Editing Nagarjun (section)

== Personal life and biography==

[[File:Library park.jpg|thumb|Sculpture of Nagarjun in the Library Park of [[Lalit Narayan Mithila University|LN Mithila University]]]]

=== Early life and education ===
Vaidyanath Mishra was born on 11 June 1911 (Jyeshtha Purnima), in the Gram Panchayat Tarauni and Block Benipur in [[Darbhanga District]] of [[Bihar]], India to Uma Devi and Gokul Mishra. He spent most of his days in his mother's village Satlakha of [[Madhubani district]], Bihar. He later converted to [[Buddhism]] and got the name ''Nagarjun''. His mother died when he was only four years old, and his father being a [[vagabond]] himself, couldn't support him so young Vaidyanath thrived on the support of his relatives, and the scholarships he won on the account of him being an exceptional student. Soon he became proficient in [[Sanskrit]], [[Pali]] and [[Prakrit]] languages, which he first learnt locally and later at [[Varanasi]] and [[Calcutta]], where he was also semi-employed, while pursuing his studies. Meanwhile, he married Aparajita Devi and the couple had six children.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}

=== Career ===
He started his literary career with [[Maithili language|Maithili]] poems by the pen-name of '''Yatri''' (यात्री) in the early 1930s. By the mid-1930s, he started writing poetry in Hindi. His first permanent job of a full-time teacher, took him to [[Saharanpur]] ([[Uttar Pradesh]]), though he didn't stay there for long as his urge to delve deeper into Buddhist scriptures, took him to the Buddhist monastery at [[Kelaniya]], [[Sri Lanka]], where in 1935, he became a [[bhikkhu|Buddhist monk]], entered the [[vihara|monastery]] and studied the scriptures, just as his mentor, [[Rahul Sankrityayan]] had done earlier, and hence took upon the name "Nagarjun".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Prasad |first=Amar Nath |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dQfnNcwgQgsC&pg=PA228 |title=Indian Poetry In English: Roots And Blossoms (part-I) |date=2007 |publisher=Sarup & Sons |isbn=978-81-7625-741-1 |pages=228 |language=en}}</ref> While at the monastery, he also studied [[Leninism]] and [[Marxism]] ideologies, before returning to India in 1938 to join 'Summer School of Politics' organised by noted peasant leader, [[Sahajanand Saraswati]], founder of [[All India Kisan Sabha|Kisan Sabha]].<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20040814041633/http://cc.domaindlx.com/aapanmithila/poet.htm#Nagarjun Poets of Mithila – Nagarjun]</ref> A wanderer by nature, Nagarjun spent a considerable amount of his time in the 1930s and the 1940s travelling across India.

He also participated in many mass-awakening movements before and after independence. Between 1939 and 1942, He was jailed by the British courts for leading a farmer's agitation in Bihar. For a long time after independence he was involved with journalism.

He played an active role in [[Jayaprakash Narayan]]'s movement prior to the [[The Emergency (India)|Emergency period]] (1975–1977), and therefore was jailed for eleven months, during the emergency period. He was strongly influenced by Leninist-Marxist ideology.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}} This was one of the reasons that he never found patronage from the mainstream political establishments.

He died in 1998 at the age of 87 in [[Darbhanga]].