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TAKEN in conjunction with my Sanskrit Drama, published in 1924, this work covers the field of Classical Sanskrit Literature, as opposed to the Vedic Literature, the epics, and the Puranas. To bring the subject—matter within the limits of a single volume has rendered it necessary to treat the scientific literature briefly, and to avoid discussions of its subject-matter which appertain rather to the historian of grammar, phi1osophy, law, medicine, astronomy, or mathematics, than to the literary historian. This mode of treatment has rendered it possible, for the first time in any treatise in English on Sanskrit Literature, to pay due attention to the literary qualities of the Kavya. Though it was to Englishmen, such as Sir William Jones and H. T. Cole-brooke, that our earliest knowledge of Sanskrit poetry was due, no English poet shared Goethe’s marvellous appreciation of the merits of works known to him only through the distorting medium of translations, and attention in England has usually been limited to the Vedic literature, as a source for comparative philology, the history of religion, or Indo—European , antiquities ; to the mysticism and monism of , Sanskrit philosophy ; and to the fables and fairy-tales in their relations to western parallels.
The neglect of Sanskrit Kavya is doubtless natural. The great poets of India wrote for audiences of experts; they were masters of the learning of their day, long trained in the use of language, and they aim to please by subtlety, not simplicity of effect. They had at their disposal a singularly beautiful speech, and they- commanded elaborate and most effective metres. ‘Under these circumstances it was inevitable that their works should be difficult, but of those who on that score pass them by it may fairly be said ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai. It is in the great writers of Kavya alone, headed by Kalidasa, that we find depth of feeling for life and nature matched with perfection of expression and rhythm. The Kavya literature includes some of the great poetry of the world, but it can never expect to attain wide popularity in the West, for it is essentially untranslatable;
German poets like Ruckert can, indeed, base excellent work on Sanskrit originals, but the effects produced are achieved by wholly different means, while English efforts at verse translations fall invariably below a tolerable mediocrity, their diffuse tepidity contrasting painfully with the brilliant condensation of style, the elegance of metre, and the close adaptation of sound to sense of the originals. I have, therefore, as in my Sanskrit Drama, illustrated the merits of the poets by Sanskrit extracts, adding merely a literal English version, in which no note is taken of variations of text or renderings. To save space l have in the main dealt only with works earlier than A.D. 1200, though especially in the case of the scientific literature important books of later date are briefly noticed.
This book was sent in, completed for the press, in January 1926, but pleasure of work at the University Press precluded printing until the summer of 1927, when it was deemed best, in order not to delay progress, to assign to this preface the notice of such new discoveries and theories of 1926 and 1927 as might have permanent interest.
On the early development of the Kavya welcome light has been thrown by Professor H. Luders’s edition of the fragments found in Central Asia of the Kalpanamanditika of Kumaralata, which is the true description of the work hitherto known to us through a Chinese translation as the Sutralamkara of Acvaghosa. That work, it is suggested, was very different in character from Kumaralata’s. It may have been an exposition in verse, possibly with prose additions, of the Canon of the Sarvastivadins, and it may be represented by fragments still extant; this suggestion can be supported by Asa1aga’s choice of title, Mahayanasutra-lamkara, for his exposition of Mahayana tenets. But that is still merely a conjecture, and even less proved is the view that Subandhu’s famous allusion Bauddhasamgatim ivalamkarabhusitam is to such a text as that ascribed to Acvaghosa. Kumaralata may well have been a younger contemporary of Acvaghosa, who lived after the death of Kaniska, a fact which explains an old crux, the difficulty of ascribing to Acvaghosa the references in the Sutralamkara which seemed inconsistent with the traditional relation of the patriarch and that king. How the Chinese version of the Kalpanamanditika, ‘that which is adorned by poetic invention’, came to bear the style Sutralamkara, remains an unexplained problem.
The fragments shed a very interesting light on the development of the style of prose mingled with verses which appears in a more elaborate form in the Jatakamala. The narratives, eighty in number, which, with ten parables, make up the work, begin with the enunciation of some doctrine, which is then established by means of an appropriate narrative; unlike the Jatakamala, the text does not follow a stereotyped plan of drawing out at the close of each tale the moral which it inculcates. The stanzas used are normally portions of the speeches of the dramatis personae; there is a complete breach with the tradition of the canonical texts which introduce such verses by the term bhasam bhasate; but of course this does not mean that Kumaralata, or Arya Cura who follows this plan in the Jatakamala, is the author of all the verses used; doubtless he often adopts or adapts current maxims. Narrative or descriptive stanzas are rare, and they are marked out for the benefit of the reciter by the words vaksyate hi. Arya Cura, on the other hand, shows a distinct advance; he uses descriptive or narrative stanzas to the extent of over a fifth of his total number of verses, and omits any introduction, inserting them freely to beautify his prose narration. The parables take a different form: in them a prose parable (drstanta) is simply followed by a prose exposition (artha). The language shows the same adherence to correct Sanskrit, with occasional lapses, as in Acvaghosa, and there is a rich variety of metres, including the earliest Aryas in Kavya so far datable with reasonable certainty; the Cloka, Upajati, Vasantatilaka, and Cardulavikridita are affected. Very important is the fact that Prakrit lyric written in the Prakrit of the grammarians (Middle Prakrit) is preluded in two Prakrit Aryas, written in Old Cauraseni, which already manifest that affection for long compounds which is carried to excess in the Gaudavaha.
