Rabindranath Tagore’s “Monihara”

Record summary

Rabindranath Tagore’s Bengali story “Monihara,” commonly translated as “The Lost Jewels,” uses an uncertain narrator and a possible returning female presence to destabilize the boundary between disappearance, memory and haunting. The story is relevant because it reflects Bengali nineteenth-century ghost-story conventions while deliberately withholding certainty about what happened. It can be compared with later report traditions that use absent bodies, possessions and unreliable narration. Researchers should verify the original Bengali publication and distinguish the story from adaptations, translations and the film version associated with Satyajit Ray.