A History of Sanskrit Literature c23.s2.3

c23.s2.3

Apart from defects of style we miss in Sanskrit literature the revelation of personal character by the poets in their poems; Sappho, Catullus, Lucretius, distant as they are from us, produce an impression infinitely more vivid than does any Sanskrit poet. Those that have come down to us preserve far more of the calm of Vergil; the writers on poetics appreciated to the full the generalizing power of poetry, its impersonal character, its duty of suggestion in lieu of expression, and their appreciation was due to the practice of the great poets. They live moreover in a world of tranquil calm, not in the sense that sorrow and suffering are unknown, but in the sense that there prevails a rational order in the world which is the outcome not of blind chance but of the actions of man in previous births. Discontent with the constitution of the universe, rebellion against its decrees, are incompatible with the serenity engendered by this recognition by all the Brahmanical poets of the rationality of the world order. Hence we can trace no echo of social discontent; the poets were courtiers who saw nothing whatever unsatisfactory in the life around them. Nor in the classical period do we find them much moved by patriotism; they wrote, so far as we have them, in times when national feeling was not excited by any foreign attack, and the clashes between neighbouring kings appeared to them in the light of the normal occupation of the warrior class. Political liberty within the state was undreamed of; the fiery passion which ennobles Lucan is impossible for an Indian poet. The Buddhist writers glorified their teacher and magnified his doctrine, but in the main they are too deeply affected by the Brahmanical spirit to move beyond the confines of emotion allowable. It is in Çāntideva above all that we find a deep seriousness, which blends in the most curious and inconsistent manner with a denial of the reality of the universe.