History of Sanskrit Literature -11 (BY ARTHUR A. MACDONELL

History of Sanskrit Literature

(BY

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

BODEN PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT)

So day and night still bear away

The life oj every mortal man.

It is uncertain who was the author of the Hitopadeqa ;

nor can anything more definite be said about the date of

this compilation than that it is more than 500 years old,

as the earliest known MS. of it was written in 1373 A.D.

As both the Panchatantra and the Hitopadega were

originally intended as manuals for the instruction of

kings in domestic and foreign policy, they belong to

the class of literature which the Hindus call nlti-c-dstra,

or " Science of Political Ethics." A purely metrical

treatise, dealing directly with the principles of policy,

is the Niti-sara, or " Essence of Conduct," of Kamandaka,

which is one of the sources of the maxims introduced

by the author of the Hitopadeqa,

COLLECTIONS OF FAIRY TALES 375

A collection of pretty and ingenious fairy tales, with

a highly Oriental colouring, is the Vetala-panchavimcati*,

or "

Twenty-five Tales of the Vetala

"

(a demon supposed

to occupy corpses). The framework of Jthis collection is

briefly as follows. King Vikrama of UjjayinI is directed

by an ascetic (yogin) to take down from a tree and convey

a corpse, without uttering a single word, to a spot in

a graveyard where certain rites for the attainment of

high magical powers are to take place. As the king is

carrying the corpse along on his shoulders, a Vetala,

which has entered it, begins to speak and tells him a

fairy tale. On the king inadvertently replying to a

question, the corpse at once disappears and is found

hanging on the tree again. The king goes back to fetch

it, and the same process is repeated till the Vetala has

told twenty-five tales. Each of these is so constructed

as to end in a subtle problem, on which the king is

asked to express his opinion. The stories contained in

this work are known to many English readers under the

title of Vikram and the Vampire.

Another collection of fairy tales is the Simhdsanadvatrimcikdy

or "Thirty-two Stories of the Lion-seat

"

{i.e.

throne), which also goes by the name of Vikrama-charitay

or " Adventures of Vikrama." Here it is the throne of

King Vikrama that tells the tales. Both this and the

preceding collection are of Buddhistic origin.

A third work of the same kind is the uka-saptatiy or

"Seventy Stories of a Parrot." Here a wife, whose

husband is travelling abroad, and who is inclined to

run after other men, turns to her husband's clever

parrot for advice. The bird, while seeming to approve

of her plans, warns her of the risks she runs, and makes

her promise not to go and meet any paramour unless

25

376 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

she can extricate herself from difficulties as So-and-so

did. Requested to tell the story, he does so, but only

as far as the dilemma, when he asks the woman what

course the person concerned should take. As she cannot

guess, the parrot promises to tell her if she stays

at home that night. Seventy days pass in the same

way, till the husband returns.

These three collections of fairy tales are all written

in prose and are comparatively short. There is, however,

another of special importance, which is composed

in verse and is of very considerable length. For it contains

no less than 22,000 qlokas, equal to nearly onefourth

of the Mahdbhdrata, or to almost twice as much

as the Iliad and Odyssey put together. This is the

Kathd-sarit-sdgara, or " Ocean of Rivers of Stories." It

is divided into 124 chapters, called tarangas, or "

waves,"

to be in keeping with the title of the work. Independent

of these is another division into eighteen books called

lambakas.

The author was Somadeva, a Kashmirian poet, who

composed his work about 1070 A.D. Though he himself

was a Brahman, his work contains not only many traces

of the Buddhistic character of his sources, but even direct

allusions to Buddhist Birth Stories. He states the real

basis of his work to have been the Brihat-kathd, or " Great

Narration," which Bana mentions, by the poet Gunadhya,

who is quoted by Dandin. This original must, in the

opinion of Biihler, go back to the first or second century

A.D.

A somewhat earlier recast of this work was made

about A.D. 1037 by a contemporary of Somadeva's named

Kshemendra Vyasadasa. It is entitled Brihat-kathdmanjari,

and is only about one-third as long as the KathdKATHA-

SARIT-SAGARA 377

sarit-sdgara. Kshemendra and Somadeva worked independently

of each other, and both state that the original

from which they translated was written in the pai$achi

bhdshd or " Goblin language/' a term applied to a number

of Low Prakrit dialects spoken by the most ignorant and

degraded classes. The Kathd-sarit-sdgara also contains

( Tarangas 60-64) a recast of the first three books of the

Panchatantray which books, it is interesting to find, had

the same form in Somadeva's time as when they were

translated into Pehlevi (about 570 A.D.).

Somadeva's work contains many most entertaining

stories ; for instance, that of the king who, through

ignorance of the phonetic rules of Sanskrit grammar,

misunderstood a remark made by his wife, and overcome

with shame, determined to become a good Sanskrit

scholar or die in the attempt. One of the most famous

tales it contains is that of King (Jibi, who offered up his

life to save a pigeon from a hawk. It is a Jdtakay and is

often represented on Buddhist sculptures ; for example,

on the tope of AmaravatI, which dates from about the

beginning of our era. It also occurs in a Chinese as

well as a Muhammadan form.

Ethical Poetry.

The proneness of the Indian mind to reflection not

only produced important results in religion, philosophy,

and science ; it also found a more abundant expression

in poetry than the literature of any other nation can

boast. Scattered throughout the most various departments

of Sanskrit literature are innumerable apophthegms

in which wise and noble, striking and original thoughts

often appear in a highly finished and poetical garb.

378 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

These are plentiful in the law-books ; in the epic and

the drama they are frequently on the lips of heroes, sages,

and gods ; and in fables are constantly uttered by tigers,

jackals, cats, and other animals. Above all, the Mahdbhdrata,

which, to the pious Hindu, constitutes a moral

encyclopaedia, is an inexhaustible mine of proverbial

philosophy. It is, however, natural that ethical maxims

should be introduced in greatest abundance into works

which, like the Panchatantra and Hitopadeca, were intended

to be handbooks of practical moral philosophy.

Owing to the universality of this mode of expression

in Sanskrit literature, there are but few works consisting

exclusively of poetical aphorisms. The most important

are the two collections by the highly-gifted Bhartrihari,

entitled respectively Niticataka, or "

Century of Conduct,"

and Vairdgya-cataka, or "

Century of Renunciation."

Others are the Qdnti-catakay or "Century of

Tranquillity," by a Kashmirian poet named ^ilhana ; the

Moha-mudgaray or " Hammer of Folly," a short poem

commending the relinquishment of worldly desires, and

wrongly attributed to (^ankaracharya ; and the Chdnakyacataka,

the " Centuries of Chanakya," the reputed author

of which was famous in India as a master of diplomacy,

and is the leading character in the political drama Mudrdrdkshasa.

The Niti-manjariy or " Cluster of Blossoms of

Conduct," which has not yet been published, is a collection

of a peculiar kind. The moral maxims which it

contains are illustrated by stories, and these are taken

exclusively from the Rigveda. It consists of about 200

clokas, and was composed by an author named Dya Dviveda

who accompanied his work with a commentary. In

the latter he quotes largely from the Brihaddevatd, Sayana

on the Rigveda, and other authors.

ETHICAL POETRY 379

There are also some modern anthologies of Sanskrit

gnomic poetry. One of these is (Jrldharadasa's Saduktikarndmrita

y or " Ear-nectar of Good Maxims/' containing

quotations from 446 poets, mostly of Bengal, and compiled

in 1205 A.D. The (^drngadhara-paddhati, or "Anthology

of (Jarngadhara," dating from the fourteenth

century, comprises about 6000 stanzas culled from 264

authors. The Subhdshiidvall, or " Series of Fine Sayings,"

compiled by Vallabhadeva, contains some 3500 stanzas

taken from about 350 poets. All that is best in Sanskrit

sententious poetry has been collected by Dr. Bohtlingk,

the Nestor of Indianists, in his Indische Spruche. This

work contains the text, critically edited and accompanied

by a prose German translation, of nearly 8000 stanzas,

which are culled from the whole field of classical Sanskrit

literature and arranged according to the alphabetical

order of the initial word.

Though composed in Pali, the Dhammapada may

perhaps be mentioned here. It is a collection of

aphorisms representing the most beautiful, profound,

and poetical thoughts in Buddhist literature.

The keynote prevailing in all this poetry is the doctrine

of the vanity of human life, which was developed before

the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century B.C., and has

dominated Indian thought ever since. There is no true

happiness, we are here taught, but in the abandonment

of desire and retirement from the world. The poet sees

the luxuriant beauties of nature spread before his eyes,

and feels their charm ; but he turns from them sad and

disappointed to seek mental calm and lasting happiness

in the solitude of the forest. Hence the picture of a

pious anchorite living in contemplation is often painted

with enthusiasm. Free from all desires, he is as happy

380 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

as a king, when the earth is his couch, his arms his

pillow, the sky his tent, the moon his lamp, when renunciation

is his spouse, and the cardinal points are the

maidens that fan him with winds. No Indian poet

inculcates renunciation more forcibly than Bhartrihari

; the humorous and ironical touches which he occasionally

introduces are doubtless due to the character of

this remarkable man, who wavered between the spiritual

and the worldly life throughout his career.

Renunciation is not, however, the only goal to which

the transitoriness of worldly goods leads the gnomic

poets of India. The necessity of pursuing virtue is the

practical lesson which they also draw from the vanity

of mundane existence, and which finds expression in

many noble admonitions :

Transient indeed is human life,

Like the moorts disc in waters seen :

Knowing how true this is, a man

Should everpractise what is good {Hit. iv. 133).

It is often said that when a man dies and leaves all

his loved ones behind, his good works alone can accompany

him on his journey to his next life. Nor should

sin ever be committed in this life when there is none to

see, for it is always witnessed by the u old hermit dwelling

in the heart," as the conscience is picturesquely

called.

