Laxmi Prasad Devkota (लक्ष्मीप्रसाद देवकोटा)लक्ष्मीप्रसाद देवकोटा

The works

Lakṣmīprasād Devkoṭa (लक्ष्मीप्रसाद देवकोटा) is the poet a Nepali (नेपाली) house calls Mahākavi (महाकवि). Mahākavi (महाकवि) means the great poet. He was born on the night of Lakṣmī Pūjā, 12 November 1909, which is 27 Kārtik 1966 in the Nepali (नेपाली) calendar. The house was in Dhobidhara, Kathmandu. His father, Til Mādhava Devkoṭa, was a Sanskrit scholar. His mother was Amar Rājya Lakṣmī. He died of cancer on 14 September 1959, at Aryaghat in Paśupati (पशुपति). He was forty-nine.

He studied at Durbar High School. At seventeen he passed the school exam from Patna. He studied arts and law at Tri-Chandra College. He sat the Patna University exams as a private student. The house needed money, so a master's degree stayed unfinished. He worked at the Nepal Bhāṣānuvād Pariṣad (नेपाल भाषानुवाद परिषद्), where books were read before they were printed. There he met the playwright Bālakṛṣṇa Sama (बालकृष्ण सम). He also taught at Tri-Chandra and at Padma Kanya.

His elder sister is Lok Priya Devi (लोकप्रियादेवी) (लोकप्रियादेवी). She was born Huta Lakshmi in Jestha of 1955 in the Nepali (नेपाली) calendar, 1898, in Kathmandu, the Kainli among Til Mādhava and Amar Rājya Lakṣmī's six sons and seven daughters. At home she was Kainli Maiya. At eight she married Loknath Joshi of Dillibazar, and he made her name by setting Priya after the Lok of his own. She wrote verse letters to him, including the letters she sent while he was in India. Lekhnath (लेखनाथ), living next door, taught her the principles of poetry. Her poem "Shantlai Jawaf" appeared in Sharada (शारदा), and a story, "Dosti," appeared in Udyog (उद्योग). She died in 1960. In 1983 her daughter Shashi Rimal (रिमाल) gathered the poems into a book. The rest of her sitting is on her page.

In 1939 he spent five months in a mental hospital in Ranchi. People say the cause was grief at home. His parents had died, and so had a daughter of two months. He later lived in exile in Varanasi. Exile means he had left Nepal. There he edited Yugvāṇī (युगवाणी), a paper of the Nepali (नेपाली) Congress. The Ranas (राणा) took his property. In 1952 King Tribhuvan put him on the Nepal Advisory Committee. From July 1957 to May 1958 he was Minister of Education and Autonomy. Autonomy means self-rule. The prime minister was K. I. Singh, and the king was Mahendra.

He died in 1959. This page does not print the long poems whole. Two couplets from Muna Madan (मुनामदन) are here, because houses say them the way they say a proverb. Two lines from Pāgal (पागल) are here. They are the opening. The sentences around the lines are this shelf's.

Muna Madan (मुनामदन)

Muna Madan (मुनामदन) is the book a house knows. It is a long poem in jhyāure (झ्याउरे), a folk-song beat. The first printing is 1936. Some people put the writing a few years earlier. This page uses 1936.

He had heard a Newar song, Ji Waya La Lachhi Maduni (जि वया ला लछि मदुनी). In that song a Newar merchant is about to leave Kathmandu for Tibet. The wife asks her mother-in-law to stop him. She has been in the house for less than a month. The Ranas (राणा) had banned Newar trade and the Newar language. Devkota (देवकोटा) changed the merchant from a Newar man to a Kṣatriya (क्षेत्री), a man of the warrior caste. Trade was rare in a Kṣatriya (क्षेत्री) house. He wrote the man that way so the poem could be printed.

Madan leaves Muna and goes to Lhasa to earn. On the road he falls ill. A friend leaves him. A Tibetan man nurses him. Madan touches that man's feet.

क्षेत्रीको छोरो यो पाउ छुन्छ घिनले छुँदैन
मानिस ठूलो दिलले हुन्छ जातले हुँदैन

Madan is a Kṣatriya's (क्षेत्री) son. He touches the feet. He says he feels no disgust. A person is great by the heart, whatever the caste.

He comes home. His mother has died of old age. Muna has died of a broken heart. Madan dies at the end. A film in 2003 tells the same story.

Houses also say this couplet about money.

