Stories in prose were new to India until Banabhatta’s Kadambari, written in Sanskrit in the seventh century, is an early example of a story in prose in Indian literature.

The earliest novel in Marathi was Baba Padmanji’s Yamuna Paryatan (1857), which used a simple style of storytelling to speak about the plight of widows.

Few novels came out of attempts to translate English novels into Indian languages. For example, Chandu Menon, a subjudge from Malabar, tried to translate an English novel called Henrietta Temple written by Benjamin Disraeli into Malayalam.

Pariksha Guru, published in 1882, written by Srinivas Das of Delhi is the first proper modern novel in Hindi. It cautioned young men of well-to-do families against the dangerous influences of bad company and consequent loose morals.

It was in the twentieth century, that writers like Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) wrote novels that showed the darker side of colonial occupation.

The writings of Devaki Nandan Khatri created a novel reading public in Hindi. His best-seller, Chandrakanta is a romance with dazzling elements of fantasy and is believed to have contributed immensely in popularising the Hindi language.

Kandukuri Viresalingam (1848-1919) began translating Oliver Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield into Telugu. He abandoned this plan for similar reasons and instead wrote an original Telugu novel called Rajasekhara Caritamu in 1878.

The first novels in Assam were written by missionaries. Two of them were translations of Bengali including Phulmoni and Karuna.

Jonaki was an Assamiya journal that promoted nationalism. This journal opened up the opportunities for new authors to develop the novel.

Rajanikanta Bardoloi wrote the first major historical novel in Assam called Manomati (1900). It is set in the Burmese invasion stories about old soldiers who had fought in the 1819 campaign.