Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
1820–1891
Biography
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891) was a Bengali educator, social reformer and writer, and one of the central figures of the Bengal Renaissance. He was born in 1820 in Birsingha village, in what is now West Medinipur district, and as a boy moved to Calcutta to study. At the Sanskrit College he became known for his command of Sanskrit learning, and the honorific title Vidyasagar, meaning ocean of knowledge, stayed with him for life.
His reform campaigns and his writing went together. He pressed the colonial government to allow Hindu widows to remarry, and the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856 followed his long campaign. He also opposed child marriage and polygamy, worked for the education of girls, and tried to make the Bengali script simpler to learn. His primer Barnaparichay became a widely used first reader for Bengali children, and he is regarded as one of the founders of modern Bengali prose.
Two of his works are on this site under their Bengali titles. বেতালপঞ্চবিংশতি (Betal Panchabinsati) is his Bengali version of the twenty-five tales that a vetala, a spirit, tells to a king. সীতার বনবাস (Sitar Banabas) retells the episode of Sita's exile from the Rama story. Both show how he carried older Sanskrit and Hindu material into plain, direct Bengali prose for a wider readership.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
বেতালপঞ্চবিংশতি
by ঈশ্বরচন্দ্র বিদ্যাসাগর
King Vikramaditya is sent to a graveyard to bring away a corpse hanging from a tree, but the vampire that lives in it tells him a tale at each step of the way and ends it with a riddle that the king must answer. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's Bengali prose of 1847, taken from the…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.সীতার বনবাস
by ঈশ্বরচন্দ্র বিদ্যাসাগর
The last chapters of the Ramayana as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar tells them in Bengali prose, in which Rama, having won back his queen, hears of the talk among his people and sends her away to the forest. Published in 1860, it is a classic of Bengali prose and was read in schools…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.