Hindi literature
Hindi literature is writing composed in Hindi, encompassing poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction across oral and written traditions.
Apabhraṃśa literature: Literature composed in Apabhraṃśa languages, which developed from Middle Indo-Aryan and preceded many modern Indo-Aryan languages. Apabhraṃśa literary traditions helped shape the linguistic world from which early Hindi writing emerged.
Hindi: An Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in India, written in Devanagari and closely related to Urdu. Hindi is the language whose literary traditions this field comprises.
Bharatendu Harishchandra: A nineteenth-century Hindi writer and playwright associated with the emergence of modern Hindi literature. His journalism, drama, and prose helped establish modern Hindi as a literary language.
Ramcharitmanas: Tulsidas’s sixteenth-century retelling of the Ramayana in Awadhi, composed as a devotional epic. It demonstrates the reach of vernacular epic poetry in Hindi literary history.
Urdu literature: Literature composed in Urdu, an Indo-Aryan language with major traditions in poetry, fiction, and drama. Hindi and Urdu share literary histories while differing in standardization, script, and cultural institutions.
Braj Bhasha literature: Literature written in Braj Bhasha, a Western Hindi literary language associated especially with poetry and devotional song. Braj poetry became a major early Hindi literary tradition, especially in Krishna devotion.
Devanagari: A writing system used for Hindi and several other South Asian languages. Most contemporary Hindi literature is printed in Devanagari.
Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi: A Hindi editor, critic, and writer who shaped the language and literary standards of the early twentieth century. His editorship of Saraswati influenced modern Hindi prose and poetry.
Padmavat: A sixteenth-century epic poem by Malik Muhammad Jayasi, composed in Awadhi and shaped by Sufi allegory. It illustrates the interaction of vernacular poetic form and Sufi storytelling.
Hindustani: A broadly shared speech continuum underlying colloquial Hindi and Urdu, with regional and social variation. It highlights the common spoken base behind literary standards often treated separately.