That spirit of universal tolerance and love of mankind

which enabled Buddhism to overstep the bounds not

only of caste but of nationality, and thus to become the

earliest world-religion, breathes throughout this poetry.

Even the Mahdbhdrata, though a work of the Brahmans,

contains such liberal sentiments as this :

ETHICAL POETRY 381

Men of high rank win no esteem

If lacking in good qualities;

A Cudra even deserves respect

Who knows and does, his duty well (xiii. 2610).

The following stanza shows how cosmopolitan Bhartrihari

was in his views :

" This marts our own, a stranger that" :

Thus narrow-mindedpeople think.

However, noble-ininded men

Regard the whole world as their kin.

But these poets go even beyond the limits of humanity

and inculcate sympathy with the joys and sorrows of all

creatures :

To harm no living thing in deed,

In thought or word, to exercise

Benevolence and charity :

Virtue's eternal law is this (Mahdbh. xii. 5997).

Gentleness and forbearance towards good and bad

alike are thus recommended in the Hitopadeqa :

Even to beings destitute , >r<~^

Ofvirtue good men pity show :

The moon does not her light withdraw

Evenfrom the pariah's abode (i. 63).

The Panchatantraj again, dissuades thus from thoughts

of reven'g&"e ;

Devise no ill at any time

To injure those that do thee harm :

They ofthemselves will some dayfall,

Like trees that grow on river banks.

The good qualities of the virtuous are often described

and contrasted with the characteristics of evil-doers.

382 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

This, for instance, is how Bhartrihari illustrates the

humility of the benevolent :

The trees bend downward with the burden of theirfruit,

The clouds bow low, heavy with waters they will shed :

The noble hold not high their heads through pride of'wealthj

Thus those behave who are on others' good intent (i. 71).

Many fine thoughts about true friendship and the

value of intercourse with good men are found here, often

exemplified in a truly poetical spirit. This, for instance,

is from the Panchatantra :

Who is not made a better man

By contact with a noblefriend?

A water-drop on lotus-leaves

Assumes the splendour of a pearl (iii. 61).

It is perhaps natural that poetry with a strong pessimistic

colouring should contain many bitter sayings

about women and their character. Here is an example

of how they are often described :

The love ofwomen but a moment lasts,

Like colours of the dawn or evening redj

Their aims are crooked like a river's course;

Inconstant are they as the lightningflash ;

. Like serpents, they deserve no confidence {Kathas. xxxvii. 143).

At the same time there are several passages in which

female character is represented in a more favourable

light, and others sing the praise of faithful wives.

Here, too, we meet with many pithy sayings about

the misery of poverty and the degradation of servitude ;

while the power of money to invest the worthless man

with the appearance of every talent and virtue is described

with bitter irony and scathing sarcasm.

As might be expected, true knowledge receives freETHICAL

POETRY 383

quent and high appreciation in Sanskrit ethical poetry.

It is compared with a rich treasure which cannot be

divided among relations, which no thief can steal, and

which is never diminished by being imparted to others.

Contempt, on the other hand, is poured on pedantry

and spurious learning. Those who have read many

books, without understanding their sense, are likened to

an ass laden with sandal wood, who feels only the

weight, but knows nothing of the value of his burden.

As the belief in transmigration has cast its shadow

over Indian thought from pre-Buddhistic times, it is

only natural that the conception of fate should be

prominent in Sanskrit moral poetry. Here, indeed, we

often read that no one can escape from the operation of

destiny, but at the same time we find constant admonitions

not to let this fact paralyse human effort. For,

as is shown in the Hitopadeqa and elsewhere, fate is

nothing else than the result of action done in a former

birth. Hence every man can by right conduct shape his

future fate, just as a potter can mould a lump of clay

into whatever form he desires. Human action is thus

a necessary complement to fate ; the latter cannot proceed

without the former any more than a cart, as the

Hitopadeqa expresses it, can move with only one wheel.

This doctrine is inculcated with many apt illustrations.

Thus in one stanza of the Hitopadega it is pointed out

that "

antelopes do not enter into the mouth of the

sleeping lion

"

; in another the question is asked,

" Who

without work could obtain oil from sesamum seeds ?

"

Or, as the Mahdbharata once puts it, fate without human

action cannot be fulfilled, just as seed sown outside the

field bears no fruit.

For those who are suffering from the assaults of

384 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

adverse fate there are many exhortations to firmness

and constancy. The following is a stanza of this kind

from the Panchatantra :

In fortune and calamity

The great ever remain the same ;

The sun is at its rising red,

Red also when about to set.

Collected in the ethico-didactic works which have

been described in this chapter, and scattered throughout

the rest of the literature, the notions held by the

Brahmans in the sphere of moral philosophy have never

received a methodical treatment, as in the Pali literature

of Buddhism. In the orthodox systems of Hindu philosophy,

to which we now turn, they find no place.

CHAPTER XV

PHILOSOPHY

The beginnings of Indian philosophy, which are to be

found in the latest hymns of the Rigveda and in the

Atharvaveda, are concerned with speculations on the

origin of the world and on the eternal principle by

which it is created and maintained. The Yajui~veda

further contains fantastic cosmogonic legends describing

how the Creator produces all things by means of the

omnipotent sacrifice. With these Vedic ideas are intimately

connected, and indeed largely identical, those of

the earlier Upanishads. This philosophy is essentially

pantheistic and idealistic. By the side of it grew up an

atheistic and empirical school of thought, which in the

sixth century B.C. furnished the foundation of the two

great unorthodox religious systems of Buddhism and

Jainism.

The Upanishad philosophy is in a chaotic condition,

but the speculations of this and of other schools of

thought were gradually reduced to order and systematised

in manuals from about the first century of our

era onwards. Altogether nine systems may be distinguished,

some of which must in their origin go back

to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. at least. Of

the six systems which are accounted orthodox no less

than four were originally atheistic, and one remained

so throughout. The strangeness of this fact disappears

38s

386 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

when we reflect that the only conditions of orthodoxy

in India were the recognition of the class privileges of

the Brahman caste and a nominal acknowledgment of

the infallibility of the Veda, neither full agreement with

Vedic doctrines nor the confession of a belief in the

existence of God being required. With these two limitations

the utmost freedom of thought prevailed in

Brahmanism. Hence the boldest philosophical speculation

and conformity with the popular religion went hand

and hand, to a degree which has never been equalled in

any other country. Of the orthodox systems, by far the

most important are the pantheistic Vedanta, which, as

continuing the doctrines of the Upanishads, has been

the dominant philosophy of Brahmanism since the end

of the Vedic period, and the atheistic Sankhya, which,

for the first time in the history of the world, asserted

the complete independence of the human mind and

attempted to solve its problems solely by the aid of

reason.

On the Sankhya were based the two heterodox religious

systems of Buddhism and Jainism, which denied

the authority of the Veda, and opposed the Brahman

caste system and ceremonial. Still more heterodox was

the Materialist philosophy of Charvaka, which went

further and denied even the fundamental doctrines

common to all other schools of Indian thought, orthodox

and unorthodox, the belief in transmigration dependent

on retribution, and the belief in salvation or release from

transmigration.

The theory that every individual passes after death into

a series of new existences in heavens or hells, or in the

bodies of men and animals, or in plants on earth, where

it is rewarded or punished for all deeds committed in a

DOCTRINE OF TRANSMIGRATION 387

former life, was already so firmly established in the sixth

century B.C., that Buddha received it without question

into his religious system ; and it has dominated the belief

of the Indian people from those early times down to the

present day. There is, perhaps, no more remarkable

fact in the history of the human mind than that this

strange doctrine, never philosophically demonstrated,

should have been regarded as self-evident for 2500 years

by every philosophical school or religious sect in India,

excepting only the Materialists. By the acceptance ot

this doctrine the Vedic optimism, which looked forward

to a life of eternal happiness in heaven, was transformed

into the gloomy prospect of an interminable series of

miserable existences leading from one death to another.

The transition to the developed view of the Upanishads

is to be found in the ^atapatha Brahmana (above, p.

223).

How is the origin of the momentous doctrine which

produced this change to be accounted for ? The

Rigveda contains no traces of it beyond a couple of

passages in the last book which speak of the soul of

a dead man as going to the waters or plants. It seems

hardly likely that so far-reaching a theory should have

been developed from the stray fancies of one or two

later Vedic poets. It seems more probable that the Aryan

settlers received the first impulse in this direction from

the aboriginal inhabitants of India. As is well known,

there is among half-savage tribes a wide-spread belief

that the soul after death passes into the trunks of trees

and the -bodies of animals. Thus the Sonthals of India

are said even at the present day to hold that the souls of

the good enter into fruit-bearing trees. But among such

races the notion of transmigration does not go beyond a

388 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

belief in the continuance of human existence in animals

and trees. If, therefore, the Aryan Indians borrowed the

idea from the aborigines, they certainly deserve the credit

of having elaborated out of it the theory of an unbroken

chain of existences, intimately connected with the moral

principle of requital. The immovable hold it acquired on

Indian thought is doubtless due to the satisfactory explanation

it offered of the misfortune or prosperity which

is often clearly caused by no action done in this life.

Indeed, the Indian doctrine of transmigration, fantastic

though it may appear to us, has the twofold merit of

satisfying the requirement of justice in the moral government

of the world, and at the same time inculcating a

valuable ethical principle which makes every man the

architect of his own fate. For, as every bad deed done

in this existence must be expiated, so every good deed

will be rewarded in the next existence. From the enjoyment

of the fruits of actions already done there is no

escape ; for, in the words of the Mahabhdratay

" as among

a thousand cows a calf finds its mother, so the deed

previously done follows after the doer."

