History of Sanskrit Literature -2 (BY ARTHUR A. MACDONELLHistory of Sanskrit Literature -2 (BY ARTHUR A. MACDONELL

History of Sanskrit Literature

(BY

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

BODEN PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT)

 

VEDIC AND SANSKRIT 21

If, however, Vedic was no longer a natural tongue,

but was already the scholastic dialect of a class, how

much truer is this of the language of the later literature

! Sanskrit differs from Vedic, but not in conformity

with the natural development which appears in living

languages. The phonetic condition of Sanskrit remains

almost exactly the same as that of the earliest Vedic.

In the matter of grammatical forms, too, the language

shows itself to be almost stationary ; for hardly any

new formations or inflexions have made their appearance.

Yet even from a grammatical point of view the

later language has become very different from the

earlier. This change was therefore brought about, not

by new creations, but by successive losses. The most

notable of these were the disappearance of the subjunctive

mood and the reduction of a dozen infinitives

to a single one. In declension the change consisted

chiefly in the dropping of a number of synonymous byforms.

It is probable that the spoken Vedic, more

modern and less complex than that of the hymns, to

some extent affected the later literary language in the

direction of

simplification. But the changes in the

language were mainly due to the regulating efforts of

the grammarians, which were more powerful in India

than anywhere else, owing to the early and exceptional

development of grammatical studies in that country.

Their influence alone can explain the elaborate nature

of the phonetic combinations (called Sandhi) between

the finals and initials of words in the Sanskrit sentence.

It is, however, the vocabulary of the language that

has undergone the greatest modifications, as is indeed

the case in all literary dialects ; for it is beyond the

power of grammarians to control change in this direc22

SANSKRIT LITERATURE

tion. Thus we find that the vocabulary has been greatly

extended by derivation and composition according to

recognised types. At the same time there are numerous

words which, though old, seem to be new only because

they happen by accident not to occur in the Vedic

literature. Many really new words have, however, come

in through continual borrowings from a lower stratum

of language, while already existing words have undergone

great changes of meaning.

This later phase of the ancient language of India

was stereotyped by the great grammarian Panini towards

the end of the fourth century B.C. It came to

be called Sanskrit, the " refined

"

or " elaborate

"

(samskri-

tay literally "put together"), a term not found in

the older grammarians, but occurring in the earliest

epic, the Rdmdyana. The name is meant to be opposed

to that of the popular dialects called Prdkrita, and is

so opposed, for instance, in the Kdvyddarca, or Mirror

of Poetry', a work of the sixth century A.D. The older

grammarians themselves, from Yaska (fifth century B.C.)

onwards, speak of this classical dialect as Bhdshd, "the

speech," in distinction from Vedic. The remarks they

make about it point to a spoken language. Thus one

of them, Patanjali, refers to it as used " in the world,"

and designates the words of his Sanskrit as " current

in the world." Panini himself gives many rules which

have no significance except in connection with living

speech ; as when he describes the accent or the lengthening

of vowels in calling from a distance, in salutation,

or in question and answer. Again, Sanskrit cannot

have been a mere literary and school language, because

there are early traces of its having had dialectic variations.

Thus Yaska and Panini mention the peculiarities

SANSKRIT AS A SPOKEN LANGUAGE 23

of the "Easterns" and "Northerners," Katyayana refers

to local divergences, and Patanjali specifies words

occurring in single districts only. There is, indeed, no

doubt that in the second century B.C. Sanskrit was

actually spoken in the whole country called by Sanskrit

writers Aryavarta, or " Land of the Aryans," which lies

between the Himalaya and the Vindhya range. But

who spoke it there ? Brahmans certainly did ; for

Patanjali speaks of them as the "instructed" (gishta),

the employers of correct speech. Its use, however, extended

beyond the Brahmans ; for we read in Patanjali

about a head-groom disputing with a grammarian as

to the etymology of the Sanskrit word for "charioteer"

(suta). This agrees with the distribution of the dialects

in the Indian drama, a distribution doubtless based on

a tradition much older than the plays themselves. Here

the king and those of superior rank speak Sanskrit,

while the various forms of the popular dialect are

assigned to women and to men of the people. The

dramas also show that whoever did not speak Sanskrit

at any rate understood it, for Sanskrit is there employed

in conversation with speakers of Prakrit. The theatrical

public, and that before which, as we know from

frequent references in the literature, the epics were

recited, must also have understood Sanskrit. Thus,

though classical Sanskrit was from the beginning a

literary and, in a sense, an artificial dialect, it would

be erroneous to deny to it altogether the character of

a colloquial language. It is indeed, as has already been

mentioned, even now actually spoken in India by

learned Brahmans, as well as written by them, for

every-day purposes. The position of Sanskrit, in short,

has all along been, and still is, much like that of

3

24 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

Hebrew among the Jews or of Latin in the Middle

Ages.

Whoever was familiar with Sanskrit at the same time

spoke one popular language or more. The question as

to what these popular languages were brings us to the

relation of Sanskrit to the vernaculars of India. The

linguistic importance of the ancient literary speech for

the India of to-day wT

ill become apparent when it is

pointed out that all the modern dialects excepting those

of a few isolated aboriginal hill tribes spoken over the

whole vast territory between the mouths of the Indus

and those of the Ganges, between the Himalaya and the

Vindhya range, besides the Bombay Presidency as far

south as the Portuguese settlement of Goa, are descended

from the oldest form of Sanskrit. Starting from their

ancient source in the north-west, they have overflowed

in more and more diverging streams the whole peninsula

except the extreme south-east. The beginnings of these

popular dialects go back to a period of great antiquity.

