मुनामदन [Muna Madan]

by Laxmi Prasad Devkota, लक्ष्मीप्रसाद देवकोटा

मुनामदन झ्याउरे लयमा आधारित कविता हो जुन नेपाली साहित्यको सबैभन्दा प्रख्यात कृति हो । मुनमदनलाई लिएर सन् १८५९ मा आफ्नो मृत्यु अघि उनले भनेका थिए म मरेपछि मेरा सबै कृति जलाइदिए पनि मुना मदन चाही नजलाउनु । मुनामदन अहिले सम्मकै सबैभन्दा धेरै बिक्रि भएको पुस्तक हो ।

मुना मदन एक कारुणिक काव्य हो जसले मुना र मदनको बिछोडको प्रेम कहानी को बर्णन गर्छ । मदन पैसा कमाउनको लागि विदेश जान्छ र फर्कने क्रममा बाटोमा बिरामी हुन्छ । बिरामी मदनलाई बीच बाटोमै छोडेर उसका साथिहरु आउछन र मदनको मृत्यु भएको कुरा भन्छन । यो कुराले मुनालाई निकै पिडा हुन्छ । येही पिडा साहना नसकी शोकमै मुनाको मृत्यु हुन्छ । उता मदनलाई बाटोमा अलपत्र रुपमा एक जना भोटेले फेला पार्छ । उसले मदनको खुबै स्याहार गर्छ (तेस् बेला मदन् यो भन्छ् " छेत्रिको छोरो यो पाउ छुन्छ घिनले छुदैन,मनिस् ठुलो दिलले हुन्छ जातले हुदैन") र जब मदन निको भएर घर फर्कन्छ, त्यो बेला उसको परिवार मुना र आमा को मृत्यु भएको खबर सुनेर ऊ मर्माहत हुन्छ ।

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Love, Romance, Literature

40 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Laxmi Prasad Devkota is a Nepali poet. Devkota is considered the greatest poet of Nepali language—he has been given the title of "Maha Kavi" ("The Great Poet") of Nepali language. Devkota was born into a Brahman family as the third son of Pandit Til Madhav and Amar Rajya Laxmi Devi. He was born in Dilli Bazar, Kathmandu on the day of Dipawali, the Festival of Lights, which is a celebration of Laxmi, the Goddess of Wealth. His name literally means a gift "Prasad" from the goddess of wealth "Laxmi". His family was never financially well-off.

Devkota studied science at Tri Chandra College in Kathmandu. After completing the intermediate level studies at Tri Chandra College, he enrolled in Humanities and that was when he began to read English poetry. In 1931, Devkota went to Patna on scholarship hoping to study English for his Master’s degree. But because seats were not available as expected, he enrolled for the Bachelor of Law degree instead. After he received the degree, he returned back home and started to live the family life. Despite taking tuition classes to supplement his earning, sometimes for fourteen hours a day, financial problems never left him.

Devkota lost both of his parents and his very young daughter within a span of two years during mid 1930's. He fell into a depression and became a chain smoker. In 1939, his brothers put him into a mental hospital in Ranchi, India for five months. He makes references to his experience in the lunatic asylum in his famous free-verse poem पागल ("The Lunatic"). After he returned to Nepal, he worked as a part of Nepal Bhasanuwad Parishad, a state organization that acted as a censorship board, and also taught at Tribhuwan University. He wrote several of his epic poetry during this time. In late 40's, dissatisfied with the Rana regime, he went into a self-imposed exile in Benaras, India, where he edited Yugbani, an opposition journal.

After the autocratic Rana regime was overthrown in 1950, he returned to Nepal and helped publish Indreni, a bilingual literary journal. Although he was constantly in severe financial hardships, he was getting wide recognition as an important figure in Nepali literature. He was appointed the Minister of Education by the first democratically elected government of Nepal in 1957. However, in 1958, he was diagnosed with cancer, and a year later, he passed away.

Laxmi Prasad Devkota was primarily a humanist who occasionally wrote from an atheistic point of view too. Given this reality, some critics have tried to line him up with Marxism or other similar politically leftist ideologies. Apparently in one of his last poems to a friend, he said "Aakhir Shree Krishna rahecha eka" ("After all, Lord Krishna seems to be the Only One"). However, there has been much intellectual skepticism about this last statement.

Devkota contributed to Nepali literature by bringing the Sanskrit tradition to its end and by starting modern romantic movement in the country. Devkota was the first to begin writing epics in Nepali literature. Nepali poetry soared to new heights with Devkota's groundbreaking and innovative use of language.

