Siddhidas Mahaju ( ne, सिद्धिदास महाजु) (alternative name: Siddhidas Amatya) (15 October 1867 – 29 December 1929) was a Nepalese poet and one of the

Four Pillars of Nepal Bhasa Four Pillars of Nepal Bhasa ( ne, नेपालभाषाका चार स्तम्भ, Newar: नेपाल भाषाया प्यंगः थां) are the four leaders who spearheaded the campaign to revive the Newar lang ...

. He was at the forefront in the endeavour to revive literature in Nepal Bhasa that had become stagnant as a result of official suppression. He has been honored with the title Great Poet.

Early life

Mahaju was born in Kel Tol,

Kathmandu , pushpin_map = Nepal Bagmati Province#Nepal#Asia , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = Bagmati Prov ...

to father Laxmi Narayan and mother Harsha Laxmi. He studied at home under various tutors, and married Ganga Devi at an early age.

Career

Mahaju looked after his family's cloth shop as a young man after a stint in government service in 1886. He had to travel frequently to

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

, India to purchase stock, and he took advantage of the opportunity to browse libraries and book stores. In Kathmandu, he spent more time composing poetry than looking after business, and his cloth shop suffered. Finding it difficult to make ends meet, he went to

Birgunj Birgunj ( ne, वीरगञ्ज) is a metropolitan city in Parsa District in Madhesh Province of southern Nepal. It lies south of the capital Kathmandu, attached in the north to Raxaul in the border of the Indian state of Bihar. As an entr ...

to work for a trader as a freight forwarder. Mahaju returned to Kathmandu after a few years when business dried up. His economic condition worsened; and in 1927, he got a job as an assistant at a medicine shop. Distressed by an unhappy family life and bad health, Mahaju went to live with his sister during his final days. He died at

Pashupati Pashupati (Sanskrit ''Paśupati''; devanagari पशुपति ) is a Hindu deity and an incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva as "lord of the animals". Pashupati is mainly worshipped in Nepal and India. Pashupati is also the national deity of Ne ...

Works

Mahaju wrote more than 44 books of poetry, epics, short stories and essays. ''Sajjan Hridayabharan'', a book of poems on morals, was the only one published during his lifetime. It was published from

Bettiah Bettiah is a city and administrative headquarters of West Champaran district ( Tirhut Division) - ( Tirhut), near Indo-Nepal border, north-west of Patna, in Bihar state of India. History In 1244 A.D., Gangeshwar Dev, a Bhumihar Brahmin ...

, India in 1920. Mahaju composed ''Siddhi Ramayana'', a translation of the epic

Ramayana The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...

in Nepal Bhasa, in 1913. It was published by Thaunkanhe Prakashan in 2010. Other notable works include ''Satyasati'' (an epic on female education and considered to be his best work, written in 1913) and ''Siddhi Vyakaran'' (a grammar of Nepal Bhasa, written in 1927).

Legacy

In 1980, the Postal Service Department of the government of Nepal issued a commemorative postage stamp of Mahaju. A street in central Kathmandu was named Siddhidas Marg in his honor by

Kathmandu Metropolitan City , pushpin_map = Nepal Bagmati Province#Nepal#Asia , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = Bagmati Provi ...

. A statue of Mahaju was erected in

Hetauda Hetauda ( ne, हेटौडा, ) is a sub-metropolitan city in the Makwanpur District of Bagmati Province in central Nepal. It is the administrative headquarters of the Makwanpur District and the capital of Bagmati Province as declared by m ...

in 2006. A statue of poet Siddhidash Mahaju was established at Ratnapark, Kathmandu on the day of his birth anniversary on September 29, 2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mahaju, Siddhidas 1867 births 1929 deaths People from Kathmandu Newar people 20th-century Nepalese poets Translators of the Ramayana Newar-language writers Nepalese male short story writers Nepalese short story writers Nepal Bhasa movement Nepalese male poets 20th-century male writers Newar-language poets from Nepal