हातका मैला सुनका थैला के गर्नु धनले
साग र सिस्नु खाएको वेश आनन्दी मनले

There is grime on the hands, and there are bags of gold. What will you do with wealth? It is better to eat greens and nettles with a happy mind. Some printings say बेस where this one says वेश. The word means better.

People say that on his last days he asked for one thing. If the other books are lost, keep Muna Madan (मुनामदन).

Shakuntala (शाकुन्तल)

Śākuntala (शाकुन्तल) was published in 1945, from Sajha. People say he wrote it in three months. It has 24 cantos. A canto is a chapter of a long poem. It uses many classical meters. Some counts say about 32. People call it the first mahākāvya (महाकाव्य) written in Nepali (नेपाली). A mahākāvya (महाकाव्य) is a long poem with the old rules of a classical epic. Bhanubhakta, born in Nepal, had already written a Nepali (नेपाली) Rāmāyaṇa (रामायण). Devkota (देवकोटा) is the second writer born in Nepal to begin an epic. The name "first mahākāvya (महाकाव्य)" is the one people give this book.

The poem retells Kālidāsa's play Abhijñānaśākuntalam (अभिज्ञानशाकुन्तलम्). King Duṣyanta meets Śakuntalā (शकुन्तला) in a hermitage. A curse makes him forget her. A ring brings the memory back. Devkota (देवकोटा) also put the poem into English himself. The long poem is not printed here.

Sulochana (सुलोचना)

Sulocanā (सुलोचना) was published in 1946. People say he wrote it in ten days. People call it the first social epic in Nepali (नेपाली). A social epic is a long poem about a house and about class.

Sulocanā (सुलोचना) is a woman from a high house. Anaṅganāth (अनङ्गनाथ) is a man from a middle house. They love each other. The families refuse the match because of class. The poem is on the side of a love marriage, and on the side of a widow marrying again. The long poem is not printed here.

Kunjini (कुञ्जिनी)

Kunjinī (कुञ्जिनी) is a long poem in folk meters. People say he wrote it in one day. People say it comes from an old story, about a love the two families refuse. This page does not retell the rest. The poem is not printed here.

Pagal (पागल)

Pāgal (पागल) means a mad person. It is free verse, from the five months in Ranchi in 1939. The book came out in 1953. It opens like this.

जरुर साथी म पागल !
यस्तै छ मेरो हाल ।

Of course, friend, I am mad. This is my state. He says he sees words. He hears sights (दर्शन). He tastes smells. He touches things the world says are not there. The rest of the poem is not printed here.

Bhikhari (भिखारी)

Bhikhārī (भिखारी) means a beggar. The book of poems came out in 1953. The title poem is about a beggar in hard poverty. He has little comfort, and little love from people. The poem also makes him the place where kindness begins. Readers set it beside a poem by the English poet Wordsworth, about an old beggar in Cumberland. The poem is not printed here.

The essays

People call him the father of the modern Nepali (नेपाली) essay. The book is Lakṣmī Nibandha Saṅgraha (लक्ष्मी निबन्धसङ्ग्रह). It holds 37 essays.

One essay asks, is Nepal small? (के नेपाल सानो छ?). He says the country is its people, and the people make it great. He wrote the essay against the push of British India into Nepali (नेपाली) life.

Another essay is Bhalādamī (भलादमी). The word means a gentleman. The essay looks at the man himself. Clothes are only clothes.

The title, and the three ways he wrote

Mahākavi (महाकवि) is the title a house gives him before it gives the dates, and the word means great poet. The style is not one instrument. He kept three, and a reader who learns only one of them has a postcard.

The first is jhyāure (झ्याउरे), the folk-song beat. Muna Madan (मुनामदन) is written in it, and so is Kunjinī (कुञ्जिनी). A line in that beat can be carried by a person who never sat a Sanskrit exam. That is why the thin book is the one a house owns. The second is the classical count, the many meters of a mahākāvya (महाकाव्य). Śākuntala (शाकुन्तल) is that labor, twenty-four cantos, people say about three months of writing, and an English version he made himself. The third is the broken line. Pāgal (पागल), from the months in Ranchi, starts by agreeing that he is mad, and then describes a mind that sees words and hears sights (दर्शन). Beside that line sit the essays. People call him the father of the modern Nepali (नेपाली) essay because the essay looks at a person, or at a country, and refuses to be only a poem's echo. Clothes are only clothes. A country is its people.

