Odia Books

Gopinath Nanda Sarma was born in 1869 at Manjusha, now in the state of Andhra Pradesh, but brought up at Paralakhemundi in the district of Ganjam. He was proficient in many languages like Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Odia, Bengali, Hindi and Telugu. He was born at a time when the Odia speaking people were passing through a crucial period of history.

The present state of Odisha was not yet formed and its language suffered from neglect. He devoted his life to the enrichment of Odia literature. He was a poet, dramatist, critic, translator, and Sanskrit scholar. Though he did not have any formal education, the college authorities at Paralakhemundi were so impressed with his scholarship that they appointed him a teacher for Sanskrit and Odia.

Sarma’s contribution to the growth of modern Odia literature is quite significant and he left his impress on many genres – drama, essay, poetry, criticism, lexicography, translation. He started as a poet, wrote original poems in Odia or translated them from Sanskrit. In this context one can recall his Udhabaduta kavya, Padyavali, Piyusha dhara, Bilhaniya kavya, and Meghaduta also. His Kumar Vijay is a prose translation of Kalidasa’s Kumar-sambhava. His translations are accurate, trying to communicate the beauty of the original.

Gopinath has several Odia plays to his credit. The verses in them are usually in Sanskrit metres. His tanslations of Sanskrit plays like Unmatta Raghava by Bhaskar, Vikramorvasiya by Kalidasa and Janaki parinaya are quite well known. His Sita banabasa and Ramasvomedha nataka are not literal translations of Bhavabhuti’s Uttararamacharita but attempts to dramatise the original story. He was also a pioneer in compiling the first etymological Odia dictionary. In this field he stands no comparison. It took him seven years to compile his Odia lexicon, Sabdatattva abhidhan.

Gopinath Nanda Sarma will be long remembered for his Odia bhasatattva. It evinces his rare merit in a comparative study of Odia, Pali and Prakrit languages, showing the origin and gradual development of Odia language, and its relationship with Prakrit and Sanskrit. His scholarly contribution to critical literature is also amazing. He took up for critical study the Mahabharata of Sarala Das, the Bhagabat of Jagannath Das and the Ramayana of Balarama Das, the great epics of Odisha.

He compares all these books with the originals in Sanskrit and their versions in Telugu, Hindi and Bengali. Unfortunately, his studies of the Ramayana and the Bhagabat have not yet been published in book form. Apart from this comparative criticism, he wrote some essays in different periodicals of the day. He has, indeed, left the stamp of his personality on Odia literature, particularly in the fields of criticism and research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Kumar Tripathy, ‘Odia bhasa o sahityaku Gopinathana dana’, Samaja, 21 August 1969;
Mayadhar Mansinha, History of Odia Literature (New Delhi, 1962); Srinibas Mishra, ‘Samalochana
Gopinath Nanda’, Jhankar, 21/11; Sudarshan Acharya, ‘Pandita Gopinath Nandanak rachanabali’, Samaja,
21 August 1969.

Udhabaduta
Kavya
Padyavali
Piyusha Dhara
Bilhaniya Kavya
Meghaduta