Indian Literature Essay

The literature of India spans many millennia, describing a variety of lifestyles, traditions, and culture across a large and diverse area, written in dozens of languages. Famous works originating from India include poetry, scriptures, novels, and epics, all of which were originally written in different languages, ranging from ancient Sanskrit, Hindi, English, and many more regional dialects. The two most notable Hindu epics, Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are the most well known throughout the country of India. ("India's Epics, Ancient & Modern.") These two stories, which bear great similarities to Western works such as Homer’s Odyssey and the Bible, tell a tale of kingdoms and gods which contain many themes central to Hinduism, such as dharma and karma.

The Ramayana is attributed to the sage Valmiki, who wrote the epic approximately 2500 years ago. The original version was written in the ancient language Sanskrit, which is now considered to be a dead, but a holy language of the gods. Even though the full transcript of Valmiki’s work couldn't be found, partial renderings and scripts exist which can be dated back to his time. The main way that this story was passed down was through oral tradition, primary through the educated saints and reciters of the ancient kingdoms. The tradition of passing down this story still occurs today, being told in more modern fashions such as movies, TV series, and theatre. Due to the regional diversity of India, the Ramayana has been rendered differently in each region, taking on different meanings and emphasizing different scenes and characteristics of the epic. For example, many in South India worship the monkey-person Hanuman, who aided Rama on his time in the forest and his journey to vanquish th...

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...n that both of these epics have placed great importance on dharma.

In conclusion, these two poems are epical in their themes and spirit, but they are not like any other two epics in the world, but are entirely of their own nature and characteristically different from others in their principle. These epics are therefore a highly artistic representation of significances of life, a developed ethical mind and a high social, political, and spiritual ideal of dharma, and the image of a great culture. These Indian epic poems were fashioned to serve a greater cultural function and that they should have been received and absorbed by both the elite and the common man, the cultured and the masses and remained through twenty centuries an intimate and formative part of the life of the whole nation is the strongest possible evidence of the greatness of these ancient Indian epics.