The cycle of existences (samsdrd) is regarded as

having no beginning, for as every event of the present

life is the result of an action done in a past one, the

same must hold true of each preceding existence ad

infinitum. The subsequent effectiveness of guilt and of

merit, commonly called adrishta or "the unseen," but

often also simply karma, "deed or work," is believed

to regulate not only the life of the individual, but the

origin and development of everything in the world ; for

whatever takes place cannot but affect some creature,

and must therefore, by the law of retribution, be due

to some previous act of that creature. In other words,

DOCTRINE OF SALVATION 389

the operations of nature are also the results of the

good or bad deeds of living beings. There is thus no

room for independent divine rule by the side of the

power of karma, which governs everything with iron

necessity. Hence, even the systems which acknowledge

a God can only assign to him the function of guiding the

world and the life of creatures in strict accordance with

the law of retribution, which even he cannot break. The

periodic destruction and renewal of the universe, an

application of the theory on a grand scale, forms part of

the doctrine of samsara or cycle of existence.

Common to all the systems of philosophy, and as old

as that of transmigration, is the doctrine of salvation,

which puts an end to transmigration. All action is brought

about by desire, which, in its turn is based on avidya, a

sort of "ignorance," that mistakes the true nature of

things, and is the ultimate source of transmigration.

Originally having only the negative sense of non-knowledge

(a-vidyd), the word here came to have the positive

sense of " false knowledge." Such ignorance is dispelled

by saving knowledge, which, according to every philosophical

school of India, consists in some special form

of cognition. This universal knowledge, which is not

the result of merit, but breaks into life independently,

destroys, the subsequent effect of works which would

otherwise bear fruit in future existences, and thus puts

an end to transmigration. It cannot, however, influence

those works the fruit of which has already begun to

ripen. Hence, the present life continues from the

moment of enlightenment till definite salvation at death,

just as the potter's wheel goes on revolving for a time

after the completion of the pot. But no merit or demerit

results from acts done after enlightenment (or

390 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

" conversion "

as we should say), because all desire for

the objects of the world is at an end.

The popular beliefs about heavens and hells, gods,

demi-gods, and demons, were retained in Buddhism and

Jainism, as well as in the orthodox systems. But these

higher and more fortunate beings were considered to be

also subject to the law of transmigration, and, unless they

obtained saving knowledge, to be on a lower level than

the man who had obtained such knowledge.

The monistic theory of the early Upanishads, which

identified the individual soul with Brahma, aroused the

opposition of the rationalistic founder of the Sankhya

system, Kapila, who, according to Buddhist legends,

was pre-Buddhistic, and whose doctrines Buddha followed

and elaborated. His teaching is entirely dualistic,

admitting only two things, both without beginning

and end, but essentially different, matter on the one

hand, and an infinite plurality of individual souls on

the other. An account of the nature and the mutual

relation of these two, forms the main i content of the

system. Kapila was, indeed, the first who drew a sharp

line of demarcation between the two domains of matter

and soul. The saving knowledge which delivers from

the misery of transmigration consists, according to the

Sankhya system, in recognising the absolute distinction

between soul and matter.

The existence of a supreme god who creates and

rules the universe is denied, and would be irreconcilable

with the system. For according to its doctrine the unconscious

matter of Nature originally contains within

itself the power of evolution (in the interest of souls,

which are entirely passive during the process), while

karma alone determines the course of that evolution.

THE SANKHYA SYSTEM 39 i

The adherents of the system defend their atheism

by maintaining that the origin of misery presents an

insoluble problem to the theist, for a god who has

created and rules the world could not possibly escape

from the reproach of cruelty and partiality. Much stress

is laid by this school in general on the absence of any

cogent proof for the existence of God.

The world is maintained to be real, and that from

all eternity ; for the existent can only be produced from

the existent. The reality of an object is regarded as

resulting simply from perception, always supposing the

senses of the perceiver to be sound. The world is

described as developing according to certain laws out

of primitive matter (prakriti or pradhdnd). The genuine

philosophic spirit of its method of rising from the known

elements of experience to the unknown by logical demonstration

till the ultimate cause is reached, must

give this system a special interest in the eyes of evolutionists

whose views are founded on the results of

modern physical science.

The evolution and diversity of the world are explained

by primaeval matter, although uniform and

indivisible, consisting of three different substances called

gunas or constituents (originally "strands" of a rope).

By the combination of these in varying proportions the

diverse material products were supposed to have arisen.

The constituent, called sattva, distinguished by the

qualities of luminousness and lightness in the object, and

by virtue, benevolence, and other pleasing attributes in

the subject, is associated with the feeling of joy; rajas,

distinguished by activity and various hurtful qualities,

is associated with pain ; and tamas, distinguished by

heaviness, rigidity, and darkness on the one hand, and

26

392 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

fear, unconsciousness, and so forth, on the other, is

associated with apathy. At the end of a cosmic period

all things are supposed to be dissolved into primitive

matter, the alternations of evolution, existence, and dissolution

having neither beginning nor end.

The psychology of the Sankhya system is specially

important. Peculiarly interesting is its doctrine that

all mental operations, such as perception, thinking,

willing, are not performed by the soul, but are merely

mechanical processes of the internal organs, that is to

say, of matter. The soul itself possesses no attributes

or qualities, and can only be described negatively.

There being no qualitative difference between souls,

the principle of personality and identity is supplied by

the subtile or internal body, which, chiefly formed of

the inner organs and the senses, surrounds and is made

conscious by the soul. This internal body, being the

vehicle of merit and demerit, which are the basis of

transmigration, accompanies the soul on its wanderings

from one gross body to another, whether the latter be

that of a god, a man, an animal, or a tree. Conscious

life is bondage to pain, in which pleasure is included

by this peculiarly pessimistic system. When salvation,

which is the absolute cessation of pain, is obtained, the

internal body is dissolved into its material elements, and

the soul, becoming finally isolated, continues to exist

individually, but in absolute unconsciousness.

The name of the system, which only begins to be

mentioned in the later Upanishads, and more frequently

in the Mahdbhdrata, is derived from sanikhyd,

il number."

There is, however, some doubt as to whether it originally

meant u

enumeration," from the twenty-five tattvas

or principles which it sets forth, or " inferential or

SANKHYA-KARIKA SANKHYA SUTRAS 393

discriminative

"

doctrine, from the method which it

pursues.

Kapila, the founder of the system, whose teaching is

presupposed by Buddhism, and whom Buddhistic legend

connects with Kapila-vastu, the birthplace of Buddha,

must have lived before the middle of the sixth century.

No work of his, if he ever committed his system to

writing, has been preserved. Indeed, the very existence

of such a person as Kapila has been doubted, in spite

of the unanimity with which Indian tradition designates

a man of this name as the founder of the system. The

second leading authority of the Sankhya philosophy

was Panchacikha, who may have lived about the beginning

of our era. The oldest systematic manual

which has been preserved is the Sankhya - karika

of I^VARA-KRISHNA. As it was translated into Chinese

between 557 and 583 A.D., it cannot belong to a later

century than the fifth, and may be still older. This

work deals very concisely and methodically with the

doctrines of the Sankhya in sixty-nine stanzas (composed

in the complicated Arya metre), to which three

others were subsequently added. It appears to have

superseded the Sutras of Panchacikha, who is mentioned

in it as* the chief disseminator of the system. There

are two excellent commentaries on the Sdnkkya-kdrikd,

the one composed about 700 A.D. by Gaudapada, and

the other soon after 1100 A.D. by Vachaspati Micra.

The Sankhya Sutras, long regarded as the oldest

manual of the system, and attributed to Kapila, were

probably not composed till about 1400 A.D. The author

of this work, which also goes by the name of Sankhyapravachana,

endeavours in vain to show that there is

no difference between the doctrines of the Sankhya and

394 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

of the Upanishads. He is also much influenced by the

ideas of the Yoga as well as the Vedanta system. In

the oldest commentary on this work, that of Aniruddha,

composed about 1500 A.D., the objectiveness of the

treatment is particularly useful. Much more detailed,

but far less objective, is the commentary of Vijnanabhikshu,

entitled Sankhya - pravachana - bhdshya, and

written in the second half of the sixteenth century.

The author's point of view being theistic, he effaces

the characteristic features of the different systems in

the endeavour to show that all the six orthodox systems

contain the absolute truth in their main doctrines.

From the beginning of our era down to recent times

the Sankhya doctrines have exercised considerable influence

on the religious and philosophical life of India,

though to a much less extent than the Vedanta. Some

of its individual teachings, such as that of the three

gunasy have become the common property of the whole

of Sanskrit literature. At the time of the great Vedantist,

(Jankara (800 A.D.), the Sankhya system was held

in high honour. The law book of Manu followed this

doctrine, though with an admixture of the theistic

notions of the Mlmamsa and Vedanta systems as well

as of popular mythology. The Mahabharata, especially

Book XII., is full of Sankhya doctrines; indeed almost

every detail of the teachings of this system is to be

found somewhere in the great epic. Its numerous

deviations from the regular Sankhya text-books are only

secondary, as Professor Garbe thinks, even though the

Mahdbhdrata is our oldest actual source for the system.

Nearly half the Puranas follow the cosmogony of the

Sankhya, and even those which are Vedantic are largely

influenced by its doctrines. The purity of the Sankhya

BUDDHISM AND JAINISM 395

notions are, however, everywhere in the Puranas" obscured

by Vedanta doctrines, especially that of cosmical

illusion. A peculiarity of the Puranic Sankhya is

the conception of Spirit or Purusha as the male, and

Matter or Prakriti as the female, principle in creation.

On the Sankhya system are based the two philosophical

religions of Buddhism and Jainism in all their

main outlines. Their fundamental doctrine is that life

is nothing but suffering. The cause of suffering is the

desire, based on ignorance, to live and enjoy the world.

