Category: Literature

  • Indian literature

    dr sanjana p

    Indian literature spans across millennia on a vast realms of tradition, time and geography and takes origin from the ancient Vedas, epics to modern multilingual landscape. Let us delve into the vast expanse of the literature of Indian subcontinent to explore its roots.

    Ancient literature of India redrawing the geopolitics of the subcontinent.

    The literary history of the subcontinent stems from rich oral traditions, philosophy, poetry and fiction of ancient Vedic period and now stretch along the vast expanse of literature carved in 22plus languages of the country. In India, the Eighth Schedule of its Constitution has 22 officially recognized literary languages. Sahitya Akademi, India’s highest literary body, also has 24 recognized literary languages.

    Most of the earliest works of Indian literature were orally transmitted. Sanskrit literature era took origin as the oral literature of the Rig Veda, a collection of literature dating to the period 1500–1200 BCE. It delineated the geopolitical environment of the period.

      The canonical Pali literature includes Buddhist discourses (suttas), Abhidharma works, poetry, works on monastic discipline (vinaya), and the Jataka tales.

     Saint or rishi Ved Vyasa penned Mahabharata and rishi Valmiki created Ramayana, in Epic Sanskrit and are regarded as the greatest Sanskrit epics with no parallels to compare till date.

    Classical Sanskrit literature flourished during the first few centuries of the first millennium BCE, and similarly the Pali and Sangam literatures too.The renowned poet and playwright Kalidasa wrote one great epic called Raghuvamsha in classical Sanskrit. Other masterpieces written in Classical Sanskrit and worthy of mention here include Panini’s Ashtadhyayi which set a norm for grammar and phonetics of classical Sanskrit. Yet another significant compilation is Manu smriti, a famous text in Hinduism.

    The sangam literature of Tamil

    The Sangam literature is the ancient Tamil literature of the period in the history of South India (known as the Tamilagam) spanning from c. 300 BCE to 300 CE.

    Most of the available Sangam literature is from the Third Sangam, this period is known as the Sangam period, which refers to the prevalent Sangam legends claiming literary academies lasting thousands of years, giving the name to the corpus of literature.

       The Only religious poems among the shorter poems occur in paripaatal. The rest of the corpus of Sangam literature depicts human relationship and emotions.

        Sangam literature delineates emotional and abstract subjects such as love, war, governance, trade and bereavement.

     A great Tamil scholar, Thiruvalluvar who had written several manuscripts on ethics, virtue, wealth and love lived during Sangam period.

    The Tamil poet Mamulanar, who delved into historical incidents of Indian subcontinent, lived during the Sangam period.

    The Bhakti Movement

    The Bhakti Movement was a prominent religious movement in medieval Hinduism which attempted for religious reforms at all strata of society.It originated in Tamilakam during 6th century CE and gathered momentum through the poems and teachings of the Vaishnava Alvars and Shaiva Nayanars.

     During the period between 14th to18th centuries, the literary traditions went through a period of huge transformation owing to the spread of the Bhakti movement in the northern parts of India. The period of Bhakthi movement witnessed the emergence of devotional poets such as Kabir, Tulsidas and Guru Nanak.

    The Assamese literature

    The Buddhist Charyapadas are quite often referred to as the earliest example of Assamese literature. The Charyapadas are Vajrayana Buddhist songs composed in the 8th to 12th centuries.

    Hindi literature

    The origin of Hindi literature was from religious and philosophical poems of medieval periods  compiled in dialects such as Avadhi and Brij. The most famous writers of this period were Kabir and Tulsidas. Overtime, the Dehlavi dialect of the Hindi Belt became more prominent than Sanskrit.

    Kannada literature

    The oldest existing record of Kannada prose is the Halmidi inscription of 450 CE, and poetry in tripadi metre is the Kappe Arabhatta record of 700 CE.

    The folk form of literature originated much before the compilation of other literary works in Kannada. Gajashtaka (800 CE) by King Shivamara II, Chudamani (650 CE) by Thumbalacharya are examples of earliest literature works which fell into oblivion and got extinct overtime.

    Kavirajamarga by King Nripatunga Amoghavarsha I (850 CE) is the earliest existing literary work in Kannada.

     The history of Marathi literature began with saint-poets such as Dnyaneshwar, Tukaram, Ramdas, and Eknath. Modern Marathi literature  emphasized social reform as its main narrative.

    Marathi literature

    Urdu poetry is a fine example of linguistic and cultural amalgamation. Arab and Persian vocabulary based on the Hindi language gave birth to a vast and popular class of ghazal literature, usually written by Muslims portraying various subjects including romance to philosophy of Sufism.

    Bengali literature

    The first evidence of Bengali literature is available as Charyapada or Charyageeti, which were Buddhist hymns from the 8th century.

    Charyapada is in the oldest known written form of Bengali. The famous Bengali linguist Hara Prasad Shastri discovered the palm leaf Charyapada manuscript in the Nepal Royal Court Library in 1907.

    The renowned Bengali writer & Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore,contributed immensely to Bengali literature. He was honored with Nobel prize in 1913 for his work “Gitanjali”. Tagore also compiled the national anthem of India and Bangladesh namely, “Jana Gana Mana” and “Amar Sonar Bangla”, respectively.

    In the medieval period, precisely in the 9th and 10th centuries, Kannada and Telugu literature rose to fame. Followed by the renaissance in these literatures, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, and Maithili literature also started contributing to literature significantly.  Soon after this revived interest in literature, the ripples of it spread across various dialects of Hindi, Persian and Urdu languages. In 1913, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore became India’s first Nobel laureate in literature.

