Early Prose Fiction in Marathi, 1828-1885 Author(s): Ian Raeside Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Asian Studies,

Vol. 27, No. 4 (Aug., 1968), pp. 791-808 Published by: Association for Asian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2051580 . Accessed: 25/09/2012 01:20
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Early Prose Fiction in Marathi, 1828-18851

IAN RAESIDE
ITERARY prose is a late developer in the history of any language and in Marathi, as for most other Indian languages, it does not appear in any significant quantity until the middle of the nineteenth century when the influence of English was beginning to transform a hitherto almost exclusively verse tradition. Before this the use of prose is limited to commentaries, to a few hagiographical works of the Mahanubhav sect written in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, to historical narratives from the time of Maratha independence and to private and diplomatic correspondenceof the same period. Of course, there must always have been a flourishing popular oral literature of fables and ghost stories, adaptations of episodes from the Puranas and the Epics, but these were never written down. Even among the well known Sanskrit story collections, only the Pancatantrais found in an early prose version in Marathi.2 This amount of prose is already considerably more than can be found in many of Marathi's neighboring languages. However, very little of it can be treated as literature, 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 is obviously derived from verse forms such as the ovi couplet where the sense and the syntactical group rarely overrun the end of the line. Without rhyme or metre the effect is jerky and repetitive: Then Mahadaisa said, "Nagdev,let us go to the GosavL." Bhatobassaid, "Where is the Gosavi?"Mahadaisasaid, "Is he not in Ritpur? griprabhuGosavY sent has
for us". . . . And Mahadaisa came with Bhatobas. Seeing the Gosavi they said,

"Alas, he is gone. grlcangdevRaul is no more." Bhatobasand Mahadaisawere very sorrowful.griprabhuGosavY comfortedthem. They kept on saying, "He has gone! He has gone!" Then they remained fourteen years in the company of 8rYprabhu GosdvY. Mhaimbhatalso came. And all the other disciples came. They remainedwith him and began to serve him.3 The historical bakhars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though naturally more modern in language, are in a similarly uninspiring style that seems inseparable 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 African Studies in I960 and has been slightly revised to take account of subsequent publications. Chief among these is Part IV of Marathi Vainmaydcd Itihds, 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 Marathi Reader, Poona, I960, p. II7. 8 V. N. Despanide, ed., Smrtisthala, 2nd ed., Poona, I960, p. 4. Further examples of Mahanubhav prose are given in Tulpule, op. cit., pp. 94-1I6.

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found in an almost identical form in the minor chroniclesof most languages. in of Nevertheless, occasionally the description some climax-a battle,a murderor a tragic death-they may include a telling phrase or two and give a piece of dialoguethat has an authenticflavor.It is noticeablethat there is still no trace of any developedsentence structure.All this early prose is essentiallyan affair of short phrases,rarely linked by conjunctionsand without punctuationexcept for the occasionalverticalstroke used in poetry. Such effectivenessas this style has is cumulative, like certainpassagesof Rabelaisor Saint-Simon. Then next day DattajT Sindeset out and cameto the campof Durani,then fifteen tearsto his eyes.In one moment he saw a moundof heads;and it brought one had thousand pickedsoldiers died.It was suchthatscarce couldbe recognised. the throughout army.Such Such carnageof our men! There was lamentation in Bhoslewas standing the ranksonly a littlewhile.He was carnage! Somajibaba only; duty a holymanpureandsimple. Thatdayhe did a warrior's for a moment but it was his hour! His head too was cut off and carriedaway.With great trouble bodyat leastwas soughtout. That bodywas offeredto the flames.4 his This then was the stage that prose had reachedat the time of the collapseof the Marathaempire.Its subsequentdevelopmentas a form and style was almost English, culture. Prose entirely due to the stimulus of Western, predominantly fiction was createdas fables,stories,novels, essays,prose drama-all were imitated and often directly translatedor adapted from English sources.Books of fables and moral tales were among the first printed books in Marathi, and in this existed Moral Classbook and Chambers' categoryAesop, the SanskritPancatantra happily side by side. The stimulus may have come from the West, but it soon began to operate on indigenous material.Before trying their hands at original works of fiction, Marathiwriters began with prose versionsof familiar Puranic tales such as Bakasurdcibakharor Nandarajacigost and numerous collections of ArabianNights type stories from Persian, although even these were usually translated English.5 via of The characteristic this earlyperiodis that all these types of prosewere given equal weight, and indeed some of the best and most influentialMarathiwritersof no the time seem to have producedpractically original work of fiction. It was a or pioneeringage in many ways. The populationof Maharashtra, ratherit would be truer to say the high-castelite of Poona and Bombay,had been pitchforked into the nineteenth century from the somewhat decayed medieval splendorsof the Peshwa'scourt, and after a short period of utter bewildermenthad avidly accepteda kind of Samuel Smiles philosophy.Marathipeople decided that they were backward and ignorant of the workings of the material world and that they must set about bettering themselves.It became more virtuous to write a schooltextbookon geographyor hygiene than to producea work of the imagination, and even imaginativeworks were put out under a smoke screenof reformist and attachedto resoundingmoral homilies.This is perhapsthe case propaganda Pamela with earlyprosefictionin any language.The overt excusefor Richardson's
4 5 72,

S. N. Jos;, ed., Bhdfisdhebdncd bakhar,7th ed., Poona, I959, p. 63. For example, Bakhatydranimd, I855, from Ouseley's translation from Persian; Bdgobahdra, I869from Duncan Forbes' Urdu translation.

EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI

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is that it is a moral tale for the edificationof young girls, exhortingthem with a wealth of titillating detail to fight for their virtue against all odds. There are closeparallels Pamelain earlyMarathi to romances, themeif not in execution. in It is necessaryto make this equipollenceof literaryforms clear because we shall inevitablybe concentrating here on originalworks of prosefiction. They are more importantto us as being part of a productivegenre. In succeedingperiods of Marathiliterature,say after the first novel of Hari Narayan Apte in i885,6 prosefictionmeansroughlywhat one would expect-the novel and the short story. In this first,experimental period,if one were to ask what was the most outstanding work of prose literatureone would probablybe told by the majorityof Marathi criticsthat it was Cipalfinkar's Jrabi bhdsetil surasva camatkarik gosti, a translation of the ArabianNights from English. Originalityand inventiononly began to be appreciated after a kind of flood of unsophisticated story telling which immereforms. diatelyfollowed the beginningsof printingand early educational Tales and fables. Before dealing with original works, therefore,it would be as well if we described brieflythe other brandsof fiction and also say something aboutthe earliest printedworksin Marathi. The first printedbook in Marathiwas almostinevitablythe resultof missionary activity.In i8o5 William Carey produceda grammarand a translationof Matthew's Gospel into Marathi at his Seramporepress with the aid of a Marathi pandit, Vaijanatha 'armd.7Some time later, I814-I5, Carey published his first collectionsof tales in Marathi-Simhasana-batfisi, Pancatantraand Hitopadesa. The credit for the first printed book of fables, however, goes to Sarphoji,the ruler of Tanjore,who again with missionary help printedthe Balbodha-muktavali in i8o6-the first of the many versionsof Aesop'sfables to be done into Marathi. For some time after this nothing was done in Maharashtra itself, but after the end of the Peshwa'srule in I8I4 missionaryactivityincreasedrapidlyin Bombay and the surroundingdistricts.Schools were establishedand printing presses set up, but at first nothing emerged but Bible translations.In I820 the Bombay Native School-bookand School Society was set up under the patronageof Elphinstone,the Governor.In I82I the Poona Pathasalawas founded, and later variousotherschools,high schoolsand societiesfor the dissemination knowledge of of one kind and another.These institutionsdemandedbooks, but there were no examplesof simple Marathi prose for the students to read. As a result prizes were offeredfor suitableworks as early as I825, but it was not until three years later that these brought any result. In I828 Sadasiv Kasinath Chatre,a founder memberof the BombayEducationSociety,producedtwo translated works:IsapaniThe secondmeritssome attentionbecauseit is tikathd(Aesop again) and Balmitra. a fine example of the odd works of "literature" that turn up in India in the nineteenthcentury.It is a translationof an English version of a kind of early children'snewspaper called L'Ami des Enfans. The original was by Arnaud
6 The end of the "ingrail avatar" of Marathi literature is usually taken to be in i 874, when the first number of KrsnasastriCipaluinkar's Nibandhamdld appeared. Stylistically this may be valid, but in the field 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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Berquin and was published in monthly parts in London and Paris simultaneously from January I782 for several years. It consists mainly of one-act plays and stories of a crushingly moral character. One, for instance, entitled "Le Lit de Mort" concerns the deathbed conversation of an old woman who gathers her grandchildren around her and encourages them to lead exemplary lives. Numerous selections from this seminal work were made in English in the early nineteenth century and it must have been introduced to India quite early for it can be found translated into most of the modern Indian languages. I am not sure if the Marathi translation was the first, for it may have crept into Bengali earlier, but a Gujarati translation of Chatre's original was republished in Bombay as late as 1933-one hopes as a centenary edition only. Chatre's introduction has an interesting passage bewailing the translator's lot at this epoch. It is only the first of many similar complaints: This book Balmitrawas first in French, and then came into English and from there into Marathi.If you considerthe French and English languages,which have been polished and improvedfor hundredsof years, in which are written books on every subject, in which there are words to express every kind of thought and meaning and which are used and understood by men of great learning, then how can the achievementsof such languages be repeated in Marathi?-in a which has no attraction languagewhich even now has no grammarsor dictionaries, for learned men, the vocabularyof which is small and the manner of speaking
immature.8

Production of similar moral tales for school children went on throughout the period. Sardar's book9 which is an invaluable bibliographical aid for the period up to i874, lists twenty-four of them. Another group of early works consists of prose versions of Puranic stories, of which a dozen or so were published between I845 and I869. Sardar's list is probably incomplete,10 for this sort of thing is being turned out regularly even today. Versions of Persian and English tales began in the following decade, in I854, which saw the appearance of Hdtimatdi, from the translation of Duncan Forbes, and Barthold.11I have already mentioned Cipalinkar's translation of the Arabian Nights, which came out between i86i and i865. From the West came various stories from Shakespeare (through the medium of Lamb's Tales), Robinson Crusoe, the first part of Gil Blas (via Smollet's translation), Scott's Ivanhoe and Johnson's Rasselas. This last is also the work of Krsnasastrl Cipalfinkar and is considered a model of its kind. It is certainly a very careful and faithful translation, aided no doubt by the classical, "general" nature of Rasselas itself. Gil Blas obviously caused more trouble, but the exotic names have been transcribed with commendable fidelity and the translation is reasonably accurate, although there is a considerable amount of simplification and shortening where strange foreign manners and materials are concerned.
S S. K. Chatre, BRlmitra, Bombay, I828, intr. The first grammars of Marathi in Marathi, notably that of Dadoba Pandurang, were not published until I836. Carey published a Marathi-Englishdictionary in I8Io and Vans Kennedy another in I824, but the first monolingual dictionary, sponsored by the Bombay Education Society, came out in I829, the year after Chatre's complaint. 9 G. B. Sardar,Arvdcin Mardthigadydci pfirvapithikd,1800-z874, 2nd ed., Poona, I956. 10 Ibid., 67-68. 11 This work was taken from an obscure English translation of a once famous Italian original. Cf. I. Rivista degli Studi Orientali,XXXVII, I962, pp. I05-II3. Raeside,"Bertoldo,"