Departing from the Sanskrit tradition that dominated Nepali literary scene, he wrote मुनामदन i.e. Muna Madan (1930), a long narrative poem in popular "jhyaure" folk meter. The book received immediate recognition from the Ranas who ruled Nepal at that time. It tells the story of Madan who departs from his wife Muna to Tibet to make money. The poem deals with the themes of the hardships of journey away from home, grief of separation, longing and death. The following couplet (translated) which are among the most famous and most frequently quoted lines from the poem celebrates the triumph of humanity and compassion over any artificial hierarchies creat

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps I will read it in Nepali one day.

**************
Update: (5/30/21)

For English readers:

Padma Devkota’s English translation is the best translation to date (but I haven’t read the Michael J. Hutt translation, so maybe I shouldn’t say best :). His book includes the full poem (with Laxmi’s later additions as well). One example: in Ananda P. Shrestha’s English translation, where Madan first replies back to Muna, Ananda leaves out “Junma Phulaykee” (my anglicization), a flower in the moon, but flower in the moon is amazing imagery and Shrestha just left it out! And in the Shrestha English translation that I have he doesn’t include the Nepali script, but Padma Devkota’s translation includes both his English translation AND the Nepali script (side by side, dherai dhanyabad).

Update (3/14/19):

I read this 8 years ago and I just read this again today. I have read more of Devkota’s poems in English as well and after reading those other poems I began to see how beautiful Devkota’s poetry is. So I wanted to read this again.

The English translation I read is okay. I think the translation could be a lot better, but I am thankful that there is an English translation. (Actually, I just checked and it looks like there is a new translation by Padma Devkota, Laxmi’s son, so I may buy that one.)

Anyway, I like it even more this time, so I’m adding two more stars.

I still want to read this in Nepali.

[Pallavi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a great blessing to have Munamadan as a part of course book in school. I remember reading it with my class of crazy friends, roaring out loud every phrase of it in a perfect "jhyaure" rhythm. The stories our teacher used to tell about the poem, about the poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota were priceless.

The sad story that this poem tells has a magic in it. I don't know, if I feel this because the journey I had with this book along with my friends was more than wonderful but there's something about it that never fades away in a lifetime. The tragic story of Muna and Madan and the story of Laxmi Prasad Devkota that goes along with it, is worth reading.

Munamadan is more than a book of poems for me at least. It has embedded in it some joyful memories of childhood classes and stories and so many wonderful things! I really hope in future, more people will read and enjoy it! :D

[Sunila Maharjan · Rating 4 out of 5]

tragic love story. Saddest part was Muna died without seeing Madan.

[Rujan Shrestha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has potential to be one of the great books in world. But being Nepali, it has not been possible. As a matter of fact, it is better than 'Romeo and Juliet"

[Roms · Rating 4 out of 5]

“हातका मैला सुनका थैला, के गर्नु धनले?
साग र सिस्नु खाएको बेस आनन्दी मनले।”
कक्षा ७ मा हुँदा पहिलो पटक ‘मुनामदन’ पढेकी थिएँ, त्यसबेला नबुझेका प्राय कुराहरू आज आएर बुझें। यस्तो दुखद तर मननै छुने कथा ‘मुनामदन’ सबैले एकपटक पढ्नैपर्ने उपन्यास हो।

[Navraj Khanal 'BIVAS']

really its heart touching nobel

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this while my nepali husband is away in Nepal for 3 months hits different. 😭

[Sangam]

Excellent thought for ever

[Heera Bhandari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple lifestyle n thoughtful thought .... I love LBD.

[Ram Hari · Rating 5 out of 5]

यो पुस्तकबारे के लेखु। लेख्न त लेखुला तर यो किताबको सम्मानमा आँच पुग्छ कि भन्ने डर लाग्छ।यति हो मुनामदन शब्द उच्चारण गर्ने वित्तिकै सम्मानले देवकोटा प्रति शिर झुकाउन मन लाग्छ।

[Ishan Mainali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth a slow read in झ्याउरे छन्द - adds a layer of texture that is almost necessary to appreciate this text.

There are many pages that readers might gloss over as a subplot but I believe that Devkota necessarily wrote each and every scene with intention. The word choices in each setting vary according to the emotion that Devkota perhaps wanted us readers to feel.

For instance, Madan's exploration of the dynamics of the Buddhist family (and himself) in his recovery 'home' is described exceptionally well. The imageries in that particular case is no less than magical and to remind ourselves that Devkota wrote this 88 years ago is quite a thought.

Similarly, the ending scene, where Madan is stricken with grief, is written with extreme emotional tension as evidenced by his choice of words and छन्द pattern.

The text does invite for a re-read, not because it is extremely difficult to read, but because my grasp of Nepali is nowhere near perfect, and I believe that the taste of Muna Madan will only grow to be more nuanced with age.

[Kshitij Chaurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally. No words to describe this masterpiece.

[Manju Adhikari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Legendary.

[Sayara · Rating 5 out of 5]

full five stars are also less for this book, it is a magnificent book which I cant rate . its beyond any praise. Its a masterpiece bu Laxmi Prasad Devkota.

