Indo-Aryan literature
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What is Indo-Aryan literature?
Indo-Aryan literature refers to the writings in the Indo-Aryan family of languages. It's difficult to pinpoint when Indo-Aryan dialects became identifiable languages, but around the 10th century CE, Sanskrit was still the prominent language of high culture, literature, and ritual.
Around the turn of the millennium, languages known today as Hindi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Punjabi, and others began to appear. These early regional literatures shared characteristics such as a debt to Sanskrit, a less obvious debt to their Apabhramsha past, and regional peculiarities.
Narratives in these languages oftenRetrieved mythological tales from Hindu epics. In the 17th and 18th centuries, secular romances and heroic tales also appeared in narrative poems. Additionally, regional literatures borrowed forms from Sanskrit, such as the Ramayana, which appears in a 16th-century Hindi version by Tulsidas.
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Which languages are included in Indo-Aryan literature?
Indo-Aryan literature includes writings in languages that evolved from the Indo-Aryan language family. These languages began to appear around the 10th century CE and developed over the next two to three centuries.
Languages included are Hindi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Sindhi, and Assamese. Urdu developed later. Early texts borrowed from Sanskrit lexicon, imagery, myths, and the values in Sanskrit poetics and philosophy. These languages gained strength through the bhakti movement, which produced lyrical poetry, devotional songs, philosophical works, and biographies.
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What are some of the oldest works in Indo-Aryan literature?
The oldest known works in Indo-Aryan literature are the Vedas, dating back to approximately 1500–1200 BCE. These texts, composed in archaic Sanskrit, include the Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda.
The Rigveda, the earliest of these, comprises hymns addressed to various deities. The Yajurveda contains prose formulas applicable to rites, while the Samaveda consists of verses drawn from the Rigveda with musical notations. The Atharvaveda, a later compilation, includes incantations and magic spells.
Attached to each Veda are the Brahmanas (c. 800–600 BCE), Aranyakas (c. 600 BCE), and Upanishads (c. 700–500 BCE), which explain the ceremonial applications of the texts, expound the symbolism of rites, and speculate on the nature of the universe and humanity’s relation to it, respectively.
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How did religion influence Indo-Aryan literature?
Indo-Aryan literature's earliest form is of a sacred nature, dating back to around 1400 BCE with the Rigveda. This collection of hymns dedicated to Aryan religious gods marked the beginning of the Veda, or Hindu sacred writings.
Sanskrit literature was greatly influenced by the Brahminical religion of the Vedas. Reform movements like Buddhism and Jainism rejected Sanskrit, adopting their own languages such as Pali and Ardhamagadhi, to create their own sacred texts.
The Purāṇas, with their encyclopedic collection of myths, legends, and genealogies of gods, heroes, and saints, became the scriptures of the common people, influencing religious themes and artistic expression.
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Who are some famous authors or poets in Indo-Aryan literature?
Indo-Aryan literature has a rich history of poets and authors. Pāṇini, a grammarian from the 5th or 6th century BC, codified Sanskrit, which has been used continuously since 600 BC.
Some other famous authors and poets include:
* Tulsidas: A celebrated Hindi author known for the 16th-century Ramcharitmanas, a version of the Ramayana.
* Surdas: A blind poet and devotee of Krishna, composed countless bhajans (chants) in praise of Krishna and Radha.
* Amir Khosrow: A Persian poet who wrote in the Awadhi dialect and is known for his innovative spirit and descriptions of natural objects.
* Kabir: A reform-minded poet who sought to reconcile Islam and Hinduism in his short poems.
* Malik Muhammad Jayasi: A Muslim Hindi poet who wrote the religious epic Padmāvatī.2 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How does Indo-Aryan literature reflect the culture and history of South Asia?
Indo-Aryan literature, which began around 1400 BCE with the Rigveda, reflects South Asia's evolving culture and history. The Vedas, written in archaic Sanskrit, offer insights into the beliefs and practices of the early Indo-Aryans, their interactions, and conflicts.
As the language evolved into Sanskrit, it influenced the themes and forms of regional literatures, including the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the Puranas, which explore myths, dynasties, and legends. These texts often incorporated regional elements, mirroring the cultural diversity of the subcontinent. The rise of the Bhakti movement further enriched regional languages, fostering self-expression and cultural identity.
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Indo-Aryan literature, body of writings in the Indo-Aryan family of languages.
