Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s2.t20.3

v2.c10.s2.t20.3

extraordinary interest in exploration of newer vistas, and with a unique creative energy in numerous fields - poetry, fiction, drama, essays, travelogue and belle letters who had made outstanding achievements in each of these domains, leaving an amazing number and variety of artistic treasures for the future generations. Creative remnants of his life include 50 books of poems, a dozen novels, over 90 short stories, dozens of plays, besides a significant number of prose works and other miscellaneous texts. These works were mainly compiled in a multivolume “Collected Works of Tagore”. He also wrote above 2,000 songs. He was the first non-European to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for the collection of poems titled *Gitanjali*. His works and the award had a significant impact on the Chinese youth, intellectuals and poets, as did his efforts to revive civilisational affinity between India and China. Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915 but in the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by the British police in 1919, he returned the honour as a mark of strong protest.