Sanskrit and Tamil
Estimating the age of texts handed down by oral tradition on the basis of the movement of the stars or the ebb and flow of a long-gone river is a highly romantic, yet very serious, idea. Indeed, scholars have no choice but to read between the lines to date the appearance of the "Veda" (imperfectly translated as "vision"), the collection of revelations made by a people from Iran to the Indians of the northern subcontinent. From their encounter, in this region of blurred borders renamed Āryāvarta, a religion was born, Vedism, the foundation on which Brahmanism and then Hinduism would later be built. In other words, this corpus - whether it dates back to the 15th century B.C. or is twice as old - is as old as the Vedas themselvesC. or twice as old, as some believe - is of the utmost importance, recognized today by Unesco, which has included it on the list of the world's intangible heritage and has defined its division into Rig Veda (sacred hymns), Sama Veda (musical arrangements), Yajur Veda (prayers and sacrificial formulas used by priests) and Atharna Veda (set of incantations and magical formulas). The time at which these "books" were set down in writing remains equally uncertain, as the original manuscripts have not survived the centuries, but it is customary to date this transcription to the beginning of our era. It marked not only the birth of Indian literature, but also that of Sanskrit, a language of Indo-Aryan origin, as confirmed by its similarity to ancient Iranian. First a liturgical language, then a scholarly one, like Latin in the West, it served as the basis for a multitude of dialects (notably in northern India), and remains official in the state of Uttarakhand, bordering Nepal. Doubtless a little more recent - the clue this time being in the language, "archaic" Sanskrit having given way to "epic" Sanskrit - two other texts are considered to be foundational in India and followed the same path, carried by orality and then by writing: the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata. These two mythological epics are inseparable from Hinduism. The first recounts the life of Prince Rāma, who reigned (again according to astronomical data) nearly twenty centuries before the birth of Christ, and was the seventh incarnation of the god Vishnu on Earth. The second is considered to be the longest poem in the history of world literature: with its 250,000 verses, it rivals by far the work of Homer! No less was needed to recount the internecine wars between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, each clan determined to take over the Aryan country north of the Ganges. According to tradition, this epic was dictated by Ganesh to the sage Vyāsa, the "Compiler", who is said to have been born between 200 B.C. and 450 A.D., depending on the source. Finally, it is said that Sanskrit literature reached its most evolved form with mahākāvya poetry, in which description took precedence over narration, while drawing inspiration from the themes of the epics. In addition to five landmark works - from Kumārasambhava to Shishupāla Vadha - several famous authors are associated with this poetic art, including Ashvaghosha (c. 2nd century) and Kālidāsa (c. 4th century). Both were also dramatists.
Of course, it's no easy task to date the emergence of Tamil literature precisely, firstly because here too, ancient manuscripts were written on ôles, palm leaves that may have preserved well, but were nonetheless putrescible, and secondly because it remains difficult to untangle the tangle of ancient chronologies, oral transmission having propagated historical dates that appear fanciful, to say the least, to some researchers. In a spirit of conciliation, some agree that it dates back to a few hundred years before our era, while others, in a spirit of discord, consider it older than Sanskrit literature. Whatever the case, it should be pointed out that classical Tamil literature is also known as "Sangam", or "confluence" in French. This term refers to the first three literary academies (the first of which, according to legend, was submerged by the waves) that succeeded one another under the Pandya empire, and more generally to all the works produced by these academies, i.e. several thousand poems generally considered to be "secular". Certainly written at the beginning of our era, they were not compiled until the 10th century and are usually classified into two categories, as in the famous anthology Ettutokai(The Eight Collected Works): those dealing with " akam " (the inner world, love for example), and those describing " puram " (the outer world: wars, life in society). Like Sanskrit literature, Tamil literature also has its founding epics: three are attributed to the Jains(Cīvaka Cintāmani, Silappatikaram and Valayapathi), two to the Buddhists(Manimēkalai, Kuntalakēci), all of which were certainly written between the5th and 10th centuries.
Without getting into the controversy as to whether Sanskrit or Tamil appeared first, let's stress that their geographical areas are different - the former developing in the north, the latter in the south - and their origins are equally distinct: as we have seen, Sanskrit is an Indo-Aryan language, while Tamil belongs to the Dravidian languages, i.e. those of neither Aryan nor Himalayan origin. These two groups will give rise to multiple dialects, and if there is any porosity, it will be mainly in one direction, with Sanskrit irrigating most Indian idioms, particularly in terms of vocabulary.
Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages
The 10th century was also a turning point for Kannada, one of the oldest Dravidian languages, which took on a new scope under the influence of Jainism, a religion then in full expansion. Whereas up until then, texts had tended to be poetic - as demonstrated by the 9th-century treatise Kavirajamarga, "royal way of the poets" - they now took on a spiritual dimension - theĀdi purāna by the monk Jinasena, recounting the journey of a man who renounces power in favor of his brother, is a good example - and even a warlike one, with the rewriting of the famous Mahābhārata epic that Pampa Bharata entitled Vikramarjuna Vijaya. In the following century, Kannada adopted another poetic metric, the " vachana ", a kind of rhymed aphorism, while retaining its religious inspiration. A popular language par excellence, it was nonetheless influenced for a long time by Sanskrit, as was Telugu, which asserted itself in the 11th century thanks to Nannaya Bhattaraka, who wrote its first grammar, while at the same time devoting himself to poetry. His works are the oldest known (or preserved) in Telugu. On his death, Tikkanna (1205-1288) continued the translation of the Mahābhārata he had begun, before Yerrapragada put the finishing touches to it. However, the real golden age would begin two centuries later - with poets such as Srinatha and Bammera Pothana, or Allasani Peddana, and works such as the epic poem Amuktamaliada, or those stemming from the " prabandha " genre (biographies of famous people) that would succeed them in medieval times - at the same time as Malayalam literature was taking shape. The "youngest" of the Dravidian languages had been in use since the 10th century - the Darukkavadham, dedicated to the goddess Kali, dates back to this period - but was gaining independence from Sanskrit and Tamil, to which it owed much, a family of poets from Niranam (Kerala) reshaped the language until the 16th century, when Thunchathtu Ezuthachan, considered the father of modern Malayalam, popularized " kilippattu ", a type of "parrot poem" in which the narrator is an animal. Along with Cherusseri Namboothiri, his 15th-century predecessor, and Kunchan Nambiar, his 18th-century successor, he belongs to the "Great Trio" (Mahakavitrayam), that trilogy of poets whose talent remains unrivalled and who form the basis of Malayalam literature.
As far as Indo-Aryan languages are concerned, Hindi is of course the one to focus on, as it is now one of the country's two official languages. It is customary to date it back to the 12th century and an exercise in admiration dedicated by the court poet Chand Bardai to King Prithivīrāja Chāhumāna, but sources are uncertain, many have been destroyed and most are difficult to date precisely. From the 14th century onwards, royal or warrior chronicles seem to give way in favor of devotional poems that are part of the Bhakti movement, an important period of reform in Hinduism that also coincides with a development of vernacular languages, these now being preferred for preaching, in order to reach the greatest number of devotees. The form of the poems also evolved, as did the themes, which diversified into as many rasa, a Sanskrit term meaning "sap" and which would be equivalent to our "genres", from the Vātsalya rasa (rasa of love) to the Vir rasa (rasa of heroism) via the Prema rasa (rasa of romance), and so on. The Nirguna school believed in an abstract god, while the Saguna school lent him venerable attributes. The poets Kabīr and Gurū Nānak belonged to the former, while Surdas and Tulsīdās belonged to the latter. The next period begins in the eighteenth century according to our calendar, and is that of the Ritikavya when, to put it crudely, form prevails over substance, description prevails over sentiment, eroticism replaces romanticism. The most remarkable and renowned work of this trend, which lasted until around 1900, is the poet Bihārī's Satasai. Subsequently, Hindi literature - and, indeed, Indian literature as a whole - entered "modernity", thanks to or because of the various waves of colonization, which opened up frontiers, made literary movements travel, and imported new forms and themes as well as innovative printing techniques: the first printing press was set up by Christian missionaries in Kottayam (Kerala) in the mid-nineteenth century. The person who personified this radical shift in Hindi literature, and embodied realism, was Dhanpat Rai Srivastava, better known by his pseudonym Premchand (1880-1936). Several of his works have been translated into French, notably by L'Harmattan (Godan: le don d'une vache, L'Ashram de l'amour, Le Grand Pèlerinage et autres nouvelles). However, this modernization was to benefit more specifically another form of literature, that in the Bengali language, originating from the Bengal region.
This was no accident: Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, was built by the British East India Company. The city was to become the seat of colonial power, from British India to the British Raj. It was also the birthplace of the only Indian ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1913): Rabindranath Thakur (1861-1941). Born into the Brahmin caste, the man we came to know as Tagore was born into a family of reformers where art played an important role. At the age of 16, he published a long poem that already brought him a certain renown, and he later abandoned the law studies he had begun in England to become administrator of his family's estates. A fulfilled husband and father, this period was particularly fruitful for his literary work, but the new century marked a turning point in his life: he lost his wife and two of his children, his father also died, and his preoccupations changed: he founded an ashram and a school in 1901, and twenty years later a university. Sensitive to the plight of the underprivileged, opposed to the caste system, a militant for independence, an unrepentant idealist and curious about everything to do with travel and science, his death left a mourning region that has observed a time of recollection in his memory every August 7 since 1941. Translator, poet, essayist, his work offers many entries: his collection L'Offrande lyrique, published by La République des Lettres, is one, Nationalisme, published by Classiques Garnier, another.
Tagore always wrote in Bengali, but since he was perfectly bilingual, he himself translated his writings into English, versions on which André Gide based his discovery of this major writer in our own language. This is an indication of the growing interest in India and its literature in the West from the mid-19th century onwards, following in the footsteps of the German Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), who devoted twenty-five years to producing a critical edition of the Rig Veda, or the Belgian missionary Camille Bulcke (1909-1982), who "rediscovered" the poet Tulsīdās. This fervor was to the benefit of vernacular languages, such as Tamil, hitherto reserved for a certain elite, which opened up to a wider public thanks to the printing press, and even to orality in its modern version. This new generation of writers is also evolving in its themes and does not hesitate to take a critical stance on social issues, as did Pudhumaipithan (1906-1948), Jayakanthan (1934-2015) and Sujatha Rangarajan (1935-2008).