Even at the time when the Vedic hymns were composed,

there must have existed a popular language which

already differed widely in its phonetic aspect from the

literary dialect. For the Vedic hymns contain several

words of a phonetic type which can only be explained

by borrowings on the part of their composers from

popular speech.

We further know that in the sixth century B.C., Buddha

preached his gospel in the language of the people, as

opposed to that of the learned, in order that all might

understand him. Thus all the oldest Buddhist literature

dating from the fourth or fifth century B.C. was composed

in the vernacular, originally doubtless in the dialect of

Magadha (the modern Behar), the birthplace of BudPALI

AND PRAKRIT 25

dhism. Like Italian, as compared with Latin, this early

popular speech is characterised by the avoidance of

conjunct consonants and by fondness for final vowels.

Thus the Sanskrit sutra,

"

thread/' and d/iarma,

M

duty,"

become sutta and dhamma respectively, while vidyut,

"

lightning," is transformed into vijju. The particular

form of the popular language which became the sacred

idiom of Southern Buddhism is known by the name of

Pali. Its original home is still uncertain, but its existence

as early as the third century B.C. is proved beyond the

range of doubt by the numerous rock and pillar inscriptions

of Acoka. This dialect was in the third century

B.C. introduced into Ceylon, and became the basis of

Singhalese, the modern language of the island. It was

through the influence of Buddhism that, from Agoka's

time onwards, the official decrees and documents preserved

in inscriptions were for centuries composed

exclusively in Middle Indian (Prakrit) dialects. Sanskrit

was not familiar to the chanceries during these centuries,

though the introduction of Sanskrit verses in Prakrit

inscriptions shows that Sanskrit was alive during this

period, and proves its continuity for literary purposes.

The older tradition of both the Buddhist and the Jain

religion, in fact, ignored Sanskrit entirely, using only the

popular dialects for all purposes.

But in course of time both the Buddhists and the

Jains endeavoured to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit.

This led to the formation of an idiom which, being in the

main Prakrit, was made to resemble the old language by

receiving Sanskrit endings and undergoing other adaptations.

It is therefore decidedly wrong to consider this

artificial dialect an intermediate stage between Sanskrit

and Pali. This peculiar type of language is most

26 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

pronounced in the poetical pieces called gathd or

"song," which occur in the canonical works of the Northern

Buddhists, especially in the Lalzta-vistara, a life

of Buddha. Hence it was formerly called the Gatha

dialect. The term is, however, inaccurate, as Buddhist

prose works have also been written in this mixed

language.

The testimony of the inscriptions is instructive in

showing the gradual encroachment of Sanskrit on the

popular dialects used by the two non-Brahmanical religions.

Thus in the Jain inscriptions of Mathura (now

Muttra), an almost pure Prakrit prevails down to the first

century A.D. After that Sanskritisms become more and

more frequent, till at last simple Sanskrit is written.

Similarly in Buddhist inscriptions pure Prakrit is relieved

by the mixed dialect, the latter by Sanskrit. Thus in the

inscriptions of Nasik, in Western India, the mixed dialect

extends into the third, while Sanskrit first begins in the

second century A.D. From the sixth century onwards

Sanskrit prevails exclusively (except among the Jains) in

inscriptions, though Prakritisms often occur in them.

Even in the literature of Buddhism the mixed dialect

was gradually supplanted by Sanskrit. Hence most of

the Northern Buddhist texts have come down to us in

Sanskrit, which, however, diverges widely in vocabulary

from that of the sacred texts of the Brahmans, as well as

from that of the classical literature, since they are full of

Prakrit words. It is expressly attested by the Chinese

pilgrim, Hiouen Thsang, that in the seventh century the

Buddhists used Sanskrit even in oral theological discussions.

The Jains finally did the same, though without

entirely giving up Prakrit. Thus by the time of the

Muhammadan conquest Sanskrit was almost the only

PRAKRIT DIALECTS 27

written language of India. But while Sanskrit was recovering

its ancient supremacy, the Prakrits had exercised

a lasting influence upon it in two respects. They

had supplied its vocabulary with a number of new words,

and had transformed into a stress accent the old musical

accent which still prevailed after the days of Panini.

In the oldest period of Prakrit, that of the Pali A$oka

inscriptions and the early Buddhistic and Jain literature,

two main dialects, the Western and the Eastern, may be

distinguished. Between the beginning of our era and

about 1000 A.D., mediaeval Prakrit, which is still synthetic

in character, is divided into four chief dialects. In the

west we find Apabhrain^a (" decadent ") in the valley of

the Indus, and aurasenl in the Doab, with Mathura as

its centre. Subdivisions of the latter were Gaurjarl

(Gujaratt), Avanti (Western Rajputdni), and Mahdrdshtrl

(Eastern Rdjputdnt). The Eastern Prakrit now appears

as Mdgadhl, the dialect of Magadha, now Behar, and

Ardha- Mdgadhl (Half - Magadhi), with Benares as its

centre. These mediaeval Prakrits are important in connection

with Sanskrit literature, as they are the vernaculars

employed by the uneducated classes in the Sanskrit

drama.

