著者

安永 有希

出版者

東洋文庫

雑誌

東洋学報 = The Toyo Gakuho (ISSN:03869067)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.103, no.1, pp.029-057, 2021-06-30

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Towards the end of the 19th century, Hindi writer Devakīnandana Khatrī (1861–1913) incorporated the two motifs of the labyrinth (tilasma) and the master of deception capable of solving it (aiyāra) into his first novel entitled Candrakāntā (first published in 1892), an epic fantasy which opened up a whole new genre of popular Hindi fiction, called “Tilasmī Aiyārī upanyāsa,” which has been widely read ever since. Despite the plethora of similar works following Khatrī’s style, none were able to eclipse Candrakāntā and its 24-part sequel, Candrakāntā Santati. After a surge of Tilasmī Aiyārī novels during Khatrī’s lifetime, the number of new works began to decline during the early 20th century as realism came to dominate Hindi fiction. The research to date on the Tilasmī Aiyārī novel has been limited to commentaries on Khatrī’s masterpieces and introductions to other authors adopting his style, while no authoritative bibliography has yet been compiled covering the whole genre. In response, this article is an attempt to clarify the history of the Tilasmī Aiyārī novel, as one breakthrough in the early stages of the development of the Hindi novel, based on the library catalogs created in the midst of British colonial censorship, which, while by no means complete, still make it possible to get some idea of circumstances surrounding Hindi publishing at that time. In addition to the available catalogs, advertisements appearing in the actual publications provide important clues to the publishing history of the Tilasmī Aiyārī genre. The author also traces the origin of the term “Tilasmī Aiyārī upanyāsa,” and its “discovery” by later literary critics, since there was no such characterization of Khatrī’s style, or its imitators, during its heyday.