India, Aug. 22 -- Menus Odia wrote the first "tribal novel", Maturaa Kahni around 1920. Written in Mundari, the voluminous work was approximately 1,700 pages long. Interestingly, Odia was the stenographer of the German linguist and missionary Johannes Baptist Hoffman, who wrote The Encyclopaedia Mundarica. Writer and professor Dineshwar Prasad referred to Odia's work as the "Mahabharata of Munda life". It's often been said that what is not found in the Mahabharata is not found in India; Maturaa Kahni holds a similar significance for those who want to understand Munda life and culture.

India has a long history of tribal writing and today, writers like Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar are prominent in the Indian English sphere. While they are now ...