Sisir Kumar Das

Sisir Kumar Das
Name	Sisir Kumar Das
Native name	সিশির কুমার দাস
Birth date	1 January 1924
Birth place	Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
Death date	12 September 2002
Death place	Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Occupation	Scholar, poet, critic, translator, Professor
Known for	History of Indian literature, comparative literature, translation studies
Alma mater	Presidency College, University of Calcutta, University of Paris (Sorbonne)

Sisir Kumar Das was an Indian poet, literary historian, critic, translator, and professor noted for his pioneering work in the history of Indian literature and comparative literature in South Asia. He produced extensive scholarly syntheses that connected ancient Vedic literature, Sanskrit traditions, medieval Bengali literature, and modern Indian English literature with global currents such as French literature, German literature, Greek literature, and Latin literature. His work bridged institutions like the University of Calcutta, the University of Paris, and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations while engaging with figures including Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Sri Aurobindo.

Early life and education

Born in Calcutta in 1924, he studied at Presidency College, Kolkata and completed degrees at the University of Calcutta where he read English literature and studied texts by William Shakespeare, John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Alexander Pope. He pursued postgraduate research influenced by scholars at the Asiatic Society and mentors who engaged with Bengali Renaissance figures such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Keshab Chandra Sen. Later he undertook doctoral work in comparative literature and spent time at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), encountering criticism from traditions including New Criticism, Structuralism, and thinkers like Roland Barthes and Paul Ricoeur.

Academic career and positions

He served as a professor and head of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Calcutta and held visiting fellowships at institutions including the University of Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of Chicago, and the University of Toronto. He collaborated with academic bodies such as the Indian Council of Historical Research, the University Grants Commission (India), and the Sahitya Akademi while participating in conferences organized by the Modern Language Association and the International Comparative Literature Association. His teaching linked curricula across departments of English literature, Bengali literature, and Classics and influenced programs at the Jadavpur University and the Visva-Bharati University.

Literary works and scholarship

As a poet and critic he published poetry in Bengali literature and essays engaging with the oeuvres of Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Kazi Nazrul Islam, and Jibanananda Das. Major scholarly works traced literary developments from Vedic literature and Pali texts to medieval Persian literature and modern Indian English literature. He edited and translated texts by Bengali poets and dramatists including Dwijendralal Roy, Manmohan Ghose, and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay and brought attention to cross-cultural contacts with Persian and Arabic traditions via studies on Mughal Empire patronage and the influence of Sufism. He engaged with theoretical frameworks advanced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Mikhail Bakhtin, Antonio Gramsci, and Edward Said to situate South Asian literatures in global contexts.

Contributions to comparative literature

He pioneered a panoramic "History of Indian Literature" that integrated regional literatures such as Sanskrit literature, Prakrit, Pali, Apabhramsa, Bengali literature, Hindi literature, Tamil literature, Telugu literature, Kannada literature, and Malayalam literature while mapping contacts with Greek literature, Roman literature, Persian literature, Arabic literature, Chinese literature, and Japanese literature. His methodology combined philology, translation studies, reception theory, and intertextuality drawing on scholars like Jan Vansina, Ernst Renan, A. K. Coomaraswamy, and S. K. Maity. He organized seminars and edited volumes with contributors from the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Oriental Institute, Oxford, and the Calcutta University Press to promote comparative approaches across departments such as Indology and Classical studies.

Awards and recognitions

His work received recognition from bodies including the Sahitya Akademi and the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and he was honored by universities such as the University of Calcutta and the Visva-Bharati University. He was invited to deliver lectures at venues like the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and the American Council of Learned Societies. His books were reviewed in journals including the Modern Asian Studies, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Comparative Literature Studies, and the Economic and Political Weekly.

Personal life and legacy

He maintained close intellectual ties with contemporaries such as Satyajit Ray, Amartya Sen, Pranab Mukherjee, Amiya Chakravarty (literary critic), and Suniti Kumar Chatterji and influenced younger scholars at institutions including the Indian Statistical Institute and the National Library of India. His students and followers work across universities like the Delhi University, the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the University of Mysore, and international centers such as the University of California, Berkeley and the Harvard University Department of South Asian Studies. His corpus remains a touchstone for research in comparative literature and the historiography of Indian literature and continues to be cited in projects at the Sahitya Akademi and archival initiatives at the National Archives of India.

Category:1924 births Category:2002 deaths Category:Indian literary critics Category:Indian poets Category:Comparative literature scholars