centuries, the villages in Magadha saw a yellow-robed bhikkhu and were pleasantly surprised to find that he spoke their local dialect Magadhi. The locals had long forgotten their own history and Kashyap was able to furnish many details. The very name of the state of Bihar comes from the presence of so many Buddhist viharas in the past. He was able to point out the true identity of the images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas which were being worshipped as Hindu gods or local deities. Villages such as Sari-chak, near Nalanda, had previously had an association with the Buddha's chief disciple Sariputta. Finally, he was able, by quoting passages from the Pāli texts, to demonstrate that Magadhi is still closely related to the Magadhi dialect.

After this visit, Kashyap offered to teach Pāli at Gaya College and at Nalanda College in Bihar-Sharif. Later, when the Bihar state government decided to start an institute for Pāli studies at Nalanda, he was the obvious choice to head the project. In 1951 the institute became the Nava Nalanda Mahavihara.

1956 was the 2500th anniversary of the parinibbana of the Buddha, celebrated by the Indian government as the Buddha Jayanti. As part of the celebrations, Kashyap's work of bringing out a Devanagari edition of the Pāli Canon was accepted as an official project and was jointly sponsored by the governments of Bihar and India. The first volume appeared in 1956 on the occasion of the Buddha Jayanti, and the rest followed over five years - guided to completion with enormous effort and marathon labour by Kashyap. At one point he sold his house to pay the salaries of workers when payments had been delayed.

During the Buddha Jayanti project, Kashyap returned to Varanasi and in 1959 was asked to become the first Professor of Pāli and Buddhism at the Sanskrit University of Varanasi. He remained there until 1965 when he returned to Nalanda for a second term as Director of the Nava Nalanda Mahavihara. He retired in 1973. Having earlier developed diabetes, he became seriously ill in 1974 and spent his last two years bedridden in the Japanese temple in Rajgir, from where he could see the Vulture Peak and the newly constructed Peace Pagoda. He died in 1976.