History of Sanskrit Literature -1 (BY ARTHUR A. MACDONELL)

History of Sanskrit Literature

(BY

ARTHUR A. MACDONELL, M. A., Ph.D.

BODEN PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT)

 

BODEN PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND FELLOW OF BALLIOL

PREFACE

It is undoubtedly a surprising fact that down to the present

time no history of Sanskrit literature as a whole

has been written in English. For not only does that

literature possess much intrinsic merit, but the light it

sheds on the life and thought of the population of our

Indian Empire ought to have a peculiar interest for the

British nation. Owing chiefly to the lack of an adequate

account of the subject, few, even of the young men

who leave these shores every year to be its future rulers,

possess any connected information about the literature

in which the civilisation of Modern India can be

traced to its sources, and without which that civilisation

cannot be fully understood. It was, therefore, with the

greatest pleasure that I accepted Mr. Gosse's invitation

to contribute a volume to this series of Literatures of

the World; for this appeared to me to be a peculiarly

good opportunity for diffusing information on a subject

in which more than twenty years of continuous study

and teaching had instilled into me an ever-deepening

interest.

Professor Max Miiller's valuable History of Ancient

Sanskrit Literature is limited in its scope to the Vedic

period. It has long been out of print; and Vedic research

has necessarily made great strides in the forty

years which have elapsed since its publication.

The only book accessible to the English reader on

vi PREFACE

the history of Sanskrit literature in general has hitherto

been the translation of Professor Weber's Academical

Lectures on Indian Literature, as delivered nearly half a

century ago at Berlin. The numerous and often very

lengthy notes in this work supply the results of research

during the next twenty-five years ; but as these notes often

modify, or even cancel, the statements of the unaltered

original text of 1852, the result is bewildering to the

student. Much new light has been thrown on various

branches of Sanskrit literature since 1878, when the last

notes were added to this translation, which, moreover, is

not in any way adapted to the wants of the general reader.

The only work on the subject appealing to the latter is the

late Sir M. Monier-Williams's Indian Wisdom. That book,

however, although it furnishes, in addition to the translated

specimens, some account of the chief departments

of Sanskrit literature, is not a history. There is thus

distinctly a twofold demand in this country for a history

of Sanskrit literature. The student is in want of a guide

setting forth in a clear and trustworthy manner the

results of research down to the present time, and the

cultivated English reader looks for a book presenting in

an intelligible and attractive form information which

must have a special interest to us owing to our close

relations with India.

To lack of space, no less than to the scope of the

present series, is due the exclusion of a full account of

the technical literature of law, science, and art, which

contains much that would interest even the general

reader ; but the brief epitome given in the Appendix

will, I hope, suffice to direct the student to all the most

important authorities.

As to the bibliographical notes, I trust that, though

PREFACE vii

necessarily restricted in extent, they will enable the

student to find all further information he may want on

matters of detail ; for instance, the evidence for approximate

dates, which had occasionally to be summarily

stated even in the text.

In writing this history of Sanskrit literature, I have

dwelt more on the life and thought of Ancient India,

which that literature embodies, than would perhaps have

appeared necessary in the case of a European literature.

This I have done partly because Sanskrit literature, as

representing an independent civilisation entirely different

from that of the West, requires more explanation than

most others ; and partly because, owing to the remarkable

continuity of Indian culture, the religious and social

institutions of Modern India are constantly illustrated by

those of the past.

Besides the above-mentioned works of Professors Max

Miiller and Weber, I have made considerable use of

Professor L. von Schroeder's excellent Indiens Literatur

und Cultur (1887). I have further consulted in one

way or another nearly all the books and monographs

mentioned in the bibliographical notes. Much of what

I have written is also based on my own studies of Sanskrit

literature.

All the quotations which I have given by way of illustration

I have myself carefully selected from the original

works. Excepting the short extracts on page 333 from

Cowell and Thomas's excellent translation of the Harshacharita,

all the renderings of these are my own. In my

versions of Rigvedic stanzas I have, however, occasionally

borrowed a line or phrase from Griffith. Nearly all my

renderings are as close as the use of metre permits. I

have endeavoured to reproduce, as far as possible, the

viii PREFACE

measures of the original, except in the quotations from

the dramas, where I have always employed blank verse.

I have throughout refrained from rhyme, as misrepresenting

the original Sanskrit.

