INDIAN LITERATURE

The Vedic Literature is the first non-archaeological written source of Indian

history. The Vedic literary tradition thus places itself at a transmission stage of
history between Pre-history and the Historical period. The Vedic literary tradition
started around 1500 BCE with the emergence of the Aryan Culture.
Indian 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 recognised languages. The earliest works of Indian literature were orally
transmitted.
R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao contributed to the growth and
popularity of Indian English fiction in the 1930s. It is also associated, in some cases,
with the works of members of the Indian diaspora who subsequently compose works
in English. It is frequently referred to as Indo-Anglian literature.
The main body of classical Sanskrit literature consists of the sacred Hindu collections
of poems and hymns known as the Vedas; the commentaries on the Vedas in the
Brahmanas, the Aranyakas, and the Upanishads; epic poetry and wisdom literature;
and poetry in a style called kavya. © reddees/iStock.com.
Greetings. One of the most popular customs and traditions in Indian culture is the
Namaste greeting, sometimes called namaskar or namaskaram, translating as 'I bow
to the divine in you'.
Prominent literary works in Sanskrit of course also include the famous Ramayana
and Mahabharata epic poems which are thought to have been created sometime
between the 6th and 1st century BCE.

The literature of those languages depended largely on the ancient Indian background,
which includes two Sanskrit epic poems, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, as
well as the Bhagavata-purana and the other Puranas.

The Mahabharata is one of the most important pieces of ancient Indian literature
and is cherished as a significant source of both cultural and historical information.
Composed around 400 BCE to 400 CE, it is a grand epic that tells the story of a great
war between two sets of cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas.

The Hindu epic Ramayana relates the story of the life of Rama, the seventh
incarnation of the god Vishnu. It follows the story of his miraculous conception and
birth, his many exploits defeating demons in his youth and his subsequent exile,
defeat of the demon Ravana, and eventual restoration to the throne of Ayodhya.
HEBREW LITERATURE

In its essence, Hebrew literature is historical, national, deed-based narrative prose.

In other words, it is narrative prose that is based on an understanding of time as the
flow of history, of man as part of a nation, and of reality as a series of actions rather
than a constellation of objects in space.
In the reading of Hebrews as a biblical text, as covenant literature, a world is
revealed that is not created or essentially sustained by human will and effort. It is a
world properly spoken of as a given, or a gift, that parallels the world of the
achievements of humankind.
Beyond comparison, the most important work of ancient Hebrew literature is the
Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). The Mishna, compiled around 200 CE, is the primary
rabbinic codification of laws as derived from the Torah.
Hebrew is the language of the Bible, which is both a religious and cultural foundation
of incalculable influence and – especially read in the original language – one of the
world's most dazzling literary achievements. Learning Modern Hebrew is the simplest
way into the Bible.
These people were the Hebrews, known also as Israelites or, later, Jews. Their early
contribution to humankind was not wealthy empires or groundbreaking technology.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda
The father of modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, was born Eliezer Perlman in the
Russian Empire in 1858. Beginning at age three, he was educated in the traditional
way: rote memorization of basic Jewish texts, the Torah and Talmud.
Hebrews clearly lays out the present priestly ministry of Christ in the life of the
believer. Jesus is both the divine Son of God and completely human, and in His
priestly role He clears the way for human beings to approach the Father in heaven
through prayer (Hebrews 4:14–16).
Literary Genres and the Stories We Tell Ourselves. Tim and Jon discuss the three
literary styles used in the Bible: narrative, poetry, and prose discourse. In this
episode, Tim introduces us to the three main times of literature styles found in the
Bible: narrative, poetry, and prose discourse.
Unlike the Greeks and Romans, the ancient Hebrews were not known for being
scientists or philosophers or conquerors. It was their religion, Judaism, that proved to
be of crucial importance in world history, both for its own sake and for being the
religious root of Christianity and Islam.
PERSIAN LITERATURE

