Vishva sahitya

South Asian Contribution to Vishva Sahitya daya dissanayake [paper presented online at a webinar organized by the Madurai Kamraj University in September 2020] I would like to consider all Sahitya from South Asia as one Sahitya, and that it should be a major portion of Vishva Sahitya, or as the west calls it, the World Literature. Mahakavi Rabindranath introduced the term Vishva Sahitya in a speech delivered at the Jatiya Sikhsa Parishad 120 years ago, and first publish in 1907. Let me quote from the translation by Rijula Das and Makarand R. Paranjape. “You have called the topic I have been entrusted to discuss as “Comparative Literature” in English. In Bangla I shall call it Visva Sahitya (world literature). What does man say through his work, what is his direction, what is he trying to accomplish? To understand this one needs to follow man’s intention through history. The reign of Akbar or Gujarat’s history or Elizabeth’s character—such piecemeal viewing only satiates our curiosity for information. The one who knows that Akbar and Elizabeth are merely pretexts, who knows man has tried to fulfil his intentions across history through many efforts at realization (sadhana), many mistakes, and many corrections, who knows that man is trying in every way to connect with everyone else in the broadest way in order to free himself, who knows that the individual is struggling to succeed in politics (rajtantra) and from politics progress to democracy—man is breaking and re-making himself only to voice himself in the universal, to realize himself in the many—such a person tries to see not the individual but the deeper intention in the striving soul’s constant endeavour to transcend his personal history. He does not return after seeing the pilgrims–he looks for the deity that all the pilgrims have congregated to see. Similarly, how man expresses his joy in literature, how and in what form the human soul chooses to manifest its diverse, variegated, multiple images of self- expression, that is the only thing worth considering in world literature. Literature must actually enter the world–whether it pleases to express itself in the form of the diseased, the accomplished, or the ascetic person–to know how far man can find his kinship in the world, and to what extent he can realize truth. It will not do to know it as an artificial construct; it is a world in itself. Its essence exceeds the individual’s grasp. It is in continuous creation, like the material universe itself, but in the innermost core of that unfinished creation is a perfected ideal that remains unmoving. The substance of the Sun’s core is recreating itself in many liquid and solid forms that we cannot see, but the corona of light that surrounds the sun ceaselessly proclaims its existence to the world. Thus it constantly bestows itself and unites itself with everyone. If we could perceive the totality of humanity in a visual meta- phor, we would see it as a vision of the Sun. We would see its matter slowly arranging itself in many layers within itself, surrounding itself in a halo of joyful expression, shedding its light in every direction. Regard literature for once as that halo of expression composed in language and enfolding humanity. Here is a tem- pest of light, the source of radiance, here are clashes of brilliant spray. Walking through a neighbourhood you notice how busy everybody is: the gro- cer tending his shop, the blacksmith hammering on the anvil, the labourer carrying his load, the merchant balancing his accounts—what may at first be invisible, you may perceive with your heart—on both sides of the road, in every home, in bazaar and shop, in lanes and by-lanes, how the torrent of rasa (relish) floods through so many streams and tributaries, overrunning so much shabbiness, wretchedness, and poverty. The nectar of the universal soul of man is apportioned out among all men through the Ramayan–Mahabharat, tales and fables, kirtans and panch- alis; Ram–Lakshman appear to prop up the most insignificant actions of the pet- tiest of men; the merciful breeze of Panchavati blows in the darkest home; man’s heart-creations and self-expressions enclasp the penury and stringency of the workplace of the labouring man, with arms bejewelled with bracelets of beauty and beneficence. For once we need to see literature as embracing all of humanity. We have to see that in his emotional self man has expanded his practical being so far in manifold and multi-directional ways. The monsoons that bless him are composed of so many rains of songs and showers of poetry, so many Meghdutams, so many Vidyapatis; the pains and joys of his small home have been augmented with the tales of the pains and joys of so many great monarchs of the solar and lunar dynasties! How the humblest man engirds the pains of his daughter with the consummate compassion of Princess Parvati, daughter of the King of the moun- tains; how in the glory of Kailasha’s poverty-stricken Lord, he glorifies the pain of his own poverty! In this way man advances, surpassing himself, intensifying himself, burnishing himself with a halo of brightness as he struggles on. Though sorely straightened by his circumstances, man has created for himself an aug- mented thought-creation, a second samsara (universe) of literary composition that surrounds this worldly samsara. Do not so much as imagine that I will show you the way to such a world lit- erature. Each of us must make his way forward according to his own means and abilities. All I have wanted to say is that just as the world is not merely the sum of your plough field, plus my plough field, plus his plough field–because to know the world that way is only to know it with a yokel–like parochialism–similarly world literature is not merely the sum of your writings, plus my writing, plus his writ- ings. We generally see literature in this limited, provincial manner. To free oneself of that regional narrowness and resolve to see the universal being in world litera- ture, to apprehend such totality in every writer’s work, and to see its interconnect- edness with every man’s attempt at self-expression–that is the objective we need to pledge ourselves to. —Translated by Rijula Das and Makarand R. Paranjape The world of literature creates a parallel universe which makes the wretchedness of ordinary life bearable. Literature, just like art, music and dance, through link languages and translations, offers one of the best ways to understand, accept and live in harmony. However, to achieve this harmony the literature has to be shared with all the people, across all physical and man-made barriers. Before going out to embrace the whole world, we could make a start in South Asia with South Asian literature. Over 2 billion human beings in South Asia live on a land area of 5.2 million km2.. We are one family, with one culture and almost all of us are descendants from the