Preface | vii | |
Kumaralata and the early Kavya, Sanskrit, and Prakrit | viii | |
Kalidasa’s Date and Place of Birth | x | |
Greek and Indian Fables. | x | |
The Dramas of Bhasa | xii | |
Dandin and the Avantisundarikata | xvi | |
The Authenticity of the Arthacastra | xvii | |
The Dates of the Philosophical Systems | xx | |
Medical Fragments from Turkestan | xxiii | |
The Indian Origin of the Numerals | xxiii | |
Sanskrit as a vernacular | xxiv | |
PART I. THE LANGUAGE | ||
I. | Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Apabhranca. | 3 |
1. | The Origin of Sanskrit | 3 |
2. | The Character and Extent of the Use of Sanskrit | 8 |
3. | The Characteristics and Development of Sanskrit in Literature | 17 |
4. | The Prakrits | 26 |
5. | Apabhranca | 32 |
PART II. BELLES-LETTRES AND POETICS | ||
II. | The Origin and Development of Kavya Literature | 39 |
1. | The Sources of the Kavya | 39 |
2. | The Testimony of the Ramayana | 42 |
3. | The Evidence of Patanjali and Pingala | 45 |
4. | Kavya in Inscriptions | 48 |
5. | The Kamasutra and the Poet’s Milieu | 51 |
III | Acvaghosa and Early Buddhist Kavya | 55 |
1. | Acvaghosa’s Works | 55 |
2. | Acvaghosa’s Style and Language | 59 |
3. | The Avadanas | 64 |
4. | Arya Cura and later Poetry | 67 |
IV. | Kalidasa and the Guptas | 74 |
1. | The Guptas and the Brahmin Revival | 74 |
2. | Harisena and Vatsabhatti | 77 |
3. | Kalidasa’s Life | 79 |
4. | The Rtusamhara | 82 |
5. | The Meghaduta | 84 |
6. | The Kumarasambhava | 87 |
7. | The Raghuvanca | 92 |
8. | Kalidasa’s Thought | 98 |
9. | Kalidasa’s Style and Metre | 101 |
V. | Bharavi, Bhatti, Kumaradasa, and Magha | 199 |
1. | Bharavi | 109 |
2. | Bhatti | 109 |
3. | Kumaradasa | 119 |
4. | Magha | 124 |
VI. | The Lesser Epic Poets | 132 |
VII. | Historical Kavya | 144 |
1. | Indian Historical Writing | 144 |
2. | The Beginnings of History | 147 |
3. | Bilhana | 153 |
4. | Kalhana’s Life and Times | 158 |
5. | The Rajatarangini and its Sources | 161 |
6. | Kalhana as a Historian | 164 |
7. | Kalhana’s Style | 169 |
8. | Minor Historical Kavya | 172 |
VIII. | Bhartrhari, Amaru, Bilhana, and Jayadeva | 175 |
1. | Bhartrhari | 175 |
2. | Amaru | 183 |
3. | Bilhana | 188 |
4. | Jayadeva | 190 |
IX. | Lyric Poetry and the Anthologies | 199 |
1. | Secular Poetry | 199 |
2. | Religious Poetry | 210 |
3. | The Anthologies | 222 |
4 | Prakrit Lyrics | 223 |
X. | Gnomic and Didactic Poetry | 227 |
1. | Gnomic Poetry | 227 |
2. | Didactic Poetry | 236 |
XI. | The didactic Fable | 242 |
1. | The Origin of the Fable | 242 |
2. | The Reconstruction of the Pancatantra and its Origin | 246 |
3. | The Subject-matter of the Pancatantra | 248 |
4. | The Style and Language of the Pancatantra | 255 |
5. | The Derivative Forms of the Pancatantra | 259 |
6. | The Hitopadeca | 263 |
XII. | The Brhatkatha and its Descendants | 266 |
1. | Gunadhya and the Brhatkatha | 266 |
2. | The Brhatkathaclokasamgraha of Budhasvamin | 272 |
3. | The Kashmirian Brhatkatha | 275 |
4. | Ksemendra’s Brhatkathamanjari | 276 |
5. | Somadeva’s Kathasaritsagara | 281 |
XIII. | The Romantic and the Didactic Tale | 288 |
1. | The Romantic Tale | 288 |
2. | The Didactic Tale | 293 |
XIV. | The Great Romances | 296 |
1. | The Age and Works of Dandin | 296 |
2. | The Dacakumaracarita | 297 |
3. | The Content and Style of the Dacakumaracarita | 299 |
4. | Subandhu | 307 |
5. | The Vasavadatta | 308 |
6. | Bana’s Life and Works | 314 |
7. | The Harsacarita | 316 |
8. | The Kadambari | 319 |
9. | Bana’s Style | 326 |
XV. | The Aims and Achievement of Sanskrit Poetry | 338 |
1. | The Romances | 331 |
2. | The Achievement | 344 |
XVII. | The West and Indian Literature | 352 |
