Hazariprasad Dwivedi's 1946 novel, Bāṇabhaṭṭa kī ‘ātmakathā’, has long been considered one of the most prominent historical novels in modern Hindi literature, canonised in literary history for its progressive view of the past and for elaborating an autobiographical voice for the seventh-century Sanskrit poet, Bāṇa. However, the many layers of fictive authorship that enfold the main narrative of the text are rarely taken into account. Examination of the metatextual materials of this text reveal, however, that Bāṇabhaṭṭa kī ‘ātmakathā’ is meant to be read in terms of the problem of its authorship, in such a way as to problematise the autobiographical voice that it presents to the reader. In this article, I analyse this material and argue that the actual author of the text, described as an Austrian woman named Catherine, is most likely inspired by Stella Kramrisch. Further analysis shows this novel to be deeply shaped by the intellectual milieu of interwar Bengal, where Dwivedi was a teacher at Shantiniketan and engaged in commenting upon the complex intellectual traditions that existed in part of that world.

哈扎里普拉萨德·德维迪 (Hazariprasad Dwivedi) 于 1946 年创作的小说《Bāṇabhaṭṭa kī 'ātmakathā》长期以来一直被认为是现代印地语文学中最著名的历史小说之一，因其对过去的进步观点和为 7 世纪梵文阐述自传式的声音而在文学史上被奉为经典。诗人巴纳。然而，包含文本主要叙述的多层虚构作者很少被考虑在内。然而，对该文本的元文本材料的检查表明，Bāṇabhaṭṭa kī 'ātmakathā'应该根据其作者身份问题来阅读，从而对其向读者呈现的自传声音提出问题。在本文中，我分析了这些材料，并认为该文本的实际作者（被描述为一位名叫凯瑟琳的奥地利妇女）很可能受到斯特拉·克拉姆里斯的启发。进一步的分析表明，这部小说深受两次世界大战期间孟加拉的知识环境的影响，德维维迪是孟加拉尚蒂尼克坦大学的一名教师，致力于评论该世界部分地区存在的复杂知识传统。