This paper concentrates on the study of the selected ‘bakhars’. The ‘bakhar’, means a Marathi prose historical narrative. Except Mahikavati bakhar, most of the ‘bakhars’ were written from the 17th century to early 19th century. These bakhars were written by Maratha officials on the directions from their masters or senior officials. Those officials were considered as ‘Mahitigar’ i.e. well-informed and knowledgeable persons. The word ‘bakhar’ derived from Arabic word ‘khabar’, which means news or information. The bakhars were about biographies of great personalities, descriptions of great battles or genealogies of prominent families.
The origin of ‘bakhar’ literature, from Persian ‘tawarikhs’ and ‘akhabarats’ or from Sanskrit ‘akhyans’ and ‘puranas’, is a matter of debate among the scholars of Maratha history and Marathi linguistics. The most of the historians raised serious questions about the authenticity of ‘bakhar’ as a reliable source for history writing. However, historians had always used and still using ‘bakhar’ as source. The Marathi literary critics, considering ‘bakhars’ as an important Marathi prose genre of the pre-colonial period, focused on various aspects in their studies of bakhars such as writing styles, sketches of characters and events, uses of ‘puranic’ and mythical legends, ideal and moral values, uses of divine interventions, descriptions of society and places, vocabulary and uses of phrases, changing meanings of words, constructions of sentences etc in ‘bakhar’ literature.
Unlike the literary critics who mainly studied the origin of bakhar through literary studies as mention above mainly focused on one question i.e. from where bakhar is derived. Making departure from this point, Sumit Guha locates the s...
... middle of paper ...
....
Sumit Guha, ‘Speaking Historically: The Changing Voices of Historical Narration in Western India.’ American Historical Review 109, no.4(October 2004):1084-2004.
Prachi Deshpande, ‘Creative Past: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India 1700-1960’ Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2007, p.39.
Ibid.
See, Anirudh Deshpande, ‘Marathas,Rajputs and Afghans in Mid-Eighteenth-Century India: Bhausahebanchi Bakhar and the Articulation of Cultural difference in Pre-Colonial India’ , Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Occasional Paper: History and Society, New Series-10, 2013
Sabhasad Bakhar, Introduction, p.15
Ibid, pp.1&2.
Ibid pp. 29-38, 116-127.
Ibid, p.131
Ibid, p.132
Chitnis Bakhar, Introduction, p. 17&18, for more details see G S Sardesai, ‘Marathi Riyasat Khand 2’, Popular Prakashan, Mumabai, 2011.
Chitnis Bakhar, Introduction, p. 17
Ibid, p.1&2
Great Indian authors have written grand epics that depict heroic characters performing virtuous deeds. Many of these epic tales feature fearsome and godly battles, while others highlight the soft side of human emotions. Despite seemingly unrealistic characters such as talking hawks and ten-headed monsters, and unlikely conflicts that feature bloody battles, many of these grand epics display many traditional values that Americans value in modern society. When construing three particular celebrated Indian epics (“the Mahabharata,” “the Bhagavad-Gita,” and “the Ramayana”), readers would easily glean the values and belief system that Ancient Indian society held in high esteem many thousands of years ago. Moreover, by comparing and contrasting respective ideals and principles, similarities between Ancient Indians and Americans would come to surface.
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
...ng religion and foreign to the people of India, yet there is a defied truth that Islam’s spread peacefully throughout India with the alliances formed between the Indian people, the Turks, and the Mongols. The encounters that the ancient Indian people had to endure with the Turks, Mongols, and Islam have had the most memorable impact and impression on Indian culture and other societies throughout the east. Ancient Indian history is often overlooked within our society, but perhaps there should be a second look at how the Indian people have became who they are today, what attributes that have given society, and what pandemonium they have overcame as a civilization to stay in existence and stand against the test of time.
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
Pandey, T. N., 2014. Lecture 1/9/14: Culture of India: Aryan and Indigenous Population. Cultures of India. U.C. Santa Cruz.
4 # Stein, Burton (2001), a History of India, New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv, 432, p.222
Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon are two Kashmiri women poets who share commonalities with Bhakti poet Mirabai. Within the comparative framework, the paper would try to explore these commonalities in their poetry. The selection of these three women poets would throw some light on the syncretism in the Sufi and Bhakti tradition as upheld by Lal Ded and Mirabai respectively in their poetry. There are the various “‘facts’ of literary history” which increase the “possibility of its multiplicity as well” (Das 42). The multiplicity of literary history makes it possible to trace the literary history of these three different poets also. The paper would try to explore the “‘internal’ changes and innovations within” the poetry of Habba Khatoon “that did not
Born in 1915 and lived in Lahore, Punjab Singh had first-hand experience with the events that followed the partition of India, which should have been “the joyful culmination of decades of anti-British struggle [and instead] became a shameful debacle as Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs turned on each other in a fury of religious bigotry” (Brians 47-8). Though he was fortunate
If there is one author which is responsible for bringing realism in Indian fiction back in the early twentieth century, he is Premchand. Before him, almost every Indian fiction encompassed stories about Gods and mythological tales. Premchand’s stories were a true reflection of the society where the abused like the peasants, the farmers, the prostitutes and the widows were crushed all their lives by the hollow norms and rules of the society where the riches and politically powerful ruled. His stories depicted their exploitation and I, as a reader could feel that – such is the ability of his writing skills. He also wrote these stories and novels aiming to bring about social reform in the society.
Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian: writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity. London: Penguin Books. 2005. 210.
Nicholas B. Dirks. (2011). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press
“The only people for whom we can even begin to imagine properly human, individual, existences are the literate and the consequential, the wazirs and the sultans, the chroniclers, and the priests—the people who had the power to inscribe themselves physically upon time” (Ghosh 17). History is written by the victorious, influential and powerful; however, history has forgotten the people whose voices were seized, those who were illiterate and ineloquent, and most importantly those who were oppressed by the institution of casted societies. Because history does not document those voices, it is the duty to the anthropologist, the historiographer, the philosopher as well as scholars in other fields of studies to dig for those lost people in the forgotten realm of time. In In An Antique Land, the footnotes of letters reveal critical information for the main character, which thematically expresses that under the surface of history is something more than the world can fathom.
The novel "Gora" is exceptionally contemporary in its tending to of various issues material to our nation's current situation and is an impression of the complex differences of social life in frontier India. It could be recognized as an epic of our nation at the urgent time of battle for Independence. It portrays the social structure in the area of Bengal before freedom.
Mishra, Vijay. "The Texts of Mother India." After Europe.Ed. Stephen Slemon and Helen Tiffin. Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1989. 119-37.
Crane, Ralph J. Inventing India: A History of India in English Language Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1992.