early migrants, probably from Africa. We must get together and live as one family. Yet we are divided into eight countries, while excluding Tibet and Myanmar, by political barriers, though geographically only Sri Lanka and Maldives are separated by the sea. We have several major religions in the region, but due to cultural and social intermingling, each has borrowed and adapted practices from the others, enabling peaceful coexistence. Literature of the region enables the sharing and understanding of the religious and cultural traditions of the various peoples in South Asia. Our Vishva Sahitya should have a very prominent place in World Literature. Because it includes not only the Ramayana and Mahabharata, but also the 546 Buddhist Jataka stories, which are universal stories. There are the poems by Buddhist monks and nuns Thera Gatha and Theri Gatha. We have the Vedic literature, and their modern interpretations, like the Baghavat Gita according to Gandhi. We have our ancient literature written in Sanskrit, which includes Janakiharana, by king Kumaradasa in Sri Lanka in the 6th century. There was Vishakadatta in the Sanskrit drama Mudra-Rakshasa written during the Gupta dynasty 4th or 5th century or later. A few years ago, after the war had ended, I saw this painting on the wall in the house of the Kurukkal of Maviddapuram kovil, in Jaffna. A painting which had survived the ravages of the war, because the Kurukkal family held it as a precious and sacred object. It was a portrait of the poet Thiruvalluvar. We in the south of Sri Lanka would have received the English translation of the Kural after 1886, with the first English translation done by Rev. Dr. G. U. Pope, Rev. W. H. Drew, Rev. John Lazarus and Mr. F. W. Ellis. A Sinhala translation was done by Ms. Misihami Gorokgoda in 1964. The first translations in English may not have done justice to the original work. Translation is a tricky subject and when a Tamil poem written 2000 years ago has to be translated into English by writers who were born and grew up in England, learned and believing in the Christian faith, grasping the original Tamil idea and putting it across in a language which does not have the correct words for them, would have been really tricky. It is about time for all of us to read The ThiruKural with an open mind, ignoring his place of birth, his religious and political beliefs. Tiruvalluvar describes our world, and mankind. His writing concerns all of us and is equally applicable to all of us, whatever our race or creed may be. Like all religious leaders and philosophers he belongs to all of us. He deserves our respect and the best way to honour him is to study his message and try to learn from it to lead a life useful and peaceful. We have all these works for World Literature. Silapadikarama too is known to in Sri Lanka. Dr. M. H. Peter Silva translated Silapadikaram into Sinhala from Tamil as 'Nuruvela teda'. Peter Silva had also translated 'Vira Solium' into Sinhala. We talk of colonial literature and post-colonial literature, instead of world literature or vishva sahitya, which should not be grouped under time and space. We are still writing, reading and studying literature under a colonial mindset. Before the European colonisers came with their ‘literature’ we already had a sahitya for over several thousand years. Our Sahitya has always been close to our hearts and minds, our Sanskriti and our respect for Sabbe Satta and Prithvi Matha, all life on Mother earth. "Writing, art, music, dance, and other forms of symbol creations and manipulations reveal the very human process of giving meaning to the experience of life." wrote Cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg in his 'Psychology of Writing'. But we are only trying to fool ourselves. We can really get meaning of life only through nature, not through any art forms or literature created by man. Our Sahitya would have included all these artistic creations, while in the west they had to compartmentalise every thing, as art, music, dance, poetry, literature. And then each such category into sub-categories, locking each subcategory in a little cage. So they talk about art, when they should be talking about all arts, Kala. When Ellen Dissanayake, considers that "Art is a normal and necessary behavior of human beings", introducing Homo eastheticus, in her book of the same title, we have to read it not as art only, but as all Sahitya. She had described a behavior of art more precisely as “making the ordinary extraordinary.” The ordinary body (skin, hair), natural surroundings (e.g., cave walls, rock outcroppings, boulders, logs, pieces of stone), and common artifacts (e.g., tools, utensils, house walls, canoes) are made special by cultural shaping and elaboration that make these more than ordinary. She had introduced the term “artification,” for this activity, what we are doing even with our literature. We could also interpret artification as interference with nature to make unnatural surroundings, more harmful than intentional destruction. We can never capture natures true beauty through any poetry or prose, or even by the latest photographic equipment. But we continue to try. Art would not have been for Art's sake when our ancestors painted on cave walls. It could not have been Homo aestheticus who painted inside the caves, but the early Homo sapiens, the so-called uneducated animal who lived in our countries, many thousands of years ago. Plato considered art as imitation, that art imitates the objects and events of ordinary life, that it was more of an illusion than is ordinary experience. It applies to all creative arts, including literature. The idea that art is divinely inspired, as explained by Socrates, and later emphasized during the Renaissance, persists till today because art became a major medium of propagation of religious ideas. We could even say that art and literature really contributed to the survival of religions. Yet there is no real evidence that the earliest surviving paintings from cave walls showed any religious ideas or had been inspired by supernatural forces. It was in the 19th century Europe that philosophers like Kant, Schelling and Hegel tried to build up a philosophy of art, perhaps based on what some of the ancient Greeks had believed. This is probably when Homo aestheticus was born, not in pre-historic times as Ellen Dissanayake has argued. Hegel claimed that "Art is the highest revelation of the beautiful, that Art makes up for the deficiencies of natural beauty, by bringing the idea into clearer light, by showing the external world in its life and spiritual animation." That is the problem with western thought. Their obsession with the superiority of human intelligence and powers. Only such an obsessed mind would see deficiencies of natural beauty. Not a single art form has ever been able to improve on or imitate natural beauty or the natural