Essay
कवि भानुभक्तको जीवनचरित्र
Not translated into English
Motiram Bhatta · 1891
Synopsis
The book tells the life of the poet who had put the epic of Rāma into Nepali, and at the same time judges the strength of his verse: it combines biography and literary criticism, according to Onlinekhabar. Its author wrote it after three years of research on this poet, whose songs he had discovered on hearing them recited at a wedding in Kathmandu, and whose epic he had already had printed, according to Sahityapost.
Context
At a wedding at a neighbour's house in Kathmandu, the author heard verses sung all night long, and then went in search of the rest, according to a Nepali daily. He published the first book of the epic in 1884, then the whole in 1887, before writing this life, which appeared in 1891. The critic Govinda Raj Bhattarai sees in it the first biographical book devoted to the country's first poet and the foundation stone of Nepali criticism; the historian Pratyush Onta invites a more nuanced view of the account of a fame that arose of its own accord after these publications, according to Sahityapost.
Who it is for
A book in Nepali from the end of the nineteenth century, with no French translation; an English version by Motibir Rai is mentioned.
Prizes and reception
Its author is regarded as the first biographer and the first critic of Nepali letters; the book fixed the standing of its subject.
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