A History of Sanskrit Literature c3: Preface
A History of Sanskrit Literature c3
- Language
- English
Contents
Preface
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TAKEN in conjunction with my *Sanskrit Drama*, published in 1924, this work covers the field of Classical Sanskrit Literature, as opposed to the Vedic Literature, the epics, and the Purāṇas. To bring the subject-matter within the limits of a single volume has rendered it necessary to treat the scientific literature briefly, and to avoid discussions of its subject-matter which appertain rather to the historian of grammar, philosophy, law, medicine, astronomy, or mathematics, than to the literary historian. This mode of treatment has rendered it possible, for the first time in any treatise in English on Sanskrit Literature, to pay due attention to the literary qualities of the Kāvya. Though it was to Englishmen, such as Sir William Jones and H. T. Colebrooke, that our earliest knowledge of Sanskrit poetry was due, no English poet shared Goethe's marvellous appreciation of the merits of works known to him only through the distorting medium of translations, and attention in England has usually been limited to the Vedic literature, as a source for comparative philology, the history of religion, or Indo-European antiquities; to the mysticism and monism of Sanskrit philosophy; and to the fables and fairy-tales in their relations to western parallels.
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The neglect of Sanskrit Kāvya is doubtless natural. The great poets of India wrote for audiences of experts; they were masters of the learning of their day, long trained in the use of language, and they aim to please by subtlety, not simplicity of effect. They had at their disposal a singularly beautiful speech, and they commanded elaborate and most effective metres. Under these circumstances it was inevitable that their works should be difficult, but of those who on that score pass them by it may fairly be said *ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai*. It is in the great writers of Kāvya alone, headed by Kālidāsa, that we find depth of feeling for life and nature matched with perfection of expression and rhythm. The Kāvya literature includes some of the great poetry of the world, but it can never expect to attain wide popularity in the West, for it is essentially untranslatable;
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German poets like Rückert can, indeed, base excellent work on Sanskrit originals, but the effects produced are achieved by wholly different means, while English efforts at verse translations fall invariably below a tolerable mediocrity, their diffuse tepidity contrasting painfully with the brilliant condensation of style, the elegance of metre, and the close adaptation of sound to sense of the originals. I have, therefore, as in my *Sanskrit Drama*, illustrated the merits of the poets by Sanskrit extracts, adding merely a literal English version, in which no note is taken of variations of text or renderings. To save space I have in the main dealt only with works earlier than A.D. 1200, though especially in the case of the scientific literature important books of later date are briefly noticed.
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This book was sent in, completed for the press, in January 1926, but pressure of work at the University Press precluded printing until the summer of 1927, when it was deemed best, in order not to delay progress, to assign to this preface the notice of such new discoveries and theories of 1926 and 1927 as might have permanent interest.
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On the early development of the Kāvya welcome light has been thrown by Professor H. Lüders's edition¹ of the fragments found in Central Asia of the *Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā* of Kumāralāta, which is the true description of the work hitherto known to us through a Chinese translation as the *Sūtrālaṃkāra* of Açvaghoṣa. That work, it is suggested, was very different in character from Kumāralāta's. It may have been an exposition in verse, possibly with prose additions, of the Canon of the Sarvāstivādins, and it may be represented by fragments still extant; this suggestion can be supported by Asaṅga's choice of title, *Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra*, for his exposition of Mahāyāna tenets. But that is still merely a conjecture, and even less proved is the view that Subandhu's famous allusion² *Bauddhasaṃgatim ivālaṃkārabhūṣitām* is to such a text as that ascribed to Açvaghoṣa. Kumāralāta may well have been a younger contemporary of Açvaghoṣa, who lived after the death of Kaniṣka, a fact which explains an old crux, the difficulty of ascribing to Açvaghoṣa the references in the *Sūtrālaṃkāra* which seemed inconsistent with the traditional relation of the patriarch and that king. How the Chinese version of the *Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā*, ‘that which is adorned by poetic invention’, came to bear the style *Sūtrālaṃkāra*, remains an unexplained problem.
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¹ *Bruchstücke der Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā des Kumāralāta*, Leipzig, 1926.
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² Below, p. 308. Lévi (*Sūtrālaṃkāra*, ii. 15 f.) reads *saṃgītim* very plausibly, and holds that a work of Asaṅga is meant.