I still remember the first time I read it and got tears in my eyes, I still do. The heart warmin love story between Muna and Madan , the incident in the story and the writing ; there will be rarely anyone who is not touched by it.

Must read for all nepali readers. But I think there will be no one who haven't read it yet .

[Sanjeela Moktan]

i hope this books help me to think what is well.

[BISHAL NEUPANE · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of a must read book of nepali sahitya(literature).. loved it

[Aneessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

महा कवि भन्नुको मुख्य कारण

[Gaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

It makes me cry every time. everybody must read in their LIFETIME :)

[Bradley William Holder · Rating 3 out of 5]

How does a reader assess the artistic merit of an alleged classic when both the reader and the classic occupy divergent cultural spaces?

I've lived in Nepal for nearly two years now. During this time, I've spent countless cherished hours both with the country's people and its language(s). Still, I am lightyears from fluency in either one. Something tells me, as I continue along this uncertain path of intra/inter discovery, that—regardless of how perfect my Nepali intonation becomes (and, judging by how things have been going, it's not going to get much better than meh); whether I can adequately discuss philosophy or the global economy drawing from the specific pool of vocabulary the situation calls for; despite my sudden and sustained proclivity for the flavors and textures of दाल भात, acquired after days upon weeks upon months of eating nothing but; notwithstanding my intellectual knowledge of the customs, behaviors, and otherwise unspeakable forever-truths constitutive of let's-put-it-in-all-caps NEPALI CULTURE—I will never be able to approach the grandeur of Muna Madan without a Hawaiian t-shirt two sizes two big, an old hand-me-down Minolta strapped to my neck, and a warn-out guidebook to Nepal's most famous tourist attractions. In other words, no matter how much I've "earned the right" not to be called a tourist, in the grand scheme of things—owing to little more than what most Nepali citizens would call a "favorable" accident of birth—it just isn't possible for me to experience a piece of Nepali literature like an actual Nepali person.

For reasons that extend well beyond the borders of a single country, this saddens me deeply.

Because of the nature of my being here—and because of another book I've lately been reading—for the last few weeks, the subject of the relationship that exists between the generalized East and the generalized West has been following me around like a raincloud that won't stop shitting sunlight. The defaultness of the Occidental perspective. My supposed role as a helper, a developer, a bearer of arcane Western knowledge and—perhaps, for outsiders, most tantalizingly—vast burrows of freedom-bestowing American wealth. My immediately apparent foreignness reciprocating brown beauty for white beauty (orientalism, in this respect, is a two-way street), the ostensible promiscuity of "my" culture guaranteeing swaths of pleasure to members of a more conservative one that—by itself—could only ever be suggested. Blame it on the Internet. Blame it on Tik-Tok. Blame it on Mr. Beast. Hell, blame it on Obama and Donald Trump. My Nepali coworkers often joke with me: "Everyone in Nepal is trying to get out, and you're trying to stay." And—biased and myopic and, ultimately, idealistic though it may be—my experience here attests to the verisimilitude of at least the first half of that sentence.

A few months after arriving in Nepal, one of the people I live with—a Nepali math teacher in his late 40s I happily call दाइ—explained to me the plot of Muna Madan beat by beat. He did so in Nepali, and—my Nepali skills at the time being what they were—more or less fruitlessly. Eventually, however, I did become aware of the events of the story—well before, in fact, I read the poem myself: Madan goes on a journey to Tibet to acquire his fortune, leaving his new wife Muna and his mother at home. He leaves, gets distracted. His machinations are successful. On the way back, he becomes sick and is abandoned by his companions. Thankfully, he is found and nursed back to health by a low-caste Tibetan farmer, a situation from which the poem's most famous lines are drawn. Once better, he gets distracted some more. After some time, he returns home—only to find that his mother and wife have died in his absence. (The specifics of Muna's death often draw comparisons to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.) He then proceeds to die as well, presumably of a broken heart.

To me—a mere outsider—the story seems to speak unironically to the kinds of problems existing in Nepal today. Although, it may be suggested, the most efficacious preconditions for the development of these problems had, in Laxmi Prasad Devkota's time, not yet come to the fore. To wit, Muda Madan is a cautionary tale against risking the comforts of simple domestic life in the unnecessary pursuit of wealth. Had Madan simply not left his family, no one would have died. And yet—but who's to say this practice was not at least in part elicited, by way of romanticization, by the immense in-country popularity of Muna Madan?—it is a commonly discussed topic, by the older generations, that young Nepalis—especially young, sometimes newly married men—keep moving to wealthier Western countries like Australia, the UK, and the United States to make non-Nepali dollars, pounds, et cetera and then send them back to their families (e.g., a young wife and a newborn daughter learning her कखगs before she learns the contours of her father's face) in the form of good-intentioned remittances. It's a story as old as Empire.

