Odia Books

Abhimanyu Samanta Simhara was born in 1757.He is an eminent odia poet, was born in a Kshatriya
landlord family at Balia in Cuttack district. He was educated at a traditional Sanskrit school and later learnt Vaishnava literature and philosophy from Sadananda Kavisurya who also initiated him to the Vaishnava cult in his youth. He is said to have composed poems at the early age of nine. His ‘Baghagita’ (Ballad on tiger hunt) and ‘Chadeigita’ (Ballad on bulbul fight), though creations of tender age, are unique in odia literature for their vividness of imagery and spectacular action.

He is regarded as the most famous poet of the ornate age or Riti yuga of odia literature. Bidagdha
chintamani, his masterpiece, is read and appreciated among all classes of odia speaking people. It is an epic consisting of 96 cantos and, though unfinished, is considered at par with the best works of his predecessor Upendra Bhanja, the stalwart of the ornate age.

The theme of this epic is the love ‘lila’ of Radha and Krishna. The poet pays homage to Lord Jagannath, Radha-Krishna and Chaitanya simultaneously in a single verse in the invocatory shloka (Mangalacharan). The sublime emotions, vision of divine love and the sweet melody of the verses have made the poet immortal in odia literature. He has experimented with more than sixty ragas (musical modes) and a hundred varieties of alankaras here. Part of his poetry is full of high rhetoric and philosophy, part of it strikingly simple and lucid.

He has three other works to his credit, namely Rasavati, Premakala, and Sulochana which seem to be the creations of his younger age. Premakala is a romance in sixty-four chhandas (cantos), modelled after the riti age, and deals with imaginary characters. After his initiation to the Vaishnava cult of the Raganuga sadhana,he wrote only about the life of Lord Krishna and his consort Radha. His poems are immensely popular in rural Odisha where they are recited and sung by wandering minstrels.

For the exquisite musicality and evocative power of his poetry, Abhimanyu has been called the Swinburne of odia literature. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mayadhar Mansinha, History of odia Literature (New Delhi, 1962); Murari Mohan Jena,Samanta Simhara samiksha (Cuttack, 1975); M.M. Chakravarty, ‘Notes on the Language and Literature of Odisha’ , Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal (Dec. 1897); Surya Narayan Das, Odiya sahityara itihasa(Cuttack, 1963).

Rasavati
Premakala
Sulochana