Society of Young Nigerian Writers Amir Khosrow

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1 Society of Young Nigerian Writers Amir Khosrow Amir Khosrow (1253?-1325), Indian writer of Persian language poetry at the court of Delhi from approximately 1277 until his death; one of the most enduringly popular and accomplished writers of Persian literature of that time. He was born Abdul Hasan Khusrau in Patiāla, to a family of Turkish extraction that had emigrated to India earlier in the 13th century. He studied the Persian classics as well as science and philosophy, and his poetic talent was apparent from his early years. Much of Amir Khosrow's extant writing was done in the service of various court patrons, whose fortunes and misfortunes he recorded and sometimes shared. One of his best-known works is the historical poem Nuh-Sipihr (Nine Heavens), which records the reign of Sultan Kutbuddin Mubarak Shah but also develops the nationalist theme of pride in Indian culture. Other odes to his patrons include the Qiran us-sa dain (The Conjunction of Two Auspicious Stars). Amir Khosrow wrote principally in Persian, arguing that the purity of the language as it then existed in India made for uniformity of idiom and great poetry. However, his numerous Hindi-language ghazals (lyrics) and volumes of Hindi-language masnavis (rhyming couplets) are important components of his poetic output. Much of his verse in Hindi has survived only in fragments or through an oral tradition that has altered and added to what he wrote himself. Nevertheless, it is this poetry, rather than the historical praises to the deeds of his patrons, that has secured his popular reputation.

2 Asvaghosha Asvaghosha (AD 100?-?), North Indian Buddhist, one of the first individual literary writers in India whose works survive. Asvagosha was the first writer of Mahayana Buddhism. He served as a court poet and guru (spiritual advisor) to King Kanishka of India, the patron of the fourth council on Buddhism, held about AD 100. In order to propagate Mahayana Buddhism, Asvaghosha adopted and adapted for his writings the literary forms of sacred Hindu epic and drama, and also of a popular Hindu vernacular drama. Asvaghosha's literary verse epics, inspired by the Sanskrit epic Ramayana, comprise Buddhacharita (Biography of the Buddha) and a legendary tale, Saundarananda (Nanda and Beauty) whose title is believed to refer to the Buddha's half-brother, Nanda, and his quest for true beauty. These works are characterized by an innovative use of Sanskrit language and of vernacular lyric meters, and by the development of erotic themes. Asvaghosha's drama Sariputraprakarnana (Legend of the Disciple Sariputra) is preserved in fragments, along with two other plays likely to be by him or a close associate. These works draw on established conventions of popular drama and contribute to classical drama a conventional jargon that Buddhists used to typify the speech of rogues and rustics. One of the plays likely to be by Asvaghosha or an associate is inspired by didactic episodes in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, and may have introduced the use of allegorical figures for moral instruction to Buddhist literature.

3 Bhavabhūti Bhavabhūti (700?-730?), Hindu dramatist, who is revered as one of the great dramatic poets of early Sanskrit literature. He was born in Berar, India. Little is known about his life, although it is judged from his writings that he was at the court of King Yasovarman (reigned ) of Kanauj. He is remembered as the author of three Sanskrit dramas. The first is a love story, the Malati-Madhava, sometimes called the Hindu Romeo and Juliet; the second, Mahāvīra-charita, describes the fortunes of the great hero Rama (see Ramayana); and the third, Utara-rāmacharita, relates the later adventures of Rama.

