Thursday, August 15, 2013

Pandit Ravi Shankar

Pandit Ravi Shankar was born 7 April 1920 in Varanasi to a Bengali Brahmin family as the youngest of seven brothers. Shankar's Bengali birth name was Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury. His father, Shyam Shankar, a Middle Temple barrister and scholar who served as dewan of Jhalawar, used the Sanskrit spelling of the family name and removed its last part. Shyam was married to Shankar's mother Hemangini Devi, but later worked as a lawyer in London. There he married a second time while Devi raised Shankar in Varanasi, and did not meet his son until he was eight years old. Shankar shortened the Sanskrit version of his first name, Ravindra, to Ravi, for "sun".


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