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Sen, (Rai Bahadur) Dinesh Chandra (1866-1939) pioneer in recovering the rich treasure of folk songs, ballads and literature of Bengal and builder of the Department of Bengali Language and Literature of the university of calcutta. Dinesh Chandra Sen was born in the village of Bogjuri in the district of manikganj on 4 November 1866. While studying BA, Sen lost his parents and had to drop out of school. He started teaching at a school in sylhet. While working in the school, Sen passed his BA examination with Honours in English in 1889 as a private student. He then moved to comilla, taking a job at Victoria School. It was at this time that Dinesh Chandra turned into an enthusiastic collector of the surviving fragments of Bengal's past. He moved from village to village collecting old Bangla manuscripts, folk songs, folk myths and legends and folk language and ballads, realising that, unless collected, these treasures would soon perish and disappear forever. Based on his empirical research, in 1986, he published his first monumental work entitled Banga Bhasa O Sahitya (Bangla Language and Literature), the first comprehensive and scientific study by any Bengali scholar so far. This work fetched him instant recognition as a scholar of rare ability. Dinesh Chandra Sen wrote and edited about 55 books in Bangla and twelve books in English in addition to a large number of research articles published in various learned journals. Apart from Banga Bhasa O Sahitya, his works include Ramayani Katha (Tales of Ramayana), 1904; Behula (a folk tale), 1907; Vaidik Bharat (Vedic India: based on stories from the Vedas), 1922; Pauraniki (Tales from the Puranas), 1934; and Brhat Banga (Greater Bengal: a social history) in two volumes, 1935. His major English works include History of Bengali Language and Literature (1911), Sati (1916), The Vaishnava Literature of Medieval Bengal (1917), The Folk-Literature of Bengal (1920), Bengali Prose Style, Chaitanya and His Age (1922), Eastern Bengal Ballads of Mymensingh in four volumes (1923-1932) and Glimpses of Bengal Life (1925). Along with the proliferation of Sen's literary output, his worldly status had also gone up. In 1909, he was appointed reader in the Department of Bengali Language and Literature of Calcutta University and was entrusted with the responsibility of building and developing the new faculty. He was made Ramtanu Lahiri Professor in 1913. Calcutta University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Literature in recognition of his work in 1921 and Jagattarini Gold Medal in 1931. [Sirajul Islam]
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