4 Anita Desai Anita Desai, born in 1937, Indian novelist who is known for her colorful and touching studies of Indian life. Desai s work is characterized by its gentleness and empathy with its often poignant and amusing characters, struggling to achieve their personal dreams in a complicated and unsympathetic world. One of her recurring themes is the struggle of women to assert their independence in a restrictive Indian society. Desai was born Anita Mazumdar in Mussoorie, a hill station near Dehra Dūn in northern India, to a German mother and a Bengali father. She was educated at Delhi University and received a bachelor s degree in She married Ashvin Desai, a business executive, in 1958 and published her first novel, Cry, the Peacock, in It was followed by other novels and collections of short stories, including Voices in the City and Games at Twilight and Other Stories (1978). Her children s book The Village by the Sea (1982) won the 1982 Guardian Award for Children s Fiction, presented annually by the British newspaper the Guardian. Three of her novels Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984), and Fasting, Feasting (1999) were shortlisted (made finalists) for Britain s highest literary award, the Booker Prize. In Custody, the story of a college lecturer seeking to meet the great poet who has been his hero since childhood, was made into a motion picture in 1993 by the production team of Merchant-Ivory. Desai s daughter Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize with her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006), which she dedicated to her mother. Other works by Anita Desai include Journey to Ithaca (1995), which follows a Western couple traveling in India in search of spirituality; the short-story collection Diamond Dust (2000); and The Zigzag Way (2004), which is set in Mexico. Desai is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990 she received the national honor of Padma Shri, given by the government of India for service to the arts. From 1993 through 2002 Desai was the John E. Burchard Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

5 Mirza Ghalib Mirza Ghalib, pen name of Asadullah Beg Khan Ghalib ( ), Urdu- and Persianlanguage poet of India, best known for his lyrical and spiritual ghazals, a form of poetry in couplets. In a ghazal, each couplet is self-contained and generally unconnected with the next. The poet's skill lies in the full expression of a thought or idea in a single couplet. Ghalib was born in Āgra, in northern India, and was raised by his uncle. Ghalib had no formal education, but was tutored in Persian by Muhammad Mu'azzam, a noted scholar of the time. It was through his marriage in 1810 to Umrao Begum, the niece of Nawab Ahmad Baksh Khan, ruler of Ferozepur and Loharu, that Ghalib was introduced to the elite circle of intellectuals and artists that surrounded the Indian royal family in Delhi. Such company spurred Ghalib to develop his studies of Urdu and Persian literature, and in 1821 he compiled his first collection of Urdu verse. The following year Ghalib switched to writing entirely in Persian, also known as Farsi. In 1826, on the death of Ghalib's uncle, the British government began providing Ghalib and his family with a small pension for the military services of his uncle. Despite this income, Ghalib remained nearly destitute for most of his life. Ghalib traveled to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1928 and was greatly influenced by the Urdu poets he met there. In 1850, the last member of the Mughal imperial line of India, Bahadur Shah, commissioned him to write a history of Bahadur Shah's lineage, the House of Timur, and Ghalib soon became Bahadur Shah's adviser on literary matters. Ghalib wrote in Urdu and Persian, primarily ghazals and qasidas (odes). His Urdu poetry, while the source of his fame, is small in quantity. His works widened the scope of Urdu poetry, which had tended to be restricted to traditional themes of love and mysticism inherited from its Persian roots. Ghalib's own difficult life, his journey to Calcutta where he was exposed to the harsh new industrial world beyond the fading Mughal courts and his experiences of the sacking of Delhi during the anti-british Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 to 1859 in which he witnessed the death of many friends drove him to write of feelings of alienation and the pain of the human condition. His poetry is also infused with spirituality and the search for the absolute. Ghalib also wrote much poetry in Persian, as well as several prose works on Mughal and Indian history. His collected letters in Urdu provide an interesting insight into 19th-century India.

6 Kabir Kabir (1440?-1518), Indian poet and mystic, whose teachings blend elements of Islam and Sufism with the ideas of the bhakti (passionate devotion) movement of Hinduism. Kabir, like many associated with the bhakti movement, which advocated absolute devotion as the path to salvation, came from a poor background. He was born in or near Banar. Kabir's family was Muslim, and he was trained as a weaver. He was a disciple of Ramananda, the Vaishnavite mystic who made Rama, as the incarnation of Vishnu, the divine object of his bhakti. Kabir, however, soon evolved his own interpretation of bhakti, which showed strong influences of Sufism. The Sufi, whose emphasis on mystic union with God was remarkably similar to the experience of the bhaktas (true devotees of the bhakti movement), has been attacked by adherents of orthodox Islam in many parts of the world but had found, in India, a sympathetic home and many converts. Kabir fused the strong element of monotheism and abhorrence of idol worship from Islam with the bhakti appoach. In his worship of Rama, the name is representative of the one God rather than the incarnation of Vishnu. Kabir also denied the efficacy of rituals and the authority of religious scripture and opposed the religiously sanctioned caste system. Kabir wrote many poems and songs and expressed his teachings in the form of concise saying and couplets. Breaking from the literary tradition of composing verse in the Bengali language, Kabir wrote in the common language of Hindi in order to have a broader appeal. His poetry, which reveals the intensity of his devotion and his sense of the omnipresence of God, contributed to the development of Hindi literature. Many of his songs were later translated into English by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, who won the 1913 Nobel Prize in literature.

