पुस्तकें और लेखक

हिंदी में पढ़ें

Books & Authors — Who Wrote What

◆ In 1944 a political prisoner sat in a cell of Ahmednagar Fort with no library and almost no news from outside. In about five months he wrote a long book about his country's past, from the Indus cities to his own time. The prisoner was Jawaharlal Nehru, and the book was "The Discovery of India" (published 1946). Many of the books in this chapter were born like that — in jails, in royal courts, on long journeys. When you know the story behind a book, you will never again forget who wrote it.

What you will master today (Learning Objectives)

The great books of ancient India — Sanskrit, science and Tamil classics

Medieval chronicles, royal memoirs and the accounts of foreign travellers

Bhakti poets and the classics of Hindi and other Indian languages

Books, autobiographies and newspapers of the freedom struggle

Indian writers in English, famous world classics and major literary awards

The examiner's favourite traps on this chapter, and simple hooks to beat them

PART A — ANCIENT INDIA

1. Politics, Grammar and Drama

Arthashastra — Kautilya (Chanakya), adviser of Chandragupta Maurya. A book on statecraft, administration and economy.
Indica — Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador of Seleucus at the court of Chandragupta Maurya. The original is lost; we know it through quotations by later Greek writers.
Ashtadhyayi — Panini, the great grammarian of Sanskrit.
Mahabhashya — Patanjali, a commentary on Panini's grammar. Patanjali is also linked with the Yoga Sutra.
Natyashastra — Bharata (Bharatamuni), the oldest Indian text on drama, music and dance.
Ramayana — Valmiki (called the "Adi Kavi", the first poet). Mahabharata — Ved Vyasa.

2. Kalidasa and the Court Poets

Kalidasa, the greatest Sanskrit poet of the Gupta period, wrote:
Abhijnanashakuntalam (play), Meghadutam (poem — a cloud carries a message), Raghuvamsham, Kumarasambhavam, Malavikagnimitram, Vikramorvashiyam and Ritusamhara.

Other works of the same tradition:
Mudrarakshasa — Vishakhadatta (a play about Chanakya and Chandragupta Maurya)
Mrichchhakatika ("The Little Clay Cart") — Shudraka
Swapnavasavadattam — Bhasa
Harshacharita and Kadambari — Banabhatta, the court poet of King Harshavardhana
Ratnavali, Nagananda and Priyadarshika — King Harsha himself
Buddhacharita — Ashvaghosha (court of Kanishka)
Prayag Prashasti (Allahabad Pillar inscription praising Samudragupta) — Harishena
Panchatantra — Vishnu Sharma; Hitopadesha — Narayana Pandit
Amarakosha (a Sanskrit dictionary) — Amarasimha
Rajatarangini (history of the kings of Kashmir, 12th century) — Kalhana
Gita Govinda — Jayadeva
Prithviraj Raso — Chand Bardai, court poet of Prithviraj Chauhan

Mnemonic for Kalidasa's four big works: "Shakuntala sent a Megh (cloud) to Raghu and Kumar" — Abhijnanashakuntalam, Meghadutam, Raghuvamsham, Kumarasambhavam.

🧠 Active Recall: Who wrote Harshacharita, and who wrote Ratnavali? (Banabhatta wrote about Harsha; Harsha himself wrote Ratnavali.)

3. Science and Medicine

Aryabhatiya — Aryabhata (mathematics and astronomy)
Brihat Samhita and Pancha Siddhantika — Varahamihira
Brahmasphutasiddhanta — Brahmagupta
Lilavati (part of Siddhanta Shiromani) — Bhaskaracharya (Bhaskara II)
Charaka Samhita (medicine) — Charaka
Sushruta Samhita (surgery) — Sushruta

4. Tamil Classics (Sangam and after)

Tolkappiyam — Tolkappiyar (the oldest Tamil grammar)
Tirukkural — Thiruvalluvar (couplets on virtue, wealth and love)
Silappadikaram — Ilango Adigal (story of Kannagi and Kovalan)
Manimekalai — Sattanar (Sittalai Sattanar)

🧠 Active Recall: Charaka or Sushruta — who is linked with surgery? (Sushruta.)

