My Science School

Finding inspiration

Markus Zusak's parents, Lisa and Helmut, who had lived in Nazi Germany before moving to Australia, loved regaling him with stories about their experiences in Germany during World War II. One day at dinner, Lisa, who became the inspiration behind the characters of Liesel and Rosa Hubermann, narrated an incident that took place when she was six. She heard a noise that sounded like cattle being herded down the street. When she looked out, she saw people being taken to a concentration camp. Among them, there was an old man who couldn't keep up, and so a boy gave him a piece of bread. They were both whipped, one for giving the bread and the other for taking it. A young Zusak loved listening to these real-life stories and wondered about the lives of ordinary people in Nazi Germany. Later, it is these stories that helped him to write "The Book Thief”, which has been translated into over 40 languages.

The write start

Zusak began writing fiction at the age of 16. However, his first attempt at writing a story about a boy with a cyst on his head that could burst at any time-was not successful. By page eight, he abandoned the effort!

During his initial days of writing, he pursued a degree in teaching. Unfortunately, his first job as a teacher was not quite what he had imagined. It involved cleaning up the mess left behind by students rather than teaching them.

A success story

A loner as a child, Zusak was always drawn to characters on the fringes. And so he wrote about a 15-year-old boy Cameron, a semi autobiographical character, in his first book, "The Underdog", published in 1999. His next book, "Fighting Ruben Wolfe", dealt with the boxing matches he fought with his brother in their backyard. By then, his popularity had grown in Australia.

Despite his writing experience, Zusak was sceptical about his fourth work "The Book Thief”. He thought no one would ever read the book and so revised it 200 times. To his surprise, the book sold over eight million copies worldwide.

Popular works

“The Book Thief”

Published in 2005, 'The Book Thief' is a story of a little blonde girl called Liesel Meminger. She steals books and reading them helps her face the horrors of war with courage. In fact, the first words Liesel reads are those from an instruction manual on grave digging which she flicks from a graveyard. Later, a sick Jew hiding in her foster family's basement teaches her to read and write. The messages he leaves behind on his death embolden her to fight back the Nazi regime and pick up the shreds of life shattered by the war.

"Bridge of Clay"

Zusak wrote his next book 'The Bridge of Clay", nearly 13 years after “The Book Thief". Published in 2018, it depicts the plight of orphans. The story revolves around five brothers coming to terms with the disappearance of their father. Zusak had a hard time finishing the book as he could not decide on the right narrator. For six years a character named Maggie was the narrator of the novel, but upon revision was completely scrapped. Finally, he decided to make Matthew Dunbar the narrator.

 

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On January 16, the government of India announced that the International Gandhi Peace Prize for 2018 would go to Nippon Foundation Chairman Sasakawa Y?hei, for his efforts toward eradicating Hansen’s disease (leprosy) in India and elsewhere around the world. Mr. Sasakawa has been working for elimination of leprosy for more than 40 years. In India, which is the world's most leprosy-afflicted country, he frequently visits the colonies of leprosy patients and recovered people who have been suffering from severe discrimination, and extends support to improve their lives and retain their dignity.

Presenting the award, President Kovind recognized Mr. Sasakawa’s work, commenting, “He has been instrumental in helping us win crucial battles in the war against leprosy – to prevent and eradicate the disease, and to end stigma and discrimination,” and adding “On behalf of India, I must appreciate the services of Mr Sasakawa and his Foundation.”

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Sasakawa expressed his thanks for the prestigious award, noting, “I do not receive it alone. I receive it together with all who have worked with me over the years. This award will certainly give us renewed encouragement from Mahatma Gandhi.” He also called for continued cooperation going forward, adding “Together, we can realize a world where no one needs to suffer from leprosy nor its associated stigma and discrimination.” He also commented that he intends to donate the monetary award to leprosy elimination efforts.

 

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The award was jointly given in 2000 to Nelson Mandela and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.