The aim of both is to redeem mankind from the misery

of mundane existence by the annihilation of desire, with

the aid of renunciation of the world and the practice of

unbounded kindness towards all creatures. These two

pessimistic religions are so extremely similar that the

Jainas, or adherents of Jina, were long looked upon as

a Buddhist sect. Research has, however, led to the discovery

that the founders of both systems were contemporaries,

the most eminent of the many teachers who

in the sixth century opposed the Brahman ceremonial

and caste pretensions in Northern Central India. Both

religions, while acknowledging the lower and ephemeral

gods of Brahmanism, deny, like the Sankhya, the existence

of an eternal supreme Deity. As they developed,

they diverged in various respects from the system to

which they owed their philosophical notions. Hence it

came about that Sankhya writers stoutly opposed some

of their teachings, particularly the Buddhist denial of

soul, the doctrine that all things have only a momentary

existence, and that salvation is an annihilation of self.

Here, however, it should be noted that Buddha^ himself

refused to decide the question whether nirvana is complete

extinction or an unending state of unconscious bliss.

396 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

The latter view was doubtless a concession to the

Vedantic conception of Brahma, in which the individual

soul is merged on attaining salvation.

The importance of these systems lies not in their

metaphysical speculations, which occupy but a subordinate

position, but in their high development of

moral principles, which are almost entirely neglected

in the orthodox systems of Indian philosophy. The fate

of the two religions has been strangely different. Jainism

has survived as an insignificant sect in India alone ;

Buddhism has long since vanished from the land of its

birth, but has become a world religion counting more

adherents than any other faith.

The Sankhya philosophy, with the addition of a

peculiar form of mental asceticism as the most effective

means of acquiring saving knowledge, appears to

have assumed definite shape in a manual at an earlier

period than any of the other orthodox systems. This is

the Yoga philosophy founded by Patanjali and expounded

in the Yoga Sutras, The priority of this textbook

is rendered highly probable by the fact that it is

the only philosophical Sutra work which contains no

polemics against the others. There seems, moreover, to

be no sufficient ground to doubt the correctness of the

native tradition identifying the founder of the Yoga

system with the grammarian Patanjali. The Yoga

Sutras therefore probably date from the second century

B.C. This work also goes by the name of Sankhya-pravachana,

the same as that given to the later Sankhya

Sutras, a sufficiently clear proof of its close connection

with Kapila's philosophy. In the Mahabharata the two

systems are actually spoken of as one and the same.

In order to make his system more acceptable, PatanTHE

YOGA SYSTEM 397

jali introduced into it the doctrine of a personal god,

but in so loose a way as not to affect the system as a

whole. Indeed, the parts of the Sutras dealing with the

person of God are not only unconnected with the other

parts of the treatise, but even contradict the foundations

of the system. For the final aim of man is here represented

as the absolute isolation (kaivafya) of the soul

from matter, just as in the Sankhya system, and not

union with or absorption in God. Nor are the individual

souls here derived from the u

special soul

"

or God,

but are like the latter without a beginning.

The really distinctive part of the system is the

establishment of the views prevailing in Patanjali's time

with regard to asceticism and the mysterious powers

to be acquired by its practice. Yoga, or "

yoking

"

the

mind, means mental concentration on a particular

object. The belief that fasting and other penances

produce supernatural powers goes back to remote prehistoric

times, and still prevails among savage races.

Bodily asceticism of this kind is known to the Vedas

under the name of tapas. From this, with the advance

of intellectual life in India, was developed the practice

of mental asceticism called yoga, which must have been

known and practised several centuries before Patanjali's

time. For recent investigations have shown that Buddhism

started not only from the theoretical Sankhya

but from the practical Yoga doctrine ; and the condition

of ecstatic abstraction was from the beginning held

in high esteem among the Buddhists. Patanjali only

elaborated the doctrine, describing at length the means

of attaining concentration and carrying it to the highest

pitch. In his system the methodical practice of Yoga

acquired a special importance ; for, in addition to con398

SANSKRIT LITERATURE

ferring supernatural powers, it here becomes the chief

means of salvation. His Sutras consist of four chapters

dealing with deep meditation (samddki), the means for

obtaining it {sddhana), the miraculous powers {vibhuti)

it confers, and the isolation (kaivalyd) of the redeemed

soul. The oldest and best commentary on this work

is that of Vyasa, dating from the seventh century A.D.

Many of the later Upanishads are largely concerned

with the Yoga doctrine. The lawbook of Manu in

Book VI. refers to various details of Yoga practice.

Indeed, it seems likely, owing to the theistic point of

view of that work, that its Sankhya notions were derived

from the Yoga system. The MahdbJidrata treats

of Yoga in considerable detail, especially in Book XII.

It is particularly prominent in the Bhagavadgltd, which

is even designated a yoga-qdstra. Belief in the efficacy

of Yoga still prevails in India, and its practice survives.

But its adherents, the Yogis, are at the present day

often nothing more than conjurers and jugglers.

The exercises of mental concentration are in the

later commentaries distinguished by the name of rdjayoga

or " chief Yoga." The external expedients are

called kriyd-yoga, or "

practical Yoga." The more intense

form of the latter, in later works called hathayoga,

or " forcible Yoga," and dealing for the most

part with suppression of the breath, is very often contrasted

with rdja-yoga.

Among the eight branches of Yoga practice the

sitting posture (dsana), as not only conducive to concentration,

but of therapeutic value, is considered important.

In describing its various forms later writers

positively revelled, eighty-four being frequently stated'

to be their normal number. In the Jiatha-yoga there

MlMAMSA AND VEDANTA 399

are also a number of other postures and contortions

of the limbs designated mudrd. The best-known mudrd,

called khecharl, consists in turning the tongue back

towards the throat and keeping the gaze fixed on a

point between the eyebrows. Such practices, in conjunction

with the suppression of breath, were capable

of producing a condition of trance. There is at least

the one well-authenticated case of a Yogi named Haridas

who in the thirties wandered about in Rajputana and

Lahore, allowing himself to be buried for money when

in the cataleptic condition. The burial of the Master

of Ballantrae by the Indian Secundra Dass in Stevenson's

novel was doubtless suggested by an account of this

ascetic.

In contrast with the two older and intimately connected

dualistic schools of the Sankhya and Yoga, there

arose about the beginning of our era the only two, even

of the six orthodox systems of philosophy, which were

theistic from the outset. One of them, being based on

the Vedas and the Brahmanas, is concerned with the

practical side of Vedic religion ; while the other, alone

among the philosophical systems, represents a methodical

development of the fundamental non-dualistic speculations

of the Upanishads. The former, which has only

been accounted a philosophical system at all because

of its close connection with the latter, is the Purvamimdmsd

or " First Inquiry," also called Karma-mlmdinsd

or (i Inquiry concerning Works," but usually simply

Mimdmsd. Founded by Jaimini, and set forth in the

Karma-mimdmsd Sutras, this system discusses the sacred

ceremonies and the rewards resulting from their performance.

Holding the Veda to be uncreated and

existent from all eternity, it lays special stress on the

400 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

proposition that articulate sounds are eternal, and on

the consequent doctrine that the connection of a word

with its sense is not due to convention, but is by nature

inherent in the word itself. Owing to its lack of philosophical

interest, this system has not as yet much

occupied the attention of European scholars.

The oldest commentary in existence on the Mimamsd

Sutras is the bhdshya of (^abara Svamin, which in its turn

was commented on about 700 A.D. by the great Mlmamsist

Kumarila in his Tantra-vdrttika and in his lokavdrttika,

the latter a metrical paraphrase of (Jabara's

exposition of the first aphorism of Patanjali. Among

the later commentaries on the Mimamsd Sutras the most

important is the J

r

aiminlya-nydya-mdld-vistara of Madhava

(fourteenth century).

Far more deserving of attention is the theoretical

system of the Uttara-mlmdmsdy or u Second Inquiry."

For it not only-systematises the doctrines of the Upanishads

therefore usually termed Veddnta, or " End of

the Veda " but also represents the philosophical views

of the Indian thinkers of to-day. In the words of

Professor Deussen, its relation to the earlier Upanishads

resembles that of Christian dogmatics to the New

Testament. Its fundamental doctrine, expressed in the

famous formula tat tvam asz,

" thou art that," is the

identity of the individual soul with God (brahma).

Hence it is also called the Brahma- or driraka-mimdmsdy

"

Inquiry concerning Brahma or the embodied

soul." The eternal and infinite Brahma not being made

up of parts or liable to change, the individual soul,

it is here laid down, cannot be a part or emanation

of it, but is the whole indivisible Brahma. As there

is no other existence but Brahma, the Vedanta is styled

THE VEDANTA SYSTEM 401

the advaita-vdda, or "doctrine of non-duality/' being,

in other words, an idealistic monism. The evidence of

experience, which shows a multiplicity of phenomena,

and the statements of the Veda, which teach a multiplicity

of souls, are brushed aside as the phantasms of

a dream which are only true till waking takes place.

The ultimate cause of all such false impressions is

avidyd or innate ignorance, which this, like the other

systems, simply postulates, but does not in any way

seek to account for. It is this ignorance which prevents

the soul from recognising that the empirical world is

mere mdyd or illusion. Thus to the Vedantist the universe

is like a mirage, which the soul under the influence

of desire {trishnd or " thirst ") 'fancies it perceives, just

as the panting hart sees before it sheets of water in

the fata morgana (picturesquely called mriga-trishnd or

"deer-thirst" in Sanskrit). The illusion vanishes as if

by magic, when the scales fall from the eyes, on the

acquisition of true knowledge. Then the semblance of

any distinction between the soul and God disappears,

and salvation (inoksha), the chief end of man, is attained.

Saving knowledge cannot of course be acquired by

worldly experience, but is revealed in the theoretical

part (jndna-kdnda) of the Vedas, that is to say, in the

Upanishads. By this correct knowledge the illusion

of the multiplicity of phenomena is dispelled, just as

the illusion of a snake when there is only a rope.

Two forms of knowledge are, however, distinguished in

the Vedanta, a higher {para) and a lower (apard). The

former is concerned with the higher and impersonal

Brahma (neuter), which is without form or attributes,

while the latter deals with the lower and personal Brahma

(masculine), who is the soul of the universe, the Lord

402 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

(i$vara) who has created the world and grants salvation.

