Raeside Early Marathi Prose Fiction

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Early Prose Fiction in Marathi, 1828-1885Author(s): Ian RaesideSource: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Aug., 1968), pp. 791-808Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2051580.

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Early Prose Fictionin Marathi, 1828-18851IAN RAESIDE

ITERARY prose is a late developer in the history of any language andin Marathi, as for most other Indian languages, it does not appear inany significant quantity until the middle of the nineteenth century when theinfluence of English was beginning to transform a hitherto almost exclusivelyverse tradition. Before this the use of prose is limited to commentaries, to afew hagiographical works of the Mahanubhav sect written in the late thirteenthand early fourteenth centuries, to historical narratives from the time of Marathaindependence and to private and diplomatic correspondence of the same period. Ofcourse, there must always have been a flourishing popular oral literature of fablesand ghost stories, adaptations of episodes from the Puranas and the Epics, butthese were never written down. Even among the well known Sanskrit storycollections,only the Pancatantra s found in an early proseversionin Marathi.2This amount of prose is already considerablymore than can be found in manyof Marathi's neighboring languages. However, very little of it can be treated asliterature,and none at all, apart from the isolated example of Pancatantra,as fiction.The style of the early Mahanubhav works is exceptionally colorless and desiccated,resolving itself into a series of short, staccato sentences, the form of which isobviously derived from verse forms such as the ovi couplet where the sense andthe syntactical group rarely overrun the end of the line. Without rhyme or metrethe effect is jerky and repetitive:

Then Mahadaisaaid,"Nagdev, et us go to the GosavL."hatobas aid,"Whereis the Gosavi?"Mahadaisa aid, "Is he not in Ritpur?griprabhuGosavY as sentfor us" . . . And Mahadaisa came with Bhatobas. Seeing the Gosavi they said,"Alas, he is gone. grlcangdev Raul is no more."Bhatobasand Mahadaisawerevery sorrowful.griprabhuGosavYomfortedthem. They kept on saying, "He hasgone He has gone " Then they remained fourteen years in the company of8rYprabhu osdvY.Mhaimbhatalso came. And all the other disciplescame. Theyremainedwith him and beganto servehim.3The historical bakhars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thoughnaturally more modern in language, are in a similarly uninspiring style that seemsinseparable from the narration of predominantly military events and which can be

Ian Raeside is affiliatedwith the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.1 This paper was originally contributed to a seminar held at the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies in I960 and has been slightly revised to take account of subsequentpublications. Chief amongthese is Part IV of Marathi Vainmaydcdtihds, ed. R. S. Jog, Poona (MaharastraSahitya Parisad), I965,which contains a valuable chapter on the story and the novel (kathakadambarl) by L. M. Bhingare.2 An excerpt is given in S. G. Tulpule, An Old MarathiReader, Poona, I960, p. II7.8 V. N. Despanide,ed., Smrtisthala, 2nd ed., Poona, I960, p. 4. Further examples of Mahanubhavprose are given in Tulpule, op. cit.,pp. 94-1I6.

791


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792 IAN RAESIDEfound in an almost identicalform in the minor chroniclesof most languages.Nevertheless, ccasionallyn the description f some climax-a battle,a murderora tragic death-they may include a telling phraseor two and give a piece ofdialogue hat has an authentic lavor.It is noticeable hat there is still no trace ofany developedsentencestructure.All this early prose is essentiallyan affair ofshort phrases,rarely linked by conjunctionsand without punctuationexcept forthe occasionalverticalstroke used in poetry. Such effectivenessas this style hasis cumulative, ike certainpassagesof Rabelaisor Saint-Simon.

Then nextdayDattajTindeset out andcameto the campof Durani, henhe sawa moundof heads;andit broughtears o hiseyes.In onemomentifteenthousand icked oldiers ad died.It was such hatscarce ne couldberecognised.Such carnageof our men There was lamentationhroughouthe army.Suchcarnage omajibabahoslewas standingn theranksonlya littlewhile.He wasa holymanpureandsimple.Thatdayhe did a warrior'suty ora moment nly;but it was his hour His head too was cut off and carriedaway.With greattroublehis body at leastwas soughtout. That body was offered o the flames.4

This then was the stage that prose had reachedat the time of the collapseofthe Marathaempire. Its subsequentdevelopmentas a form and style was almostentirely due to the stimulusof Western, predominantlyEnglish, culture.Prosefictionwas createdas fables,stories,novels, essays,prose drama-all were imitatedand often directly translatedor adapted from English sources. Books of fablesand moral tales were among the first printed books in Marathi, and in thiscategoryAesop, the SanskritPancatantra nd Chambers'Moral Classbook xistedhappily side by side. The stimulus may have come from the West, but it soonbegan to operate on indigenousmaterial. Before trying their hands at originalworks of fiction, Marathiwriters began with prose versions of familiar Puranictales such as Bakasurdcibakharor Nandarajacigost and numerouscollectionsof Arabian Nights type stories from Persian, althougheven these were usuallytranslated ia English.5The characteristicf this earlyperiod s that all thesetypesof proseweregivenequal weight,and indeedsomeof the best and most influentialMarathiwritersof

the time seem to have producedpracticallyno originalwork of fiction. It was apioneeringage in many ways.The populationof Maharashtra,r rather t wouldbe truer to say the high-castelite of Poona and Bombay,had been pitchforkedinto the nineteenthcenturyfrom the somewhatdecayedmedieval splendorsofthe Peshwa'scourt, and after a short period of utter bewildermenthad avidlyaccepteda kind of Samuel Smiles philosophy.Marathipeople decided that theywere backwardand ignorantof the workings of the materialworld and thatthey must set about betteringthemselves.It became more virtuous to write aschool textbookon geographyor hygienethan to producea work of the imagina-tion,and even imaginativeworks were put out undera smokescreenof reformistpropaganda nd attached o resoundingmoral homilies. This is perhapsthe casewith earlyprosefiction in any language.The overt excuse for Richardson's amela

4 S. N. Jos;,ed., Bhdfisdhebdncdakhar,7th ed., Poona, I959, p. 63.5 For example, Bakhatydranimd,I855, from Ouseley's translation from Persian; Bdgobahdra,I869-

72, from Duncan Forbes'Urdu translation.


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EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI 793is that it is a moraltale for the edificationof young girls, exhorting hem with awealth of titillatingdetail to fight for their virtue against all odds. There arecloseparallelso Pamelan earlyMarathi omances,n theme f notin execution.