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The fragments shed a very interesting light on the development of the style of prose mingled with verses which appears in a more elaborate form in the *Jātakamālā*. The narratives, eighty in number, which, with ten parables, make up the work, begin with the enunciation of some doctrine, which is then established by means of an appropriate narrative; unlike the *Jātakamālā*, the text does not follow a stereotyped plan of drawing out at the close of each tale the moral which it inculcates. The stanzas used are normally portions of the speeches of the dramatis personae; there is a complete breach with the tradition of the canonical texts which introduce such verses by the term *bhāṣāṃ bhāṣate*; but of course this does not mean that Kumāralāta, or Ārya Çūra who follows this plan in the *Jātakamālā*, is the author of all the verses used; doubtless he often adopts or adapts current maxims. Narrative¹ or descriptive stanzas are rare, and they are marked out for the benefit of the reciter by the words *vakṣyate hi*. Ārya Çūra, on the other hand, shows a distinct advance; he uses descriptive or narrative stanzas to the extent of over a fifth of his total number of verses, and omits any introduction, inserting them freely to beautify his prose narration. The parables take a different form: in them a prose parable (*dṛṣṭānta*) is simply followed by a prose exposition (*artha*). The language shows the same adherence to correct Sanskrit, with occasional lapses, as in Açvaghoṣa, and there is a rich variety of metres, including the earliest Āryās in Kāvya so far datable with reasonable certainty; the Çloka, Upajāti, Vasantatilaka, and Çārdūlavikrīḍita are affected. Very important is the fact that Prākrit lyric written in the Prākrit of the grammarians (Middle Prākrit) is preluded in two Prākrit Āryās, written in Old Çaurasenī, which already manifest that affection for long compounds which is carried to excess in the *Gaüḍavaha*.
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¹ Cf. below, pp. 244, 256, 332. The evidence of slow development of use of narrative stanzas is clear. For the priority of Ārya Çūra to the *Vessantara Jātaka*, see R. Fick, *Festgabe Jacobi*, pp. 145–59.
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Kālidāsa has suffered from attempts¹ to defy style by placing him before Açvaghoṣa, and to ignore² the use of his works in Vatsabhaṭṭi by ascribing him to the period 525-75, when no great Empire existed, on the strength of his picture of India in the *Raghuvañça*. Much more ingenious is an effort³ to fix his home in Kashmir, and to trace in his poetry an adumbration of the Pratyabhijñāçāstra of that land, with its doctrine of recognition of the unity of the divine love. Kālidāsa would thus be a master of suggestion, which later was definitely developed in Kashmir as the essence of poetry by the Dhvanikāra, who was doubtless not Ānandavardhana. Use by Kālidāsa of the *Padma Purāṇa* has been suggested but is not plausible. His possible relation to the Vākāṭakas has been investigated, and use has been made of Kṣemendra's ascription to him of a *Kunteçvaradautya*, but all is mere hypothesis.⁴
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¹ Kshetreśachandra Chaṭṭopādhyāya, *Allahabad Univ. Stud.*, ii. 80 ff.; K. G. Śaṅkar, IHQ. i. 309 ff. But contrast IHQ. ii. 660 for Açvaghoṣa's influence on Kālidāsa's grammar.
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² D. R. Bhandarkar, ABI. viii. 202-4.
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³ Lachhmi Dhar Kalla, *Delhi University Publications*, no. 1.
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⁴ See POCM. 1924, p. 6.
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Discussion of the migration of fables and other literature has failed to achieve decisive results. Some stress has lately been laid on the evidence of connexions between Egypt and India contained in the *Oxyrhynchus Papyri*,⁵ but it is difficult to believe seriously that Isis was worshipped in India as Maia,⁶ as asserted with complete vagueness in the Isis litany,⁷ and Professor Hultzsch's effort⁸ to find Kanarese explanations for certain terms in the farce regarding Charition's adventures on the coast of a country bordering the Indian Ocean, are as little plausible as those of Sir G. Grierson to discover Sanskrit. It seems prima facie absurd to suppose that any Greek farce writer would trouble to embody passages in foreign speeches which would be utterly unintelligible to his audience.⁹
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⁵ In ii. no. 300 a woman Indike appears.
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⁶ xi. no. 1380. That Māyā is meant is not probable.
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⁷ iii. no. 413.
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⁸ JRAS. 1904, pp. 399 ff.
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⁹ Pischel's view that mixture of language is Indian specifically is disproved by Reich, DLZ. 1915, p. 591. India was known in Egypt, but there is not the slightest ground to believe that any one knew Kanarese or Sanskrit well enough to reproduce either of them in a farce.
