Dr. Indu Prakash Pandey (Born 1924) is associate professor of Hindi Language and Literature in the Indo- germanisches Seminar of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, West Germany, Berore joining this Seminar in 1967, he was Cultural Professor in the University of Bucharest, Rumania for two years. He has lectured and conducted seminars also at the universities of Berkeley and Heidelberg. He was the Head of the Hindi Department of the Elphinstone College, Bombay for over ten years before leaving for Europe in 1963. He has acted as adviser and expert on several academic boards and committees of the universities of Bombay, Marathwada and S.N.D.T. He was a member of the Advisory Panel of the Central Board of Film Censors, India.
He is a graduate of the University of Allahabad, where he received his Master's degree in Hindi Language and Literature in 1949. He was conferred upon the degree of Doctor of Letter by the University of Utrecht, Holland on his published work entitled "Regionalism in Hindi Novels" in 1974.
As a folklorist he has published four books on Awadhi folksongs, tales and pro verbs. He has also brought out a volume of his poems and a small selection of his short stories. Some of his literary articles have already appeared in book form. Besides, his papers and articles have been published in a variety of journals, both in Hindi and English and in India and abroad.
By and large the old and mediaeval Hindi literature is a literature of trends. It is only in the modern period that the individual artist has become important. For this reason also, here in this book, an attempt has been made to acquaint the English readers with the important trends and traits of Hindi literature from its earliest period to the present. It is not a detailed and exhaustive account of the development of Hindi literature, as such a number of writers and works have not found any mention in the book.
Hindi literature has been studied in great detail with sufficient care and interest by a number of brilliant scholars: certain periods of its development have been thoroughly investigated; numerous outstanding literary works have been critically examined; philosophical contents have been minutely analysed; and different forms of literature have been extensively scrutinised. As a result of this vigorous interest a number of big and small books have come out which present historical development of Hindi literature. Genuine efforts have been made to collect useful material in order to prepare authentic biographies of some of the great poets and writers about whom very little was known. Many unknown authors have been brought to light and many old texts and manuscripts have been scientifically edited. For the last thirty years much useful research work has been carried out which has, more or less, brought the disjointed links of history together offering a coherent picture of the literary developments of Hindi and its allied dialects. Most of this work, naturally of course, has been done in Hindi, while very little has been written or translated into English or in any other foreign language. In the bibliography appended to this book, a fairly good list of books has been given which would provide the readers with good know- ledge about the linguistic and literary problems of Hindi. But these books cannot be of any help to those readers whose knowledge of Hindi is inadequate. Of course, there are three or four books in English about Hindi literature, but they are either too old or too narrow in their approach to be really helpful in giving a comprehensive picture of literary developments of Hindi which are varied and vast.
The present book is an humble attempt to provide a comprehensive abstract of the historical developments of Hindi literature to the English readers. The most important traits and trends of literary development of Hindi have been discussed here with occasional references to the philosophical and political ideas which helped in shaping Hindi and its literature.
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