7 Kalidasa Kalidasa (375?-415?), Indian court poet and dramatist. He belonged to the second period of Sanskrit literature, when the writing of the anonymous Vedic hymns gave way to the writings of secular drama and poetry by known authors. Kalidasa is particularly noted for his three surviving verse dramas of romantic love, Shakuntala, the most famous of the three; Vikramorvasi (Urvasi Won by Valor); and Malavikagnimitra (Malavi and Agnimitra). Kalidasa also wrote two epic poems, Raghuvamsa (Dynasty of Raghu) and Kumarasambhava (Birth of the War God), and many lyric poems, characterized by their fine descriptions of nature and of poignant emotions. His principal works have been translated into many languages, including English. One of the lyrics, Meghaduta (The Cloud Messenger), influenced the German dramatist Friedrich von Schiller's drama Maria Stuart (1800), and Shakuntala provided the idea for the prologue to the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (first part, 1808; second, 1832). So many poems of different types are attributed to Kalidasa that some critics believe them to be the work of three poets, all named Kalidasa.

8 Mira Bai Mira Bai or Meera Bai ( ), a princess of Rājasthān, an area in northwest India, celebrated for her lyrical poetry and compositions of bhajans (songs of worship) devoted to the Hindu god Krishna (see Hinduism). She formed part of the bhakti movement, which advocated complete devotion as the path to the realization of God. Mira was the daughter of Ratan Singh of Merta, in northwest India. According to tradition, she was married at the age of 13 to Bhorjraj, the king of Mewar, an ancient Rajput kingdom. Mira, however, considered herself the spiritual wife of the god Krishna and refused to worship the gods of her new family. After the death of her husband, she did not follow the Indian tradition that demanded the widow to throw herself upon the funeral pyre of her deceased spouse. Instead, Mira spent her time in devotion to Krishna at the local temple. Harassed by her in-laws, she left her home and spent many years wandering the Rājasthān, gaining followers and admirers through her compositions, which she often sang herself. Mira spent her last years at Vrindaban, the legendary childhood home of Krishna. According to legend, at her death her body physically melted into an image of Krishna. Many other details of her life are also shrouded in legend, but a number of her compositions have survived. Her highly personal bhajans, which describe her yearning for Krishna, form a popular part of the oral poetry tradition of the Hindustani language.

9 R. K. Narayan R. K. Narayan ( ), highly acclaimed Indian author, born in Madras (now Chennai). His first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), was based on his experiences as a village schoolteacher. Like his later fiction The English Teacher (1945) and The Vendor of Sweets (1967), it is a gently humorous, elegantly crafted picture of daily life in a fictitious southern Indian town. Narayan's other novels include Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961), and A Tiger for Malgudi (1983). A Horse and Two Goats (1970), Malgudi Days (1982), and Grandmother's Tale (1994) are collections of Narayan's short stories and contain simple, yet insightful, character portrayals that often reveal subtle ironies. He also revived the classic Indian epics The Ramayana (1972) and The Mahabharata (1978), condensing the lengthy works and setting them in modern surroundings. See also Ramayana; Mahabharata.

