Every year, as Nepali households light oil lamps and worship Goddess Laxmi for wealth and prosperity, the festival carries a link to one of the country’s most celebrated writers..
Laxmi Prasad Devkota, known as Mahakavi, the Great Poet, was born on the night of Laxmi Puja in 1966 BS in Dhobidhara, Dillibazar, Kathmandu. His parents named him Laxmi Prasad, a name commonly understood as a gift of the goddess.
Yet his life was far from the prosperity the name suggests. Devkota became one of the most influential writers in Nepali history while facing financial hardship and personal struggles. What he left behind was a different kind of wealth.
A birth on Laxmi Puja
His birth date as 27 Kartik 1966 BS, commonly converted to November 12, 1909. His father, Til Madhav Devkota, was a Sanskrit scholar and poet, and his mother was Amar Rajya Laxmi Devi. He died on September 14, 2025’s equivalent date of 29 Bhadra 2016 BS, which is September 14, 1959, at Pashupati Aryaghat, aged 49.
This year Laxmi Puja falls on 22 Kartik 2083, not 27 Kartik, because the festival follows the lunar tithi, while his birth anniversary is a fixed Bikram Sambat date.
Childhood and education
Devkota grew up among Sanskrit texts, religious learning and poetry. He began learning the Nepali alphabet at about five, was taught Sanskrit by his father and was exposed to English early. He copied his father’s poems and is reported to have begun writing his own around the age of ten. Kathmandu’s gardens, hills and the surroundings of Pashupatinath fed his love of nature.
His father wanted him to attend a Sanskrit school, but his mother and elder brother preferred an English education. He studied at Durbar High School and Tri-Chandra College, where he earned a BA, and went to Patna in India to study law. He had hoped to pursue a master’s in English literature but could not. He did not make law his career and earned a living by teaching and tutoring. He married Man Devi Chalise young, at around 16, and supported a large family on irregular income.
The Great Poet
Devkota wrote poetry, long narrative poems, epics, essays, short stories, plays, novels, criticism and translations. He produced more than 100 works, while the Nepali Archives catalogue lists 346 attributed works across genres and collections. He helped establish the modern epic in Nepali, blending Sanskrit and Hindu philosophical traditions with the influence of English Romantic poets such as Wordsworth.
His best-known work is Muna Madan, published in 1935-36. Madan leaves his wife Muna and mother to seek wealth in Lhasa. On his return he falls ill and is abandoned by his companions. A man from a community treated as socially inferior nurses him back to health and refuses the gold Madan offers in thanks. When Madan reaches home, Muna has died. The poem questions whether wealth is the measure of success, challenges caste prejudice and celebrates compassion. Its message is often rendered in English as a person being great by heart, not by caste.
Other major works include the epics Shakuntala, which he finished in about three months, and Sulochana, in about ten days. Kunjini, a poem of love and social pressure, was reportedly composed in a day. His poem Pagal, or The Lunatic, treats madness as a metaphor for imagination and independent thought. It is a literary work, not a medical autobiography. He also wrote Bhikhari on poverty, Pahadi Pukar on national identity, Mhendu on Tamang culture, and the essay Is Nepal Really Small?, which called Nepal beautiful, peaceful and great and argued that size does not measure greatness.
A humanist in public life
Devkota’s writing put ordinary and overlooked people at its centre, rejecting wealth, caste or occupation as the measure of worth. He brought ethnic cultures into Nepali literature at a time when they were rarely represented.
During the Rana period he signed a request to the government to establish a public library. Those involved were arrested and sentenced, though the punishment was reportedly converted to a fine, an episode remembered as Library Parba. In exile in India he was associated with the Nepali Congress publication Yugvani.
In 1957 he became Minister for Education and Autonomous Governance in K I Singh’s government. Nepali was made a compulsory subject on his initiative, and he is also credited with contributing to the founding of the Nepal Academy.
Struggles
Devkota suffered serious emotional distress and was sent to Ranchi, India, for treatment in 1939. He endured financial pressure, family losses and poor health, and was later diagnosed with cancer.
What prosperity means
His life offers a contrast with the festival. Laxmi Puja is associated with money, business success and good fortune. Devkota did not leave a fortune. He left poems, stories, essays and ideas that became part of Nepal’s cultural inheritance.
Muna Madan is the bridge. Madan goes in search of gold and loses his wife, while the man who saves him shows that kindness is worth more than money. The festival celebrates prosperity, and Devkota’s work asks whether it also includes love, compassion, dignity, knowledge and cultural identity.
Why it still matters
The poem’s themes of migration and family separation echo the lives of Nepali migrant workers today. His work on equality, access to knowledge and national identity remains relevant, and Pagal invites a sensitive conversation about how society treats those who think differently. For younger readers, perhaps the most relatable idea is that someone can be unsuccessful by conventional financial standards and still leave something far more valuable behind.