It is necessary o make this equipollenceof literary forms clear because weshall inevitablybe concentrating ere on originalworks of prosefiction.They aremore important o us as being part of a productivegenre. In succeedingperiodsof Marathi iterature, ay after the first novel of Hari Narayan Apte in i885,6prosefictionmeansroughlywhat one would expect-the novel and the shortstory.In this first,experimental eriod, f one wereto askwhat was the mostoutstandingwork of proseliteratureone would probablybe told by the majorityof Marathicritics hat it wasCipalfinkar'srabi bhdsetil urasva camatkarikosti, a translationof the ArabianNights from English.Originalityand inventiononly began to beappreciated fter a kind of flood of unsophisticatedtory telling which imme-diatelyfollowed the beginningsof printing and earlyeducational eforms.

Tales and fables. Before dealing with originalworks, therefore, t would beas well if we describedbrieflythe other brandsof fiction and also say somethingabout heearliestprintedworks n Marathi.The firstprintedbookin Marathiwas almost nevitably he resultof missionaryactivity.In i8o5 William Careyproduceda grammarand a translationof Mat-thew's Gospel into Marathi at his Seramporepress with the aid of a Marathipandit,Vaijanatha 'armd.7Some time later, I814-I5, Carey publishedhis firstcollections of tales in Marathi-Simhasana-batfisi,ancatantraand Hitopadesa.The credit for the first printedbook of fables,however, goes to Sarphoji,theruler of Tanjore,who again with missionaryhelp printedthe Balbodha-muktavaliin i8o6-the first of the many versionsof Aesop'sfables to be done into Marathi.For some time after this nothing was done in Maharashtratself, but after theend of the Peshwa'srule in I8I4 missionaryactivity ncreased apidly n Bombayand the surroundingdistricts.Schools were establishedand printing pressessetup, but at first nothing emerged but Bible translations. n I820 the BombayNative School-bookand School Societywas set up under the patronageof El-phinstone,the Governor.In I82I the Poona Pathasalawas founded, and latervariousotherschools,high schoolsand societies or the dissemination f knowledgeof one kind and another.These institutionsdemandedbooks,but there were noexamplesof simple Marathiprose for the students to read. As a result prizeswere offeredfor suitableworks as earlyas I825, but it was not until threeyearslater that these broughtany result. In I828 SadasivKasinathChatre,a foundermemberof the BombayEducationSociety,produced wo translatedworks:Isapani-tikathd Aesop again) andBalmitra.The secondmeritssomeattentionbecause t isa fine exampleof the odd works of "literature"hat turn up in India in thenineteenthcentury.It is a translationof an English version of a kind of earlychildren'snewspapercalled L'Ami des Enfans. The original was by Arnaud

6 The end of the "ingrail avatar"of Marathiliterature is usually taken to be in i 874, when the firstnumber of KrsnasastriCipaluinkar'sNibandhamdldappeared. Stylistically this may be valid, but in thefield of prose fiction I can detect no natural break until the advent of H. N. Apte.7 On Carey's Serampore press see T. W. Clark, "The languages of Calcutta, 1760-I 840," BSOAS,XVIII, 3, 1956, 459-60.


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EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI 795Some of the Persian stories were blamed for dealing too much with love andsensuality, and thereby as tending to corrupt the morals of pure Maharashtrianyouth. There is certainly plenty of love in them, but to a modern reader it seemsthat the Marathi has usually paraphrased or sidestepped the already faint tracesof licentiousness eft by the English translators.In I854 also, a few more original works began to be written with a collectionof stories for and about women known as Stricaritra. Written by "Ramjee Gunno-jee, First Hospital Assistant Pensioner," the English subtitle gives a good idea ofits contents: "Streechuritraor Female Narration, comprizing their course of life,BEHAVIOUR and undertaking in four parts with Moral reprimands checkingObscenity to secure Chastity." The tales themselves are patently imitated from theArabian Nights, with the hero generally replaced by a heroine. A work on similar

lines, Sus`iksitStricaritra,was written much later, I872-73, and on the evidence ofthe titles alone these two are generally classed together with a third, VidagdhaStricaritra,which came out in i87I 12 This, however, is a horse of quite a differentcolor. Its plot would make it eminently suitable for inclusion in the Decameron.Two young men set out to see the world. One finds a lucrative job at a prince'scourt and settles down while the other continues seeking adventures. After fouryears they meet again and while the rolling stone recounts his adventures, mainlyamorous, the unenterprising one wryly laments his choice. The principal storyconcerns Vasantakalika who deceives her husband and contrives to give most ofher jewelry to her lover by seducing her husband while disguised as anotherwoman (her lover's nonexistent wife), and then forcing the husband to hand overthe jewels as hush-money. This is preceded by a short episode reminiscent of theMiller's Tale and a ribald anecdote about a holy man on a pilgrimage who climbsinto the bullock cart where a widow is sleeping, tips up the cart and is found bythe other pilgrims lying on top of the widow under a pile of luggage on theground. Hardly a "Moral Tale " It is unfortunately rather tediously written andis quite untypical of the rather strait-laced tone of Marathi literature at that timeand even now.

The cunning of Vasantakalika brings in another very popular type of storyproduced at this time-that illustrating the quick wit or cunning of the mainprotagonist. Many of these were again adapted from Sanskrit or Persian sources,but some of the later ones may contain stories of the author's own invention,or more likely traditional oral tales that had not before appearedin print. Such areK. R. Conce's Mahardstrabhdset manoranjak gos i, i870-73, and Barthold, whichI have already mentioned and consists largely of tales of rustic wit attributed tothe boorish Italian folk-hero Bertoldo. Such tales are the nearest approach to shortstories to be written during this period, but they do not of course qualify for sucha description. There is little depiction of character in them and no trace of anystructure.They are merely anecdotes.One representativeof this genre which is still fairly well known, by reputationat least, to Marathi readers is Moroba Kanhoba's Ghas'zrdmKotvdl, written in

I863. There are twenty-eight chapters all built around the central character of12Bhingare, however, has described this work in detail and sees it as a direct descendant of the mildlypornographic raditionof Sanskrit tales. R. S. Jog, Mard(thiVanimaydca tihds, Pt. IV, p. i86.


