This timeline of Rabindranath Tagore is a work in progress. The content has been written by Christine Kupfer (2015), unless otherwise mentioned. This timeline is divided into three categories: context and events in the family, biographical events and Tagore’s works.  In the absence of a particular date for a given event the timeline entry simply expresses 1st January to indicate the year.

Rabindranath Tagore is first taught at home. He starts going to school when he is seven years old. He first goes to the Oriental Seminary and shortly after to Normal School.

Rabindranath Tagore writes his first verses, inspired by a Bengali translation of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s ‘Paul et Virginie’.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Upanayan (Brahminical sacred thread ceremony and initiation into Gayatri prayers). Upanayana (Sanskrit: उपनयन upanayana-) Janai or janeau (Sanskrit: जनै, जनेऊ is one of the traditional saṃskāras (rites of passage) that marked the acceptance of a student by a guru (teacher or tutor) and an individual’s entrance to a school in Hinduism.

In 1873 Rabindranath and his father went on a journey. They visited Santiniketan, Amristar, and finally, in mid-April, Dalhousie hill station. Tagore read biographies on the way and his father tutored him in Sanskrit, history, and study of the Upanishads and the poetry of Kalidasa. They stayed for several months in Dalhousie and adopted a strict daily regime. His father also gave him lessons in Sanskrit, English and astronomy.

1874 – 1876: Tagore is admitted to his last school, St Xavier’s School, which he attends only for a few months. The school record confirms that he attends school only irregularly. He formally drops out in 1876.  

Tagore’s first poem, entitled Abhilasha (Desire), is published anonymously in the journal “Tattvabodhini Patrika.” Tattwabodhini Patrika (Bengali: তত্ত্ববোধিনী পত্রিকা) [Tattwabodhini (“truth-searching”) Patrika (“newspaper”)] was established by Maharshi Devendranath Tagore on 16 August 1843, as a journal of the Tattwabodhini Sabha, and continued publication until 1883. It was published from Kolkata, India

Utsava‘ is the Sanskrit word for Hindu festivals, it refers to “religious practices. Todumal or Todumal or Todumal is derived from the Sanskrit word, Utsava. The Sanskrit word Utsava comes from the word “ut” meaning “removal” and “sava” which means “worldly sorrows” or “grief”.

Death of Sarada Devi, Rabindranath Tagore’s mother.

Rabindranath Tagore joins a short-lived Secret Society, supposed to have been modelled after Mazzini’s Carbonari. The Carbonari (lit. ’charcoal makers’) was an informal network of secret revolutionary societies active in Italy from about 1800 to 1831.

Rabindranath starts writing short stories. The first one, published in 1877, is “Bhikharini” [The Beggar Woman]. The story was first published in 1877 in Bharati and was the first short story written in Bengali language. This was also Tagore’s own first short story, and he was 16 years old at the time of its publication.

Tagore mentioned Bhanusingha Thakur in several of his writings, describing him as an “ancient Vaishnav saint”. But he would express his inability to share more details about him — which he once sarcastically blamed on the “absence of documented Indian history”, an issue that he felt strongly about.

In 1877 and 1878 Rabindranath Tagore spends eighteen months in Ahmedabad and Bombay, where he studies English and lives as ward of his elder brother Satyendranath.

In 1877 Rabindranath Tagore acts on stage for the first time. He plays the principal role of a comedy written by his brother Jyotirindranath. He plays Valmiki in Valmii Pratibha.

Rabindranath Tagore receives his first literary criticism on a book of Bengali poems, entitled ‘Bhuban Mohini Pratibha”, which is published in Jnanankur.

Rabindranath Tagore’s first collection Kabi Kahini [Tale of a Poet] is published in 1878. Kabi-Kahini is a poetry book written in Bengali when Rabindranath was the age of 16.

Tagore publishes his “Letters on a Sojourn in Europe” in serialized form in the journal Bharaii. His elder family members are not pleased about this series.

Tagore has a mystic experience of cosmic unity that inspires his poem “Nirjharer Svapnabhanga” (The Awakening of the Fountain).

In 1884 Rabindranath Tagore is appointed Secretary of the Adi Brahmo Samaj. Founded in 1861, with the publication of Hemendranath Tagore’s “Brahmo Anusthan” (or Brahmo Code of doctrine and practice), Adi Dharm refers to the religion of Adi Brahmo Samaj the first development of Brahmoism.

Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India in Delhi. She is represented by Viceroy Lord Lytton.

Tagore considers the publication of his drama “Bisarjan” and the collection of poems “Manasi” as turning point and as first publications of his mature works.

His father gives Rabindranath new responsibilities regarding his estates North Bengal and Orissa. He begins to visit these places.

Mira Devi (also called Atasi), Rabindranath’s daughter, was born on 12 January 1894. On 6 June 1907, when Mira was thirteen years, she was married to Nagendranath Ganguli (Gangopadhyay). They had a son called Nitindranath (Nitu) (1912- 32), who was Tagore’s only grandson, and a daughter named Nandita, born in 1916.

In 1896 Rabindranath writes Chitra, a one-act play which was later to be published in English in 1913 by the India Society of London. The play adapts part of the story from the Mahabharata and centers upon the character of Chitrangada, a female warrior who tries to attract the attention of Arjuna.

A poem which has the focus of the river; something which is symbolic in Tagore’s poetry, signifying the humble rural communities which thrive along its banks   Click here for a copy of Nadi

In Panchabhut (The Five Elements, serialized 1892–5), a poem by one of the five interlocutors stimulates variant readings in the other four.