Sarisab-Pahi, in the Pandaul block of Madhubani, is one of the most storied villages of learning in all Mithila — a place where, for centuries, Sanskrit scholarship was the family trade. It was here that the great fourteenth-century logician Ayachi Mishra (Bhavanath Mishra) lived his life of voluntary poverty; his home, the Ayachi Mishra Dih, is preserved as a historical site by the Government of Bihar.
The village’s tradition ran unbroken into modern times: it gave India the Sanskritist Sir Ganganath Jha and his son Amarnath Jha, the celebrated scholar of English. Few villages anywhere can claim so dense a lineage of the learned — Sarisab-Pahi is, in a real sense, the academic conscience of Mithila.