Ketakadas Kshemananda or Kshemananda Das was a 17th or 18th-century

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

who wrote ''Manasar Bhasan'', a version of Manasa Mangal Kavya. ''Manasar Bhasan'' was part of a Bengali poetic and performance tradition, Mangal Kavya, that was popular in the 13th to 18th centuries, involving sung poetry and religious worship. It tells the story of the snake

goddess A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of s ...

Manasa Manasa () is a Hindu goddess of snakes. She is worshipped mainly in Bihar, Bengal, Jharkhand, Lower Assam and other parts of northeastern India and in Uttarakhand, chiefly for the prevention and cure of snakebite, and also for fertility and pr ...

, but notably also depicts everyday village life. The text was used as the basis for ''Chand Manasar Kissa'', a play produced by the Sansriti theater company in 2018 and 2019. When ''Manasar Bhasan'' was published in the 1880s, the title page created the impression that the work was created by two people, "Ketakadas" and "Kshemananda." This was later discovered to be incorrect.

References

Nationality missing Year of birth missing 17th-century Bengali poets Bengali-language writers People from Hooghly district Poets from West Bengal {{india-poet-stub