A&H101 Great Books: INDIAN LITERATURE, Lecture notes of Indian Literature

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Indian Literature

Asia is known to be the most populous and largest continent on the planet. Asia is a cradle of the human race, world religions and civilization which is composed of a widespread variety of ethnic groups, diverse cultures, environments, and varied governmental systems making it rich in written literature.

Indian literature - writings of the Indian subcontinent, produced there in a variety

of vernacular languages including:

1. Sanskrit
2. Punjabi
3. Prakrit
4. Rajasthani
5. Pali
6. Tamil
7. Bengali
   8. Telugu
   9. Bihari
   10. Urdu
   11. Gujarati
   12. Lahnda
   13. Hindi
   14. Siraika
   15. Kannada
   16. Sindhi
   17. Kashmiri
   18. Malayalam
   19. Oriya Sanskrit is the primary sacred language of Hinduism, and has been used as a philosophical language in the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Sanskrit is a standardized dialect of Old Indo-Aryan, originating as Vedic Sanskrit as early as 1700-1200 BCE. One of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial documentation exists, Sanskrit is believed to have been the general language of the greater Indian Subcontinent in ancient times. It is still used today in Hindu religious rituals, Buddhist hymns and chants, and Jain texts. The earliest Indian literature took the form of the canonical Hindu sacred writings, known as the Veda , which were written in Sanskrit. To the Veda were added prose commentaries such as the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. Brahmana , any of a number of prose commentaries attached to the Vedas, the earliest writings of Hinduism, explaining their significance as used in ritual sacrifices and the symbolic import of the priests’ actions. The word brahmana may mean either the utterance of a Brahman (priest) or an exposition on the meaning of the sacred word; the latter is more commonly accepted by scholars. Veda , (Sanskrit: “ Knowledge ”) a collection of poems or hymns composed in archaic Sanskrit by Indo-European-speaking peoples who lived in northwest India during the 2nd millennium BCE.

The hymns formed a liturgical body that in part grew up around the soma ritual and sacrifice and were recited or chanted during rituals. They praised a wide pantheon of gods, some of whom personified natural and cosmic phenomena, such as fire (Agni), the Sun (Surya and Savitri), dawn (Ushas, a goddess), storms (the Rudras), and rain (Indra), while others represented abstract qualities such as friendship (Mitra), moral authority (Varuna), kingship (Indra), and speech (Vach, a goddess). Four Vedas

Rigveda - Rig means “Praise ”.

• The oldest Veda is the Rigveda (1800 – 1100 BCE). It has 1028 hymns called ‘Suktas’ and is a collection of 10 books called ‘Mandalas.’
• It has 10600 verses
• Rigvedic books 2-9 deal with cosmology and deities
• Rigvedic books 2-7 are the oldest and shortest also called family books
• Rigvedic books 1 & 10 are the youngest and longest
• 1028 hymns deal with deities including Agni, Indra and are attributed and dedicated to a sage rishi

Samaveda

• Known as the Veda of melodies and chants , Samaveda dates back to 1200- BCE. This Veda is related to public worship.
• There are 1549 verses (except 75 verses, all have been taken from Rigveda)
• The Samaveda is considered as the root of the Indian classical music and dance
• Samaveda is categorized into two parts – Part-I includes melodies called Gana & Part-II includes three verses book called Archika.
• Samaveda Samhita is not meant to be read as a text, it is like a musical score sheet that must be heard

Yajurveda - Yajur means “ Worship ”, dates back to 1100-800 BCE

• It compiles ritual-offering mantras/chants. These chants were offered by the priest alongside a person who used to perform a ritual Atharvaveda - Atharva means “Stable Mind ”
• The daily procedures of life are very well enumerated in this Veda
• This Veda contains hymns many of which were charms and magic spells which are meant to be pronounced by the person who seeks some benefit, or more often by a sorcerer who would say it on his or her behalf

Most Important Epics in India Ramayana - (Sanskrit: “Rama’s Journey”) shorter of the two great epic poems of India, the other being the Mahabharata (“Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty”). The Ramayana was composed in Sanskrit, probably not before 300 BCE, by the poet Valmiki and in its present form consists of some 24,000 couplets divided into seven books.

• relates the story of the life of Rama, the seventh incarnation of the god Vishnu.
• Maharshi Valmiki was the composer of the first Sanskrit poem (the Adikavya) known the world over as the epic Ramayana (Story of Lord Rama), hence he is called the Adikavi or First Poet - the Poet of Poets of India. His birth name was Ratnakara. He apparently got lost in the jungles as a child and was found by a hunter who raised him as his own son. When he grew up he became a hunter like his foster father but also took to being a bandit to supplement his livelihood. Once it so happened he met the Maharishi Narada and tried to rob him. However Narada convinced him of the evil of his ways and converted him into a 'Brahmarishi' or religious scholar. He came out of the anthill and penned the great epic sometime between the 4th and the 2nd century BC. "As long as there are rivers and mountains in the world, people will read the Ramayana." Mahabharata - heroic narrative that tells of the struggle for sovereignty between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas (sons of Dhritarashtra, the descendant of Kuru) and the Pandavas (sons of Pandu). The poem is made up of almost 100,000 couplets—about seven times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined—divided into 18 parvan s, or sections, plus a supplement titled Harivamsha.
• deals with the other reincarnation of Vishnu in the person of Krishna.
• Although it is unlikely that any single person wrote the poem, its authorship is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa
• Rabindranath Tagore (born May 7, 1861, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died August 7, 1941, Calcutta) Bengali poet, short-story writer, song composer, playwright, essayist, and painter who introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of early 20th- century India. In 1913 he became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
• Gītāñjali - a collection of poetry, the most famous work by Rabindranath Tagore, published in India in 1910. Tagore then translated it into prose poems in English,

as Gitanjali: Song Offerings , and it was published in 1912 with an introduction by William Butler Yeats.

Vishnu Sharma an Indian scholar, author and sage, who is believed to have written the

Panchatantra, a collection of fables. He was invited to teach the King Sudarshan who ruled a kingdom. He didn’t teach his princes students through conventional means and he had to employ a less orthodox way, and that was to tell a succession of animal fables – one weaving into another – that imparted to them the wisdom they required to succeed their father. After Vishnu Sharma taught the king’s sons, he was offered with valuable gifts which he declined. The king later gave him a title of “Pathak” and after him his family started using “Pathak” as surname. Now also in villages there is belief in Pathak’s that they don’t have to charge anything for knowledge transfer. These five discourse titled “The Lose of Friends”, “The Winning of Friends”, “Of Crows and Owls”, “Loss of Gains”, “Imprudence” – became the Panchantantra – meaning the five (pantra), treatises (tantra) Panchatantra - a compilation of inter-woven series of tales in prose and poetry, mostly animal fables. It was compiled in Sanskrit (Hindu) and Pali (Bhuddhist). It consists of 5 parts, apart from a brief introductory narrative.  The Panchatantra is a series of inter-woven colourful tales, mostly fables. According to its introductory narration, these inter-woven tales are meant to illustrate, for the benefit of three ignorant princes, the primary Hindu principles of nïti - "the wise conduct of life" or "prudent worldly conduct".