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796 IAN RAESIDEGhasiram, who was a notorious police chief under the Peshwas, and many ofthese are not even anecdotesbut merely a list of faits divers in the form of conversa-tions between Ghs'iram and better informed persons (and almost anyone is betterinformed than GhMs'lrm) on such subjects as sword-swallowers, diamond minesand bearded women. Mixed with this, however, are many of these cunning-trickstories, and Ghas'lram,who is a sublime mixture of ignorance, cupidity, superstitionand vice, is frequently the victim. The whole thing is written with considerablevigor and humor, and the dialogue is often vivid. Here is one of the shorterstories in which Ghas'irams not the main protagonist:

Everyeveningafter his meal Ghsgirdmused to sit in his housechewingbetelortobacco,and at that time a crowd of flattererswould gather round him praisinghis judgment and power of swift action. On one occasiona man from Bijapurwas there and began to sing the praisesof a magistrateof his own city, tellingthe following story: Last year in the month of asadhaa perfumierof our citycalledRamdin had made up about 25 maunds of scentedpowder, packed it intofifty sacks and was going to send it by ox-cartnext day to Pandharpuro sell atthe big festival.Meanwhilethe sacks were left in the yard behind his shop.In themorningRamdingot up earlyand went into the yard. No sacks But there werebits of powder scatteredaroundand signs that the sacks had been draggedoverthe wall. So he set up a cry of "Thief Thief ", the neighbourscamerunningandhe told them what had happenedand then went and complainedto the citykotval, Samserkhan.The latter immediatelysent messengers o close all the gatesandinstituteda search,but therewas no traceof the sacks.Thereupon he summoned all the scent-shopkeepersand their workmen andbegan an interrogation hat lasted till midday. Still no result Then Samserkhanstood them together in a bunch, walked round them slowly three times andfinallycame to a halt in front of them. He laughed aloud and said, "Well, you'rea brazen lot. Stealingthe stuff is one thing, but then to come along here with aspot of it on your forehead "As soon as he said this four of the men in front ofhim whipped their hands up to their foreheadsand then sniffed their fingerssurreptitiously.They were immediatelysingled out and questioned and it turnedout that two were brothersand the other two were theirservants.Their shops andcellars were searched with the help of torches and the fifty stolen sacks werefound in a dark corner.And so all four were punished and everyonepraisedSamgerkhanKotvalfor his shrewdness.After hearing the Bijapurmerchant's toryGhasiramsaid, "If this Tarvarkhanor whateverhis name was was such a genius why did the kingdom of Bijapurcollapse?Now if a theft like that had happened in this city we wouldn't havetaken half a day to catch the thieves. We'd have slung the whole lot into adungeon and then stood four or five of them on a red-hotgrid-iron.We'd soonhave known who the thief was." At this all Ghi'sirm's toadies applaudedfuriously and began to make fun of the merchantfrom Bijapur.So the poorfellow took himself off.13

This then is the stage that the "short story" had reached-either translations oradaptations of foreign works or these "clever trick" tales which are told with aconsiderable verve at times but which are basically traditional, a carrying over13 MorobaKanhobaVijaykar,GhasJrJm Kotvil, ed. N. R. Phatak, Bombay, (MumbalMarithi grantha-sangrahlaaya),I96I, pp. Io-Ii.


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EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI 797into print of the sort of storyteller'sale that might delight a village audiencetothis day.

The firstnovel.Having cleared he ground,we now cometo the beginningsofthe novel; that is, as a minimumdefinition,a longish connectedprose tale witha range of namedprotagonists, istinguishablyharacterized, judiciousmixtureof dialogue,narrative nd description nd somesort of structure.At the veryleastthe charactersmustbe introduced,mustundergovariousperipeties itherphysicallyor psychologically nd finally come to a position of rest-death or resignationor tranquility, ccordingo whetherthe storyhas a happyendingor not.It is usually said that the first two original novels in Marathiwere bothChristianworks.They are Baba Padmanji'sYamund-paryatanublished n 1857,and Phulmuniani Karundpublished n i859.The latter,however, s a translationof a storypublishedn Englishin Calcuttaand has no claimto be considered s anoriginalwork in Marathi.Fortunately,Yamundis more readily availablethanmanyotherworksof this period,havingbeen reprintedn I937 when the "ingrajiavatar"English ncarnation)of Marathiiteraturewasincludedn the B.A.syllabusat BombayUniversity.14Bengalinormally ays claim to the first Indian novel with one that came outin I858. Yamundantedates his by a year,but I am not sure if it is sufficientlynovel-liken form to disputethe point.The plot, in brief,is thatYamuna,who issecretly a Christian, s marriedto an enlightenedyoung man who sharesherideals without openly acceptingher religion. They travel around Maharashtraon some unspecifiedbusinessof the husband's, nd finallyhe is mortally njuredby a bullock cart while saving a child's life. Beforedying he persuadesYamunato baptizehim informally,and also makeshis fatherpromisenot to subjectherto the usual harshtreatmentreserved or widows in India.However,the mother-in-lawis incensedby this and with the backingof the familypriestthey preparethe head-shaving,ewelry strippingand so on, but Yamuna forestallsthem byrunningawayto the houseof a Christian ouple.And that is all, exceptthat it ismentionedcasually n the last line that she subsequentlymarriesagain-an overtChristianhis time.

The main plot, therefore,s tenuousin the extreme,but in fact two-thirdsofthe book is taken up with widow-remarriageropaganda,ometimes n the formof directexhortationby the authorbut more usually by means of horrificstories.Yamunaand her husband n their travelskeep meetingwidows, or stayingin ahouse where some widow is leading a miserable ife, and these individualsthentell theirstoryat lengthto the sympathetic udience.This episodic orm is scarcelythat of a novel and is rathersimilarto didacticworks such as Johnson'sRasselas,whichwereundoubtedlypopularat the time with those who couldreadEnglish-and indeedRasselaswas later translatednto Marathi n full as has been men-tioned.There are some characteristicsf the novel all the same. Yamuna and herhusbandare cardboard igures,but some of the minor protagonists-the ratherfeeblefather-in-lawnd the family priestfor instance-are fairlysharplycharacter-14The phrase "ingraji avatar" seems to have been coined by D. V. Potdar in his book Mardthigady&cdngraj-avatdr,Poona, I922.


