| 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.
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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. Kannada writers have won seven awards, the highest for any language followed by six for Hindi, four for Malayalam, three for Marathi & three for Urdu. The only writer from Bihar to have received this prestigious award was the celebrated poet, also hailed as Rashtrakavi, Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar'. 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]
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