বাঙালি সাহিত্যভাণ্ডার অত্যন্ত ধনী | The Affluent Store-House of Bengali Literature

Abstract

Rebecca J. Manring started to study Bangla in 1983 with Carol Solomon, famous Lalon researcher and translator and medieval Bangla literature expert. Rebecca Manring afterwards learnt Hindi and Sanskrit languages also. In her interview, she informed that she had academic bachelor degree in Russian language and MA degree in Slavic linguistics. But for her personal interest in south Asian language and culture, she began her PhD in 1985 on the biography of Advaita Acharya, one of the Vaishnava Gurus in medieval Bengal. For her research, she consulted various manuscripts of Vaishnava practices preserved at Kolkata Sahitya Parishad, Asiatic Society, National Library and Shantiniketan in India and Dhaka University Library and Bangla Academy in Bangladesh. She also conducted field research at the birthplace of Advaita Acharya, at the village of Nabagram in the district of Sylhet. In this interview Rebecca commented on her research, field work and Bangla literature and culture. She also described her experiences of working with the old manuscripts in different libraries of Bangladesh and India. In addition, she talked about the sources of analyzing the character of Seeta, the first wife of Advaita Acharya. After she had completed her PhD, she, jointly with Suvadra Kumar Sen of Kolkata, worked on personal collections of Sukumar Sen and prepared an inventory of 1000 manuscripts. For last five years, she has been translating Rupram Chaterjee's Dharmanangol Kabya collected by Sukumar Sen. She is a professor of Sangskrit language at Indiana University in America. At the end of this interview, she shared information about all of the universities in America where there are Bangla Departments or where Bangla is a discipline. Finally, she has drawn readers' attention to the affluent store of Bangla literature.