Page 49 - Journeys Through Society-7

7. The Flowering of

Regional Cultures

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Identify and name these dance forms with the help box:
Manipuri Bharatnatyam Kathak Kathakali Bhangra Odissi

The religious and secular texts of medieval India, by Jayadeva. The common people used Pali and
inform us about the cultural interactions, social Prakrit as languages of communication.
activity and trading patterns in a particular region. Many literary works were composed in this period.

The medieval period saw the flowering of a composite Somdev wrote Kathasaritsagar, a collection of stories
culture. It was mainly due to two reasons. The first was and legends. Kalhana’s Rajatarangini is a historically
the coming of the Turks, Afghans and Persian to India important work as it is a chronological account of the
which led to the intermingling of the cultures. The kings of Kashmir.
second was the rise of Bhakti between the eighth and The early medieval period saw the appearance of
fifteenth centuries. The Bhakti saints preached in the Apabhransa dialects. It developed during the period
language of the common people and travelled all spanning between the sixth and the fifteenth
across the country. This brought regional languages centuries. Jain libraries consist of a significant amount
and cultures to prominence. of Apabhransa literature. While Amir Khusrau and
kabir wrote in a language which was quite similar to
Development of Language and Literature in
modern Hindi, many poets, especially in regions that
North India were still ruled by Hindu kings, continued to write in

Literature is a unifying factor in a country as languages Apabhransa. The speeches of various Indo-Aryan
reflect the culture of the people. The study of languages, including Prakrit and Pali gradually
literature is essential to be able to understand the transformed into Apabhransa dialects which were
definitive and contextual bearings of different time used until about the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.
periods. The dialects later evolved into modern-day Indo-
Sanskrit always remained the language of the elite and Aryan languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi,
thus, the language of the court. One of the finest Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi, Konkani and Sinhala.
works in poetry in Sanskrit of medieval is Gita Govinda Namdev and Tukaram composed devotional poems in
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