Prasannamoyee Devi

Prasannamoyee Devi
Native name
প্রসন্নময়ী দেবী
Born(1856-09-29)29 September 1856
Haripur, Pabna District, Mughal Empire
Died25 October 1939(1939-10-25) (aged 83)
OccupationPoet, travel writer and memoirist
Literary movementBengal Renaissance
Notable worksAryavarta: Janaika Bangamahilar Bhraman Brittanta (1888)
ChildrenPriyamvada Devi
RelativesPramatha Chaudhuri (brother)
Kumudnath Chaudhuri (brother)

Prasannamoyee Devi (Bengali: প্রসন্নময়ী দেবী, née Chaudhuri, 29 September 1856 – 25 October 1939) was a Bengali poet, travel writer and memoirist of the Bengali Renaissance period. Her work Aryavarta: Janaika Bangamahilar Bhraman Brittanta (1888) was the first published travel account of India by a Bengali woman.

Family and background

Devi was born on 29 September 1856 into a wealthy Hindu zamindari family in the village of Haripur, Pabna District, Mughal Empire, (the area became part of the British Raj in 1858 and is today part of Bangladesh).[1][2] Devi wrote in her autobiography that her father Durgadas Chowdhury lived in Murshidabad in West Bengal with family during the 1850s.[3][4]

Devi was primarily educated in the family home,[5] but also used to dress as a boy to go to Kachhari Bari for studies outside of the home.[6] She was tutored in Bengali, English, and Sanskrit.[7]

Devi was married to zamindari Krishna Kumar Bagchi of Gunaigachha in the Pabna District when she was aged ten.[8][9] She gave birth to their daughter Priyamvada Devi in 1871, who would become a writer, teacher and philanthropist.[10][11][12]

After her daughter's birth Devi refused to live with her husband in his rural home, and lived instead in her father and brothers home, which was frequented the Tagore family.[5]

Career

Fiction

Davi published her first book of short poems, Adh-Adh Bhashini, when she was aged 12.[2][9] She contributed poems to journals including Matri Mandir and Bharatbarsha (established by Dwijendralal Ray).[9]

Devi published Banalata, a collection of poetry. The Calcutta Review wrote that the work:[5]

"consists of several short poems on a variety of subjects which bear the impress of a mind emancipated from the thraldom of... Juthi, Mallika, Malati [names of flowers commons in Bengali households] of bygone ages, and awakening to an appreciative perception of the beautiful, the grand and the sublime not simply in terrestrial objects, but likewise in the phenomenal aspects of Nature, in all her immensity."

Other works of poetry by Devi include Banalata (1880) and Niharika (1884).[8][9] Her novel Ashok was set during the time of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.[9]

Travel writing

Devi's travel writing was shaped by both the Hindu-revivalist nationalism and the colonial modernity of the 1870s in British India.[8] Her work Aryavarta: Janaika Bangamahilar Bhraman Brittanta (1888) was the first published travel account of India by a Bengali woman[7][13] and differed from the rational, scientific travel writing produced by professional historians.[14][15] She mapped in the tradition of Bengali scholars like Rajendralal Mitra and drew on Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's ideas of promoting a non-positivist history with mytho-religious temporality for Bengali identity, in opposition to the European notion of linear history.[8] She also tried to understand through her travel writing "what led to the downfall of India from the glorious Aryan (ancient Indo-Iranian) past."[15]

Devi wrote of the civil station Krishnanangar as an exotic and green idyll.[16] She wrote of her fascination with the architecture of the Taj Mahal in Agra constructed by Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal[7] and the Sheesh Mahal near Sikandra constructed by Raja Man Singh I for his sister.[8] However, she also praised an article written by an Englishman for The Statesman newspaper which argued that the money spent building the mausoleums would have been better spent on the "public good."[7]

Death

Devi died on 25 October 1939, aged 83.[2]

References

  1. ^ Gupta, Jayati (23 July 2020). Gupta, Jayati (ed.). "Prasannamayee Devi (Chaudhuri) (1857–1939)". Travel Culture, Travel Writing and Bengali Women, 1870–1940. London: Routledge India. doi:10.4324/9781003054535-9/prasannamayee-devi-chaudhuri-jayati-gupta. Archived from the original on 7 May 2025. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
  2. ^ a b c হোসেন, আলাউল (26 May 2025). "পাবনার কবি ও কবিতা: প্রসন্নময়ী দেবী". মুক্তচিন্তা (in Bengali). Retrieved 6 February 2026.
  3. ^ Ray, Rajat Kanta (1995). Mind, Body, and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial Bengal. Oxford University Press. p. 320. ISBN 978-0-19-563757-1.
  4. ^ Walsh, Judith E. (3 May 2004). Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When Men Gave Them Advice. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-7425-2937-3.
  5. ^ a b c Banerjee, Sumanta (1989). "Marginalization of women's popular culture in nineteenth century Bengal" (PDF). In Sangari, Kukum; Vaid, Sudesh (eds.). Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History. pp. 161–162. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
  6. ^ Deb, Chitra (6 April 2010). Women of The Tagore Household. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5214-187-6.
  7. ^ a b c d Sen, Simonti (5 June 2020). "Emergence of Secular Travel in Bengali Cultural Universe: Some Passing Thoughts". Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. 12 (3): 8–9. doi:10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.01. ISSN 0975-2935. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
  8. ^ a b c d e Murmu, Maroona (2009). "Prasannamayee Devi: Imagining and Imaging Aryavarta". Journal of History. 17: 34, 36, 39. ISSN 0976-5476. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
  9. ^ a b c d e "Prasannamoyee Devi (1857-1939)". StreeShakti. Archived from the original on 16 December 2025. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
  10. ^ Amin, S. N. (1996). The World of Muslim Women in Colonial Bengal, 1876-1939. BRILL. p. 233. ISBN 978-90-04-10642-0.
  11. ^ Chakravarty, Saumitra (2007). Three Sides of Life: Short Stories by Bengali Women Writers. Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-19-568585-5.
  12. ^ Jash, Sanghita (1 June 2022). "NATION, REFORM AND RESISTANCE: Indian Women Writings in the pre-Independence era" (PDF). International Journal of Humanities, Engineering, Science and Management (IJHESM). 3 (1): 133. Retrieved 6 February 2026.
  13. ^ "Literary Practices of Pabna District: Ancient & Modern Period". CPS. 30 October 2024. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
  14. ^ Chatterjee, Kumkum (11 February 2009). The Cultures of History in Early Modern India: Persianization and Mughal Culture in Bengal. Oxford University Press. pp. 256–257. ISBN 978-0-19-908801-0.
  15. ^ a b Murmu, Maroona (5 November 2020), Murmu, Maroona (ed.), "Travel Writings: Her Travails and Negotiations", Words of Her Own, Oxford University Press, pp. 245–308, doi:10.1093/oso/9780199498000.003.0006, ISBN 9780199498000, retrieved 5 February 2026{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  16. ^ Sengupta, Tania (2012). "Between country and city: fluid spaces of provincial administrative towns in nineteenth-century Bengal". Urban History. 39 (1). Cambridge University Press: 56–82. doi:10.1017/S0963926811000782. ISSN 1469-8706. Retrieved 5 February 2026.
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