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the Sultanate grew and became a literary language in the 18th century. It
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finally split into Hindi and Urdu, with Hindi acquiring the status of a national
language during British colonial rule.
Hindi is written in the Devanagri script and has 57 symbols, including
10 vowels and 40 consonants. Vowels are combined with consonants and
appear in the form of a line or mark known as a matra above, below, after
or before the consonant. The script has no capital letters and is written
from left to right horizontally. It includes honorifics which allow adjustments
in communication in formal and informal conversations. Devanagri is
straightforward and easy to learn with the words written according to the
way they are spoken. Hindi shares common features with Urdu, the official
language of Jammu and Kashmir state, and Pakistan, as well as other Indian
languages such as Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati.
BRAHMI SCRIPT
Brahmi is the earliest known script used for writing Sanskrit. It
originated in the 5th century BC and was used by Maurya Emperor
Ashoka (r. 273 BC 232 BC), to inscribe his famous edicts on stones
and pillars in the kingdom. Brahmi is a syllabic alphabet , which
means that each character is made up of a consonant as well as a
neutral vowel. In Brahmi, the same consonant is used with extra
strokes in combination with different vowels.
PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES
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LITERATURE
Indian literary works are as diverse as the languages spoken in the country
and include everything from epics, lyrics, poetry, aphorisms, drama, fables,
folk stories to scientific prose. Traditional literature is dominated by religious
themes from Hinduism, with writers singing praises of the gods and invoking
their blessings. The entire corpus of Vedic texts the Puranas, the epics the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita and renowned poet
Kalidas Abhijnana Shakuntala are some of the celebrated works from this
genre. The Puranas, 18 in number, are ancient Sanskrit texts that are said
to pre-date the epics. The Puranas discuss the creation of the universe,
the powers of the gods and the genealogies of kings.
Most of early Indian literature was in the Sanskrit language, the
dominant language of intellectual pursuits at that time; however, in
south India during ancient times, literary works were written in the
Tamil language. During the period of Muslim rule from the 11th century
onwards, classical Persian poetry took centre stage, giving way to Urdu
literature during the Mughal period. By the 16th century, an exhaustive
written literature in the vernacular languages had appeared. In the early
19th century, prose in different Indian languages got an impetus with the
setting up of vernacular schools, with Bengali writers taking the lead. The
British brought English literature to India, and it had a profound influence
on many writers of that period who assimilated some of its elements
to Indian themes.
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Today there is an extensive body of literature in all the important
languages of India, as well as an impressive collection of works in English.
Illustrious Indian writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries include Ram
Mohun Roy, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Prem Chand, a renowned writer
known as the Father of Urdu short stories, Vivekananda and Nobel laureate
Rabindranath Tagore, who won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. Tulsidas,
who lived in the 17th century, is considered the greatest Hindi poet, while Mirza
Asadullah Baig Khan, or Ghalib, was the greatest Urdu poet of the 19th century.
Muhammad Iqbal was a celebrated Muslim poet of the 20th century.
Among the later writers are Nirad C Chaudhuri, R K Narayan, Salman
Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Chandra, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Jhumpa
Lahiri, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai, many of whom represent the new breed of
Indians writing in English for a national as well as an international audience. Salman
Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai have been honoured by the international
community with the prestigious Booker Prize, while Jhumpa Lahiri has received
the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her debut collection of short stories.
It was Salman Rushdie s 1981 novel Midnight s Children that set the trend
of Indian authors writing in English. This trend has seen a newfound resurgence
in recent years. The number of Indians writing in English has mushroomed in
the 21st century with more and more writers, particularly those belonging
to the diaspora in the United States and Canada, drawing on their personal
experiences in post-colonial India or their lives overseas, to spin a fascinating
story centred around their unique identity.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN INDIAN
Nirad C Chaudhuri is best known for his Autobiography of an
Unknown Indian, a controversial book about his experiences as a
Bengali under British rule. The book is rated as Chaudhuri s magnum
opus for his vivid articulation of middle class Bengali society in the
early 1900s. Chaudhuri, an eccentric Anglophile who offended many
Indians because of his open admiration for the British Raj, moved
to Britain in the 1970s and lived in Oxford until his death in August
1999 at the age of 101. He continued to write while at Oxford,
penning his last book, an anti-India, pro-British collection of essays
titled Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse, when he was 99.
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TRADITIONAL LITERATURE
The Vedas
The Vedas (the word literally means knowledge ) are the primary
source of information about the ancient Vedic period (1700 BC
500 BC) in Indian history, and are believed to have been composed by
1200 BC 800 BC. The lyrical texts were passed on orally from generation to
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