Indian Literature

2. ▶ Worlds 7th largest country in South Asia
▶ Second most populous country
▶ 3, 000 km (1.865 mi) wide, shoreline 7000 km (4,350 mi) along the Bay of Bengal
▶ India and Bharat are both official names
▶ Derives from Indus river used by Greek
▶ India civilization grew up in the Indus Valley to 2500 BC.

3. ▶ Himalayan Mountain - system on the North
▶ Northern plain – drained by the Indus, Ganges and Bramaputra rivers in North Central
India.
▶ Peninsular India – in the South

4. ▶ More than 200 languages are spoken in India
▶ Four major languages are represented
 Indo – Arab branch of the Indo – European group (the major Linguistic family in
Europe)
 Dravidian - language group
 Hindi – the fourth most widely spoken language in the world
 Indo – Aryan language

5. ▶ Over thousand years, countless group have migrated into the subcontinent and
many of these groups have maintained distinctive cultures down through years.
▶ The earliest Indian may have migrated from Australia and the Pacific Island

6. ▶ Four major religious traditions have emerged from this area:
▶ Hinduism – 83 %
▶ Jainism – 11%
▶ Buddhism – less than 1%
▶ Sikhism

7. ▶ Major social system that groups people according to birth:
 Brahmins – priests, the highest caste
 Kshatriyas – warriors and kings
 Vaishyas – merchants
 Shudras – manual labourers

8. ▶ Some people do not fall into any caste ; these are called dalits, or untouchables
 Untouchables also known as Harijans
 Dalits have traditionally been tasked with work such as cleaning streets and working with
human and animal corpses and waste
▶ Caste- based discrimination is now illegal in India, and affirmative – action
policies aim to improve standards of living in lower castes, but inequalities persist

9. ▶ Federal System with parliamentary form of government
▶ Parliament consist of two houses
 The Raiya Sabha (Council of states)
 The Lok Sabha (House of the people)
 Elected directly by eligible voters and sit 5 years unless Parliament is dissolved
▶ Indian National Congress – party most identified remained control of the central government
▶November 1989 election – Discontent with India’s leadership caused Congress to lose its
parliamentary
▶ 1991 Election – P.V Narasimha Rao succeeded Ravid Gadhi as party leader became prime
minister in June 1991

10. ▶ 1950 and 1988 – Indian Literacy was doubled
▶ Literacy is higher on man than woman
▶ Free and open
▶ 8 years in primary
▶ 2 years in lower secondary
▶ 2 years in upper secondary
▶ Compulsory in 6 -14 years old
▶ University are large with cluster of affiliated colleges

11. ▶ India was a sovereign state under its own constitutional government began on
August 15, 1947, when the subcontinent was partitioned into the two states of India
and Pakistan.
▶ Pakistan become an Islamic state while India opted to become a secular state.

12. ▶ The father of modern India
▶ He was born in Pobandan, India on October 2, 1869, his father was a chief minister for the maharaja
of Pobandan and his family came from traditional caste of grocers and moneylenders.
▶ His mother was a devout adherent of Jainism, a religion in which ideas are non violence and
vegetarianism.
▶ He had his fixed marriage when he was 13
▶ He went to London to study law when he was 18
▶ He works for an Indian firm in South Africa
▶ He assumed leadership of protest campaign and gradually developed his techniques of non violent
resistance known as Satyagraha

13. whom he called Harijans
▶ He believed in manual labor and simple living and non violence is a percept common to three
faiths :
 Hinduism – Adherent to the prescription against violence toward living things can escape from the
cycle of rebirth and the doctrine also form a basis for vegetarian
 Buddhism – Non violence is manifest in the Buddha’s emphasis on compassion and is also part of the
faith’s moral codes
 Jainism – Non violence is a core religious duty and followed strictly that the most Orthodox devotes
cover their faces with mask to prevent accidentally harming insect

14. ▶ In June 1975, He persuaded president Fakhuruddin Ali Ahmed to evoke a state of emergency
that gave his near – dictatorial power opposition leads were jailed without trial and many
constitutional freedom were curtailed
▶ In March 1977, He called a new election, perhaps to legitimatize the powers he had taken
under the emergency. But Morarji Desai, a long time opponent of Gandhi became prime
minister. President Ahmed died the same year and Nelsan Sanjavi Reddy was elected as
president
▶ In July 1979, Janai party began to break apart and Desai resigned as the prime minister
▶ He was assassinated by the Hindu militant who believed him to be, too kind to the Muslims

