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Some Early Dramas in Bengali

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

Rāmnārāyan's Kulīn Kulsarbasva (1854) is often regarded as the first Bengali drama, but there are many other Bengali plays of one sort or another anterior to it in date.

Although Herasim Lebedeff, a Russian adventurer, staged two Bengali plays in Calcutta towards the end of the eighteenth century, these have not come down to us. It is doubtful if Lebedeff's plays, which were translations of English dramatic works, were ever published. No clue to the subsequent fate of these plays is found in the autobiographical introduction to Lebedeff's Grammar of Pure and Mixed East Indian Languages, printed in London in 1801

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1935

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References

page 113 note 1 Calcutta Review, vol. xiii, p. 160.Google Scholar The Bibliotheca Orientalis, vol. ii, p. 460, mentions a Bengali work, Kaliraj, but it is not definitely stated whether this was a drama or a prose narrative.Google Scholar

page 113 note 2 Asiatic Journal, 1822, p. 287.Google Scholar

page 113 note 3 Calcutta Journal, 26th February, 1822, p. 587.Google Scholar

page 113 note 4 Asiatic Journal, 1826, p. 214.Google Scholar

page 114 note 1 Samācār Candrikā, 1830, 12th April.

page 114 note 2 Dhanañjay Mukhopādhyāy-Bangāya Natyaśālā, p. 2.Google Scholar

page 114 note 3 A Bibliography of the Sanskrit Drama, p. 65. Long, however, in his Descriptive Catalogue of Bengali Works (1855), gives the date as 1849.Google Scholar

page 114 note 4 Bendall, , Catalogue of Pali, Prakrit, and Sanskrit Works in the British Museum (1893), pp. 143–4.Google Scholar The Bibliotheca Orientalis, vol. ii, p. 454, gives the date as 1835.Google Scholar

page 115 note 1 Long, in his Descriptive Catalogue of Bengali Works (1855) mentions this work twice, and in one place he remarks that it requires pruning. This Catalogue, which is rather scarce now, has been reprinted as an appendix to Dr. Dinescandra Sen's Bangabhasa o Sahitya (fifth edition).Google Scholar