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Literature of the East ENT 504 NEPALI LITERATURE Discussant: Maria Karla S. Sepcon (Khey)
Over the course of its history, Nepal has been known by names, such as The Land of Truth, The Land of Solitary Meditation and Penance. It is only in this current Iron Age that it is known as Nepal.
Brief Background Writing Systems Literatures of Nepal CONTENTS
• Nepal is named for the Kathmandu Valley, where the nation's founder established a capital in the late eighteenth century. Nepali culture represents a fusion of Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Mongolian influences, the result of a long history of migration, conquest, and trade. • Country Name: Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal Kathmandu Nepali Capital City: National Language: Religions: 81.3% Hinduism 9.0% Buddhism 4.4% Islam 3.1% Kirant 1.4% Christianity 0.5% Prakriti 0.3% Others Ethnic Groups: 126 caste/ethnic groups reported in the census 2011 Population: 29,940,606 as of Saturday, January 15, 2022
• Nepal is named for the Kathmandu Valley, where the nation's founder established a capital in the late eighteenth century. Nepali culture represents a fusion of Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Mongolian influences, the result of a long history of migration, conquest, and trade. • It’s a landlocked multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious country. It is situated north of India in the Himalayas, in the region where, about 40 to 50 million years ago, the Indian subcontinent crashed into Asia. Nepal has some of the world's highest mountains, including Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest, 8848m, which it shares with Tibet (by now a province of China). The highest mountain on Earth is towering above populated valleys and forested plains. Somewhere here in the Kapilavastu district, there is a place called Lumbini, where Queen Mayadevi is said to have given birth to Siddhartha Gautama, better known as Buddha, around 500 BC.
National Festivals: Dashain, Tihar, Shivaratri, Nepali new year (Baishak first), Teej, Chad, etc. Nepal possesses some of the most outstanding bio-diversity in the world, ranging from sub-tropical Rain-forests to Alpine Deserts. Climate ranges from sub-tropical in the low lands to Arctic higher altitudes. Seasons: Winter (December – February) ; Summer (March – May ) ; Monsoon (June – August) ; Autumn (September – November) World Heritage Sites: In Nepal, there are two UNESCO world heritage site respectively cultural world heritage site and another is natural world heritage.
Which year is currently going on in Nepal? It's the year 2078 in Nepal, but it's also 2021, 1142, 2148 and the year of the Iron Ox. 2078: Is taken from the official calendar in Nepal the Bikram Sambat or Vikram Samvat calendar, which is approximately 56 years and 8 months ahead of ours. The number of days in each month changes each year and can go up to 32. The Bikram Sambat / Vikram Samvat calendar is mostly used in Nepal and India but some countries or regions of them, also use it like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Bhutan. 1142: Then there is also the Nepal Sambat national lunar calendar of Nepal. This started to be used on the 20th October 879 AD and was in widespread use for all daily purposes until the beginning of the 20th century. Today, it is used for ceremonial purposes and to determine the dates to celebrate religious festivals and commemorate birthdays and death anniversaries. Thursday , April 14 Nepalese New Year 2022
Nepal was known to the Ancient Indians. It was mentioned in classical Indian literature. In the 3rd century BC, the great Indian Emperor introduced Buddhism into Nepal. Nepal was also in contact with China. Under them Nepal flourished and great temples both Hindu and Buddhist were built. Nepal’s Heritage is alive and dynamic. Shamanism, Pan- animism & Witch-craft are still practiced in remote regions. Temples, shrines, monuments and monasteries are extremely active with devotees burning butter-lamps, singing hymns, chiming temple bells and playing drums. The only country that has living goddess “Kumari”.
Nepali art is as old as Nepali culture despite the fact that we can only find the sculptures of fourth century A.D., the point of time in Lichchhabi period. This period is considered as the golden age of Nepali art. From the quality of these exclusive artworks we can deduct that Nepali art was much older than that. Likewise, the travelogue of the seventh century’s Chinese ambassador mentions that there were beautiful wall paintings on the houses of Kathmandu valley despite the fact that the earliest Nepali painting ever found is the Prajnaparamita manuscript illumination.
As Nepali art developed, it crossed a number of stages. We can find the shift from religious to secular, objective to subjective, external to internal, others to self, referential to abstract and so on. Earliest arts and architectures were symbolic. They depicted something but signified something else. They have didactic values, that is, they teach moral lessons. As they are religious, they are mystical and magical. The deities and human figures always have youthful body even in death bed. The artworks are anthropomorphic in the sense that even the divinities are in human form and express human emotions. (having human characteristics) The early forms of Nepali paintings are manuscript illumination, paubha, mandala, pata (narrative scroll painting) and wall painting. Pagoda temple, Shikhara style temple, stupa and monastery were the examples of architecture.
The Nepali writing system is not an alphabetic writing constitutes a cross writing systems and alphabetic writing systems. system; between rather syllabic it Nepalese Alphabet However, the term "alphabet" in this section is used in a wider sense to include aspects of both systems. This type of writing system consisting of aspects of both alphabetic writing systems and syllabic writing systems has been termed as abugida, a term proposed by Peter T. Daniels, from the Ethiopian word for the Ge'ez script, an example of such writing system. Abugida alphasyllabary. is also referred to as
Devanāgarī, (Sanskrit: deva, “god,” and nāgarī (lipi), “[script] of the city”) - also called Nāgarī, script used to writethe Sanskrit, Prākrit, Hindi, Marathi, and Nepali languages, developed from the North Indian monumental script known as Gupta and ultimately from the Brāhmī alphabet, from which all modern Indian writing systems are derived. In use from the 7th century CE and occurring in its mature form from the 11th century onward, Devanāgarī is characterized by long, horizontal strokes at the tops of the letters, usually joined in modern usage to form a continuous horizontal line through the script when written. The Nepali writing system is thus an abugida. Nepali is written in Devanagari script, a descendant of the Brahmi script. The Devanagari script is written from left to right and there are no special forms for capital letters. Even though Nepali is written in Devanagari script, the Nepali writing system uses only a subset of characters, not the entire character set, of the Devanagari script.