In the transliteration of Sanskrit words I have been

guided by the desire to avoid the use of letters which

might mislead those who do not know Sanskrit. I have

therefore departed in a few particulars from the system

on which Sanskrit scholars are now almost unanimously

agreed, and which I otherwise follow myself. Hence for c

and ch I have written ch and chh respectively, though in the

rare cases where these two appear in combination I have

retained cch (instead of chckk). I further use sh for the

lingual s, and c for the palatal /, and ri for the vowel r.

J have not thought it necessary to distinguish the guttural

h and the palatal ft by diacritical marks, simply printing,

for instance, anga and pancha. The reader who is unacquainted

with Sanskrit will thus pronounce all words

correctly by simply treating all the consonants as in

English ; remembering only that the vowels should be

sounded as in Italian, and that e and o are always long.

I am indebted for some suggestions to my friend Mr.

F. C. S. Schiller, Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi

College, who looked through the final proof of the

chapter on Philosophy. To my pupil Mr. A. B. Keith,

Boden Sanskrit scholar and Classical scholar of Balliol,

who has read all the final proofs with great care, I owe

not only the removal of a number of errors of the press,

but also several valuable criticisms regarding matters

of fact.

A HISTORY OF

SANSKRIT LITERATURE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Since the Renaissance there has been no event of such

world-wide significance in the history of culture as the

discovery of Sanskrit literature in the latter part of

the eighteenth century. After Alexander's invasion, the

Greeks became to some extent acquainted with the

learning of the Indians ; the Arabs, in the Middle Ages,

introduced the knowledge of Indian science to the

West ; a few European missionaries, from the sixteenth

century onwards, were not only aware of the existence

of, but also acquired some familiarity with, the ancient

language of India ; and Abraham Roger even translated

the Sanskrit poet Bhartrihari into Dutch as early as

165 1. Nevertheless, till about a hundred and twenty

years ago there was no authentic information in

Europe about the existence of Sanskrit literature, but

only vague surmise, finding expression in stories about

the wisdom of the Indians. The enthusiasm with which

Voltaire in his Essai sur les Mceurs et TEsprit des

Nations greeted the lore of the Ezour Vedam, a work

2 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

brought from India and introduced to his notice in

the middle of the last century, was premature. For

this work was later proved to be a forgery made in

the seventeenth century by a Jesuit missionary. The

scepticism justified by this fabrication, and indulged in

when the discovery of the genuine Sanskrit literature

was announced, survived far into the present century.

Thus, Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, wrote an essay

in which he endeavoured to prove that not only

Sanskrit literature, but also the Sanskrit language, was

a forgery made by the crafty Brahmans on the model

of Greek after Alexander's conquest. Indeed, this view

was elaborately defended by a professor at Dublin as

late as the year 1838.

The first impulse to the study of Sanskrit was given

by the practical administrative needs of our Indian

possessions. Warren Hastings, at that time Governor-

General, clearly seeing the advantage of ruling the

Hindus as far as possible according to their own laws

and customs, caused a number of Brahmans to prepare

a digest based on the best ancient Indian legal authorities.

An English version of this Sanskrit compilation,

made through the medium of a Persian translation,

was published in 1776. The introduction to this work,

besides giving specimens of the Sanskrit script, for the

first time supplied some trustworthy information about

the ancient Indian language and literature. The earliest

step, however, towards making Europe acquainted with

actual Sanskrit writings was taken by Charles Wilkins,

who, having, at the instigation of Warren Hastings,

acquired a considerable knowledge of Sanskrit at

Benares, published in 1785 a translation of the Bhagavad-

gita, or The Song of the Adorable One, and two years

PIONEERS OF SANSKRIT STUDIES 3

later, a version of the well-known collection of fables

entitled Hitopadeca, or Friendly Advice.

Sir William Jones (1746-94) was, however, the

pioneer of Sanskrit studies in the West. It was this

brilliant and many-sided Orientalist who, during his

too brief career of eleven years in India, first aroused

a keen interest in the study of Indian antiquity by his

unwearied literary activity and by the foundation of the

Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784. Having rapidly acquired

an accurate knowledge of Sanskrit, he published in

1789 a translation of akuntaldy the finest Sanskrit drama,

which was greeted with enthusiasm by such judges as

Herder and Goethe. This was followed by a translation

of the Code of Manuy the most important of the

Sanskrit law-books. To Sir William Jones also belongs

the credit of having been the first man who ever printed

an edition of a Sanskrit text. This was a short lyrical

poem entitled Ritusamhdra, or Cycle of the Seasons, published

in 1792.