15. ▶ Sanskrit literature – Oral tradition produced the Vedic holy text
▶ Mahabharata and Ramayana – two great books, sources for countless literary
▶ 400 BC Panini – Produced his Sanskrit grammar
▶ Second century AD – Prakrits being used in literature
▶ Middle ages Sanskrit – used in religious context by priest
▶ Ghazal – form of lyrical folk song and notable exponents of the form
▶ Macaulay – Established English – language schooling for Indians
▶ Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Jayashankar Prasad (1889-1937) introduced black
verse in sonnet into Indian poetry

16. ▶ Madhusudan Dutt – Wrote the first plays modelled on Western Drama
▶ Sir Rabindranath Tagore – Introduced the short story to vernacular writing in
India and he is the first novel laureate
▶ Laksminath Bezbarua and Muhammad Iqbal – Major poets of the period
▶ History of Indian Literature falls into two periods:
 The Vedic period
 Sanskrit period

17. ▶ Poetry
▶ The Rig Veda – A book of sacred hymns
▶ The Yajur Veda – A book of knowledge and melodies for the hymns
▶ The Sama Veda – Descriptions of the materials for sacrifice
▶ The Artharva Veda – Contains magic spells and other folk knowledge
▶ The Brahmanas
▶ The Maya
▶ The Sutras

18. ▶ Epics
 Mahabharata
 Bhagavad gita
 Nala and Damayanti
 Ramayana
▶ Dramas
 The toy clay cart
 Sakuntala or the fatal ring
 Jatakas
 Panchatantra
 Hitopdesa
 Sukasaptati

19. ▶ Reincarnation – The belief that the soul repeatedly goes through a cycle of being
born into a body, dying and being reborn again in a new body
▶ Karma – A force that determines the quality of each life , depending on how well
one behaved in a past life
 Hinduism says we create karma by our actions on earth. If you live a good life,
you create a good karma. If you live a bad life, you create bad karma

20. ▶ Each time a Hindu soul is born into a better life , it has the opportunity to improve
itself further, and get closer to ultimate liberation
▶ The liberation is called Moksha
▶ One attains Moksha when one has “overcome ignorance” and no longer desires
anything at all
▶ The one who reach this state no longer struggle with the cycle of life and death
▶ The way to get to Moksha is to not create any karma

21. ▶ The Vedas Collection of Sanskrit hymns (1200-900 BCE) but based on older oral
versions
▶ The Upanishads which means the inner or mystic teaching that were passed down
from guru (teacher) to disciple (student)

22. ▶ Sanskrit for great story , is one of the great epic poems of ancient India
▶ It was written between 300 BC and 300 AD
▶ The great sage Veda Vyasa, also known as Krsna Dvaipayana.
▶ The story is about the battle of one family over a kingdom in northern India
▶ The Bhagavad Gita (song of God) is contained in the Mahabharata. It is a dialogue between Krishna and
the hero Arjuna on the meaning of life
▶ With about one hundred thousand verses, long prose passages, or about 1.8 million words in total, the
Mahabharata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined or about four times the
length of the Ramayana.
▶ It has been called Mahabharata due to the immense size and its dealing with the story of the people of
the race descended from the ancient emperor Bharata, culminating in the war.

23. ▶ The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the poet Valmiki and is an important part
of the Hindu canon
▶ The name Ramayana is a tatpurusa compound of Rama and ayana "going, advancing", translating
to "the travels of Rama“
▶ The Ramayana consists of 24,000 verses in seven cantos (karnas) and tells the story of a prince,
Rama of Ayodhya, whose wife Sita is abducted by the demon (Rakshasa) king of Lanka, Ravana.
▶ The characters of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Bharata, Hanumān and Ravana (the villain of the piece)
are all fundamental to the cultural consciousness of India
▶ One of the most important literary works on ancient India, the Ramayana has had a profound
impact on art and culture in the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia.

24. better life net time and
ultimately achieve liberation
There are 4 legitimate goals in
life:
 Dharma – Appropriate living
 Artha – The pursuit of material gain by lawful
means
 Karma – Delight of the senses
 Moksha – Release from rebirth
▶ Hinduism is about the sort of life one should lead in order to be born into a

25. ▶ Each Hindu has 4 daily duties :
 Revere the deities
 Respect ancestors
 Respect all beings
 Honour all human kind