Grameen Bank (GB) has reversed conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral and created a banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity. GB provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh, without any collateral. At GB, credit is a cost effective weapon to fight poverty and it serves as a catalyst in the overall development of socio-economic conditions of the poor who have been kept outside the banking orbit on the ground that they are poor and hence not bankable.

Grameen Bank’s positive impact on its poor and formerly poor borrowers has been documented in many independent studies carried out by external agencies including the World Bank, the International Food Research Policy Institute (IFPRI) and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).

Muhammad Yunus, the bank’s founder, earned a doctorate in economics from Vanderbilt University in the United States. He was inspired during the terrible Bangladesh famine of 1974 to make a small loan of US$27.00 to a group of 42 families so that they could create small items for sale without the burdens of predatory lending. Yunus believed that making such loans available to a wide population would have a positive impact on the rampant rural poverty in Bangladesh.

The Grameen Bank believes that the best way for participants to learn about how the bank works, is through first hand exposure and observations at the field level. Through these experiences, participants are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the effectiveness of Grameen Bank’s work and the impact it has on the poorest of the poor.

 

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For 2016 jointly to AkshayaPatra Foundation for its contribution in providing mid-day meals to millions of children across India and Sulabh International for its contribution in improving the condition of sanitation in India and emancipation of manual scavengers.

Sulabh International is an India-based social service organization that works to promote human rights, environmental sanitation, non-conventional sources of energy, waste management and social reforms through education. The organization counts 50,000 volunteers. Sulabh International is the largest nonprofit organization in India.

Sulabh was founded by Bindeshwar Pathak from Bihar State in 1970 .And have 50,000 volunteers Innovations include a scavenging-free two-pit pourflush toilet (Sulabh Shauchalaya); safe and hygienic on-site human waste disposal technology; a new concept of maintenance and construction of pay-&-use public toilets, popularly known as Sulabh Complexes with bath, laundry and urinal facilities being used by about ten million people every day and generates bio-gas and biofertilizer produced from excreta-based plants, low maintenance waste water treatment plants of medium capacity for institutions and industries. Other work includes setting up English-medium public school in New Delhi and also a network of centres all over the country to train boys and girls from poor families, specially scavengers, so that they can compete in open job market.

 

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Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been selected for the Gandhi Peace Prize for 2014 for its contribution to the country’s development through space technology and satellite-based services.

The award, comprising Rs.one crore and a citation, was decided after the jury for the prize met under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.

Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu, Leader of the single largest Opposition Party in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, senior Member of Parliament L.K. Advani and Gopalkrishna Gandhi are other members of the jury.

The Gandhi Peace Prize for social, economic and political transformation through non-violence was instituted in 1995.

 

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Chandi Prasad Bhatt (born 1934) is an Indian Gandhian environmentalist and social activist, who founded Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS) in Gopeshwar in 1964, which later became a mother-organization to the Chipko Movement, in which he was one of the pioneers, and for which he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1982, followed by the Padma Bhushan in 2005. Today he is known for his work on subaltern social ecology, and considered one of India's first modern environmentalist. In 2013, he was the recipient of the Gandhi Peace Prize.

This is an annual award given to individuals and institutions for their outstanding contributions towards social, economic and political transformation through non-violence, and other Gandhian methods, for amelioration of human sufferings particularly of the less privileged sections of the society, contributing social justice and harmony.

A decision of a group of peasants in a remote Himalayan village (Reni village of Chamoli, Uttrakhand) to stop a group of loggers from felling a patch of trees has been termed as Chipko Movement. The name was dubbed as the protesters hugged trees to protect them from being felled. This landmark struggle to protect trees started on 27 March 1973 and can be considered as the modern Indian environmental movement.

 

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Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, established with the blessings of Mahatma Gandhi, has bagged the coveted Gandhi Peace Prize for 2002.

A five-member jury headed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has chosen Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan for its "significant contribution towards spreading peace and and harmony among all religions and communities on the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi as also integration of best of ancient and modern values".