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798 IAN RAESIDEized. There is plentyof dialogue,much of it of a ratherexpositorykind betweenhusband and wife. A technicalpoint is that dialogue is normally printed indramaticorm, with the abbreviatedameof the speakergiven first,thus avoidinga repetitionof "he said,""she said,"etc. This techniquemay possiblyhave beenimitatedfrom plays,of which a handful had been publishedat this time, or itmay well have been adoptedspontaneously s a convenientdevice.It remained nvogue throughout he periodwe are discussing,althoughnot all authorsused it.There are some descriptions, lthoughfew are striking.However, in one placethere is an attemptto convey the essenceof the interiorof a simplevillage hut(with moral overtonesof the superiority f simplevillagelife which are somewhatdiscordantwith the main theme) which does seem to have somethingof thechosevueabout t:

Yamunaand Vinayakwent inside and founda little roomin which twobanana-leaflateswereset out, each with its heapof salt.The room tselffilledthemwithdelight.Everythingn it spokeof village ife.The roomhad onlyonedoormadeof jack-treewood, verythick and heavywith a massive ron bartoshut it. The cow-dungloorwas smoothand beautifullylean.On it the sun'srays,coming hrough iny holesin the roof,lay scatteredike brightgold coins,whilespecksof dustdancedwithinthe rays hemselves hichgavethe onlylighttherewasin the room.All fourwalls weresmearedwithred ochreand overheadran greattwistedbeamswhichcarriedbasketsof rice and firewoodand driedpalas eaves or platters, ll tied on with thickgrassrope.On Yamuna'sefthandwas a huge quernfor grindingrice and nearit, lying against he wall, was apestle he handleof which gleamedike goldin a straybeamof sunlightwhichfell upon it. On Vinayak's ightwas a pile of jarsstackedone on top of theother.All this stuff was neatlyand carefullyarranged o that therewas nosuggestionf disordern theroom,butrather f beauty.15

That is quite vivid, especiallywhen you take into accountthe early date andthe fact that therewas no traditionof realisticdescriptionhen or for a long timeafterwards.By contrasthere is another description rom the same chapterofYamundin which the beautiesof the dawn-an infinitely more conventionaltheme-are described n the form of a dialogueof incredibletritenessand im-plausibility:Yam.Ah Whatalovely oolbreeze sblowingVin. Look,beloved,what a beautiful oldenlight shines n the East.Couldman evermakesuchsplendour?Beforesuchbeautyhow drab and wearisomewould eemanemperor'salace dorned t theexpense fthousandsfrupeesYam.How variegatedre the colours can see red and yellowand purpleandpink.Andlook where he sunis rising,what a gloriousightis thereas if agoldsmith adpoured ut his cruciblef liquidgold... 1'6

And so on, with long digressions n the liliesof the field and God giving heed toevery parrow.Romances.Yamund-paryatans a work of Christianand social propagandaand is scarcely ypical of the originalworks of fiction which follow. It is fouryearsbeforethe first reallyindigenousromanceappearswith Muktdmdldn i86i,15 BabaPadmanji,Yamund-paryatan, th ed., Bombay,1937, p. 74.16 Ibid., pp. 6o-6i.


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EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI 799and this set a pattern or a numberof worksin the samegenre-a scoreor so in thethirteenyears beforeI874. The author statesin his preface that he is writing tocreate atherhantosatisfya demand or thistypeof literature:

Formerly urpeople hought hat it was rather jokethattheyshouldhaveto learn he Marathianguage, ut nowmanyhaverealisedhat t is not so easy olearna language roperly ndto writebooks n it. However, t seems o me thatourpeoplehavenot takenas muchpleasure s theyshould n readingbooksandnewspapersn their own language,and so I havewritten his book with theintentionf furtheringuchaninterest.. .17In Muktdmdldhere is no attempt at any kind of realisticsetting. The plotunfolds n a kind of Indian Illyria"in olden time" and is not worthdescribingndetail. It concerns a wicked king and his evil counsellors.The one virtuous

courtier,Muktamala's usband, s throwninto prisonon a trumped-up harge byhis wife'sstepbrotherwho is afterthe inheritance.Muktamala scapesand wandersaroundfrom one city to another,at one point disguisedas a man. Her life andher virtueare constantlyn danger,but somethingalways turnsup to save her atthe last minute and all ends happilywith the wicked destroyed, he good restoredto power and the virtuousyounger brotherof the bad king establishedon thethrone. The book, more than 200 pages long, is practicallyall narrativeand isbetter writtenand more swiftly moving than many later examplesof the genre.The plot bristleswith coincidences, ut most of them are at leastplausibly ed upto and explained,and there are signs of constructionn the switching of emphasisfrom one character o another.Characterizations minimal, with everyoneeithervery blackor very white. The dialogue is rather iterary,and much of the directspeech consists of soliloquies in which the various oppressedcharacters amenttheir cruelfate.Directspeech s distinguished nly sporadically y invertedcommasand is lost among the enormousparagraphs n which books of this era areprinted. There is a certain amount of description,and one rather interestingfeature s that many of the chapters, even out of nine, begin with a descriptiveset-piecewhich only exceptionallyhas any relevance to the succeedingaction.The descriptions hemselvesare of the most classical, hat is to say generalized,nature.Here are the openingparagraphs f Muktdmdhi:

Whenthe rainyseason nds and winterbeginsandyou lookuponthe earthin the earlymorningrom the topof somehill, it is delightful ndwonderfulobehold.You see fieldsof variouskindsof grain,some in flowerand somereadyfor harvesting, rovesof mangoes, oconuts,arecapalmsand so on, gardens,pasture, ndon eachsideof the roadsrowsof trees; o thatwhatever artof theearthyoulookat seems o beburstingwithlife,and it seemsas if a many-colouredcarpet as been hrown vertheearth.Thewinding hread f theriver,brimmingover both its banks, ooksverybeautiful.Here and thereare lakeswhichgivejoy to the mind of the beholdermore thananything lse because f the manycoloured lowers hat bloom n them. In the towns andvillages here s moretosee.The housesandpalaceseemto be wrappedn a mixture f mist andfoliageand smoke romthe newly-litires,and the temples ndtowers eemto lift theirheads bove hetreesoseethedelights f theworld orthemselves.