We next come to the great name of Henry Thomas

Colebrooke (1765-1837), a man of extraordinary industry,

combined with rare clearness of intellect and

sobriety of judgment. The first to handle the Sanskrit

language and literature on scientific principles, he published

many texts, translations, and essays dealing with

almost every branch of Sanskrit learning, thus laying

the solid foundations on which later scholars have

built.

While Colebrooke was beginning his literary career

in India during the opening years of the century, the

romance of war led to the practical knowledge of Sanskrit

being introduced on the Continent of Europe.

Alexander Hamilton (1765-1824), an Englishman who

4 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

had acquired a good knowledge of Sanskrit in India,

happened to be passing through France on his way home

in 1802. Hostilities breaking out afresh just then, a

decree of Napoleon, directed against all Englishmen in

the country, kept Hamilton a prisoner in Paris. During

his long involuntary stay in that city he taught Sanskrit

to some French scholars, and especially to the

German romantic poet Friedrich Schlegel. One of

the results of these studies was the publication by

Schlegel of his work On the Language and Wisdom of

the Indians (1808). This book produced nothing less than

a revolution in the science of language by the introduction

of the comparative and the historical method. It

led to the foundation of the science of comparative

philology by Franz Bopp in his treatise on the conjugational

system of Sanskrit in comparison with that of

Greek, Latin, Persian, and German (1816). Schlegel's

work, moreover, aroused so much zeal for the study of

Sanskrit in Germany, that the vast progress made since

his day in this branch of learning has been mainly due to

the labours of his countrymen.

In the early days of Sanskrit studies Europeans

became acquainted only with that later phase of the

ancient language of India which is familiar to the Pandits,

and is commonly called Classical. Sanskrit. So it

came about that the literature composed in this dialect

engaged the attention of scholars almost exclusively

down to the middle of the century. Colebrooke had,

it is true, supplied as early as 1805 valuable information

about the literature of the older period in his essay On

the Vedas. Nearly a quarter of a century later, F. Rosen,

a German scholar, had conceived the plan of making this

more ancient literature known to Europe from the rich

PROGRESS OF SANSKRIT STUDIES 5

collection of manuscripts at the East India House ; and

his edition of the first eighth of the Rigveda was actually

brought out in 1838, shortly after his premature death.

But it was not till Rudolf Roth (1821-95), the founder

of Vedic philology, published his epoch-making little

book On the Literature and History of the^Veda in 1846,

that the studies of Sankritists received a lasting impulse

in the direction of the earlier and more important literature

of the Veda^. These studies have since been prosecuted

with such zeal, that nearly all the most valuable

works of the Vedic, as well as the later period,

have within the last fifty years been made accessible in

thoroughly trustworthy editions.

In judging of the magnitude of the work thus accomplished,

it should be borne in mind that the workers

have been far fewer in this than in other analogous fields,

while the literature of the Vedas at least equals in extent

what survives of the writings of ancient Greece. Thus

in the course of a century the whole range of Sanskrit

literature, which in quantity exceeds that of Greece and

Rome put together, has been explored. The great bulk

of it has been edited, and most of its valuable productions

have been translated, by competent hands. There has

long been at the service of scholars a Sanskrit dictionary,

larger and more scientific than any either of the classical

languages yet possesses. The detailed investigations

in every department of Sanskrit literature are now so

numerous, that a comprehensive work embodying the

results of all these researches has become a necessity.

An encyclopaedia covering the whole domain of Indo-

Aryan antiquity has accordingly been planned on a more

extensive scale than that of any similar undertaking, and

is now being published at Strasburg in parts, contributed

6 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

to by about thirty specialists of various nationalities. By

the tragic death, in April 1898, of its eminent editor,

Professor Buhler of Vienna, Sanskrit scholarship has

sustained an irreparable loss. The work begun by

him is being completed by another veiy distinguished

Indianist, Professor Kielhorn of Gottingen.

Although so much of Sanskrit literature has already

been published, an examination of the catalogues of

Sanskrit manuscripts, of which an enormous number are

preserved in European and Indian libraries, proves

that there are still many minor works awaiting, and

likely to repay, the labours of an editor.

The study of Sanskrit literature deserves far more

attention than it has yet received in this country. For

in that ancient heritage the languages, the religious and

intellectual life and thought, in short, the whole civilisation

of the Hindus, who form the vast majority of the

inhabitants of our Indian Empire, have their roots.