He was born on Lakṣmī Pūjā night, so the calendar and the name arrived together. Til Mādhava, the father, was a Sanskrit scholar, which is why the classical meters were a family language and not a costume. Amar Rājya Lakṣmī was the mother. The elder sister, Lok Priya Devi (लोकप्रियादेवी), wrote too. The wife was Man Devi Chalise. In 1939 the parents were dead, and a daughter of two months was dead, and he spent five months in a mental hospital in Ranchi. The mad poem comes out of that building, and was printed in 1953, the same year as the beggar poems. Exile in Varanasi, the paper Yugvāṇī (युगवाणी), the Ranas (राणा) taking the property: that is the political weather around the classical work. In 1957 and 1958 he was a minister, education and autonomy, under K. I. Singh and King Mahendra. The minister and the madman and the folk poet are one man. The death was cancer, 14 September 1959, Aryaghat, forty-nine years old. People say the last request was narrow and exact. If the other books are lost, keep Muna Madan (मुनामदन).

Muna and Madan, told as a road

The poem a house can retell without the book in its hand goes like this. Madan is a young man of a Kṣatriya (क्षेत्री) house. Muna is his wife. The road to Lhasa is money. He leaves. On the way he falls ill. A companion he trusted leaves him there, which is the poem's first hard fact about friendship. A Tibetan man nurses him. Madan, a Kṣatriya's (क्षेत्री) son, touches that man's feet and says there is no disgust in it. A person is great by the heart. The caste line is the one houses recite, and it is printed on this page because they recite it the way they recite a proverb. He comes home. His mother has died of age. Muna has died of the waiting. Madan dies at the end. The gold he went for is answered by the other couplet houses know: grime on the hands, bags of gold, and the better meal is greens and nettles eaten with a glad mind. Some printings say बेस where this one says वेश. The word means better.

Under that road is a Newar song, Ji Waya La Lachhi Maduni (जि वया ला लछि मदुनी). In the song the merchant is Newar, the wife has been in the house less than a month, and she asks her mother-in-law to stop the journey to Tibet. The Ranas (राणा) had banned Newar trade and the Newar language. Devkota (देवकोटा) changed the merchant to a Kṣatriya (क्षेत्री) so the poem could be printed. Trade was rare in a Kṣatriya (क्षेत्री) house, which makes Madan's leaving stranger, and the strangeness is the price of the printing. A 2003 film tells the same story. The poem remains the thin book. He also said, if the tellings are true, that this was the one to save. A mahākavi asking to be remembered by the folk beat, not by the epic that took three months and thirty-odd meters, is a judgment on his own shelf. This page obeys it. The long poems are named. Muna Madan (मुनामदन) is walked.

What the epic and the essay are for

Śākuntala (शाकुन्तल) retells Kālidāsa. King Duṣyanta, hunting, enters Kaṇva's hermitage and finds Śakuntalā (शकुन्तला), daughter of Viśvāmitra and Menakā, raised by the sage. They marry by the gandharva rite. He leaves a ring. She fails to greet Durvāsas, who curses the king to forget her until the ring returns the memory. The ring is lost in a river, swallowed in the telling by a fish. At court he does not know her. She is taken toward her mother's world. A son, Bharata (भरत), is born. A fisherman brings the ring. Memory returns. Devkota (देवकोटा) gives this story the length and the meters of a mahākāvya (महाकाव्य), in 1945, from Sajha. People call it the first mahākāvya (महाकाव्य) in Nepali (नेपाली). Bhanubhakta, born in Nepal, had already written a Nepali (नेपाली) Rāmāyaṇa (रामायण). Devkota (देवकोटा) is the second writer born in Nepal to begin an epic of that ambition. The name "first mahākāvya (महाकाव्य)" is the one people give this book, and it names the classical rules, not the mere fact of length. He also put the poem into English himself. The cantos are not printed here. The story is the gist. The meters are the style's second instrument, the one the folk beat does not need and the mahākavi would not give up.

Sulocanā (सुलोचना), 1946, people say ten days, is the social epic. Sulocanā (सुलोचना) from a high house, Anaṅganāth (अनङ्गनाथ) from a middle house, families who refuse the match for class, a poem on the side of a love marriage and of a widow marrying again. Kunjinī (कुञ्जिनी), people say one day, folk meters, an old story of a love two families refuse. This page does not invent the rest of that plot. The speed people boast of, three months, ten days, one day, is part of the legend and should stay labeled as what people say. The range is the fact. He could write the counted epic and the social quarrel and the folk tale, and then sit down to an essay.

