Dutt, Okhay Kumar : (1821-86) journalist, social reformer, educationist, pioneer of Bengali prose. Born in Burdwan district: educated in his village school, & at the Oriental Seminary, Calcutta: contributed to Bengali Prabhākari: edited Ādi Brahmo Samāj’s Tattwabodhini Patrika started by Debendranath Tagore: wrote several scholarly books including Religious Sects of India in Bengali: published essays in Bengali on scientific subjects. [Buckland]
... originality. Rammohan Ray arose with a new religion in his hand, which was developed on original lines by men almost greater one thinks than he, by Rajnarain Bose and Debendranath Tagore. The two Dutts, Okhay Kumar and Michael Madhu Sudan, began a new Prose and a new Poetry. Vidyasagara, scholar, sage and intellectual dictator, laboured hugely like the Titan he was, to create a new Bengali language and... children is marked by an unbounded energy and passion. Their reading was enormous and ran often quite out of the usual track. Madhu Sudan Dutt, besides English, Bengali and Sanskrit, studied Greek, Latin, Italian and French, and wrote the last naturally and with ease. Toru Dutt, that unhappy and immature genius, who unfortunately wasted herself on a foreign language and perished while yet little more than ...
... nation's body, the leaden yoke galled and oppressed. In the field of literature, which is the medium of expression of a nation's soul, arose some remarkable men of original genius. "The two Dutts, Okhay Kumar and Michael Madhu Sudan, began a new prose and a new poetry." "...Madhusudan's first great poems Sharmistha and Tilottama had a complex effect, much of a piece with the sensation created by Marlowe's... Page 72 here of Bengal only - that Ram Mohan Roy was followed by Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, Rishi Rajnarayan Bose, Pandit Shivnath Shastri, Akshaya Kumar Dutt, Keshav Chandra Sen, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, poet Madhusudan Dutt, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, the inspired seer of the National Anthem, Bande Mataram, and the greatest novelist in Bengali literature. Dr. Rajendra Lal Mitra, Sri... offer to the reader the intimate pen-picture of Sri Aurobindo by Dinendra Kumar Roy, which we have promised. 56 Dinendra Kumar was a distinguished man of letters in Bengal. He was sent by the maternal uncle of Sri Aurobindo to help him learn the Bengali language, particularly its colloquial form and pronunciation. Dinendra Kumar stayed with Sri Aurobindo in the same house for a little over two years ...
... but they fell short of their high conception. Rammohan Ray, the great Vidyasagara, Okhay Kumar Dutt and the Bengali playwrights were all working bravely towards the same consummation. But Page 112 Vidyasagara, though he had much in him of the scholar and critic, was nothing of an artist; Okhay Kumar's audience ran only to the subscribers of a single magazine; and the literary originality... Bengali. Among the rest the Bengali tongue was put by as an instrument hopelessly bad and unsatisfying; even Madhu Sudan in his youth neglected and forgot it. The strivings of Vidyasagara and Okhay Kumar Dutt were the strivings of a few far-sighted and patriotic men in a generation misled by false ideals. On that generation Madhu Sudan's first great poems, Sharmishtha and Tilottama , had a complex... Bengali race. Of this it is not easy to suggest any image without speaking in superlatives. I had almost said in one place that he created the language, and if one couples his name with Madhu Sudan Dutt's, the statement is hardly too daring. Before their advent the Bengali language, though very sweet and melodious, was an instrument with but one string to it. Except the old poet Bharatchandra, no supreme ...
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