Among all the ancient literatures, that of India is, moreover,

undoubtedly in intrinsic value and aesthetic merit

second Ulllji lu ttpat uf Glt'Lue* To the latter it is, as a

source for the study of human evolution, even superior.

Its earliest period, being much older than any product of

Greek literature, presents a more primitive form of belief,

and therefore gives a clearer picture of the development

of religious ideas than any other literary monument of

the world. Hence it came about that, just as the discovery

of the Sanskrit language led to the foundation of

the science of Comparative Philology, an acquaintance

with the literature of the Vedas resulted in the foundation

of the science of Comparative Mythology by Adalbert

Kuhn and Max Muller.

Though it has touched excellence in most of its

ORIGINALITY OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE ;

branches, Sanskrit literature has mainly achieved greatness

in religion and philosophy. The Indians are the

only division of the Indo-European family which has

created a great national religion Brahmanism and a

great world-religion Buddhism ; while all the rest, far

from displaying originality in this sphere, have long since ^f^k .

adopted a foreign faith. The intellectual life of the

Indians has, in fact, all along been more dominated by

religious thought than that of any other race. The

Indians, moreover, developed independently several

systems of philosophy which bear evidence of high

speculative powers. The great interest, however, which

these two subjects must have for us lies, not so much in

the results they attained, as in the fact that every step in

the evolution of religion and philosophy can be traced in

Sanskrit literature.

The importance of ancient Indian literature as a

whole largely consists in its originality. Naturally

isolated by its gigantic mountain barrier in the north,

the Indian peninsula has ever since the Aryan invasion

formed a world apart, over which a unique form of

Aryan civilisation rapidly spread, and has ever since

prevailed. When the Greeks, towards the end of the y~

fourth century B.C., invaded the North-West, the Indians

had already fully worked out a national culture of their

own, unaffected by foreign influences. And, in spite of

successive waves of invasion and conquest by Persians,

Greeks, Scythians, Muhammadans, the national development

of the life and literature of the Indo-Aryan race

remained practically unchecked and unmodified from

without down to the era of British occupation. No

other branch of the Indo-European stock has experienced

an isolated evolution like this. No other country except

/

/

8 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

China can trace back its language and literature, its religious

beliefs and rites, its domestic and social customs,

through an uninterrupted development of more than

three thousand years. JLj^C^uu^-

A few examples will serve to illustrate this remarkable

continuity in Indian civilisation. Sanskrit is still

spoken as the tongue of the learned by thousands of

Brahmans, as it was centuries before our era. Nor has

it ceased to be used for literary purposes, for many

books and journals written in the ancient language are

still produced. The copying of Sanskrit manuscripts

is still continued in hundreds of libraries in India, uninterrupted

even by the introduction of printing during

the present century. The Vedas are still learnt by

heart as they were long before the invasion of Alexander,

and could even now be restored from the lips of

religious teachers if every manuscript or printed copy

of them were destroyed. A Vedic stanza of immemorial

antiquity, addressed to the sun-god Savitri, is still recited

in the daily worship of the Hindus. The god Vishnu,

adored more than 3000 years ago, has countless votaries

in India at the present day. Fire is still produced for

sacrificial purposes by means of two sticks, as it was in

ages even more remote. The wedding ceremony of the

modern Hindu, to single out but one social custom, is

essentially the same as it was long before the Christian

era.

The history of ancient Indian literature naturally

falls into two main periods. The first is the Vedic, which

beginning perhaps as early as 1500 B.C., extends in its

latest phase to about 200 B.C. In the former half of the

Vedic age the character of its literature was creative and

poetical, while the centre of culture lay in the territory

TWO MAIN PERIODS 9

of the Indus and its tributaries, the modern Panjab ; in

the latter half, literature was theologically speculative in

matter and prosaic in form, while the centre of intellectual

life had shifted to the valley of the Ganges. Thus

in the course of the Vedic age Aryan civilisation had

overspread the whole of Hindustan Proper, the vast tract

extending from the mouths of the Indus to those of the

Ganges, bounded on the north by the Himalaya, and on

the south by the Vindhya range. The second period, concurrent

with the final offshoots of Vedic literature and

closing with the Muhammadan conquest after 1000 A.D.,

is the Sanskrit period strictly speaking. In a certain

sense, owing to the continued literary use of Sanskrit,

mainly for the composition of commentaries, this period

may be regarded as coming down to the present day.

