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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
The poetry of the “Chhayavad” group and the later fiction of Premchand together represent the first, and thus far the finest, flowering of the new literary Hindi, based on Khaṟī bolī, that became accepted as standard during the last half of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth. Before that time the phase of Hindi known as Braj, spoken chiefly around Mathura, had been preferred to khaṟī bolī, the Hindi of the Delhi-Meerut region. The credit for the triumph of khaṟī bolī is usually attributed to Pandit Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, who devoted himself energetically to the reform and propagation of the language, particularly from 1903 to 1920, when he was editor of the influential journal Saraswatī. But although he contributed greatly to the improvement of Hindi style and diction and to the development of its literary potential, it must also be noted that the so-called “Dwivedi-yug” saw the creation of no masterpieces in the new idiom. None of the poets published in Saraswatī during Dwivedi's editorship commands much more than historical interest now, with the exception of Maithili Sharan Gupta, whose great work, in any case, was not to appear until the thirties. It was the Chhayavadins who first fulfilled the promise of the Bharatendu and Dwivedi periods (ca. 1870–1920) with the publication of such volumes as Nirala's Anāmikā (first version, 1922) and Parimal (1930), Prasad's revised Jharnā (1927), Pant's Pallav (1928), and Mahadevi Verma's Nihār (1930).
1 Both Sāket and Yashodharā were published in 1932.
2 Hindī Sāhitya Kosh (Banaras, 1963), Vol. 1, p. 325Google Scholar.
3 Most sources give 1896 or 1897, but Ramvilas Sharma, in his excellent biography, Nirālā kī Sāhitya Sādhnā (Delhi, 1969), makes a convincing case for 1899. See pp. 490–97 for a full discussion of this question, as also of the problem of dating Juhī kī Kalī” and of Pant's priority in developing free verse.
4 Quoted in Sharma, op. cit., p. 201.
5 Nirala, , Prabandh-Pratimā (Allahabad, 1940), pp. 18–34Google Scholar.
6 Sharma, op. cit., p. 512.
7 Ibid., p. 511.
8 Ibid., p. 429.
9 Ibid., p. 442.
10 Nirala is probably most familiar to English-speaking readers through the six “transcreations” of his work in Modern Hindi Poetry, ed. Misra, V. N. (Bloomington, 1965)Google Scholar. Whatever charm these versions may have, they are not translations and are so full of totally new images and ideas that they can scarcely be called Nirala. For example, three words of Nirala's poem “Stump,” “remembering a little,” are rendered, “Dumbly recalling the music it once could make” (Misra, p. 69). The author is currently working on a detailed study of the question of “transcreation.”
11 Nirala, , Parimal (Lucknow, 1966), pp. 171–2.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., pp. 126–27.
13 Ibid., p. 230.
14 Ibid., p. 229.
15 Ibid., pp. 219–20.
16 Ibid., pp. 238–42.
17 Ibid., p. 125. (In current printings of Parimal the last three lines of the poem have been omitted.)
18 Ibid., pp. 166–67.
19 Ibid., pp. 180–81.
20 Ibid., p. 134.
21 Ibid., p. 153.
22 Nirala, , Gītikā (Allahabad, 1936), p. 4Google Scholar.
23 For example, most glosses ignore the hyphen at the end of the poem's second line and attribute the sun-bright face to the nāyikā herself.
24 Nirala, , Anāmikā (Allahabad, 1963), p. 86Google Scholar.
25 Ibid., pp. 87–88.
26 Ibid., p. 91.
27 Ibid., p. 93.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., p. 137.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., p. 167.
32 For a discussion of Indian opinion of Kukurmuttā see Jhari, Krishnadev, Yugkavi Nirālā (New Delhi, 1970), pp. 52–53Google Scholar.
33 Nirala, , Kukurmuttā (Allahabad, 1969), p. 46Google Scholar.
34 Ibid., pp. 49–50.
35 Quoted in Nirala's, Aparā (Allahabad, 1965), p. 55Google Scholar.
36 Nirala, , Naye Patte (Allahabad, 1962), pp. 46–47Google Scholar.
37 Ibid., pp. 59–60.
38 Ibid., pp. 25–26.
39 Ibid., pp. 106–10.
40 Nirala, , Belā (Allahabad, 1962), p. 5Google Scholar.
41 Nirala, , Archnā (Allahabad, 1962), p. 78Google Scholar.
42 Nirala, , Ārādhnā (Allahabad, 1963), p. 50Google Scholar.
43 Ibid., p. 74.
44 Ibid., p. 75.
45 Nirala, , Sāndhya Kāklī (Allahabad, 1969), p. 18Google Scholar.
46 Ibid., p. 87.
