Chitra

By Rabindranath Tagore

Play. According to Wikipedia: "Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright who reshaped Bengali literature and music. As author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he was the first non-European who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. His poetry in translation was viewed as spiritual, and this together with his mesmerizing persona gave him a prophet-like aura in the west. His "elegant prose and magical poetry" still remain largely unknown outside the confines of Bengal."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seltzer Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781455408382

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.

Book preview

CHITRA, A PLAY IN ONE ACT BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Published by Seltzer Books

established in 1974, now offering over 14,000 books

feedback welcome: [e-mail]  

Works of Rabindanath Tagore available from Seltzer Books:

Chitra, a Play in Play in One Act

Creative Unity

The Fugitive

Glimpses of Bengal

The Home and the World

The Hungry Stones and Other Stories

The King of the Dark Chamber

Mashi and Other Stories

Sadhana the Realisation of Life

Stories from Tagore

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1926

All rights reserved

Copyright 1914

by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped  Published February, 1914

Reprinted March, twice,June, 1914; October, 1914; February, June, 1915; March, October, 1916; March, 1917; December, 1926.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY

THE BERWICK & SMITH CO.

TO MRS. WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

PREFACE

THE CHARACTERS

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

SCENE V

SCENE VII

SCENE VIII

SCENE IX

PREFACE

THIS lyrical drama was written about twenty-five years ago. It is based on the following story from the Mahabharata.

In the course of his wanderings, in fulfilment of a vow of penance, Arjuna came to Manipur.  There he saw Chitrangada, the beautiful daughter of Chitravahana, the king of the country. Smitten with her charms, he asked the king for the hand of his daughter in marriage.  Chitravahana asked him who he was, and learning that he was Arjuna the Pandara, told him that Prabhanjana, one of his ancestors in the kingly line of Manipur, had long been childless.  In order to obtain an heir, he performed severe penances.  Pleased with these austerities, the god Shiva gave him this boon, that he and his successors should each have one child.  It so happened that the promised child had invariably been a son.  He, Chitravahana, was the first to have only a daughter Chitrangada to perpetuate the race.  He had, therefore, always treated