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Some of the Persian stories were blamed for dealing too much with love and sensuality, and thereby as tending to corrupt the morals of pure Maharashtrian youth. There is certainly plenty of love in them, but to a modern reader it seems that the Marathi has usually paraphrased or sidestepped the already faint traces of licentiousnessleft by the English translators. In I854 also, a few more original works began to be written with a collection of stories for and about women known as Stricaritra.Written by "Ramjee Gunnojee, First Hospital Assistant Pensioner," the English subtitle gives a good idea of its contents: "Streechuritra or Female Narration, comprizing their course of life, BEHAVIOUR and undertaking in four parts with Moral reprimands checking Obscenity to secure Chastity." The tales themselves are patently imitated from the Arabian 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 of the titles alone these two are generally classed together with a third, Vidagdha Stricaritra,which came out in i87I.12 This, however, is a horse of quite a different color. 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's court and settles down while the other continues seeking adventures. After four years they meet again and while the rolling stone recounts his adventures, mainly amorous, the unenterprising one wryly laments his choice. The principal story concerns Vasantakalika who deceives her husband and contrives to give most of her jewelry to her lover by seducing her husband while disguised as another woman (her lover's nonexistent wife), and then forcing the husband to hand over the jewels as hush-money. This is preceded by a short episode reminiscent of the Miller's Tale and a ribald anecdote about a holy man on a pilgrimage who climbs into the bullock cart where a widow is sleeping, tips up the cart and is found by the other pilgrims lying on top of the widow under a pile of luggage on the ground. Hardly a "Moral Tale!" It is unfortunately rather tediously written and is quite untypical of the rather strait-laced tone of Marathi literature at that time and even now. The cunning of Vasantakalika brings in another very popular type of story produced at this time-that illustrating the quick wit or cunning of the main protagonist. 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 appeared in print. Such are K. R. Conce's Mahardstra bhdset manoranjak gos i, i870-73, and Barthold, which I have already mentioned and consists largely of tales of rustic wit attributed to the boorish Italian folk-hero Bertoldo. Such tales are the nearest approach to short stories to be written during this period, but they do not of course qualify for such a description. There is little depiction of character in them and no trace of any structure.They are merely anecdotes. One representative of this genre which is still fairly well known, by reputation at least, to Marathi readers is Moroba Kanhoba's Ghas'zrdmKotvdl, written in I863. There are twenty-eight chapters all built around the central character of
12 Bhingare,however, has described this work in detail and sees it as a direct descendant of the mildly pornographictradition of Sanskrit tales. R. S. Jog, Mard(thi Vanimaydca Itihds, Pt. IV, p. i86.

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Ghasiram, who was a notorious police chief under the Peshwas, and many of these are not even anecdotes but merely a list of faits divers in the form of conversations between Ghs'iram and better informed persons (and almost anyone is better informed than GhMs'lrm) on such subjects as sword-swallowers, diamond mines and bearded women. Mixed with this, however, are many of these cunning-trick stories, and Ghas'lram,who is a sublime mixture of ignorance, cupidity, superstition and vice, is frequently the victim. The whole thing is written with considerable vigor and humor, and the dialogue is often vivid. Here is one of the shorter stories in which Ghas'iramis not the main protagonist: Every evening after his meal Ghsgirdmused to sit in his house chewing betel or tobacco,and at that time a crowd of flattererswould gather round him praising his judgment and power of swift action. On one occasion a man from Bijapur was there and began to sing the praises of a magistrateof his own city, telling the following story: Last year in the month of asadha a perfumier of our city called Ramdin had made up about 25 maunds of scented powder, packed it into fifty sacks and was going to send it by ox-cartnext day to Pandharpurto sell at the big festival. Meanwhilethe sacks were left in the yard behind his shop. In the morning Ramdin got up early and went into the yard. No sacks! But there were bits of powder scatteredaround and signs that the sacks had been dragged over the wall. So he set up a cry of "Thief! Thief!", the neighbourscame running and he told them what had happened and then went and complained to the city kotval, Samserkhan.The latter immediatelysent messengersto close all the gates and instituteda search,but therewas no traceof the sacks. Thereupon he summoned all the scent-shopkeepers and their workmen and began an interrogationthat lasted till midday. Still no result! Then Samserkhan stood them together in a bunch, walked round them slowly three times and finally came to a halt in front of them. He laughed aloud and said, "Well, you're a brazen lot. Stealing the stuff is one thing, but then to come along here with a spot of it on your forehead!"As soon as he said this four of the men in front of him whipped their hands up to their foreheads and then sniffed their fingers surreptitiously. They were immediatelysingled out and questionedand it turned out that two were brothersand the other two were their servants.Their shops and cellars were searched with the help of torches and the fifty stolen sacks were found in a dark corner. And so all four were punished and everyone praised Samgerkhan Kotvalfor his shrewdness. After hearing the Bijapurmerchant'sstory Ghasiramsaid, "If this Tarvarkhan or whatever his name was was such a genius why did the kingdom of Bijapur collapse? Now if a theft like that had happened in this city we wouldn't have taken half a day to catch the thieves. We'd have slung the whole lot into a dungeon and then stood four or five of them on a red-hot grid-iron.We'd soon have known who the thief was." At this all Ghi'sirm's toadies applauded furiously and began to make fun of the merchant from Bijapur. So the poor fellow took himself off.13 This then is the stage that the "short story" had reached-either translations or adaptations of foreign works or these "clever trick" tales which are told with a considerable verve at times but which are basically traditional, a carrying over
13 MorobaKanhobaVijaykar, GhasJrJm Kotvil, ed. N. R. Phatak, Bombay, (Mumbal Marithi granthasangrahlaaya),I96I, pp. Io-Ii.