They are the sources of all the Aryan languages of

modern India. From the Apabhramqa are derived Sindhl,

Western Panjabl} and Kashmiri; from aurasenl come

Eastern Pa?ijabl and Hindi (the old Avanti), as well as

Gujaratl ; while from the two forms of Mdgadhl are

descended Mardthl on the one hand, and the various

dialects of Bengal on the other. These modern vernaculars,

which began to develop from about 1000 A.D., are

no longer inflexional languages, but are analytical like

English, forming an interesting parallel in their develop2

3 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

ment from ancient Sanskrit to the Romance dialects in

their derivation from Latin. They have developed literatures

of their own, which are based entirely on that of

Sanskrit. The non-Aryan languages of the Dekhan, the

Dravidian group, including Telugu, Canarese, Malayalam,

and Tamil, have not indeed been ousted by Aryan

tongues, but they are full of words borrowed from Sanskrit,

while their literature is dominated by Sanskrit

models.

CHAPTER II

THE VEDIC PERIOD

On the very threshold of Indian literature more than

three thousand years ago, we are confronted with a body

of lyrical poetry which, although far older than the literary

monuments of any other branch of the Indo-European

family, is already distinguished by refinement and

beauty of thought, as well as by skill in the handling of

language and metre. From this point, for a period of

more than a thousand years, Indian literature bears__

^smj^ygjiisively religions sfonrpj. even those latest productions

of the Vedic age which cannot be called directly

religious are yet meant to further religious ends. This

is, indeed, implied by the term u Vedic." For veda,

primarily signifying

"

knowledge

"

(from vidy

" to know "),

designates

" sacred lore," as a branch of literature. Besides

this general sense, the word has also the restricted

meaning of "sacred book."

In the Vedic period three well-defined literary strata

are to be distinguished. The first is that of the four *

Vedas, the outcome of a creative and poetic age, in

which hymns and prayers were composed chiefly to

accompany the pressing and offering of the Soma juice

or the oblation of melted butter (ghrita) to the gods. The

four Vedas are "

collections," called samhitd, of hymns

and prayers made for different ritual purposes. They

are of varying age and significance. By far the most

30 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

important as well as the oldest for it is the very foundation

of all Vedic literature is the Rigveda, the "Veda

of verses" (from rich, "a laudatory stanza"), consisting

entirely of lyrics, mainly in praise of different gods. It

may, therefore, be described as the book of hymns or

psalms. The Sama-veda has practically no independent

value, for it consists entirely of stanzas (excepting only

75) taken from the Rigveda and arranged solely with reference

to their place in the Soma sacrifice. Being meant

to be sung to certain fixed melodies, it may be called the

book of chants {saman). The Yajur-veda differs in one

essential respect from the Sama-veda. It consists not

only of stanzas {rich), mostly borrowed from the Rigveda,

but also of original prose formulas. It resembles the

Sama-veda, however, in having its contents arranged in

the order in which it was actually employed in various

sacrifices. It is, therefore, a book of sacrificial prayers

(yajus). The matter of this Veda has been handed down

in two forms. In the one, the sacrificial formulas only

are given ; in the other, these are to a certain extent

intermingled with their explanations. These three Vedas

alone were at first recognised as canonical scriptures,

being in the next stage of Vedic literature comprehensively

spoken of as "the threefold knowledge" {trayi

vidya).

The fourth collection, the Atharva-veda, attained to

this position only after a long struggle. Judged both

by its language and by that portion of its matter which is

analogous to the contents of the Rigveda, the Atharvaveda

came into existence considerably later than that

Veda. In form it is similar to the Rigveda, consisting

for the most part of metrical hymns, many of which are

taken from the last book of the older collection. In

VEDAS AND BRAHMANAS 31

spirit, however, it is not only entirely different from the

Rigveda, but represents a much more primitive stage of

thought. While the Rigveda deals almost exclusively

with the higher gods as conceived by a comparatively

advanced and refined sacerdotal class, the Atharva-veda

is, in the main, a book of spells and incantations appealing

to the demon world, and teems with notions about

witchcraft current among the lower grades of the population,

and derived from an immemorial antiquity.

These two, thus complementary to each other in contents,

are obviously the most important of the four Vedas.

As representing religious ideas at an earlier stage than

any other literary monuments of the ancient world, they

are of inestimable value to those who study the evolution

of religious beliefs.

The creative period of the Vedas at length came

to an end. It was followed by an epoch in which there

no longer seemed any need to offer up new prayers to

the gods, but it appeared more meritorious to repeat

those made by the holy seers of bygone generations,

and handed down from father to son in various priestly

families. The old hymns thus came to be successively

gathered together in the Vedic collections already mentioned,

and in this form acquired an ever-increasing

sanctity. Having ceased_to_pxoduce poetry^ the priesthood

transferredjheir creative energies to the_elaboration

of the sacrificial ceremonial. The result was a ritual

system far surpassing in complexity of detail anything

the world has elsewhere known. The main importance

of the old Vedic hymns and formulas now came to

be their application to the innumerable details of the

sacrifice. Around this combination of sacred verse and

rite a new body of doctrine grew up in sacerdotal tradi-

1

32 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

tion, and finally assumed definite shape in the guise of

distinct theological treatises entitled Brahmanas,

" books

dealing with devotion or prayer

"

(brahman). They evidently

did not come into being till a time when the

hymns were already deemed ancient and sacred revelations,

the priestly custodians of which no longer fully

understood their meaning owing to the change undergone

by the language. They are written in prose throughout,

and are in some cases accented, like the Vedas themselves.