17 Laksman MoresvarHalbe, Muktdmald,Bombay, i86i, intr.


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800 IAN RAESIDEAnd if you look closer there are more things to take the eye. You see peoplestarting heir dailywork. Travellers, ome on horseback, ome on foot and some incarts are coming and going by various roads. Farmers and cowherds drivingtheir cows and bullocksare leaving the villagesin all directions.Some haveset out

to sell corn, hay,wood, vegetablesand such things as these. Some are going to theriver and some to the well. They call out one to another and the song of thedifferentkinds of bird mingles with these sounds so that a constant noise comesto the ear. Whereveryou turn your gaze you see something else to delight you.If you look towards the hills, some near and some far, the eye has a furtherpleasure. In some places there are valleys and in others great and small cliffsare cut in the hillsides; in some places thick and awsome woods and in othersscattered rees; n someplacesonly grassand in othersbarerock. . .18This is all thrownin without any kind of selectionor organization,and alsowithout any particularization.t is a landscapewith figures like a Breughel,but

there is no point in it, for the leg of Icarus s missing.The city of Jaypur,whichis the centerof the actionwhich follows, is not localized n this scene in any way.This criticism appliesto most of the scenic descriptionswhich occur in theromancesof this early period of Marathi iterature.They are all, in a way, setpieces, although they may not be set apart so explicitlyas in Muktdmala.Thereare certain points in any narrativewhere you can say with confidence,"Herecomes a description." or instance,people are constantly etting out on journeysand after a few miles they leave the inhabitedarea near the town and come intothe wilds. And then it comes varioussorts of treesand busheswith variouskindsof birds singing in them, all sorts of wild beasts roaring and grunting andscreeching n the middle distance.These set themesseem to be characteristicfunsophisticated, ften bardic, iterature;of works writtenfor the ear ratherthanthe eye. In the chansonsde geste there is a list of objectsthat qualify for adescriptive nterludethat you could count on your fingers: shields, armor,tents,feasts and so on. You have the feasts in Marathialso, as well as gardensandpalaces.Every king seemsto have a palace right in the middle of his city, set inthe exact center of a beautifulgardenwhich has a lofty "pleasuredome"in eachcorner,with gilded and painted walls and superbviews over the garden.Clearly

this is inheritedfrom earlierverse works and from the Sanskritprose tales suchas Pancatantra, nd at this early stagein prose fictionthe conventionsare adoptedunthinkingly.It is less perhapsa positive influence than a negative thing; anabsenceof interest n the detailof everyday ife and surroundingswhich it neveroccurred o anyone might be worth talking about until prose fiction, which isessentiallya realist genre whatever the age in which it is written, had gotproperlyunder way. A passage from the introduction to another romance,Manjughod,written n i868,brings hisoutveryclearly:The basicaim of works like "novels" s to show how in this world a virtuousman attains happinessafter sufferingvarious setbacksat the hands of evil men.

. . . Becauseof our attitude to marriageand for severalotherreasonsone finds inthe lives of us Hindus neither interesting vices nor virtues, and this is thedifficultywhich we find in trying to write novels. If we write about the thingsthat we experiencedaily there would be nothing enthrallingabout them, so thati8 Muktdmmld,-3*


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EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI 801if we set out to write an entertainingbook we are forced to take up with themarvellous....19

Here of course the author is talking more about plot and defending his ownliberal use of magic and supernatural devices, but the attitude is the same. That iswhy the little descriptive passage quoted from Yamund-paryatan strikes one sofavorably.

There is little more to say about Manjughosd, which is excessively tediousand implausible, and which is also written in a laborious archaic style bristlingwith Sanskrit borrowings and alankdrs.The style was deliberate, since the authorconsidered it more fitting to some vague bygone age in which romantic adventuresbetween the sexes were possible. As a sample of the remaining romances we maytake RajaMadan and Suhdsyavadand.Raja Madan20was the second of these early romances to appear, in i865, andhas always earned special mention in the histories of Marathi literature becauseit is the only one without a happy ending. In fact this is only partly true. Theprincipal hero and heroine live happily ever after just like everyone else, and it isonly the secondary characters who are eliminated. On the whole I am somewhatprejudiced against Rajd Madan because it has been consistently overpraised (orrather less despised, for until very recently Marathi critics have taken a thoroughlyjaundiced view of all this literature). Justice Ranade once wrote a short article inEnglish on these early works, which unfortunately I have been unable to. trace, inwhich he gave the opinion that "Muktdmald and Raja Madan are probably thebest," and this has been dutifully repeated ever since. It would seem that Ranademust have been playing safe by picking the two earliest works, for Raja Madanseems to be one of the feeblest of the genre. It is nothing but a long "virtue indanger" story of astonishing implausibility, concerning wicked kings and ministersand their designs on the virtuous wives of absent colleagues. Some of the methodsthey use for getting the poor women into their clutches are quite delightfullyelaborate, such as digging an underground tunnel for miles and laying a kinld ofcamouflaged elephant trap over the end of it. The eponymous Raja Madan isabsent throughout, and so devoted is the author to his titillating episodes that hedoes not even bother to finish off the main plot properly. When the last oppressedfemale has jumped out of a window rather than submit to, the advances of the lastvillain, the final sentence is: "Next day the Raja returned to the city and punishedall the evildoers and began to rule again in peace and prosperity." The EndThe "virtue in danger" theme mentioned here recurs constantly in Marathiromances of this and later periods. It seems to be mainly an indigenous pre-occupation, for there is very little of it in the Persian tales, but it must havereceived a powerful boost from Western novels such as those of Reynolds2'and even Scott. It is hard to say how soon the influence of such novels was felt.There is no definite evidence of it before the eighteen seventies, when we knowthat the young Hari Narayan, Apte was an assiduous reader of Reynolds, and"The Seamstress"was translated or rather adapted in I877, but they may equally

19Naro Sadasiv Risbud, Man;ughosas, oona, i868, intr. pp. 3-4.20 Babaji Krsna Gokhale, RdjdMadan, duhkhaparyavasdyi atha, Bombay, I865.21 The novelist G. W. M. Reynolds, who is not worthy apparently of an individual entry in theencyclopaedias,had more influence in India than almost any other nineteenth century Western writer.


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802 IAN RAESIDEwell have been read by the preceding generation. In any case the popularitv ofthese English writers was doubtless due in part to the fact that they struck asympathetic chord in their Indian readers.