There's a lot more to be said about this. Perhaps I'll revisit this topic in another review. For now, however, if I were permitted the freedom of unrestrained literary analysis—a freedom it may be presumptious of me to act upon—I'd say that what makes Muna Madan such an important piece of literature is that the reality it depicts is not that far from the reality that might be copying it.

The poem's written in an old, syllable-based folk meter that uses rhyming couplets. (This translation, while lineated, does not correspond to the constraints of the Nepali original.) Even though I read the Nepali text, I would've been mostly lost without the English translation. Since I still lack an intuitive sense of the language's natural flow, it'd be wrong of me to try to critique the versification. I was struck, however, by the sheer economy of Laxmi Prasad Devkota's Nepali. The translator (Padma Devkota) perhaps took some liberties, for the sake of clarity, that others might not have dared to take. For instance, consider the following: "कुन दिन दिदी ! आउँछिन् भन न!" Padma Devkota translates this as "O sister, tell me when she'll come!" But a more direct translation would have been, "Which day, sister! Tell me she'll come, won't you!" This kind of thing abounds. Translating poetry is no easy task, especially across languages as different from each other as Nepali and English. So, uh, yeah. Consider these aspersions uncast.

How does a reader assess the artistic merit of an alleged classic when both the reader and the classic occupy divergent cultural spaces?

As long as you're honest, I don't think it really matters.

Just make sure you say you're sorry after.

[Rishav Adhikari · Rating 5 out of 5]

We always were told that this book was one of the best books in Nepali literature. We were also told that Laxmi Prasad Devkota is and will be one of the best writers to ever grace the Nepali literature scene. I first came to know about this book when I was in 2nd grade and that this book is a must read. I knew the story before hand of what was about to happen and at that time, I didn’t care or didn’t even give the premise a second thought.

After 20 years, I read this book and I am extremely happy (and sad) that I read it now. I can relate well with the despair that Madan feels and I have my own experiences to relate to while going through the book. The simplicity of a heart break, hopelessness and frustration is so well written in this that you feel a lump rising in your throat while going through the words. Sadness, loneliness and a deep longing to be around loved ones, it’s something we all can relate to and have been through in our own respective ways and the author absolutely nails it. A brilliant book and for me proves the point that was it indeed is one of the best books in Nepali literature.

[Malla.Ranendragmail.Com · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muna Madan is based on an 18th-century ballad in Nepal Bhasa entitled Ji Waya La Lachhi Maduni (it has not been a month since I came).[1][2][3] The song, which is popular in Newar society, tells the story of a merchant from Kathmandu who leaves for Tibet on business leaving behind his newly wed bride. The wife is concerned for his safety as the journey to Tibet is filled with hardships, and she pleads with him not to go. But he leaves despite her protests. When he returns home after many years, he finds that she has died.

[Brija · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this is a hard core tragic love story, and yet, it is not just that. The poetic description of ups and downs of Madan's journey, innocence and strength of Muna, waiting eyes of a dying mother, betrayal of friends and at the same time true altruism of a total stranger - all in oh.. so beautiful words!! Lucky again to know the language its originally written in

[Raunak Mainali · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would 100% be a 5 star rating if I could read the Nepali version properly. The English version is still amazing but the poem is written in a jhaure style in Nepali which cannot be matched in English. So 4 stars because of my own inability to read my own language properly.

[Puspa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

[Sujal · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books ever written in Nepali literature.

[Bikki Waiba · Rating 5 out of 5]

How i can read the book in this apps?

[Ajātaśatru · Rating 5 out of 5]

A

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful

[Ngawang Gyatso · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is the name of a person who writes love story of husband and wife, by Lakshmi Prasad Devkota. When I was reading I liked everything very much.

The husband loved his wife very much but due to some circumstances the husband had to go to Lhasa, which is located in Tibet. Many people in the world have to face the same situation. They do not want to move away from home but the condition is that they do so. There is no other option than staying at home and missing family. Facing various situations, pain, sick but struggling provide some happiness for the family. At times I felt that he was offering to the four elements, at the same time I felt that he was talking to them.

When I read this book I felt as if the author has told us about the man's struggle, patience, pain, love, care for his family.

[Shan]

मुनामदन
- महाकवी लक्ष्मी प्रसाद देवकोटा.

This epic poetic story s is sure to leave an indelible impression on you. If you are looking for a rich, meaningful and thought-provoking. "Muna Madan" is the book for you !
I suggest to read this book to everyone (including all age). I'm damm sure this book give a ultimate vibe & meaningful understanding while reading. It has a narrative poetry form, very well wordplay & lyrical prose which create urge to read more and more. Whole book fulfilled with struggle, love, hope, hardship, condition, strength & perseverance

Everyone must read...!!

#munamadan