Who became the first woman to win the Jnanpith Award in 1976 for her…

Concept

The Jnanpith Award is India's highest literary honour, conferred for an author's outstanding lifetime contribution to literature. Identifying a laureate means matching the specific work, language, and year to the writer who was actually recognised — and, for a 'first woman' question, locating the earliest female recipient in the chronological record.

Application

The cited work, the 1965 Bengali novel Pratham Pratisruti (The First Promise), is the opening volume of Ashapoorna Devi's celebrated trilogy on three generations of Bengali women. She was honoured with the Jnanpith Award in 1976, and in the chronology of laureates she stands as the first woman to receive it — making Ashapoorna Devi the writer the stem describes.

Why the others do not fit

• Amrita Pritam: a major Punjabi poet and novelist and a Sahitya Akademi awardee, but she received the Jnanpith only in 1981 (for Kagaz Te Canvas), not in 1976.

• Mahasweta Devi: a celebrated Bengali writer and activist whose Jnanpith came much later, in 1996 — well after 1976.

• Lily Ray: not a Jnanpith laureate and not the author of Pratham Pratisruti.

Matching the 1965 novel Pratham Pratisruti and the 1976 first-woman milestone points to Ashapoorna Devi.