Essay On Assamese Literature

literature produced during 8th to 12th century bears sheer historical significance, but can’t be called heritage. The 13th century Assamese literature mostly patronized by non-Aryan kings more or less fall in the same category, the only exception being Madhav Kandali’s “Saptakanda Ramayana”. But, the first literature that can be properly termed as “heritage” with profound humanist content is undoubtedly that produced in 15th and 16th centuries by Shankardeva and Madhavdeva, the Assamese counterparts of the pan-Indian Medieval Neo-Vaisnavite Bhakti movement. The Shakta literature popularly known as “Panchali Literature” is also a heritage but can’t be bracketed as “humanist”. The examples of the two Gurus continued to remain direct forming influences until the 18th century in both prose and poetry particularly in the prose biographies of the

Alongside, developed the purely this-worldly literature called “buranjis” (histories) by the Ahoms in this century. The emergence of the new educated middle class corresponded with the birth of modern Assamese literature. The first Assamese journal “Arunodoi” published by the Baptist Missionaries from 1846 streamed Western modern ideas into Assamese literature. But, the greatest impetus to the humanist tradition was given by the journal “Jonaki” published from 1889, which bears the influence of the European Romanticism and Liberal Humanism enhanced by patriotism of the freedom movement and the middle-class individualism. But, a mature bourgeois humanism was impossible for the nascent, weak, dependent middle-class and its adherence to the medieval Neo-Vaisnavite ideas, particularly its sense of resignation and that of the other world, significantly diluted the humanist content. But, when the Romantic literature gave way to realist, modernist and leftist literatures in post-Independence period, the current of humanism did not fail to flow in different forms even through these new