Don't seal my mouth
It has to speak for the coming generations
Don't restrain my pen
It has to signal the coming truth
Don't chain my feet
For I have to embark on a new path
            - Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala (1971)

The fiction in the Nepali language draws its inspiration from three  different sources: (i) the ancient Puranic and mediaeval literary traditions, (ii) the folktales, and (iii) the Western influence. In modern Nepali fiction, however, the last of these sources, that is the western influence, is singularly predominant. 

The genre of fiction includes two forms of literary compositions. They are the short story and the novel. Although the oft-quoted criteria like a concentrated delineation of a single character, a small dramatic incident, an aspect of someone's behavior, a crucial thought, or a part of mental make-up seem to form the essential attributes of a short  story to distinguish it from a novel which has a larger canvas to deal with a multifaceted character embracing various aspects of life touching many people, the only feature that makes a short story a short  story and a novel a novel is that a short t story is short and a novel is long.

Story telling has been as old as human civilization. The ancient Puranas are full of religious and moral stories. These were most interestingly told to the people by Sanskrit scholars on both formal and informal occasions. Apart from them folk tales have evolved with local touches in various parts where the Nepalese people have lived and worked for centuries. In addition to these traditions Arabic and Persian tales full of magical and romantic episodes from mediaeval times came to Nepal through India and were available in written forms. Thanks to the Nepalese enthusiasts who when exiled by the cruel rulers of the country went to Banaras in India to translate these and other interesting tales in the Nepali language to cater for the needs of their fellow countrymen. This was the reason why the first Nepali novel Bir charitra (1898) by Grirish Ballav Joshi is full of magic, romance and fantasies. The Gorkha Patra, which started in 1901 as a weekly, published innumerable stories of that kind. All these short tales, fanciful stories, mythological romances and ethical anecdotes were either didactic or merely recreational. They rarely ever contained the actual experiences of life.

It was 'Annapurna,' a short t story by Rup Narayan Sinha (1904-1955) published in a journal named Gorkha Sansar in 1927, that brought out the psychological plane of a Nepalese woman after the fashion of modern Western writers of fiction. It clearly showed the way the future Nepali short stories would take in both form and content.

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©Taranath Sharma, 2005