Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

Kopal-Kundala Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

Kapalkundala or Kopal-Kundala also known as Mrinmoyee, is a Bengali romance novel by Indian writer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Published in 1866, it is a story of a forest-dwelling girl named Kapalkundala, who fell in love and got married to Nabakumar, a young gentleman from Saptagram, but eventually found that she is unable to adjust herself with the city life. Following the success of Chattopadhyay's first novel Durgeshnandini, he decided to write about a girl who is brought up in a remote forest by a Kapalika (Tantrik sage) and never saw anyone but her foster-father. The story is set in Dariapur, Contai in modern-day Purba Medinipur district, Paschimbanga (West Bengal) where Chattopadhyay served as a Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector. Kapalkundala is considered as one of the finest and the most popular of Chattopadhyay's novels. It has been translated into English, German, Hindi, Gujrati, Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit. Girish Chandra Ghosh, one of the pioneers of Bengali drama, and Atul Krishna Mitra dramatized the novel separately