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is an Indian educational trust. It was founded on 7 November 1938 by Dr. K. M. Munshi, with the support of Mahatma Gandhi. The trust programmes through its 119 centres in India, 7 centres abroad and 367 constituent institutions, cover "all aspects of life from the cradle to the grave and beyond – it fills a growing vacuum in modern life", as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru observed when he first visited the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1950.

The trust operates a number of primary and secondary institutes in India and abroad. It organizes and runs 100 private schools in India.[4] The schools are known as Bharatiya Vidya Mandir, Bhavan's Vidya Mandir, or Bhavan's Vidyalaya.

The Bhavan significantly grew as a cultural organization and became a global foundation under the leadership of Sundaram Ramakrishnan who took over as the director after the death of Munshi in 1971. The first foreign centre was opened in London in 1972.

 

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Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian anti-colonial activist, politician, and political theorist. He governed Tanganyika as Prime Minister from 1961 to 1962 and then as President from 1963 to 1964, after which he led its successor state, Tanzania, as President from 1964 to 1985. A founding member of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) party—which in 1977 became the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party—he chaired it until 1990. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he promoted a political philosophy known as Ujamaa.

A committed pan-Africanist, Nyerere provided a home for a number of African liberation movements including the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan African Congress (PAC) of South Africa, Frelimo when seeking to overthrow Portuguese rule in Mozambique, Zanla (and Robert Mugabe) in their struggle to unseat the white regime in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He also opposed the brutal regime of Idi Amin in Uganda. Following a border invasion by Amin in 1978, a 20,000-strong Tanzanian army along with rebel groups, invaded Uganda. It took the capital, Kampala, in 1979, restoring Uganda’s first President, Milton Obote, to power. The battle against Amin was expensive and placed a strain on government finances. There was considerable criticism within Tanzania that he had both overlooked domestic issues and had not paid proper attention to internal human rights abuses. Tanzania was a one party state — and while there was a strong democratic element in organization and a concern for consensus, this did not stop Nyerere using the Preventive Detention Act to imprison opponents. In part this may have been justified by the need to contain divisiveness, but there does appear to have been a disjuncture between his commitment to human rights on the world stage, and his actions at home.

 

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"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well- And staying true to his words, John Griffith Chaney, aka Jack London, did exactly that. Overcoming extreme poverty and hardship, London went on to pen timeless classics that made him one of the first highest paid American authors.

From his first book The Son of the Wolf Tales of the Far North to his bestsellers "The Call of the Wild and "White Fang". London wrote about characters - human and canine struggling to survive in a cold, hard world, something he had closely experienced.

Like the characters in his books. London had a tough life. With his family under constant financial strain, he started working in the docks at a young age. In the proximity of the sea and listening to the sailors talk about their sea-faring adventures. London yearned for some adventures of his own.

Dropping out of school at the age of 14, he bought a small boat and went to San Francisco Bay. On the way, he tried his hand at oyster fishing and even worked for the government fish patrol to capture poachers who fished illegally.

At the end of the voyage, however, real life awaited him. The Great Depression had left thousands unemployed. And London joined them in their desperate search for jobs. Ferrying illegally on freight trains, he travelled the length and breadth of the country, but did not find employment. Instead, he discovered his calling as a writer.

The write start

Unable to find a job even after graduation, London took up writing as a full-time profession. He drew up a daily timetable to write sonnets, ballads and adventure stories, and increased his pace steadily. His first book, "The Son of the Wolf Tales of the Far North" was published in 1900. The stories of his Alaskan adventures won praise for their fresh subject matter and force.

In 1897, he embarked upon another adventure: this time to the gold mines of Yukon in Canada to experience the life of the workers in the Klondike Gold Rush. His experiences became the basis of his book "The Call of the Wild". It made him a bestselling author.

From the trenches

A few years later, in 1904, London began to work as a war correspondent. This marked the beginning of yet another chapter in his exploits. As a war correspondent during the Russo-Japanese war, London defied the Japanese and risked his life to get to the front lines in Korea. Instead of reporting from Japan, London hired a boat and risked his life to crossed the Yellow Sea in the middle of a storm to reach the Korean coast. However, his adventure came to an end as soon as he reached the front lines. He was arrested by the Korean police and later released.

