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The Last Brahmin is a work of reflection on the life and worldview of a modern-day Pandit. Written by a schoolteacher of Sanskrit, it grapples with the enigma of the Brahmin Tradition--its spread over long time periods, its forms and transformations, its implications for India's Hindus and the larger world. Even as it is a philosophical critique of an elite tradition, The Last Brahmin emphasizes the enormity of the tasks involved in finding alternatives to that tradition today. From the core of the surviving realms of the Brahmin Tradition, this work recounts a tale of living on in difficult and adversarial conditions for the sake of learning, scholarship, and the rigours of pedagogical bonding. It throws up philosophical issues such as: What is an inheritance? Who inherits tradition? What are the conditions and consequences of such inheritance? In the process, this reflective work emerges as the poignant articulation of a Brahmin's response and responsibilities, in the wake of colonial and postcolonial conditions. Its critical unravelling of the Sanskrit Tradition sets The Last Brahmin apart from the disciplinary frames of indology on the one hand, and partisanal Hindu ideological forces on the other. While pitching its tent against orientalist knowledge on India, it insists equally on the difference and distinction between the Brahmin Sanskrit tradition and 'so-called Hinduism'.