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tale into print of the sort of storyteller's that might delight a village audienceto this day. The first novel. Having clearedthe ground,we now come to the beginningsof the novel; that is, as a minimum definition,a longish connectedprose tale with a characterized, judiciousmixture distinguishably a range of named protagonists, At and some sort of structure. the very least and description of dialogue,narrative eitherphysically must undergovariousperipeties must be introduced, the characters and finally come to a position of rest-death or resignation or psychologically to according whetherthe storyhas a happyending or not. or tranquility, It is usually said that the first two original novels in Marathi were both publishedin 1857, Christianworks. They are Baba Padmanji'sYamund-paryatan and Phulmuni ani Karundpublishedin i859. The latter,however,is a translation as of a storypublishedin English in Calcuttaand has no claim to be considered an more readily availablethan original work in Marathi.Fortunately,Yamund is many other works of this period,having been reprintedin I937 when the "ingraji was (Englishincarnation)of Marathiliterature includedin the B.A. syllabus avatar"
at Bombay University.14

Bengali normallylays claim to the first Indian novel with one that came out in I858. Yamundantedatesthis by a year, but I am not sure if it is sufficiently novel-likein form to disputethe point. The plot, in brief, is that Yamuna,who is secretly a Christian,is married to an enlightened young man who shares her ideals without openly accepting her religion. They travel around Maharashtra and finally he is mortallyinjured on some unspecifiedbusinessof the husband's, by a bullock cart while saving a child's life. Before dying he persuadesYamuna to baptize him informally,and also makes his father promisenot to subject her to the usual harsh treatmentreservedfor widows in India. However, the motherin-law is incensedby this and with the backing of the family priest they prepare the head-shaving, jewelry stripping and so on, but Yamuna forestallsthem by running away to the house of a Christiancouple.And that is all, exceptthat it is marriesagain-an overt mentionedcasuallyin the last line that she subsequently this Christian time. The main plot, therefore,is tenuous in the extreme,but in fact two-thirdsof sometimesin the form propaganda, the book is taken up with widow-remarriage the authorbut more usually by means of horrificstories. by of direct exhortation Yamuna and her husbandin their travelskeep meeting widows, or staying in a house where some widow is leading a miserablelife, and these individualsthen audience.This episodicform is scarcely tell their storyat length to the sympathetic Rasselas, that of a novel and is rathersimilar to didacticworks such as Johnson's which were undoubtedly popularat the time with those who could read Englishand indeed Rasselaswas later translatedinto Marathiin full as has been mentioned. of There are some characteristics the novel all the same. Yamuna and her husbandare cardboardfigures, but some of the minor protagonists-the rather and feeblefather-in-law the family priest for instance-are fairly sharplycharacter14The phrase "ingraji avatar" seems to have been coined by D. V. Potdar in his book Mardthi ingraj- avatdr,Poona, I922. gady&cd

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kind between ized. There is plenty of dialogue,much of it of a ratherexpository husband and wife. A technical point is that dialogue is normally printed in name of the speakergiven first, thus avoiding form, with the abbreviated dramatic a repetitionof "he said,""she said,"etc. This techniquemay possiblyhave been imitated from plays, of which a handful had been publishedat this time, or it as may well have been adoptedspontaneously a convenientdevice.It remainedin vogue throughoutthe period we are discussing,althoughnot all authorsused it. although few are striking. However, in one place There are some descriptions, there is an attemptto convey the essence of the interiorof a simple village hut of (with moralovertonesof the superiority simplevillage life which are somewhat discordantwith the main theme) which does seem to have something of the chosevue aboutit: Yamunaand Vinayakwent inside and found a little room in which two plateswere set out, eachwith its heapof salt.The roomitselffilled banana-leaf in themwith delight.Everything it spokeof villagelife. The roomhad only one wood, very thick and heavywith a massiveiron bar to doormadeof jack-tree clean.On it the sun's floorwas smoothand beautifully shut it. The cow-dung like rays,comingthroughtiny holes in the roof,lay scattered brightgold coins, whichgavethe only light withinthe raysthemselves whilespecksof dustdanced with red ochreand overhead therewas in the room.All fourwallsweresmeared basketsof rice and firewoodand dried ran great twistedbeamswhich carried left all palasleavesfor platters, tied on with thickgrassrope.On Yamuna's hand was a huge quernfor grindingrice and near it, lying againstthe wall, was a like pestlethe handleof whichgleamed gold in a straybeamof sunlightwhich right was a pile of jars stackedone on top of the fell upon it. On Vinayak's so other. All this stuff was neatly and carefullyarranged that there was no of in but of suggestion disorder theroom, rather beauty.15 That is quite vivid, especiallywhen you take into accountthe early date and then or for a long time the fact that there was no traditionof realisticdescription another descriptionfrom the same chapter of afterwards.By contrast here is Yamund in which the beauties of the dawn-an infinitely more conventional theme-are describedin the form of a dialogue of incredibletritenessand implausibility: is Yam.Ah!Whata lovelycoolbreeze blowing! what a beautiful goldenlight shinesin the East.Could Vin. Look, beloved, Beforesuch beautyhow drab and wearisome man ever make such splendour? of of adorned theexpense thousands rupees! at wouldseeman emperor's palace I are Yam. How variegated the colours! can see red and yellowand purple light is thereas if a and pink.And look wherethe sun is rising,whata glorious of out had goldsmith poured his crucible liquidgold....1'6 on And so on, with long digressions the lilies of the field and God giving heed to everysparrow. is Romances.Yamund-paryatan a work of Christian and social propaganda and is scarcelytypical of the original works of fiction which follow. It is four in yearsbeforethe first really indigenousromanceappearswith Muktdmdld i86i,
15