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It is indeed probable that no assured results can be expected regarding borrowing of tales; Sir Richard Temple's ingenious suggestions¹ as to non-Aryan origins of certain *motifs*, with which may be compared those of Professor Przyluski² regarding the influence of Austro-Asiatic peoples on early Indian thought and speech, are inconclusive, nor is it clear that, as Dr. Gaster³ inclines to hold, we owe to India the ideas of fallen angels, genii who return to earth, or legends of asceticism carried to ludicrous extremes. Dr. Gaster, however, rightly stresses the impossibility of assuming that India gave only and did not borrow, and insists on the importance of investigating the possibility of a literary origin for many fairy tales current among the people. Moreover, parallelism should often, it appears to me, be admitted in literary development. It is instructive, for instance, to compare the scheme of development of the practice of emboxing tales within tales given below (p. 320) for India with that suggested by Schissel von Fleschenberg⁴ for Greek literature: the simple tale passes through stages illustrated by the *Milesiaka* of Aristeides, the work of Antonius Diogenes, the *Golden Ass* of Apuleius, and the romance of Petronius, to the complete outcome in later romance. The many *motifs* found in the *Kathāsaritsāgara*, for which parallels are adduced by the learned editor⁵ of a new edition of Tawney's excellent version from western literature, suggest likewise that much may be said for the doctrine of parallelism.
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¹ *Ocean of Story*, i. pp. xiv ff.
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² For other possibilities (Sumerian connexions) cf. Przyluski, BSL. xxvii. 218–29.
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³ *Ocean of Story*, iii. pp. ix ff.
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⁴ *Entwickelungsgeschichte des griechischen Romans im Altertum*, and *Die griechische Novelle*; cf. Reich, DLZ. 1915, pp. 543 f. For the parallel development of the Helen and Sītā legends, see Printz, *Festgabe Jacobi*, pp. 103 ff.
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⁵ N. M. Penzer, *Ocean of Story*, ten vols., 1924–8. For elaborate notes on *motifs* see references in Indexes in each volume.
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On Çivadāsa's version of the *Vetālapañcaviṅçatikā* much light has been thrown by Hertel's researches.⁶ He establishes that Çivadāsa used a version in verse, whence some stanzas of merit, including those cited below (p. 290), are taken; the many verse fragments found in his prose are explained by the origin of his work. Similar features are not rare in late texts, such as Meghavijaya's *Pañcākhyānoddhāra*, the *textus simplicior* of the *Çukasaptati*, the *Madanarekhākathā*, the *Kusumasārakathā*, the *Aghaṭakumārakathā*,¹ and that version of the *Vetālapañcaviñçatikā* which goes back to Kṣemendra's verse rendering. This, however, does not decide the question of the original form of the *Vetālapañcaviñçatikā*; the common source of Kṣemendra and Somadeva may have been in prose or prose and verse; we have not sufficient evidence to show which. Hertel proves by comparison of texts that Çivadāsa was deeply influenced in vocabulary and syntax by Old Gujarātī, and concludes that he was a man of small education, belonging to the class who did not use Sanskrit as their 'Hochsprache', but understood it *tant bien que mal*, and endeavoured to express themselves in it.
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⁶ *Streitberg Festgabe*, pp. 135 ff. He places him not much before A. D. 1487.
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¹ Trans. Ch. Krause, *Ind. Erz.*, iv.