During this second epoch Brahmanic culture was introduced

into and overspread the southern portion of the

continent called the Dekhan or "the South." In the

course of these two periods taken together, Indian

literature attained noteworthy results in nearly every

department. The Vedic age, which, unlike the earlier

epoch of Greece, produced only religious works, reached

a high standard of merit in lyric poetry, and later made

some advance towards the formation of a prose style.

The Sanskrit period .embracing in general secular

subjects, achieved distinction in many branches of literature,

in national as well as court epic, in lyric and

especially didactic poetry, in the drama, in fairy tales,

fables, and romances. Everywhere we find much true

poetry, the beauty of which is, however, marred by

obscurity of style and the ever-increasing taint of artificiality.

But this period produced few works which,

regarded as a whole, are dominated by a sense of

io SANSKRIT LITERATURE

harmony and proportion. Such considerations have had

little influence on the aesthetic notions of India. The

tendency has been rather towards exaggeration, manifesting

itself in all directions. The almost incredible

development of detail in ritual observance ; the extraordinary

excesses of asceticism ; the grotesque representations

of mythology in art ; the frequent employment

of vast numbers in description ; the immense bulk of the

epics ; the unparalleled conciseness of one of the forms

of prose ; the huge compounds habitually employed in

the later style, are among the more striking manifestations

of this defect of the Indian mind.

In various branches of scientific literature, in phonetics,

grammar, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and

law, the Indians also achieved notable results. In some

of these subjects their attainments are, indeed, far in

advance of what was accomplished by the Greeks.

History is the one weak spot in Indian literature. It

is, in fact, non-existent. The total lack of the historical

sense is so characteristic, that the whole course of

Sanskrit literature is darkened by the shadow of this

defect, suffering as it does from an entire absence of

exact chronology. So true is this, that the very date

of Kalidasa, the greatest of Indian poets, was long a

matter of controversy within the limits of a thousand

years, and is even now doubtful to the extent of a century

or two. Thus the dates of Sanskrit authors are in the

vast majority of cases only known approximately, having

been inferred from the indirect evidence of interdependence,

quotation or allusion, development of language or

style. As to the events of their lives, we usually know

nothing at all, and only in a few cases one or two

general facts. Two causes seem to have combined to

LACK OF CHRONOLOGY 1 1

bring about this remarkable result. In the first place,

early India wrote no history because it never made any.

The ancient Indians never went through a struggle for

life, like the Greeks in the Persian and the Romans in the

Punic wars, such as would have welded their tribes into

a nation and developed political greatness. Secondly,

the Brahmans, whose task it would naturally have been

to record great deeds, had early embraced the doctrine

that all action and existence are a positive evil, and could

therefore have felt but little inclination to chronicle historical

events.

Such being the case, definite dates do not begin to

appear in Indian literary history till about 500 A.D, The

chronology of the Vedic period is altogether conjectural,

being based entirely on internal evidence. Three main

literary strata can be clearly distinguished in it by differences

in language and style, as well as in religious

and social views. For the development of each of these

strata a reasonable length of time must be allowed ; but

all we can here hope to do is to approximate to the

truth by centuries. The lower limit of the second Vedic

stratum cannot, however, be fixed later that 500 B.C.,

because its latest doctrines are presupposed by Buddhism,

and the date of the death of Buddha has been with a

high degree of probability calculated, from the recorded

dates of the various Buddhist councils, to be 480 B.C.

