Baldeo Upadhyaya | Hindu Blog

Baldeo Upadhyaya is a well-known writer and Sanskrit scholar
of Varanasi. Baldeo Upadhyaya was born in a brahmin family on October 10, 1899
in the village of Sonbarsa in Balia district of Uttar Pradesh. His father was
Ram Suchit Upadhyaya, a Sanskrit scholar, and mother Murti Devi. He received his
primary education in the village primary school. He came to Varanasi in 1909
and, living with his aunt, began his further studies in the Bengali Tola High
School.

Next year he returned to Balia and Faizabad where he
appeared at the high school examination in the year 1916 and stood fourth in
the whole state. He joined the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and passed the MA
examination in Sanskrit. Maha Mahopadhyaya Ramavatar Sharma, a renowned scholar
of that time, was one of his teachers. He studied different branches of
Sanskrit from renowned scholars like Maha Mahopadhyaya Gopinath Kaviraj,
amongst others and passed the Sahityacharya examination from the Government
Sanskrit College, which is now Sampurnanand Sanskrit University.

Upadhyaya joined BHU as a lecturer in 1922 in the Department
of Sanskrit, and retired in 1960. He was appointed head of the Department of
Purana in the Sanskrit University. In 1962 he became director of the Research
Department.

Baldeo Upadhyaya wrote thirty books in almost all the
branches of Sanskrit studies – Samskrita Sahitya ka Itihasa, Bharatiya
Darshana, Purana Vimarsha, Bauddha Darshana Mimamsa, Vaishnava Sampradayo ka
Sahitya aur Siddhanta, Bharatiya Vangmaya me Sri Radha, Samskrita Sahitya ka
Brihat Itihasa, Prakrita Prakasha, Bhamaha Kavyalankara, and Natya Shastra are
among his well-known books. He was awarded many certificates of honor and
received the Padma Bhushan in 1984. He died in 1999 at the age of one hundred,
in Varanasi.