CHAPTER III

THE PHASE OF VEDANTISM

After the death of Bhagaban Sarcar, Vrjaykrishna
studied in the Sanskrit tol under Banamali Bhattacharyya
and impressed his learned teacher by his profound
erudition and versatile genius. In the Bengali year 1^66,
Vrjaykrishna, after finishing his studies in the tol, came
to Calcutta with his friend, Aghor Nath Gupta, for the
study of the Vedanta in the Sanskrit College, which was
then the greatest educational institution in Bengal.

Calcutta at that time was the centre of various
religious controversies and factions. The western influence
invaded Indian cultural life considerably ; and Calcutta,
the great metropolis, became, so to say, an uncharted
and boundless stream with rapids and whirlpools.
Vijaykrishna had to swim at the mercy of chance at this
dangerous stream. Young graduates that came out of
the Hindu College, tried to buy naAe and fame by burning
incense under the nose of the Anglicists whose mouthpiece
was Lord Macaulay. We know Macaulay's famous
dictum that "a single shelf of a good European library
was worth the whole native literature of India and
Arabia". Dr. Duff's testimony was no less interesting".
With an almost comic zeal for exaggeration like Macaulay,
he said, 'The magnificent court of Ghuzni is a sea, and
a sea without bottom or shore. I have fished it long but
have found no pearl." The so-called educated men killed
their time by devouring the shilling-shockers, and
characterized by nonchalant self-indulgence and freed

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