ABSTRACT
Mrutyunjay Ratha’s essay on Dinakrushna Das, which won the Talcher Medal, was published in Utkal Sahitya in 1910. This medal had been instituted by the king of Talcher to promote critical appreciation of Odia literature. The rules governing the award of the medal required the contestants to answer a set of questions relating to a particular kavya and its author, and these questions were published in reputed periodicals well in advance. The questions asked assume particular significance as they prepare the ground for a new approach to understanding and evaluating literature. The first question seeks information on the biography of the author citing internal textual evidence and the second requires the contestant to discuss formal and contentual aspects of the text. At the outset, Mrutyunjay carefully sifts and weighs evidence and scrupulously distinguishes verifiable facts from popular legends. In his biographical sketch Mrutyunjay strives to locate the poet not in hazy or hallowed past but in an identifiable social world established through spatial and temporal specificities. Mrutyunjay draws one’s attention to the innovations Dinakrushna’s Rasakallola introduces at the level of both form and technique, and examines their aesthetic effectiveness. However, Mrutyunjay’s assessment of Rasakallola is not entirely adulatory; he takes the poet to task for the presence of obscene elements in his kavya. Mrutyunjay’s response can be explained with reference to his absorption of puritanical Brahmo attitudes, and echoes the Indradhanu-Bijuli controversy which raged in the 1890s. The essay shows how, in the early part of the twentieth century, institutional interventions gave critical discourse a new orientation and method.