1. | The Fables and Marchen of Greece and India | 352 |
2. | The Translations of the Pancatantra | 357 |
3. | The Cukasaptati | 359 |
4. | Other Cases of Contact between East and West | 359 |
5. | The Romance in Greece and India | 365 359 |
6. | The Hexameter and Indian Metre | 370 |
XVIII. | Theories of Poetry | 372 |
1. | The Beginnings of Theory on Poetry | 372 |
2. | The Early Schools of Poetics | 375 |
3. | The Doctrine of Dhvani | 375 |
4. | The Critics and Supporters of the Doctrine of Dhvani | 391 |
XIX | The Origin and Characteristics of the Scientific Literature | 403 |
1. | The Origin of the Castras | 403 |
2. | The Characteristics of the Scientific Literature | 406 |
XX. | Lexicography and Metrics | 412 |
1. | The Origin and Characteristics of Sanskrit Lexicography | 412 |
2. | The Extant Lexica | 413 |
3. | Treatises on Metre | 415 |
4. | The Metres of Classical Poetry | 417 |
XXI. | Grammar | 422 |
1. | The Beginnings of Grammatical Study | 422 |
2. | Panini and his Followers | 423 |
3. | The Later Schools | 431 |
4. | Grammars of Prakrit | 433 |
XXII. | Civil and Religious Law (Dharmacastra) | 437 |
1. | The Origin of the Dharmacastras | 437 |
2. | The Smrti of Manu | 439 |
3. | The Later Smrtis | 445 |
4. | The Digests of Law | 448 |
XXIII. | The Science of Politics and Practical Life (Arthacastra, Niticastra) | 450 |
1. | The Origin of the Arthacastra | 450 |
2. | The Content and Form of the Kautiliya Arthacastra. | 452 |
3. | The Authenticity of the Arthacastra | 458 |
4. | Later Treatises | 462 |
5. | Ancillary Sciences | 464 |
XXIV. | The Science of Love (Kamacastra) | 467 |
XXV. | Philosophy and Religion | 471 |
1. | The Beginnings of Indian Philosophy | 471 |
2. | The Purvamimansa | 472 |
3. | The Vedanta | 474 |
(a) The Doctrine of Non-duality and Illusion | 475 | |
(b) The Purvamimansa | 472 | |
(c) Other Commentators | 479 | |
4. | Theology and Mysticism | 479 |
5. | Logic and Atomism | 482 |
6. | The Samkhya and Yoga Schools | 487 |
7. | Buddhism | 491 |
8. | Jainism | 497 |
9. | Carvakas or Lokayatas | 498 |
10. | Historians of Philosophy | 499 |
11. | Greece and Indian Philosophy | 500 |
XXVI | Medicine | 505 |
1. | The Development of Indian Medicine | 505 |
2. | The Older Samhitas | 506 |
3. | The Medical Tracts in the Bower MS. | 509 |
4. | Later Medical Works | 510 |
5. | Greece and Indian Medicine | 513 |
XXVII. | Astronomy, Astrology, and Mathematics | 516 |
1. | The pre-scientific Period | 516 |
2. | The Period of the Siddhantas | 517 |
3. | Aryabhata and later Astronomers | 521 |
4. | Aryabhata and later Mathematicians | 523 |
5. | Greece and Indian Mathematics | 525 |
6. | Varahamihira and early Astrologers | 528 |
7. | Greece and Indian Astrology | 530 |
8. | Varahamihira’s Poetry | 532 |
9. | Carvakas or Lokayatas | 498 |
10. | Historians of Philosophy | 499 |
11. | Greece and Indian Philosophy | 500 |
XXVI. | Medicine | 505 |
1. | The Development of Indian Medicine | 505 |
2. | The Older Samhitas | 506 |
3. | The Medical Tracts in the Bower MS. | 509 |
4. | Later Medical Works | 510 |
5. | Greece and Indian Medicine | 513 |
XXVII. | Astronomy, Astrology, and Mathematics | 516 |
1. | The pre-scientific Period | 516 |
2. | The Period of the Siddhantas | 517 |
3. | Aryabhata and later Astronomers | 521 |
4. | Aryabhata and later Mathematicians | 523 |
5. | Greece and Indian Mathematics | 525 |
6. | Varahamihira and early Astrologers | 528 |
7. | Greece and Indian Astrology | 530 |
8. | Varahamihira’s Poetry | 532 |
9. | Later Works on Astrology | 534 |
ENGLISH INDEX | 537 | |
SANSKRIT INDEX | 559 |
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