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.