South Asian Literature
Encyclopedia
The term "South Asian literature" refers to the literary works of writers from the Indian subcontinent
and its diaspora. Countries to which South Asian literature's writers are linked include India
, Pakistan
, Bangladesh
, Sri Lanka
and Nepal
. The Maldives
, Burma, Bhutan
, Afghanistan
and Iran
are also sometimes classed as part of South Asia.
South Asian literature is written in English as well as the many national and regional languages of the region.
As the success of Booker Prize winning authors like Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy
suggests, India
is today one of the world's most vibrant areas of literary and cultural production.
For more information, see WikiGanesh
For the literature of South Asian cultures, see:
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
and its diaspora. Countries to which South Asian literature's writers are linked include India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
, Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
and Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
. The Maldives
Maldives
The Maldives , , officially Republic of Maldives , also referred to as the Maldive Islands, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of twenty-six atolls oriented north-south off India's Lakshadweep islands, between Minicoy Island and...
, Burma, Bhutan
Bhutan
Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China...
, Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
are also sometimes classed as part of South Asia.
South Asian literature is written in English as well as the many national and regional languages of the region.
As the success of Booker Prize winning authors like Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays...
suggests, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
is today one of the world's most vibrant areas of literary and cultural production.
For more information, see WikiGanesh
For the literature of South Asian cultures, see:
- Bangladeshi literatureBengali literatureBengali literature is literary works written in Bengali language particularly from Bangladesh and the Indian provinces of West Bengal and Tripura. The history of Bengali literature traces back hundreds of years while it is impossible to separate the literary trends of the two Bengals during the...
- Bengali literatureBengali literatureBengali literature is literary works written in Bengali language particularly from Bangladesh and the Indian provinces of West Bengal and Tripura. The history of Bengali literature traces back hundreds of years while it is impossible to separate the literary trends of the two Bengals during the...
- Bengali literature
- Indian literatureIndian literatureIndian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognized languages....
- Assamese literatureAssamese literatureAssamese literature is the entire corpus of poetry, novels, short stories, documents and other writings in the Assamese language. It also includes popular ballads in the older forms of the language during its evolution to the contemporary form. The literary heritage of the Assamese language can...
- Bengali literatureBengali literatureBengali literature is literary works written in Bengali language particularly from Bangladesh and the Indian provinces of West Bengal and Tripura. The history of Bengali literature traces back hundreds of years while it is impossible to separate the literary trends of the two Bengals during the...
- Gujarati literatureGujarati literatureThe history of Gujarati literature may be traced to 1000 AD, and this literature has flourished since then to the present. It is unique in having almost no patronage from a ruling dynasty, other than its composers...
- Hindi literatureHindi literatureHindi literature , is broadly divided into four prominent forms or styles, being Bhakti ; Shringar ; Veer-Gatha ; and Adhunik...
- Indian English literatureIndian English literatureIndian English literature refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora, such as V.S...
- Kannada literatureKannada literatureKannada literature is the corpus of written forms of the Kannada language, a member of the Dravidian family spoken mainly in the Indian state of Karnataka and written in the Kannada script....
- Kashmiri literatureKashmiri literatureKashmiri literature has a history of at least 2,500 years, going back to its glory days of Sanskrit. Early names include Patanjali, the author of the Mahabhashya commentary on Pāṇini's grammar, suggested by some to have been the same to write the Hindu treatise known as the Yogasutra, and...
- Malayalam literatureMalayalam literatureThe term Malayalam literature refers to Literature written in Malayalam language. Malayalam is the language spoken by around 35 million people, mainly the inhabitants of the state of Kerala and the union territory of Lakshadweep Islands in India. Malayalam is a Dravidian language and thus has close...
- Marathi literatureMarathi literatureMarathi literature is the body of literature of Marathi, a Sanskrit-derived language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Maharashtra and written in the Devanagari script.-Early Marathi Literature :...
- Nepali literatureNepali literatureNepali Literature refers to the literature written in the Nepali language and should not be confused with Nepalese literature; a work that is classified as Nepali literature does not necessarily have to be written by a Nepalese/ written in Nepal. Much of today's Nepali literature is widely written...
- Oriya literatureOriya literatureOriya is an official language of the state of Orissa, India. The region has been known at different stages of history as Kalinga, Udra, Utkala, or Koshala. The language is also spoken by minority populations of the neighboring states of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. The...
- Punjabi literaturePunjabi LiteraturePunjabi literature refers to literary works written in the Punjabi language particularly by peoples from the historical Punjab region of India and Pakistan including the Punjabi diaspora. The Punjabi language is written in several different scripts, of which the Shahmukhi, the Gurmukhī scripts are...
- Rajasthani literatureRajasthani literatureRajasthani has a vast literature written in various genres starting from 1000 AD. But, it is generally agreed that modern Rajasthani literature began with the works of Surajmal Misrana. His most important works are the Vansa Bhaskara and the Vir Satsai...
- Sanskrit literatureSanskrit literatureLiterature in Sanskrit begins with the Vedas, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India; the golden age of Classical Sanskrit literature dates to late Antiquity . Literary production saw a late bloom in the 11th century before declining after 1100 AD...
- Tamil literatureTamil literatureTamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution...
- Telugu literatureTelugu literatureThe Telugu literature or Telugu Sahityam is one of the most precious possessions of the literary products of India. Telugu literature is rich reserve of poems, stories, dramas and puranas. It flowered in the early 16th century under the Vijayanagar empire, of which Telugu was one of the court...
- Urdu literatureUrdu literatureUrdu literature has a long and colorful history that is inextricably tied to the development of that very language, Urdu, in which it is written...
- Assamese literature
- Nepali literatureNepali literatureNepali Literature refers to the literature written in the Nepali language and should not be confused with Nepalese literature; a work that is classified as Nepali literature does not necessarily have to be written by a Nepalese/ written in Nepal. Much of today's Nepali literature is widely written...
- Pakistani literaturePakistani literaturePakistan literature, that is, the literature of Pakistan, is a distinct literature that gradually came to be defined after Pakistan gained nationhood status in 1947, emerging out of literary traditions of the Indian subcontinent. The shared tradition of Urdu literature and English literature of...
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- Kashmiri literatureKashmiri literatureKashmiri literature has a history of at least 2,500 years, going back to its glory days of Sanskrit. Early names include Patanjali, the author of the Mahabhashya commentary on Pāṇini's grammar, suggested by some to have been the same to write the Hindu treatise known as the Yogasutra, and...
- Punjabi literaturePunjabi LiteraturePunjabi literature refers to literary works written in the Punjabi language particularly by peoples from the historical Punjab region of India and Pakistan including the Punjabi diaspora. The Punjabi language is written in several different scripts, of which the Shahmukhi, the Gurmukhī scripts are...
- Sindhi literatureSindhi literatureSindhi literature is very rich and is generally considered to be among the world's oldest. Its writers have contributed extensively in various forms of literature both in poetry and prose.- Sufi literature and poetry :...
- Urdu literatureUrdu literatureUrdu literature has a long and colorful history that is inextricably tied to the development of that very language, Urdu, in which it is written...
- Kashmiri literature
- Sri Lankan literatureSri Lankan literatureSri Lankan literature is the literary tradition of Sri Lanka. The largest part of Sri Lankan literature was written in the Sinhala language, but there is a considerable amount of works in other languages used in Sri Lanka over the millennia .Up to the present, short stories are a very important...
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- Tamil literatureTamil literatureTamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution...
- Tamil literature