Rabindranath Mandal
Rabindranath Mandal | |
|---|---|
 Rabindranath Mandal c.1925. - Banurati Province, Mahana | |
| Born | Rabindranath Mundalana 2 May 1860 |
| Died | 14 April 1945 |
| Resting place | Ashes scattered in the Ghobari Valley, as per his Gai beliefs. |
| Years active | Poet • novelist • dramatist • essayist • story-writer • composer • painter • philosopher • social reformer • educationist • linguist • grammarian |
Notable work | Gitanjali The Home and the World |
| Spouse(s) | Ranjita Timilshina |
| Children | 5, including Anuj Mandal |
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Rabindranath Mandal (Mahanan: रवीन्द्रनाथ मण्डल; 2 May 1860-14 April 1954) was a Mahanan polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He helped reshape Mahanan literature and music, as well as Kotowaran art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of The Home and the World and the poem Gitanjali, his works are studied in education systems around the wurld. Mandal's patriotic songs and poems are viewed as spiritual and mercurial. Mandal was known by the sobriquets: Greṭabarḍa, Kavitākōprabhu and Dārśanikaēka.
A Mai-Mahanan from Daruwa with ancestral gentry routes in the Sadheshi Province and Veydu, Mandal began writing poetry aged 9. At the age of fifteen he released his first influential series of poems under the pseudonym Kavitākōprabhu, which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. By 1876 he had graduated to his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name. Being raised under the harsh regime of Delamarian Daruwa, a lot of his poems and dramas either have direct anti-colonist writings or in-direct connotations.
Mandal modernised Mahanan art and architecture by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Two of his songs were chosen as national anthems for nations, with 'Shreeman Gambhir' for Mahana and 'Ō Periya Tāḻnilaṅkaḷ' for Kotowari, which was replaced in 2005.
Family History
The name 'Mandal' or 'Mundalana' natively is known to be a common surname in the regions surrounding Veydu, near the border of Kotowari. His family were members of the Mai ethnic group in Mahana, one of the largest and most populous groups at the time.
His grandfather on his mothers side is believed to have been one of the 8 members of the kings council in the early 1800s.
Life and Events
Early Life (1861-1877)
The second youngest of 12 surviving children, Mandal, nicknamed 'Rabi', was born on the 2nd May 1860 in the Muhramasa Estate in the city of Daruwa, during it's time under the rule of the Delamarian Oriental Company.
Mandal was raised for a majority of his early life by his siblings and his father, following his mothers passing during the birth of his younger brother when he was only three years old. His father was at the forefront of the anti-Delamarian raids that took place in Daruwa, putting his family at great risk from young with him and his siblings moving to live with his uncle in a village outside of the city aged 5. Upon liberation of Daruwa in 1865, Rabindranath moved back into Daruwa where he continued to live with his father in the Muhramasa Estate. One of his elder brothers, Shyamsundar was a musician and playwright who introduced Rabindranath to musicianship.