# Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya

Mahamahopadhyay Pandit Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya CIE (22 February 1836 – 12 April 1906) was a prominent Indian Sanskrit scholar and served as the principal of Sanskrit College from 1876 to 1895. He was a colleague of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and participated in the Bengal Renaissance.

## Biography
### Personal life

Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya was born on 22 February 1836 to a Kulin Brahmin family, the Bhattacharyya family of Narit. His father, Harinarayan Tarkasiddhanta, and his two uncles, Guruprasad Tarkapanchanan and Thakurdas Churamani, were well-known Pandits. His elder brother, Pandit Madhab Chandra Sarbabhauma, was the Sabha Pandit of Mahishadal Raj.
In 1848, he married Mandakini, the daughter of Pandit Ram Chand Tarkabagis, in Jehanabad, Hooghly.
He had a daughter, Manorama, and three sons: Manmatha Nath Vidyaratna Bhattacharyya (born April 1863), who became the first Indian Accountant General of Madras; Munindra Nath Bhattacharyya (born February 1868), who served as a vakil of the High Court of Calcutta; and Mahima Nath Bhattacharyya (born April 1870), who became a collector in the Department of Excise of the Government of India.
He died on 12 April 1906, at the age of 70.

### Academic career

In 1876, he succeeded Prasanna Kumar Sarbadhikari as the principal of the Sanskrit College. During his 19-year tenure, he introduced the Sanskrit Title Examination to confer titles on students in special departments of Sanskrit learning.
He later started a secondary Anglo-Sanskrit school in his native village of Narit, named the Narit Nyayratna Institution.

### Written work

He wrote and edited Kavya Prakas, Mimansa Darshan, and the Black Yajur Veda. He also wrote pamphlets, including remarks on Dayananda Saravati's Veda-Bhashya, Tulasidharan Mimansa, the authorship of Mrichchhakatika and Lupta Samvatsara.

### Philanthropy

He contributed to the development of roads and infrastructure, such as tramways, in Narit and Howrah.

### Honours and titles

The title of Mahamahopadhyay was conferred on 16 February 1887, on the occasion of the Jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria, for eminence in oriental learning. It entitled him to take rank in the Durbar immediately after the titular Rajas.
Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna was made a Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) on 24 May 1881. He also held the title of Nyayratna.
He was elected as a member or held a position in the following institutions:
* Foreign member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at Budapest
* Member of the Bengal Asiatic Society
* Member of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
* Member of the University of Calcutta
* Member of the Central Text Book Committee of Bengal
* Member of the Behar Sanskrit Samaj
* Member of the Anthropological Society of Bombay
* Joint Secretary of the Hindu Hostel Committee
* Member of the Bethune College Committee
* Visitor at the Government Engineering College at Shibpur, Howrah
He was also in charge of Sanskrit education during the Bengal presidency, which then comprised the present West Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa states.
Nyayratna Lane and Manmatha Bhattacharyya Street in Shyambazar, North Kolkata, are named after him.

## Works online

* Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya, ed. (1889). The Mimansa Darsana (Bibliotheca Indica) (in Hindi). Baptist Mission Press.