10 Raja Rao Raja Rao ( ), Indian writer, known as India s greatest philosophical novelist. Rao was one of the three greats of 20th-century Indian writing in English (along with R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand). Born in Hassan, Mysore (now Karnataka), Rao went to Europe at the age of 19 and studied at the University of Montpellier and the Sorbonne in France. He later moved to the United States where he taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas. In Kanthapura (1938), Rao wrote about Indian independence from the perspective of a village in South India. His novel The Serpent and the Rope (1960), about a young cosmopolitan intellectual seeking enlightenment, won India s highest literary honor, the Sahitya Akademi Award. For his novel, The Chessmaster and His Moves (1988), Rao received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, an award given every two years to outstanding world writers. Among his other novels are The Cat and Shakespeare (1965) and Comrade Kirillov (1976). Collections of his stories include The Cow of the Barricades (1947), The Policeman and the Rose (1978), and The Meaning of India (1996). He also published a biography of Mohandas Gandhi, The Great Indian Way (1998). He received one of India s most prestigious honors, the Padma Bhushan, in 1969.

11 Vikram Seth Vikram Seth, born in 1952, Indian novelist and poet, much of whose writing is based on his experiences of the very different societies of India, China, and America. His best-known book is the novel A Suitable Boy (1993). Seth was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Hindu parents. He was educated at English schools in India prior to attending Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford, in England. He received a B.A. degree from Oxford; M.A. degrees from Stanford University, in California, and Oxford; and a graduate study diploma from Nanjing University in Eastern China. Seth's early works include the poetry collection The Humble Administrator's Garden (1983) and a travel journal of a hitchhiking trip, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983). He wrote the novel The Golden Gate (1986) in verse form, as a series of sonnets. It focuses on a group of young California professionals in the 1980s. Other works include the poetry volume All You Who Sleep Tonight (1990) and a children's book of retellings of traditional poetry and fables, Beastly Tales from Here and There (1992). In 1993 A Suitable Boy was published to great acclaim. The book, which won one of Britain's annual literary prizes, the W. H. Smith Award, is the story of an Indian mother's search for a suitable match for her daughter. The tale is set against the panoramic backdrop of life in India just after the country gained independence from Britain in Seth took on a new literary form with the libretto Arion and the Dolphin (1994), a retelling of the story of Greek poet Arion being saved from drowning by a dolphin. The libretto was published to coincide with the first performance of an opera of the same name, with music by English composer Alec Roth, at the English National Opera in London, in Seth returned to the novel form with An Equal Music (1999), which depicts a love affair between two musicians.

12 Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore ( ), Indian poet, philosopher, and Nobel laureate, who tried to deepen mutual Indian and Western cultural understanding. His name in Bengali is Ravīndranātha Thākura. He was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), into a wealthy family, the son of the philosopher Debendranath Tagore. He began to write poetry as a child; his first book appeared when he was 17 years old. After a brief stay in England (1878) to study law, he returned to India, where he rapidly became the most important and popular author of the colonial era, writing poetry, short stories, novels, and plays. He composed several hundred popular songs and in 1929 also began painting. A dedicated internationalist and educator, Tagore established a school (1901) in his estate, Santiniketan, in Bengal, to teach a blend of Eastern and Western philosophies. In 1921 his school was expanded into an international university, Visva-Bharati. He also traveled and lectured throughout the world. Tagore wrote primarily in Bengali, but translated many of his works into English himself; critics agree they are much more effective in the original. Tagore's writing is highly imagistic, deeply religious and imbued with his love of nature and his homeland. He was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in literature, and in 1915 he was knighted by the British king George V. Tagore renounced his knighthood in 1919 following the Amritsar massacre of nearly 400 Indian demonstrators by British troops. His Collected Poems and Plays was published in 1966.

13 Tulsidas Tulsidas (1543?-1623), Hindu poet, born in Rajapur, Uttar Pradesh, India. He lived most of his adult life in Benares. From 1574 to 1577 Tulsidas wrote Ramcaritmanas (The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama; trans. 1952), a poem that had a profound influence on the religious traditions of Hinduism in northern India, being largely responsible for the replacement of the cult of Krishna by the cult of Rama. Drawing on the Sanskrit epic the Ramayana, it is concerned with the proper worship of Rama as a means to salvation. It also describes the lesser tenets and rituals of Hindu mythology and religion. Among the other works attributed to Tulsidas are shorter lyrical pieces about Rama, Krishna, and other members of the Hindu pantheon.