“If that textbook did not contain a famous poem by Eminescu, then the poet would have become known in India only later. That poem changed her entire life, and the link between Eminescu and Amita Bhose was more than strictly scientific, it was also sentimental. This love made her move to Romania, live here, and even die here. She dedicated her entire life to researching Eminescu’s life work from the perspective of the influence of Indian thinking. In the poem that made her fall in love with Eminescu’s work, she found the lyricism of great Indian poets such as Kalidasa and Tagore. Those lyrics haunted her for years, and she could not rest until she translated them into her native Bengali, also the language of Tagore”.

After her husband graduated his two years of study, Amita Bhose returned to India. However, her love of Romanian literature and Eminescu in particular did not go away. She started to popularize Romanian culture through translations and studies dedicated to Mihai Eminescu. In August 1969, the volume entitled “Eminescu: Poems” was published in Calcutta. It contains 35 poems translated into Bengali and introduced by a short presentation of the poet’s life and work. It is the first Eminescu translation published in India, and the second published in Asia. Amita Bhose’s activity was pioneering, as Carmen Musat-Coman has told us:

“She started translating Eminescu, but also other Romanian writers, such as Sadoveanu, Caragiale and Marin Sorescu. Between 1959 and 1961 she was the only Indian philologist who knew the Romanian language. She had to establish correspondences between the two languages by herself, there were no Romanian dictionaries or language textbooks in India. In fact, they appeared later, thanks to her”.

Her activity as a translator was completed by that of a scholar. In 1971, Amita Bhose started a PhD, and got a scholarship from the Romanian state to study Eminescu. In addition, in 1972 she started to teach at the University of Bucharest a course in Indian civilization, Sanskrit and Bengali, which she held until 1991. In recognition of her activity, Amita Bhose was made a member of the group that edited Eminescu’s complete works, to which she contributed a text on the relationship between Eminescu’s poetry and Indian spirituality. Here is once again writer and editor Carmen Musat-Coman:

“Amita Bhose reached that Indian substrate in Eminescu’s work, and the only other to make that connection was Sergiu Al-George, the best known Romanian expert on India. She determined what Eminescu read into Indian spirituality, and how he passed through his personal filter all of Indian literature and philosophy. She determined the fact that the poet had read the translations of several Vedic texts, but also their original Sanskrit. Eminescu had read parts of the Upanishads, some Buddhist writings, as well as Kalidasa’s work. Amita Bhose proved he had learned Sanskrit. Her book, “Eminescu and India”, was the first Indo-Romanian comparative study, and it was also the first step in her research of Eminescu. In fact, it was her PhD thesis, which she defended in 1975”.

Amita Bhose died in Bucharest, in 1992. Her students, among them our guest, Carmen Musat-Coman, continue to enjoy what she taught them about Bengali and Indian studies.