They are thus notable as representing the oldest

prose writing of the Indo-European family. Their style

is, indeed, cumbrous, rambling, and disjointed, but distinct

progress towards greater facility is observable

within this literary period.

The chief purpose of the Brahmanas is to explain the

mutual relation of the sacred text and the ceremonial,

as well as their symbolical meaning with reference

to each other. With the exception of the occasional

legends and striking thoughts which occur in them,

they cannot be said to be at all attractive as literary

productions. To support their explanations of the

ceremonial, they interweave exegetical, linguistic, and

etymological observations, and introduce myths and philosophical

speculations in confirmation of their cosmogonic

and theosophic theories. They form an aggregate of

shallow and pedantic discussions, full of sacerdotal conceits,

and fanciful, or even absurd, identifications, such

as is doubtless unparalleled anywhere else. Yet, as the

oldest treatises on ritual practices extant in any literature,

they are of great interest to the student of the history

of religions in general, besides furnishing much important

material to the student of Indian antiquity in

particular.

THE BRAHMANAS 33

It results from what has been said that the contrasts

between the two older phases of Vedic literature are

strongly marked. The Vedas are poetical in matter and

form ; the Brahmanas are prosaic and written in prose.

The thought of the Vedas is on the whole natural and

concrete ; that of the Brahmanas artificial and abstract.

The chief significance of the Vedas lies in their mytho;

logy ; that of the Brahmanas in their ritual.

The subject-matter of the Brahmanas which are

attached to the various Vedas, differs according to the

divergent duties performed by the kind of priest connected

with each Veda. The Brahmanas of the Rigveda,

in explaining the ritual, usually limit themselves to the

duties of the priest called hotri or "

reciter," on whom

it was incumbent to form the canon (castra) for each

particular rite, by selecting from the hymns the verses

applicable to it. The Brahmanas of the Sdma-veda are

concerned only with the duties of the udgatriox "chanter"

of the Samans ; the Brahmanas of the Yajur-veda with

those of the adhvaryu, or the priest who is the actual

sacrificer. Again, the Brahmanas of the Rigveda more

or less follow the order of the ritual, quite irrespectively

of the succession of the hymns in the Veda itself. The

Brahmanas of the Sdma- and the Yajur-veda, on the

other hand, follow the order of their respective Vedas,

which are already arranged in the ritual sequence. The

Brahmana of the Sdma-veda, however, rarely explains

individual verses, while that of the Yajur-veda practically

forms a running commentary on all the verses of the

text.

The period of the Brahmanas is a very important

one in the history of Indian society. For in it the

system of the four castes assumed definite shape, fur-

")

34 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

nishing the frame within which the highly complex

network of the castes of to-day has been developed.

In that system the priesthood, who even in the first

Vedic period had occupied an influential position, secured

for themselves the dominant power which they have

maintained ever since. The life of no other people has

been so saturated with sacerdotal influence as that of the

Hindus, among whom sacred learning is still the monopoly

of the hereditary priestly caste. While in other

early societies the chief power remained in the hands of

princes and warrior nobles, the domination of the priesthood

became possible in India as soon as the energetic

life of conquest during the early Vedic times in the

north-west was followed by a period of physical inactivity

or indolence in the plains. Such altered conditions

enabled the cultured class, who alone held the

secret of the all-powerful sacrifice, to gain the supremacy

of intellect over physical force.

The Brahmanas in course of time themselves acquired

a sacred character, and came in the following

period to be classed along with the hymns as qruti or

"hearing," that which was directly heard by or, as we

should say, revealed to, the holy sages of old. In the

sphere of revelation are included the later portions of

the Brahmanas, which form treatises of a specially

theosophic character, and being meant to be imparted or

studied in the solitude of the forest, are called Aranyakas

or " Forest-books." The final part of these, again, are

philosophical books named Upanishads, which belong

to the latest stage of Brahmana literature. The pantheistic

groundwork of their doctrine was later developed

into the Vedanta system, which is still the favourite

philosophy of the modern Hindus.

THE SUTRAS 35

Works of Vedic " revelation

" were deemed of higher

authority in cases of doubt than the later works on

religious and oivil usage, called smriti or "

memory,"

as embodying only the tradition derived from ancient

sages.

We have now arrived at the third and last stage ot

Vedic literature, that of the Sutras. These are compendious

treatises dealing with Vedic ritual on the one

hand, and with customary law on the other. The rise of

this class of writings was due to the need of reducing

the vast and growing mass of details in ritual and

custom, preserved in the Brahmanas and in floating

tradition, to a systematic shape, and of compressing

them within a compass which did not impose too great

a burden on the memory, the vehicle of all teaching and

learning. The main object of the Sutras is, therefore,

to supply a short survey of the sum of these scattered

details. They are not concerned with the interpretation

of ceremonial or custom, but aim at giving a plain

and methodical account of The whole course of the

rites or practices with which they deal. For this purpose

the utmost brevity was needed, a requirement

which was certainly met in a manner unparalleled elsewhere.

The very name of this class of literature, stitray

" thread" or "clue" (from sivy "to sew"), points to its

main characteristic and chief object extreme conciseness.

The prose in which these works are composed

is so compressed that the wording of the most laconic

telegram would often appear diffuse compared with it.

