Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa

Early life

Jinarajadasa was born on 16 December 1875 in Sri Lanka to a family of Sinhalese parents. He was one of the first students of Ananda College, Colombo. In 1889, when Charles Webster Leadbeater, the first principal of Ananda College was asked by A.P. Sinnett to come back to England to tutor his son, Leadbeater agreed and also brought one of his pupils, Jinarajadasa, to England with him. Thanks to Leadbeater, Jinarajadasa went to St John's College, Cambridge where he studied oriental languages and four years later took his Degree in the Oriental Languages Tripos.

Career

He then came back to Ceylon and became the vice principal of Ananda College in Colombo. Jinarajadasa returned to Europe, to study at the University of Pavia, Italy. He soon became proficient in Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Around 1904 he visited Chicago, where he met and influenced Weller van Hook, the well-known surgeon and author, who then became a theosophist. During his lifetime, Jinarajadasa traveled to many countries despite all the war difficulties of that era for his devoted service to Theosophy.

He also traveled to South America, where he lectured in Spanish and Portuguese and founded branches of the Theosophical Society (TS). He was the Vice-President of the Theosophical Society from 1921 to 1928. After the death of Dr. Arundale in 1945, Jinarajadasa became president of the Theosophical Society Adyar. In 1949 he founded the School of Wisdom in Adyar, which attracted students from many countries. He was also a Freemason, joining Le Droit Humain also known as Co-Masonry. Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa was the president of Theosophical Society until his death on 18 June 1953 in the United States.

Personal life

In 1916, Jinarajadasa married the English feminist Miss Dorothy M. Graham, who founded the Women's Indian Association (WIA) in Adyar with Annie Besant in 1917. She accompanied him in his travels around the world for some years. At one stage of his life, he resided in Brazil. By 1953 he declined renomination as president of the Theosophical Society due to poor health and installed Nilakanta Sri Ram as his successor. He visited America where he died on 18 June 1953 at the national headquarters of the Theosophical Society, called “Olcott”. His body was cremated; half of his ashes were sent to Adyar for deposit in the Garden of Remembrance there. The rest were kept at Olcott until the late 1990s, when they were deposited in an American Garden of Remembrance created to receive them.

Works (selection)

Jinarajadasa wrote many works on Theosophy, Theology, philosophy, literature, art and science. He also participated in Annie Besant's and Charles Leadbeater's researches on Occult Chemistry. In 1913 Jinarajadasa was awarded the Subba Row Medal for his contribution to Theosophical literature.

Jinarajadasa published more than 1,600 articles in periodicals such as The Adyar Bulletin, The American Theosophist, The Australian ES Bulletin, The Herald of the Star, The Messenger, Sishya (The Student), The Theosophic Messenger, The Theosophist, and World Theosophy. Mr Jinarajadasa was also editor of The Theosophist for three periods.

Criticism

His books on Theosophy were negatively reviewed by scientists. Science writer Hugh S. R. Elliot mocked Jinarajadasa's belief that every genus and species has a "group soul". Elliot noted that "for wherever a difficulty occurs, the author invents a spook to account for any process he cannot understand."