PART B — MEDIEVAL INDIA

5. Foreign Travellers and Their Books

Fa-Hien (Faxian) — Chinese monk, came in the time of Chandragupta II (Gupta period).
Hiuen Tsang (Xuanzang) — Chinese monk, came in the time of Harshavardhana; his account is known as Si-Yu-Ki.
Al-Biruni — came with Mahmud of Ghazni; wrote Kitab-ul-Hind (also called Tahqiq-i-Hind) in Arabic.
Marco Polo — Venetian traveller of the 13th century; wrote "The Travels".
Ibn Battuta — from Morocco; came in the time of Muhammad bin Tughlaq; his travel book is the Rihla, in Arabic.
François Bernier — French physician; "Travels in the Mughal Empire".

Order to remember (oldest to newest): Megasthenes → Fa-Hien → Hiuen Tsang → Al-Biruni → Marco Polo → Ibn Battuta → Bernier.

6. Sultanate and Mughal Chronicles

Tabaqat-i-Nasiri — Minhaj-us-Siraj
Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi — Ziauddin Barani
Khazain-ul-Futuh, Tughlaq Nama, Nuh Sipihr — Amir Khusrau (called "Tuti-e-Hind", the parrot of India)
Baburnama (Tuzuk-i-Baburi) — Babur himself, written in Turkish; later translated into Persian by Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan
Humayun-nama — Gulbadan Begum, Babur's daughter (Humayun's sister)
Akbarnama — Abul Fazl; its third volume is the Ain-i-Akbari
Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh — Abdul Qadir Badauni (often critical of Akbar)
Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri (Jahangirnama) — Jahangir himself
Padshahnama — Abdul Hamid Lahori (history of Shah Jahan's reign)
Majma-ul-Bahrain and Sirr-i-Akbar (Persian translation of the Upanishads) — Dara Shikoh
Amuktamalyada (Telugu) — Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara

Hook: "Abul Fazl did Akbar a Fazl (favour)" — he wrote the Akbarnama and Ain-i-Akbari. His brother Faizi was a poet at the same court — do not mix the brothers.

🧠 Active Recall: Which Mughal emperor wrote his own memoir in Turkish? (Babur — the Baburnama.)

7. Bhakti and Early Hindi Literature

Ramcharitmanas (in Awadhi) — Tulsidas; he also wrote Vinay Patrika and Kavitavali
Sursagar (in Braj Bhasha) — Surdas
Padmavat (in Awadhi) — Malik Muhammad Jayasi
Bijak — the sayings of Kabir
Bihari Satsai — Bihari
Dnyaneshwari (a Marathi commentary on the Gita) — Sant Dnyaneshwar
Adi Granth — compiled by Guru Arjan Dev in 1604

PART C — MODERN INDIA AND THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE

8. Reformers and Freedom Fighters

Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (Persian) and Precepts of Jesus — Raja Ram Mohan Roy
Satyarth Prakash (1875) — Swami Dayananda Saraswati
Gulamgiri (1873) — Jyotiba Phule
Neel Darpan (1860, on the misery of indigo farmers) — Dinabandhu Mitra
Anandamath (1882, contains "Vande Mataram") — Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901) — Dadabhai Naoroji (the "Drain Theory")
Gita Rahasya (written in Mandalay jail) — Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Hind Swaraj (1909) — Mahatma Gandhi
The Story of My Experiments with Truth — Mahatma Gandhi (written in Gujarati, translated into English by Mahadev Desai)
The Indian War of Independence 1857 — V. D. Savarkar
Unhappy India — Lala Lajpat Rai (a reply to Katherine Mayo's "Mother India")
Annihilation of Caste (1936) — B. R. Ambedkar
Why I Am an Atheist — Bhagat Singh
The Indian Struggle — Subhas Chandra Bose
India Divided — Rajendra Prasad
India Wins Freedom — Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

Nehru's three big books: The Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History (letters to his daughter Indira), and An Autobiography. Hook: "Nehru's jail had a DGA" — Discovery, Glimpses, Autobiography.

