A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s2.1

c14.s2.1

The Purāṇas, as we have them, contain amidst vast masses of other matter, religious and social, some traces of the activity of court poets who made genealogies, but the value of these notices is of the most limited description; the lists of names and dates alone which is what they normally contribute are regularly, when compared with our more reliable evidence, hopelessly inaccurate, showing that at the time when they came into being the interest of genealogists was rather edification by constructing pleasing ancestries than accurate record of facts. It may indeed be doubted whether with the most critical care anything could be retrieved of substantial value additional to other sources of information; hitherto they have been treated only without critical judgement or acumen.¹ Beside them may be put the lists of teachers which occasionally are recorded in later Vedic texts, but which are anything but free from suspicion of interpolation and exaggeration, though they prove, what was hardly dubious in any event, that there prevailed the practice of remembering series of teachers and pupils. The Buddhists made some more serious approach to history in their legends of the Buddha, but, valuable as is the matter which they have preserved, it remains clear, from their greatest creation,² the *Mahāvaṁsa* of Mahānāman in the fifth century A. D., that during the passage of the centuries the monks had not acquired any real historical sense. A king like Açoka was, of course, a model of pious deeds, but not the slightest attempt is made to treat his life and efforts in an historical spirit; instead, we learn of the courteous action of the wild beasts and birds who come to the royal kitchen and die there, to prevent the sin of slaying them for food, of miracle-performing snakes, and sages who come down to earth to cleanse the community of heretics. Even in contemporary times the poet is untrustworthy; all is looked at merely from the point of view of the attitude of the king for the time being towards the special community of monks among whom the author lived. Still less, of course, do we find history among the Jains; their Paṭṭāvalis, kept doubtless from early times but only recorded rather late, preserve lists of pontiffs, they had a stereotyped life of their Tīrthakaras, and endeavoured to attach Jain legends to such names as that of Candragupta,³ but serious history was repugnant to them. Eulogies of saints are common to the sects, but serious historical work is quite unknown.