c3.30
The question of the authenticity of the dramas ascribed to Bhāsa by the late T. Gaṇapati Çāstrī has been frequently discussed since my *Sanskrit Drama* appeared, but without results of value, largely because the true issues have been misunderstood and effort has been devoted to proof of the obvious. It is true that it is not a matter of much importance whether the dramas be ascribed to Bhāsa or to an unknown poet, but it is important to consider whether (1) they are all by one hand, and (2) by a writer earlier than Kālidāsa and the *Mṛcchakaṭikā*. Both these propositions seem to me clearly established, for, though some Indian and, less excusably, some European² scholars still seem not to have weighed the evidence adduced by Dr. Morgenstierne, the English protagonist against T. Gaṇapati Çāstrī's theory recognizes that the *Cārudatta* must be placed before the *Mṛcchakaṭikā*. Priority to Kālidāsa seems established by evidence of use by that poet, and of greater antiquity in technique, style, diction, metre, and forms of Prākrit; it is significant that Kālidāsa has Māhārāṣṭrī, unknown to Bhāsa. Moreover, it is perfectly clear that Bhāsa's Prākrits, as revealed by the manuscripts of his plays, occupy a position intermediate between the Prākrits of Açvaghoṣa and of Kālidāsa as shown by European critical³ editions. It is no reply to this fact to point out that manuscripts of Kālidāsa's works of similar provenance to those of Bhāsa's dramas show Prākrit forms similar to those of Bhāsa's plays, for the obviously correct explanation is that Kālidāsa's works in these southern manuscripts have been affected by the usage of Bhāsa. It is clear that quite late dramas use forms of the Prākrits of Bhāsa, doubtless as a result of his great influence, just as the dramas recently published from southern manuscripts show frequent signs of borrowing of ideas and style from Bhāsa, as in the case of the *Dāmakaprahasana* absurdly ascribed to him.¹ Moreover, it must be noted that the most searching criticism has failed yet to find any proof of borrowing by Bhāsa from Kālidāsa, or references to matters later than that poet. The effort to turn the term *rājasiṁhaḥ*—a mere variant of *rājā*—into a proper name has found no general acceptance, and the identification of the *Nyāyaçāstra* of Medhātithi, mentioned in the *Pratimānāṭaka*, with Medhātithi's commentary on Manu is clearly due to forgetfulness that Medhātithi is obviously Gautama, the famous author of the *Nyāya Sūtra*. Unity of authorship is proved by style, a consideration which unfortunately seems often to be ignored, as when, for instance, it seems seriously to be suggested³ that the author of the *Āçcaryacūḍāmaṇi*,⁴ Çaktibhadra, who obviously imitated Bhāsa, might be the author of the works. This evinces the same curious lack of discrimination which ascribes to Daṇḍin the *Avantisundarīkathā*, credits Bāṇa with the *Pārvatīpariṇaya*, and would rob Kālidāsa of the *Ṛtusaṁhāra*.
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² Nobel, ZII. v. 141 f. He sets Çūdraka and the *Mṛcchakaṭikā* before Kālidāsa.
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³ Indian editions, e. g. that of the *Āçcaryacūḍāmaṇi*, have not even the value of a MS. in this connexion.
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¹ See Jolly's disproof, *Festgabe Garbe*, pp. 115–21.
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² See Keith, BSOS. iii. 623–5. A like lapse has converted the *Priyadarçikā* into the *Ratnāvalī* (*JRAS.* 1927, p. 862, n. 1) and found the Oḍras in the *Taittirīya Āraṇyaka* in lieu of the *Trikāṇḍaçeṣa*, ii. 1. 11 (*Cambridge Hist. of India*, i. 601). Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus!
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³ MASI. xxviii. 10; IHQ. iii. 222.
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⁴ Of uncertain, but not early date, and of modest literary value.
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The ascription of these old plays specifically to Bhāsa rests primarily on the testimony of Rājaçekhara, doubtless the critic and dramatist of *c.* A.D. 900, who tells us that the *Svapnavāsavadatta* of Bhāsa survived exposure to the fire of criticism, when his dramas were exposed to that ordeal by experts. It would indeed be a curious coincidence if an unknown dramatist had written like Bhāsa a number of dramas, of which the *Svapnavāsavadattā* stands out in the judgement of many critics as unquestionably the finest, and in any case is so admirable that it may easily have won general acceptance in Rājaçekhara's circle as the finest of the works. Add to this the facts that Kālidāsa himself, who seems from internal evidence to have sought to vie with these dramas, recognizes ruefully the great difficulty a young poet must have in contending with Bhāsa, and that the author of these works is assuredly a greater dramatist than any other Sanskrit writer than Kālidāsa, and Rājaçekhara's testimony is strongly confirmed. Again, from the vast mass of confused conjecture on the mode of beginning dramas, the fact emerges that Bāṇa's reference to Bhāsa's dramas as introduced by the Sūtradhāra corresponds precisely with the manner of introducing these dramas, and, when all is said and done, is most simply and naturally explained by the obvious view that he is referring to them.
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One argument against the validity of Rājaçekhara's evidence should be noted. It is claimed¹ that in the context of the passage Rājaçekhara ascribes the authorship of the *Priyadarçikā*, *Ratnāvalī*, and *Nāgānanda* to Bhāsa and, therefore, must be untrustworthy. It is deplorable that this argument should ever have been adduced; the alleged context is plainly and indubitably a recent forgery,² and it would be idle to attach any value to other arguments adduced by a critic who has not the capacity to avoid being deceived, and unfortunately deceiving others, by such evidence. It must, however, be admitted that the forgery is so gross and palpable that it was presumably never intended to be taken seriously, and other Indian scholars have been prompt to repudiate it.