Writing from experience

London's writing was based on things he had experienced. To write on a particular subject, he would completely immerse himself into it. For instance, once to expose the adverse conditions of Europe's working class population, he posed as an American sailor stranded there. For nearly seven weeks, he wandered the streets to get a firsthand experience of how people felt. He slept in doss houses (cheap lodging for homeless people) and even lived in London's slums. He wrote about his experiences in one of his most important works "The People of the Abyss." His adventures set him apart from other writers. And on November 22, 1916, he died in his home on a ranch in California. His legac lives on.

Oh, really?

• In addition to his writings. Jack London was a prolific photographer. His photographs of east London's slums highlighted the abject poverty in which many of the Londoners were forced to live even as Great Britain was expanding its empire overseas.


• As a war correspondent in Asia, London attempted to sail around the world on his own boat, but the journey ended abruptly in Australia.

Popular works

Published in 1903, " The Call of the Wild" is about a pet dog named Buck, who is abducted from his home and forced to work as a sled dog in Alaska. Buck has to fight to survive and dominate other dogs, and eventually embrace his wild ancestry. "The White Fang (1906) is a companion novel to "The Call of the Wild". Both the novels explore the world of humans from the point of view of animals. The books also explore complex themes, including morality and redemption.

 

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"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is a lyric poem by William Wordsworth. It is Wordsworth's best-known work.

The poem was inspired by an event on 15 April 1802 in which Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came across a "long belt" of daffodils.

Wordsworth was aware of the appropriateness of the idea of daffodils which “flash upon that inward eye” because in his 1815 version he added a note commenting on the "flash" as an "ocular spectrum". Coleridge in Biographia Literaria of 1817, while acknowledging the concept of "visual spectrum" as being "well known", described Wordsworth's (and Mary's) lines, among others, as "mental bombast". Fred Blick has shown that the idea of flashing flowers was derived from the "Elizabeth Linnaeus Phenomenon", so called because of the discovery of flashing flowers by Elizabeth Linnaeus in 1762. Wordsworth described it as "rather an elementary feeling and simple impression (approaching to the nature of an ocular spectrum) upon the imaginative faculty, rather than an exertion of it..." The phenomenon was reported upon in 1789 and 1794 by Erasmus Darwin, whose work Wordsworth certainly read.

The entire household thus contributed to the poem. Nevertheless, Wordsworth's biographer Mary Moorman notes that Dorothy was excluded from the poem, even though she had seen the daffodils together with Wordsworth. The poem itself was placed in a section of Poems in Two Volumes entitled "Moods of my Mind" in which he grouped together his most deeply felt lyrics. Others included "To a Butterfly", a childhood recollection of chasing butterflies with Dorothy, and "The Sparrow's Nest", in which he says of Dorothy "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears".

 

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Goblin Market, poem by Christina Rossetti, published in 1862 in the collection Goblin Market and Other Poems. Comprising 567 irregularly rhyming lines, the poem recounts the plight of Laura, who succumbs to the enticement of the goblins and eats the fruit they sell. 

Christina Georgina Rossetti was born on December 5, 1830, in London, England, the fourth child of an Italian immigrant family with strong literary and artistic leanings. Her father, Gabrielle Rossetti, was an Italian poet and political exile whose support for revolutionary nationalism drove him to seek refuge in England. One of Rossetti's brothers was the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His work is also discussed and studied today. Her other brother, William Michael Rossetti, was a writer and critic who later acted as her editor. Both brothers were members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood art movement. Rossetti's sister, Maria Francesca Rossetti, was an author who later in life became an Anglican nun. Indeed, Rossetti dedicated "Goblin Market" to Maria. Rossetti's mother, Frances Polidori (later Rossetti), was the daughter of another Italian exile and the sister of John Polidori, the physician of the famous poet Lord Byron.

