Rahul was born Kedarnath Pandey on 9th April 1893 in a small village Kanaila of District Azamgarh, U. P., India. He left his formal studies to become Hindu monk in 1912-13. During 1912-15 Rahul studied and traveled on foot from North to south India. From 1915-22 Rahul studied Sanskrit, Arabic, theology of various religion and national history. In 1927, Rahul went to Sarnath and from there began his extensive study in Buddhism. He traveled the centres of Buddhism like Kushinagar, Bothgaya, Lumbini within India and Ceylon. In 1926 traveled in Kashmir and went through Kargil to Laddakh. He went up to 18000 feet to Khardong-La and met the sixty year old Rizong Lama. He also went from Nubra to Leh. He returned via Man-Pang-Gong lake to Shimla. Rahuls dangerous travels, by roads traversed only by nomads, on the Tibetan border bgan in 1926. Rahul visited Tibet four times, in 1929,1934, 1936 and 1938. When Bakhtiyar Khilji, with his hords, attacked Nalanda and Vikramshila universities in Bihar, Buddhist monks had run for life, with manuscripts and palm- leaf scriptures to Nepal, Assam and Tibet. When many libraries and monastries were destroyed and set on fire, Indian iconography, as preserved in sculpture and frescoes, was carried, through palm-leaf illustrations and drawings on wooden covers of holy books, to Tibet. He spent about seven years in Jail. His work and study continued even during the period Rahul went to Jail for freedom of the motherland. During his life time he mastered over 30 languages, wrote over 50000 pages contained in 140 books. He wrote Novels, Short Stories, Biographies, Autobiography, and Travelogues. He also wrote on Science, Sociology, Politics, Philosophy, Religion, History and history of Literature. He has to his credit translations of several Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan works of Buddhism. He died on 14th, April 1963 after an eventful life. Emancipation of mankind i.e. to see humanity free of exploitation was central to his life and work. It is this thought which has inspired us to work for the masses for the removal of their miseries and to wipe out the tears from their eyes. It is also the objective of the Centre to protect the rare books brought by Rahul from Tibet for which Centre wishes to establish RAHUL ACADEMY where extensive work on Buddhism and Pali language could be done and rare books and manuscripts could be preserved.
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