LITERATURE

Bengali Literature

Raja Ram Mohan Roy wrote in Bengali besides English, which gave an impetus to Bengali literature.
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar(1820-91) and Akshay Kumar Dutta (1820-86) were two other writers of this early period.
Sharat Chandra Chatterji (1876-1938) and RC Dutta, a noted historian and a prose writer, all contributed to the making of Bengali literature.
But the most important name that influenced the whole of India was that of Rabindra Nath Tagore (1861-1941). Novels, dramas, short stories, criticism, music, and essays, all flowed from his pen. He won the Novel Prize for literature in 1913 for the Gitanjali.

Like Bengali, Assamese also developed in response to the Bhakti Movement.
Shankardeva, who introduced Vaishnavism in Assam helped in the growth of Assamese poetry. Even the Puranas were translated in Assamese.
The earliest Assamese literature consisted of buranjis. Shankardeva has left several devotional poems, which people sang with rapturous pleasure, but it was only after 1827 that more interest was shown in producing Assamese literature.

Oriya language shows the maximum influence of Sanskrit. it originated in the AD 9th century and its literary development took place in the 13th century.
Worth mentioning in Oriya literature are Fakirmohan Senapati and Radha Nath Ray, whose writings deserve considerable attention in the history of Oriya literature.

Punjabi is a language with several shades. It is being written in two scripts, Gurumukhi and Persian.
Guru Nanak was the first poet in the Punjabi language. Some other contemporary poets, mostly Sufi saints used to write in this language.
Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th guru, was educated in Patna, where he learned Persian and Sanskrit.
He has composed two savaiyyas in Punjabi, but these are not part of Adi Granth. Similar is the popularity of Bully Shah, who was a Sufi Saint. He was composed a large number of songs.