Poetry
The Slaying of Meghanada
মেঘনাদবধ কাব্য
Michael Madhusudan Dutt · 1861
Opening lines
সম্মুখ সমরে পড়ি, বীর চূড়ামণি,
বীরবাহু, চলি যবে গেলা যমপুরে
অকালে, কহ, হে দেবি অমৃতভাষিণি,
কোন্ বীরবরে বরি সেনাপতি পদে,
পাঠাইলা রণে পুনঃ রক্ষঃকুলনিধি
রাঘবারি?
When, fallen in open battle, the crest-jewel of heroes,
Virabahu, went untimely
to the city of Yama, tell, O goddess of nectar speech,
what great hero, chosen to the post of commander,
did the treasure of the Rakshasa race, Raghava's foe,
send once more to battle?
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Lanka besieged: the poem opens with the death in battle of Birbahu, son of Ravana. The old king then entrusts command to his son Meghnad, who takes leave of his wife Pramila before the battle. Meanwhile, Indra and the gods obtain from Shiva that Lakshmana, helped by the goddess Maya, may overcome the hero, and Vibhishana leads Lakshmana by a secret passage to the temple where Meghnad performs his rites.
Context
Having returned to his mother tongue after his first English verses, the author drew on Milton's Paradise Lost to make Ravana a tragic and heroic figure, and brought into the epic the unrhymed verse, the amitrakshar chhanda. Composed during the year 1860, as his letters show, the poem was published in 1861 and has nine cantos. Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Tagore hailed it as a major work. In English, Clinton B. Seely translated it under the title The Slaying of Meghanada.
Who it is for
Nine cantos, in a Bengali that is old for today's reader; one needs to know the Ramayana, whose perspective the poem reverses.
Prizes and reception
The first original epic of Bengali literature; its author's most famous work.