Some of the Sutras attain to an almost algebraic mode

of expression, the formulas of which cannot be understood

without the help of detailed commentaries. A

characteristic aphorism has been preserved, which

36 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

illustrates this straining after brevity. According to it,

the composers of grammatical Sutras delight as much

in the saving of a short vowel as in the birth of a

son. The full force of this remark can only be understood

when it is remembered that a Brahman is deemed

incapable of gaining heaven without a son to perform

his funeral rites.

Though the works comprised in each class of Sutras

are essentially the same in character, it is natural to

suppose that their composition extended over some

length of time, and that those which are more concise

and precise in their wording are the more recent ; for

the evolution of their style is obviously in the direction

of increased succinctness. Research, it is true, has

hitherto failed to arrive at any definite result as to the

date of their composition. Linguistic investigations,

however, tend to show that the Sutras are closely

connected in time with the grammarian Panini, some

of them appearing to be considerably anterior to him.

We shall, therefore, probably not go very far wrong

in assigning 500 and 200 B.C. as the chronological limits

within which the Sutra literature was developed.

The tradition of the Vedic ritual was handed down in

two forms. The one class, called Qrauta Siltrasy because

based on qruti or revelation (by which in this case the

Brahmanas are chiefly meant), deal with the ritual of the

greater sacrifices, for the performance of which three or

more sacred fires, as well as the ministrations of priests,

are necessary. Not one of them presents a complete

picture of the sacrifice, because each of them, like the

Brahmanas, describes only the duties of one or other

of the three kinds of priests attached to the respective

Vedas. In order to obtain a full description of each

RITUAL AND LEGAL SUTRAS 37

ritual ceremony, it is therefore needful to supplement

the account given by one frauta Sutra from that

furnished by the rest.

The other division of the ritual Sutras is based on

smriti or tradition. These are the Grihya Sutras, or

" House Aphorisms," which deal with the household

ceremonies, or the rites to be performed with the

domestic fire in daily life. As a rule, these rites are not

performed by a priest, but by the householder himself

in company with his wife. For this reason there is,

apart from deviations in arrangement and expression,

omission or addition, no essential difference between the

various Grihya Sutras, except that the verses to be repeated

which they contain are taken from the Veda to

which they belong. Each Grihya Sutra, besides being

attached to and referring to the Crauta Sutra of the same

school, presupposes a knowledge of it. But though thus

connected, the two do not form a unity.

The second class of Sutras, which deal with social and

legal usage, is, like the Grihya Sutras, also based on

smriti or tradition. These are the Dharma Sutras, which

are in general the oldest sources of Indian law. As is

implied by the term dlia-mia,

"

religion and morality,"

their point of view is chiefly a religious one. The)'

- are

closely connected with the Veda, which they quote, and

which the later law-books regard as the first and highest

source of dharma.

From the intensely crabbed and unintelligible nature

of their style, and the studied baldness with which they

present their subjects, it is evident that the Sutras are

inferior even to the Brahmanas as literary productions.

Judged, however, with regard to its matter, this strange

phase of literature has considerable value. In all other

38 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

ancient literatures knowledge of sacrificial rites can only

be gained by collecting stray references. But in the

ritual Sutras we possess the ancient manuals which the

priests used as the foundation of their sacrificial lore.

Their statements are so systematic and detailed that it

is possible to reconstruct from them various sacrifices

without having seen them performed. They are thus of

great importance for the history of religious institutions,

But the Sutras have a further value. For, as the life of

the Hindu, more than that of any other nation, was, even

in the Vedic age, surrounded with a network of religious

forms, both in its daily course and in its more important

divisions, the domestic ritual as well as the legal Sutras

are our most important sources for the study of the

social conditions of ancient India. They are the oldest

Indian records of all that is included under custom.

Besides these ritual and legal compendia, the Sutra

period produced several classes of works composed in

this style, which, though not religious in character, had a

religious origin. They arose from the study of the

Vedas, which was prompted by the increasing difficulty

of understanding the hymns, and of reciting them

correctly, in consequence of the changes undergone by

the language. Their chief object was to ensure the right

recitation and interpretation of the sacred text. One of

the most important classes of this ancillary literature

comprises the Prdtiqakhya Sutras, which, dealing with

accentuation, pronunciation, metre, and other matters,

are chiefly concerned with the phonetic changes undergone

by Vedic words when combined in a sentence.

They contain a number of minute observations, such

as have only been made over again by the phoneticians

of the present day in Europe. A still more

X

SUBSIDIARY SUTRAS 39

important branch of this subsidiary literature is grammar,

in which the results attained by the Indians in the

systematic analysis of language surpass those arrived at

by any other nation. Little has been preserved of the

earliest attempts in this direction, for all that had been

previously done was superseded by the great Sutra work

of Panini. Though belonging probably to the middle

of the Sutra period, Panini must be regarded as the

starting-point of the Sanskrit age, the literature of which

is almost entirely dominated by the linguistic standard

stereotyped by him.

In the Sutra period also arose a class of works

specially designed for preserving the text of the Vedas

from loss or change. These are the Anukramanis or

"

Indices," which quote the first words of each hymn,

its author, the deity celebrated in it, the number of

verses it contains, and the metre in which it is composed.

One of them states the total number of hymns, verses,

words, and even syllables, contained in the Rigveda,

besides supplying other details.

From this general survey of the Vedic period we

now turn to a more detailed consideration of the different

phases of the literature it produced.

