{{Short description|Episodic love poem by Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1936)}} {{Infobox book | name = Muna Madan | author = Laxmi Prasad Devkota | language = Nepali | country = Nepal | genre = Romance | image = File:Muna Madan - book cover.jpg | subject = Narrative poetry | pages = 41 | oclc = 712775523 | title_orig = मुनामदन }}
'''''Muna Madan''''' ({{langx|ne|मुनामदन}}) is a 1936 Nepali-language episodic love poem written by Laxmi Prasad Devkota. It is about Madan, newly married to Muna, who leaves for Lhasa in Tibet to make his fortune, despite protests from his wife.
== Synopsis == ''Muna Madan'' follows the life of Madan, a Chhetri man from Kathmandu who leaves Muna, his wife, to go to Lhasa to earn a fortune. He is cautioned against leaving by both Muna and his elderly mother, but he decides to leave anyway. While he initially intends to spend just a few weeks in Lhasa, he spends a longer time there to earn more fortune, but he can't tolerate the cold. After talking with his friends, he finally starts to set off for Kathmandu but falls sick with jaundice on the way. His travelling companion, Ram, returns to Kathmandu and tells Muna that her husband has died.
But Madan is rescued by a 'Bhote', a Tibetan man. Tibet is called 'Bhot' in the Nepali language, drawn from the classical Tibetan name for Tibet, Bod. The Tibetan nurses Madan back to health, leading Madan to realize that men are great not because of their castes nor race but because of their hearts and humanity.<ref>Peebles, Patrick (2012). ''Voices of South Asia: Essential Readings from Antiquity to the Present.'' M.E. Sharpe. {{ISBN|9780765620729}}. Page 157.</ref> In the Nepali Hindu caste system, a Tibetan, as a meat-eating Buddhist, would have been considered 'untouchable' by devout Hindus. The couplet uttered by Madan while touching the Tibetan's feet, a sign of great respect in Khas Nepali culture, has since taken on the status of modern proverbs, often uttered by Nepalis in their daily speech:<ref name=":1">Hutt, Michael (1991). ''Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature.'' University of California Press.
{{ISBN|9780520070486}}.</ref> {| class="wikitable" |+ !In Nepali !Translation (by Michael Hutt)<ref name=":13">Hutt, Michael (1991). ''Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature.'' University of California Press. {{ISBN|9780520070486}}.</ref> |- |{{Poem quote|text={{lang|ne|क्षेत्रीको छोरो यो पाउ छुन्छ, घिनले छुँदैन; <br>मानिस ठूलो दिलले हुन्छ जातले हुँदैन}}}} |{{Poem quote|text=Son of a Chhetri touches your feet, but not with contempt,<br>a person is great by his heart, not by his name nor his caste.}} |}
When Madan finally returns to Kathmandu, he discovers that his elderly mother has died of old age while Muna has died of a broken heart.<ref>Shrestha, Dayaram (2006). ''Nepal Sahitya Ka Kehi Prista.'' Lalitpur: Sajha Prakashan.</ref> Madan comes to conclusion that riches have little value when you have no one to share them with. He vows to follow them into death and subsequently passes away at the end of the poem.
== Inspiration == Devkota's ''Muna Madan'' is believed to be based on an 18th-century Nepal Bhasa ballad called 'Ji Waya La Lachhi Maduni' ('It has not been a month since I came').<ref>{{cite web |last=Hutt |first=Michael |date=July 1994 |title=Book Review |url=http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/contributions/pdf/CNAS_21_02_reviews.pdf |access-date=27 June 2012 |work=Contributions to Nepalese Studies |publisher=Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University}} Page 253.</ref><ref name=":0">{{cite web |last=Bandhu |first=C. M. |date=December 2006 |title=Folklore Studies in Nepal: A Historical Survey |url=http://nepalfolklore.org/download/Bulletin3.pdf |access-date=17 July 2012 |work=Nepali Folklore and Folklife |publisher=Nepali Folklore Society}} Page 5.</ref><ref name=":1" /> The song, which is popular in Newar society, tells the story of a merchant from Kathmandu who leaves for Tibet on business, leaving behind his newly wed bride. The wife is concerned for his safety as the journey to Tibet is filled with hardships, and she pleads with him not to go. But he leaves despite her protests. When he returns home after many years, he finds that she has died.<ref>Lienhard, Siegfried (1992). ''Songs of Nepal: An Anthology of Nevar Folksongs and Hymns.'' New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas. {{ISBN|81-208-0963-7}}. Page 84.</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Von Bohlen |first=Dominik |date=December 2012 |title=Muna Madan |url=http://ecs.com.np/feature_detail.php?f_id=571 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121226055408/http://ecs.com.np/feature_detail.php?f_id=571 |archive-date=26 December 2012 |access-date=18 December 2012 |publisher=ECS Nepal}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Shakya |first1=Ravi |title=Ji Wayala Lachhi Maduni (Pushpa Chitrakar) |url=https://www.academia.edu/4060751 |journal=Academia.edu |access-date=19 July 2013}}</ref>
