The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c22.39

v1.c22.39

The reason for this lies not alone in the fact that literature after the early Vedic age is chiefly liturgical and didactic, for this only shifts the explanation. Sanskrit literature is without power of literary expression from the hymns of the Rigveda to the Upanishads, and again from this time to that which produced the dramatic scenes of the epic, because it was in the hands of priests whose whole interest lay apart from real life. The same spirit which produced the best Vedic hymns, the spirit reflecting independence and freedom, appears in the royal literature, if we may so call it, which stamps the age of the Upanishads and of the great epic in its earlier parts. The Upanishads are in part the product of unpriestly, or at least anti-ritualistic, thought, and the epic also emanates from the throne and not from the altar. As the Upanishads embody the cultured philosophy of king and noble¹, so the epic scenes of love and war reflect the life of court and camp. They breathe a different spirit, as they come from a different source than does the literature of the Brāhman, until indeed the all-grasping hand of the priest seized even the epic tales, and, stifling all that was natural in them, converted them into sermons, to teach the theology of the priest and impart to the king the teaching best calculated to further priestly greed¹.