wonders. At first art too became a kind of religion, with the art critics as the priests who interpreted the artistic creations. The common man was not expected to understand or appreciate the meaning of the new Art, and had to be interpreted and explained by the experts. Art galleries became like places of religious worship, where visitors had to move around in silence and soft feet, gazing with open mouths at the displayed work which was called art. Then it spread to literature. Today we believe someone has to teach us to understand and appreciate literature, specially poetry. Aesthetics as we know it today in South Asia, is what we have inherited from the colonial masters, and we try to interpret our historical art and literature according to them. In our country, Sri Lanka all art work and literature created since the 3rd century BCE was religious, influenced by Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions and beliefs. Even the Sihigiri frescoes would have been drawn along religious themes, like at Ajanta. They would not have been painted just for the beauty of the women depicted. And we do not need art experts to explain to us paintings in our temples, or the religious poetry and literature. We should ask ourselves, has literature, art or music really made man happier and less dull, than he would have been without it, but surrounded by the beauty and wonders of nature. We have also corrupted the concept of literature to mean just the novel, and on occasion the short story and the poem. We talk of best selling novels, but hardly about best selling short stories or poetry. Because we want to ape the west in everything, we grabbed at their word literature, and translated it as Sahitya, degrading the entire concept. We learn literary criticism from western pundits, we try to apply their standards, their rules to our ancient literary creations, and even our modern writings influenced by our own culture and traditions which are so alien to western academics. Sujata Sudhakar Mody traces the use of the term Sahitya for Literature to 1894 when Bengal Academy of Literature was changed in an attempt to de-anglicize it as 'Bangiya Sahitya Parishad'. Mody quotes from Sheldon Pollock, that the term "Sahitya's history begins with Bhamaha's Sanskrit text Kavyalankara, from the seventh century, but then Sahitya did not refer to literature. The Sanskrit term, in its most basic sense, signifies an 'association,' 'connection,' 'society,' 'combination,' or 'union'." Sahitya came to include "prose, verse, poetry, plays, novels, champu, history, biographies, satire, comedy, humor, human interest, ancient history, science, handicrafts, the arts, and as many other topics", wrote Shrinarayan Chaturvedi in Sarasvati journal (1961). However Shamsunar Das, even in 1901, used the term 'bhandar' instead of 'Sahitya' to mean 'gadya' and 'padya'. Das did not include poetry, novels and plays under Sahitya. But for writings in English he began to use the term Sahitya. P. Sachidanandan in 'What is Sahit in Sahitya' gives us Sahit as the root word of Sahitya. Sahitya means "to be together; joining together various dharmas in one deed; participation of a large number of people on equal basis in one act; a kind of kavya." 'Kavya' has been proposed as a better term for literature Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, when he was editor of Sarasvati carried a cartoon 'Sahitya samachar' (literary news). One cartoon (January 1904), shows three men, one of them, Marathi Sahitya is in search of his turban, English Sahitya is in search of his coat, and Bengali Sahitya for his scarf, watch and handkerchief. All three are complaining that the items are missing or stolen. In the next page the cartoon continues, with a fourth man, Hindi Sahitya, wearing the stolen turban, coat, scarf, handkerchief and watch. He says "...how quickly I have brought about my own progress! This is the science that I have learned at the great university in Paris!!!...The guardian of 'The Times' and 'The Globe' will pardon me and serve as my fortress." This cartoon perhaps illustrates the fate of all 'Sahitya' in our countries, producing 'Shaitya Chori', or plagiarists. Literature in the west has come to mean only imaginative or fictional writing, which is just one river flowing into the ocean of Sahitya. Sachidanandan mentions a response by Mahasveta Devi, when someone asked about bringing Adivasis into the mainstream, "Are you asking me to bring the ocean into a canal?". That is what we are doing when we try to restrict Sahitya to a stream, serving only a limited group. In the same manner that the flow of a river could be controlled, guided or restricted, diverted and even polluted, the Sahitya restricted to literature could be treated in the same manner, to destroy it. No one would ever be able to do such damage to the mighty ocean. Literature itself is on the decline, even in the west where it originated. Books have been coming out with titles like, 'The Death of Literature' (Melon Foundation, 1990), 'Literature Lost' (John Ellis 1997), to name only a few such books. In America the Century of the Book is considered as from 1850 to 1950. In 2004 a survey revealed that 43 percent of Americans polled had not read a book all year. In 2018, Indians read more than any other country, each person in terms of time per day devoted to reading. Our Sahitya had been alive for over two thousand years, and will continue to live for many more years, even if literature in the west dies. This year thanks to the panic about the pandemic we had more opportunities to read, to read all the unread books on our bookshelves and then search online for e-books and e-journals. That is the biggest benefit that I believe, the acceptance by readers of the e-literature. Though I have tried to promote e-books, e-journals and e-conferences for over two decades, it took a new virus to get people interested. Before COVID 19, we had to leave a huge carbon footprint, and spend a few million rupees, to hold an international conference on the environment, literature or about eco-criticism. It is the critics and the academics who began to kill literature and now Sahitya, by imposing rules and regulations of how to write fiction, what a reader or a student of literature should look for in a novel or a poem. Today in the west, students are almost totally dependent on 'Cliff Notes' and 'Spark Notes' to appreciate a literary work, because they have been brainwashed to believe they need to be taught how to appreciate and enjoy a book. That is why all the abuse of the modern Sahitya river, with guidelines, rules and regulations, sometimes even censorship has been happening over the past two centuries. The 'poetic license' that was really enjoyed by the ancient Sahityakara has been revoked by the businessmen. Today we do not get real masterpieces, in any Shaitya form, as novels, epics, drama, paintings, music