Meghnad Bodh Kavya

Meghnad Badh Kavya (Bengali: মেঘনাদবধ কাব্য- The Saga of Meghnad's Killing) is the most famous and most acclaimed poem by the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta. It is based on the demise of Meghnad (a.k.a. Indrajit), son of Ravana, the villain of the classic Sanskrit epic Ramayana.

It was first published in 1861, incidentally the year of birth of the Bengali author, Rabindranath Tagore, who afterwards wrote a review on it.

The ballad is divided into 9 different sargas, i.e. parts. Each part exhibits different incidents. Starting from the death of Beerbahu, son of Ravana, it is continued till the sati-daha (the ancient Indian custom of burning the widows alive with the dead husband) of Prameela, Meghnad's beloved wife.

The poem starts with the lines:

সম্মুখ সমরে পড়ি, বীর-চূড়ামণি
বীরবাহু, চলি যবে গেলা যমপুরে
অকালে...

The great hero, being defeated in a face to face battle,
Beerbahu, leaves to the dead man's world,
at an earlier age...

Ravana, along with his sons, were the ones performing evil deeds in the Ramayana, which was originally written in Sanskrit by the sage Valmiki. But Dutta claims to have found a tragic hero in Ravana, as he was conversant Western literature. He feels a shadow of Hector of Troy in Meghnad. According to him, he realized why Ravana had perpetrated such crimes and Meghnad was slayed by Lakshmana brutally. He says that Meghnad was worshiping Lord Shiva which was known as Nikumvilla yaga in the royal temple of Lanka, while Lakshmana attacked him with some help from Bivishana, who is eventually an uncle of Meghnad. Meghnad prayed not to fight with an unarmed person, rebuking Lakshmana as a coward; but Lakshmana did not heed him. This unfortunate hero twice endangered Rama but could not survive himself in this unfair battle. This is the central theme of this epic. Here Meghnad is shown to be a patriot, a loving husband, a caring son and a friend to his countrymen. Unlike in the Ramayana, here Ravana is portrayed as a respectable man and a responsible king possessed of all royal qualities.

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