The contradiction resulting from one and the same

thing having form and no form, attributes and no attributes,

is solved by the explanation that the lower

Brahma has no reality, but is merely an illusory form

of the higher and only Brahma, produced by ignorance.

The doctrines of the Vedanta are laid down in the

Brahma-sutras of Badarayana. This text -book, the

meaning of which is not intelligible without the aid of

a commentary, was expounded in his bhdshya by the

famous Vedantist philosopher (^ANKARA, whose name

is intimately connected with the revival of Brahmanism.

He was born in 788 A.D., became an ascetic in 820,

and probably lived to an advanced age. There is

every likelihood that his expositions agree in all essentials

with the meaning of the Brahma-sutras. The full elaboration

of the doctrine of Maya, or cosmic illusion,

is, however, due to him. An excellent epitome of the

teachings of the Vedanta, as set forth by Cankara, is

the Vedanta-sara of Sadananda Yoglndra. Its author

departs from (Jankara's views only in a few particulars,

which show an admixture of Sankhya doctrine.

Among the many commentaries on the Brahmasutras

subsequent to (Jankara, the most important is

that of Ramanuja, who lived in the earlier half of the

twelfth century. This writer gives expression to the

views of the Pancharatras or Bhagavatas, an old Vishnuite

sect, whose doctrine, closely allied to Christian

ideas, is expounded in the Bhagavadglta and the Bhdgavata-

purdna, as well as in the special text-books of the

sect. The tenets of the Bhagavatas, as set forth by Ramanuja,

diverge considerably from those of the Brahmasutras

on which he is commenting. For, according

VAICESHIKA AND NYAYA SYSTEMS 403

to him, individual souls are not identical with God ;

they suffer from innate unbelief, not ignorance, while

belief or the love of God (bhakti), not knowledge, is the

means of salvation or union with God.

The last two orthodox systems of philosophy, the

Vaiceshika and the Nyaya, form a closely-connected

pair, since a strict classification of ideas, as well as the

explanation of the origin of the world from atoms, is

cHmmon to both. Much the older of the two is the

Vaiceshika, which is already assailed in the Brahmasutras.

It is there described as undeserving of attention,

because it had no adherents. This was certainly not

the case in later times, when this system became very

popular. It received its name from the category of

"particularity" (yiqeshd) on which great stress is laid

in its theory of atoms. The memory of its founder is

only preserved in his nickname Kanada (also Kanabhuj

or Kana-bhaksha), which means " atom-eater."

The main importance of the system lies in the logical

categories which it set up and under which it classed

all phenomena. The six which it originally set up are

substance, quality, motion, generality, particularity, and

inherence. They are rigorously defined and further

subdivided. The most interesting is that of inherence or

inseparable connection (samavdya), which, being clearly

distinguished from that of accident or separable connection

(samyogd), is described as the relation between

a thing and its properties, the whole and its parts, genus

and species, motion and the object in motion. Later

was added a seventh, that of non-existence (abhdva),

which, by affording special facilities for the display of

subtlety, has had a momentous influence on Indian

logic. This category was further subdivided into prior

404 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

and posterior non-existence (which we should respectively

call future and past existence), mutual nonexistence

(as between a jar and cloth), and absolute

non-existence (as fire in water).

Though largely concerned with these categories, the

Vaiceshika system aimed at attaining a comprehensive

philosophic view in connection with them. Thus while

dealing with the category of "substance," it develops

its theory of the origin of the world from atoms. The

consideration of the category of "quality" similarly

leads to its treatment of psychology, which is remarkable

and has analogies with that of the Sankhya. Soul

is here regarded as without beginning or end, and allpervading,

subject to the limitations of neither time nor

space. Intimately connected with soul is "mind"

(inanas), the internal organ of thought, which alone

enables the soul to know not only external objects but

its own qualities. As this organ is, in contrast with

soul, an atom, it can only comprehend a single object

at any given moment. This is the explanation why the

soul cannot be conscious of all objects simultaneously.

The Nyaya system is only a development and complement

of that of Kanada, its metaphysics and psychology

being the same. Its specific character consists

in its being a very detailed and acute exposition of

formal logic. As such it has remained the foundation

of philosophical studies in India down to the present

day. Besides dealing fully with the means of knowledge,

which it states to be perception, inference, analogy, and

trustworthy evidence, it treats exhaustively of syllogisms

and fallacies. It is interesting to note that the Indian

mind here independently arrived at an exposition of the

syllogism as the form of deductive reasoning. The

ECLECTICISM 405

text-book of this system is the Nydya-siUra of Gotama.

The importance here attached to logic appears from the

very first aphorism, which enumerates sixteen logical

notions with the remark that salvation depends on a

correct knowledge of their nature.

Neither the Vaiqeshika nor the Nydya-siitras originally

accepted the existence of God ; and though both

schools later became theistic, they never went so far

as to assume a creator of matter. Their theology is

first found developed in Udayanacharya's Kusumdnjali,

which was written about 1200 A.D., and in works which

deal with the two systems conjointly. Here God is

regarded as a "special" soul, which differs from all

other individual eternal souls by exemption from all

qualities connected with transmigration, and by the

possession of the power and knowledge qualifying him

to be a regulator of the universe.

Of the eclectic movement combining Sankhya, Yoga,

and Vedanta doctrines, the oldest literary representative

is the Qvetdgvatara Upanishad. More famous is the

Bhagavadgitdy in which the Supreme Being incarnate as

Krishna expounds to Arjuna his doctrines in this sense.

The burden of his teaching is that the zealous performance

of his duty is a man's most important task, to whatever

caste he may belong. The beauty and the power

of the language in which this doctrine is inculcated, is

unsurpassed in any other work of Indian literature.

By the side of the orthodox systems and the two non-

Brahmanical religions, flourished the lokdyata (" directed

to the world of sense "), or materialistic school, usually

called that of the Charvakas from the name of the

founder of the doctrine. It was regarded as peculiarly

heretical, for it not only rejected the authority of the

4o6 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

Vedas and Brahmanic ceremonial, but denied the doctrines

of transmigration and salvation accepted by all

other systems. Materialistic teachings may be traced

even before the time of Buddha, and they have had many

secret followers in India down to the present day. The

system, however, seems never to have had more than

one text-book, the lost Sutras of Brihaspati, its mythical

founder. Our knowledge of it is derived partly from the

polemics of other schools, but especially from the Sarvadar^

ana-samgraha, or " Compendium of all the Philosophical

Systems," composed in the fourteenth century by

the well-known Vedantist Madhavacharya, brother of

Sayana. The strong scepticism of the Charvakas showed

itself in the rejection of all the means of knowledge

accepted by other schools, excepting perception. To

them matter was the only realitVj Soul they regarded as

nothing but the body with the attribute of intelligence.

They held it to be created when the body is formed by

the combination of elements, just as the power of intoxication

arises from the mixture of certain ingredients.

Hence with the annihilation of the body the soul also is

annihilated. Not transmigration, they affirm, but the

true nature of things, is the cause from which phenomena

proceed. The existence of all that transcends the senses

they deny, sometimes with an admixture of irony. Thus

the highest being, they say, is the king of the land, whose

existence is proved by the perception of the whole world ;

hell is earthly pain produced by earthly causes ; and

salvation is the dissolution of the body. Even in the

attribution of their text-book to Brihaspati, the name of

the preceptor of the gods, a touch of irony is to be detected.

The religion of the Brahmans receives a severe

handling. The Vedas, say the Charvakas, are only the

MATERIALIST SCHOOL OF CHARVAKA 407

incoherent rhapsodies of knaves, and are tainted with the

three blemishes of falsehood, self-contradiction, and tautology

; Vedic teachers are impostors, whose doctrines are

mutually destructive ; and the ritual of the Brahmans is

useful only as a means of livelihood. "

If," they ask, "an

animal sacrificed reaches heaven, why does the sacrificer

not rather offer his own father ?

"

On the moral side the system is pure hedonism.

For the only end of man is here stated to be sensual

pleasure, which is to be enjoyed by neglecting as far as

possible the pains connected with it, just as a man who

desires fish takes the scales and bones into the bargain.

" While life remains, let a man live happily, let him feed

on ghee even though he run into debt ; when once the

body becomes ashes, how can it ever return again ?

"

The author of the Sarvadarqana-samgrahay placing

himself with remarkable mental detachment in the position

of an adherent in each case, describes altogether

sixteen systems. The six which have not been sketched

above, besides being of little importance, are not purely

philosophic. Five of these are sectarian, one Vishnuite

and four Civite, all of them being strongly tinctured

with Sankhya and Vedanta doctrines. The sixth, the

system of Panini, is classed by Madhava among the

philosophies, simply because the Indian grammarians

accepted the Mlmamsa, dogma of the eternity of sound,

and philosophically developed the Yoga theory of the

sphuta, or the imperceptible and eternal element inherent

in every word as the vehicle of its sense.

27

CHAPTER XVI

SANSKRIT LITERATURE AND THE WEST

Want of space makes it impossible for me to give even

the briefest account of the numerous and, in many cases,

important legal and scientific works written in Sanskrit.

But I cannot conclude this survey of Sanskrit literature

as an embodiment of Indian culture without sketching

rapidly the influence which it has received from and

exercised upon the nations of the West. An adequate

treatment of this highly interesting theme cou4d only be

presented in a special volume.

