Nepali literature

Nepali literature, the body of writings in the Nepali language of Nepal. Before the Gurkha (Gorkha) conquest of Nepal in 1768, Nepalese writings were in Sanskrit and Newari as well as Nepali (the latter being the language of the Gurkha conquerors). These writings consisted of religious texts, chronicles, gift-deeds, and so on. The extant material in Nepali, with the possible exception of the memoirs (c. 1770) of the Gurkha king Prithvi Narayan Shah, has more historical than literary interest. Literary writing in the Nepali language began only in the 19th century.

About 1830 there arose a school of Nepali poets who wrote on themes from the Hindu epics Rāmāyaṇa and Bhāgavata-Purāṇa in a language that is more Sanskrit than Nepali and that was heavily influenced by classical Sanskrit themes and poetic metres. They were followed in mid-century by Bhānubhakta, whose Nepali version of the Rāmāyaṇa achieved great popularity for the colloquial flavour of its language, its religious sincerity, and its realistic natural descriptions. The poet Lekhnāth Pauḍyāl in the early 20th century also tended to the colloquial and used the rhythms of popular songs in some of his poems.

The advent of modern literature in Nepal really began in the 1920s and ’30s with the work of Bālkrishṇa Sama, who wrote lyric poetry, plays based on Sanskrit and English models, and some short stories. Sama and his great contemporary, the poet Lakṣmīprasād Devkoṭā, discarded the earlier Sanskrit-dominated literary tradition and adopted some literary forms of the West, notably prose poetry, tragic drama, and the short story. In their poetry these writers dealt with such themes as love and patriotism as well as the problems of injustice, tyranny, and poverty faced by Nepal in the 20th century. Modern Nepali drama, of which Sama was the chief practitioner, was influenced in its depiction of contemporary social problems by Western playwrights, notably Henrik Ibsen. In the hands of such writers as Viṣveṣvaraprasād Koirālā and Bhavānī Bhiksu, the Nepali short story also centred on modern-day Nepal’s social problems and the need for reform.