INDIANLITERATURE

INDIA

 World’s 7th largest country in South Asia.

 Second most populated country in the world.
 India and Bharat are the official country names.

INDIANLITERATURE

 Indian Literature is one of the oldest and richest literatures around the world.
 The Indian Constitution recognizes 22 official languages. Each language has its regional literature.
 The earliest Indian literature took the form of the canonical Hindu sacred writings, known as the
Veda, which were written in Sanskrit.
 The production of Sanskrit literature extended from about 1500 BCE to about 1 0 0 0 C E and
reached its height of development in the 1st to 7th centuries.

The Indus civilization

 flourished in northern India between 2500 and 1500 B.C. The Aryans, a group of nomadic
warriors and herders, were the earliest known migrants into India. They brought with them a
well- developed language and literature and asset of religious beliefs.

Vedic Period (1500 B.C. – 500 B.C.).

 This period is named for the Vedas, a set of hymns that formed the cornerstone of Aryan culture.
Hindus consider the Vedas, which were transmitted orally by priests, to be the most sacred of all
literature for they believe these to have been revealed to humans directly by the gods.

Epic and Buddhist Age (500 B.C. – A.D.).

 The period of composition of two great epics, Mahabharata and the Ramayana. This time was
also the growth of later Vedic literature, new Sanskrit literature, and the Buddhist literature in
Pali.

Classical Period (A.D. – 1000 A.D.).

 The main literary language of northern India during this period was Sanskrit, in contrast with the
Dravidian languages of southern India. Sanskrit, which means ‘perfect speech’ is considered a
sacred language is spoken by the gods and goddesses.

Medieval and Modern Age ( A.D. 1000–present).

 Persian influences on literature were considerable this period. Persian was the court language of
the Moslem rulers. In the 18th century, India was directly under the British Crown and remained
so until its Independence in1947.

Hinduism, literally “the belief of the people of India”,

  is the predominant faith of India and of no other nation. The Hindus are deeply absorbed with
God and the creation of the universe.

The Purusarthas are the three ends of man: dharma – virtue. Duty, righteousness, moral law; artha-
wealth; and karma- love or pleasure. A fourth end is moksha- the renunciation of duty, wealth, and love
in order to seek spiritual perfection. It is achieved after the release from samsara, the cycle of births and
deaths.

The Hindus believe that all reality is one and spiritual, and that each individual soul is identical with this
reality and shares its characteristics: pure being, intelligence, and bliss. Everything that seems to divide
the soul from this reality is maya or illusion.

The Hindus regard Purusha, the universal spirit as the soul and original source of the universe. As the
universal soul, Purushaisthe life-giving principle in all animated beings. As a personified human being,
Purusha’s body is the life-giving principle in all animated beings. As a personified human being, Purusha’s
body is the source of all creation.

The four Varnas

1. The Brahman (priest) was Purusha’s mouth. Their duty is to perform sacrifices, to study and to
teach the Vedas, and to guard the rules of Dharma. Because of their sacred work, they are
supreme in purity and rank.
2. The Ksatriyas (warriors) are the arms. From this class arose the kings who are the protectors of
society.
3. The Vaisyas (peasants) are the thighs. They live by trading, herding, and farming.
4. The Surdas (serfs) are the feet. They engage in handicraft sand manual occupation and they
serve meekly the three classes above them. They are strictly forbidden to mate with persons of
higher varna.

Indian Literature

Buddhi sm originated in India inthe6thcentury B.C. This religion is

based on the teachings of Siddharta Gautama called Buddha or
the ‘Enlightened One’. Muchof Buddha’s teaching is focused on
self- awareness and self-development in order to attain nirvana or
enlighten men.
According to Buddhist beliefs, human beings are bound to the
wheel of life which is a continual cycle of birth, death, and
suffering. This cycle is an effect of karma in which a person’s
present life and experiences are the results of past thoughts and
actions, and these present thoughts and actions likewise create those of the future.

The Four Noble Truths

1. life is suffering; 2. the cause of suffering is desire; 3. the removal of the desire of suffering,

4. the Noble Eightfold Paths.

The Noble Eight-fold Paths

1. right understanding, 2. right thought, 3. right speech, 4. right action,

5. right means of livelihood, 6. right effort, 7. right consideration, 8. right meditation.

Indian literature

The Vedas form a collection of sacred among hymn or verse composed in archaic Sanskrit the Indo-
European speaking people who entered India from the Iranian regions. Most scholars believed it to have
the period of about 1500- 1200 B.C.

The Dhammapada (Way of Truth) is an anthology of basic Buddhist teaching in a simple aphoristic style.
One of the bestknown books of the Pali Buddhist canon it contains 423 s tanzas arranged in 26 chapters.

The Upanishads form a highly sophisticated commentary on the religious thought suggested by the
poetic hymns of the Rigveda. The name implies, according to same traditions, ‘sitting at the feet of the
teacher. ’

The most important philosophical doctrine is the concept of a single supreme being, the Brahman, and
knowledge is directed toward reunion with it by the human soul, the Atman or self.

The nature of eternal life is discussed and such themes as the transmigration of souls and causality in
creation.

