NDA (II) 2023 General Ability Test · Question 100 of 146

Correct — D, Mukundaram Chakrabarti. He is the best-known poet of the Chandimangal, the Bengali narrative poem in honour of the goddess Chandi. His version, titled the Abhayamangal, carries the date 1466 in the Saka era, which is 1544 CE — squarely the sixteenth century the stem asks for. He wrote under the title Kabikankan, and his portrait of the hunter Kalketu is the passage most often quoted, because it shows ordinary human joy and hardship rather than only divine glory.

• (a)Hema Saraswati — Hema Saraswati is the earliest known writer of early ASSAMESE, from the Pre-Shankari period, and is credited with the Prahlad Charita and the Hara Gauri Samvada. Different language, different region and an earlier phase than the sixteenth-century Bengali Chandimangal.
• (b)Madhav Kandali — Madhava Kandali is the Assamese poet of the Saptakanda Ramayana, the first rendering of the Ramayana into an Indo-Aryan language of the subcontinent. His subject is the Ramayana, not the Chandi cycle, and his literary Assamese set the standard for later Assamese writing.
• (c)Tukaram — Tukaram is a seventeenth-century MARATHI saint-poet of the Warkari tradition, a devotee of Vithoba who composed abhangs in the ovi metre and lived at Dehu near Pune. He belongs to a different language, a different century and a devotional form far removed from mangalkavya narrative.

Mangalkavya is a genre of medieval Bengali narrative verse written in honour of a deity — the poem tells how the god or goddess established worship among human beings, and it usually ends with the promise of well-being, mangal, to whoever listens. The three great cycles are the Manasamangal for the snake goddess, the Chandimangal for Chandi, and the Dharmamangal for Dharma Thakur. The Chandimangal has several composers, but Mukundaram Chakrabarti's version is the one that fixed the poem's literary reputation.

The safest route through this question is language, not date. Chandimangal is Bengali; two of the four names are Assamese poets and one is Marathi, so only one option is even in the right literary tradition. The Assamese pair tempts because both are genuinely famous early poets, and Tukaram tempts because he is the most familiar name on the list. Other Chandimangal poets are on record — Manik Datta earlier than all of them, Dvija Madhab in 1579, and later Akinchan Chakrabarty in 1773 — so 'Chandimangal has one author' is the wrong lesson to carry away; what the examiner wants is the poet identified with it.

• Mukundaram Chakrabarti wrote under the title Kabikankan, and his Chandimangal is also called the Abhayamangal.
• That work is dated 1466 in the Saka era, which corresponds to 1544 CE.
• His narrative of the hunter Kalketu is the passage most praised for its human detail.
• Hema Saraswati and Madhava Kandali wrote in early Assamese; Tukaram wrote abhangs in Marathi in the seventeenth century.

• Assuming a famous medieval poet belongs to whichever region the question is about — check the language first.
• Treating Chandimangal as the work of a single author; several poets composed versions of it.
• Confusing the Saka year printed on a manuscript with the Common Era year — 1466 Saka is 1544 CE.

Asked as a straight author-to-work pick, or as a match-list pairing poets with their languages or their works.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Saptakanda Ramayana, the first rendering of the Ramayana into an Indo-Aryan language of the subcontinent, was composed by

  • (a)Hema Saraswati
  • (b)Madhava Kandali
  • (c)Krittibas Ojha
  • (d)Tulsidas

  Answer(b) Madhava Kandali — his Assamese Saptakanda Ramayana belongs to the Pre-Shankari period.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Mangalkavya, of which the Chandimangal is an example, is a genre of narrative poetry in which language?

  • (a)Marathi
  • (b)Assamese
  • (c)Bengali
  • (d)Odia

  Answer(c) Bengali — mangalkavyas are medieval Bengali narrative poems composed in honour of a deity.