CHAPTER III

THE RIGVEDA

In the dim twilight preceding the dawn of Indian literature

the historical imagination can perceive the forms of

Aryan warriors, the first Western conquerors of Hindustan,

issuing from those passes in the north-west through

which the tide of invasion has in successive ages rolled

to sweep over the plains of India. The earliest poetry

of this invading race, whose language and culture ultimately

overspread the whole continent, was composed

while its tribes still occupied the territories on both sides

of the Indus now known as Eastern Kabulistan and the

Panjab. That ancient poetry has come cjown to us in

the fonn_eLL-^^-cr>ITprtinn nf hymrre-f^4W4- tfrg Rigveda.

The cause which gathered the poems it contains into a

single book was not practical, as in the case of the Sdmaand

Yajur-veda, but scientific and historical. For its

ancient editors were undoubtedly impelled by the

motive of guarding this heritage of olden time from

change and destruction. The number of hymns comprised

in the Rigveda, in the only recension which has

been preserved, that of the (^akala school, is 1017, or,

if the eleven supplementary hymns (called Valakhilya)

which are inserted in the middle of the eighth book

are added, 1028. These hymns are grouped in ten

books, called mandalasy or "cycles," which vary in

length, except that the tenth contains the same number

ARRANGEMENT OF THE RIGVEDA 41

of hymns as the first. In bulk the hymns of the Rigveda

equal, it has been calculated, the surviving poems

of Homer.

The general character of the ten books is not identical

in all cases. Six of them (ii.-vii.) are homogeneous. Each

of these, in the first place, is the work of a different seer or

his descendants according to the ancient tradition, which

is borne out by internal evidence. They were doubtless

long handed down separately in the families to which

they owed their being. Moreover, the hymns contained

in these "

family books," as they are usually called, are

arranged on a uniform plan differing from that of the

rest. The first, eighth, and tenth books are not the productions

of a single family of seers respectively, but

consist of a number of groups based on identity of

authorship. The arrangement of the ninth book is in

no way connected with its composers ; its unity is due

to all its hymns being addressed to the single deity Soma,

while its groups depend on identity of metre. The

family books also contain groups ; but each of these

is formed of hymns addressed to one and the same

deity.

Turning to the principle on which the entire books of

the Rigveda are arranged in relation to one another, we

find that Books II.-VII., if allowance is made for later

additions, form a series of collections which contain a

successively increasing number of hymns. This fact,

combined with the uniformity of these books in general

character and internal arrangement, renders it probable

that they formed the nucleus of the Rigveda, to which

the remaining books were successively added. It further

seems likely that the nine shorter collections, which form

the second part of Book I., as being similarly based on

42 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

identity of authorship, were subsequently combined and

prefixed to the family books, which served as the model

for their internal arrangement.

I The hymns of the eighth book in general show a

mutual affinity hardly less pronounced than that to be

/found in the family books. For they are connected by

numerous repetitions of similar phrases and lines running

through the whole book. The latter, however, does not

form a parallel to the family books. For though a single

family, that of the Kanvas, at least predominates among

its authors, the prevalence in it of the strophic form of

composition impresses upon it a character of its own.

Moreover, the fact that the eighth book contains fewer

hymns than the seventh, in itself shows that the former

did not constitute one of the family series.

The first part (1-50) of Book I. has considerable affinities

with the eighth, more than half its hymns being attributed

to members of the Kanva family, while in the hymns

composed by some of these Kanvas the favourite strophic

metre of the eighth book reappears. There are, moreover,

numerous parallel and directly identical passages in

the two collections. It is, however, at present impossible

to decide which of the two is the earlier, or why it is that,

though so nearly related, they should have been separated.

Certain it is that they were respectively added at

the beginning and the end of a previously existing collection,

whether they were divided for chronological reasons

or because composed by different branches of the Kanva

family.

As to the ninth book, it cannot be doubted that it

came into being as a collection after the first eight books

had been combined into a whole. Its formation was in

fact the direct result of that combination. The hymns to

BOOKS IX. AND X. 43

Soma Pavamana ("the clearly flowing") are composed

by authors of the same families as produced Books

II. VII., a fact, apart from other evidence, sufficiently

indicated by their having the characteristic refrains of

those families. The Pavamana hymns have affinities to

the first and eighth books also. When the hymns of the

different families were combined into books, and clearly

not till then, all their Pavamana hymns were taken out

and gathered into a single collection. This of course

does not imply that the Pavamana hymns themselves

were of recent origin. On the contrary, though some of

them may date from the time when the tenth book came

into existence, there is good reason to suppose that the

poetry of the Soma hymns, which has many points in

common with the Avesta, and deals with a ritual going

back to the Indo-Iranian period, reached its conclusion

as a whole in early times among the Vedic singers. Differences

of age in the hymns of the ninth book have been

almost entirely effaced ; at any rate, research has as yet

hardly succeeded in distinguishing chronological stages

in this collection.

With regard to the tenth book, there can be no doubt

that its hymns came into being at a time when the first

nine already existed. Its composers grew up in the

knowledge of the older books, with which they betray

their familiarity at every turn. The fact that the author

of one of its groups (20-26) begins with the opening

words (agnim lie) of the first stanza of the Rigveda, is

probably an indication that Books I.-IX. already existed

in his day even as a combined collection. That the

tenth book is indeed an aggregate of supplementary

hymns is shown by its position after the Soma book, and

by the number of its hymns being made up to that of

44 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

the first book (191). The unity which connects its

poetry is chronological ; for it is the book of recent

groups and recent single hymns. Nevertheless the

supplements collected in it appear for the most part to

be older than the additions which occur in the earlier

books.

