Three Answers to 'The First Hindi Novel': Facts, Criteria and the Limits of Credit
In a Hindi-sahitya moderation meeting, three scripts answer a six-mark question: हिन्दी का प्रथम उपन्यास कौन-सा है? Script 1 writes परीक्षा गुरु, 1882, श्रीनिवास दास. Script 2 writes चन्द्रकान्ता, 1888, देवकीनन्दन खत्री, and adds क्योंकि यही पहला उपन्यास है जिसे जनता ने पढ़ा. Script 3 writes गोदान, 1936, प्रेमचन्द, and adds क्योंकि यही पहला पूर्ण उपन्यास है. The key names only परीक्षा गुरु. A newly appointed examiner wants to give Script 2 and Script 3 zero; a senior teacher argues Script 2 deserves at least four marks because a popularity criterion is a legitimate literary-history argument. The same scripts place भारतेन्दु हरिश्चन्द्र in आदिकाल and call him a छायावादी कवि. The coordinator must fix the marks and add one clarifying paragraph to the key.
1. Mark the three answers out of six and justify each mark.
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Script 1: 6 of 6. Correct title, correct date, correct author, and the answer matches the conventional literary-history claim that the question is testing.
Script 2: 3 of 6. The title, date and author are all correct - that is worth 3, and it is not nothing. The word प्रथम is wrong, because चन्द्रकान्ता is not the earliest Hindi novel; it is the earliest widely read one. The reasoning the student offers is a real criterion, but it is a criterion about reception, not about priority, and the question asked for priority. Give 1 of the remaining 3 for stating a criterion explicitly, and explain the distinction in the remark rather than leaving it as a bare zero.
Script 3: 1 of 6. गोदान is a novel and the date and author are right, but 1936 is more than half a century after the first Hindi novel, and 'पूर्ण' is not a criterion anyone uses to establish priority. One mark for the accurate factual detail, with a remark directing the student to the nineteenth-century prose narrative unit.
The senior teacher is half right: Script 2's reasoning deserves recognition. Recognition is given in the mark for argument and in the remark, not by conceding a fact that is false.
2. Explain what a correct answer to a 'first' question must contain, and how the key should be worded so that good reasoning earns credit without blurring the fact.
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A correct answer to a priority question needs three things: the title, the year and the author, and it must be the item that the syllabus and the standard literary histories identify as first under the stated definition. For the Hindi novel the conventional answer is परीक्षा गुरु, 1882, श्रीनिवास दास, on the grounds that it is an extended prose narrative in Hindi, printed and circulated as a novel, and written before the other candidates.
The key should therefore separate two things that the students are confusing: priority and significance. Add a line such as: 'Answers naming चन्द्रकान्ता or later novels are incorrect on the question of priority, but a candidate who states and defends a criterion - for example, first novel to achieve wide readership - should receive the marks allotted to argument, provided the criterion is stated and applied consistently.'
This lets the examiner reward the student who understands that literary history is argued, while keeping the factual answer stable across centres. It also protects the board's key from the opposite complaint, that a well-reasoned answer was marked down simply for disagreeing with a list.
3. The same scripts place भारतेन्दु हरिश्चन्द्र in आदिकाल and call him a छायावादी. Diagnose both errors and say what the remark should teach.
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The two errors come from different confusions and should be corrected separately.
The period error. The standard periodisation of Hindi literature places आदिकाल roughly from the eleventh to the late fourteenth century, भक्तिकाल from the late fourteenth to about the seventeenth, रीतिकाल through the eighteenth and nineteenth, and the modern period from around the mid-nineteenth century. भारतेन्दु belongs to the nineteenth century, at the opening of the modern period, and his name is given to a transition usually called the भारतेन्दु युग. Calling him आदिकाल conflates the name of an age with the name of a movement.
The movement error. छायावाद is a twentieth-century movement associated with the generation after भारतेन्दु; भारतेन्दु is a pioneer of modern Hindi prose, drama, journalism, and a poet of revivalist and nationalist temper. He cannot be a छायावादी for the simple reason that the movement postdates him.
The remark should say both things in one sentence and add the general lesson: before attaching a poet to a period or a movement, check the dates and check what the movement was reacting against. That is a correction the student can reuse.