History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c97.3.2

v7.c97.3.2

In my early boyhood my father taught me some elements of astrology and advised me to commit to memory the verses of Amarakośa (of which I had 400 by heart before I was 12 years of age). In 1891 I joined the S. P. G. Mission's English High School at Dapoli and passed the Bombay University's Matriculation Examination in 1897 and stood high among the successful candidates. While at school, I began to suffer from hyper-acidity, consequent acute stomach pains and vomiting at the age of 16 and had to leave school for nearly a year. At the time when I passed the Matriculation there was an epidemic of Bubonic Plague in Bombay and Poona, where there was high mortality. My father was not willing to send me (whose health was already delicate) to those places where alone College education could then be had. So he asked me to study law under him. I studied it for two weeks, but being repelled soon by the dry study of law, I wrote a letter to Dr. Machichan, who was then Principal of the Wilson College in Bombay (and reputed to be very kind), conducted by the Scottish Mission, asking him whether I could be enrolled as a student *in absentia*. He asked me to send Rs 36/-, a term's fee, get myself registered as a student and stated that as the epidemic was at its height the University might condone absence The Bombay University later on did so. I did not attend College in the first term.