Suhdsyavadana22 oo has its share of attempted seductions, but not to anywearisome extent. Its plot is more elaborate than the romances so far discussed.There is much to-ing and fro-ing of the characters and numerous conspiracies,stratagems and confused adventures. There is also a rather daring episode wherethe hero rescues the heroine from drowning in a lonely spot and proceeds,chastely, to put her into some dry clothes that he is conveniently carrying in hissaddle bag. But this is passed over very gingerly. The characterization is of theusual black and white variety, except that there appears here for the first time acharacterwho turns up continually in later novels, and particularly in the historicalnovels by H. N. Apte. This is the smart young lad who is always a faithfulservant of the hero, who spies out the land, collects information, hoodwinks thesentries and so forth. Indeed in Suhasyavadand the happy ending is almost en-tirely brought about by this admirable person, for the hero, though brave andworthy, is more than a little obtuse. His origin may perhaps be in the Sanskrit"duita,"who filled a similar role of messenger and confidant. Altogether thisnovel is quite readable, of its kind, mainly because it is fast-moving and not tooverbose. Still it has most of the faults that have already been mentioned: conven-tional descriptions, lack of realistic dialogue (although there is an attempt toconvey rustic speech by means of mixed Marathi and Hindi), and a special kindof repetitiveness which is due to a rather primitive technique, in that eventsalready described are narrated with scarcely any abbreviation to some third partyin the story.

We have dealt with only a few of the numerous romantic novels that arecharacteristicof this period, but it is enough to give a fair idea of them all. Theyare all more or less timeless and placeless and make no attempt to reflect anyspecific milieu, whether historical or contemporary. A few extraneous touches,such as the introduction of widow-remarriage into, Halbe's second novel Ratnap-rabhd23or a character in Vicitrapuri who wears shoes and socks and is an M. A.of Calcutta University,24have no real effect on the plot. It should also be remem-bered that this type of romantic tale continued to be written until the end of thecentury, and some of them were still being reprinted in the nineteen twenties, sothat the later ones were able to borrow a few historical or social frills from theirmore modern contemporaries.On the whole, though, the genre was astonishinglyhomogeneous, with plots, characters and descriptive interludes that seem freelyinterchangeable.To end with K. B. Marathe's often quoted words: "Every hero isthe God of Love incarnate, every heroine is a Tilottama. In every tragic episodethe sorrow is a deathly sorrow and in every joyful one the joy is heavenlyrapture-nothing less."25

22 Vaman KrsnsaDesmukh, Suhdsyavadand, ombay, I870.23 L. M. Halbe, Ratnaprabhd,Bombay, i866.24 Kesav Laksman Jorvekar,Vicitrapuri,Bombay,I870.25 Quoted from Potdar, op. cit., 2nd ed., Poona, I957, p. 83. K. B. Marathe's "Naval va natakhyavisay; nibandh,"a paper first read before the Marathi Jiinnaprasarak abha in I872 and subsequentlypublished as a pamphlet, was one of the first and harshest criticisms of the Romances. Although quotedin every history of Marathi literature,the original is hard to come by and I have not seen it.


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EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI 803Social Novels. Nevertheless, the origins of a different kind of novel are also to befound within our period. Bodhasudha is usually listed among the romances, but infact it has as much claim to be called a social or realist novel as Yamund-paryatan,and is equally didactic in tone.26 The framework of the plot is that a rich manis spending the hot season at Mahabaleshwar, the hill-station southwest of Poona,with his two sons who both have bad characters and cause their father muchconcern. While out walking they meet a distinguished old man whom theyeventually invite home and who proceeds to tell them the story of his life. This,

of course, is of a very edifying nature. He was once rich, wasted his father'sfortune, deserted his wife for a beautiful temptress and ran away with her. Inthe village he is boycotted, so he moves to the anonymity of Poona, gets a job,sinks lower and lower and finally, when he is lying ill, he discovers that hismistresshas found a new rich lover and is planning to poison him off.The story is not told with any great distinction, and is frequently interruptedby the two youths asking questions which give the old man an excuse for longdiatribes on ethical and social topics. The dialogue is stilted and unreal, thedescriptions of nature in the linking passages are as generalized as ever-the storytakes nearly a week in the telling and the narrator stays as a guest until he hasfinished it, and every morning they all get up early and stroll round Mahabaleshwarand see the birds and the trees and the industrious peasants. However the interestof the work is that it seems to be the first hostile reaction in fiction to Britishrule and Western ideas. The time is the present. The hero at one point is broughtup before an English magistrate's court and takes the opportunity to make a few

cynical remarks about corruption and how you cannot cure it simply by payingmagistrates a decent salary as the British seem to think. The author also takes afew sly digs at the missionaries. Talking about conversions the narrator says,"Well, we won't inquire too closely why a lot of people embrace Christianity,"and he goes on to contrast dharma, the doing of one's duty here on earth, withthe "pie in the sky" motive. He is not entirely reactionary, for he attacks earlymarriage on purely practical grounds, but has nothing to say on more controversialtopics like widow-remarriage and the education of women. Indeed he takes avery traditional view of women-they should not be oppressed unduly, but theyought to be firmly deterredfrom the vices to which they are naturally prone.In short, this Hindu counterblast to reformist ideas has some slight claim tobe considered the first social realist novel. The characters may still be incredible,but at least the plot is contemporaryand is not entirely outweighed by moralizingor by a string of independent tales as in Yamund.

Ndrdyanrdv dni Goddvari, which was not written until I879, is usually saidto be the first social novel. Clearly the author, M. V. Rahalkar,envisaged himself asstriking out into a new field.All the novels published in our language, with very few exceptions, havesituations, settings and charactersof one and the same kind. The heroes and

heroinesare always princesand princesses,or at least are enormouslyrich. Theirwealth is the wealth of Kuber, their beauty like that of Madan and Rati . .comparedwith their ove thelove of RamandSita is derisory.2726 Kesav BalavantKelkar, Bodhasudha,Bombay, I87I.27 Mahadev VyankatesRahalkar, Ndrdyanrdvdni Goddvari,duhkha-parindmikalpit 1adambari, Poona,

I879, intr. p. 2. The echo of Marathe'swords is probablynot coincidental.


