Bangla Academy organised a lecture session on the life and contributions of renowned litterateur Abdul Karim to observe his 143rd birth anniversary at the Shamsur Rahman Hall of the academy on Monday afternoon.
Noted researcher and litterateur Dr. Israel Khan delivered a lecture titled ‘Itihaser Goti Nirdharoney Abdul Karim Sahittya Bisharad’ at the programme in presence of Shamsuzzaman Khan, director general of Bangla Academy.
‘Abdul Karim took to preserving folk literature specially puthis as the motto of his life. Through the puthis collected and preserved by him, we can understad the way of life and also the socio-cultural condition of the people of medieval Bangla,‘ Dr. Israel Khan said in his paper.
‘The contributions of Abdul Karim were immense in the sense that he actually proved that the Muslims also had an important role in the literary arena of ancient Bangla,’ said Shamsuzzaman Khan.
Abdul Karim (1871-1953), also known as Sahittya Bisharad, had made immense contribution to the literary scene in the country by collecting and preserving folk literature, especially puthis and traditional oral tales on kings, gods and heroes. He collected more than 2,000 Puthis, among which more than 1,000 of them were written by Bengali Muslims. No other person or organisation had collected such an astounding number of puthis before.
Karim’s literary works were first published in the monthly Naba-Nur (1903–06) and are included in the curriculum of secondary, higher secondary, and graduation level Bengali literature in Bangladesh.
-With New Age input
