page_title: Antanas Poška
section_title: Journey to India (1929–36)
hierarchical_section_title: Antanas Poška / Biography / Journey to India (1929–36)
caption_attribution_description: English: A tribal woman from the Andamans, picture taken by Poška in 1935
context_page_description: Antanas Paškevičius – Poška was a prominent Lithuanian traveler and anthropologist, as well as an active member of the Esperanto movement in Lithuania. He is best known for his journey to India in 1929–36. In India, he studied Sanskrit and received bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Bombay and wrote his PhD thesis at the University of Calcutta on the Shina-speaking people but was unable to defend it. He interacted with India's intellectual elite and participated in anthropological expeditions. He met with Rabindranath Tagore and translated some of his works into Lithuanian. Poška returned to Lithuania in 1936 and worked as a journalist. He was recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations for hiding three Lithuanian Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania. After the Soviet takeover in 1945, he refused to destroy books deemed unacceptable to the Soviet regime and was imprisoned in a Gulag. Unable to return to Lithuania, Poška later worked at several museums in Central Asia.
context_section_description: Intrigued by linguistic similarities between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit languages, Poška decided to travel to India to study Sanskrit, research Indian culture, and explore Lithuania's cultural links with India. He chose to travel on a motorbike, which he obtained from the Belgian manufacturer FN for free in exchange for publicity. While preparing for the journey, he got acquainted with another dedicated traveler Matas Šalčius, a journalist by profession, who was much older and already an experienced traveler. The duo started their motorbike trip on 20 November 1929 from Kaunas. The travelers first reached Constantinople then Cairo and continued via the Middle East. They took very little money, 69 U.S. dollars combined, and had to find ways of making money along the way. They financed the trip by giving lectures on Esperanto, Lithuania, and other topics as well as submitting articles and photos to Lithuanian and foreign press. However, the relationship between Šalčius and Poška deteriorated as they faced financial troubles and mechanical problems. While in Tehran, Poška became severely ill. Šalčius abandoned Poška and later did not mention him in his memoirs. Poška received help from local Esperantists and spent about half a year recovering. He then boarded a ship in Bushire and arrived in Bombay on 23 March 1931.
  With the help of local Esperantists and intellectuals, including Jivanji Jamshedji Modi and N. A. Thooti, he enrolled into the University of Bombay. In 1931, he visited the University of Varanasi for 42 days to study Sanskrit and begin his translations of Bhagavad Gita and Rigveda into Lithuanian (manuscript of Bhagavad Gita was lost; translation of Rigveda is kept at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania). In 1933, Poška completed bachelor's degree in anthropology with thesis on the Aryans, their origin and migration. After graduation, Poška moved to Calcutta and enrolled in the University of Calcutta. While visiting Mohenjo-daro, he met professor Biraja Sankar Guha who invited him to work at the Anthropological Laboratory of the Indian Museum.
  The Lithuanian press widely reports that in 1933, Poška accompanied Oxford University professor Aurel Stein on an anthropological expedition to the Taklamakan Desert in Central Asia. However, in 1932–36, Stein explored Persia. In 1933–36, he participated in anthropological expeditions in Southeast Asia and the Himalayas, where he collected data about Shina-language speaking peoples of northwestern Himalayas. In 1935, Poška with a team of young scholars from the Indian Museum went for a three-month expedition to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands led by the Australian scholar Dr. M. E. Smith. They traveled to various parts of the archipelago and studied the local aboriginal tribes. Poška and his team gathered somatometric measurements and other anthropological data on the lifestyle, habits, and customs of the local inhabitants.
  While in Bengal, Poška actively interacted  with Calcutta's intellectual elite, university professors, and young researchers: Biraja Sankar Guha, Himangshu Kumar Bose, Achyuta Kumar Mitra, Bajra Kumar Chatterji and others. He also befriended Suniti Kumar Chatterji who later embarked on a comparative study The Balts and the Aryans, exploring the commonalities between India's Vedic and the Baltic pagan rites. Published as a monograph by the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in 1968, this Chatterji's book is dedicated to, among others, Antanas Poška. Friendship with the renowned Indian Esperantist Sinha Laksmiswar led Poška to Shantiniketan where he had a chance to interact with Rabindranath Tagore. Under Tagore's personal supervision, Poška translated some of Tagore's poems into Lithuanian; some of these manuscripts reemerged in 2013 when a woman gave them to Poška's daughter after years of safekeeping from Soviet censors. Poška met Mahatma Gandhi twice (in Bombay and Allahabad) and conveyed the support of the Lithuanian people to India's independence struggle; Gandhi presented Poška with a decorative hand-made cloth that he preserved de
caption: A tribal woman from the Andaman Islands, picture taken by Poška in 1935
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