Modern Sanskrit Literature: From the autobiographical poem to formal autobiography

Abstract

The Sanskrit literature produced since the beginning of the 20th century, apart from continuing the traditional genres and stylistic forms, seeks new means of expression, new writing techniques and new subjects. Certainly, one of the new contents and modes of writing introduced by contemporary writers is autobiographical writing. It seems that in contemporary Sanskrit literature, autobiographical subjects most often express their experience of life in a particular place and time in the form of travel writing of various kinds. This may still be the dūtakāvya genre, well known in the classical tradition of Sanskrit literature, which could be said to pass easily into a personal travelogue and then function as a yātrāvṛtta. Works inspired by travel experiences include autobiographical poems, which present the author’s voice exploring his or her emotions; they are not travelogues or a kind of personalised guide to a country one has happened to be in or lived in temporarily. Another type of work, also a record of the personal experience of a stay in a foreign country, is an autobiography in the third person. There are also biographies that contain fragments of personal narrative, which in certain theoretical considerations are called auto/biographies, or a/b. Finally, there are diaries (dainikavṛtta) and formal autobiographies (ātmakathā). Examples of the categories introduced here will be briefly discussed.