Kamayani

Jaishankar Prasad (1889-1937) attended formal school till class eight, because of financial constraints. He drew on his own study of Indian scriptures, philosophy, history, literature, and culture to create works which established him as a giant of Hindi literature in his short life of 48 years. His epic poem Kamayani (1936) is a feast for intellectuals. It operates at three different levels: the gross or mythological, the emotional and the spiritual. Prasad infused the vision of a rishi, a sage, into this work. The reader experiences poetic currents of human emotions - anxiety, hope, desire, love, shyness, sorrow, conflict - and finally emerges at an elevated level of consciousness.