L I T E R A T U R E                

Sanskrit  Literature

Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmanas and the great Epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata  form  the greatest body of literature ever produced in ancient times. They outweigh the  literature of ancient Rome and  Greece,  combined.

 Vedas in prose form and the others both in prose and verse forms trace their origin to the ancient Indian language of’ ‘Sanskrit ‘and ‘Vedic’ (not a popular tongue but a dialect handed down from one generation to another in the priestly class) which later merged into Sanskrit. These have been translated into English and a host of Indian languages. 

All these works are written in manuscript form on palm leaves, many of them existing in libraries and priestly households. The oldest known example of a Sanskrit manuscript on palm leaves is in Japan and the oldest on paper, dates back to the thirteenth century and was found in Gujarat.

Some of the great and early works attributed to Brahmin authors are most of the Upanishads and commentaries there of.

 Commentaries by the  Acharyas- Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhwa.

Adhyatma Ramayana by Badarayana (Veda Vyasa)

Mahabharata  by Veda Vyasa

Manusmruthi by Vyvasvata Manu

Artha Shastra (Economics) by Kautilya (Chanakya)

Kama Sutra (Treatise on pleasure) by Vatsayana

Charaka Samhita (Medicine) by Charaka

Malati Madhava  (Drama) by Bhavabhuti. 800 B. C

Paniniyam (Sanskrit lexicon) by Panini.400 B. C

Yogasutra (Yoga) by Patanjali. 200 B. C

Kadambari and Harsha Charita (Ornate prose) by Banabhatta. 7^th century

Kavyadarsa (literary criticism) by Dandin. 7^th century

Raja Tarangini  (History of Kashmir) by Kalhana Pandit.11^th century

Katha Sarit Sagara (collection of stories) by Somadeva Bhatta. 12^th century

Gita Govinda  (Erotic poetry) by Jayadeva. 12^th century

Sri Ramacharita Manasa (Poetry) by Tulsidas. 17^th century  

Tulsidas

Latter day Literature

Sanskrit is considered as the mother of Indian languages and is also known as Devanagari (the language of the Gods). It has 52 letters, in phonetic form and reflects all possible sounds we make when we speak. It is the closest to a perfect language known to mankind. A host of languages with Devanagari as the base evolved in India the principal one being Hindi, which has become the mother tongue for a vast majority of Indians. To this group belong Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali. There is another distinct group of languages termed Dravidian languages comprising of Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam whose alphabets have their own distinctive characteristics. These are well -developed languages in their own right and have own literary traditions.

One of the unique features in their evolution is the assimilation of Sanskrit words, phrases and grammar especially into the Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam languages. As a consequence, most of the early literature was by way of translations and commentaries on earlier works.

Some of the great literary minds of this period were:

Jnanadeva  
Marathi. Poet and saint. 13^th century.

Vidyapati
Mythili. Poet. 14^th century.

Eknath
Marathi. Poet and  saint. 16^th century.  

Modern Literature

In recent times, especially in the preceding two centuries, hundreds of authors and thousands of works, in all the major Indian languages, have enriched the Indian literary firmament. More information will be included in future updates, after  complete research.

However, for starters, are included  the names of authors who have received the most prestigious Indian literary award called  ‘Jnanpith’ Puraskar’. These annual awards are made since 1965, by The Bharatiya GnanPith, established in 1944, in New Delhi.

Although a particular work of the recipient is cited for the award, these scholars have made and are making lifetime contributions to literature. Their combined output exceeds a thousand works, some individuals contributing over one hundred works. Chronologically these are:

Tarashankar Bandopadhyaya. (Bengali).

Umashankar Joshi. (Gujarati).

Sumitranandan Pant. (Hindi).

Viswanatha Satyanarayana. (Telugu).

Dattatreya Ramachandra Bendre. (Kannada).

Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar. (Marathi)

Shivarama Karanth. (Kannada).

Ashapoorna Devi. (Bengali).

Sachidanand Hiranand Vatsayan. (Hindi).

Birendrakumar Bhattacharya. (Assamese).

Masti Venkatesha Iyengar. (Kannada).

Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar. (Marathi).

Vinayaka Krishna Gokak. (Kannada).

Subash Mukopadhaya. (Bengali).

Mahasweta Devi. (Bengali).

U.R.Anantha Murthy. (Kannada).

Girish Karnad. (Kannada). 

English Literature

Rabindranath Tagore (Poetry)
Nobel Laureate

Deepak Chopra ( Health and Holistic ) 

B.K.S.Iyengar ( Yoga )

Sir V.S.Naipaul ( Fiction and Non-Fiction )
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature

R.K.Narayan ( Novels ) 

Dr S. Radhakrishnan (Philosophy)

Raja Rao ( Fiction )