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 BIRTH AND PARENTAGE

Dr. Prafulla Chandra Ray was born in 1861 at Raruli-Katipara, a small village now in the District of Khulna, of a family well-known for generations in that part of Bengal. The village is situated on the bank of the river Kapotaksha, immortalised by the great Bengali poet, Michael Madhusudan, in a sonnet written at Versailles. His father, the late Harish Chandra Ray, who died in 1894 at the age of 69 -- a good Persian scholar imbued with the writings of Sadi and Hafiz -- was a student of the Krishnagur College in the early forties of the last century, when the celebrated Captain D. L. Richardson was its Principal. He was a well-read man who held enlightened views on many social questions and was a pioneer in introducing English education in his own district. Harish Chandra was a member of the British Indian Association in the early sixties of the last century, and was well acquainted with, among others, the late Raja Digambar Mitra, Kristo Das Pal, Sishir Kumar Ghosh and Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar. The local Model Vernacular School, which was founded and maintained mainly at the expense of the late Harish