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¹ K. R. Pisharoti, IHQ. i. 105. The same writer makes an error of six centuries in Kulaçekhara's date, and numerous other serious blunders, in which others have followed him, including a complete failure to understand the issues as to Prākrit.
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² K. G. Sesha Aiyar, IHQ. i. 361; G. Harihar Sastri, *ibid.*, 370–8. Dr. Sukthankar's acceptance of this foolish and obvious forgery is regrettably uncritical, as is his following of Mr. Pisharoti as to the Prākrits.
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The ascription suggested by the evidence given above has recently been confirmed in the most gratifying manner by the discovery of fresh references in works on poetics and dramaturgy, inaccessible in Europe. The *Çr̥ṅgāraprakāça* of Bhoja in the eleventh century a.d. attests the currency of a drama in essentials as regards substance in accord with Act V of the *Svapnavāsava-* *dattā*; the *Bhāvaprakāça* of Çāradātanaya (13th century), knew a work not merely very similar in structure, but actually containing a verse found in the Trivandrum text. Sāgaranandin in the *Nāṭakalakṣaṇaratnakoça* ascribes to the *Svapnavāsavadattā* a passage which undoubtedly, as T. Gaṇapati Çāstrī shows, is a paraphrase of a passage at the beginning of our text, not a citation from a variant text as Professor Lévi suggested.¹ I agree also with T. Gaṇapati Çāstrī that the passage cited by Rāmacandra and Guṇacandra in the *Nāṭyadarpaṇa* from Bhāsa's *Svapnavāsavadattā* could easily have found a place in our text, while in any event it is clear that that play contained a scene parallel with one in our play. The most that can be made out from these facts against the ascription to Bhāsa is simply that there were probably varying recensions of the plays. That, of course, may be taken for granted; it was the fate of every much-studied and used play, and we have it exemplified to perfection in the case of Kālidāsa,² the variations regarding whose works seem to have been unknown to or forgotten by those who refuse to recognize Bhāsa's authorship of these dramas. There is no evidence at all to show that any of the versions of the *Çakuntalā* can be credited with any greater fidelity to the original of Kālidāsa than is possessed by the Trivandrum *Svapnavāsavadattā* in relation to Bhāsa's original. Moreover, it seems too often to be forgotten that variants may be due to the dramatist himself, who can hardly be supposed to have given his dramas a single perfectly definite text. It is, of course, tempting to adopt with Hermann Weller³ the belief that the actors of Kerala have the responsibility for mangling our texts, and to accept the view that Bhāsa is preserved to us in a deteriorated form, and that, for example, the *Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa* and the *Svapnavāsavadattā* made up a single piece. But I am satisfied that to accept this view is uncritical and is to substitute our preferences for reality; the pedestrian character of some of Bhāsa's stanzas can far better be explained by the simple fact of his early date; Kālidāsa exhibits the influence of increased refinement of style in his dramas, just as in his epics he normally avoids the pedestrian traits which are easily to be found in the epics of his forerunner Açvaghoṣa. The dramatic defects of Bhāsa need not be ascribed to actors, for Kālidāsa himself in any version of even the *Çakuntalā* is far from perfect, and Shakespeare's flaws are notorious. On the other hand, we owe a very considerable debt to Hermann Weller¹ for showing in detail, with true insight into the nature of Bhāsa's poetic talent,² that six of the stanzas which by the anthologies are attributed to Bhāsa bear remarkable resemblance to the style of stanzas in our dramas. We may dismiss as far-fetched the suggestion that the makers of anthologies ascribed them to him because they felt in them the spirit of his poetry; it is common sense to assume that the ascriptions are correct, and that they add one more link to the chain of evidence which ascribes the dramas to Bhāsa, and vindicates the suggestion of a great Indian scholar.
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¹ *JA.* cciii. 193 ff., followed in the very uncritical MASI. xxviii. 11.
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² Cf. also the recensions of the *Uttararāmacarita*, Belvalkar, JAOS. xxxiv. 428 ff.
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³ Trans. of *Svapnavāsavadattā*, p. 8. The same theory applies, of course, to the *Çakuntalā*.
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¹ *Festgabe Jacobi*, pp. 114–25.
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² Cf. Garbe's emphatic testimony, *Festgabe Jacobi*, p. 126, in contrast with ZII. ii. 250; ABA. viii. 17 ff.