Rossetti had struggled with ill health since her teens, when a doctor (probably inadequately) diagnosed her condition as "religious mania." In 1871, she became seriously ill with Graves' disease. The illness affected her heart and permanently altered her appearance, causing her eyes to protrude. In May, 1892, Rossetti was diagnosed with breast cancer. A mastectomy performed in her home proved ineffectual, and she died in London two years later on December 29, 1894. Her brother William continued to edit and publish her poetry after her death.

 

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Edgar Allan Poe, American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His “The Raven” (1845) numbers among the best-known poems in the national literature.

Poe and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. He and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.

After his early attempts at poetry, Poe had turned his attention to prose, likely based on John Neal's critiques in The Yankee magazine. He placed a few stories with a Philadelphia publication and began work on his only drama Politian. The Baltimore Saturday Visiter awarded him a prize in October 1833 for his short story "MS. Found in a Bottle". The story brought him to the attention of John P. Kennedy, a Baltimorean of considerable means who helped Poe place some of his stories and introduced him to Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe became assistant editor of the periodical in August 1835, but White discharged him within a few weeks for being drunk on the job. Poe returned to Baltimore where he obtained a license to marry his cousin Virginia on September 22, 1835, though it is unknown if they were married at that time. He was 26 and she was 13.

Poe was reinstated by White after promising good behavior, and he went back to Richmond with Virginia and her mother. He remained at the Messenger until January 1837. During this period, Poe claimed that its circulation increased from 700 to 3,500. He published several poems, book reviews, critiques, and stories in the paper. On May 16, 1836, he and Virginia held a Presbyterian wedding ceremony at their Richmond boarding house, with a witness falsely attesting Clemm's age as 21.

 

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A sonnet is a poem generally structured in the form of 14 lines, usually iambic pentameter, that expresses a thought or idea and utilizes an established rhyme scheme. As a poetic form, the sonnet was developed by an early thirteenth century Italian poet, Giacomo da Lentini. However, it was the Renaissance Italian poet Petrarch that perfected and made this poetic literary device famous. Sonnets were adapted by Elizabethan English poets, and William Shakespeare in particular.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are composed of 14 lines, and most are divided into three quatrains and a final, concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. This sonnet form and rhyme scheme is known as the ‘English’ sonnet. It first appeared in the poetry of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who translated Italian sonnets into English as well as composing his own. Many later Renaissance English writers used this sonnet form, and Shakespeare did so particularly inventively. His sonnets vary its configurations and effects repeatedly. Shakespearean sonnets use the alternate rhymes of each quatrain to create powerful oppositions between different lines and different sections, or to develop a sense of progression across the poem. The final couplet can either provide a decisive, epigrammatic conclusion to the narrative or argument of the rest of the sonnet, or subvert it. 

Some critics argue that the Fair Youth sequence follows a story-line told by Shakespeare. Evidence that corroborates this is that the sonnets show a constant change of attitude that would seem to follow a day-by-day private journal entry. Furthermore, there is an argument that the Fair Youth sequence was written to Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. Critics believe that Shakespeare would like him to marry and have an heir so that his beauty would live forever. The historical timeline of the procreation sonnets directly relates to William Cecil Lord Burghley and the pressure he put on Southampton to marry his granddaughter Lady Elizabeth Vere (daughter of Edward de Vere). To this day the relationship between Henry Wriothesly and Shakespeare is debated due to the fact that some believe it was romantic in nature, and not platonic. Regardless most critics agree that Shakespeare wrote this sonnet in order to convince him to produce an heir.

 

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Emily Dickinson has received considerable attention during the 100 years since her death on May 15, 1886, and yet she remains almost as mysterious as Shakespeare. Some of her lines are so familiar that we quote them without knowing we are doing so: ''The Soul selects her own Society''; ''I'm Nobody! Who are you? / Are you - Nobody - Too?''; ''Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed''; ''Parting is all we know of heaven, / And all we need of hell.'' They have entered our language with some of the anonymous authority of proverbs.

