A History of Sanskrit Literature c1.3

c1.3

THIS BOOK has two objects. In the first place it deals with Classical Sanskrit Literature on the lines already applied to the drama in the author's *Sanskrit Drama*, and sketches the history of epic, lyric, gnomic, and didactic poetry and the development of the fable, the fairy tale, and romance. Stress has been laid on literary form and style, and full illustration in the original and translation has been afforded of the characteristics of the great writers. The remarkable theories of Indian writers on poetics are fully explained. A chapter is devoted to discussion of literary relations between East and West. Secondly, in more summary form, but embodying the result of much recent research, an account is given of the Sanskrit literature on grammar, law, politics, philosophy and religion, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics, all fields in which remarkable Indian achievements can be recorded. As a necessary introduction, an effort is made to ascertain the character of the Classical Sanskrit language, to determine in what sense it was vernacular, and to explain its relations to the literary Prākrits and Pāli and to the vernaculars.