or sculpture, we only have bestsellers and record breaking films. We can only admire what has been created in the past. We have so many example of great works of art and literature in our part of the world, before our artists and writers had to learn creative writing in colleges and universities. The real decline in our ancient Sahitya, to new Sahitya with the interpretation of it as 'literature' probably would have begun with the commercialization and commodification of all art forms. Today we have forgotten or ignored what Sahitya really means. That is probably why we have to even introduce terms like 'Subhashitha Sahitya' or Sahitya for the well being of mankind, as against 'Durbhashitha Sahitya' commercialized art forms which are detrimental to our society. Even the crudest forms of pornography, and books dealing with all forms of unimaginable violence and hate speech which rouse hatred towards fellow human beings, are all classed under literature. Could we ever get back to real Sahitya? Before we talk about Eco-criticism let us write for our nisarga or our nature. Let us begin with our children’s literature. Before we talk of eco-criticism, let us talk about eco-literacy. We boast about the very high literacy rate in most regions of our countries. But that literacy is limited to education with the aim of getting university degrees and earning money. In the concrete jungles we live in, children never get an opportunity see a plant growing to be a vanaspathi, bearing fragrant flowers and fruit, they don’t get a chance to see a caterpillar blossoming out to a butterfly. They don’t hear the music of the birds. They are totally cut off from nature and natural beauty. We need to introduce the natural wonders to the children, and get them to appreciate and respect nature. It can be done through poetry and stories. But such books should be interesting enough to drag the children away from the idiotbox and violent literature. Our Sahitya has to begin from what we write for the children. Today, language is a major barrier for world literature. But language would not have been a barrier in the past, and even today it is not a major barrier in the subcontinent. Traders and Religieux travelled everywhere, communicating with people irrespective of language differences. People in Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan, are able to communicate with the majority in India or Pakistan, because they have so many words in common, even with 13 major languages within four major language families, and altogether several hundred languages and dialects. English as the link language has been helpful since the British occupation of most of the countries, and in Nepal and Bhutan, even though they were never under colonial rule. We cannot make the world a ‘Global Village’ overnight. We need to do it one step at a time. Our contribution, however small, has to make South Asia into one nation, irrespective of all the political barriers, because geographical and physical barriers have been brought down by the progress of transport and through digital communications. Let us learn about our people, our culture, traditions through our literature, and let us promote them throughout South Asia first. Let us first use the literature in English that exists in all the South Asian countries. The next step would be to translate writings in other native languages into English and to other major languages. A major barrier in South Asia today is the Partition of the subcontinent. We still find new literature, and films and documentaries about the partition, and about those who suffered and are still suffering in regions now labelled as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Kashmir (parts of which are controlled by India, Pakistan and China). Even the diaspora writers, who are so far removed from the country and the people by distance and time, are still writing about them. We need to study such creative works to try to breakdown the partitions, literally, socially and culturally, and to avoid any further partitions. The British should never have created the ‘Partitions’. After almost the entire South Asia had been formed into one country by the British, they undid what they had achieved, murdering millions, displacing more millions, as their parting curse. The tragedy still lives in our minds, seven decades later. We also have unnecessary labels to identify writers, identifying them within political borders. This creates issues. Bangla writers are divided between Bangladesh and West Bengal, and Urdu and Panjabi writers between India and Pakistan. There are Tamil writers in Sri Lank and South India. Mahakabi Rabindranath is an example. He is a Bengali, claimed by both India and Bangladesh, though he truly belongs to the whole South Asia and the whole world. There would be many writers who are known only in their mother tongue, who have not been translated into any other language, and thus unknown to the rest of the world. There could be many more writers around the world, over the past century, who never got published because now books are a commodity and the publishers are businessmen who give first priority to their profits. We have writers now labeled as ‘Diaspora Writers’, by which we mean those who have left their homeland, to settle down in another country. Even if they write about their country of birth, often they would be describing their ‘imaginary homeland’, a homeland as they wish it would have been, or as the readers of their adopted country would like to read about. We also have writers from other countries who have settled down, or had lived for many years, in South Asia. Ruth Prawar Jhabvala is considered as a German born American, but married to an Indian. Rudyard Kipling, was born in India, but is considered an English journalist and writer. Parijat (Vishnu Kumari Waiba) was born in Darjeeling, is today considered one of the most famous Nepali writers. Speaking of Sri Lankan writers, Anne Ranasinghe, was born in Germany to Jewish parents. She married a Sri Lankan doctor and settled down in Sri Lanka as a Sri Lankan citizen and wrote her poems in English. She won the Sahitya Rathana, the most prestigious State Award as a Sri Lankan writer. Ven. S. Mahinda thera was a Buddhist monk who was a very famous poet writing in Sinhala to rouse feelings of patriotism among the Sri Lankans. He called himself a Tibetan, born in Sikkim. Today it is not easy to give him a nationality, because Sikkim at the time of his birth was not a part of India, and Tibet may not have accepted him either, but people in Sri Lanka have accepted him as Sri Lankan. British writer Leonard Woolf, is remembered as the author of the great Sri Lankan novel ‘The Village in the Jungle’. Arthur C. Clark immigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956, where he lived to the end of his life in 2008. When we read or