The literary tradition in India dominates a large part of Indian culture. Traditionally Indian literature was one of verse and oral. The ancient literary creations in India are the Vedas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (Hindu epics) and several other scriptures like Vaastu Shastra in architecture and town planning, and Arthashastra in political science.
Hindu drama, poetry and songs are more than thousand years old. Among the best known works in Sanskrit literature include Kalidasa’s Shakuntalam and Meghduta, Panini’s Asthadhyayi, Sudraka’s Mirchkatikaand Sri Harsha’s Ratnavali. Jaydev’s Geet Govinda and Vatsayana’s Kamasutra are some of the popular works of ancient Indian literature.
Muslim literary traditions also dominate a large part of Indian culture. In the medieval period, India was mostly under Muslim rulers. Muslim rulers were patronage of art, architecture and literature. Persian and Urdu poetry of Ghalib and Amir Khusrau are important works in Indian literature.
Indian literature flourished in regional languages as well. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay were great Bengali writers. Famous Marathi literary figures include sain-poets like Ramdas, Eknath, and modern writers like Vijay Tendulkar, P. L. Deshpande and Vishnu Vaman Shirvadakar. Some notable contributors in Hindi literature include Munshi Premchand, poets like Jaisshankar Prasad, Mahadevi Verma, Kedarnath Agarwal and Raghuveer Sahai. Kannada, Tamil, Malaylam literature contributed tremendously towards Indian literature.
Modern Indian literature provides a broad sense of the subcontinent's literary traditions from the mid-19th century to the present day. The work includes both in Hindi and in almost all regional languages and several other languages. India’s contribution to English literature in modern period is also remarkable. Some of the famous Indian writers in English include R. K. Narayan, Arundhati Roy, Raja Rao, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Deshpande, Vikram Chandra, Nayantara Sehgal, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Ashok Banker, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Kamala Markandaya.