Sibnarayan Ray is the Chairman of the Department of Indian Studies at the University of Melbourne; predictably, therefore, those essays in this collection that deal with Indian literature do provoke one’s interest. Mr Ray is especially enlightening about the problems facing the contemporary Indian writer. In a revealing essay devoted to this subject he explains that, apart from English, there are at least a dozen major languages in India each with a well-developed literature of its own. Add to this eight distinct scripts in use, each cast in type, and that translations between the languages are few.
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