Governor, also paid a visit to him last year; Lord Elgin, when Viceroy, halted for a short while at Kumbakonam during his southern tour, on purpose to see Sashiah Sastri and grant him an interview; Lord Curzon also gave him an interview, some time back, at Tanjore; and all these great men have gone impressed by the personality of the grand old man of Southern India. As Sir M. E. Grant Duff writes to Sashiah Sastri in one of his letters : 66 "I have again and again said to others and there seems no reason why I should not say to you, that of all the native statesmen I have come across in any part of India you were the one who impressed me most favourably." His most Gracious Majesty Edward VII. has, in the birth day honours bestowed this year, made Sashiah Sastri a Knight Commander of the Star of India, Lord Curzon, Viceroy, wiring the news and his congratulations thus: "It gives me great pleasure to inform you that His Majesty has been pleased, upon my recommendation, to appoint you to be a K.C.S.I. Permit me to congratulate you heartily upon this distinction." And now it is time to bring this sketch to a close. The career of Sir Sashiah furnishes many a lesson of high import to the present generation. He has shown us how it is possible, even for the poorest among us, to rise to the highest eminence, rank and power by dint of honest, hard work, to come to be honoured of mighty potentates and rulers of the earth by steadily trying to do, to the best of our might, the work that is set before us, leaving the rest in the hands of Him who controls all things. To few men have been given the length of his public life and the wide range of his public action. But at no period during this remarkably long career has Sir Sashiah yielded to the temptation of fingering an unearned or ill-earned rupee or rising 'to dignity through indignity.' He has had no cynical contempt for the blessings of wealth or the good things of life but he has never had the unhealthy hankering for the flesh-pots of Egypt and the supreme faith in the Almighty dollar' which have come in the train of modern ideas. Sir Sashiah has shown us that to succeed in life large grasp of principles must be combined with skill in the management of details and that the instinct of order should never be allowed to be crushed by the multiplicity of varied, interests. Little things are often overlooked in the contemplation of grand theories and mighty results, but Sir Sashiah has always first cared for little things in whose train he has left the mighty results to follow in their own time. This talent for details is almost the first thing that strikes a visitor and has enabled Sir Sashiah, more perhaps than anything else, to succeed so thoroughly in all he undertook and wherever he has been he has left behind him a tradition for order and mastery of details. For nearly a quarter of a century, during the best part of his life, Sir Sashiah lived and worked in native states and the circumscribed sphere of his activities has kept from him the not unmixed advantage of looming more largely in the public eye or taking a more noticeable part in directing the destinies of Southern India. But within the province of his work he has always used his opportunities for the amelioration of the material well-being of those around him. He has made roads and bridges; he has brought into existence new tanks and renovated old ones and supplied people with unfailing sources of wholesome water; he has placed food within the reach of thousands of starving men and women; he has helped hundreds of deserving men to means of honourable living; he has added to the revenues of states and developed their resources; he has taken with him, wherever he went, the blessings of education and the comforts of modern civilisation; and his distinctive personality, his geniality and charm of manner, his conversational powers and intellectual endowments have left an abiding influence on the more immediate circle of those, among the rulers and the ruled, who have had the pleasure or the privilege of close acquaintance. All these form a record of which any one may be proud; and Sir Sashiah has not obtained it without difficulties. Often has he been maligned and traduced by evil tongues; often have his motives and actions been misconstrued and misinterpreted; often has he had to face vehement and sometimes unscrupulous opposition. But he looked upon these troubles as the perquisites of his position and, steadily keeping his eye on the goal, calmly and cheerfully worked his way to it. Sir Sashiah is one of the very few remaining links, in this part of India, between the dead and the living, between the old order of ideas and the With a reverent and grateful appreciation of the institutions of the past he combines a trustful confidence in the progressive development of human destinies. His mode of life is itself an embodiment of this happy combination. His halls are furnished with all the luxuries of modern life; but he himself lives the rigidly simple life of the Rishis of old. Simple in dress, tastes and style of living, liberal and even indulgent to those about him he preserves all that is lovable in the traditions of the land with at the same time a genuine admiration for the sturdy virtues of the Englishman, the manliness, the moral strength and the spirit of enterprise which have created for him an empire on which the sun never sets. |