16 Ibid., pp. 6o-6i.

BabaPadmanji,Yamund-paryatan, ed., Bombay, 1937, p. 74. 4th

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and this set a patternfor a numberof worksin the samegenre-a scoreor so in the thirteenyears before I874. The author states in his prefacethat he is writing to create rather thanto satisfya demandfor this typeof literature: Formerly peoplethoughtthat it was rather joke that they shouldhave our a to learnthe Marathi language, now manyhaverealised it is not so easyto but that learna language properly to writebooksin it. However, seemsto me that and it our peoplehavenot takenas muchpleasure theyshouldin reading as booksand newspapers their own language,and so I have writtenthis book with the in intention furthering an interest. . .17 of such In Muktdmdld there is no attempt at any kind of realisticsetting. The plot unfoldsin a kind of Indian Illyria"in olden time" and is not worth describing in detail. It concerns a wicked king and his evil counsellors.The one virtuous courtier,Muktamala's husband,is thrown into prison on a trumped-up chargeby his wife's stepbrother who is after the inheritance. escapesand wanders Muktamala aroundfrom one city to another,at one point disguisedas a man. Her life and her virtue are constantlyin danger,but somethingalwaysturns up to save her at the last minute and all ends happilywith the wicked destroyed, good restored the to power and the virtuous younger brotherof the bad king establishedon the throne. The book, more than 200 pages long, is practicallyall narrativeand is better written and more swiftly moving than many later examplesof the genre. The plot bristleswith coincidences, most of them are at least plausiblyled up but to and explained,and there are signs of construction the switchingof emphasis in from one character another.Characterization minimal, with everyoneeither to is very black or very white. The dialogue is ratherliterary,and much of the direct speech consists of soliloquies in which the various oppressedcharacterslament their cruelfate. Direct speechis distinguished only sporadically invertedcommas by and is lost among the enormous paragraphsin which books of this era are printed. There is a certain amount of description,and one rather interesting featureis that many of the chapters,seven out of nine, begin with a descriptive set-piecewhich only exceptionallyhas any relevance to the succeeding action. The descriptions themselvesare of the most classical,that is to say generalized, nature.Here are the opening paragraphs Muktdmdhi: of When the rainyseasonends and winterbeginsand you look upon the earth fromthe top of somehill, it is delightful wonderful in the earlymorning and to kinds of grain,somein flowerand someready behold.You see fieldsof various for harvesting, grovesof mangoes,coconuts,arecapalms and so on, gardens, pasture, on eachside of the roadsrowsof trees;so thatwhatever of the and part earthyou lookat seemsto be bursting withlife, andit seemsas if a many-coloured overthe earth. The windingthread the river,brimming has of carpet beenthrown Here and thereare lakes which give over both its banks,looks very beautiful. more than anythingelse because the many joy to the mind of the beholder of coloured flowersthat bloomin them.In the townsand villagesthereis moreto seemto be wrapped a mixture mist and foliage in see. The housesand palaces of and smokefromthe newly-lit and fires,and the temples towersseemto lift their above treesto seethedelights theworldforthemselves. the of heads
17

LaksmanMoresvarHalbe, Muktdmald,Bombay, i86i, intr.

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And if you look closer there are more things to take the eye. You see people some on foot and some in startingtheir daily work. Travellers,some on horseback, carts are coming and going by various roads. Farmers and cowherds driving their cows and bullocksare leaving the villages in all directions.Some have set out to sell corn, hay, wood, vegetablesand such things as these. Some are going to the river and some to the well. They call out one to another and the song of the differentkinds of bird mingles with these sounds so that a constantnoise comes to 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 further pleasure. In some places there are valleys and in others great and small cliffs are cut in the hillsides; in some places thick and awsome woods and in others scattered trees;in some placesonly grassand in othersbarerock. . . .18

This is all thrown in without any kind of selectionor organization,and also It without any particularization. is a landscapewith figures like a Breughel,but there is no point in it, for the leg of Icarusis missing. The city of Jaypur,which is the centerof the actionwhich follows, is not localizedin this scene in any way. This criticismapplies to most of the scenic descriptionswhich occur in the romancesof this early period of Marathiliterature.They are all, in a way, set There pieces, althoughthey may not be set apart so explicitlyas in Muktdmala. are certain points in any narrativewhere you can say with confidence,"Here For comes a description." instance,people are constantlysetting out on journeys and after a few miles they leave the inhabitedarea near the town and come into the wilds. And then it comes! varioussorts of trees and busheswith variouskinds of birds singing in them, all sorts of wild beasts roaring and grunting and of screechingin the middle distance.These set themes seem to be characteristic unsophisticated, often bardic,literature;of works written for the ear ratherthan the eye. In the chansons de geste there is a list of objects that qualify for a descriptiveinterludethat you could count on your fingers: shields, armor, tents, feasts and so on. You have the feasts in Marathialso, as well as gardens and palaces.Every king seems to have a palace right in the middle of his city, set in dome"in each the exact center of a beautifulgarden which has a lofty "pleasure corner,with gilded and painted walls and superbviews over the garden. Clearly this is inheritedfrom earlierverse works and from the Sanskritprose tales such as Pancatantra, at this early stage in prose fiction the conventionsare adopted and unthinkingly.It is less perhaps a positive influence than a negative thing; an which it never absenceof interestin the detail of everydaylife and surroundings occurredto anyone might be worth talking about until prose fiction, which is essentially a realist genre whatever the age in which it is written, had got properly under way. A passage from the introduction to another romance, sd, Manjugho writtenin i868,bringsthis out veryclearly:
The basic aim of works like "novels"is to show how in this world a virtuous man attains happinessafter suffering various setbacksat the hands of evil men. . . . Becauseof our attitude to marriageand for severalother reasonsone finds in the lives of us Hindus neither interesting vices nor virtues, and this is the difficultywhich we find in trying to write novels. If we write about the things that we experiencedaily there would be nothing enthrallingabout them, so that
i8 Muktdmmld, I-3*

