Krishnadas Shama, a

Gaud Saraswat Brahmin Gaud Saraswat Brahmins (GSB) (also Goud or Gawd) are a Hindu Brahmin community of the north. The Konkani speaking Gaud Saraswat of Goa and southern India claim to be descendents of these Gaud Saraswat Brahmins of the north that migrated to K ...

and native of

Quelossim Quelossim is a village in Mormugao taluka, South Goa, India. This village was known as ''Kardalipura'' in ancient times and had a beautiful temple dedicated to the Mother-Goddess Shri Shantadurga and Shri Kavale Math which was shifted to Kaval ...

Goa Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to th ...

, was the author of ''Krishna Charitrakatha.'' According to verses (''ovis'') 245-250 of this work, it was commenced on 25 April 1526, or Vaishakh Shukla of shake 1448 according to the Hindu calendar. The original manuscript of this work was discovered by

Mariano Saldanha Mariano Jose Luis de Gonzaga Saldanha (1878–1975) of Uskai ( Ucassaim) village in Goa, studied medicine and pharmacy, but went on to become a teacher of Marathi and Sanskrit at the Lyceum in Goa (1915–1929) and of Sanskrit and Konkani at Lis ...

in the Public Library of

Braga Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (i ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, In recognized minority languages of Portugal: :* mwl, República Pertuesa is a country located on the Iberian Peninsula, in Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Macaronesian ...

(first 130 pp. of codex 773, Marathi MS, Roman script). The work has 19 chapters (''ovesvaru'') and 3,123 verses (''ovis''). It is a rendering of the Tenth canto (''Adhyaya'') of the

Bhagavata Purana The ''Bhagavata Purana'' ( sa, भागवतपुराण; ), also known as the ''Srimad Bhagavatam'', ''Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana'' or simply ''Bhagavata'', is one of Hinduism's eighteen great Puranas (''Mahapuranas''). Composed in S ...

. It may be the first extant prose work by a Goan in

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

. Shama may also be the author of the Konkani texts contained in codices 771 and 772 of the Public Library of Braga. These contain stories in prose from the

Ramayana The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages e ...

and

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the K ...

. These manuscripts were found in

Rachol Seminary The Rachol Seminary, also known today as Patriarchal Seminary of Rachol, is the diocesan major seminary of the Primatial Catholic Archdiocese of Goa and Daman in Rachol, Goa, India. Historical outline The edifice that presently houses the semin ...

, in the possession of Dom Francisco Garcia. They were transliterated into

Roman script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

by Jesuit scholars in the 16th century. These may be the first extant prose works in Konkani.

Recognition

The latest building of the

Goa State Central Library Goa State Central Library is the main library in the State of Goa, India. It is located in Panjim (Panaji) and its website claims that it is the first public library to be set up across India, in the early 1830s. Oldest in India According to i ...

Panjim Panaji (; also known as Panjim) is the capital of the Indian state of Goa and the headquarters of North Goa district. Previously, it was the territorial capital of the former Portuguese India. It lies on the banks of the Mandovi river estuary ...

was dedicated to Krishnadas Shama in 2011.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shama, Krishnadas Konkani