The oldest trace of contact between the Indians and

the peoples of the West is to be found in the history of

Indian writing, which, as we have already seen (p. 16)

was derived from a Semitic source, probably as early as

800 B.C.

The Aryans having conquered Hindustan in prehistoric

times, began themselves to fall under foreign

domination from an early period. The extreme northwest

became subject to Persian sway from about 500 to

331 B.C. under the Achaemenid dynasty. Cyrus the First

made tributary the Indian tribes of the Gandharas and

Acvakas. The old Persian inscriptions of Behistun and

Persepolis show that his successor, Darius Hystaspis, ruled

over not only the Gandharians, but also the people of the

Indus. Herodotus also states that this monarch had

subjected the " Northern Indians." At the command of

408

THE GREEKS IN INDIA 409

the same Darius, a Greek named Skylax is said to have

travelled in India, and to have navigated the Indus in

509 B.C. From his account various Greek writers, among

them Herodotus, derived their information about India.

In the army which Xerxes led against Greece in 480 B.C.

there were divisions of Gandharians and Indians, whose

dress and equipment are described by Herodotus. That

historian also makes the statement that the satrapy of

India furnished the heaviest tribute in the Persian empire,

adding that the gold with which it was paid was brought

from a desert in the east, where it was dug up by ants

larger than foxes.

At the beginning of the fourth century B.C., the Greek

physician Ktesias, who resided at the court of Artaxerxes

II., learnt much from the Persians about India, and was

personally acquainted with wise Indians. Little useful

information can, however, be derived from the account

of India which he wrote after his return in 398 B.C., as it

has been very imperfectly preserved, and his reputation

for veracity did not stand high among his countrymen.

The destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander

the Great led to a new invasion of India, which fixes the

first absolutely certain date in Indian history. In 327 B.C.

Alexander passed over the Hindu Kush with an army of

120,000 infantry and 30,000 cavalry. After taking the

town of PushkalavatI (the Greek Peukelaotis) at the

confluence of the Kabul and Indus, and subduing the

Acvakas (variously called Assakanoi, Aspasioi, Hippasioi,

by Greek writers) on the north and the Gandharas on the

south of the Kabul River, he crossed the Indus early in

326. At Takshacila(Greek Taxiles), between the Indus and

the Jhelum (Hydaspes), the Greeks for the first time saw

Brahman Yogis, or " the wise men of the Indians," as

410 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

they called them, and were astonished at their asceticism

and strange doctrines.

Between the Jhelum and the Chenab (Akesines) lay

the kingdom of the Pauravas or Pauras, whose prince,

called Porus by the Greeks from the name of his people,

led out an army of 50,000 infantry, 4000 cavalry, 200

elephants, and 400 chariots to check the advance of the

invader. Then on the banks of. the Jhelum was fought

the great historic battle, in which Alexander, after a severe

struggle, finally won the day by superior numbers and

force of genius. He continued his victorious march

eastwards till he reached the Sutlej (Greek Zadadres).

But here his further progress towards the Ganges was

arrested by the opposition of his Macedonians, intimidated

by the accounts they heard of the great power of the

king of the Prasioi (Sanskrit Prachyas, or " Easterns ").

Hence, after appointing satraps of the Panjab and of

Sindh, he sailed down to the mouths of the Indus and

returned to Persia by Gedrosia. Of the writings of those

who accompanied Alexander, nothing has been preserved

except statements from them in later authors.

After Alexander's death the assassination of the old

king Porus by Eudemus, the satrap of the Panjab, led

to a rebellion in which the Indians cast off the Greek

yoke under the leadership of a young adventurer named

Chandragupta (the Sandrakottos or Sandrokyptos of the

Greeks). Having gained possession of the Indus territory

in 317, and dethroned the king of Pataliputra in 315 B.C.,

he became master of the whole Ganges Valley as well.

The Maurya dynasty, which he thus founded, lasted for

137 years (315-178 B.C.). His empire was the largest

hitherto known in India, as it embraced the whole

territory between the Himalaya and the Vindhya from

MEGASTHENES ON INDIA 411

the mouths of the Ganges to the Indus, including

Gujarat.

Seleucus, who had founded a kingdom in Media and

Persia, feeling himself unable to vanquish Chandragupta,

sent a Greek named Megasthenes to reside at his court at

Pataliputfa. This ambassador thus lived for several years

in the heart of India between 311 and 302 B.C., and wrote

a work entitled Ta Indika, which is particularly valuable

as the earliest direct record of his visit by a foreigner who

knew the country himself. Megasthenes furnishes particulars

about the strength of Chandragupta's army and

the administration of the state. He mentions forest

ascetics {Hylobioi), and distinguishes Brachmdnes and

Sarmanai as two classes of philosophers, meaning, doubtless,

Brahmans and Buddhists (gramanas). He tells us

that the Indians worshipped the rain-bringing Zeus

(Indra) as well as the Ganges, which must, therefore,

have already been a sacred river. By his description of

the god Dionysus, whom they worshipped in the mountains,

(Jiva must be intended, and by Herakles, adored

in the plains, especially among the (Jurasenas on the

Yamuna and in the city of Methora, no other can be

meant than Vishnu and his incarnation Krishna, the

chief city of whose tribe of Yadavas was Mathura

(Muttra). These statements seem to justify the conclusion

that (Jiva and Vishnu were already prominent as

highest gods, the former in the mountains, the latter in

the Ganges Valley. Krishna would also seem to have been

regarded as an Avatar of Vishnu, though it is to be noted

that Krishna is not yet mentioned in the old Buddhist

Sutras. We also learn from Megasthenes that the doctrine

of the four ages of the world (yugas) was fully

developed in India by his time.

412 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

Chandragupta's grandson, the famous Acoka, not only

maintained his national Indian empire, but extended it in

every direction. Having adopted Buddhism as the state

religion, he did much to spread its doctrines, especially

to Ceylon, which since then has remained the most

faithful guardian of Buddhist tradition.

After Acoka's death the Graeco-Bactrian princes began

about 200 B.C. to conquer Western India, and ruled

there for about eighty years. Euthydemos extended his

dominions to the Jhelum. His son Demetrios (early in the

second century B.C.) appears to have held sway over the

Lower Indus, Malava, Gujarat, and probably also Kashmir.

He is called "

King of the Indians," and was the first to

introduce a bilingual coinage by adding an Indian inscription

in Kharoshthl characters on the reverse to the Greek

on the obverse. Eukratides (190-160 B.C.), who rebelled

against Demetrios, subjected the Panjab as far east as

the Beas. After the reign of Heliokles (160-120 B.C.),

the Greek princes in India ceased to be connected with

Bactria. The most prominent among these Grseco-

Indians was Menander (c. 150 B.C.), who, under the name

of Milinda, is well known in Buddhist writings. The last

vestige of Greek domination in India disappeared about

20 B.C., having lasted nearly two centuries. It is a remarkable

fact that no Greek monumental inscriptions

have ever been found in India.

With the beginning of the Graeco-Indian period also

commenced the incursions of the Scythic tribes, who are

called Indo-Scythians by the Greeks, and by the Indians

^akas, the Persian designation of Scythians in general.

Of these so-called Scythians the Jats of the Panjab are

supposed to be the descendants. The rule of these (Jaka

kings, the earliest of whom is Maues or Moa (c. 120 B.C.),

LATER INVADERS 413

endured down to 178 A.D., or about three centuries.

Their memory is preserved in India by the (Jaka era,

which is still in use, and dates from 78 A.D., the

inaugural year of Kanishka, the only famous king of

this race. His dominions, which included Kanyakubja

(Kanauj) on the Ganges, extended beyond the confines

of India to parts of Central Asia. A zealous adherent of

Buddhism, he made Gandhara and Kashmir the chief

seat of that religion, and held the fourth Buddhist

council in the latter country.

About 20 B.C. the (^akas were followed into India by

the Kushanas, who were one of the five tribes of the

Yueh-chi from Central Asia, and who subsequently conquered

the whole of Northern India.

After having been again united into a single empire

almost as great as that of Chandragupta under the

national dynasty of the Guptas, from 319 to 480 A.D.,

Northern India, partly owing to the attacks of the

Hunas, was split up into several kingdoms, some under

the later Guptas, till 606 A.D., when Harshavardhana

of Kanauj gained paramount power over the whole of

Northern India. During his reign the poet Bana flourished,

and the celebrated Chinese pilgrim Hiouen Thsang

visited India.

With the Muhammadan conquest about 1000 A.D.

the country again fell under a foreign yoke. As after

Alexander's invasion, we have the good fortune to possess

in Alberunl's India (c. 1030 A.D.) the valuable work

of a cultivated foreigner, giving a detailed account of the

civilisation of India at this new era in its history.

This repeated contact of the Indians with foreign invaders

from the West naturally led to mutual influences

in various branches of literature.

414 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

With regard to the Epics, we find the statement of

the Greek rhetorician Dio Chrysostomos (50-117 A.D.)

that the Indians sang in their own language the poetry

of Homer, the sorrows of Priam, the laments of Andromache

and Hecuba, the valour of Achilles and Hector.

The similarity of some of the leading characters of the

Mahdbhdrata, to which the Greek writer evidently alludes,

caused him to suppose that the Indian epic was a translation

of the Iliad. There is, however, no connection of

of any kind between the two poems. Nor does Professor

Weber's assumption of Greek influence on the Rdmdyana

appear to have any sufficient basis (p. 307).

The view has been held that the worship of Krishna,

who, as we have seen, plays an important part in the

Mahdbhdrata, arose under the influence of Christianity,

with which it certainly has some rather striking points

of resemblance. This theory is, however, rendered improbable,

at least as far as the origin of the cult of

Krishna is concerned, by the conclusions at which we

have arrived regarding the age of the Mahdbhdrata (pp.

286-287), as well as by the statements of Megasthenes,

which indicate that Krishna was deified and worshipped

some centuries before the beginning of our era. We

know, moreover, from the Mahdbhdshya that the story of

Krishna was the subject of dramatic representations in

the second or, at latest, the first century before the birth

of Christ.

