Hiteswar Barbarua

Hiteswar Barbarua (; 1876 – February 1939), also spelled Hiteswar Borboruah, was an Indian Assamese-language poet and historian of the Jonaki era. He is remembered for Malach (1918), regarded as the first collection of sonnets in Assamese, and for Ahomar Din, a history of Assam under the Ahom monarchy.

Early life

Barbarua was born in 1876 at Sarucharaibahi, a village near Jorhat, into a Sandikoi family of the Ahom aristocracy whose ancestors had held office under the Ahom kings. Owing to his family's financial difficulties, his formal education ended in the eighth standard. He worked briefly as a school teacher in Jorhat and later as a clerk in a tea garden.

Literary career

Barbarua began publishing poetry in the magazines Jonaki and Bijulee, the leading periodicals of the romantic Jonaki era of Assamese literature. His poetry collections include Dhopakali (1902), Kamatapur Dhwansa (1910), Tirutar Atmadan Kavya (1913), Birohini Bilap (1913), Abhas Kavya (1914), Yuddhakshetrat Ahom Ramani (1918), Malach (1918), and Chakulo (1922). Several of his narrative poems drew on the history of Assam, treating subjects such as the fall of the Kamatapur kingdom, the self-sacrifice of Joymoti, and the heroism of Mula Gabharu; Kamatapur Dhwansa was among the earliest Assamese long poems composed in blank verse. Malach, containing 122 sonnets on life and nature, is regarded as the first sonnet collection in Assamese, and Chakulo, a set of 33 sonnets, was written in mourning after the death of his young son.

Barbarua devoted much of his later life to the study of the buranjis, the chronicles of the Ahom period, and presided over the history section of the Asam Sahitya Sabha. His major historical work, Ahomar Din (), a comprehensive account of Assam under Ahom rule, was published posthumously by the Publication Board Assam and remains a frequently cited reference on the period. His collected works have been published by the Publication Board Assam as the Hiteswar Barbaruah Rachanavali.

See also

• Assamese literature
• Jonaki era