Odia Books

Ramshankar Ray was born in 1838,in a Bengali family of Odisha, and had his schooling at the village school, where he acquired some knowledge of odia rhetoric and prosody. Afterwards, he studied at a Bengali High School at Cuttack, and at Ravenshaw College from where he graduated. He started his career as a clerk, but soon he studied law and became a lawyer.In 1875, when he was editor of Utkal madhupa, an odia monthly magazine, his ‘Prematari’, a long poem, was serialized. He started writing two novels, Saudamini and Unmadini, for the journals Utkal madhupa and Indradhanu but left them incomplete.

Ramshankar Ray was a landmark in Oriya theatre. Although not the first Oriya dramatist, he is credited as the first successful playwright. In 1878 he saw a Bengali production in Cuttack and resolved to write drama in Oriya. His first play, Kanchi-Kaveri in 1880 was staged in 1881. He chose as hero Gajapati Purushottam Dev, illustrious king of the Suryadynasty of Orissa, through whose historic war with the king of Kanchi, Saluva Narasimha Dev, Ray depicted Oriya patriotism. The play won the hearts of audiences instantly by its popular nationalistic theme and attractive presentation

Ramshankar Ray never looked back and by 1917 had written as many as fourteen historical, mythological, and social works, including traditional Yatra, Lila, and downright farce. He was the first author to present Shakespeare in Oriya. He adapted The Tempest as Batiabala in 1882, and tried his best to adopt a Shakespearean style. However, keeping in view the taste of spectators, he had to follow Indian classical and folk traditions too.

A Bengali drama, Ramabhiseka, inspired him to write plays in odia. In fact, he became the first
playwright in odia. His purpose was didactic. He studied the Vedas, the Smriti, the Ramayana, the
Mahabharata, the Bhagavata, Chaitanya-charitamrita and Gitagovinda. He borrowed stories from ancient
literature and turned them into popular dramas.

He adopted the structure of western plays and was the first in odia to use blank verse in Kanchi Kaveri. He also used Hindustani ‘ragas’ and ‘raginis’ for embellishment.Ramshankar dominated the scene of odia drama for thirty-seven years from 1880 to 1917, and set a new trend, which influenced later dramatists like Veer Vikram Dev, Padmanav Narayan Dev, Bhikaricharan Patnaik and Kamapala Mishra.

Ramshankar has seventeen works to his credit. Among them ten are plays: Kanchi Kaveri (1882), Vanavala (1882), Ramavanavasa (1891), Yugadharma (1892), Kamsavadha (1896), Visamodaka (1900),
Kanchanmali (1904), Chaitanyalila (1906), Lilavati (1912) and Ramabhisheka (1917); two dance dramas:
Badaloka (1913) and Visva yagna (1916); and two farces: Kalikala (1883) and Budhavara (1892). The
historical and mythological plays of Ramshankar reveal his genius. He also wrote a novel called Bibasini (1891) which was published in Utkal prabha and became very popular.

Saudamini
Unmadini
Kanchi Kaveri
Ramavanavasa
Yugadharma
Chaitanyalila
Ramabhisheka
Visamodaka
Kanchanmali