Persian literature, body of writings in New Persian (also called Modern Persian), the
form of the Persian language written since the 9th century with a slightly extended
form of the Arabic alphabet and with many Arabic loanwords.
Thus, especially in the Western world, the names Persia and Persian came to refer to
all of Iran and its subjects. Some medieval and early modern Islamic sources also
used cognates of the term Persian to refer to various Iranian peoples and languages,
including the speakers of Khwarazmian, Mazanderani, and Old Azeri.
The richness of Persian literature, one of the world's oldest, can be traced back to
medieval classical Persian. Beginning in the tenth century and lasting well into the
sixteenth century, classical Persian poetry and prose flourished.
In short, the ability to write in verse form was a pre-requisite for any scholar. For
example, almost half of Avicenna's medical writings are in verse. Works of the early
era of Persian poetry are characterized by strong court patronage, an extravagance
of panegyrics, and what is known as ‫" سبک فاخر‬exalted in style"
Persian Literature differs from the common definition of “literature” in that it is not
confined to lyrical compositions, to poetry or imaginative prose, because the
central elements of these appear, to greater or lesser degrees, in all the written works
of the Persians.
During this period, three major styles of Persian poetry came to prominence: the epic
panegyric Khorasani style, developed around the tenth century in eastern Persia; the
Iraq-i 'Ajami (Western Persian style) that emerged in the thirteenth century, a lyrical
style that uses mystical Sufi concepts; and the Sabk-i Hindi.
Some of the famous works of classical Persian literature are the Shahnameh, the great
Persian epic, by Ferdowsi (‫)شاهنامه فردوسی‬, Bustan and Golestan by Sa'di ( ‫بوستان و‬
‫)گلستان سعدی‬, Masnavi-e-Ma'navi and Divan-e Shams by Rumi( ‫مثنوی معنوی و دیوان شمس‬
‫)موالنا رومی‬, Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam (‫)رباعیات عمر خیام‬, Divan-e.
The seminal work of Persian literature is the Shahnameh, an epic poem that recounts
the history of pre-Islamic Persia or Iranshahr (Greater Iran). The Shahnameh contains
62 stories, told in 990 chapters with 50,000 rhyming couplets.
During the early modern period, Persian literature evolved to include genres in prose
such as short stories, novels, satire, and humor. Persian writers introduced new
themes related to nationalism and national identity. Free verse poetry also found an
audience among the new literary elites.
CHINESE LITERATURE

the body of works written in Chinese, including lyric poetry, historical and didactic
writing, drama, and various forms of fiction.

Chinese literature is one of the major literary heritages of the world, with an
uninterrupted history of more than 3,000 years, dating back at least to the 14th century
bce. Its medium, the Chinese language, has retained its unmistakable identity in both
its spoken and written aspects in spite of generally gradual changes in pronunciation,
the existence of regional and local dialects, and several stages in the structural
representation of the written graphs, or “characters.” Even the partial or total
conquests of China for considerable periods by non-Han Chinese ethnic groups from
outside the Great Wall failed to disrupt this continuity, for the conquerors were forced
to adopt the written Chinese language as their official medium of communication
because they had none of their own. Since the Chinese graphs were inherently
nonphonetic, they were at best unsatisfactory tools for the transcription of a non-
Chinese language, and attempts at creating a new alphabetic-phonetic written
language for empire building proved unsuccessful on three separate occasions. The
result was that after a period of alien domination, the conquerors were culturally
assimilated (except the Mongols, who retreated en masse to their original homeland
after the collapse of the Yuan [or Mongol] dynasty in 1368). Thus, there was no
disruption in China’s literary development.

Early Chinese literature does not present, as the literatures of certain other world
cultures do, great epics embodying mythological lore. What information exists is
sketchy and fragmentary and provides no clear evidence that an organic mythology
ever existed; if it did, all traces have been lost. Attempts by scholars, Eastern and
Western alike, to reconstruct the mythology of antiquity have consequently not
advanced beyond probable theses. Shang dynasty material is limited. Zhou dynasty (c.
1046–256 bce) sources are more plentiful, but even these must at times be
supplemented by writings of the Han period (206 bce–220 ce), which, however, must
be read with great caution. This is the case because Han scholars reworked the ancient
texts to such an extent that no one is quite sure, aside from evident forgeries, how
much was deliberately reinterpreted and how much was changed in good faith in an
attempt to clarify ambiguities or reconcile contradictions.
JAPANESE LITERATURE

Japanese literature, the body of written works produced by Japanese authors in

Japanese or, in its earliest beginnings, at a time when Japan had no written language,
in the Chinese classical language.

