History of Hindi Literature — The Four Kaals, Their Poets and the Works Papers Keep Asking

Ask a Hindi paper who wrote Padmavat and it wants one word. Ask which kaal Bihari belongs to and it wants one word again. The history of Hindi literature is examined almost entirely as matching — a name to a work, a work to a period, a period to the critic who named it — and that is exactly why it is scoring. There is nothing to derive and nothing to argue with.

Ramchandra Shukla's four-fold division, set out in Hindi Sahitya ka Itihas in 1929, is the one every paper follows: Adikal, Bhaktikal, Ritikal and Adhunik Kal. Learn those four boundaries first. A question that hands you a poet and asks for a period is unanswerable without them, while a question that hands you a period and asks for a poet turns into a short list you can recall. Everything else here — the branches, the dialects, the landmark works — hangs off that skeleton.

1. 'Prithviraj Raso', generally treated as the first mahakavya of Hindi, was composed by:

2. The Sufi premakhyan 'Padmavat' was written by:

3. Acharya Ramchandra Shukla named the Adikal of Hindi literature as:

4. The Ashtachhap poets belong to which branch of Bhaktikal?

5. The Chhayavad epic 'Kamayani' was written by:

6. Bihari, the author of 'Satsai', is classified among which Ritikal poets?

7. 'Tar Saptak' (1943), which began the Prayogvad movement, was edited by:

8. Which of the following works is composed in Brajbhasha?