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but only for one year. Throughout her life, she seldom left her home and visitors were few. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she first met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and some critics believe his departure gave rise to the heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson in the years that followed. While it is certain that he was an important figure in her life, it is not clear that their relationship was romantic—she called him “my closest earthly friend.” Other possibilities for the unrequited love that was the subject of many of Dickinson’s poems include Otis P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court judge, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican.

Dickinson's great poetic achievement was not fully realized until years after her death, even though Dickinson understood her own genius when she lived. Many scholars now identify Dickinson's style as the forerunner, by more than fifty years, of modern poetry. At the time in which Dickinson wrote, the conventions of poetry demanded strict form. Dickinson's broken meter, unusual rhythmic patterns, and assonance struck even respected critics of the time as sloppy and inept. In time, her style was echoed by many of our most revered poets, including Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. However, while she lived, the few publishers could not appreciate the innovation of Dickinson's form. Her unique technique discomfited them, and they could not see beyond it to appreciate her jewels of imagery and her unexpected and fresh metaphors.

Dickinson's niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Dickinson's sister Lavinia collected and published some of Dickinson's poetry after her death, but the world was still slow to recognize Dickinson. In 1945, the collection of poems titled Bolts of Melody was published. In 1955 Dickinson's letters and selected commentaries on her life and work were published, and in 1960, her complete poems, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, were published. At last the world began to recognize Dickinson's innovation and brilliance. Today, Dickinson is ensconced in the canon and almost universally considered one of the greatest poets in history.

In recent years, many scholars have rejected the popular view of Emily Dickinson as a heartsick recluse who spent her entire life pining for an unnamed lover, foregoing sex and companionship in order to concentrate more fully on her writing. Some scholars have argued that research on Emily Dickinson has focused too heavily on her personal life and on the importance of men to her poetry. There can be no doubt, however, that her poetry was a forerunner to modern poetry and that her poems contained some of the most unusual and daring innovations in the history of American poetry.

Dickinson was experimenting with the form and structure of the poem. Many of her innovations form the basis of modern poetry. She sent her poems as birthday greetings and as valentines, but her love poetry was private. She tied it in tight little bundles and hid it away. She did, however, seek out a mentor in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a prominent literary critic in Boston. They began a correspondence that would last for the rest of her life. Though she doggedly sought out his advice, she never took the advice he gave, much to Higginson's annoyance.

 

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Seven works of Kalidasa are known till date which include three epics, namely: Abhijnanasakuntalam, Malavikagnimitram and Vikramorvasiyam; two epic poems, namely: Raghuvamsa and Kumarasambhava; and two khandakavyas or minor poems, namely Meghadutam and Ritusamhara.

The Raghuvamsha treats of the family to which the great hero Rama belonged, commencing with its earliest antecedents and encapsulating the principal events told in the Raamaayana of Valmiki. But like the Kumarasambhava, the last nine cantos of which are clearly the addition of another poet, the Raghuvamsha ends rather abruptly, suggesting either that it was left unfinished by the poet or that its final portion was lost early.

Kalidasa has been lauded for his literary brilliance from the time of the inception of his works. His works have been a source of inspiration for various writers who have followed. Being written in Sanskrit, his works would have been limited to the upper varnas of society. He is contested to be a Brahmin whose works were centred around men and power. Brahminical hegemony, as a function of land grants made to them, worsened the status of lower varnas due to exploitation at the hands of landowners. The idea which the dominant section of the society wanted to propagate was at the centre of his works. His works tried to manifest the idea of the Gupta age being the “Golden Age”. This itself explains the reason for his works being very popular.

Therefore, this essay establishes that his works were the reflection of his society, written with a male Brahmin’s perspective, limited to a section of society which was in power due to changes in the economic infrastructure, popular because they depicted the mindset of the audience and sounded music to their ears, and remained popular during the course of time among other Sanskrit writers.

 

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