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.

The Award

The name of the award is taken from Sanskrit jnāna-pīṭha = "knowledge-seat".^{[citation needed]}

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. Seven awards each have been awarded in Hindi and Kannada, followed by five in Bengali, four in Malayalam and three in Gujurati,Marathi and Urdu.^[4] The award announcements have lately been lagging behind the award-years. The award for the years 2005 and 2006 were announced on November 22, 2008, and were awarded to the Hindi writer Kunwar Narayan for 2005 and jointly to Konkani writer Ravindra Kelekar and Sanskrit scholar Satveet Shastri for 2006. ^[4]

See also

• Sahitya Akademi Fellowship
• Sahitya Akademi
• Sahu Jain
• Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship
• Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship

References

External links

• Official Jnanpith Website
• List of winners