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The effort³ to strengthen the case for dating Daṇḍin later than Bhāmaha by using the evidence of the *Avantisundarīkathā* and its *Sāra* is clearly a complete mistake. The Kathā should never have been published from one mutilated manuscript, whose readings, even if correctly stated, have already been proved wrong by other manuscript evidence.⁴ Even, however, from the mutilated text it was clear that Bhāravi was not made out to be the great-grandfather of Daṇḍin, who is given as Dāmodara. But, as Dr. Dé⁵ has pointed out, even the most careless reader of the Kathā and the *Daçakumāracarita* should have been struck by the extraordinary difference of style between the two works, the Kathā rivalling unsuccessfully the worst mannerisms of the *Harṣacarita* and the *Kādambarī*. If a Daṇḍin wrote the work, he was assuredly not the author of the *Daçakumāracarita*, and its date may be centuries later than the great Daṇḍin, for there is no reason to accept the suggestion⁶ that the writer of the Kathā lived sufficiently soon after the famous Daṇḍin to be familiar with his genealogy and to work it into his story. it may be added that the effort¹ to find in v. 17 of the Kathā an allusion to *kāvyatraya* of Kālidāsa, thus confirming the denial to him of the *Ṛtusaṁhāra*, is wholly impossible and has not even the authority of the editor. It is very difficult to say whether we can derive from the Kathā any assurance as to Bhāravi's connexion with Viṣṇuvardhana or identify the latter with the prince who became Eastern Cālukya king in A.D. 615 and was the brother of that Pulakeçin, whose Aihole inscription (A.D. 634) mentions Bhāravi's fame, but at least there is no flagrant anachronism, though we know already of one literary forgery² which ascribes to Durvinīta of Koṅgaṇi a commentary on *Kirātārjunīya* xv.
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³ J. Nobel, ZII. v. 136–52.
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⁴ G. Harihar Sastri, IHQ. iii. 169–71.
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⁵ IHQ. iii. 395 ff. As Daṇḍin wrote according to Bhoja's *Çṛṅgāraprakāça* (BSOS. iii. 282) a *Dvisaṃdhānakāvya*, this may be his third work (cf. below, p. 296).
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⁶ *Ibid.*, p. 403.
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¹ ZII. v. 143.
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² *Ep. Carn.*, iii. 107. It is noteworthy that a Durvinīta appears in the Kathā.
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Of Abhinavagupta's important commentary on the *Nāṭya Çāstra* we have now the beginning of an edition, which, unhappily, is fundamentally uncritical,³ while a new effort⁴ has been made to assign their precise shares in the *Kāvyaprakāça* to its two authors, but without any convincing result; in cases of this sort it is probably hopeless *a priori* to expect to find any conclusive evidence; an editor who has to fill out lacunae is certain to adapt the whole more or less to his own style and to render restoration of the original and his additions almost impossible.⁵
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³ *Gaekwad Oriental Series* 36, 1926 (i–vii); cf. S. K. Dé, IHQ. iii. 859–68.
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⁴ H. R. Divekar, JRAS. 1927, pp. 505–20; he assigns all the commentary to Alaṭa as well as the Kārikās from that on Parikara.
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⁵ The effort of Dr. Dé to ascribe Vallabhadeva's *Subhāṣitāvali* to the 12th cent. has been discussed in a note to appear in BSOS. iv. (1928). As regards Kavirāja's date (below, p. 137), Achyutacharan Chaudhuri ascribes him to the 11th cent. as protégé of a king Kāmadeva of Jaintia; see IHQ. iii. 848 f.
c3.58.1
The curious scepticism which has marked the attitude of Indian and some European scholars towards Bhāsa has not been shown in recent work on the *Kauṭilīya Arthaçāstra*, on which I have written in the Patna memorial volume in honour of that great Indian, Sir Asutosh Mookerjee. The only ground of this differentiation of treatment appears to be the sanctity ascribed to the written word: because the work in an obviously later appended verse assures us it was written by Viṣṇugupta, i. e. Kauṭilya—the reading Kauṭalya is clearly⁶ of no value—therefore it must be so, although it seems patently absurd that the minister of an Emperor should confine his work to a moderate-sized kingdom, and should not once by word or allusion betray the name of the country for which and in which he was writing. Nevertheless there is nothing too fantastic to find defenders, though it is difficult not to feel that it is a very misplaced patriotism which asks us to admire the *Arthaçāstra* as representing the fine flower of Indian political thought. It would, indeed, be melancholy if this were the best that India could show as against the *Republic* of Plato or the *Politics* of Aristotle, or even the common-sense and worldly wisdom of the author of the tract on the constitution of Athens, formerly ascribed falsely to Xenophon. Certainly fantastic is the elaborate theory worked out by J. J.
