Jnanpith Award

The Jnanpith Award instituted in 1961 is the highest literary honour conferred in India. It is presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith Trust, which is largely owned by the Sahu Jain family of The Times group. The award includes a cheque for Rs. 5,00,000, a citation plaque and a bronze replica of Vagdevi (Devi Saraswati, the goddess of learning). Any Indian citizen who writes in any of the official languages of India is eligible for the honour.
Before 1982, the awards were given for a single work by a writer. From 1982, the award has been given for a lifetime contribution to Indian literature. The first recipient of the award was Malayalam writer G. Sankara Kurup in 1965. For 2006, the award was presented to the eminent Sanskrit scholar Satya Vrat Shastri.

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	Asha Purna 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 (માનવીની ભવાઇ)	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		Oriya
1994	U.R. Ananthamurthy		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 modern Indian drama"[5]	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 [6]
2005	Kunwar Narayan		Hindi[3]
2006	Ravindra Kelekar		Konkani[3]
2006	Satya Vrat Shastri		Sanskrit[4][7]