9. Newspapers of the Freedom Struggle

Indian Opinion (South Africa), Young India, Navajivan, Harijan — Mahatma Gandhi
Kesari (Marathi) and Maratha (English) — Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Al-Hilal — Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
Mooknayak — B. R. Ambedkar

🧠 Active Recall: Which book contains the song "Vande Mataram"? (Anandamath, by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.)

10. Classics of Hindi Literature

Godan, Gaban, Nirmala, Rangbhoomi; stories Idgah, Kafan, Panch Parmeshwar — Premchand (real name Dhanpat Rai Srivastava)
Andher Nagari, Bharat Durdasha — Bhartendu Harishchandra ("father of modern Hindi")
Kamayani — Jaishankar Prasad
Saket, Bharat-Bharati — Maithili Sharan Gupt
Chidambara — Sumitranandan Pant (first Hindi writer to get the Jnanpith, 1968)
Yama — Mahadevi Verma (Jnanpith 1982)
Ram ki Shakti Puja, Saroj Smriti — Suryakant Tripathi "Nirala"
Rashmirathi, Kurukshetra, Urvashi (Jnanpith 1972), Sanskriti ke Char Adhyay — Ramdhari Singh "Dinkar"
Madhushala — Harivansh Rai Bachchan
Maila Anchal — Phanishwar Nath "Renu"
Raag Darbari — Shrilal Shukla
Tamas — Bhisham Sahni

The four pillars of Chhayavad (Hindi romantic poetry): Prasad, Pant, Nirala, Mahadevi. Hook: "PPNM — Prasad Pant Nirala Mahadevi".

11. Other Indian Languages

Gitanjali, Gora, Ghare Baire, Kabuliwala — Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali; Nobel Prize in Literature 1913, the first Asian)
Devdas, Parineeta, Srikanta — Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (Bengali)
Pinjar — Amrita Pritam (Punjabi)
Odakkuzhal — G. Sankara Kurup (Malayalam; the first Jnanpith Award, 1965)

Tagore also wrote "Jana Gana Mana" (India's national anthem) and "Amar Shonar Bangla" (Bangladesh's national anthem). "Saare Jahan Se Achha" was written by Muhammad Iqbal.

12. Indian Writers in English

Swami and Friends, Malgudi Days, The Guide — R. K. Narayan (Malgudi is an imaginary town)
Untouchable, Coolie — Mulk Raj Anand
Kanthapura — Raja Rao
Train to Pakistan — Khushwant Singh
The Room on the Roof, The Blue Umbrella — Ruskin Bond
A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth
Midnight's Children — Salman Rushdie (Booker Prize 1981)
The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy (Booker Prize 1997)
The Inheritance of Loss — Kiran Desai (Booker Prize 2006)
The White Tiger — Aravind Adiga (Booker Prize 2008)
The Golden Threshold — Sarojini Naidu ("Nightingale of India")
Wings of Fire (with Arun Tiwari), Ignited Minds, India 2020 (with Y. S. Rajan) — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Amitav Ghosh — The Shadow Lines; the first writer in English to receive the Jnanpith Award (54th, for 2018)

🧠 Active Recall: Kiran Desai or Anita Desai — who won the Booker for "The Inheritance of Loss"? (Kiran Desai; Anita Desai is her mother.)

PART D — THE WORLD

13. World Classics

Republic — Plato | Politics — Aristotle | The Prince — Niccolò Machiavelli
Iliad and Odyssey — Homer | Divine Comedy — Dante | Paradise Lost — John Milton
Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare
Don Quixote — Miguel de Cervantes | Robinson Crusoe — Daniel Defoe | Gulliver's Travels — Jonathan Swift
The Social Contract — Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Wealth of Nations (1776) — Adam Smith
Das Kapital — Karl Marx | The Communist Manifesto — Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
On the Origin of Species (1859) — Charles Darwin
War and Peace, Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy | Les Misérables — Victor Hugo
Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen | The Old Man and the Sea — Ernest Hemingway
Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell (born in Motihari, Bihar)
The Jungle Book, Kim — Rudyard Kipling (born in Bombay)
Unto This Last — John Ruskin (Gandhi translated its ideas as "Sarvodaya")

