Brief Biographical Sketch of A. R. Krishna Sastry (A. R. Krishnashastry)

A. R. Krishna Sastry was born on 12 February, 1890 at Mysore. His father Ambale Y. Ramakrishna Sastry was a renowned teacher in logic and Sanskrit grammar at the Maharaja Samskrit Mahapatashale. His mother was Shankaramma. He was their first male issue. Even though christened at birth as Krishna Sastry, he was seldom addressed by that name ever. All through his childhood and up until his B. A. graduation, he was always addressed as Ramakrishna Sastry. When it came to registering his name for the official degree, the name Krishna Sastry seems to have made a comeback! 

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Childhood
His childhood seems to have transpired in and around the streets of Devirammani Agrahara in Mysore. His paternal ancestors hailed from Ambale village near Chickamagalur and were of Hoysala Karnataka ancestry. There was a rich tradition of Sanskrit education prevalent in the family and A. R. Krishna Sastry was tutored by his father from a very young age. In fact, even at the age of 4 – 5 years, Sastry was accompanying his father to the Sanskrit Mahapatashale to sit in audience and listen to his father’s classes. In this way, Krishna Sastry had mastered the ‘Amarakosha’, ‘Sanskrit Grammar’ and a number of Sanskrit Shlokas at a very young age. His father also took a keen interest in tutoring young Sastry in Kannada as well. Krishna Sastry was well versed in Kalidasa’s ‘Raghuvamsha’, ‘Kumara Sambhava’ and ‘Champu Ramayana’ by the age of ten. Sadly, he lost his mother around this time to plague. With the passing of his mother, Sastry’s father took upon himself the task of running the house while supervising his son’s education. Sastry’s father also had his elderly mother and many younger sisters to look after. In spite of these and more challenges at home, Krishna Sastry managed to stand first for the district in the lower secondary exam at the age of sixteen. Though, by this age, many of Sastry’s peers had already completed their matriculation and were well into their F. A. course, Sastry’s academic progression while slow was nonetheless steady in it’s course. Balancing house-hold chores and helping his father run the family gave young Sastry a degree of maturity and worldly wisdom that many of his classmates evidently lacked. 

 

Education

Sastry joined the Wesleyan Mission High School for his further education. By this time, his father had arranged his wedding to Venkatalakshmamma. Sastry, owing to his consistently good academic performances, had the good fortune of getting the Merit Scholarship for all three years of his tenure here. This was a testament to his steadfast dedication and devotion to his studies. Maasti Venkatesh Iyengar - a classmate of Sastry during these years reminisces in his biography that there used to be a healthy competition between the two for most of the literary events held at school. 

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Sastry always nurtured an ambition to pursue his higher studies in the sciences. This would have meant that he had to relocate to Bangalore and then study at Central College. This entailed an expense that was ill afforded by a Sanskrit teacher! Alas, young Sastry had to settle for History and Language studies at the Maharaja College, Mysore which was then under the Madras University. 

 

Maharaja College 
Maharaja College, Mysore during these years had a distinguished faculty in most subjects – Sanskrit (and Philosophy): M. Hiriyanna, Philosophy: S. Radhakrishnan, English: B. M. Srikantia, History: Radha Kumudh Mukherjee and for Economics: K. T. Shah. While there was no dedicated Kannada department, stalwarts like Kanakanahalli Varadachar and P. R. Karibasava Sastry did their best to impart Kannada education in the traditional mould. Sastry was greatly influenced by B. M. Srikantia’s versatile knowledge of both Western and Indian poetry, linguistic theories and the like. He was also influenced by the simplicity, generosity and meticulous attention to detail of M. Hiriyanna, with whom he retained a lifelong association in the years to come. Krishna Sastry learnt the nuances of Sanskrit language, of Vedanta and Kavyamimamse from Hiriyanna. He reminisced in his later years the lifelike renditions of dramas and plays by K. Varadachar. 

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