There are many criteria, derived from its matter

as well as its form, showing the recent origin of the

tenth book. With regard to mythology, we find the

earlier gods beginning to lose their hold on the imagination

of these later singers. Some of them seem to

be disappearing, like the goddess of Dawn, while only

deities of widely established popularity, such as Indra

and Agni, maintain their position. The comprehensive

group of the Vigve devds, or "All gods," has alone

increased in prominence. On the other hand, an

altogether new type, the deification of purely abstract

ideas, such as " Wrath " and "

Faith," now appears for

the first time. Here, too, a number of hymns are found

dealing with subjects foreign to the earlier books, such

as cosmogony and philosophical speculation, wedding

and burial rites, spells and incantations, which give to

this book a distinctive ^character besides indicating its

recent origin.

Linguistically, also, the tenth book is clearly distinguished

as later than the other books, forming in

many respects a transition to the other Vedas. A few

examples will here suffice to show this. Vowel contractions

occur much more frequently, while the hiatus

has grown rarer. The use of the letter /, as compared

with r, is, in agreement with later Sanskrit,

strikingly on the increase. In inflexion the employment

of the Vedic nominative plural in dsas is on the decline.

CHRONOLOGICAL STRATA IN RIGVEDA 45

With regard to the vocabulary, many old words are

going out of use, while others are becoming commoner.

Thus the particle sim, occurring fifty times in the rest of

the Rigveda, is found only once in the tenth book. A

number of words common in the later language are

only to be met with in this book ; for instance, labh,

" to

take," kala, "time," lakshmi, "fortune," evam, "thus."

Here, too, a number of conscious archaisms can be

pointed out.

Thus the tenth book represents a definitely later

stratum of composition in the Rigveda. Individual

hymns in the earlier books have also been proved by

various recognised criteria to be of later origin than

others, and some advance has been made towards

assigning them to three or even five literary epochs.

Research has, however, not yet arrived at any certain

results as to the age of whole groups in the earlier

books. For it must be borne in mind that posteriority

of collection and incorporation does not necessarily

prove a later date of composition.

Some hundreds of years must have been needed

for all the hymns found in the Rigveda to come into

being. There was also, doubtless, after the separation

of the Indians from the Iranians, an intermediate

period, though it was probably of no great length. In

this transitional age must have been composed the

more ancient poems which are lost, and in which the

style of the earliest preserved hymns, already composed

with much skill, was developed. The poets of the

older part of the Rigveda themselves mention predecessors,

in whose wise they sing, whose songs they

desire to renew, and speak of ancestral hymns produced

in clays of yore. As far as linguistic evidence

46 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

is concerned, it affords little help in discriminating

periods within the Rigveda except with regard to the

tenth book. For throughout the hymns, in spite of

the number of authors, essentially the same language

prevails. It is quite possible to distinguish differences

of thought, style, and poetical ability, but hardly any

differences of dialect. Nevertheless, patient and minute

linguistic research, combined with the indications derived

from arrangement, metre, and subject-matter, is

beginning to yield evidence which may lead to the

recognition of chronological strata in the older books

of the Rigveda,

Though the aid of MSS. for this early period

entirely fails, we yet happily possess for the Rigveda

an abundant mass of various readings over 2000 years

old. These are contained in the other Vedas, which

are largely composed of hymns, stanzas, and lines

borrowed from the Rigveda. The other Vedas are,

in fact, for the criticism of the Rigveda} what manuscripts

are for other literary monuments. We are

thus enabled to collate with the text of the Rigveda

directly handed down, various readings considerably

older than even the testimony of Yaska and of the

Praticakhyas.

The comparison of the various readings supplied

by the later Vedas leads to the conclusion that the

text of the Rigveda existed, with comparatively few

exceptions, in its present form, and not in a possibly

different recension, at the time when the text of the

Sdma-veda, the oldest form of the Yajur-veda, and the

Atharva-veda was constituted. The number of cases is

infinitesimal in which the Rigveda shows a corruption

from which the others are free. Thus it appears that

THE TEXT OF THE RIGVEDA 47

the kernel of Vedic tradition, as represented by the

Rigveda, has come down to us, with a high degree

of fixity and remarkable care for verbal integrity,

from a* period which can hardly be less remote than

1000 B.C.

It is only natural that a sacred collection of poetry,

historical in its origin, and the heritage of oral tradition

.before the other Vedas were composed and the

details of the later ritual practice were fixed, should

have continued to be preserved more accurately than

texts formed mainly by borrowing from it hymns which

were arbitrarily cut up into groups of verses or into

single verses, solely in order to meet new liturgical

needs. For those who removed verses of the Rigveda

from their context and mixed them up with their own

new creations would not feel bound to guard such

verses from change as strictly as those who did nothing

but continue to hand down, without any break, the

ancient text in its connected form. The control of

tradition would be wanting where quite a new tradition

was being formed.