Nepali literature encompasses two areas: The first is the ancient spiritual-religious classics from the ancient Vedic period that saw the formation of Nepali-Indian civilization and related spiritual philosophic treatises millenia ago. - the Vedas - Puranas - a number of other works relating to life, nature, - humankind’s core and utilitarian activities — Vastu Shastra, the Kama Sutra, and medical & well-being treatises, are examples of these) - Through to related mythological works and folklore related traditions recorded in written form. - In the case of the latter, this has been much more recent since such traditions until quite recent times were almost exclusively communicated verbally.
Nepali literature encompasses two areas: The second is Socio-cultural modern works such as novels and short stories, which deal with more experiential subject matters about the human condition, and day to day life. Before the Gurkha (Gorkha) conquest of Nepal in 1768, Nepalese writings were in Sanskrit and Newari as well as Nepali (the latter being the language of the Gurkha conquerors). These writings consisted of religious texts, chronicles, gift- deeds, and so on. The extant material in Nepali, with the possible exception of the memoirs (c. 1770) of the Gurkha king Prithvi Narayan Shah, has more historical than literary interest. The development of literature in Nepal has been hindered by heavy government control and censorship, which led Nepali authors and poets to seek publication outside of Nepal until the 1930s, when Nepal's first literary journal. Literary writing in the Nepali language began only in the 19th century.
About 1830 there arose a school of Nepali poets who wrote on themes from the Hindu epics Rāmāyaṇa and Bhāgavata-Purāṇa in a language that is more Sanskrit than Nepali and that was heavily influenced by classical Sanskrit themes and poetic metres. They were followed in mid-century by Bhānubhakta, whose Nepali version of the Rāmāyaṇa achieved great popularity for the colloquial flavor of its language, its religious sincerity, and its realistic natural descriptions. The poet Lekhnāth Pauḍyāl in the early 20th century also tended to the colloquial and used the rhythms of popular songs in some of his poems.
The advent of modern literature in Nepal really began in the 1920s and ’30s with the work of Bālkrishṇa Sama, who wrote lyric poetry, plays based on Sanskrit and English models, and some short stories. Sama and his great contemporary, the poet Lakṣmīprasād Devkoṭā, discarded the earlier Sanskrit- dominated literary tradition and adopted some literary forms of the West, notably prose poetry, tragic drama, and the short story. In their poetry, these writers dealt with such themes as love and patriotism as well as the problems of injustice, tyranny, and poverty faced by Nepal in the 20th century. Modern Nepali drama, of which Sama was the chief practitioner, was influenced in its depiction of contemporary social problems by Western playwrights, notably Henrik Ibsen. In the hands of such writers as Viṣveṣvaraprasād Koirālā and Bhavānī Bhiksu, the Nepali short story also centred on modern-day Nepal’s social problems and the need for reform.
Poetry is the richest genre of twentieth-century Nepali literature. Although the short story has developed strongly, the drama holds its ground in the face of fierce competition from the cinema, and the novel is increasingly popular, almost every Nepali writer composes poetry. Since the appearance of Sharada , Nepali poetry has become diverse and sophisticated. The direction that this process of evolution has taken should be clear from the introduction to individual poets and the translations of their poems.
Nepali literature is of enormous value to anyone who is interested in the culture and society of twentieth-century Nepal. Nor should it be forgotten that the world that Nepali literature describes is not confined to Nepal alone: at least 2 million Nepalis live in India. A recent volume of "Indian" Nepali stories contained works by authors from Darjeeling, Sikkim, Assam, Nagaland, and various other regions of Nepal's huge southern neighbor (Bharatiya Nepali Katha 1982). The following selections are dominated by stories from Nepal, but Indian Nepali literature has not been wholly ignored and is represented by the Darjeeling writers Shivkumar Rai and Indra Bahadur Rai.
Some Problems of Translation All translation involves a loss, whether it be of music and rhythm or subtle nuances of meaning. The intrinsic difficulty of translating Nepali poetry into English stems partly from some important differences between the two languages. In some poems, it is impossible for any single line to be translated in isolation: the meaning of each stanza must be rendered prosaically and then reconstituted in a versified form that comes as close as possible to that of the original Nepali. This is partly because Nepali follows the pattern of subject-object-verb and possesses participles and adjectival verb forms for which English has no real equivalents. But the untranslatable character of some Nepali poetry can also be explained in terms of poetic license. Nepali is also capable of extreme brevity: to convey accurately the meaning of a line of only three or four words, a much longer English translation may be necessary.
Current Nepali literature is influenced by global trends. Fiction and non-fictional writing are becoming popular locally. Though Nepal does not have a large readership, fictional and non- fictional works are sold the most. Young novelists are emerging every year, and the literary market is gradually making its presence. Travel narratives, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs have been appearing to a great extent. Young writers seem to be leading at present. In recent past, a few memoirs made a pretty good business in the book market, not necessarily so much because of the quality of the work as much as because of the social name and popularity of the individual. Nepali readers of literature seem, at times, to be waylaid by the media publicity accompanying some mediocre works.
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