EARLY PROSE FICTION IN MARATHI

marvellous....19

801

if we set out to write an entertainingbook we are forced to take up with the Here of course the author is talking more about plot and defending his own liberal use of magic and supernatural devices, but the attitude is the same. That is why the little descriptive passage quoted from Yamund-paryatan strikes one so favorably. There is little more to say about Manjughosd, which is excessively tedious and implausible, and which is also written in a laborious archaic style bristling with Sanskrit borrowings and alankdrs. The style was deliberate, since the author considered it more fitting to some vague bygone age in which romantic adventures between the sexes were possible. As a sample of the remaining romances we may take Raja Madan and Suhdsyavadand. Raja Madan20 was the second of these early romances to appear, in i865, and has always earned special mention in the histories of Marathi literature because it is the only one without a happy ending. In fact this is only partly true. The principal hero and heroine live happily ever after just like everyone else, and it is only the secondary characters who are eliminated. On the whole I am somewhat prejudiced against Rajd Madan because it has been consistently overpraised (or rather less despised, for until very recently Marathi critics have taken a thoroughly jaundiced view of all this literature). Justice Ranade once wrote a short article in English on these early works, which unfortunately I have been unable to. trace, in which he gave the opinion that "Muktdmald and Raja Madan are probably the best," and this has been dutifully repeated ever since. It would seem that Ranade must have been playing safe by picking the two earliest works, for Raja Madan seems to be one of the feeblest of the genre. It is nothing but a long "virtue in danger" story of astonishing implausibility, concerning wicked kings and ministers and their designs on the virtuous wives of absent colleagues. Some of the methods they use for getting the poor women into their clutches are quite delightfully elaborate, such as digging an underground tunnel for miles and laying a kinld of camouflaged elephant trap over the end of it. The eponymous Raja Madan is absent throughout, and so devoted is the author to his titillating episodes that he does not even bother to finish off the main plot properly. When the last oppressed female has jumped out of a window rather than submit to, the advances of the last villain, the final sentence is: "Next day the Raja returned to the city and punished all the evildoers and began to rule again in peace and prosperity."The End! The "virtue in danger" theme mentioned here recurs constantly in Marathi romances of this and later periods. It seems to be mainly an indigenous preoccupation, for there is very little of it in the Persian tales, but it must have received 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 know that 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
19 Naro SadasivRisbud, Man;ughosas, Poona, i868, intr. pp. 3-4. Babaji Krsna Gokhale, Rdjd Madan, duhkhaparyavasdyi katha, Bombay, I865. The novelist G. W. M. Reynolds, who is not worthy apparently of an individual entry in the encyclopaedias,had more influence in India than almost any other nineteenth century Western writer.
20 21

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well have been read by the preceding generation. In any case the popularitv of these English writers was doubtless due in part to the fact that they struck a sympathetic chord in their Indian readers. Suhdsyavadana22too has its share of attempted seductions, but not to any wearisome 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 where the 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 his saddle bag. But this is passed over very gingerly. The characterization is of the usual black and white variety, except that there appears here for the first time a characterwho turns up continually in later novels, and particularly in the historical novels by H. N. Apte. This is the smart young lad who is always a faithful servant of the hero, who spies out the land, collects information, hoodwinks the sentries and so forth. Indeed in Suhasyavadand the happy ending is almost entirely brought about by this admirable person, for the hero, though brave and worthy, 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 this novel is quite readable, of its kind, mainly because it is fast-moving and not too verbose. Still it has most of the faults that have already been mentioned: conventional descriptions, lack of realistic dialogue (although there is an attempt to convey rustic speech by means of mixed Marathi and Hindi), and a special kind of repetitiveness which is due to a rather primitive technique, in that events already described are narrated with scarcely any abbreviation to some third party in the story. We have dealt with only a few of the numerous romantic novels that are characteristicof this period, but it is enough to give a fair idea of them all. They are all more or less timeless and placeless and make no attempt to reflect any specific milieu, whether historical or contemporary. A few extraneous touches, such as the introduction of widow-remarriage into, Halbe's second novel Ratnaprabhd23or 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 remembered that this type of romantic tale continued to be written until the end of the century, and some of them were still being reprinted in the nineteen twenties, so that the later ones were able to borrow a few historical or social frills from their more modern contemporaries. On the whole, though, the genre was astonishingly homogeneous, with plots, characters and descriptive interludes that seem freely interchangeable. To end with K. B. Marathe's often quoted words: "Every hero is the God of Love incarnate, every heroine is a Tilottama. In every tragic episode the sorrow is a deathly sorrow and in every joyful one the joy is heavenly rapture-nothing less."25
Vaman Krsnsa Desmukh, Suhdsyavadand, Bombay, I870. L. M. Halbe, Ratnaprabhd,Bombay, i866. Kesav LaksmanJorvekar,Vicitrapuri,Bombay, I870. 25 Quoted from Potdar, op. cit., 2nd ed., Poona, I957, p. 83. K. B. Marathe's "Naval va natak hyavisay; nibandh," a paper first read before the Marathi Jiinnaprasarak Sabha in I872 and subsequently published as a pamphlet, was one of the first and harshest criticisms of the Romances. Although quoted in every history of Marathi literature, the original is hard to come by and I have not seen it.
23 24 22

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Social Novels. Nevertheless, the origins of a different kind of novel are also to be found within our period. Bodhasudha is usually listed among the romances, but in fact 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 man is 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 much concern. While out walking they meet a distinguished old man whom they eventually 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's fortune, deserted his wife for a beautiful temptress and ran away with her. In the 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 his mistresshas found a new rich lover and is planning to poison him off. The story is not told with any great distinction, and is frequently interrupted by the two youths asking questions which give the old man an excuse for long diatribes on ethical and social topics. The dialogue is stilted and unreal, the descriptions of nature in the linking passages are as generalized as ever-the story takes nearly a week in the telling and the narrator stays as a guest until he has finished it, and every morning they all get up early and stroll round Mahabaleshwar and see the birds and the trees and the industrious peasants. However the interest of the work is that it seems to be the first hostile reaction in fiction to British rule and Western ideas. The time is the present. The hero at one point is brought up 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 paying magistrates a decent salary as the British seem to think. The author also takes a few 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, with the "pie in the sky" motive. He is not entirely reactionary, for he attacks early marriage on purely practical grounds, but has nothing to say on more controversial topics like widow-remarriage and the education of women. Indeed he takes a very traditional view of women-they should not be oppressed unduly, but they ought to be firmly deterredfrom the vices to which they are naturally prone. In short, this Hindu counterblast to reformist ideas has some slight claim to be considered the first social realist novel. The characters may still be incredible, but at least the plot is contemporary and is not entirely outweighed by moralizing or by a string of independent tales as in Yamund. Ndrdyanrdv dni Goddvari, which was not written until I879, is usually said to be the first social novel. Clearly the author, M. V. Rahalkar, envisaged himself as striking out into a new field. All the novels published in our language, with very few exceptions, have situations, settings and charactersof one and the same kind. The heroes and heroinesare always princes and princesses,or at least are enormouslyrich. Their wealth is the wealth of Kuber, their beauty like that of Madan and Rati . . with theirlove the love of Ram and Sita is derisory.27 compared
Kesav BalavantKelkar, Bodhasudha,Bombay, I87I. Mahadev Vyankates Rahalkar,Ndrdyanrdvdni Goddvari,duhkha-parindmikalpit 1adambari, Poona, I879, intr. p. 2. The echo of Marathe'swords is probablynot coincidental.
27