review a literary creation, sometimes we are prejudiced because we identify the writer by his or her race, creed, nationality, gender, caste, and even by political affiliations. In the recent past, many writers were bold enough to declare their caste and we have a new literature in India as Dalit writings. Yet we could consider all literature by and about the suppressed and oppressed society as Dalit Literature, or at least as Subaltern Literature. Inherited from the West, in South Asia too we have a category called Women Writers, even though in the past no one would have bothered about the gender of the writer. Yet unfortunately, society had compelled some female writers to hide their gender and use a male pseudonym, while today it is imposed by the publishers. We need to talk of Dalit Feminism, about those females who are twice oppressed in the households of the oppressed people. The women writers bring out all the violence against women, due to ethnic, religious and caste based conflicts, but what we need is writing not about the violence as such, which only bring out the brutality of the male human. Instead what we need is to bring out instances where such brutality and violence had been avoided, or subdued without violence. We need to learn from such instances so we could prepare ourselves better in the future. Why should we talk about Feminist writing or women’s literature. Why should the gender matter in creative work. The general misconception, probably created by the male of the species, is that literature is dominated by men writers all over the world. The truth is, the theme of women writers is too vast to be discussed within a limited space. In a supposedly male dominated literary world it is Enheduanna who is still accepted as the First Writer among 'man'kind. In South Asia, there have always been women writers, of equal prominence as the males. Feminism is an alien concept to the South Asian culture. Women always had an equal or a dominant position in our cultures, and even in pre-historic cultures throughout the world. The myth about a hunter-gatherer and provider of the family has been exploded and there is evidence to believe that the woman was the provider of all food and who took care of the family. The men were only there for protection and to provide an occasional supply of meat from a hunted animal. Contradicting the myth about the subservient position of women in South Asia, we find numerous inscriptions of donations of caves and temples made by women. However, when readers and even scholars discuss South Asian women writers, they always take up the role of post-colonial writers, talking about how they have moved away from "traditional enduring, self-sacrificing women searching for identity". But that is because these readers are only exposed to the diasporic writings and writing in English. Had they been aware of real "indigenous" writing by women in South Asia, they would have realized the true position of these women and their role in culture and arts. The oldest surviving women writing from South Asia are accepted as the Therigatha by Buddhist nuns from the 6th century B.C. There could have been previous writings, which have not survived, or had been suppressed or destroyed by their male rivals. However, there is a school of thought that some of the Vedic hymns were written by women. Among them is Ghosha, the granddaughter of Dirghatamas and daughter of Kakshivat, who were both composers of hymns in praise of Ashwins. Ghosha has 14 verses in praise of Ashwins, another was a personal prayer for married life after she is cured of her lifelong ailment. Lopamudra was the wife of the sage Agasthya who is credited with two stanzas in the Rig Veda. Maitreyi, one of Yajnavalkya's wives, had written 10 out of the Rig Veda hymns. Gargi, daughter of sage Vachaknu, was also a Vedic prophet (or should we call her a prophetess?) Sangam Age (100 B.C. to A.D. 250) writings are considered the oldest South Asian secular poetry, and out of the 2,381 surviving poems 154 are by women. Susie Tharu and K.Lalita believes that most of the anonymous works would also be by women. In the West sometimes women had to write under male names. Even Joanne Rawlings had to appear in a more masculine guise as J.K. Rawlings. The oldest university on earth, founded at Nalanda around the 1st century B.C. gave women equal status, but any writing made by them were destroyed when the university was burned down. The seventh century poet Vijjaka or Vidya from the present day Karnataka has written "without knowing about me, Vijjaka, dark, like the petal of the blue lotus, That the poet Dandin (vainly) said that the Goddess of learning was all white". In the ninth century, Avantisundari, wife of the poet Rajasekhara, had written poetry in Prakrit. Rajasekhara had written in 'Kavya Mimamsa', "women also can be poets. Sensibility and sophistication know no difference of sex". Hemachandra used quotations from Avntisundari in his Deshiamamala in the twelfth century. The Tamil poet Karraikal Ammaiyar is the earliest of the women-poet saints of the Bhakti movement. Bhakti poets wrote in their regional languages, breaking the religious and literary hold of Sanskrit. Many of the Bhakti poets were women, among them 12th century poets, Akkamahadevi and Sule Sankavva, who "wrote poetry that could startle contemporary sensibility with its combination of the sacrosanct and the sacrilegious" (Vijaya Dabbe) Janabai, who belonged to the Sudra community, orphaned at a young age, became a servant in the household of a Varkari devotee, and later became the 'dasi' of a son of the family. Yet she wrote over 340 devotional songs, which survived as her master Namdev, who himself was a Varkari poet, saved them. She considered her god 'Vitthal' (an incarnation of Vishnu), as her mother, her fellow servant and ultimately as herself. The Bhakti movement was spread all over the Indian subcontinent. Janabai wrote in Marathi. Rami wrote in Bangali, Gangasati and Ratnabai in Gujarati, Atukuri Molla in Telugu and Gul-badan Begum in Persian. Some of the well known women in Kannada literature include Triveni, (1928 - 1963), Rajalakshmi N. Rao (Sangama), N. V. Bhagyalakshsmi (Berala Sandiya Baduku), Vina Shanteeshwar (Higondu Kathe) Tahru and Lalita discuss the issue of "Colonial Rearticulation of Gender", when "Women artists were delegitimated and marginalized", like the Vishnava poets. An extraordinary number of biographies had been written by women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mainly in Marathi and Bengali, Pandita Ramabai, Lakshmibai Tilak, Rassundari Devi among them. Sarojini Naidu (1879 - 1949), born in Hyderabad, though well known as a great poet, wrote in English, during her early years. Later she had devoted her full time for politics and the Independence struggle. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880 - 1932), born in Pairaband in present day Bangladesh also wrote in English (Sultana's Dream, 1905). But Sughra Humayun Mirza (1884 - 1954) and Janaki Bai (1889 - ?) wrote in Urdu. A list of 20th century South Asian writers could begin with Kuntala Kumari Sabat who wrote in Oriya, Kamla Choudhry in Hindi, Ashapurna Debi in Bengali, Lalithambika Antherjanam in Malayalam, and Shyamal Devi in Kannada. In Sri Lanka the first women writers could be authors of the Deepavamsa, the oldest known chronicle, which is claimed to have been written by a team of Bhikkhunis. There is reference to the Twelve great poets, and we do not know if any of them had been women. We know there were many women who wrote poems on the Mirror like wall of Sihigiri. The first woman writer in English in Sri Lanka is accepted to be Rosalind Mendis (Mystery of a Tragedy). The Sri Lanka Directory of Women Journalists and Writers lists 500 profiles of our writers. There could be many more, who have not been listed, who have been here before our time. The place of Sri Lankan women writers in Sinhala has been convincingly proven by Sumithra Rahubadda, Sunethra Rajakarunanayake, and others, by consistently winning awards for their creative writing, outclassing the male writers. Women authors writing in Tamil include fiction writers, Kokila Mahendran, Annaladchmy Rajadurai, Yoga Balachandran and Padma Somakantahn and poets, Sivaramani, Urvasi, Maithayi, Sankari, Kasthuri, Auvai and Zulfika. (Lakshman & Tisdell) Pakistan women writing in Urdu include Alfat Fatima (Dastak Na Do), Bano Quisia, Fatima Suraya Bajia, Fehmida Riaz, Haseen Moin and Umaira Ahmad. Attiya Dawood writes in Sindhi. There are many more women who write and publish for their readers in Pakistan, doing a silent service for their arts and literature. There are many other women writers. The first version of the Ramayana by a woman writer appeared in the 16th century, by Chandravati, paying tribute to Sita. This is the Bengali Ramayana or Chandravati Ramayana, described through the lives of Sita, Mandodari and Chandravati herself. Other writers are Mahasweta Devi who won the Magsaysay award in 1997. Baby Halder, from West Bengal, abandoned by her mother at 7, married off at 12, escaped to Delhi with her three children. She wrote her memoir 'A Life Less Ordinary', which has been translated into several languages including English. Aminath Faiza (1924 - 2011) was a Malidivian poet who wrote in Dhivehi, who was awarded the National Award of Recognition (1980) and National Award of Honour (1996) for her contribution to Maldivian poetry. Kunzang Choden is from Bhutan, studied in Delhi and Nebraska. She writes in English on Bhutanese oral traditions.. Manjushree Thapa was born in Nepal, lives in Kathmandu, but had studied in Canada and her higher education in Washington, writes in English. A list of South Asian Women Writers is available at http://www.sawnet.org/books/authors.php When we talk about world literature, it is time that men started writing and discussing Male writers too, or someday they too would have to complain about been dominated by female women writers. We also talk about Postcolonial Literature, which in a way is a hangover of colonialism, because till recent times many of the Postcolonial writers had received their English education during the colonial times, or in educational institutes which continued the colonial traditions. It is not always easy to draw a line between colonial and postcolonial literature. Eco-criticism developed from the genre called modern or postmodern eco-centric literature, even though all our ancient literature in South Asia would have been eco-centric, because our people lived in perfect harmony with nature. The issues of culture vs. nature grew with industrial and commercial development, which always caused destruction. When we read today the literature that evolved during the freedom struggle, we have to keep in mind the situation in colonial South Asia, which the young generation has to read with an open mind, to understand the past as sometimes, there is danger in trying to act in a similar manner today. This would lead to conflicts around nations, nation-states, nationalism and anti-nationalism. It would also give rise to temptations for further struggles for separation, which may not be in the best interest of anyone. We are confined to our own country or region, and are not aware of the great literature of our neighbours. In India, universities teach South Asian Literature. Though we have so much social and cultural links with India, in South Asian Literature studies the only Sri Lankan literature known and used by them are the works of a few Diaspora writers. Most of the academics are not aware of our great writers like Ediriweera Sarachchandra, Martin Wickramasinghe, Punyakante Wijenayake, or even of Carl Muller, though several of his novels were published by Penguin India. They have not heard of the anthologies of English Writings or about the Literature in English in Sri Lanka by D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke. There is no opportunity to know anything about our literature in Sinhala and Tamil, even if a few books have been translated into English. This is the situation, not only with our immediate neighbour, but in all the other South Asian countries. Within our own country too we are confined to our own mother tongue. The Sinhala reader is not aware of the Tamil writing and vice versa. Very few books are translated, even to English, and when they are translated readers are not aware of the availability of such translations. A few examples are, Sarachchandra’s three novels in English translations, which were first printed overseas, and have been reprinted in Sri Lanka, and also his translation of ‘Charitha Thunak’. Sinhala poetry to English has been translated by Ranjini Obeysekara, Rajiv Wijesinghe and a few others, Tamil poetry has been translated by Somasunderampillai Pathmanathan, Kandiah Shriganeshan and others. SAARC Cultural Centre conceived a very ambitious project to translate Sinhala classics to English several years ago, but they suffered political abortion. We have very little knowledge of the modern writers from the other countries, even from India, even books written in English. Sarat Chandra Chattopahyay (Chatterjee) is claimed as the most popular novelist in the Bengali language. Most of his novels, including Devdas, Parineeta and Pather Dabi. “Sarat Chandar’s novels were translated into almost all the Indian languages. In fact he is the most translated novelist in India even more than Tagore. People translated Sarat Chandra’s novels out of love for his writing and not for any commercial motive or through any patronage of government agencies or literary institutions.” wrote Dr. Adyasha Das https://www.academia.edu/39133950/Women_Poetry_and_Empowerment. Mahakavi Jibananda Das is another. His place of