It is an interesting question whether the Indian drama

has any genetic connection with that of Greece. It

must be admitted that opportunities for such a connection

may have existed during the first three centuries

preceding our era. On his expedition to India, Alexander

was accompanied by numerous artists, among

GREEK AND INDIAN DRAMA 415

whom there may have been actors. Seleucus gave his

daughter in marriage to Chandragupta, and both that

ruler and Ptolemy II. maintained relations with the

court of Pataliputra by means of ambassadors. Greek

dynasties ruled in Western India for nearly two centuries.

Alexandria was connected by a lively commerce with

the town called by the Greeks Barygaza (now Broach),

at the mouth of the Narmada (Nerbudda) in Gujarat ;

with the latter town was united by a trade route the city

of UjjayinI (Greek Ozene), which in consequence reached

a high pitch of prosperity. Philostratus (second century

A.D.), not it is true a very trustworthy authority, states

in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, who visited India

about 50 A.D., that Greek literature was held in high

esteem by the Brahmans. Indian inscriptions mention

Yavana or Greek girls sent to India as tribute, and

Sanskrit authors, especially Kalidasa, describe Indian

princes as waited on by them. Professor Weber has

even conjectured that the Indian god of love, Kama,

bears a dolphin {inakard) in his banner, like the Greek

Eros, through the influence of Greek courtesans.

The existence of such conditions has induced Professor

Weber to believe that the representations of

Greek plays, which must have taken place at the courts

of Greek princes in Bactria, in the Panjab, and in Gujarat,

suggested the drama to the Indians as a subject for imitation.

This theory is supported by the fact that the

curtain of the Indian stage is called yavanikd or the

" Greek partition." Weber at the same time admits that

there is no internal connection between the Indian and

the Greek drama.

Professor Windisch, however, went further, and maintained

such internal connection. It was, indeed, impos416

SANSKRIT LITERATURE

sible for him to point out any affinity to the Greek

tragedy, but he thought he could trace in the Mricchakatika

the influence of the new Attic comedy, which

reached its zenith with Menander about 300 B.C. The

points in which that play resembles this later Greek

comedy are fewer and slighter in other Sanskrit dramas,

and can easily be explained as independently developed

in India. The improbability of the theory is emphasised

by the still greater affinity of the Indian drama to that

of Shakespeare. It is doubtful whether Greek plays

were ever actually performed in India ; at any rate, no

references to such performances have been preserved.

The earliest Sanskrit plays extant are, moreover, separated

from the Greek period by at least four hundred

years. The Indian drama has had a thoroughly national

development, and even its origin, though obscure, easily

admits of an indigenous explanation. The name of the

curtain, yavanikd, may, indeed, be a reminiscence ot

Greek plays actually seen in India ; but it is uncertain

whether the Greek theatre had a curtain at all ; in any

case, it did not form the background of the stage.

It is a fact worth noting, that the beginning of one

of the most famous of modern European dramas has

been modelled on that of a celebrated Sanskrit play.

The prelude of ^akuntald suggested to Goethe the plan

of the prologue on the stage in Faust, where the stagemanager,

the merryandrew, and the poet converse

regarding the play about to be performed (cf. p. 351).

Forster's German translation of Kalidasa's masterpiece

appeared in 1791, and the profound impression it produced

on Goethe is proved by the well-known epigram

he composed on ^akuntald in the same year. The impression

was a lasting one ; for the theatre prologue

MIGRATION OF INDIAN FABLES 417

of Faust was not written till 1797, and as late as 1830

the poet thought of adapting the Indian play for the

Weimar stage.

If in epic and dramatic poetry hardly any definite

influences can be traced between India and the West,

how different is the case in the domain of fables and

fairy tales \ The story of the migration of these from

India certainly forms the most romantic chapter in the

literary history of the world.

We know that in the sixth century A.D. there existed

in India a Buddhist collection of fables, in which animals

play the part of human beings (cf. p. 369). By the

command of the Sassanian king, Khosru Anushlrvan

(531-579), this work was translated by a Persian

physician named Barzoi into Pehlevi. Both this version

and the unmodified original have been lost, but two

early and notable translations from the Pehlevi have

been preserved. The Syriac one was made about 570

A.D., and called Kalilag and Damnag. A manuscript of

it was found by chance in 1870, and, becoming known

to scholars by a wonderful chapter of lucky accidents,

was published in 1876. The Arabic translation from

the Pehlevi, entitled Kalllah and Dimnah, or " Fables of

Pilpay," was made in the eighth century by a Persian

convert to Islam, who died about 760 A.D. In this translation

a wicked king is represented to be reclaimed to

virtue by a Brahman philosopher named Bidbah, a word

which has been satisfactorily traced through Pehlevi

to the Sanskrit vidyapati,

" master of sciences,"

" chief

scholar." From this bidbah is derived the modern

Bidpai or Pilpay, which is thus not a proper name

at all.

This Arabic version is of great importance, as the

4i 8 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

source of other versions which exercised very great

influence in shaping the literature of the Middle Ages

in Europe. These versions of it were the later Syriac

(c. iooo A.D.), the Greek (1180), the Persian (c. 1130),

recast later (c. 1494) under the title of Anvdr-i-Suhaili,

or "Lights of Canopus," the old Spanish (1251), and the

Hebrew one made about 1250.

The fourth stratum of translation is represented by

John of Capua's rendering of the Hebrew version into

Latin [c. 1270), entitled Dii'ectorium Humance Vitcey which

was printed about 1480.

From John of Capua's work was made, at the instance

of Duke Eberhardt of Wurtemberg, the famous

German version, Das Buck der Byspel der alten Wysen, or

" Book of Apologues of the Ancient Sages," first printed

about 1481. The fact that four dated editions appeared

at Ulm between 1483 and 1485, and thirteen more down

to 1592, is a sufficiently eloquent proof of the importance

of this work as a means of instruction and amusement

during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Directorium

was also the source of the Italian version, printed

at Venice in 1552, from which came the English translation

of Sir Thomas North (1570). The latter was thus

separated from the Indian original by five intervening

translations and a thousand years of time.

It is interesting to note the changes which tales

undergo in the course of such wanderings. In the

second edition of his Fables (1678), La Fontaine acknowledges

his indebtedness for a large part of his work to

the Indian sage Pilpay. A well-known story in the

French writer is that of the milkmaid, who, while carrying

a pail of milk on her head to market, and building

all kinds of castles in the air with the future proceeds

SANSKRIT STORIES IN LA FONTAINE 419

of the sale of the milk, suddenly gives a jump of joy at

the prospect of her approaching fortune, and thereby

shatters the pail to pieces on the ground. This is only

a transformation of a story still preserved in *the Panchatantra.

Here it is a Brahman who, having filled an

alms-bowl with the remnants of some rice-pap he has

begged, hangs it up on a nail in the wall above his

bed. He dreams of the money he will procure by

selling the rice when a famine breaks out. Then he

will gradually acquire cattle, buy a fine house, and

marry a beautiful girl with a rich dowry. One day

when he calls to his wife to take away his son who is

playing about, and she does not hear, he will rise up

to give her a kick. As this thought passes through his

mind, his foot shatters the alms-bowl, the contents of

which are spilt all over him.

Another Panchatantra story recurring in La Fontaine

is that of the too avaricious jackal. Finding the dead

bodies of a boar and a hunter, besides the bow of the

latter, he resolves on devouring the bowstring first. As

soon as he begins to gnaw, the bow starts asunder,

pierces his head, and kills him. In La Fontaine the

jackal has become a wolf, and the latter is killed by

the arrow shot off as he touches the bow.

Nothing, perhaps, in the history of the migration

of Indian tales is more remarkable than the story of

Barlaam andJosaphat. At the court of Khalif Almansur

(753-774), under whom Kalllah and Dimnah was translated

into Arabic, there lived a Christian known as

John of Damascus, who wrote in Greek the story of

Barlaam and Josaphat as a manual of Christian theology.

This became one of the most popular books of the

Middle Ages, being translated into many Oriental as

420 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

well as European languages. It is enlivened by a

number of fables and parables, most of which have

been traced to Indian sources. The very hero of the

story, Prince Josaphat, has an Indian origin, being,

in fact, no other than Buddha. The name has been

shown to be a corruption of Bodhisattva, a well-known

designation of the Indian reformer. Josaphat rose to

the rank of a saint both in the Greek and the Roman

Church, his day in the former being August 26, in the

latter November 27. That the founder of an atheistic

Oriental religion should have developed into a Christian

saint is one of the most astounding facts in religious

history.

Though Europe was thus undoubtedly indebted to

India for its mediaeval literature of fairy tales and fables,

the Indian claim to priority of origin in ancient times is

somewhat Rubious. A certain number of apologues found

in the collections of ^Esop and Babrius are distinctly

related to Indian fables. The Indian claim is supported

by the argument that the relation of the jackal to the

lion is a natural one in the Indian fable, while the

connection of the fox and the lion in Greece has no

basis in fact. On the other side it has been urged

that animals and birds which are peculiar to India

play but a minor part in Indian fables, while there

exists a Greek representation of the ^Esopian fable of

the fox and the raven, dating from the sixth century

B.C. Weber and Benfey both conclude that the Indians

borrowed a few fables from the Greeks, admitting at

the same time that the Indians had independent fables

of their own before. Rudimentary fables are found

even in the Chhdndogya Upanishady and the transmigration

theory would have favoured the development of this

WESTWARD MIGRATION OF CHESS 421

form of tale ; indeed Buddha himself in the old Jdtaka

stories appears in the form of various animals.

Contemporaneously with the fable literature, the

most intellectual game the world has known began

its westward migration from India. Chess in Sanskrit

is called chatur-anga> or the " four-limbed army,"

because it represents a kriegspiel, in which two armies,

consisting of infantry, cavalry, chariots, and elephants,

each led by a king and his councillor, are opposed.

The earliest direct mention of the game in Sanskrit

literature is found in the works of Bana, and the Kdvydlamkdra

of Rudrata, a Kashmirian poet of the ninth

century, contains a metrical puzzle illustrating the

moves of the chariot, the elephant, and the horse.