With regard to the commencement of the Vedic age,

there seems to have been a decided tendency among

Sanskrit scholars to place it too high. 2000 B.C. is

commonly represented as its starting-point. Supposing

this to be correct, the truly vast period of 1500 years is

required to account for a development of language and

thought hardly greater than that between the Homeric

V

12 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

and the Attic age of Greece. Professor Max Muller's

earlier estimate of 1200 B.C., formed forty years ago,

appears to be much nearer the mark. A lapse of three

centuries, say from 1 300-1000 B.C., would amply account

for the difference between what is oldest and newest in

Vedic hymn poetry. Considering that the affinity of the

oldest form of the Avestan language with the dialect of

the Vedas is already so great that, by the mere application

of phonetic laws, whole Avestan stanzas may be

translated word for word into Vedic, so as to produce

verses correct not only in form but in poetic spirit ; considering

further, that if we knew the Avestan language at

as early a stage as we know the Vedic, the former would

necessarily be almost identical with the latter, it is impossible

to avoid the conclusion that the Indian branch

must have separated from the Iranian only a very

short time before the beginnings of Vedic literature, and

can therefore have hardly entered the North-West of

India even as early as 1500 B.C. All previous estimates

of the antiquity of the Vedic period have been outdone

by the recent theory of Professor Jacobi of Bonn, who

supposes that period goes back to at least 4000 B.C. This

theory is based on astronomical calculations connected

with a change in the beginning of the seasons, which

Professor Jacobi thinks has taken place since the time

of the Rigveda, The whole estimate is, however, invalidated

by the assumption of a doubtful, and even

improbable, meaning in a Vedic word, which forms the

very starting-point of the theory. Meanwhile we must

rest content with the certainty that Vedic literature in

any case is of considerably higher antiquity than that

of Greece.

For the post-Vedic period we have, in addition to the

EVIDENCE OF FOREIGN VISITORS 13

results of internal evidence, a few landmarks of general

chronological importance in the visits of foreigners. The

earliest date of this kind is that of the invasion of India

by Alexander in 326 B.C. This was followed by the

sojourn in India of various Greeks, of whom the most

notable was Megasthenes. He resided for some years

about 300 B.C. at the court of Pataliputra (the modern

Patna), and has left a valuable though fragmentary

account of the contemporary state of Indian society.

Many centuries later India was visited by three Chinese

Buddhist pilgrims, Fa Hian (399 A.D.), HiOUEN Thsang

(630-645), and I Tsing (671-695). The records of their

travels, which have been preserved, and are all now translated

into English, shed much light on the social conditions,

the religious thought, and the Buddhist antiquities

of India in their day. Some general and specific facts

about Indian literature also can be gathered from them.

Hiouen Thsang especially supplies some important statements

about contemporary Sanskrit poets. It is not till

his time that we can say of any Sanskrit writer that he

was alive in any particular year, excepting only the three

Indian astronomers, whose exact dates in the fifth and

sixth centuries have been recorded by themslves. It was

only the information supplied by the two earlier Chinese

writers that made possible the greatest archaeological

discovery of the present century in India, that of the

site of Buddha's birthplace, Kapila-vastu, identified in v

December 1896. At the close of our period we have the

very valuable account of the country at the time of the

Muhammadan conquest by the Arabic author AlberunT,

who wrote his India in 1030 A.D.

It is evident from what has been said, that before.

500 A.D. literary chronology, even in the Sanskrit period,

14 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

is almost entirely relative, priority or posteriority being

determined by such criteria as development of style or

thought, the mention of earlier authors by name, stray

political references as to the Greeks or to some wellknown

dynasty, and allusions to astronomical facts which

cannot have been known before a certain epoch. Recent

research, owing to increased specialisation, has made

considerable progress towards greater chronological definiteness.

More light will doubtless in course of time

come from the political history of early India, which

is being reconstructed, with great industry and ability,

by various distinguished scholars from the evidence of

coins, copper-plate grants, and rock or pillar inscriptions.

These have been or are being published in the

Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarumy the Epigraphia Indica,

and various journals devoted to the study of Indian

antiquities. The rise in the study of epigraphy during

the last twenty years has, indeed, already yielded some

direct information of importance about the literary and

religious history of India, by fixing the date of some

of the later poets as well as by throwing light on

religious systems and whole classes of literature. Thus

some metrical inscriptions of considerable length have

been deciphered, which prove the existence of court

poetry in Sanskrit and vernacular dialects from the first

century of our era onwards. No direct evidence of this

fact had previously been known.

The older inscriptions are also important in connection

with Sanskrit literature as illustrating both the

early history of Indian writing and the state of the

language at the time. The oldest of them are the rock

and pillar inscriptions, dating from the middle of the

third century B.C., of the great Buddhist king AgOKA,

ORIGIN OF INDIAN WRITING 15

who ruled over Northern India from 259 to 222 B.C.,

and during whose reign was held the third Buddhist

council, at which the canon of the Buddhist scriptures

was probably fixed. The importance of these inscriptions

can hardly be over-rated for the value of the information

to be derived from them about the political,

religious, and linguistic conditions of the age. Found

scattered all over India, from Girnar (Giri-nagara) in

Kathiawar to Dhauli in Orissa, from Kapur-di-Giri, north

of the Kabul river, to Khalsi, they have been reproduced,

deciphered, and translated. One of them, engraved on

a pillar erected by Acoka to commemorate the actual

birthplace of Buddha, was discovered only at the close

of 1896.

