A History of Sanskrit Literature c27.s2.9

c27.s2.9

In the great period of Sanskrit literature at any rate experimental science was at a low ebb, and little of importance was accomplished in those fields in which experiment is essential.¹ Medicine developed a considerable knowledge of symptoms and treatment of diseases, but surgery was banned by reason of the Brahmanical and general Indian fear of impurity through contact with the dead, and the acceptance of demoniac sources of disease hampered serious research. The mathematical achievements of India lay in the field of algebra and in the invention of a valuable system of notation. Far more was accomplished in fields of human action; if political theory never reached any high development, legal studies were conducted with much acumen. The form of the Dharmaçāstras corresponds in an interesting manner with the more humane character of their contents. They are handed down in Çlokas, for which we have in the Dharmasūtras, of which they are ultimately descendants, occasional memorial verses summing up or illustrating doctrines. In verse form maxims on human life naturally won far greater circulation than prose Sūtras, and this form of composition, which was unquestionably aided by the example of the epic, was often adopted for scientific works, even in non-humanistic branches of learning. The Çloka was easy to write and easy to remember, but not unnaturally it did not content all authors, some of whom, like Varāhamihira and Bhāskara in the field of astrology and mathematics, proceeded to develop their scientific doctrines in elegant and complex metres. In other cases the Āryā, which, like the Çloka, is a comparatively simple metre, won acceptance, as in the *Sāṁkhyakārikā*, in which the doctrines of the Sāṁkhya philosophy were succinctly set forth. Technical science was often reduced to roughly fashioned Çlokas which were popular for medical recipes, though even for those we find cases of more complex metres being employed. But there remained instead the alternative of a prose exposition with verses interspersed here and there to corroborate or sum up or illustrate doctrines laid down, as is the case with the medical Saṁhitās.