Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognised languages.
The earliest works of Indian literature were orally transmitted. Sanskrit literature begins with the oral literature of the Rig Veda, a collection of literature dating to the period 1500–1200 BCE. The Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were subsequently codified and appeared towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. Classical Sanskrit literature developed rapidly during the first few centuries of the first millennium BCE, as did the Pāli Canon and Tamil Sangam literature.
In the medieval period, literature in Kannada and Telugu appeared in the 9th and 10th centuries respectively. Later, literature in Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, and Maithili appeared. Thereafter literature in various dialects of Hindi, Persian and Urdu began to appear as well. In 1913, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore became India's first Nobel laureate in literature. In contemporary Indian literature, there are two major literary awards; these are the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and the Jnanpith Award. Eight Jnanpith Awards each have been awarded in Hindi and Kannada, followed by five in Bengali and Malayalam, four in Odia, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu and Urdu, two each in Assamese, Konkani and Tamil, and one each in Sanskrit and Kashmiri۔
Vedas
Examples of early works written in Vedic Sanskrit include, the core Vedas and Upanishads. Other examples include the Sulba Sutras, which are some of the earliest texts on geometry.
Indian epic poetry
Ved Vyasa's Mahabharata and Valmiki's Ramayana, written in Epic Sanskrit, are regarded as the greatest Sanskrit epics.
Sanskrit literature
The famous poet and playwright Kālidāsa wrote one epic: Raghuvamsha (Dynasty of Raghu); it was written in Classical Sanskrit rather than Epic Sanskrit. Other examples of works written in Classical Sanskrit include the Pāṇini's Ashtadhyayi, which standardised the grammar and phonetics of Classical Sanskrit.