Mahabharata

 The Mahabharata consists of a mass of legendary and didactic material that tells of the struggle
for supremacy between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas, and the Pandavas. The traditional
date for the war is 3102B.C.
 The poem is made up of the almost 100,000 couplets divided into 18 parvans or sections.
 Authorship is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vsaya, although its more likely that he compiled
existing material.
 It is an exposition on dharma (codes of conduct), including the proper conduct of a king, of a
warrior. Of a man living in times of calamity, and of a person seeking to attain emancipation from
rebirth.

Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita (The blessed Lord’s Song) is one of the greatest and most beautiful of the Hindu
scriptures. It is regarded by the Hindus in somewhat the same way as the Gospels are by Christians. It
forms part of Book I Vandis written in the form of a dialogue between the warrior prince Arjuna and his
friend and charioteer, Krishna, who is also an earthly incarnation of the god Vishnu.

Ramayana
The Ramayana was composed in Sanskrit, probably not before 300 B.C., by the poet Valmiki, and consists
of some24,000 couplets divided into seven books. It reflects the Hindu values and forms of social
organization, the theory of karma, the ideas of wifehood, and feelings about caste, honor, and promises

The poem describes the royal birth of Rama, his tutelage under the sage Visavamitra, and his success in
bending Siva’s mighty bow, thus winning Sita, the daughter of King Janaka, for his wife. After Rama is
banished from his position as heir by intrigue, he retreats to the forest with his wife and his half brother,
Laksmana. There Ravana, the demon-king of Lanka, carries off Sita, who resolutely rejects his attention.

Panchatantra

The Panchatantra is a collection of Indian beast fables originally written in Sanskrit. In Europe, the work
was known under the title The Fables of Bidpai after the narrator, and Indian sage named Bidpai, (called
Vidyapati in Sanskrit).In theory, the Panchatantra is intended as a text book of Artha(worldly wisdom);
the aphorisms tend to glorify shrewdness and cleverness more than the helping of others.

Sakuntala

Sakuntala is a Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa. Love is the central emotion that binds the characters Sakuntala
and king Dushyanta. What begins as a physical attraction for both of them becomes spiritual in the end
as their love endures and surpasses all difficulties. King Dushyanta is a noble and pious king who upholds
his duties above personal desire. Sakuntala, on the other hand, is a young girl who matures beautifully
because of her kindness, courage, and strength of will. After a period of suffering, the two are eventually
reunited.

The Little Clay Cart

The Little Clay Cart (Mrcchakatika) is attributed to Shudraka, a king. The characters in this play include a
Brahman merchant who has lost his money through liberality, a rich courtesan in love with a poor young
man, many descriptions of resplendent palaces, and both comic and tragic or near tragic emotional
situations.

Gitanjali

Song Offerings was originally published in Indiain1910 and its translation followed in1912. In these prose
translations, Rabindranath Tagore uses imagery from nature to express the themes of love and the
internal conflict between spiritual longings and earthly desires.

The Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal a poem by Sahir Ludhianvi is about the mausoleum in North India built by the Mogul
emperor Shah Jahanfor his wife Mumtaz-i-Mahal. The façade of this grandiose structure is made of white
marble and is surrounded by water gardens, gateways, and walks. The tomb at the center of the dome
stands on a square block with towers at each corner. The construction of the building took twenty years
to complete involving some 20,000workers.

On Learning to be an Indian
On Learning to be an Indian an essay by Santha Rama Rau illustrates the telling effects of colonization on
the lives of the people particularly the younger generation. The writer humorously narrates the conflicts
that arise between her grandmother’s traditional Indian values and her own British up bringing.

famous Indian writers

Kalidasa a Sanskrit poet and dramatis probably the greatest Indian

writer of all time. As with most classical Indian authors, little is
known about Kalidasa’s person or his historical relationships. His
poems suggest that he was a Brahman(priest). Many works are
traditionally as cribbed to the poet, but scholars have identified
only six as genuine.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

The son of a Great Sage, Tagore is a Bengali poet and mystic who
won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. The death of his wife
and two children brought him years to sadness but this also
inspired some of his best poetry. Tagore is al so a gifted composer.

Kamala Markandaya (1924). Her works concern the struggles of

contemporary Indians with conflicting Eastern and Western
values. A Brahman, she studied at Madras University then settled
in England and married an Englishman. In her fiction, Western
values typically are viewed as modern and materialistic, and
Indian values as spiritual and traditional.

R.K. Narayan (1906). One of the finest Indian authors of his

generation writing in English. He briefly worked as a teacher
before deciding to devote himself fulltime to writing. All of
Narayan’s works are set in the fictitious South Indian town of
Malgundi. They typically portray the peculiarities of human
relationships and the ironies of Indian daily life, in which modern
urban existence clashes with ancient tradition. His style is graceful,
marked by genial humor, elegance, and simplicity.

Anita Desai (1937). An English-language Indian novelist and

author of children’s books, she is considered India’s premier
imagist writer. She excelled in evoking character and mood
through visual images. Most of her works reflect Desei’s tragic
view.