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 110 LIFE OF BABU BH7AHA CHURN SIBKAB. "materially," with money, Pundit Hurish Chunde| Kabirutna, additional Professor of Sanscrit in the Pre-i sidency helped him in correcting his proof sheets. Be«* sides these works, he wrote other works of minor inv< portance. HIS CHARACTER. Shyama Churn was a man of great scholarship. a sound lawyer, well read in Hindu shastras and a lin- guist of no mean repute. He knew nine different lan-) guages, Viz, Bengali, English, Sanskrit, Persian, Ara4 bic, Urdu, Hindi, Greek, and Latin, and the knowledge acquired by him in these classics and dialects, he was* not indebted for, to any school- master or to a school or academy of any kind. He was his own school-mas^ ter, his strong will-power was his best teacher, and the dire poverty of his life was his best training ground, He began to study English at the advanced age of 2 1 when our academicians of modern days come out fuU fledged out of the University, and yet what are their attainments compared to those of this self-cultured Brahmin as reflected in the pages of his memorable works on Hindu Shastras. Early deprived of the pro- tection of a kind Hindu father, he roamed about in the streets of Krishnagur with Gulistan in his arm-pit, and had to assuage pangs of hunger and fatigue with soak- ed gram, half a sheer in quantity, admixed sometimes .with a little salt or ginger of common quality. During his first appearance in the Metropolis itself, far prior to the time of Lord Bentinck, he used to do the busi- ness of a "drawer of water " as we have already des^ cribed, but amidst this crushing poverty and tiresome business he used to go to the late Babu Peary Chand Miter and Ramgopal Ghose to learn English from them. For full seven years, while he was a Munshi ini /the Calcutta Madrassa^ his eldest boy Babu Deno