These Acoka inscriptions are the earliest records

of Indian writing. The question of the origin and age

of writing in India, long involved in doubt and controversy,

has been greatly cleared up by the recent palaeographical

researches of Professor Buhler. That great

scholar has shown, that of the two kinds of script known

in ancient India, the one called Kharoshthi, employed

in the country of Gandhara (Eastern Afghanistan and

Northern Panjab) from the fourth century B.C. to

200 A.D., was borrowed from the Aramaic type of

Semitic writing in use during the fifth century B.C. It

was always written from right to left, like its original.

The other ancient Indian script, called Brdhmiy is, as

Buhler shows, the true national writing of India, because

all later Indian alphabets are descended from it, however

dissimilar many of them may appear at the present day.

It was regularly written from left to right ; but that this

was not its original direction is indicated by a coin of

the fourth century B.C., the inscription on which runs

1 6 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

from right to left. Dr. Buhler has shown that this

writing is based on the oldest Northern Semitic or

Phoenician type, represented on Assyrian weights and

on the Moabite stone, which dates from about 890 B.C.

He argues, with much probability, that it was introduced

about 800 B.C. into India by traders coming by way of

Mesopotamia.

References to writing in ancient Indian literature are,

it is true, very rare and late ; in no case, perhaps, earlier

than the fourth century B.C., or not very long before the

date of the Acoka inscriptions. Little weight, however,

can be attached to the argumentum ex silentio in this

instance. For though writing has now been extensively

in use for an immense period, the native learning of the

modern Indian is still based on oral tradition. The

sacred scriptures as well as the sciences can only be

acquired from the lips of a teacher, not from a manuscript

; and as only memorial knowledge is accounted

of value, writing and MSS. are rarely mentioned. Even

modern poets do not wish to be read, but cherish the

hope that their works may be recited. This immemorial

practice, indeed, shows that the beginnings of Indian

poetry and science go back to a time when writing was

unknown, and a system of oral tradition, such as is

referred to in the Rigveda, was developed before writing

was introduced. The latter could, therefore, have been

in use long before it began to be mentioned. The palaeographical

evidence of the Acoka inscriptions, in any case,

clearly shows that writing was no recent invention in the

third century B.C., for most of the letters have several,

often very divergent forms, sometimes as many as nine

or ten. A considerable length of time was, moreover,

needed to elaborate- from the twenty-two borrowed

THE BRAHMI WRITING 17

Semitic symbols the full Brdhml alphabet of forty-six

letters. This complete alphabet, which was evidently

worked out by learned Brahmans on phonetic principles,

must have existed by 500 B.C., according to the strong

arguments adduced by Professor Buhler. This is the

alphabet which is recognised in Panini's great Sanskrit

grammar of about the fourth century B.C., and has remained

unmodified ever since. It not only represents all

the sounds of the Sanskrit language, but is arranged on a

thoroughly scientific method, the simple vowels (short

and long) coming first, then the diphthongs, and lastly

the consonants in uniform groups according to the

organs of speech with which they are pronounced. Thus

the dental consonants appear together as t, t/i, d, dh, ny

and the labials as/, ph, b, bh} m. We Europeans, on the

other hand, 2500 years later, and in a scientific age, still

employ an alphabet which is not only inadequate to

represent all the sounds of our languages, but even preserves

the random order in which vowels and consonants

are jumbled up as they were in the Greek adaptation ol

the primitive Semitic arrangement of 3000 years ago.

In the inscriptions of the third century B.C. two types,

the Northern and the Southern, may be distinguished in

the Brdhml writing. From the former is descended the

group of Northern scripts which gradually prevailed in

all the Aryan dialects of India. The most important of

them is the Ndgarl (also called Devandgari), in which

Sanskrit MSS. are usually written, and Sanskrit as well as

Marathi and Hind! books are regularly printed. It is

recognisable by the characteristic horizontal line at the

top of the letters. The oldest inscription engraved entirely

in Ndgarl belongs to the eighth, and the oldest MS.

written in it to the eleventh century. From the Southern

1 8 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

variety of the Brdhml writing are descended five types of

script, all in use south of the Vindhya range. Among

them are the characters employed in the Canarese and

the Telugu country.

