Glossaries of Hindi Texts

Devaki Nandan Khatri (1861 - 1913) originally wrote his novel Chandrakanta for serial publication. When it was collected into a book, it was the longest piece of modern Hindi prose to date. (However, the selection offered on this site represents only the preface and the first thirty pages of the novel.) Despite its age, it is a breezy and quite funny read and remains a favorite classic in India.

Lallulal (1763 - 1825) was one of the Indian scholars associated with the College of Fort William in early-nineteenth century Calcutta. This text is based on the tenth book of the Bhāgavata purāṇa, which describes Lord Krishna's childhood in the fields around Vrindavan on the banks of the Yamuna River not far from Agra.

Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850 - 1882) lived a short but extremely influential life and is known as “the Father of Modern Hindi Literature.” With his erudition (he had been trained in both Persian and Sanskrit, the two major classical literary traditions in India) and a publishing empire based in Varanasi, he shaped perceptions of Hindi literature by elevating the discourse surrounding it and helping to establish a literary standard.

This is one of the best known stories by Premchand (1880 - 1936) and a classic example of Progressive writers’ concern with the lives of people from oppressed classes. The main character, Dukhi, is from the untouchable Chamar caste, and his meager life is made difficult by social forces he does not understand. The action of the story revolves around his attempt to get the village Brahmin to cast his daughter's wedding horoscope. The ironic title, which is a Hindu theological term literally meaning “the right path,” has often been rendered into English as “Deliverance.

Premchand’s “Dudh kā dām” takes up one of the author’s favorite themes: India’s social ills. Grinding poverty and caste oppression are the lot of Bhūngī and her ironically-named son Maṅgal (“fortunate”) from the bhaṅgī (sweeper) caste. Arguably a proto-Dalit writer, Premchand exposes the injustice of the rigid social hierarchies that relegate Maṅgal to barely human status when he loses his mother and sole protector.

This excerpt from Premchand’s “Urdū, Hindī aur Hindustānī” (1934) evinces the position of a well-meaning nationalist-period writer who saw himself as a champion of the linguistic middle ground of Hindustani. He advocates a national language that would eschew complex words from Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic and be readily accessible to all.

Mohan Rakesh (1925 - 1978) was one of the leading lights of the Nayī Kahānī (or “New Story”) movement in post-Independence Indian literature.

In “Malbe kā mālik,” or “The Owner of the Rubble,” an old man has come from Pakistan to find the place in an India where his late son had lived before Parition. The people of the village hide in their homes presumably because the old man is Muslim and a stranger. The reality is more complicated...

“Tanāv” by Rajendra Yadav (b. 1929) is a highly experimental story, whose narration is at once third person and first person. Mrs. Sinha, an upper middle class wife, tells her own story but refers to herself in the third person. She is clearly mentally ill and her illness is a metaphor for the discomfort of the urban middle class in the years after the euphoria of Indian Independence had worn off.

“A Death in Delhi” is a classic of the Nayī Kahānī (or “New Story”) style of the post-Independence period. Short story writers like Kamleshwar (1932 - 2007) turned their attention from the lives of the rural poor, a subject so beloved by Premchand, to the ennui of the urban middle class. There was a new interest in the psychological lives of characters, as is evident in this story

Post-Independence short-story writing opened the way for Dalits (formerly known as “untouchables” or “Harijans”) to write stories from their perspective. Omprakash Valmiki (b. 1950) is one of the most famous Dalit litterateurs and, in contrast to earlier short story writers, portrays the life of Dalits with an authentically Dalit voice.

Mohan Naimishray’s Apne-apne piñjare (1995) is one of the most influential works of Dalit literature in Hindi and an outstanding instance of the ātmakathā (autobiography) that is the signature genre of Dalit self-expression. It is instructive to contrast Naimishray’s style of narration with that of Premchand (1880-1936), whose voice is that of a nationalist writer who could sympathize with the plight of Dalits but who could not render their suffering in the first person.

“Lājwantī” by Rajinder Singh Bedi explores the plight of abducted women during the violence and upheaval of the subcontinent’s partition in 1947. Sundarlal, an abusive husband whose own wife went missing during the conflict, actively campaigns for the repatriation of abducted women but is taken aback by the unsettling emotional transformations that attend the acceptance of his own wife back into his home. Bedi raises the problem of silence—the inability of survivors and perpetrators of violence to talk about what happened—which is a common theme in partition literature.

A selection of popular dohās (couplets) attributed to Kabir (fl. 1450) and Rahim (c. 1600).

The mid-twentieth century Chayavad movement represents a stark departure from earlier Hindi and Urdu poetic traditions. Its philosophy was that poetry should deal in emotions above all else and that the poet should strive to express those emotions as tenderly as possible. The name “Chayavad” is untranslatable, as the literal meaning, “shadow-espousing,” sounds sinister in English. What is meant by “shadow” in this context is the emotional wake that trails after an event. It is that ripple of emotion and not the event itself that Chayavad poetry aims to capture in verse.