Jnanpith Award

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Jnanpith Award
Award Information
Category Literature (Individual)
Instituted 1961
First Awarded 1965
Last Awarded 2006
Awarded by Bharatiya Jnanpith
Description Literary award
in India
First Awardee(s) G Sankara Kurup

The Jnanpith Award is a literary award in India. Along with the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship,[1] it is one of the two most prestigious literary honours in the country.[2] It is presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a trust founded by the Sahu Jain family, the publishers of the The Times of India newspaper.

Contents

[edit] The Award

The award carries a check for Rs. 500,000, a citation plaque and a bronze replica of Vagdevi, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, and the arts.[3]

The award was instituted in 1961, and its first recipient, in 1965, was the Malayalam writer G. Sankara Kurup. Any Indian citizen who writes in any of the official languages of India is eligible for the honor.

Prior to 1982, the awards were given for a single work by a writer; since then, the award has been given for a lifetime contribution to Indian literature. The literature of the state of Uttar Pradesh is most represented among the awardees, six for Hindi and three for Urdu. Kannada writers have won seven awards, the highest for any language. The award announcements have lately been lagging behind the award-years; the last award, made in 2006, was for the year 2004 [4].

Its name is taken from Sanskrit jnāna-pīṭha = "knowledge-seat".[citation needed]

[edit] List of Awardees

(Year - Name - Works - Language)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Report from The Hindu, January 2007.: the noted writer Manoj Das (in January 2007) "received the country's highest literary honour - Sahitya Akademi Fellowship."
  2. ^ Article from The Hindu
  3. ^ Jnanpith award for Jayakanthan. Times of India. 20 Mar 2005. Retrieved on 2007-11-12.
  4. ^ Official List of awardees Bharatiya Jnanpith website.
  5. ^ http://jnanpith.net/images/40thJnanpith_Declared.pdf 40th Jnanpith Award to Eminent Kashmiri Poet Shri Rahman Rahi

[edit] External links