A History of Sanskrit Literature c23.s2.17

c23.s2.17

But Sanskrit poets had advantages denied to some of the Alexandrians and post-Augustans. Their outlook on religion was one which it is perhaps difficult for us to appreciate, but it accepted a reality in the tales of the gods such as Viṣṇu or Çiva which was obviously not felt by Kallimachos in his playful treatment of the loves of the deities, or by Apollonios in his revival of the Homeric outlook long after it had ceased to have any reality, still less by Lucan, Statius, or Valerius Flaccus, to whom the gods were no more than machinery sanctioned by Vergilian usage. The Sanskrit poet might regard the gods as ultimately real only in a secondary sense, but he had no difficulty in treating them as something more than idle abstractions. Again, these poets had a deep appreciation of nature and feeling for its beauties which is rare in classical poets of Greece or Rome; it is more akin to the spirit of Theokritos, but, unlike that author, Indian poets expressed not a somewhat artificial appreciation of country scenes as they attracted a poet used to town life, but a natural affection which is not really disguised by their placid acceptance of a large number of purely poetic conventions in their descriptions. It may become tedious to find the themes of the seasons, the dawn, the rising and setting of the moon, and kindred topics so often dealt with in the Kāvya, but taken each by itself these pictures are often accomplished works of art with which Greek and Roman poets have nothing strictly comparable in finish or merit. Nor in their appreciation of love in all its phases have the Sanskrit poets any equal among the Alexandrians save Apollonios in his splendid picture of Medea, while the post-Augustans cannot vie with him despite the real ability of Statius. There is, moreover, a deep gulf between the reticence of Greek and Roman alike in the treatment of love and the frankness of the poet of India; the *Ars Amatoria* of Ovid aided to secure his permanent exile,¹ and the Flavians show no signs of its influence, while Sanskrit poets would have been discredited if they had not been skilled in the topics of the Kāmaçāstra, and been able to depict beauty of form and the delights of dalliance. In this sense they are far more akin to the spirit of romance than are the Greeks or their Roman followers. Indian poets also have a happier outlook on life than the disillusioned Alexandrians or the somewhat depressed post-Augustans;² they lived in a simpler world, were not vexed by political problems or memories of lost liberty, and were parts of a social system and believers in a scheme of life which, if incapable of producing the magnificence of Vergil's vision of the world to come, at least offered something more exhilarating than the systems of Epicureanism or Stoicism.