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He himself, he says, wants to write aboutordinarypeople and to be releasedfrom the bondageof the happy ending. He certainlyachieveshis secondaim. The book begins with a most respectable social theme. Godavari,the heroine,is about to be sold by her miserlyfatherto be the secondwife of a drunkenlecher.Howevershe avoidsthis fate quite earlyby her own effortsand marriesNarayan,an enlightened young schoolteacher, at this point the socialquestionis lost sight of and the plot and becomesa simplemelodrama. is Godavarl entangledin the snaresof her disappointed fiancee,and finallyNarayanis persuaded she has betrayed that him. The idea is that once Godavarihas been turned out by her husbandshe may be collectedoff the streetfor the asking,but Narayanis a man of actionand exceedsall expectations by killing Godavariin a fit of jealousy.Immediatelyafterwards learns the truth, he and from the melodrama pass to grand guignol. Narayanfinds all his enemies we conveniently gatheredtogetherin one of those garden"pleasure domes"that I have alreadymentioned,and as they are incapacitated with drink and debauchery he proceedsto carve them up slowly and methodicallywith a sharpsword, starting with the minor offenders and workingup. And so perishone lecher,one pimp, one corruptpriest,one venal mameledarand one libidinousschool inspector. Narayan ends the evening by blowing his head off with his own shotgun. This bloodthirsty storyis told with considerable gusto and the dialogueis much livelier and more crediblethan anything we have met so far. But Rahblkarcannot take the creditfor innovatinghere. The historical novel, the best novel written beforethe emergenceof Apte, had precededhim by eight years. Historical Novels. Gunjikar'sMocanga4 opens with a few introductorysentences setting the scene in historicaltime and in time of day. Various kinds of birdstwitterin the bushesand a pale light grows in the East, and thereis nothing to show that one is not in for a long, rambling and possibly irrelevantintroduction in the MuktamdM style. And then, abruptly,one is plunged into the narrative a veryeffective quitenew way: in and On the slopesof a hill in the Sahyadri mountains men cameout of some two bushes.They seemedabout twenty-five years old. They were handsome and stronglybuilt, and althoughtheir faces were lined with miseryand suffering, you couldstill see that they weremen of high rank.They were dressed only in raggedjackets, shortdhotisof coarsecloth and anotherwhisp of cloth wound around theirheads,and thesefew clothesweredirtyand tattered. Theirhairand beardswere long, and on their legs were heavyfettersso that they took each but as stepwithprecaution, as quickly theycouldso asto makeno noise.28 That, I think, is an excellentbeginning to an adventurestory. It is still rather stimulatingto be plunged into the story in an effectiveway like this, and in an age of tedious introductionsit must have been a lot more so. Undoubtedlya technicalrevolutionof this kind is due to the influenceof Westernmodels such as Scott but it is none the worse for that, and Gunjikarwas not only the first to use it but the firstby a long way. to It is not necessary go into the plot of Mocangadexcept to say that it sets a patternfor many a Marathihistoricalnovel to come. It is centeredarounda fort,
28

Ramcandra Bhikjil Gunjikar,Mocanga4, Bombay, 187I, p.

2.

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one of the Deccan hill forts which can only be comparedto an iron-agecamp reinforcedwith Mediaevalmasonry,and the action is terminatedand the happy ending finally broughtabout by the captureof the fort by the nationalhero and founderof the independent Maratha state,Shivaji. Apart from the way in which it opens, this novel representsa great step forwardin other ways. It has a plot which has evidentlybeen constructed with care and deliberation. Actions are motivated and reasonablylogical, although it must be allowed that coincidenceis somewhatoverworked.Up until now there tales like had been little attemptat plausibility a well-ordered or plot. Biographical Yamuna or Bodhasudhdsimply ran along from start to finish like any other and then.. unsophisticated story, with constantrepetitionof "and then ..., A romancelike Suhasyavadana, written only one year earlier,had more pretensions. It says such things as: "And now we must leave this subject for a time and see what Suhasyavadana's parentswere doing back in Kirtipilr,"but when you get back to Kirtip-ur find that they are not doing anythingmuch except you wringingtheir hands or decidingto send a messengerto find out what is happening. There are no real sub-plots.At the most you have two rival gangs surging backwardsand forwardsfrom one city to another and occasionallycolliding in some intermediate desert,but it is all rathermeaninglessand is obviouslydesigned solely to keep the hero separated from the heroine for as long as the readercan stand. Mocangadhas no real sub-plot either, and the final capture of the fort by Shivaji is quite extraneous, but one thing it has got is a kind of unity of time. The whole affair takes place in about a fortnight.Without giving undue weight to the French classicalideal, it seems to me that this is in itself an advancein the development an artisticform like the novel out of an earliertraditionof long of ramblingstories.Almost anythingcan be a novel no doubt,but at some point in its development any one languagesome sort of unity has to crystallizeout of the in storiesand fables and fairy-tales whateverit was that flourished or earlier,and one wayof achieving sucha unityis by restricting time scaleas is donehere. the 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 the two escaped prisonersand we follow their fortunes in a couple of palpitating chaptersduring which they jump over the cliff surroundingthe fort, fetters and all, and begin to staggerdown the hill with one man carryingthe other,wounded, on his back. The following chapterbegins in a village at the foot of the hill on the oppositeside. A soldiercomes riding down with a messagefrom the governor of the fort to tell the village pai.tl about the escapeand instructhim to keep an eye on the prisoners'families in case they try to contact them. The action is immediatelycarried forward and at the same time you are still left in suspense aboutthe fugitives.The suspenseelement is very important, this must be one for of the firstnovelsto be published serialformin Marathi.29 in Altogetherthe first half of Mocangad is extremelywell done, but then it goes off ratherbadly, to my taste at least, with a long piece of "virtue in danger" business.Even this, however, is rather more plausiblethan usual, and certainly
29I1n

a Vividha-jn-ana-vistira, monthly started in Bombay in I867, only four years earlier.

