21st cen

• Indian literature


  Literature produced across the Indian subcontinent prior to the creation of the Republic of India in 1947 and within the Republic of India after 1947
• Indian literature


  • Lays considerable stress upon oral and written forms, both of which were the primary patterns of successive transmittance
  • Hinduism was the most predominating religious faction that ever ruled in pre-Christian era, thus inducing lasting impressions upon the literary scenario
  • Hindu literary traditions dominated a sizeable part of Indian culture
• Hindu sacred texts


  • Vedas (comprising of Upanishads, Samhitas, Brahmanas and Aranyakas)
  • Other scholarly works
• History of Indian literature

  Can be divided into three periods: ancient, medieval and modern or contemporary
• Periods of Indian literature

  • Ancient
  • Medieval
  • Modern or contemporary
• Ancient Indian literature


  • Orally transmitted (shruti) valuable treatises in the guru-shishya mode
  • Vedic Period, denoting the commencement of Golden Age in India, through Sanskrit literature
• Medieval Indian literature


  • Witnessed a shift towards much more religious zealousness in regional divisions, although Sanskrit still was retained as the essential penmanship language
  • The Bhakti Movement was largely responsible for such a breakaway from the ancient 'Golden Moments'
• Contemporary Indian literature


  • Defined the ideal metamorphosis of Indian rebellious writers and their fuming socialism in the umpteen Indian Independence movements and thereafter
• Characteristics of Indian literature

  • Based on piety, a deeply religious spirit
  • Literary masterpieces are written in epic form, corresponds to the great epochs in the history of India
  • Medieval Indian literature had earliest works in many languages that were sectarian, designed to advance or to celebrate some unorthodox regional belief
• Vedas


  The oldest known literature in India, according to Hindu tradition they are apauruceya "not of human agency", are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called æruti ("what is heard")
• Ramayana and Mahabharata


  The most important epics of India, the latter is the longest epic in the world
• Medieval Indian literature


  • Caryapadas in Bengali
  • Tantric verses of the 12th century
  • Lilacaritra (circa 1280) in Marathi
• R.K. Narayan


  One of the most celebrated Indian novelists writing in English, his stories were set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi and captured the essence of ordinary life
• R.K. Narayan's prominent works


  • Novels: Swami and Friends (1935), The Bachelor of Arts (1937), The Dark Room (1938)
  • Short Stories: A Horse and Two Goats (1970), The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories (1994)
• Arundhati Roy


  Won the Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things, has been involved in controversies related to her opposition to the Narmada Dam project and her article on the film Bandit Queen
• Anita Desai


  Eminent novelist and short story writer, her novels include Cry, The Peacock, The Voices of the City, The Fire on the Mountain, and The Clear Light of Day
• Kalidasa


  Classical India's master poet and dramatist, demonstrated the expressive and suggestive heights of which the Sanskrit language is capable and revealed the very essence of an entire civilization
• Panchatantra


  A compilation of inter-woven series of tales in prose and poetry, mostly animal fables, compiled in Sanskrit (Hindu) and Pali (Buddhist)
• Ramayana


  One of the two great epic poems of ancient India, existed in the oral tradition perhaps as far back as 1,500 BCE, but the fourth century BCE is generally accepted as the date of its composition in Sanskrit by Valmiki
• Mahabharata


  One of the two great epic poems of ancient India, a Sanskrit epic principally concerning the dynastic struggle and civil war