Shri Purohit Swami(1882 – 1941)
Shri Purohit Swami was one of the first great yogis who came to Europe from India. His books never gained the wide readership they deserve, and he has fallen into obscurity.
He is the author of the first (and probably best) autobiography of a yogi ever written, and he collaborated with W.B. Yeats, the famous Irish poet, on an English translation of the principal Upanishads whose literary merit exceeds all others.
His remarkable Autobiography of an Indian Monk has recently been brought back into print by Munrisham Manoharlal Publishers in New Delhi.
Purohit was born in Badnera, Vidarbha, India on October 12, 1882 to a wealthy Maharashtran Brahmin family. His parents gave him the name Shankar Gajannan Purohit.
As a child he became proficient in Marathi, English, and Sanskrit. He was well educated, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy at Calcutta University in 1903 and a law degree from Deccan College and Bombay University.
As a teenager, he decided to be celibate, but in 1908 he accomodated his parents’ wishes and married Godu Bai. After the birth of daughters in 1910 and 1914 and a son in 1915, he resumed his vow of celibacy.
A year or two before his marriage, he met a young man only four years older than himself named Natekar. Purohit says this meeting “was love at first sight,”1 and Natekar, who later took the monastic name Hamsa Swami, became Purohit’s guru
Despite his law degree, Purohit never practiced as a lawyer. He worked as a manager of a candle factory and wrote books; for a time he took a position as an ordinary household servant. In 1923 his guru directed him to embark on a mendicant pilgrimage the length and breadth of India. Begging bowl in hand, he passed several years in this way.
In 1930 he went to Europe where he met W.B. Yeats, the great Irish poet, who became a friend and helped arrange for the publication of Purohit’s books by leading London publishers. These included The Autobiography of an Indian Monk (1932), a translation of Hamsa Swami’s The Holy Mountain (1934), a translation of the Bhagavad Gita (1935), a translation of The Ten Principal Upanishads (in collaboration with Yeats, 1937), and a translation of Patanjali’s Aphorisms of Yoga (1938).
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