Devrani Jethani Ki Kahani or A Tale of Two Sisters-in-Law

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Pandit Gauri Datt's Devrani Jethani ki Kahani or A Story of Two Sisters-in-Law (1870) is often considered the first novel in Hindi. This sparsely written story, in deceptively simple but elegant prose, follows the fortunes of an Agarwal merchant family in the north Indian town of Meerut, then under colonial rule. Gauri Datt introduces us to a colourful and carefully calibrated canvas of characters in which the family's two daughters-in-law remain the focus of interest. Following a familiar pattern, only one of them is virtuous, skilled and literate. The novel acknowledges the large extended family's aspirations for social mobility, reform and modernity, while capturing the swiftly transforming everyday and ritual life of merchant communities. The novel will be of interest to scholars and students of South Asian literature and to historians of language, education, modernity, caste and gender.

Pandit Gauri Datt's Devrani Jethani ki Kahani or A Story of Two Sisters-in-Law (1870) is often considered the first novel in Hindi. This sparsely written story, in deceptively simple but elegant prose, follows the fortunes of an Agarwal merchant family in the north Indian town of Meerut, then under colonial rule. Gauri Datt introduces us to a colourful and carefully calibrated canvas of characters in which the family's two daughters-in-law remain the focus of interest. Following a familiar pattern, only one of them is virtuous, skilled and literate. The novel acknowledges the large extended family's aspirations for social mobility, reform and modernity, while capturing the swiftly transforming everyday and ritual life of merchant communities. The novel will be of interest to scholars and students of South Asian literature and to historians of language, education, modernity, caste and gender.

THE EVOLUTION OF Hindi literature in nineteenth-century colonial north India is often associated with the cities of Benares, Allahabad, Delhi, Agra and Patna. While the focus on these urban centres and their literary public spheres is certainly justified, it has obscured the fact that much literary activity in Hindi at the time took place in the small provincial towns that are spread across the Gangetic plains in what is today the state of Uttar Pradesh. Situated 60 km north-east of Delhi, between the Ganga and Yamuna rivers, the ancient town of Meerut is one such place. It was in this town, in the year 1870, that Pandit Gauri Datt wrote Devrani Jethani ki Kahani, 'A Story of Two Sisters-in- Law', a landmark work of realist fiction that holds special importance as the first venture into novel-writing in Hindi literary history.

Devrani Jethani ki Kahani may be read on multiple levels as a social document depicting the life and aspirations of a north Indian middle-class family of the Agarwal merchant community; as an early experiment in novel-writing and literary realism; as an advice manual for women in narrative form; as a reformist and didactic work championing female education; or as a linguistic document revealing an early stage in the evolution of Modern Standard Hindi (MSH).