2.  The ancient Indian literary tradition was primarily oral
i.e. sung or recited.
 Early Indian literary works were either poetic or
philosophical works.
 The earliest literary works in India were the Sanskrit
sacred Vedic texts.

3.  Vedas
-first Indian literary work
-it was a collection of Sanskrit hymns that was orally
transmitted
-either sung or recited
-composed as early as 1500 to 1200 BCE but they were
written down only at the end of the first millennium
BCE
-the oldest Veda texts date to around 11th century.

4.  Two great epic poems
-Ramayana
-Mahabharata
-created sometime between the 6th and 1st
century BCE.
 Mahabharata
-the longest poem in the world
- 100,000 stanzas strong

5.  religious importance of the early Sanskrit texts and the
influence of Sanskrit on many Indian languages
enabled Sanskrit literature to flourish over one
millennium
 most Sanskrit works from the so-called classical
Sanskrit literature have been lost

6.  The most prominent surviving Sanskrit literary from
the classical period include the:
-Abhijnanasakuntalam by Kalidasa
-Arthashastra and Neetishastra by Chanakya
-Vasavadatta by Subandhu and his son Skandagupta
-Dashakumaracharita by Dandin
-Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana.

7.  literary works that were created between the 11th and
early 19th century reveal a major influence of Buddhist
and Jain works
 Sanskrit gradually give way to the Prakrit language,
especially in Buddhist and Jain texts as well as other
common Indian languages

8.  The Muslim invasions from the early 8th century
onwards and of course the arrival of the British also
left their mark on Indian literature
 The period following the decline of the Classical
Sanskrit literature until the mid-19th century was
dominated by the so-called bhakti or devotional
poetry in all Indian languages.

9.  Mid-19 century
- The period of the modern Indian literature starts
with the first movements for independence
 Influenced by both adaption of the Western thoughts
and ideas on the other hand their rejection

10.  Mid-19th and Mid-20th century
 the rise of a large number of literary works which often
incorporated both the elements of Sanskrit and Western
literature
 20th
 emergence of the Indian English literature which refers
to literary works that are written by Indian authors in
English language

11.  Rabindranath Tagore
 V. S. Naipaul
 R. K. Narayan (Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer
Narayanaswami)
 Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
 Salman Rushdie
 Mahadevi Varma
 Arundhati Roy
 Kiran Desai

12.  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/285771/I
ndian-literature
 http://www.iloveindia.com/literature/
 http://www.easternbooks.co.uk/indian-literature.html
 http://indianscriptures.50webs.com/anciLitr.htm
 http://www.diehardindian.com/culture/literatr.php