  • Tamil literature

      The Tamil literature encompasses a wide a collection of literary works that originated from a tradition spanning more than two thousand years in South India. It also portrays the history of Tamil Nadu, with its social, economic, political and cultural trends of various periods.

       Tamil is one of the oldest Dravidian languages of Indian subcontinent. The Tamil writing system evolved from the Brahmi script. The scriptures in Tamil are written mostly as religious texts of Sangam period and a few in post Sangam period. The contributors to the Tamil literature are mainly from Tmil speaking people of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Eelam Tamils from Sri Lanka, as well as the Tamil diaspora.

    The Sangam literature

    The early Sangam literature, dated before 300 BCE, is one of the most renowned epic poetries of Tamil literature and contains anthologies of many Tamil poets depicting various aspects of life, including love, war, social values and religion.

    Scholars consider this Tamil tradition-based chronology as ahistorical as well as mythical.  The sangam period and literature originated in South India and lasted between the period 3rd century BCE to 3rd century CE. Most scholars suggest the historical Sangam literature era, also called the Sangam period, spanned from c. 300 BCE to 300 CE, while others variously place this early classical Tamil literature period a bit later  before 300 CE.

    According to Kamil Zvelebil, a Tamil literature and history scholar, the most acceptable range for the Sangam literature is 100 BCE to 250 CE, based on the linguistic and text references. Tamil tradition holds the earliest Sangam poetry to be older than twelve millennia. Modern linguistic scholarship places the poems between the first century B.C.E. and the third century C.E. The age of Sangam is established through the correlation between the evidence on foreign trade found in the poems and the writings by ancient Greek and Romans such as Periplus.

       The sangam literature is historically known as ‘the poetry of the noble ones’.

    It is believed that Sangam literature originated in three chankams, or literary academies, in Madurai, India, from the 1st to the 4th century BCE. The Tamil tradition and legends link it to three legendary literary gatherings around Madurai and Kapaṭapuram and the first lasted over 4,440 years, the second over 3,700 years, and the third over 1,850 years.

    The Sangam age is considered by the Tamil people as the golden era of the Tamil language. During this period, the Tamil country was ruled by the Cheras, Pandyas, and the Cholas.

    Many of the original literature works of Sangam period is lost. The available literature from this period has been broadly divided in antiquity into three categories based roughly on chronology. These are: The Major Eighteen Anthology Series comprising the Ettuthokai (Eight Anthologies) and the Pattupattu (Ten Idylls) and the Five Great Epics. Tolkaappiyam, a commentary on grammar, phonetics, rhetoric, and poetics, is dated from this period.

    These were composed in three successive poetic assemblies (Sangam) that were held in ancient times on a now vanished continent far to the south of India. It is believed that a significant amount of literature could have preceded Tolkappiyam, as grammar books are usually written after a literature has existed for a long period.

    The poems of Sangam literature mostly are discussing two main topics: those of the first five collections are on love (akam), and those of the next two are on heroism (puram), including the praise of kings and their deeds. Paripatal, the eighth collection, contains poems of both types.

    Post Sangam period works of Tamil literature

    Later, at the end of Sangam period many great tamil epics were written including Cilappathikaram,Manimeghalai ,Civaka cintamani ,Valayapathi and Kundalakesi.

    Manimegalai and Kundalakesi are Buddhist religious works. Civaka cintamani and Valayapathi are Tamil Jain works. Cilappathikaram does not implicate any religious views and it is written in monologue style of Sangam literature.

    The ‘Tirukkuraḷ ‘written during this period is a collection of aphorisms depicts topics such as love, kingship, and ethics. It is a work that has had great influence on Tamil culture  and life. It is usually attributed to the poet Tiruvalluvar , who is thought to have lived  in the 6th century, though some scholars assign an earlier date (1st century bc).

    The Tirukkural consists of 133 sections of 10 couplets each are divided into three books: aram (virtue), porul (government and society), and kamam (love). The first section opens with praise of God, rain, renunciation, and a life of virtue. It then presents a world-affirming vision, the wisdom of human sympathy that expands from one’s family and friends to one’s clan, village, and country. The porul section projects a vision of an ideal state and relates good citizenship to virtuous private life. The kamam section addresses both “secret love” and married love; the section on married love is written as a dialogue between husband and wife.

    From the 6th to 12th century CE, the Tamil devotional poems written by Alvars (sages of Vaishnavism) and Nayanmars (sages of Shaivism) and, heralded the onset of  great Bhakti movement which later spread to the whole Indian subcontinent.

    In the post Sangam period the early epics and moral literature, authored by Vaishnavite, Shaivite, Ajivika; probably written by Jain and Buddhist authors and poets lasting up to the 5th century CE. Original scriptures of Ajivika seems to be lost .The Ajivika school of philosophy is known for its doctrine of fate or Niyati.That is the followers believed that every happenings of past,present and future are preordained and a function of cosmic principles. This philosophy was prominent in Mauryan empire of Bindusara in the 4th century. It reached Tamil speaking areas in 14th century CE.

    During the medieval era some of the grandest of Tamil literary classics like Kambaramayanam and Periya Puranam were authored and many poets were patronized by the imperial Chola and Pandya empires.

     The later medieval period saw many assorted minor literary works and also contributions by a few Muslim and European authors.

    References

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangam_literature
    2. https://www.britannica.com/art/Sangam-literature
    3. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tamil-language
    4. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tamil_literature
    5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tirukkural