Ram Chandra Shukla, Author of the masterpiece “History of Hindi Literature”

Ram Chandra Shukla, author of History of Literature, was born in the village Agona of the District Basti in Uttar Pradesh. He was educated primarily in Urdu – English and Persian. He could study formally only upto Intermediate. Later, he self studied extensively the ancient as well as the modern literatures of Sanskrit, English, Bangla and Hindi. For sometimes, he worked as the Instructor of Painting in Mission High School at Mirzapur. In 1905 he shifted to Kashi after he was appointed on the post of the Assistant Editor for preparing Hindi Shabd Sagar in Kashi Nagri Pracharini Sabha and subsequently he succeeded in garnering the post of the Professor of Hindi in Kashi Hindu University. He moved on his career and when Babu Shyama Sundar Das took leave, he kept on working as the Head of the Hindi Department and he left for heavenly abode while rendering his services on this post itself. Only Kashi has the credit to be his arena of literary endeavors.

Ram Chandra Shukla is high quality Critic, Historian and man of letters of Hindi. The personality, which discloses itself through the wide range of knowledge and wisdom enshrined in the essays, books, original writings, editing and translations concerning diverse aspects of society, literature, linguistics, history, philosophy and science is unparallel. He presented new approach and concept to the Indian literatures and developed new horizons of Hindi Criticism. He appropriately reviewed the Hindi Poets while arranging the history of Hindi Literature and placed their place in the history. Besides critical writings, he also authored the precious articles related to emotions and other psychological aspects.               The style of Prem Chandra Shukla Ji is analytical, in which there is the confluence of thinking, deep reasoning scheme and benevolence. Utilizing irony and humor, he strengthens his style lively and powerful. We find the unity of the confidence, consolidation and bravery of thought in his writing. His diction and coherence of expressions are is ambient, in which from synonyms to Urdu words in vogue are used. Highly concentrated, thought oriented and formula sentence structure is one major characteristic of his prose style. His works are numerous, out of which History of Hindi Literature is very famous.

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