Both in quantity and quality, Japanese literature ranks as one of the major literatures
of the world, comparable in age, richness, and volume to English literature, though its
course of development has been quite dissimilar. The surviving works comprise a
literary tradition extending from the 7th century ce to the present; during all this time
there was never a “dark age” devoid of literary production. Not only do poetry, the
novel, and the drama have long histories in Japan, but some literary genres not so
highly esteemed in other countries—including diaries, travel accounts, and books of
random thoughts—are also prominent. A considerable body of writing by Japanese in
the Chinese classical language, of much greater bulk and importance than comparable
Latin writings by Englishmen, testifies to the Japanese literary indebtedness to China.
Even the writings entirely in Japanese present an extraordinary variety of styles,
which cannot be explained merely in terms of the natural evolution of the language.
Some styles were patently influenced by the importance of Chinese vocabulary and
syntax, but others developed in response to the internal requirements of the various
genres, whether the terseness of haiku (a poem in 17 syllables) or the bombast of the
dramatic recitation.

The first writing of literature in Japanese was occasioned by influence from China.
The Japanese were still comparatively primitive and without writing when, in the first
four centuries ce, knowledge of Chinese civilization gradually reached them. They
rapidly assimilated much of this civilization, and the Japanese scribes adopted
Chinese characters as a system of writing, although an alphabet (if one had been
available to them) would have been infinitely better suited to the Japanese language.
The characters, first devised to represent Chinese monosyllables, could be used only
with great ingenuity to represent the agglutinative forms of the Japanese language.
The ultimate results were chaotic, giving rise to one of the most complicated systems
of writing ever invented. The use of Chinese characters enormously influenced modes
of expression and led to an association between literary composition and calligraphy
lasting many centuries.
KOREAN LITERATURE

Korean literature, the body of works written by Koreans, at first in Classical

Chinese, later in various transcription systems using Chinese characters, and finally in
Hangul (Korean: han’gŭl; Hankul in the Yale romanization), the national alphabet.

Although Korea has had its own language for several thousand years, it has had a
writing system only since the mid-15th century, when Hangul was invented. As a
result, early literary activity was in Chinese characters. Korean scholars were writing
poetry in the traditional manner of Classical Chinese at least by the 4th century ce. A
national academy was established shortly after the founding of the Unified Silla
dynasty (668–935), and, from the time of the institution of civil service examinations
in the mid-10th century until their abolition in 1894, every educated Korean read the
Confucian Classics and Chinese histories and literature. The Korean upper classes
were therefore bilingual in a special sense: they spoke Korean but wrote in Chinese.

By the 7th century a system, called idu, had been devised that allowed Koreans to
make rough transliterations of Chinese texts. Eventually, certain Chinese characters
were used for their phonetic value to represent Korean particles of speech and
inflectional endings. A more extended system of transcription, called hyangch’al,
followed shortly thereafter, in which entire sentences in Korean could be written in
Chinese. In another system, kugyŏl, abridged versions of Chinese characters were
used to denote grammatical elements and were inserted into texts during transcription.
Extant literary works indicate, however, that before the 20th century much of Korean
literature was written in Chinese rather than in Korean, even after the invention of
Hangul.

In general, then, literature written in Korea falls into three categories: works written in
the early transcription systems, those written in Hangul, and those written in Chinese.

There are four major traditional poetic forms: hyangga (“native songs”); pyŏlgok
(“special songs”), or changga (“long poems”); sijo (“current melodies”); and kasa
(“verses”). Other poetic forms that flourished briefly include the kyŏnggi style in the
14th and 15th centuries and the akchang (“words for songs”) in the 15th century. The
most representative akchang is Yongbi ŏch’ŏn ka (1445–47; “Songs of Flying
Dragons”), a cycle compiled in praise of the founding of the Chosŏn (Yi) dynasty.

THAI LITERATURE

Thai literature, body of writings of the Thai (Siamese) people, historically fostered
by the kings, who themselves often produced outstanding literary works.

The earliest literature, that of the Sukhothai period (13th to mid-14th century),
survives chiefly in stone inscriptions, which provide vivid accounts of contemporary
life. The most famous of these is the Ramkhamhaeng inscription of 1292, in which
King Ramkhamhaeng records the economic abundance of his kingdom and the
benevolence of his rule.