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argumentwith her would-beravisher, more exciting.The heroine,after protracted in succeeds shootinghim with his own pistol. But only by accidentI regretto say. to Womenarestill expected takea verypassiverole. The descriptivepassagesare of specific scenes and places which have some connectionwith the action, and are, therefore,much more factual and more relevantthan we have come to expect. The dialogue is good, and at last shows signs of becomingcolloquialand alive. At one point a Shiledarfrom the fort-one of the minor villains-comes down to his home village to show off his horse and his sword and his new glory. All the villagers twit him at first: "Oh, it's old Sathvya,the one who ran away from home because he'd been caught stealing coconuts.Wonder how long he's been a soldier? Ram Ram, Sathvaji.Have you given up your old job yet?" Sathvaji bridles somewhat and lets them all know he how prosperous has become. movedup a bit to let him sit everyone As soon as moneywas mentioned said down and somebody that of courseit wasn'ttrue that childishvicesalways throughtravel,"so comeand sit down enormously and remained men improved Sathvajii!" But Nimbajisaid, "Andwhy shouldsuch a rascalbe shortof money?He's shop only got to raidsomemoney-lender's and takeall he wants.... He's a real hero,he is." for "Whatdo you mean?You don'tbecomea shiledar nothingyou know. withyourlifein yourhand." Youhaveto go intobattle "With your nose in your hand you mean, in case someonecatchesyou and thieving cutsit off." with still "What? Lookhereat thissword, stained blood!" some goat or hen just "Oh yes! Looks as if you must have overpowered dinner-time."30 around Not very subtle humor perhaps,but it is lively and it makes a change. It is not an isolated example. Even when the heroine is fending off the villain she managessomeveryspiritedretorts. One should not, of course,exaggeratethe virtuesof this novel. There are still taste for oppressed in numerous implausibilities the plot and the contemporary females is fully cateredto. There are also many of those long, boring soliloquies where the characterscommune with their consciencesor lament their fate ad nauseam.Nevertheless,such things remained popular for long after Mocangad, and proliferatein the historicalnovels of Apte for instance.When you consider it that Mocangad is the very first historicalnovel in Marathi, really is surprisingly It betteras a novel than any of its predecessors. mattersvery little that Gunjikar has imitated Western models, for he has succeededin recreatingsomething in life Marathiand in terms of Maharashtrian and history,and in laying the foundaof many things that a later writer such as Apte had only to develop.It is a tions achievement. veryrespectable are only two other historicalnovels that were written in the pre-Apte There It no by period.Sambhaji V. N. Bapatrepresents advanceon Mocangad.31 is more it introducesa number of real historicalpersonagesinto the in "historical" that
30Mocangad, p. 46. 31 Nages Vinayak Bapat, Sambhadj,Bombay, 1884.

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action. For that very reason it is less of a novel, combining as it does undigested lumps of history with a thin romantic sub-plot. The same criticism can be made of V. J. Patvardhan's Hambirrdv ani Putaldbdi,32which is an attempt to write a historical novel around much more recent events-the mutiny of I857. Again it is not a very successful attempt, since a large part of it consists of a purely domestic story about a young wife being estranged from her husband by the machinations of her co-wife, interspersed with solid historical narrative of the main events of the mutiny-the two being entirely unrelated until the last third of the book when the wife, driven from home, is abducted by a band of rebellious sepoys. There is a great deal of dialogue, much of it superfluous since the weak construction leaves laboriously prepared situations unfinished and hanging in the air. One interesting feature, however, is that the speech of some of the "low-life" characters is given in a vulgar, rustic brand of Marathi, and this is conveyed by typographical devices which have since become standard for colloquial forms. In I875 they must have been fairly new. At least this is the first example of such conventions that I am acquainted with. Finally Randive's Sikfak might be mentioned briefly as kind of politico-historicoromantic amalgam.33 Here the romantic adventures of the hero, always accompanied by the mentor who gives the novel its title, take place against a background of pre-mutiny events reminiscent of those in Jhansi. The hero is an adopted son whose inheritance of a minor princely state is disallowed by the harsh Dalhousie government. In spite of the political implications of this theme, the pervading atmosphere in nonrealistic and there is no reason to suppose that Part Two would have been any different. remains outstanding not only against this very feeble competition in Mocangadq the historical field, but among all the novels written before the advent of Apte. In the period before I885 prose fiction in Marathi developed, largely under the influence of Western writing, from practically nothing to a point where all the ingredients of a major novel were at hand but had not yet been assimilated by any one author. After the first simple tales, nearly all of them translated or imitated from English, came the more elaborate romances of which Muktdmdld is a better than average example. In these the problems of construction were first tackled but not solved. Dialogue remained literary, descriptions of people and places conventional and lacking in any kind of particularization. Comtemporary problems and more realistic settings had been attempted in the very first novellength work of fiction, Yamund-paryatan,but here and in the later Bodhasudha the construction was rudimentary and the plot was overlaid by a great weight of moralizing and didacticism. The first signs of the fruitful influence of Western novels was in the historical Mocangad which was organized appetizingly for serial publication and which contained lively dialogue and realistic, visual scene painting. The analysis and depiction of individual human beings, however, was still in its very early stages. The short story, so dependent on character in action, had still not arrived. In technique there had been considerable advances. A livelier dialogue implies
32

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

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the increasing use of colloquial forms, both grammatically and phonetically. Because of this the influence of English sentence structure and of painstaking Sanskritic literaryness was on the wane during the last decade of the period, and in Hambirrav dni Putalabai there is already established a convention for transcribing phonetic variants from the literary norm. Dialogue was still being printed in dramatic 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 the average page had the same physical appearance as it does today. The conventions of punctuationhad been establishedin 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 to have devoted his student life, and proceeded to turn out novels of a weight, length and copiousness that was entirely new.