page_title: Allahabad
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Allahabad / Culture / Literature
caption_attribution_description: Anand Bhavan, Allahabad.
context_page_description: Allahabad, officially known as Prayagraj, and also known as Illahabad and Prayag, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of Allahabad district—the most populous district in the state and 13th most populous district in India—and the Allahabad division. The city is the judicial capital of Uttar Pradesh with Allahabad High Court being the highest judicial body in the state. As of 2011, Allahabad is the seventh most populous city in the state, thirteenth in Northern India and thirty-sixth in India, with an estimated population of 1.11 million in the city and 1.21 million in its metropolitan region. In 2011 it was ranked the world's 40th fastest-growing city. Allahabad, in 2016, was also ranked the third most liveable city in the state and sixteenth in the country. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in the city.
  Allahabad lies close to Triveni Sangam, the "three-river confluence" of the Ganges, Yamuna and Sarasvati rivers. It plays a central role in Hindu scriptures.
context_section_description: Allahabad has a literary and artistic heritage; the former capital of the United Provinces, it was known as Prayag in the Vedas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Allahabad has been called the "literary capital of Uttar Pradesh", attracting visitors from East Asia; the Chinese travellers Faxian and Xuanzang found a flourishing city in the fifth and seventh centuries, respectively. The number of foreign tourists, which mostly consisted of Asians, visiting the city was 98,167 in 2010 which subsequently increased to 1,07,141 in 2014. The city has a tradition of political graffiti which includes limericks and caricatures. In 1900, Saraswati, the first Hindi-language monthly magazine in India, was started by Chintamani Ghosh. Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, the doyen of modern Hindi literature, remained its editors from 1903 to 1920. The Anand Bhavan, built during the 1930s as a new home for the Nehru family when the Swaraj Bhavan became the local Indian National Congress headquarters, has memorabilia from the Gandhi-Nehru family.
  During the 19th and 20th centuries, Hindi literature was modernised by authors such as Mahadevi Varma, Sumitranandan Pant, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala' and Harivansh Rai Bachchan. A noted poet was Raghupati Sahay, better known as Firaq Gorakhpuri. Gorakhpuri and Varma have received Jnanpith Awards. Allahabad is a publication centre for Hindi literature, including the Lok Bharti, Rajkamal and Neelabh. Persian and Urdu literature are also studied in the city. Akbar Allahabadi is a noted modern Urdu poet, and Nooh Narwi, Tegh Allahabadi, Shabnam Naqvi and Rashid Allahabadi hail from Allahabad. English author and 1907 Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling was an assistant editor and overseas correspondent for The Pioneer.
caption: Anand Bhavan, owned by Indian political leader Motilal Nehru
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTD", "Image Model": "C2Z,D520Z,C220Z", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "144", "Image YResolution": "144", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "83-1054", "Image DateTime": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "146", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "6566", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5979", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1024", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "768", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "482", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}