I
INTRODUCTION
Indian Literature, literature in the languages
of India, as well as those of Pakistan (see Indian
Languages). For information on the literature
written in the classicial language, Sanskrit,
see Sanskrit Literature.
The Indian literary tradition is primarily one
of verse and is also essentially oral. The earliest
works were composed to be sung or recited and
were so transmitted for many generations before
being written down. As a result, the earliest
records of a text may be later by several centuries
than the conjectured date of its composition.
Furthermore, perhaps because so much Indian literature
is either religious or a reworking of familiar
stories from the Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana
and the Mahabharata, and the mythological writings
known as Puranas, the authors often remain anonymous.
Biographical details of the lives of most of the
earlier Indian writers exist only in much later
stories and legends, so that any history of Indian
literature is bound to raise more questions than
it answers. Often, much less is known about an
Indian poet who died in the early 19th century
than of the English medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer
or of the Latin poet Virgil.
II
LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL
INFLUENCES
Much traditional Indian literature is derived
in theme and form not only from Sanskrit literature
but from the Buddhist and Jain texts written in
the Pali language and the other Prakrits (medieval
dialects of Sanskrit). This applies to literature
in the Dravidian languages of the south as well
as to literature in the Indo-Iranian languages
of the north. Successive invasions of Persians
and Turks, beginning in the 14th century, resulted
by about 1700 in most of India being governed
by Muslim rulers. The influence of Persian and
Islamic culture (see Persian Literature) is strongest
in literature written in Urdu, although important
Islamic strands can be found in other literatures
as well, especially those written in Bengali,
Gujarati, and Kashmiri. After 1817, when the British
controlled nearly all of India, entirely new literary
values were established that remain dominant today.
III
THE TAMIL TRADITION
The only Indian writings that incontestably predate
the influence of classical Sanskrit are those
in the Tamil language. Anthologies of secular
lyrics on the themes of love and war, together
with the grammatical-stylistic work Tolkappiyam
(Old Composition), were once thought to be very
ancient; they are now believed to date no earlier
than from about the 1st to the 5th century AD.
Later, between the 6th and 9th centuries, Tamil
sectarian devotional poems were composed, often
claimed as the first examples of the Indian bhakti
tradition (see below). At some indeterminate date
between the 2nd and 5th centuries, two long Tamil
verse romances (sometimes called epics) were written:
Cilappatikaram (The Jeweled Anklet) by Ilanko
Atikal, which has been translated into English
(1939 and 1965); and its sequel Manimekalai (The
Girdle of Gems), a Buddhist work by Cattanar.
IV
MEDIEVAL INDIAN LITERATURE
The first true works of literature in most of
the main indigenous Indian languages tend to date
from about 1200. Before then, any work of literature
would have been composed in the literary languages:
Sanskrit or one of the Prakrits in the north or
Tamil in the Dravidian south.
A.Sanskrit Epic Influence
In this early period, which ended about 1500,
the main literary productions in all the languages
of India were versions of stories from the Sanskrit
epics and the Puranas. Many of the vernacular
treatments of the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagavata-Purana,
well known to educated Indian readers even today,
were written during this period. For example,
the first true Malayalam work, which is a version
of the Ramayana, dates from about the 13th century.
B.Other Themes Other themes were
also treated in medieval Indian literature. The
earliest works in many of the languages were sectarian,
designed to advance or to celebrate some unorthodox
regional belief. Examples are the Caryapadas,
Tantric (see Tantra) verses of the 12th century
that are the earliest surviving works in Bengali,
and the Lilacaritra (circa 1280), a Marathi prose
account of the words and deeds of the founder
of the Mahanubhava sect. In Kannada (Kanarese)
from the 10th century, and later in Gujarati from
the 13th century, the first truly indigenous works
are Jain romances; ostensibly the lives of Jain
saints, these are actually popular tales based
on Sanskrit and Pali themes.
Tales besides these sectarian
works were composed; examples in Rajasthani are
bardic tales of chivalry and heroic resistance
to the first Muslim invasions—such as the
12th-century epic poem Prithiraja-raso by Chand
Bardai of Lahore. Popular stories and ballads
were also composed, such as those of East Bengal.
Later important religious literatures
developed that were associated with certain regional
philosophies and sects: texts in Tamil from the
13th to the 15th century devoted to the medieval
Hindu Shaiva-siddhanta sect; the works of the
Lingayats (a Hindu sect devoted to the worship
of Shiva) in Kannada, especially the vacanas,
or "sayings," of Basava, the mid-12th-century
founder of the sect, and his disciples; and the
Tantric texts, especially those from northeast
India, which developed later into genres such
as the mangala-kavya (poetry of an auspicious
happening) of Bengal. This verse was addressed
to deities such as Manasa (a snake goddess), purely
local forms of the female divine principle called
Devi (see Hinduism).
Most important of all for later
Indian literature were the first traces in the
vernacular languages of the northern Indian cults
of Krishna and of Rama. The Krishna story developed
in Sanskrit from the Mahabharata through the Bhagavata-Purana,
to the 12th-century poem by Jaydev, called the
Gitagovinda (The Cowherd's Song); but about 1400,
a group of religious love poems written in Maithili
(eastern Hindi of Bihâr) by the poet Vidyapati
were a seminal influence on the cult of Radha-Krishna
in Bengal and the whole religio-erotic literature
associated with it.