The essay book, Lakṣmī Nibandha Saṅgraha (लक्ष्मी निबन्धसङ्ग्रह), holds thirty-seven essays. His essay Ke Nepal sano chha (के नेपाल सानो छ), which asks whether Nepal is small, answers a sneer from British India. The country is its people, and the people make it great. Bhalādami (भलादमी) looks past the coat. A gentleman is the man, and clothes are only clothes. Prometheus (प्रमिथस), the titan who took fire for human beings, is a long poem of the exile, printed after the death. Van Kusum (वनकुसुम) and Mahārāṇā Pratāp (महाराणा प्रताप) are named here as long poems. The Pṛthvīrāj poem was printed many years after he died, and the Hamlet translation shows the same hunger that put Śakuntalā (शकुन्तला) into English. A minister of education who translates Hamlet and writes a folk tragedy and a mad free verse is using all three instruments in one life. The title Mahākavi (महाकवि) is what the house says when it means that range.

Ranchi, Varanasi, the ministry

The five months in Ranchi are the part of the life people whisper, and they are also the part that produced a style. A mental hospital in 1939, in India, for a Nepali (नेपाली) poet whose parents had died and whose infant daughter had died. Grief is the cause people give. The poem he wrote there does not argue with the diagnosis. It accepts the word mad, and then it describes a perception the street calls impossible. He sees words. He hears sights (दर्शन). He tastes smells. He touches what the world says is not there. Printed in 1953 as Pāgal (पागल), with the beggar poems of the same year, it is the third instrument at full volume. The opening two lines are on this page because they are the door. The rest of the poem stays in the book. A reader who wants the blow has to take the blow from him.

Bhikhārī (भिखारी), the beggar, is the companion piece of that year. A man in hard poverty, with little comfort and little love from the people who pass, and also the place where kindness would have to begin if kindness were going to begin at all. Readers set it beside Wordsworth's old beggar in Cumberland. The likeness is a way of saying the poem is not a local scold only. It is a picture of a person the city has decided not to see, which is a picture Bhupi will later draw with a revolving chair. Devkota (देवकोटा) draws it with pity that still has a spine. The beggar is not a decoration for a festival of compassion. He is the test of whether the gentleman in the essay Bhalādami (भलादमी) is a man or a coat.

Exile is the next room. Varanasi, the paper Yugvāṇī (युगवाणी) of the Nepali (नेपाली) Congress, the Ranas (राणा) holding his property. Prometheus (प्रमिथस) belongs to that table. The Greek story is simple and public. A titan takes fire, which the gods had kept, and gives it to human beings, and is punished for the gift. A poet writing that story while his own house has been seized is not being subtle about the rhyme. The poem was printed after he died. Van Kusum (वनकुसुम), forest flowers, and Mahārāṇā Pratāp (महाराणा प्रताप), the Rajput king who would not bow, are the other long poems of that hunger for a large subject. Pṛthvīrāj Cauhān waited even longer for print. Hamlet, translated, is the play about a son who cannot act cleanly in a rotten court. He did not have to explain why that play felt like a Nepali (नेपाली) job.

Then the state, briefly, asked him to administer. July 1957 to May 1958, Minister of Education and Autonomy, under Prime Minister K. I. Singh and King Mahendra. Autonomy means self-rule, and a poet in that chair is a strange sight (दर्शन) until you remember he had already spent his life trying to make Nepali (नेपाली) able to rule itself as a literature. Ten months is not a policy era. It is a fact that keeps the legend from being only illness and genius. He could sit in a cabinet. He went back to the page. In September 1959 the cancer finished it, at Aryaghat, where Motiram (मोतीराम) had been burned sixty-three years earlier and where Ghimire (घिमिरे) would be burned sixty-one years later. The river has taken a lot of this shelf. The thin book is what he asked the living to keep.

Other books

He wrote a long poem about Prometheus (प्रमिथस), the Greek titan who took fire and gave it to people. He wrote it in exile. It was printed after his death. He also wrote long poems called Van Kusum (वनकुसुम) and Mahārāṇā Pratāp (महाराणा प्रताप). A long poem about Pṛthvīrāj Cauhān was printed many years after he died. He translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into Nepali (नेपाली). The names are enough for this page.

Where it sits

A house meets him in Muna Madan (मुनामदन), the thin book. The page before this one is his elder sister, Lok Priya Devi (लोकप्रियादेवी). He was born on Lakṣmī Pūjā night, the night told on the Lakṣmī Pūjā page. He died at Aryaghat, at Paśupati (पशुपति). The next page is Siddhicharan Shrestha (सिद्धिचरण श्रेष्ठ). Parijat (पारिजात) and Bhupi Sherchan (भूपि शेरचन) come later.