A novel of epic proportions, written in four parts from 1887 to 1901, Saraswatichandra is both an enactment and the embodiment of the life philosophy of one man, and his sole mission.
Part 1, Buddhidhan's Administration, narrates the story of one individual's extraordinary rise from poverty to power, to become the Karbhari of Suvarnapur. East India Company's growing presence in the Indian native states provides the setting for the rivalry between Buddhidhan and the ruling Karbhari, Shathrai, and the royal intrigue involving Bhupsinh, claimant to the throne of Suvarnapur. The parallel story threading through all four parts is of an unusual and abiding love between Sarasvatichandra and Kumud who, betrothed young, fall in love before marriage through an exchange of letters, words and worlds.
Written sixty years before Independence, the novel holds up a fascinating mirror to Gujarati.society of that time, the joint family, particularly the role of women, and life in the princely states, against the backdrop of a nation in transition at the turn of the century-culturally, politically, and ideologically.
Before the advent of Gandhi, arguably no other work has so profoundly influenced the ethos and imagination of Gujarat as Sarasvatichandra. Part II, III, and IV, also translated by Tridip Suhrud, an acknowledged scholar of nineteenth and twentieth century Gujarat, are forthcoming.
Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi was born on 20 October 1855 at Nadiad, in Gujarat. He published the first part of Sarasvatichandra in 1887, the second part in 1892, the third in 1898, and the fourth in 1901. He is also the author of Snehmudra (1889), Navalram Nu Kavijivan (1891), The Classical Poets of Gujarat and Their Influence on Society and Morals (1894), Lilavati Jivankala (1905) and Dayaram No Aksherdeha (1908). He presided over the first session of the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad in 1905. He died on 4 January 1907 in Bombay.
Tovels have in these days become a universal luxury and in No competing for public interest have succeeded to an extent almost unrivalled. The very natural result has been that the bulk of fiction in the West has ceased to aspire beyond an artistic display of such of the sentimental and emotional idiosyncrasies of mankind as happen to tickle the fancy of the ordinary reader. It is however certain-and the higher class of novelists never fail to recognise and claim-that the functions of the novel are more numerous, higher and more sacred than the mere pandering to the taste of the novel reading public.
The writer of these pages admits that the origin of his undertaking was in the first instance neither so ordinary nor so ambitious. Like all who live and look around, he had his memoranda of what may be called the substrata of this our world of human affairs. When he first desired to give an objective existence to all that so sketched out in his mind's book, he intended to give it the form of essays. Second thoughts discovered that the reading class in Gujarat were, for various reasons, difficult to reach through abstruse or discursive matter, and that illustrations of real or ideal life would be the best medium, best in the sense of being attractive and impressive, for communications like those which the writer has to make. Hence, the present contribution.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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