Chanda Jha (b. 1831, Pindaruch in Darbhanga), known as Kavi Chandra, was the first poet to render the Ramayana into Maithili — the Mithila Bhasha Ramayana — and in doing so helped lift Maithili into a fully literary language. It is often said that what Vidyapati did for Maithili in the fourteenth century, Chanda Jha did for it in the nineteenth.
Beyond the Ramayana his pen ranged across the Lakshmishwar Vilas, Geet-Sudha, Padyavali and the play Ahalya-Charit Natak. His work stands as the bridge between Mithila’s classical and modern literary ages.