Vaman Shivaram Apte वामन शिवराम आपटे

[Arvind_Kolhatkar]

Vaman Shivaram Apte वामन शिवराम आपटे (1858 - August 9, 1894) of the Apte Sanskrit-English Dictionary.

Many of us rely on Apte and MW dictionaries in our Sanskrit studies but little is known about Apte outside Poona - Pune, the city in which he spent his very short active life.

He was born in a Brahmin family in Sawantwadi, a small town and a princely state in South Maharashtra in 1858.  His father died when he was 4 years of age.  The family was very poor.  His mother brought him to Kolhapur, another nearby princely state which had much better facilities for education.  Apte started his schooling in the Rajaram High School.  His mother too died within four years of coming to Kolhapur but Apte continued his education with the support of M.M.Kunte, the Headmaster of the school.  He passed his Matriculation Examination in 1873 and proceeded to Poona for higher education.  He got his Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in 1879 and won several prizes for his proficiency in Mathematics and Sanskrit.  He joined other like-minded young persons like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Vishnushastri Chiplunkar and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar in the cause of spreading education among the youth and was a co-founder with them of the Deccan Education Society.  For the first few years he was a teacher in the Society's New English School in Poona.  When the Society started the Fergusson College in 1885, Apte became its first Principal and continued in that capacity till his untimely death in 1894 at the age of 36 in an epidemic of typhoid.

He worked on his Sanskrit-English Dictionary while he was the Principal of the Fergusson College.  Its first edition came out in 1890.  Prior to it, in 1884 had come out his English-Sanskrit Dictionary and a few other books for the use of the learners of the Sanskrit language.  Both of his dictionaries, especially the Sanskrit-English Dictionary, have gone through several revisions and reprints.

Both Institutions mentioned above - the Deccan Education Society and the Fergusson College run by it continue to prosper till date. The Society has under its management several other schools, colleges and technical institutions.  The Fergusson College, now 130 years old, is considered as one of the premier colleges in India.  I myself am a proud alumnus of this college.

I attach to this post a photograph of Apte.  The dress and the headgear are traditional and were the usual attire of the educated in those times.  They have completely gone out of use over the last 70-80 years.

(The information given here is chiefly drawn for महाराष्ट्र ज्ञानकोश, a Marathi encyclopedia compiled by Dr S.V. Ketkar in 1928.) 

Arvind Kolhatkar.

[Phani Kumar]

Namaste. Very interesting information about the great man, indeed. Thank you.

कालोह्ययं निरवधिः विपुला च पृथ्वी ।

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[G S S Murthy]

Thanks for this info on the savant.

I wish one of the many Sanskrit Universities in India take up in earnest researching on his life and times and bringing out a definitive biography in Sanskrit.

Regards,
Murthy

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and also my Sanskrit blog :

http://simplesanskrit.blogspot.com/

http://gssmurthy.blogspot.com

[Arvind_Kolhatkar]

I find Apte's work all the more remarkable because it appears to have been a one-man-effort and that too during a very short life. Another great work that we all use is the MW dictionary.  (In my personal view the MW dictionary is superior to Apte's for the etymologies and the comparisons with other IE languages that MW provides.)  As the long introduction of MW tells us, he was assisted by a number of able assistants.  He was already a Professor, with contacts throughout the world of Sanskrit scholarship in Europe and India.  He had the weight of his position and the weight of the mighty British Establishment behind him.

Apte, on the other hand was a young person, just out the University, with no position of any kind behind him.  the traditional Pandits would not have been able to help much in a work of this type and he had nothing that would induce them to help him.  There were no modern libraries around the corner to supply him with books and references.  He had only his own knowledge, memory and resources to fall back upon.  Yet he succeeded so remarkably well in something that Kalidasa would describe as तितीर्षुर्दुस्तरं मोहादुडुपेनास्मि सागरम्, attempting to cross the ocean in a small rowing boat.

Arvind Kolhatkar.