Introduced into Persia in the sixth century, chess was

brought by the Arabs to Europe, where it was generally

known by 1100 A.D. It has left its maris on mediaeval

poetry, on the idioms of European languages

{e.g.

"

check," from the Persian shahy

"

king "), on the

science of arithmetic in the calculation of progressions

with the chessboard, and even in heraldry, where the

"rook" often figures in coats of arms. Beside the fable

literature of India, this Indian game served to while

away the tedious life of myriads during the Middle Ages

in Europe.

Turning to Philosophical Literature, we find that the

early Greek and Indian philosophers have many points

in common. Some of the leading doctrines of the

Eleatics, that God and the universe are one, that everything

existing in multiplicity has no reality, that thinking

and being are identical, are all to be found in the

philosophy of the Upanishads and the Vedanta system,

which is its outcome. Again, the doctrine of Empe422

SANSKRIT LITERATURE

docles, that nothing can arise which has not existed

before, and that nothing existing can be annihilated,

has its exact parallel in the characteristic doctrine of

the Sankhya system about the eternity and indestructibility

of matter. According to Greek tradition, Thales,

Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and others undertook

journeys to Oriental countries in order to study

philosophy. Hence there is at least the historical possibility

of the Greeks having been influenced by Indian

thought through Persia.

Whatever may be the truth in the cases just mentioned,

the dependence of Pythagoras on Indian philosophy

and science certainly seems to have a high degree

of probability. Almost all the doctrines ascribed to him,

religious, philosophical, mathematical, were known in

India in the sixth century B.C. The coincidences are

so numerous that their cumulative force becomes considerable.

The transmigration theory, the assumption

of five elements, the Pythagorean theorem in geometry,

the prohibition as to eating beans, the religio-philosophical

character of the Pythagorean fraternity, and the

mystical speculations of the Pythagorean school, all

have their close parallels in ancient India. The doctrine

of metempsychosis in the case of Pythagoras appears

without any connection or explanatory background,

and was regarded by the Greeks as of foreign origin. He

could not have derived it from Egypt, as it was not

known to the ancient Egyptians. In spite, however, of

the later tradition, it seems impossible that Pythagoras

should have made his way to India at so early a date,

but he could quite well have met Indians in Persia.

Coming to later centuries, we find indications that the

Neo-Platonist philosophy may have been influenced by

INDIAN AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY 423

the Sankhya system, which flourished in the first centuries

of our era, and could easily have become known

at Alexandria owing to the lively intercourse between

that city and India at the time. From this source

Plotinus (204-269 A.D.), chief of the Neo-Platonists, may

have derived his doctrine that soul is free from suffering,

which belongs only to matter, his identification of soul

with light, and his illustrative use of the mirror, in

which the reflections of objects appear, for the purpose

of explaining the phenomena of consciousness.

The influence of the Yoga system on Plotinus is suggested

by his requirement that man should renounce the

world of sense and strive after truth by contemplation.

Connection with Sankhya ideas is still more likely

in the case of Plotinus'^ most eminent pupil, Porphyry

(232-304 A.D.), who lays particular stress on the difference

between soul and matter, on the omnipresence of

soul when freed from the bonds of matter, and on the

doctrine that the world has no beginning. It is also

noteworthy that he rejects sacrifice and prohibits the

killing of animals.

The influence of Indian philosophy on Christian

Gnosticism in the second and third centuries seems at

any rate undoubted. The Gnostic doctrine of the opposition

between soul and matter, of the personal existence

of intellect, will, and so forth, the identification of

soul and light, are derived from the Sankhya system.

The division, peculiar to several Gnostics, of men into

the three classes of pneumatikoi, psychikoi, and hylikoi, is

also based on the Sankhya doctrine of the three gunas.

Again, Bardesanes, a Gnostic of the Syrian school, who

obtained information about India from Indian philosophers,

assumed the existence of a subtle ethereal body

28

424 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

which is identical with the linga-qarlra of the Sankhya

system. Finally, the many heavens of the Gnostics are

evidently derived from the fantastic cosmogony of later

Buddhism.

With regard to the present century, the influence of

Indian thought on the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer

and Von Hartmann is well known. How great

an impression the Upanishads produced on the former,

even in a second-hand Latin translation, may be inferred

from his writing that they were his consolation

in life and would be so in death.

In Science, too, the debt of Europe to India has been

considerable. There is, in the first place, the great fact

that the Indians invented the numerical figures used all

over the world. The influence which the decimal system

of reckoning dependent on those figures has had not only

on mathematics, but on the progress of civilisation in

general, can hardly be over-estimated. During the eighth

and ninth centuries the Indians became the teachers in

arithmetic and algebra of the Arabs, and through them of

the nations of the West. Thus, though we call the latter

science by an Arabic name, it is a gift we owe to India.

In Geometry the points of contact between the Culva

Sutras and the work of the Greeks are so considerable,

that, according to Cantor, the historian of mathematics,

borrowing must have taken place on one side or the

other. In the opinion of that authority, the (Julva Sutras

were influenced by the Alexandrian geometry of Hero

(215 B.C.), which, he thinks, came to India after 100 B.C.

The (^ulva Sutras are, however, probably far earlier than

that date, for they form an integral portion of the (Jrauta

Sutras, and their geometry is a part of the Brahmanical

theology, having taken its rise in India from practical

INDIAN AND GREEK SCIENCE 425

motives as much as the science of grammar. The prose

parts of the Yajurvedas and the Brahmanas constantly

speak of the arrangement of the sacrificial ground and

the construction of altars according to very strict rules,

the slightest deviation from which might cause the

greatest disaster. It is not likely that the exclusive Brahmans

should have been willing to borrow anything^

closely connected with their religion from foreigners.

Of Astronomy the ancient Indians had but slight

independent knowledge. It is probable that they derived

their early acquaintance with the twenty-eight divisions

of the moon's orbit from the Chaldeans through their

commercial relations with the Phoenicians. Indian

astronomy did not really begin to flourish till it was

affected by that of Greece ; it is indeed the one science

in which undoubtedly strong Greek influence can be

proved. The debt which the native astronomers always

acknowledge they owe to the Yavanas is sufficiently

obvious from the numerous Greek terms in Indian astronomical

writings. Thus, in Varaha Mihira's Hora-cdstra

the signs of the zodiac are enumerated either by Sanskrit

names translated from the Greek or by the original

Greek names, as Ara for Aresy Heli for Helios, Jyau for

Zeus. Many technical terms were directly borrowed from

Greek works, as kendra for kentron, jdmitra for diametron.

Some of the very names of the oldest astronomical

treatises of the Indians indicate their Western origin.

Thus the Romaka-siddhd7ita means the "Roman manual."

The title of Varaha Mihira's Hord-cdstra contains the

Greek word hord.

In a few respects, however, the Indians independently

advanced astronomical science further than the Greeks

themselves, and at a later period they in their turn

426 SANSKRIT LITERATURE

influenced the West even in astronomy. For in the

eighth and ninth centuries they became the teachers of

the Arabs in this science also. The siddhdntas (Arabic

Sind Hind)y the writings of Aryabhata (called Arjehlr),

and the Ahargana (Arkand), attributed to Brahmagupta,

were translated or adapted by the Arabs, and Khalifs of

Bagdad repeatedly summoned Indian astronomers to

their court to supervise this work. Through the Arabs,

Indian astronomy then migrated to Europe, which in

this case only received back in a roundabout way what

it had given long before. Thus the Sanskrit word uchcha,

"apex of a planet's orbit," was borrowed in the form

of aux (gen. aug-is) in Latin translations of Arabic

astronomers.

After Bhaskara (twelfth century), Hindu astronomy,

ceasing to make further progress, became once more

merged in the astrology from which it had sprung. It

was now the turn of the Arabs, and, by a strange inversion

of things, an Arabic writer of the ninth century who

had written on Indian astronomy and arithmetic, in this

period became an object of study to the Hindus. The

old Greek terms remained, but new Arabic ones were

added as the necessity for them arose.

The question as to whether Indian Medical Science

in its earlier period was affected by that of the Greeks

cannot yet be answered with certainty, the two systems

not having hitherto been compared with sufficient care.

Recently, however, some close parallels have been discovered

between the works of Hippocrates and Charaka

(according to a Chinese authority, the official physician

of King Kanishka), which render Greek influence before

the beginning of our era likely.

On the other hand, the effect of Hindu medical

SANSKRIT INFLUENCE IN EUROPE 427

science upon the Arabs after about 700 A.D. was considerable,

for the Khalifs of Bagdad caused several books

on the subject to be translated. The works of Charaka

and Sucruta (probably not later than the fourth century

A.D.) were rendered into Arabic at the close of the

eighth century, and are quoted as authorities by the celebrated

Arabic physician Al-Razi, who died in 932 A.D.

Arabic medicine in its turn became the chief authority,

down to the seventeenth century, of European physicians.

By the latter Indian medical authors must have

been thought highly of, for Charaka is repeatedly mentioned

in the Latin translations of the Arab writers

Avicenna (Ibn Slna), Rhazes (Al-Razi), and Serapion (Ibn

Sarafyun). In modern days European surgery has borrowed

the operation of rhinoplasty, or the formation of

artificial noses, from India, where Englishmen became

acquainted with the art in the last century.

We have already seen that the discovery of the

Sanskrit language and literature led, in the present

century, to the foundation of the two new sciences of

Comparative Mythology and Comparative Philology.

Through the latter it has even affected the practical

school-teaching of the classical languages in Europe.

The interest in Buddhism has already produced an

immense literature in Europe. Some of the finest lyrics

of Heine, and works like Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of

Asia, to mention only a few instances, have drawn their

inspiration from Sanskrit poetry. The intellectual debt

of Europe to Sanskrit literature has thus been undeniably

great ; it may perhaps become greater still in

the years that are to come.

Om Tat Sat

                                                        

(End) 

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