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Meyer in his translation, and in his treatise *Über das Wesen der indischen Rechtsschriften und ihr Verhältnis zu einander und zu Kauṭilya* (1927). These works, produced in great difficulties, contain, amid much that is unsound and despite disconcerting changes of view, valuable contributions to our understanding of Kauṭilya, and throw light on many of the obscure sides of Indian life. But the main thesis of the author, who seeks to distinguish two sharply severed streams of literature, the one Brahmanical, essentially concerned with magic, the other of the people, practical and legal, is clearly based on a false foundation. The effort to regard the Brahmins as something apart in Indian life is one of those delusions which may find sympathy in the non-Brahmanical classes in India and in Europe, but which run counter to all that we know of Indian thought, which owes its life and strength to the Brahmins, not to warriors or rulers, still less to the commonalty. The efforts of the author¹ to establish that the *Arthaçāstra* was used by *Yājñavalkya* are certainly without weight; the evidence tends far more to show that the borrowing was the other way. Not a single passage referred to really favours the priority of the *Arthaçāstra*, but in several passages the obscurities of the *Arthaçāstra* can be readily understood by realizing that it was drawing from *Yājñavalkya*.
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Nor does Meyer attempt systematically¹ to prove that *Manu* is later than the *Arthaçāstra*, though on his theory of dates that text is more than a hundred years at least posterior to the *Arthaçāstra*. He has been as unable as the Indian supporters of Cāṇakya’s² authorship to explain the silence which the *Arthaçāstra* observes regarding everything imperial and its absolute ignoring of the facts as to Pāṭaliputra. His further effort³ to prove the late date of the *Gautama Dharmaçāstra* is in itself less open to objection, but his contentions are largely inconclusive⁴ and do little more than prove, what has always been admitted, that our text of that Dharmaçāstra has been considerably worked over. The main principles of the development of the legal literature remain as they were formulated by Max Müller and Bühler, and further established by Oldenberg and Jolly. Indeed, Meyer’s own view at present⁵—his conclusions lack admittedly any great fixity—is that *Baudhāyana* and *Āpastamba* are pre-Buddhist, *Vāsiṣṭha* belongs to the fourth century B.C., and *Manu* may be ascribed rather nearer to 200 B.C. than to A.D. 200; there is, however, no tolerable proof of *Vāsiṣṭha’s* posteriority to *Āpastamba*, still less that *Āpastamba* is pre-Buddhist in date. Still less convincing again are Meyer’s efforts⁶ to assign *Nārada* to a period anterior to *Manu* and *Yājñavalkya*; if we take our present texts as the basis of argument, this is certainly out of the question;
c3.58.4
if we reconstruct originals for all three, we lose ourselves in idle conjectures which, like all guesses, merely obscure knowledge. For *Yājñavalkya* there may be noted an interesting effort⁷ to reconstruct the original Smṛti on the basis of comparison with parallel texts in the *Agni* and the *Garuḍa Purāṇas*. It is very possible that the parts of the text dealing with Rājadharma and Vyavahāra have been amalgamated with a text dealing with the topics of the Gṛhyasūtras; but it is very dubious if it is possible to recover the original form of the Smṛti. It is, of course, easy to eliminate certain obviously late passages, such as those dealing with the Vināyaka- and Graha-çānti and the anatomical matter in Book iii, but the more radical analysis suggested is far less satisfactorily made out.
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⁶ Cf. P. V. Kane, ABI. vii. 89; Jolly, ZII. v. 216–21. Bhandarkar's theory (ABI. vii. 65–84) of a verse original known to Daṇḍin is incapable of demonstration. W. Ruben's defence of Jacobi's date (*Festgabe Jacobi*, pp. 346 ff.) is ineffective. For Kālidāsa's relation to the *Arthaçāstra*, cf. K. Balasubrahmanya Ayyar, POCM. 1924, pp. 2–16.
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¹ pp. 65, 69, 70, 71, 77, 121, 130, 133, 158-79, 179-90, 213, 216, 284, 290, 294, 299, 300.
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¹ What is said, e. g. p. 112, is quite inconclusive; contrast IHQ. iii. 812.
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² Jacobi (IHQ. iii. 669–75) holds that Cāṇakya and Viṣṇugupta were distinct persons later confused with Kauṭilya. Cāṇikya may be original, not Cāṇakya.
