Harry Spier brought to my attention the news that Dr. T.N. Dharmadhikari passed away this morning. I spoke to my sister in Pune and she confirmed this news.

     Dharmadhikari along with V.V. Bhide and S.D. Joshi was a college classmate of my father and so I have known them all as my uncles [kaka] since my childhood. My father used to call him Dharmaraj, and for a long time I thought that this was his name.

     Along with my father, Dharmadhikari came to see me off at the Cochin harbor as I was boarding my ship to go to New York in 1968.

     Dharmadhikari directed the Vaidika Samshodhan Mandal of Pune, and edited many Vedic texts including the Taittirīya Saṃhitā and the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā and he was among the few modern Indian scholars doing such critical work with Vedic texts. He did his Ph.D. degree under the guidance of the late Professor M. A. Mehendale.

     Later, while I was working on the text of Vedavicāra, I used to see him once a week to read this text and with his help a number of knotty readings and passages received a good interpretation.

     For the last several years, Dharmadhikari was not in good health, and his wife passed away a few years ago. With the passing of Dharmadhikari, almost an entire generation of eminent Sanskrit scholars of Pune has gone into history.