Jnanpith Award

The Jnanpith Award is the highest literary award in India. It is presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a trust founded by the Sahu Jain family, the publishers of The Times of India Newspaper. The name of the award is taken from Sanskrit jnāna-pīṭha = "knowledge-seat". The award carries a check for Rs. 700,000, a citation plaque and a bronze replica of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, and the arts. 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. Seven awards each have been awarded in Kannada and Hindi and followed by five in Bengali and Malayalam, four in and Urdu and three in Gujarati, Oriya and Marathi[3].The award announcements have lately been lagging behind the award-years. The awards for the years 2005 and 2006 were announced on November 22, 2008, and were awarded to the Hindi writer Kunwar Narayan for 2005 and jointly to Konkani writer Ravindra Kelekar and Sanskrit scholar Satya Vrat Shastri for 2006. Satya Vrat Shastri is the first Sanskrit poet to be conferred the award since its inception.

Jnanpith Award recipients

Year	Name	Works	Language
1965	G. Sankara Kurup	Odakkuzhal (Flute)	Malayalam
1966	Tarashankar Bandopadhyaya	Ganadevta	Bengali
1967	Kuppali Venkatappagowda Puttappa (Kuvempu)	Sri Ramayana Darshanam	Kannada
1967	Umashankar Joshi	Nishitha	Gujarati
1968	Sumitranandan Pant	Chidambara	Hindi
1969	Firaq Gorakhpuri	Gul-e-Naghma	Urdu
1970	Viswanatha Satyanarayana	Ramayana Kalpavrikshamu (A resourceful tree:Ramayana)	Telugu
1971	Bishnu Dey	Smriti Satta Bhavishyat	Bengali
1972	Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar'	Urvashi	Hindi
1973	Dattatreya Ramachandra Bendre	Nakutanti (Naku Thanthi) (Four Strings)	Kannada
1973	Gopinath Mohanty	Paraja	Oriya
1974	Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar	Yayati	Marathi
1975	P. V. Akilan	Chitttrappavai	Tamil
1976	Ashapurna Devi	Pratham Pratisruti	Bengali
1977	K. Shivaram Karanth	Mookajjiya Kanasugalu (Mookajjis dreams)	Kannada
1978	Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan 'Ajneya'	Kitni Navon Men Kitni Bar (How many times in many boats?)	Hindi
1979	Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya	Mrityunjay (Immortal)	Assamese
1980	S. K. Pottekkatt	Oru Desattinte Katha (Story of a land)	Malayalam
1981	Amrita Pritam	Kagaj te Canvas	Punjabi
1982	Mahadevi Varma	Yama	Hindi
1983	Maasti Venkatesh Ayengar	Chikkaveera Rajendra (Life and struggle of Kodava King Chikkaveera Rajendra)	Kannada
1984	Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai	Kayar {Coir}	Malayalam
1985	Pannalal Patel	Maanavi Ni Bhavaai	Gujarati
1986	Sachidananda Rout Roy		Oriya
1987	Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar(Kusumagraj)	Natsamrat	Marathi
1988	Dr.C. Narayana Reddy	Vishwambhara	Telugu
1989	Qurratulain Hyder	Akhire Shab Ke Humsafar	Urdu
1990	V. K. Gokak (Vinayaka Krishna Gokak)	Bharatha Sindhu Rashmi	Kannada
1991	Subhas Mukhopadhyay		Bengali
1992	Naresh Mehta		Hindi
1993	Sitakant Mahapatra	"for outstanding contribution to the enrichment of Indian literature, 1973-92"	Oriya
1994	U. R. Ananthamurthy	Samskara	Kannada
1995	M. T. Vasudevan Nair	Randamoozham (Second Chance)	Malayalam
1996	Mahasweta Devi		Bengali
1997	Ali Sardar Jafri		Urdu
1998	Girish Karnad	"for his contributions to Kannada literature and for contributions to kannada theater (yayati)"[	Kannada
1999	Nirmal Verma		Hindi
1999	Gurdial Singh		Punjabi
2000	Indira Goswami		Assamese
2001	Rajendra Keshavlal Shah		Gujarati
2002	D. Jayakanthan		Tamil
2003	Vinda Karandikar	Ashtadarshana (poetry)	Marathi
2004	Rahman Rahi	Subhuk Soda, Kalami Rahi and Siyah Rode Jaren Manz	Kashmiri
2005	Kunwar Narayan		Hindi
2006	Ravindra Kelekar		Konkani
2006	Satya Vrat Shastri		Sanskrit
2007	O. N. V. Kurup		Malayalam
2008	Akhlaq Mohammed Khan 'Shahryar'		Urdu[9]