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804 IAN RAESIDEHe himself, he says, wantsto writeabout ordinarypeople and to be released romthe bondageof the happyending. He certainlyachieveshis second aim.The bookbegins with a most respectable ocialtheme.Godavari, he heroine, s aboutto besold by her miserlyfatherto be the secondwife of a drunken echer.Howeversheavoidsthis fate quite earlyby her own effortsandmarriesNarayan,an enlightenedyoungschoolteacher,nd at this pointthe socialquestion s lost sight of andtheplotbecomesa simplemelodrama.Godavarls entangledn the snaresof herdisappointedfiancee,and finallyNarayan s persuadedhat shehas betrayed im. The ideais thatonce Godavarihas been turned out by her husbandshe may be collectedoff thestreet or the asking,butNarayan s a man of actionandexceedsall expectations ykilling Godavari n a fit of jealousy.Immediatelyafterwardshe learnsthe truth,and from the melodramawe pass to grandguignol.Narayan inds all his enemiesconveniently athered ogether n one of thosegarden"pleasure omes" hatI havealreadymentioned,and as they are incapacitatedwith drink and debaucheryheproceeds o carve them up slowly and methodicallywith a sharpsword,startingwith the minoroffenders nd workingup. And so perishone lecher,onepimp,onecorruptpriest,one venalmameledarand one libidinous choolinspector.Narayanends the eveningby blowing his headoff with his own shotgun.This bloodthirsty tory s told with considerableusto and the dialogue s muchlivelierand more crediblethan anything we have met so far. But Rahblkarcan-not take the creditfor innovatinghere.The historicalnovel,the best novel writtenbefore the emergenceof Apte, had precededhim by eight years.

HistoricalNovels. Gunjikar'sMocanga4 opens with a few introductory en-tences setting the scene in historical ime and in time of day. Various kinds ofbirds twitter n the bushesand a pale light growsin the East,and there s nothingto show that one is not in for a long, ramblingand possiblyirrelevant ntro-duction in the MuktamdMtyle. And then, abruptly,one is plunged into thenarrativen a very effective nd quitenew way:On theslopesof a hill in the Sahyadrimountainswomencameout of somebushes.They seemed abouttwenty-five earsold. They were handsome ndstronglybuilt,and although heirfaceswere lined with miseryand suffering,

you couldstill see thattheywere men of highrank.Theyweredressed nly inragged ackets, hortdhotisof coarseclothand anotherwhispof clothwoundaround heirheads,andthese ew clothesweredirtyandtattered. heirhairandbeardswerelong, and on theirlegs wereheavyfettersso that they took eachstepwithprecaution,utasquickly stheycould o as tomakenonoise.28That, I think, is an excellentbeginningto an adventure tory.It is still ratherstimulating o be plungedinto the storyin an effectiveway like this, and in anage of tedious introductions t must have been a lot more so. Undoubtedlyatechnical evolutionof this kind is due to the influenceof Westernmodels suchasScott but it is none the worsefor that,and Gunjikarwas not only the first to useit but the firstby a long way.It is not necessaryo go into the plot of Mocangadexceptto say that it setsapattern or many a Marathihistoricalnovel to come. It is centeredarounda fort,

28 RamcandraBhikjil Gunjikar,Mocanga4,Bombay,187I, p. 2.


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EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI 805one of the Deccan hill forts which can only be compared o an iron-agecampreinforcedwith Mediaevalmasonry,and the action is terminatedand the happyending finally broughtabout by the captureof the fort by the national hero andfounderof the independentMaratha tate,Shivaji.Apart from the way in which it opens, this novel representsa great stepforwardin other ways. It has a plot which has evidently been constructedwithcare and deliberation.Actions are motivated and reasonably ogical, althoughitmust be allowed that coincidence s somewhatoverworked.Up until now therehad beenlittle attemptat plausibility r a well-ordered lot. BiographicalaleslikeYamuna or Bodhasudhd imply ran along from start to finish like any otherunsophisticatedtory, with constantrepetitionof "andthen ..., and then..A romance ike Suhasyavadana, ritten only one year earlier,had more preten-sions. It says such things as: "And now we must leave this subjectfor a timeand see what Suhasyavadana'sarents were doing back in Kirtipilr,"but whenyou get back to Kirtip-urou find that they are not doing anythingmuch exceptwringingtheir hands or decidingto send a messenger o find out what is happen-ing. There are no real sub-plots.At the most you have two rival gangs surgingbackwardsand forwardsfrom one city to another and occasionally olliding insomeintermediate esert,but it is all rathermeaninglessand is obviouslydesignedsolely to keep the hero separated rom the heroine for as long as the readercanstand.Mocangad has no real sub-plot either, and the final captureof the fort byShivaji is quite extraneous,but one thing it has got is a kind of unity of time.The whole affair takes place in abouta fortnight.Withoutgiving undue weightto the Frenchclassical deal, it seems to me that this is in itself an advance n thedevelopment f an artistic orm like the novel out of an earliertraditionof longrambling tories.Almost anythingcan be a novel no doubt,but at some point in itsdevelopment n any one languagesome sort of unity has to crystallizeout of thestoriesand fables and fairy-tales r whatever t was that flourished arlier,and onewayof achieving ucha unity s byrestrictinghe time scaleas is donehere.To return to the constructionof Mocangad, the plot is develped by leaps,and the leaps are made to some purpose.As we have seen it begins with thetwo escaped prisonersand we follow their fortunes in a couple of palpitatingchaptersduring which they jump over the cliff surrounding he fort, fettersandall, andbeginto staggerdown the hill with one man carrying he other,wounded,on his back.The following chapterbegins in a village at the foot of the hill onthe oppositeside. A soldiercomesridingdown with a message rom the governorof the fort to tell the villagepai.tl aboutthe escapeandinstructhim to keepan eyeon the prisoners' amilies in case they try to contact them. The action is im-mediatelycarriedforward and at the same time you are still left in suspenseabout the fugitives.The suspenseelement is very important, or this must be oneof the firstnovels o bepublishedn serial orm n Marathi.29

Altogether he first half of Mocangad is extremelywell done,but then it goesoff ratherbadly, to my taste at least, with a long piece of "virtuein danger"business.Even this, however,is rather more plausiblethan usual, and certainly29I1n Vividha-jn-ana-vistira, monthly started in Bombay in I867, only four years earlier.


