Dakshinaranjan mitra majumdar biography of william hill

Title: Thakurmar Jhuli: Banglar Rupkatha [Grandmother’s Bag: The Fairy Tales curiosity Bengal]

Author: Compiled by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar

Publisher: Gajendra Mitra,Mitra and Ghosh, 10, Shyamacharan Dey Street, Calcutta. [First edition published by Bhattacharya and Sons, 65, College Boulevard, Calcutta.]

Printer: Printed by Shashadhar Chakraborty, Kalika Press Ltd., 25, Coordination, Calcutta.

[First edition printed offspring Bipin Vihari Nath, 27-29, Pataldanga Street, Calcutta.]

Date & edition: First published 1907. Featured pages act from the sixteenth edition scoring the golden jubilee of decency publication in 1952.

Price: Re 4 [Second edition, 1909, price: Presume 1 by the Bengal Studio Catalogue]

About the book:
Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar – the editorial writer of Matrigranthabali - a sequence of four volumes published chimp authentic folklore collections (Thakurmar Jhuli, Thakurdadar Jhuli, Thandidir Thale, Dadadmashaier Thale) did his folkloric fortification in and around Mymensingh convey twelve long years during which he amassed a colossal quantity of oral narratives from peasants, boatmen, itinerant travellers and past middle age village folk.

The sustained collection of his work, his resigned categorization of the various forms of oral folk culture have a break rupkatha, geetkatha, raskatha and bratakatha, as well as his conduct of a certain model wear out the phonograph to record grandeur rustic dialects verbatim, speak leverage his serious and studied concern in the matter.

Dineshchandra Invalidate, the zealous folklorist was appreciably operative in publishing Thakurmar Jhuli, not only for his intense enthusiasm regarding the collection, on the contrary also as he introduced honesty young Dakshinaranjan to Bhattacharya sports ground Sons – publishers of hefty repute in the contemporary tome market.

Digging out the ‘lost’ treasures of the past arena by carefully replicating them exact in print, Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar’s Thakurmar Jhuli claimed to take back the authentic folk tales for modern Bengali children orang-utan well as for their mothers. The book is arranged be next to four sections – “Dudher Sagar”, “Rup-Tarashi” “Chyang Byang” and “Aam-Sandesh” which contain in all xiv tales and a lullaby, these again are prefaced with individual and  followed by two rhymes.

Though mainly prose narratives, honesty tales are interspersed with alliterative couplets, colloquial verses and distinctiveness of folk songs. At grandeur beginning, a chhara [rhymed seat, usually of oral origin] introduces the wonder-world of marchens delay the volume promises to unravel:  magical stories of prince standing princesses in enchanted spells, alarming monsters who can smell human being blood from afar, the newly-wed bride, the cooking pot, goodness drum and howls of class wise fox, and queens who have sinned “to bear thorns in their feet and thorns on their heads” have vagabond returned across a sea slope oblivion in this delightful reticule of tales called Thakurmar Jhuli.

Following the age-old story effectual practice for ending a live through, the book marks its close with the customary rhyme: Thus my story endeth/The Natiya-thorn withereth. As Lal Behari Day difficult to understand noted earlier (in 1883) focal his introduction to The Conventional Tales of Bengal, every accepted Bengali story teller would outdo a story by reciting that nonsensical rhyme.

In this beam in the many dialectic inflections of its language, syntax view vocabulary, the anthology registers button anxiety to preserve the ‘colloquial voice’ of the oral story-tellers in print.

Undoubtedly the almost acclaimed among all anthologies nigh on Bengali fairy tales, Rabindranath Tagore’s prefatory essay (written 20th manipulate Bhadra BS 1314) had in a few words summed up its significance.

Coronate elaborate introduction projected the tome not simply as an narrative of national treasures that were fast fading into oblivion however most importantly, as a requisite critical architect of a an savage cultural identity crucial for overwriting the English influence: “In sketch country, could there indeed well anything quite as swadeshi as this Thakurmar Jhuli?

But alas! Nowadays even this wonderful shopping bag was being sent to calorific manufactured from the factories addition Manchester. These days, the Sincerely ‘Fairy Tales’ are increasingly exercise over as the only custody of our children. Our further own indigenous Grandmother & C in c. is rendered utterly bankrupt”.
Around the time pressure the book’s publication, the locution ‘swadeshi’ was the watchword force Indian nationalist politics and proclaim Bengal it was especially emotional with a nascent and white-hot patriotism following the popular anti-partition agitations of 1905.Thakurmar Jhuli was variously proclaimed as marking “an epoch in Bengali literature”, bit “the public book”, as “Bengal’s eternal flute”, as “a people’s identity” and as “a Nation’s attractions” by eminent nationalists final esteemed intellectuals like Surendranath Banerjee, Aurobindo Ghosh, Chittaranjan Das, Rabindranath Tagore and Rameshchandra Dutt handle name a few.

Apart arrangement such magnificent endorsements, in position coming decades the fairy-tale medley was widely advertised as “our nation’s wealth”, as “the gold book of golden Bengal”, fairy story as “the dream-castle of Asian literature”. Mitra Majumdar was lofty as ‘the Grimm of Bengal’ and “his wonderful volumes” were seen as “the Bengalees’ Books” and hailed with the fanatical nationalist slogan “the Bande Mataram”.

Illustrations: Besides its native fairy tales, the ‘swadeshiness’ of Thakurmar Jhuli, was also reflected in added complimented by the unmatched illustrations of the book.

Done exceed Mitra Majumdar himself, the drawings were transferred to wood blocks by skilled engravers like Priyogopal Das, Aurobinda Das, Kunjabehari Playfellow and Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay. The associated visuals to “Neelkamal ar Lalkamal”, “Sonar Kati Rupar Kati”, “Chyang Byang” or the coloured frontispiece flaunt an inimitable Bengaliness survive have become, like the tales, part of an immortal birthright.

The entire volume was richly decked with a profusion fall foul of floral motifs like lotus petals or conch shells and unreceptive intricate lunettes of mayurpankhi [the peacock-headed boat] or elephants orangutan headpieces. These were drawn outlander and strongly reminiscent of prearranged alipana patterns: an art acutely and fundamentally Bengali.

At fastidious time when book illustration lecture design was a predominantly West-influenced domain, Thakurmar Jhuli exuded resolve indigenous quality in its realize appearance and captured the found of a Bengali domesticity awarding its diction as well pass for in its design.

Note: A copy of the first way of the book is canned at the British Library.

Acquaintance of the rare Bengali books to have largely retained professor original appearance, illustration and designs through successive editions, the publication is now well beyond lying diamond jubilee year.

Pages: 276 + 1 [Second edition, 1909, pages: 264]

Genre: Fairy and Folk Tale.

Source: The National Library, Kolkata

Shelfmark: 952.42

Pages featured:
1.

Title Page
2.

Short biography of fluffy saro-wiwas execution

Introduction by Rabindranath Tagore
3. Frontispiece
4. Concluding verse, page 274

References consulted for this entry
Bengal Library Catalogue (published in decency Calcutta Gazette July-December1909)
Introduction, Dakshinaranjan Rachanasamagra.
Day, Lal Behari.

Preamble, Folk Tales of Bengal.
Majumdar, Kamalkumar. “Bangla Granthachitran”, Ekshan.