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Towards a Literary History of India

INDIA'S LITERATURE is older than its music or sculpture or painting but has not received historical attention in the way that these other arts have. Ancient treatises on music are extant; eras of sculpture have been demarcated and documented; schools of painting have been identified. But the literary history of India somehow continues to be denied sustained scholarly pursuit. The term Indian Literature tends to make people think only of ancient literary works in Sanskrit, and the afterglow of that allegedly glorious past dazzles us into inability to view the living present. No modem and forward-looking concept of Indian literature has yet been formulated, so that proper study and research can grow up around it. The aphorism that "India has one literature that is written in many languages" may satisfy foreigners, but no right-thinking Indian should accept such a statement until it has been fully explored and its validity established beyond doubt. Such exploration will have to contend with some grave and seemingly insuperable difficulties. First, the multiplicity of languages in which the literary imagination in India has expressed itself1 makes it impossible for any one Indian to know all the significant products at first hand. Second, no previous model exists anywhere in the world for the literary history of a country of this subcontinental size containing so many languages that have achieved a widely scattered and highly uneven literary culture. Third, the unequal development of Indian languages prior to Independence and the growth of rabid linguistic sentiments in each language region after Independence make it more expedient for most Indians to think in terms of many regional literatures rather than of one subcontinental literature. These are only the major and obvious difficulties. Other allied and no less obdurate practical as well as conceptual problems are bound to crop up as soon as one begins to consider a working plan for the projected literary history of India. If we look back to our older histories of literature, we shall find that the great pioneering work done by Western "Orientalists" and "Indologists" can no longer guide a modern literary historian. Whether it be Albrecht Weber's The History of Indian Literature (1852) or G. A. Grierson's Modern Vernacular Litera- ture of Hindustan (1889) or Robert Watson Frazer's A Literary History of India (1897) or Moritz Winternitz's History of Indian Literature (1907), all are in the * The author's comprehensive treatment of this subject is to be found in Towards a Literary History of India (Simla, India, 1975).