English-language literature
Yet Tagore's writing in two languages is also the sign of a movement that will intensify and endure after Independence, one that will lead a large number of Indian writers to choose English, a choice that will ensure them a better audience on the international literary scene. R. K. Narayan, for example, was born in Madras in 1906, where he died in 2001. Educated at a Lutheran school and enthralled by Dickens, Shakespeare and Walter Scott, it was in English that he published Swami and Friends in 1935 - an autobiography about his childhood, the first volume of his Magudi Days trilogy - which his friend Graham Greene tried to promote in London. Gradually, her style, akin to Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness, began to win over a real readership, including French readers thanks to the translation work carried out by the fine publishing house Zulma(Le Magicien de la finance, Le Guide et la danseuse).
An essential female voice, Anita Desai hails from the state of Uttarakhand, where she was born in 1937 to a German mother and Bengali father. An accomplished polyglot, she turned to English from an early age - she wrote her first short story at the age of 9! - She considered English more literary and better suited to expressing herself in an abundant body of work, which she began in 1963 with Cry, The Peacock. Although she is a perfect link between East and West, having lived on two continents and reflected on our divergences, her books are difficult to find in French today. The Mercure de France nevertheless has Le Jeûne et le festin in its catalog.
Salman Rushdie also became an expatriate, leaving Bombay, where he was born in 1947, for the UK in his teens. Yet it's impossible not to associate him with Indian literature, even if he also preferred English to his mother tongue, Urdu, spoken in northern India and Pakistan. Born into a middle-class, secular Muslim family, his prolific work has been marred by a fatwa since 1989, the year following the publication of The Satanic Verses. This daily danger, confirmed by the new attack on him in 2022, inspired him to write the fictionalized autobiography of his literary double, Joseph Anton, but the range of his inspirations is much broader, as confirmed by his other texts, from Enfants de Minuit published by Plon in 1997 to Quichotte published by Actes Sud in 2020. His work is representative of what Indian literature has become in the 20th century: open to the world thanks to its universal themes, centered on the novel, a typically Western genre.
Born in 1952, also in Bombay but now living in Canada, Rohinton Mistry also uses English. His novels are published in our language by Albin Michel(L'Équilibre du monde, Un si long voyage, Une simple affaire de famille), as are those by Kerala-born Anita Nair: Dans les jardins du Malabar, L'Abécédaire des sentiments, La Mangeuse de guêpes... Finally, without attempting to provide a complete panorama of this abundant and surprising literature, Arundhati Roy remains an obvious choice. Born into a Catholic family in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya in north-east India, she acquired her international reputation as much for her novels - Le Dieu des petits riens is a bestseller - as for her pacifist activism. It's worth pointing out, however, that some writers have chosen to turn away from English - the "colonial language" - following the example of Shumona Sinha, born in 1973 in Calcutta, who discovered a passion for French, to the point of settling in our country, where she has won several awards. Published by Gallimard: Apatride (2017), Le Testament russe (2020), L'autre nom du bonheur était français (2022).
These international successes - Rushdie is Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Mistry a recipient of the Governor General's Award, Nair of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi, Arundhati Roy of the Booker Price... - do not obscure the fact that Indian languages have also reached a sufficient degree of maturity to enjoy a wide audience, both within and beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent. Among the Dravidian languages, Malayalam literature can boast the achievements of G. Sankara Kurup (1901-1978), who was the first writer to win the Jnanpith Prize in 1965, and OV Vijayan (1931-2005), who won acclaim for his first novel, Khasakkinte Itihasam, published in 1965. As for Madath Vasudevan Nair, born in 1933, he has been recognized as one of the greatest writers of the post-independence period, his realistic works dealing with subjects as intimate as family life. His youngest daughter, Khadija Mumtaz, born in 1955 in Kattor, continues in this psychological vein, drawing on her experience as a doctor: her second novel, Barsa, was awarded the prestigious Kerala Sahitya Akademi in 2010. On the Tamil literary front, we should mention Jayakanthan (1934-2015), a native of Tamil Nadu, who gave a voice to the most humble in his novels, the prolix Sujatha Rangarajan (1935-2008), who won his readers by publishing in newspapers before turning to cinema, and finally Pérumal Murugan, born in 1966 near Thiruchengodu, whom we will be lucky enough to discover in French thanks to Hauteville Editions: Le Bûcher evokes the impossible love between two young people who do not belong to the same caste. As for Indo-Aryan languages, let's mention De la forêt (The Forest) by Calcuttian Bibhouti Bhoushan Banerji, whose translation, produced by the fine éditions Zulma, was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville d'Arles in 2021. Translated or not, authors expressing themselves in Hindi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Urdu or even Sanskrit have found their audience, if the winners of the prestigious Jnanpith Prize, which rewards writers of Indian languages, are anything to go by.
