Rāmnārāyan's Kulīn Kulsarbasva (1854) is often regarded as the first Bengali drama, but there are many other Bengali plays of one sort or another anterior to it in date.
Although Herasim Lebedeff, a Russian adventurer, staged two Bengali plays in Calcutta towards the end of the eighteenth century, these have not come down to us. It is doubtful if Lebedeff's plays, which were translations of English dramatic works, were ever published. No clue to the subsequent fate of these plays is found in the autobiographical introduction to Lebedeff's Grammar of Pure and Mixed East Indian Languages, printed in London in 1801