birth now belongs to Bangladesh. But he studied, lived and died in Kolkata. His best poem, Bonalata Sen, is also considered the best ever Bangla poem is about South Asia, past and present, and should be included in Vishva Sahitya. Most of his works had not even been published during his lifetime, and he received the Sahithya Akademy award posthumously. Had his poems and novels been translated into English, perhaps he would have deserved the Nobel prize. Some of the credit for Bengali literature should go to the 19th century Bengali scholar Ishvar Chandra Bandyopadhyay , known more as Vidyasagar who began teaching Bangla and Sanskrit to both boys and girls in Bengal. Rubber is a Tamil novel by Jeyamohan in 1990. A novel that should be translated into English and also to other south Asian languages. A novel which should be of interest to everyone in rubber producing and also rubber consuming countries. A novel which should be appreciated by all who are interested in eco-criticism. There must be numerous such novels in other languages of South Asia, which should be in Vishva Sahitya. Govind Mishra has written over 50 books, and most significant is that more than 150 PhDs have been completed on his books. Pratibha Ray has published 19 novels and 22 collections of short stories in Odia. Yajnaseni, the story of Draupadi, has been reprinted over 100 times since it was published in 1984. Sarojini Sahoo is another great Odia writer, with many of her novels translated into English, Bangla, Hindi and Malayalam. Fortunately for Sri Lanka readers two of Sahoo’s novels have been translated into Sinhala. Perhaps the South Asian writer with the most number of books translated into other languages, including Sinhala, is R. K. Narayan. We write and we talk most often about Rabindranath Tagore and his Gitanjali. But unfortunately, most of the translations to other world languages and even to most other outh Asian languages had been from the English translation. Only 53 of the 103 poems in the English Gitanjali was from the original creation. 16 were from Gita-malya, 15 were from Naivedya, 11 from Kheya, the other 8 from Chaitali, Kalpana, Smaran, Shishu, Utsarga and Achalayatan. Only people who could read Bengali would have really enjoyed the original Gitanjali. This means that the real Gitanjali has not reached Vishva Sahitya. There is a wonderful novel written about Rabindranath’s early days on a houseboat on the River Padma. The novel is in Bengali, and for our good fortune it has been translated into English as ‘The Painted Palette’. Another novel by the author Selina Hossain ‘The Charcoal Portrait’ has also been translated into English. It is about the ever suffering workers in the tea plantations, which should be interesting reading for us too. There are only two novels, to my knowledge about our own tea estate workers, ‘Refuge’ and ‘Somewhere on the Green Hills’. 'World in My Hands' by Dr. K. Anis Ahmed, is based in a country named Pandua (not the town in West Bengal), which could be any country in the world today, specially a country in South Asia, or even Asia or Africa. In his first novel, Ahmed has seen man who had roamed the earth for several millennia. 'The Daily Pandua' we read about in the novel could be a daily newspaper in anywhere in South Asia today. Nepal has her own Mahakavi of Nepali language, Laksmi Prasad Devkota. Then there was Parijat. “I feel that Parijat’s ‘Shirish ko phool’ is the greatest piece of literature ever written”, says Prakash Subedi. https://www.academia.edu/1727771/Take_a_leap_from_words_An_interview The first major novel to emerge from Nepal is ‘The Tutor of History’ by Manjushree Thapa. Samrat Upadhyay’s Arresting God in Kathmandu was the first English book of fiction by a Nepali writer to be published by a western publisher, but today both of them have to be considered as diaspora writers. Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai from Pakistan is considered as the greatest Sufi poet of the Sindhi language. Saadat Hasan Manto was one of the finest Urdu short story writers, best known from ‘Bu’, ‘Khoti Do’ and ‘Thanda Gosht’. Moshin Hamid, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is also probably a reluctant diaspora writer, because he spends most of his time in the West, but lives in Lahore. The Commonwealth Best Book award winner Mohammed Hanif is best known for his ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’. Bhutan literature is the least known, because till about 1960 they had used Nepali language and most of their creative literary works and legends were oral. The present trend is creative writing in English. Kunzang Choden is the first Bhutanese woman to write a novel in English, ‘The Circle of karma’ and is hailed as the Grand Old Lady of Bhutanese fiction. Among the modern Bhutan writers, we find Rinzin Rinzin, Lingi Jamtsho, and also the Queen Mother Dorji Wangmo. The great Sufi poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet hailed from what is now known as Afghanistan. Rumi, like all major poets and writers do not belong to one country, they belong to the whole world, and specially all Muslims in South Asia. The Afghan born writer we all know is Khaled Hosseini, (Kite Runner) but he too is a diaspora writer. Almost all Afghan writers now live in exile. Maldives is of great interest because they are so near to us and we have so much in common with us, as confirmed by Prof. J. B. Dissanayake. Their ancient script is known as ‘Divehi Akuru’. Bodufenvalhuge Sidi who passed away in 1970, is known for his novels, ‘Bodufeneval’ and ‘ Maa Mukunudu Bodu’. Modern writers prefer to write in English, because they realize writing in Divehi would limit it to their own people only, and even among them the young readers prefer the books in English. That is what made Ibrahim Waheed “Ogaru” begin to create his poetry in English. He is a frequent visitor to Sri Lanka, and India, Sinhala is one of the seven languages he has mastered. Yet his works are not available to us. Some of his writings are available at his blogspot, and ‘Hussy’ is available as an e-book. With little over 400,000 population, we have to admire the Divehi writers, using their efforts to create Divehi poetry and fiction. Tibet has been ignored as a South Asian country, though the people of Tibet are South Asian too and their oral or written works should be considered along with those of Bhutan or Nepal. But whether we can identify Tibetan literature in the western sense has been debated for several decades. South Asian countries have their own literary journals. Bangladesh has ‘Bengal Lights’, Nepal has ‘Nepalese Clay’, India has many, including Sahitya Akademy journal and ‘margAsia’, Pakistan too has many literary journals. What we need really is a South Asian Literary Journal, for contributions from all South Asian writers, and even from writers in other countries posting literary