Rajendralal Mitra

Raja Rajendralal Mitra (16 February 1822 – 26 July 1891) was among the first Indian cultural researchers and historians writing in English. A polymath and the first Indian president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, he was a pioneering figure in the Bengali Renaissance. Mitra belonged to a respected family of Bengal writers. After studying by himself, he was hired in 1846 as a librarian in the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for which he then worked throughout his life as second secretary, vice president, and finally the first native president in 1885. Mitra published a number of Sanskrit and English texts in the Bibliotheca Indica series, as well as major scholarly works including The antiquities of Orissa (2 volumes, 1875–80), Bodh Gaya (1878), Indo-Aryans (2 volumes, 1881) and more.