Laxmi Prasad Devkota was a Novelist, author, and Nepali artist. In Nepali literature, He was honored with the title of Mahakavi. He was considered the most famous literary figure in Nepal. Muna Madan, Kundalini, Bhikhari, Sulochana, and Shakuntala are some of the popular and best-selling. He is known as a poet with a golden heart.
Early Stage
Laxmi Prasad Devkota was born in Dobidhara, Kathmandu, on 1909, 13 November, on the night of Lakshmi puja. His father’s name is teel Madhav Devkota, and his mother’s name is Lakshmi Devi Devkota. he achieved his Basic education under the custodianship of his father. His father was a Sanskrit scholar. In Durbar High School, he started his formal education, where he learned both English and Sanskrit grammar. At the age of 17, he finished his matriculation exams from Patna. He goes after a bachelor of arts along with a bachelor of laws at tri-Chandra college. He graduated from Patna University. Due to the family’s financial condition, his desire for his master’s degree was incompleted. He joined Nepal Bhasaanuwad Parishad ( publication Censor board); after a decade from his graduation as a lawyer, he met legendary playwright Balkrishna Sama. At the same time, he also worked As a lecturer at Padma Kanya college and Tri- Chandra College.
Learning and style
Devkota began to write epic poems in Nepali literature, and he was the first writer in Nepal. He started a modern Nepali language movement in the country by contributing to Nepali literature. He had inspired by the Newar language ballad song Ji Waya Lachhi Madani, He wrote the narrative Poem Jhyaure Bhaka in folk tune, which was a very famous poem, and in 1930 he wrote Muna Madan. The best-selling book in the history of Nepali literature is Muna Madan. The documentary Muna Madan, Nepal’s real note for the foreign-language Movie at the 76th foundation grants, was based on this poem in 2003. At the time of the Ranas- the country rulers, he received immediate recognition. Muna Madan’s poem describes the story of Madan, a traveling salesman, who goes to Tibet to earn some money leaving his wife, Muna. The verse explains the thematic hardships of the journey: the agony of parting, the itching desire, and the misery of death.
The terrible song ballad Ji Waya la Lachhi Maduni had based on a New dealer, his wife, and his mother. The retailer leaves Kathmandu to work in Tibet. The song begins with the wife pleading with her relative to stop him, assuming that it doesn’t have a month after she came to their house and he needs to go on. Laxmi Prasad Devkota had learned this melody from locals singing it at a regional gathering. He had highly influenced by Melody and determined to re-write it in Nepali literature After the Rana leaders had limited literature, language, and New merchant. He became the Main part from a New dealer as in the first melody to a Kshatriya (warrior class) number. However, Kshatriya spirits did not obey business for their existence while that time, he became to represent it as such in sequence to attract the Rana leaders. He could make long poems and lyrics with learned philosophical density and complexity in quite a short time. Devkota wrote Shakuntala, which is the first narrative literature. And including Mahakavya printing in the Nepali language in three months. Shakuntala is a large business in 24 cantos based on Kalidasa’s great Sanskrit musical Abhijnanasakuntalam, Written in 1945. Devkota’s knowledge of Sanskrit music shows Shakuntala and style which, he regularly combined while working basically in Nepali. According to David Rubin, the new learner, and translator of Devkota, Shakuntala is his most notable accomplishment.
“It is, externally reservations, a staggering accomplishment, arranging numerous elements of a standing tradition with a new characteristic of the scheme, a reward of a remarkable personality, Kālidāsa’s poetic drama of natural love with a representative structure that guides to improvement in the coinciding of emotional and pure love.
Devkota also printed many sets of short lyric songs arranged in various classical and non-traditional modes and rhythms. Most of his poem explains the significance of English Poetic poets like Coleridge and Wordsworth. The title poem in the group Bhikhari is nostalgic of Wordsworth’s “The Old Cumberland Beggar.” Devkota had described the fellow performing his unfortunate debt and pain in this poem, removed of personal emotion and physical encouragements. On the other hand, Fellowes viewed as the cause of kindness arranged in the heart of pain and poverty. Devkota combines the fellow with the priest as the latest fount of opinion and insight.
Many of his lyrics focus on mundane details of the natural world and the human. The titles of his songs like Ban, Baadal explains that he asked his romantic thought in the general and proximal appearances of the world. What resonates during most of his poem is his deep belief in sympathy. For example, in the composition Ban, the lecturer runs in a range of investigations, refusing all kinds of solace and support that could be awarded individually to him as a person. He includes his loyalty and attention to his personal life. The composition closes with the following quatrain that highlights the speaker’s humanistic desires.
Besides poems, Devkota also presented meaningful enrichment to the essay genre. He is considered the father of the current Nepali article. He challenged the traditional method of themes and developed the conventional ways of essay writing. He contained a more liquid and natural form that had more accuracy in meaning, expressive in words of a language, and significance in emotions. His articles are frequently paradoxical and represented by their sharp humor and relentless analysis of the modernizing characters from the West on Nepali community. An article titled Bhaladmi instead examines a dying course in Nepali culture to recognize people based on their outside surfaces and outlay rather than their original personal personality and quality. In a different article titled Ke Nepal Sano Cha? He states a genuinely nationalistic way of protesting upon the colonial troops of British India, which he thought, were invading all characters of Nepali society. His poems had published in an articles book named Laxmi Nibandha.
Politics
Laxmi Prasad Devkota was not working inside any well-established state party in his poetry harmoniously, included an opinion of resistance against the autocratic Rana dynasty. He initiated operating as a director of Yugvani newspaper of the Nepali Congress, While his self-exile in Varanasi, starting to confiscation of all his assets in Nepal by the Rana Government. After democracy through the revolution of 1951, Devkota was ‘Nepal Advisory Committee’ in 1952 by King Tribhuvan and was elected member of the Nepal Salahkar Samiti. Under the premiership of Kanwar Inderjit Singh, he had elected as Autonomous Governance and Minister of Education in 1957.
Family
Padma Devkota is the eldest son of Laxmi Prasad Devkota, a writer and author, and worked for several years as a teacher at the English Department, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu.
Devkota suffered from Nervous breakdowns in 1930, apparently the death of his two-month-old daughter, father, and mother. He was admitted to the Mental Asylum of Ranchi, India, for five months, in 1939. he was unable to support the marriages and properties of his daughters due to economic conditions. He said to his wife, ” let’s leave the children to the concern of youth and society and abandon this world at bedtime and take potassium cyanide or morphine or something like that.
Death
Laxmi Prasad Devkota was a series smoker during his life. Devkota died at Aryaghat Kathmandu on 14 September 1959, after a long struggle with cancer.
References:
- wikipedia.org Laxmi_Prasad_Devkota
- ne.wikipedia.org लक्ष्मीप्रसाद_देवकोटा
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