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A Hindi Writer's View of Social, Political and Language Issues of his Time: Attitudes of Hariścandra of Banaras (1850–1885)1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

R. S. McGregor
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

Extract

The individual works of Hariścandra in prose, poetry and drama have been little analysed or exploited by western scholars for the light they throw on social and political attitudes, and on language issues, in north India in their author's time. Yet many of these works are of interest from the above point of view. One such work is an essay based on an address given by Hariścandra in the town of Ballia, to the east of Banaras, in 1877. In the following pages the content of this interesting essay is outlined and analysed; an introductory account is first provided of Hariścandra, his activity, and its historical context.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

2 Hariścandra, , Granthāvalī, ed. Vrajratnadās, (Banaras, 1950), 3, 896903.Google Scholar

3 Bayly, C. A., Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (Cambridge, 1983), 453ff.Google Scholar

4 Lütt, J., Hindunationalismus in Uttar Pradeś (Stuttgart, 1970), 68, 72. Hariścandra was the founder of the Tadīya Samāj.Google Scholar

5 ‘Bengal and the Development of Hindi’, South Asia Review (London, 1972), 142ff;Google ScholarHindi Literature of the 19th and early 20th Centuries (Wiesbaden, 1974), 72ff.Google Scholar

6 2nd edn (Calcutta, 1869), intro., 2.

7 Granthāvalī, 661.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 896; Rām-carit-manas, 4. 30.

9 Granthāvalī, 897.

10 Ibid., 898.

11 Mātāprasād, Gupta's edition of one recension of the Prthyirāj-rāso (Jhansi, 1965) gives a very different text: see pp. 321–8 for verses dealing with the incident, and especially v.45, p. 324.Google Scholar

12 Granthāvalī, 899900.Google Scholar

13 Lütt, Hindunationalismus, p. 78, appears to minimize the political overtones present here.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 897.

15 Ibid., 901.

16 Ibid., 902.