Classical literature, written in verse, dates from the Ayutthaya period (1351–1767). It
includes religious works such as Maha chat (“The Great Birth”), later rewritten as
Maha chat kham luang (“The Royal Version of the Great Birth”), the Thai version of
the Vessantara jataka, which recounts the story of the future Buddha’s penultimate
life on earth; Lilit phra Lo (“The Story of Prince Lo”), a tragic romance, widely
regarded as one of the greatest of Thai poetic works, and Lilit Yuan phai (“The Defeat
of the Yuan”), a historical work, celebrating Ayutthaya’s defeat of the forces of the
northern Lan Na kingdom. The reign of King Narai (1656–88) is seen as a golden era,
in which writers were welcomed at the royal court, and new verse forms were
developed; some of the most highly regarded nirat poems—a genre characterized by
the themes of journeying, separation, and love-longing—date from this period,
including Si Prat’s famous Nirat khlong kamsuan (“A Mournful Journey”), describing
his journey into exile in Nakhon Sri Thammarat.

Much literature was lost in the sack of Ayutthaya by Hsinbyushin of Myanmar

(Burma) in 1767. After the restoration of Thai sovereignty, and the establishment of a
new capital at Bangkok, many law codes, religious works, and literary texts were
rewritten. These include the Ramakian, a Thai version of the Indian Ramayana, which
was composed during the reign of Rama I (1782–1809); Khun Chang Khun Phaen, an
epic poem full of martial and amatory exploits, which took its title from the two main
protagonists; and Phra Aphaimani, named after its hero. The second and third both
date from the reign of Rama II (1809–24).
Translations of best-selling Western fiction by authors such as Marie Corelli, William
Le Queux, Charles Garvice, H. Rider Haggard, Sax Rohmer, Anthony Hope, and
Arthur Conan Doyle, began to appear at the beginning of the 20th century, but by the
mid-1920s original Thai stories, often serialized in newspapers and magazines before
their publication in a book, had become more popular. Most were romantic novels,
typically involving a poor boy–rich girl (or rich boy–poor girl) theme, in which the
plot was brought to a happy conclusion by a series of improbable coincidences.

VIETNAMESE LITERATURE

Vietnamese literature, body of literature produced by Vietnamese-speaking people,

primarily in Vietnam.

Like the river basins that have nourished Vietnam’s agricultural civilization for
thousands of years, Vietnamese literature has been fed by two great tributaries: the
indigenous oral literature and the written literature of Chinese influence.

The oral poetry tradition is purely native. Older even than the linguistic separation of
the Muong and Vietnamese languages 1,000 years ago, the oral poetry tradition
probably has its origins in the agrarian prayers common to the prehistory of the Mon-
Khmer language family. The oral poetry, still sung today in the countryside, remains a
strong influence in contemporary poetry and fiction writing. Its word stock, prosodic
patterns, and themes show few foreign influences. And, while its main contemporary
feature is the lyrical, first-person, sung poetry of ca dao (“folk ballads”), the oral
tradition also contains third-person narratives, as in the ca tru (“ceremonial songs”)
tradition in the north and the vong co (“echoes of the past”) tradition in the south, as
well as in the tuc-ngu proverbs (“customary words”), related to ca dao.

Chinese influence on the written literature of Vietnam is nearly as old as its conquest
of the country in the 2nd century bc. For nearly 2,000 years after that, most
Vietnamese writing was in Chinese ideograms. In other words, to express themselves
in writing, the Vietnamese had to use a writing system that represented their ideas but
not their speech. However, with national independence and the establishment of a
Vietnamese state in the 10th century ad, scholars began to develop an ideographic
writing system that represented Vietnamese speech. This demotic writing system,
called Chu Nom, or “the southern script,” existed beside Chinese writing into the
early 20th century when both Chinese and Chu Nom were supplanted by a Roman
alphabetical script, first proposed in 1651 by the Jesuit priest Alexandre de Rhodes.
The alphabetical system of writing, called Quoc-ngu, or “the national script,” was
much simpler to learn than either Chinese or Chu Nom. Its general adoption,
particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, spread literacy throughout
Vietnam and sped the introduction of Western ideas and literary forms, including the
appearance of the Western-style novel and short story.

