Modern Sanskrit Literature : Some Observations(An Old and Rare Book)

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Professor Rita Chattopadhyay's observations on the Modern Sanskrit Literature are knitted in the present book with her profound scholarship, keen insight and capacity of projecting exact nature of the present day literary works written in Sanskrit, which have been overlooked by many of our so-called Indologists. Prof. Chattopadhyay's deep penetration is ubiquitous in all the branches of Sanskrit literature that has come to us since the beginning of the last century. Amongst these, Sanskrit creations of undivided Bengal has attracted her special attention. Prof. Chattopadhyay has contributed a good number of scholastic articles to various research journals. The present book, which is being published under the auspices of DSA (Sanskrit), Jadavpur University, contains fifteen thoughtful articles related to Modern Sanskrit literature, the focus point of most of which being the dramas. This most popular branch of Modern Sanskrit works has been studied and evaluated in these papers from the perspective of theme, language, style, technique etc. Prof. Chattopadhyay's articles not only speak of the diversity and the richness of Sanskrit literature belonging to the 19th-20th century, but also of the devoted effort and imaginative approach of the author towards this area.

Prof Chattopadhyay has brought hundreds of literary works of different genres and belonging to various provinces into limelight; this endeavour strongly corroborates her intensive research work behind introducing the themes through the well-prepared scholastic articles. The methodology followed by our author is really laudable.

the present compilation contains fifteen articles, all of T which are related to Modern Sanskrit Literature and most of which focus on 'dramas'. The articles were composed over the last two decades. The states in which I found them now were as varied as they could be some were published, some were not; some were presented at conferences; some were accepted for presentation but in fact were not presented for unavoidable circumstances. But the common thread that binds all the essays together is that each and every article is related to Modern Sanskrit Literature'.

These scattered articles were gathering dust had it not been Prof. Karuna Sindhu Das of Rabindra Bharati University who had first mooted the idea of compiling them in one book form.

Once, most casually I approached Prof. Manabendu Banerjee, who always stands beside me as an excellent academic advisor and who is my senior colleague at Jadavpur University as well as Co-ordinator, DSA Dept. of Sanskrit, J.U and asked him whether these essays are worth publishing or not. He immediately reacted by saying -

"তুমি paper. গুলো একজায়গায় ক'রে আমাকে দাও, আমি বুঝব ওগুলো ছাপার যোগ্য কিনা।"

"You just submit all your papers to me" and added in a lighter vein "it is upto me to judge whether your papers are suitable for publication, or not."

As I have already told, these papers are the works of two decades, naturally, some of them appear to me not upto the standard at this point of time; some are out-of-tune in present- day context and need some refurbishing. As such, some additions, alterations and modifications have been carried out.