== Writing == Before ''Muna Madan'', Devkota had primarily been influenced by the English Romantics, but with this poem, he took a quintessentially Nepali folk tradition as his inspiration, the ''jhyaure'' meter.<ref name=":1" /> Devkota was reportedly inspired to write a poem in ''jhyaure'' by the singing of women plating rice in the fields during the Nepali month of Asar.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> He chose to write in ''Asare Jhyaure,'' the poetic meter of central Nepali rice-planting songs.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Stirr|first=Anna|date=January 2015|title=Sounding and Writing a Nepali Public Sphere: The music and language of Jhyaure|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282485474|journal=Asian Music|volume=46|issue=1|pages=3–38|doi=10.1353/amu.2015.0008|s2cid=145492980 |via=Project MUSE}}</ref> His choice of the jhyaure meter was controversial, as the folk meter was associated among Kathmandu's literary elite with flirtation and the erotic. Stirr argues that the poem "created a link between his elite world and the worlds of ordinary Nepali people of various castes and ethnic groups, bringing hallmarks of folk song and vernacular erotic poetry into a refined atmosphere where meticulous Sanskrit aesthetics and Brahminical Hindu morality were the norms."<ref name=":2" />
Devkota also moved away from the baroque style of the Romantics and wrote ''Muna Madan'' in much simpler Nepali, an attempt to create something that was purely Nepali in character. Devkota also used the epic form to comment on various socio-political issues, namely the pursuit of wealth at the cost of family and the Hindu caste system. Another of the poem's couplets that has entered common usage occurs when Muna is entreating Madan not to go to Lhasa for the sake of riches: {| class="wikitable" !In Nepali !Translation (by Michael Hutt)<ref name=":12">Hutt, Michael (1991). ''Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature.'' University of California Press. {{ISBN|9780520070486}}.</ref> |- |{{Poem quote|text={{lang|ne|हातका मैला सुनका थैला के गर्नु धनले<br>साग र सिस्नु खाएको बेस आनन्दी मनले}}}} |{{Poem quote|text=Purses of gold are like the dirt on your hands, what can be done with wealth?<br>Better to eat only nettles and greens with happiness in your heart.}} |} Although Devkota would go on to produce epic works of immense literary significance, like ''Shakuntala'', ''Sulochana'', and ''Maharana Pratap'', Muna Madan was reportedly his most beloved poem. While on his deathbed in 1959, he is believed to have said that "even though all of his works might perish after his demise, ''Muna and Madan'' should be saved".<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|title=Muna Madan|url=http://ecs.com.np/features/muna-madan|access-date=2020-08-25|website=ECS NEPAL|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":1" />
Muna Madan remains one of the most commercially successful Nepali books ever published.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}
== Characters == * Madan – A Chhetri man from Kathmandu who goes to Lhasa to earn money. * Muna – Madan's newly married wife. * Aama – Madan's mother. * Bhote - who saves Madan's life.(tibetian) * Ram – Madan's companion. * Sister - who goes to in - law home. * Chyangba - who saved Madan when he was sick in the middle of nowhere. * Bada kaji - who gives debt to other villagers. * Kaji - who loves Muna.
== Themes == At the heart of the poem is the relationship between Madan and Muna, hence the title of the play. While ostensibly a love poem, much of the narrative follows Madan on his journey to Lhasa and back. The overall theme of the poem is that the pursuit of material wealth can have serious consequences and that riches are of no use when there is no one to share them with.<ref name=":3" /> Devkota also makes a bold statement against the prevailing caste system, by having his devout Chhetri protagonist touch the feet of the 'untouchable' Tibetan man.
The poem presents a distinct contrast between the masculine Madan who goes off on a trip (to Lhasa) to provide for his family and the feminine Muna who is "a paragon of high-caste Hindu female virtue, enclosed in the home and waiting for her husband".<ref name=":2" />
== Influence == ''Muna Madan'' is among Devkota's most popular and most accessible works. It is regularly studied in schools as an introduction to modern Nepali poetry and remains a best-seller for its publisher, Sajha Prakashan. Its impact on Nepali language and culture is perhaps second to none, with many rhyming couplets entering the Nepali vernacular as proverbs.<ref name=":3" />
Hutt has also argued that ''Muna Madan'' established the jhyāure meter as one of the “native” meters of Nepal.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hutt, Michael (Michael J.)|title=Nepali, a national language and its literature|date=1988|publisher=Sterling Publishers|isbn=81-207-0698-6|location=New Delhi|oclc=21679215}}</ref>
== Adaptations == The poem has been adapted into a movie of the same name. The film was directed by Gyanendra Deuja, starring Aviyana Dhakal and Usha Poudel in the role of Muna. ''Muna Madan'' was Nepal's official submission for the 2004 Academy Awards.<ref>{{cite web | last =Chi| first =Minnie| url = http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=6975| title =Nepal's Submission for Best Foreign Language Film (Academyय Award)| publisher =UCLA International Institute| date=23 January 2004| access-date = 1 July 2012}}</ref>
==See also== *Heer Ranjha *Romeo and Juliet
==References== {{Reflist}}
== External links == * [http://literature.wnso.org/2002/munamadan.htm Adaptation in English] * [https://pustakalaya.org/documents/detail/8977bde1-d886-4515-aeb2-4c538d02928e/ Official e-book in Nepali] {{Works by Lakshmiprasad Devkota |state=collapsed}}{{Nepali literature|state=collapsed}}{{Authority control}}
Category:1936 poems Category:Culture of Nepal Category:Nepalese books Category:Nepali-language books Category:Books by Laxmi Prasad Devkota Category:Epic poems in Nepali Category:Love poems Category:Tibet in fiction Category:20th-century Nepalese books Category:Nepalese epics