Wikipedia
Kanha or Kanhapad was one of the poets of Charjapad, the earliest known example of Odia and Bengali literature. He was a tantric buddhist and his poems in Charjapad are written in a code, whereby every poem has a descriptive or narrative surface meaning but also encodes tantric buddhist teachings. Some experts believe this was to conceal sacred knowledge from the uninitiated, while others hold that it was to avoid religious persecution.
Kanha is also a leading contemporary Bengali magazine of poetry and poetry-related essays named after the Charjapad poet.
Category:Bengali poets
Kanha may refer to:
- Krishna, a Hindu deity
- Kanha (Satavahana dynasty), 1st century BCE Indian king
- Kanha (poet), Indian poet
- Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh, India
Kanha (c. 1st century BCE) was a ruler of the Satavahana dynasty of India. Himanshu Prabha Ray assigns his reign to the period c. 100-70 BCE.
Kanha has been mentioned as "Krishna" ( IAST: Kṛṣṇa) in the Puranas. According to the Puranic genealogy, he was the brother of the first Satavahana king Simuka (whose name varies according to the different Puranas).
Besides the legendary Puranas, Kanha's existence is also supported by an epigraphic record. He is identified with the "Kanha-raja" (King Kanha) of "Satavahana-kula" (Satavahana family) mentioned in a Nashik cave inscription. The inscription states that the cave was excavated by maha-matra (officer-in-charge) of the shramanas (non- Vedic ascetics) during Kanha's reign. Based on this, Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya concludes that Kanha favoured Buddhism, and had an administrative department dedicated to the welfare of Buddhist monks. Also, the term maha-matra indicates that the early Satavahanas followed the Mauryan administrative model.