reviews on South Asian writings, and for such a publication to be made available to every reader. A major problem we face is the failure to make all South Asian literature available in all the countries. This situation was created by the commodification and commercialization of literature. The reader and the writer are both at the mercy of the publisher. It is the publisher and the bookseller who decides what is to be printed, promoted and distributed. That is why most creative works do not cross the political and commercial borders. We are all starved for the literary works of our neighbours. It is unfortunate that in most South Asian countries the readers are more aware of diaspora writers than the writers of the neighbouring countries and even writers in their own country. We need more anthologies, literary reviews, conferences and online discussions about all literature published in South Asia. To enable online discussions and webinars, we need to go online with our literature, as e-books, and wherever possible by publishing them in the public ___domain, to be shared with all. India and Bangladesh have established Sahitya Akademys who are a doing wonderful service for their literature, but they are limited to their own countries. For South Asian writings to gain international recognition we need to set up an organization to make literary awards, because we cannot depend on western organizations to do justice to our writers. Perhaps we should form a South Asian Sahitya Akademy, to promote our Sahitya within the region and around the world. We consider the Nobel for literature as the highest award a writer could expect. But it does not really cover Vishva Sahitya or World literature. From 1901 to 2019, out of the 116 awards India received only one award, while Japan received 2 and China won one. Out of the other 115, France got 17, USA 12, UK 11, Germany 10, Sweden 8 and so on. Even Rabindranath, considered by the Nobel committee as an Anglo-Asian, (not an Indian) received it, because he translated it to English and was edited (or Anglicized) by W. B. Yates. Out of the 116 Literature awards women writers received only 15! That is probably because the great women writers from South Asia had not been really considered. We should also think of expanding the Comparative Literature Association of India, to a Comparative Literature Association of South Asia, CLASA instead of CLAI. We cannot expect any support or cooperation from the SAARC organization which has become a total failure today. India once started a very ambitious programme of promoting ‘India Books Abroad’ to popularise their literature in other countries and to encourage translation of their books into other languages. But these projects appear to have died of unknown causes. The SAARC Cultural Centre also made a good start with the annual anthologies of short stories and poems from all the South Asian countries. They also had one International conference in Bhutan on the South Asian novel, and another in Bangalore on South Asian Poetry. That was many years ago. Since SAARC is a total failure, perhaps we could consider a South Asian Sahitya Akademy, with no political interference. Foundation Of SAARC Writers And Literature (FOSWAL), was a brainchild of Ajeet Caur, who almost single-handedly has contributed more for promoting South Asian literature than any other individual or organization in the region. She had the courage to organize a meeting of the writers from India and Pakistan, and for the first time after the partition Pakistan writers crossed the border to attend a conference in India in 1987. Ajeet Caur organized the first conference of South Asian Writers in 2000. FOSWAL was recognized as a SAARC Apex body in 2002, they received support from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and from the Cultural ministries in other countries. Unfortunately the support became step-motherly, after the establishment of the SAARC Cultural Center. Today FOSWAL is struggling to hold at least one annual literary festival, but they have not been able to publish their anthologies, conference papers and other South Asian writings for want of funds. Indian Universities hold many International conferences on literature, and publish journals, but they do not cover all South Asian literature and sometimes political barriers hinder their efforts. All South Asian countries (except Sri Lanka and Maldives) regularly hold International or South Asian literary festivals, attended by many writers from South Asia. Even Afghanistan, with all their problems hold annual poetry festivals. We need to have more conferences, discussions, share our writings, book reviews, and translate more and more books first into English and then into other South Asian languages. Book publishers and sellers too are responsible for the failure to distribute the literary works. Unless the publishers and distributors form a South Asian Publishers and Distributors Association, the regular distribution of books in the other countries will never be effective. They could also consider co-publishing, to avoid the cost of transport and import taxes when the books have to enter another country. The best and the least costly process would be to have all literature in e-format. Wherever possible to be released in the public ___domain for free distribution or at least under CopyLeft. Even if the e-books are to be sold, they could be offered at very low prices, still giving the writers and publishers a reasonable income from the sales. The biggest advantage is that these books would be available around the world, for instant purchase, cutting across all barriers. We need to use all the latest technology, instead of just talking about a Global Village. We talk of the abuse and even the evil of digital technology, the internet and the social media. Since we believe that we are the most intelligent, most capable and efficient animal beings on earth, we should be able to use all the communication facilities and the media to share our thoughts, our visions, our traditions and clear up all doubts and misunderstandings that keep us within barricades we have erected around ourselves. Let us live in a real village, as it used to be, as one family, with no walls or fences around the houses, without the need to close and lock our doors, and without the need to hide anything from anyone. Ronald Reagan, on June 12, 1987, said in Berlin, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall". Let us appeal to all mankind, “Tear down all these walls”, all the language barriers we have built between us. Books like ‘Ruminations on South Asian Literature, Culture and Society’ give an opportunity for writers of the world to unite, beginning in South Asia. United we could change the world to be a better place, not only for humanity, but for all life forms. 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