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806 IAN RAESIDEmoreexciting.The heroine,afterprotracted rgumentwith her would-beravisher,succeedsn shootinghim with his own pistol.But only by accident regretto say.Womenarestillexpectedo takea verypassive ole.The descriptivepassagesare of specificscenes and places which have someconnectionwith the action, and are, therefore,much more factual and morerelevant han we have come to expect.The dialogueis good, and at last showssignsof becomingcolloquialand alive.At one point a Shiledar rom the fort-oneof the minorvillains-comes down to his home villageto show off his horseandhis sword and his new glory. All the villagerstwit him at first: "Oh, it's oldSathvya,the one who ran away from home becausehe'd been caught stealingcoconuts.Wonderhow long he's been a soldier?Ram Ram, Sathvaji.Have yougiven up your old job yet?" Sathvajibridlessomewhatand lets them all knowhowprosperouse hasbecome.

As soon as moneywas mentioned veryonemovedup a bit to let him sitdownand somebodyaidthatof course t wasn't ruethat childishvicesalwaysremained ndmenimprovednormouslyhrough ravel,"so comeandsit downSathvajii "But Nimbaji aid,"Andwhy shouldsucha rascalbe shortof money?He'sonlygot to raidsomemoney-lender'shopandtakeall he wants.... He'sa realhero,he is.""Whatdo you mean?You don'tbecomea shiledaror nothingyou know.Youhave ogo intobattlewithyour ife nyourhand.""Withyour nose in your hand you mean, in case someonecatchesyouthieving ndcuts t off.""What?Lookhereatthissword,tillstainedwithblood ""Oh yes Looksas if you must have overpoweredome goat or hen justaround inner-time."30

Not very subtlehumor perhaps,but it is lively and it makes a change.It isnot an isolatedexample.Even when the heroineis fending off the villain shemanages omeveryspirited etorts.One should not, of course,exaggerate he virtuesof this novel. There are stillnumerousimplausibilitiesn the plot and the contemporaryaste for oppressedfemalesis fully catered o. There are also many of those long, boringsoliloquieswhere the characters ommune with their consciencesor lament their fate adnauseam.Nevertheless,such things remainedpopularfor long after Mocangad,and proliferaten the historicalnovels of Apte for instance.When you considerthatMocangad is the very firsthistoricalnovel in Marathi,t reallyis surprisinglybetteras a novel than any of its predecessors.t mattersvery little that Gunjikarhas imitatedWesternmodels, for he has succeeded n recreatingsomethinginMarathiand in termsof Maharashtrianife and history,and in layingthe founda-tionsof many things that a later writersuch as Apte had only to develop.It is averyrespectablechievement.There are only two other historicalnovels that were written in the pre-Apteperiod.Sambhajiby V. N. Bapatrepresents o advanceon Mocangad.31t is more"historical"n that it introducesa numberof real historicalpersonages nto the30Mocangad,p. 46.31 Nages VinayakBapat, Sambhadj,Bombay, 1884.


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EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI 807action. For that very reason it is less of a novel, combining as it does undigestedlumps of history with a thin romantic sub-plot. The same criticism can be madeof V. J. Patvardhan'sHambirrdv ani Putaldbdi,32which is an attempt to write ahistorical novel around much more recent events-the mutiny of I857. Again it isnot a very successful attempt, since a large part of it consists of a purely domesticstory about a young wife being estranged from her husband by the machinationsof her co-wife, interspersed with solid historical narrative of the main events ofthe mutiny-the two being entirely unrelated until the last third of the book whenthe wife, driven from home, is abducted by a band of rebellious sepoys. There isa great deal of dialogue, much of it superfluoussince the weak construction leaveslaboriously preparedsituations unfinished and hanging in the air. One interestingfeature, however, is that the speech of some of the "low-life"characters is given ina vulgar, rustic brand of Marathi, and this is conveyed by typographical deviceswhich have since become standard for colloquial forms. In I875 they must havebeen fairly new. At least this is the first example of such conventions that I amacquaintedwith.

Finally Randive'sSikfakmight be mentioned briefly as kind of politico-historico-romantic amalgam.33 Here the romantic adventures of the hero, always accom-panied by the mentor who gives the novel its title, take place against a backgroundof pre-mutiny events reminiscent of those in Jhansi. The hero is an adopted sonwhose inheritance of a minor princely state is disallowed by the harsh Dalhousiegovernment. In spite of the political implications of this theme, the pervadingatmospherein nonrealistic and there is no reason to suppose that Part Two wouldhave been any different.Mocangadq emains outstanding not only against this very feeble competition inthe historicalfield, but among all the novels written before the advent of Apte.In the period before I885 prose fiction in Marathi developed, largely under theinfluence of Western writing, from practically nothing to a point where all theingredients of a major novel were at hand but had not yet been assimilated byany one author. After the first simple tales, nearly all of them translated orimitated from English, came the more elaborate romances of which Muktdmdldis

a better than average example. In these the problems of construction were firsttackled but not solved. Dialogue remained literary, descriptions of people andplaces conventional and lacking in any kind of particularization. Comtemporaryproblems and more realistic settings had been attempted in the very first novel-length work of fiction, Yamund-paryatan,but here and in the later Bodhasudhathe construction was rudimentary and the plot was overlaid by a great weight ofmoralizing and didacticism. The first signs of the fruitful influence of Westernnovels was in the historical Mocangad which was organized appetizingly for serialpublication and which contained lively dialogue and realistic, visual scene painting.The analysis and depiction of individual human beings, however, was still in itsvery early stages. The short story, so dependent on character in action, had stillnot arrived.In technique there had been considerable advances. A livelier dialogue implies

32 Visnu JanardanPatvardhan,HambirrJvani Putalabdi,Bombay, I875.3sDvarkanathNarayan Ra.ndive,Sik ak,Bombay,I883. (Part i only published.)


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808 IAN RAESIDEthe increasing use of colloquial forms, both grammatically and phonetically. Be-cause of this the influence of English sentence structure and of painstaking San-skritic literarynesswas on the wane during the last decade of the period, and inHambirrav dni Putalabai there is already established a convention for transcribingphonetic variants from the literary norm. Dialogue was still being printed indramatic form and continued to be for a good many years with some writers,but this at least had the advantage of separating speech and narrative, and theaverage page had the same physical appearance as it does today. The conventionsof punctuation had been established n conformity with Western usage.This then was the stage that prose fiction had reached when Hari Narayan.Apte came on the scene. He took everything that had gone before, shook it up,added the massive reading of Scott, Dickens and Reynolds to which he seems tohave devoted his student life, and proceeded to turn out novels of a weight,length and copiousnessthat was entirely new.

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Raeside Early Marathi Prose Fiction

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