Novel
বেণের মেয়ে
Not translated into English
Haraprasad Shastri · 1919
Synopsis
At Saptagram, Rupa, a Bagdi from Tarapukur, has become king of the city under a long royal and Buddhist titulature, and governs with an army of ten thousand men of his caste. In the city lives Maya, daughter of a renowned merchant, whom everyone urges to join the Buddhist community and take refuge with a master; she hesitates, and wonders what exactly is expected of her.
Context
The novel appeared in Calcutta in 1919 from Gurudas Chattopadhyay and Sons. Its author, who had published three years earlier the Buddhist songs discovered in Nepal, depicts in it the Buddhist Bengal to which they bear witness, with its masters, its monasteries and its doctrine of great bliss, and gives a social history of it. It was his second novel, after Kanchanmala in 1916; the text can now be read online on the Bengali Wikisource.
Who it is for
Long sentences and the vocabulary of religious history; it helps to have some idea of Buddhist Bengal.
Prizes and reception
Reissued among the Bengali classics; with Kanchanmala, one of the two novels of a scholar known first for his discoveries.