SINGAPOREAN LITERATURE

The literature of Singapore comprises a collection of literary works by

Singaporeans. It is written chiefly in the country's four official languages: English,
Malay, Standard Mandarin and Tamil.

While Singaporean literary works may be considered as also belonging to the

literature of their specific languages, the literature of Singapore is viewed as a distinct
body of literature portraying various aspects of Singapore society and forms a
significant part of the culture of Singapore. Literature in all four official languages has
been translated and showcased in publications such as the literary journal
Singa[citation needed], which was published in the 1980s and 1990s with editors
including Edwin Thumboo and Koh Buck Song, as well as in multilingual anthologies
such as Rhythms: A Singaporean Millennial Anthology Of Poetry (2000), in which the
poems were all translated three times each into the three languages. A number of
Singaporean writers such as Tan Swie Hian and Kuo Pao Kun have contributed work
in more than one language. However, such cross-linguistic fertilisation is becoming
increasingly rare and it is now increasingly thought that Singapore has four sub-
literatures instead of one[citation needed].

Business Times (Singapore) has written that writers in Singapore can also be "highly
experimental", and quoting the poet, Cyril Wong, literature in the country "doesn't
necessarily mean writing that's on the page. It can be writing that is performed or even
writing that is translated into video or images or photographs...including writings that
are less tangible. Writings that are expressed through other mediums."Singaporean
literature has even begun to make its mark on the international stage, with Sonny
Liew's graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye winning three Eisner
Awards and the Pingprisen for Best International Comic in 2017.
Singaporean literature in English started with the Straits-born Chinese community in
the colonial era; it is unclear which was the first work of literature in English
published in Singapore, but there is evidence of Singapore literature published as
early as the 1830s. The first notable Singaporean work of poetry in English is possibly
Teo Poh Leng's F.M.S.R. This modernist poem was published in 1937 in London
under the pseudonym of Francis P. Ng.[3] This was followed by Wang Gungwu's
Pulse in 1950.

AFRICAN LITERATURE the body of traditional oral

and written literatures in Afro-Asiatic and African languages together with works
written by Africans in European languages. Traditional written literature, which is
limited to a smaller geographic area than is oral literature, is most characteristic of
those sub-Saharan cultures that have participated in the cultures of the Mediterranean.
In particular, there are written literatures in both Hausa and Arabic, created by the
scholars of what is now northern Nigeria, and the Somali people have produced a
traditional written literature. There are also works written in Geʿez (Ethiopic) and
Amharic, two of the languages of Ethiopia, which is the one part of Africa where
Christianity has been practiced long enough to be considered traditional. Works
written in European languages date primarily from the 20th century onward. The
literature of South Africa in English and Afrikaans is also covered in a separate
article, South African literature. See also African theatre.

The relationship between oral and written traditions and in particular between oral and
modern written literatures is one of great complexity and not a matter of simple
evolution. Modern African literatures were born in the educational systems imposed
by colonialism, with models drawn from Europe rather than existing African
traditions. But the African oral traditions exerted their own influence on these
literatures.

Oral and written storytelling traditions have had a parallel development, and in many
ways they have influenced each other. Ancient Egyptian scribes, early Hausa and
Swahili copyists and memorizers, and contemporary writers of popular novellas have
been the obvious and crucial transitional figures in the movement from oral to literary
traditions. What happened among the Hausa and Swahili was occurring elsewhere in
Africa—among the Fulani, in northern Ghana among the Guang, in Senegal among
the Tukulor and Wolof, and in Madagascar and Somalia.
The linkage between oral tradition and the written word is most obviously seen in
pulp literature: the Onitsha market literature of Nigeria; the popular fiction of Accra,
Ghana; the popular love and detective literature of Nairobi; the visualizing of story in
the complex comic strips sold in shops in Cape Town. But the linkage is also a crucial
characteristic of more-serious and more-complex fiction. One cannot fully appreciate
the works of Chinua Achebe or Ousmane Sembene without placing them into the
context of Africa’s classical period, its oral tradition. To be sure, the Arabic, English,
French, and Portuguese literary traditions along with Christianity and Islam and other
effects of colonialism in Africa also had a dynamic impact on African literature, but
African writers adapted those alien traditions and made them their own by placing
them into these African classical frames.