The criticism of the text of the Rigveda itself is

concerned with two periods. The first is that in which

it existed alone before the other Vedas came into being ;

the second is that in which it appears in the phonetically

modified form called the Samhita text, due to the labours

of grammatical editors. Being handed down in the

older period exclusively by oral tradition, it was not

preserved in quite authentic form down to the time of

its final redaction. It did not entirely escape the fate

suffered by all works which, coming down from remote

antiquity, survive into an age of changed linguistic

conditions. Though there are undeniable corruptions

48 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

in detail. belonging to the older period, the text maintained

a remarkably high level of authenticity till such

modifications as it had undergone reached their conclusion

in the Samhita text. This text differs in hundreds

of places from that of the composers of the hymns ;

but its actual words are nearly always the same as those

used by the ancient seers. Thus there would be no

uncertainty as to whether the right word, for instance,

was sumnam or dyumnam. The difference lies almost

entirely in the phonetic changes which the words have

undergone according to the rules of Sandhi prevailing

in the classical language. Thus what was formerly

pronounced as tuani hi ague now appears as tvaiu hy

agne. The modernisation of the text thereby produced is,

however, only partial, and is often inconsistently applied.

The euphonic combinations introduced in the Samhita

text have interfered with the metre. Hence by reading

according to the latter the older text can be restored.

At the same time the Samhita text has preserved the

smallest minutia? of detail most liable to corruption,

and the slightest difference in the matter of accent and

alternative forms, which might have been removed with

the greatest ease. Such points furnish an additional

proof that the extreme care with which the verbal

integrity of the text was guarded goes back to the

earlier period itself. Excepting single mistakes of tradition

in the first, and those due to grammatical theories

in the second period, the old text of the Rigveda thus

shows itself to have been preserved from a very remote

antiquity with marvellous accuracy even in the smallest

details.

From the explanatory discussions of the Brahmanas

in connection with the Rigveda, it results that the text

AGE OF THE SAMHITA TEXT 49

of the latter must have been essentially fixed in their

time, and that too in quite a special manner, more, for

instance, than the prose formulas of the Yajurveda. For

the Qatapatha Brdhmana, while speaking of the possibility

of varying some of these formulas, rejects the notion of

changing the text of a certain Rigvedic verse, proposed

by some teachers, as something not to be thought of.

The Brahmanas further often mention the fact that

such and such a hymn or liturgical group contains a

particular number of verses. All such numerical

statements appear to agree with the extant text of

the Rigveda. On the other hand, transpositions and

omissions of Rigvedic verses are to be found in the

Brahmanas. These, however, are only connected with

the ritual form of those verses, and in no way show

that the text from which they were taken was different

from ours.

The Sutras also contain altered forms of Rigvedic

verses, but these are, as in the case of the Brahmanas,

to be explained not from an older recension of the text,

but from the necessity of adapting them to new ritual

technicalities. On the other hand, they contain many

statements which confirm our present text. Thus all

that the Sutra of (Jankhayana says about the position

occupied by verses in a hymn, or the total number of

verses contained in groups of hymns, appears invariably

to agree with our text.

We have yet to answer the question as to when the

Samhita text, which finally fixed the canonical form of

the Rigveda, was constituted. Now the Brahmanas contain

a number of direct statements as to the number of

syllables in a word or a group of words, which are at

variance with the Samhita text owing to the vowel con50

SANSKRIT LITERATURE

tractions made in the latter. Moreover, the old part of

the Brahmana literature shows hardly any traces of

speculations about phonetic questions connected with

the Vedic text. The conclusion may therefore be drawn

that the Samhita text did not come into existence till

afterthe completion of the Brahmanas. With regard to

the Aranyakas and Upanishads, which form supplements

to the Brahmanas, the case is different. These works

not only mention technical grammatical terms for certain

groups of letters, but contain detailed doctrines about

the phonetic treatment of the Vedic text. Here, too,

occur for the first time the names of certain theological

grammarians, headed by (^akalya and Mandukeya, who

are also recognised as authorities in the Pratigakhyas.

The Aranyakas and Upanishads accordingly form a transition,

with reference to the treatment of grammatical questions,

between the age of the Brahmanas and that of

Yaska and the Pratigakhyas. The Samhita text must

have been created in this intermediate period, say about

600 B.C.

This work being completed, extraordinary precautions

soon began to be taken to guard the canonical text thus

fixed against the possibility of any change or loss. The

result has been its preservation with a faithfulness unique

in literary history. The first step taken in this direction

was the constitution of the Pada, or "word" text, which

being an analysis of the Samhita, gives each separate

word in its independent form, and thus to a considerable

extent restores the Samhita text to an older stage.

That the Pada text was not quite contemporaneous in

origin with the other is shown by its containing some

undoubted misinterpretations and misunderstandings.

Its composition can, however, only be separated by a

THE PADA TEXT 5 1

short interval from that of the Samhita, for it appears

to have been known to the writer of the Aitareya

Aranyaka, while its author, (^akalya, is older than both

Yaska, who quotes him, and (^aunaka, composer of

the Rigveda Praticdkhya, which is based on the Pada

text.

The importance of the latter as a criterion of the

authenticity of verses in the Rigveda is indicated by the

following fact. There are six verses in the Rigveda 1 not

analysed in the Pada text, but only given there over

again in the Samhita form. This shows that Cakalya did

not acknowledge them as truly Rigvedic, a view justified

by internal evidence. This group of six, which is doubtless

exhaustive, stands midway between old additions

which (Jakalya recognised as canonical, and the new

appendages called Khilas, which never gained admission

into the Pada text in any form.

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)