14. Famous Autobiographies

The Story of My Experiments with Truth — Mahatma Gandhi
An Autobiography (Toward Freedom) — Jawaharlal Nehru
Atmakatha — Rajendra Prasad
An Indian Pilgrim — Subhas Chandra Bose (unfinished)
Wings of Fire — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela
The Diary of a Young Girl — Anne Frank
The Story of My Life — Helen Keller
Playing It My Way — Sachin Tendulkar
The Race of My Life — Milkha Singh
Unbreakable — M. C. Mary Kom
Straight from the Heart — Kapil Dev
Sunny Days — Sunil Gavaskar
A Shot at History — Abhinav Bindra

🧠 Active Recall: Whose autobiography is "Long Walk to Freedom", and whose is "Wings of Fire"? (Nelson Mandela; A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.)

15. Pen Names Exams Ask

Premchand — Dhanpat Rai Srivastava | Nirala — Suryakant Tripathi | Dinkar — Ramdhari Singh
Agyeya — Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan | Gulzar — Sampooran Singh Kalra

Summary Table

⏰ Review this chapter after 2 days.

⚠️ Caution: Examiner's Trap

Trap 1 — "Similar Name": Kalidasa and Kalhana sound alike. Kalidasa wrote plays and poems (Shakuntalam, Meghadutam); Kalhana wrote the history of Kashmir (Rajatarangini). Similarly Bankim Chandra (Anandamath) vs Sarat Chandra (Devdas), Panini (grammar) vs Patanjali (commentary, yoga), Kiran Desai vs Anita Desai, Abul Fazl vs his brother Faizi.

Trap 2 — "Almost True Statement": "Hind Swaraj was written by Tilak" — Tilak gave the slogan "Swaraj is my birthright"; the book Hind Swaraj is Gandhi's. Or "Ain-i-Akbari was written by Akbar" — it was written by Abul Fazl about Akbar's rule.

Trap 3 — "Chronological Confusion": Fa-Hien came in the Gupta age (Chandragupta II), Hiuen Tsang in Harsha's time. Ibn Battuta came under Muhammad bin Tughlaq, not under the Mughals.

Trap 4 — "Negative Phrasing": "Which of the following was NOT written by Kalidasa?" — Mudrarakshasa or Mrichchhakatika are planted among his real works.

🔁 Linguistic Bridge: In Hindi we say this, in English we say that

आत्मकथा — Autobiography
जीवनी — Biography
उपन्यास — Novel
कहानी-संग्रह — Short-story collection
नाटक — Play / Drama
महाकाव्य — Epic
उपनाम — Pen name
यात्रा-वृत्तांत — Travelogue
अर्थशास्त्र (कौटिल्य) — Arthashastra (Kautilya's book; not "economics" here)
मेघदूत — Meghadutam ("The Cloud Messenger")
मृच्छकटिकम् — Mrichchhakatika ("The Little Clay Cart")
सत्य के प्रयोग — The Story of My Experiments with Truth

🔗 Static-Dynamic Link

International Booker Prize 2022: "Tomb of Sand" (Hindi original "Ret Samadhi") by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell — the first book originally written in an Indian language to win it.
International Booker Prize 2025: "Heart Lamp" by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi — the first short-story collection to win the prize.
58th Jnanpith Award (for 2023): Gulzar (Urdu) and Jagadguru Rambhadracharya (Sanskrit); presented in May 2025.
59th Jnanpith Award (announced March 2025): Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla ("Naukar ki Kameez"), the first from Chhattisgarh to receive it.

📅 Revision Planner: Three-Level Blurting

🔢 High-Yield Facts & Figures (Quick Glance)

Every book has a story — a jail, a court, a journey. Tie the book to its story and the author's name will come back to you in the exam hall.