C.The Bhakti Tradition The full
flowering of the Radha-Krishna cult, under the
Hindu mystics Caitanya in Bengal and Vallabhacharya
at Mathura, involved bhakti. The word bhakti implies
a personal devotion to a god far different from
the rituals of Brahmanism—an intense longing
comparable to the desire of lovers or of a child
separated from his or her mother. Indeed, bhakti
may be conceived of in terms of all forms of human
love. Although earlier traces of this attitude
are found in the work of the Tamil Alvars (mystics
who wrote ecstatic hymns to Vishnu between the
7th and 10th centuries), the enthusiasms of the
Sufi mystics of Islam probably produced the surge
of bhakti that flooded every channel of Indian
intellectual and religious life beginning in the
late 15th century. The sentiment was the same,
but the recipient varied by region. Beside the
writings of the devotees of Radha-Krishna, bhakti
was addressed to Rama (an avatar of Vishnu), most
notably in the Avadhi (eastern Hindi) works of
Tulsi Das; his Ramcaritmanas (Lake of the Acts
of Rama, 1574-77; trans. 1952) has become the
authoritative, repeatedly recited version of the
Ramayana for the whole Hindi-speaking north. In
addition to their other literary works, the early
gurus or founders of the Sikh religion, especially
Nanak and Arjan Dev, composed bhakti hymns to
their concepts of deity. These are the first written
documents in Punjabi (Panjabi) and form part of
the Adi Granth (First, or Original, Book), the
sacred scripture of the Sikhs, which was first
compiled by Arjan Dev in 1604.
In the 16th century, in other
regions, bhakti was directed to other forms of
divinity. For example, the Râjasthâni
princess and poet Mira Bai addressed her lyric
verse to Krishna, as did the Gujarâti poet
Narsimh Mehta.
V
INDIAN LITERATURE OF
THE MIDDLE PERIOD
In the literature from about 1500 to 1800, the
stream of reworkings of the traditional Sanskrit
epics continued unabated, while at the same time
the use of Urdu and of Persian literary forms
arose.
A. Traditional
Material In the 16th century, Jagannath Das wrote
an Oriya version of the Bhagavata and Tuncattu
Eruttacchan, the so-called father of Malayalam
literature, wrote recensions of traditional literature.
To these were added, particularly in the 18th
century, a deliberate imitation of Sanskritic
forms and meters in addition to a highly Sanskritic
vocabulary by pandita, or "learned"
poets, or by court poets like those of the Telugu-speaking
kingdom of Vijaynagar. Historical events were
recounted in 18th-century Assamese and Marathi
prose chronicles, ballads, and folk drama involving
much dance and song.
B.Urdu Literature
During this period, Indian literature was also
written in Urdu, a new language. Urdu, spoken
in the Delhi region, is similar to Hindi and contains
many words from Arabic and Persian. The Urdu poets
almost always wrote in Persian forms, using the
ghazal for love poetry in addition to an Islamic
form of bhakti, the masnavi for narrative verse,
and the marsiya for elegies. Writing in Urdu began
first in the Islamic kingdoms of the Deccan, where
literary experiment was apparently easier and
the prestige of the orthodox literary language,
Persian, was less strong; it culminated there
in the lyrics of Wali. Urdu then gained use as
a literary language in Delhi and Lucknow. The
ghazals of Mir and Ghalib mark the highest achievement
of Urdu lyric verse. The Urdu poets were mostly
sophisticated, urban artists, but some adopted
the idiom of folk poetry, and this is typical
of the verse written in Punjabi, Pushtu, Sindhi,
or other regional languages.
VI
THE MODERN PERIOD
Poets such as Ghalib, for example, lived and worked
during the British era, when a literary revolution
occurred in all the Indian languages as a result
of contact with Western thought, when the printing
press was introduced (by Christian missionaries),
and when the influence of Western educational
institutions was strong. During the mid-19th century
in the great ports of Bombay (now Mumbai), Calcutta,
and Madras (now Chennai), a prose literary tradition
arose—encompassing the novel, short story,
essay, and literary drama (this last incorporating
both classical Sanskrit and Western models)—that
gradually engulfed the customary Indian verse
genres. The northern heartland of Delhi and Uttar
Pradesh was the last to be affected by this new
tradition; and because Muslims for the most part
did not take advantage of the new education, Urdu
writing preserved much of its integrity. Urdu
poets remained faithful to the old forms and meters
while Bengalis were imitating such English poets
as Percy Bysshe Shelley in the 1840s or T. S.
Eliot in the 1940s.
During the last 150 years many
writers have contributed to the development of
modern Indian literature, writing in any of the
18 major languages (as well as in English). In
the process of Westernization, Bengali has led
the way and today has one of the most extensive
literatures of any Indian language. One of its
greatest representatives is Sir Rabindranath Tagore,
the first Indian to win the Nobel Prize for literature
(1913). Much of his prose and verse is available
in his own English translations.
Work by two other great 20th-century
Indian leaders and writers is also widely known
through translation: the verse of the Islamic
leader and philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal, originally
written in Urdu and Persian; and the autobiography
of Mohandas K. Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth,
originally written in Gujarati between 1927 and
1929 and now considered a classic.
Although the bulk of later 20th-century
Indian writing remains untranslated, several writers
working in English are relatively well known to
the West. They include Mulk Raj Anand, among whose
many works the early affectionate Untouchable
(1935) and Coolie (1936) are novels of social
protest; and R. K. Narayan, writer of novels and
tales of village life in southern India. The first
of Narayan's many works, Swami and Friends, appeared
in 1935; among his more recent titles are The
English Teacher (1980), The Vendor of Sweets (1983),
and Under the Banyan Tree (1985). Among the younger
authors writing of modern India with nostalgia
for the past is Anita Desai—as in Clear
Light of Day (1980). Her In Custody (1984) is
the story of a teacher's fatal enchantment with
poetry. Ved Mehta, although long resident in the
U.S., recalls his Indian roots in a series of
memoirs of his family and of his education at
schools for the blind in India and America; among
these works are Vedi (1982) and Sound Shadows
of the New World (1986). |