Owing to the perishability of the material on which

they are written, Sanskrit MSS. older than the fourteenth

century A.D. are rare. The two ancient materials used

in India were strips of birch bark and palm leaves. The

employment of the former, beginning in the North-West

of India, where extensive birch forests clothe the slopes

of the Himalaya, gradually spread to Central, Eastern,

and Western India. The oldest known Sanskrit MS.

written on birch bark dates from the fifth century A.D.,

and a Pali MS. in Kharoshthi, which became known in

1897, is still older, but the use of this material doubtless

goes back to far earlier days. Thus we have the statement

of Quintus Curtius that the Indians employed it for

writing on at the time of Alexander. The testimony of

classical Sanskrit authors, as well as of AlberunI, shows

that leaves of birch bark {bhurja-pattrd) were also regularly

used for letter-writing in early mediaeval India.

The first example of a palm leaf Sanskrit MS. belongs

to the sixth century A.D. It is preserved in Japan, but

there is a facsimile of it in the Bodleian Library. According

to the Chinese pilgrim Hiouen Thsang, the use of the

palm leaf was common all over India in the seventh century

; but that it was known many centuries earlier is

proved by the fact that an inscribed copper-plate, dating

from the first century A.D. at the latest, imitates a palm

leaf in shape.

Paper was introduced by the Muhammadan conquest,

and has been very extensively used since that time for

the writing of MSS. The oldest known example of a

MANUSCRIPTS AND WRITING MATERIALS 19

paper Sanskrit MS. written in India is one from Gujarat,

belonging to the early part of the thirteenth century. In

Northern India, where ink was employed for writing,

palm leaves went out of use after the introduction of

paper. But in the South, where a stilus has always been

employed for scratching in the character, palm leaves

are still common for writing both MSS. and letters. The

birch bark and palm leaf MSS. are held together by a

cord drawn through a single hole in the middle, or

through two placed some distance apart. This explains

how the Sanskrit word for "

knot," grantha, came to

acquire the sense of "book."

Leather or parchment has never been utilised in

India for MSS., owing to the ritual impurity of animal

materials. For inscriptions copper-plates were early

and frequently employed. They regularly imitate the

shape of either palm leaves or strips of birch bark.

The actual use of ink (the oldest Indian name of

which is mashi) is proved for the second century B.C. by

an inscription from a Buddhist relic mound, and is

rendered very probable for the fourth century B.C. by

the statements of Nearchos and Quintus Curtius.

All the old palm leaf, birch bark, and paper Sanskrit

MSS. have been written with ink and a reed pen, usually

called kalama (a term borrowed from the Greek kalamos).

In Southern India, on the other hand, it has always been

the practice to scratch the writing on palm leaves with a

stilus, the characters being subsequently blackened by

soot or charcoal being rubbed into them.

Sanskrit MSS. of every kind are usually kept between

thin strips of wood with cords wound round them,

and wrapped up in coloured, sometimes embroidered,

cloths. They have been, and still are, preserved in the

20 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

libraries of temples, monasteries, colleges, the courts of

princes, as well as private houses. A famous library was

owned by King Bhoja of Dhar in the eleventh century.

That considerable private libraries existed in fairly early

times is shown by the fact that the Sanskrit author Bana

(about 620 A.D.) had in his employment a reader of

manuscripts. Even at the present day there are many

excellent libraries of Sanskrit MSS. in the possession of

Brahmans all over India.

The ancient Indian language, like the literature composed

in it, falls into the two main divisions of Vedic and

Sanskrit. The former differs from the latter on the

whole about as much as Homeric from classical Greek,

or the Latin of the Salic hymns from that of Varro.

Within the Vedic language, in which the sacred literature

of India is written, several stages can be distinguished.

In its transitions from one to the other it gradually grows

more modern till it is ultimately merged in Sanskrit.

Even in its earliest phase Vedic cannot be regarded as

a popular tongue, but is rather an artificially archaic

dialect, handed down from one generation to the other

within the class of priestly singers. Of this the language

itself supplies several indications. One of them is the

employment side by side of forms belonging to different

linguistic periods, a practice in which, however, the Vedic

does not go so far as the Homeric dialect. The spoken

language of the Vedic priests probably differed from this

dialect of the hymns only in the absence of poetical constructions

and archaisms. There was, in fact, even in the

earlier Vedic age, a caste language, such as is to be found

more or less wherever a literature has grown up ; but in

India it has been more strongly marked than in any other

country.

Om Tat Sat

                                                        

(Continued...) 

(My humble salutations to  Brahmsree Sreeman  Arthur A. Macdonell  and also my humble greatulness to  great Devotees , Philosophic Scholars  for the collection)