It is difficult to pinpoint the time when the Indo-Aryan dialects first became identifiable as languages. About the 10th century ce, Sanskrit was still the language of high culture and serious literature, as well as the language of ritual. At the turn of the millennium, there began to appear, at different times during the subsequent two or three centuries, the languages now known as the regional languages of the subcontinent—Hindi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Sindhi (which did not develop an appreciable literature), and Assamese. Urdu did not develop until much later.
The literatures in their early stages show three characteristics: first, a debt to Sanskrit that can be seen in their use of Sanskrit lexicon and imagery, their use of myth and story preserved in that refined language and frequently in their conformity to ideals and values put forward in Sanskrit texts of poetics and philosophy; second, a less obvious debt to their immediate Apabhramsha past (dialects that are immediate predecessors of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars); and, third, regional peculiarities.
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The narratives in the early stages of the development of the languages are most often mythological tales drawn from the epics and Puranas of classical Hindu tradition. However, in the 17th and 18th centuries, secular romances and heroic tales were also treated in narrative poems. Although the themes of the narratives are based on Purana tales, they often include materials peculiar to the area in which the narrative was written.
In addition to themes, regional literatures frequently borrowed forms from Sanskrit. For example, the Ramayana appears in a 16th-century Hindi version by Tulsidas, called the Ramcharitmanas (“Sacred Lake of the Acts of Rama”). This has the same form as the Sanskrit poem, though a different emphasis. The stylized conventions and imagery of Sanskrit court poetry also appear, though here too with different emphasis—for example, in the work of the 15th-century Maithili (Eastern Hindi) lyric poet Vidyapati. Even the somewhat abstruse rhetorical speculations of the Sanskritic poetic schools of analysis were used as formulas for the production of 17th-century Hindi court poetry. The Rasikapriya (“Beloved of the Connoisseur”) of Keshavadasa is a good example of this kind of tour de force.
There are other characteristics common to the regional literatures, some of which come not from Sanskrit but most likely from the Apabhramsha. There are two poetic forms, for example, that are found in many northern Indian languages: the barahmasa (“12 months”), in which, perhaps, 12 beauties of a girl or 12 attributes of a deity might be extolled by relating them to the characteristics of each month of the year; and the chautis (“34”), in which the 34 consonants of the northern Indian Devanagari alphabet are used as the initial letters of a poem of 34 lines or stanzas, describing 34 joys of love, 34 attributes, and so on.
Finally, there are common characteristics that may have come either through Apabhramsha or through the transmission of stories and texts from one language to another. The stories of Gopichandra, the cult hero of the Natha religious movement, a school of mendicant sannyasis, were known from Bengal to the Punjab even in the early period. And the story of the Rajput heroine Padmavati, originally a romance, was beautifully recorded, with a Sufi (mystic) twist, by 16th-century Hindi Muslim poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi and later by 17th-century Bengali Muslim poet Alaol.
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From the late 13th through the 17th century, bhakti (devotional) poetry took hold in one region after another in northern and eastern India. Jnaneshvari, a Marathi verse commentary on the Bhagavadgita written by Jnaneshvara (Jnanadeva) in the late 13th century spread devotional movement through Maharashtra. As a result, it was reflected in the works of the poet-saints Namdev and Tukaram. In Rajasthan it was represented in the works of Mira Bai, a 16th-century bhakti saint and poet. In northern India it could be seen in the poetry of Tulsidas, Surdas, Kabir, and others. In Bengal it spread through the poet Chandidas and others who sang of their love of God. Because of the bhakti movement, beautiful lyric poetry and passionate devotional songs were created. In some cases, as in Bengal, serious philosophical works and biographies were written for the first time in a regional language rather than in Sanskrit. The languages and their literatures gained strength as mediums of self-expression as well as of exposition. And, although there is much Sanskrit imagery and expression in the poetry and song, as well as similarities to Sanskrit textual models, its basic character is not Sanskritic. True to the nature of any spoken, everyday language, it is more vital than polished, more vivid than refined. In all the early literatures, writing was lyrical, narrative, or didactic, entirely in verse, and all in some way related to religion or love or both. In the 16th century, prose texts, such as the Assamese histories known as the buranji texts, began to appear.
The influence of Western models became discernible in those regional literatures beginning in the 19th century. From that period through the 20th century, those literatures witnessed a particular proliferation of works in vernacular prose. New prose and poetry forms also came gradually to be synthesized with traditional forms, where they did not entirely replace them. See Hindi literature; Assamese literature; Bengali literature; Gujarati literature; Kashmiri literature; Marathi literature; Nepali literature; Oriya literature; Punjabi literature; Rajasthani literature; Sindhi literature; Urdu literature.