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Meghnadbadh Kavya (1861) epic by michael madhusudan dutt. The Sanskrit ramayana as well as the English Paradise Lost have influenced this poem. Though the inspiration of Meghnadbadh is an episode in Ramayana, the perspective on Ravana is as much the legacy of Milton as the blank verse that Madhusudhan borrowed from the English Puritan poet. The highly Sanskritised Bangla also parallels Milton's Latinate English in Paradise Lost. The first successful literary epic in Bangla, Meghnadbadh Kavya gave Madhusudhan his place in bangla literature. In Madhusudan's epic, his hero-god ramachandra is depicted as an aggressor and Laksmana is portrayed as a killer in an unjust war. Ravana in the Ramayana is an abductor of another's wife; in Meghnadbadh Kavya he is presented as a great hero, a caring king, a loving father and
brother. He is shown as abducting sita not out of lasciviousness, but to avenge his sister's disgrace. Ravana's son Meghnad is shown as a courageous warrior, an upholder of righteousness. He is killed by Laksmana in collusion with his own uncle Bibhisana while unarmed and lost in meditation. Meghnad's wife Pramila is show as resplendent and heroic. The story of Ravana's defeat is essentially the tragic story of Indians under colonial rule. Meghnadbadh Kavya was composed in 1860-61 and was first published in two parts in 1861. In 1869, its sixth edition was published in a single volume. A dramatised version of the epic was staged in
Kolkata by the Bengal Theatre in March 1875 and by the National Theatre in July 1877. In 1899 Umeshchandra Sen translated the entire epic into English blank verse.
Combining eastern and western elements, Madhusudan completely
transformed the traditional narrative poem in Bangla. [Siddiqa
Mahmuda]
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