Author: Sisir Kumar Das
Publisher: Sahitya Akademi
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 302
ISBN/UPC (if available): 81-260-2171-3
Description
A prequel to A History of Indian Literature: 1800-1910 by the same author, the present volume deals with the first nine hundred years of the medieval period of Indian literary history. The literary scene in India during the period presents a fantastically varied and wide spectrum of thought and expressions, here vibrant, there dull, now vigorous and natural, now sophisticated and recondite, at once sublime and cruse. It is amazing both in quality and quantity, produced in many languages, some inter-related and interdependent, sharing the same tradition, some distinctly separate and stubbornly resisting any possible influence of the other. As in other periods, so in the medieval period, there is a co-existence of different literary traditions, some old, refusing to die out, some dominant and popular, and some new struggling to assert themselves.
Radically different from all existing models of literary history, this book is an account of the literary activities of the Indian people carried through in many languages and under different social conditions. It is the story of a multilingual literature, a plurality of linguistic expressions and cultural experience and also of the remarkable unity underlying them.