This book, which is published in two volumes, contains most of the papers presented at the Seventh International Conference on Early Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, held at Venice in 1997. They are grouped in part by geographical area, in part by subject matter, in a crossing of boundaries that sharpens the exchange between the two. In fact, they share a common feature which goes beyond regional specificities. This consists of the dialectical relationship between two elements, such as popular devotion as opposed to erudite religious faith, and their respective literary outputs; or the Muslim and Hindu religions, modified by Hind-Muslim synthesis, and the revival of the more specifically Hindu spirit. From another point of view, where papers have been grouped according to topic, those imbued with religious sentiment may be read in contrast with those in which religious sentiment is on a fundamentally aesthetic level.