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³ See references at pp. 417, 418.
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⁴ For a further argument as to Gautama’s later date, see Bata Krishna Ghosh, IHQ. iii. 607–11.
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⁵ *Altind. Rechtsschriften*, p. vii.
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⁶ Ibid., pp. 82–114.
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⁷ Hans Losch, *Die Yājñavalkyasmṛti* (1927). The *Garuḍa* has a version of the Nidānasthāna of the *Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya* and *Aṣṭāṅgasaṁhitā*; *Festgabe Garbe*, pp. 102 ff.
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Of auxiliary sciences architecture has at last received expert treatment from Professor Prasanna Kumar Acharya in his *Dictionary of Hindu Architecture* and *Indian Architecture*,¹ based on a new text and rendering of the *Mānasāra*, for which the period of A. D. 500–700 is suggested. Striking similarities between the prescriptions of the *Mānasāra* and Vitruvius are unquestionably established. Unhappily, the deplorable condition of the text of the *Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra*² of Bhoja adds to the difficulty of valuing his remarks on architecture, town-planning, engineering, and the construction of remarkable machines, probably akin to the mechanical toys of the Middle Ages.³ The *Principles of Indian Śilpa Śāstra*, with the text of the *Mayaśāstra*, by Phanindra Nath Bose, is also of value.⁴ Hawking figures in a *Çyainikaçāstra* by Rudradeva.
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¹ Oxford, 1927 ff.
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² GOS. 1924–5.
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³ *Ocean of Story*, iii. 56 ff.
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⁴ A text and trans. of a *Çilpa Çāstra* are in print.
c3.73.1
On the early development of logic an interesting light has been thrown by Professor O. Strauss's demonstration from the *Mahābhāṣya*⁵ that Patañjali was well acquainted with the doctrine of the causes familiar from the *Sāṁkhyakārikā*⁶ why things in themselves visible are sometimes not seen, and also had some knowledge of the theory of the syllogism—how much, is not altogether certain. The evidence, however, is useful as supporting the view that our philosophical Sūtras are essentially the outcome of a long period of development, and, whatever their date as we have them, contain doctrines much earlier in point of time. The effort to distinguish strata, though energetically pursued, leads to little that is certain. For instance, while we may readily believe that the *Pūrvamīmāṅsā* and the *Vedānta Sūtras* represent a long period of working over, it is by no means clear that we can deduce¹ from a remark of so late a writer as Sureçvara that Jaimini, the author of the *Pūrvamīmāṅsā*, also wrote a more philosophical *Çārīraka Sūtra*, the first two Sūtras of which correspond with those of the extant *Vedānta Sūtra*.
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The fact that in these two *Sūtras*, *Pūrvamīmāṅsā* and *Vedānta*, references are made both to Jaimini and Bādarāyaṇa is best explained, not by assuming a number of Jaiminis and Bādarāyaṇas, but simply by recognizing that each text represents a long scholastic development and that the use of the names may not represent the views of the authors in question any more accurately than do, for instance, those of the Christian Fathers or the Scholastics the doctrines of Aristotle, or those of the neo-Platonists those of Plato. Nothing, of course, conclusive can be adduced against the belief in many Jaiminis or Bādarāyaṇas, and recourse has recently been had² to the same device to explain the fact that Prabhākara sometimes appears in tradition as later than Kumārila, while his work as known to us shows no certain trace of such a relation. In this case the suggestion is probably needless. The much discussed question of Dinnāga's place in the history of Indian logic, in special his relation to Praçastapāda, has been furthered by Dr. Randle's edition of Dinnāga's fragments³; it appears to me that Dinnāga's priority is still the more probable view, but this issue, as well as the important contributions to our knowledge of Indian philosophy by Professor M. Walleser, Th. Stcherbatsky, Louis de la Vallée Poussin, S. Radhakrishnan, Das Gupta, O. Strauss, Masson Oursel, J. W. Hauer, Ryukan Kimura, Kokileswar Sastri, Mahendranath Sircar, and others, must be reserved for discussion elsewhere.
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Y. Kanakura⁴ has shown that the alleged interpolations in Çan̄kara's Bhāṣya are known to Vācaspati Miçra, while the date adopted by me⁵ for Çan̄kara is supported by Jinavijaya's proof that Haribhadra, whom Çan̄kara used, falls in the period A. D. 700-770. Mention, however, should be made of the controversy which has raged over the authorship of the *Nyāyapraveça*, which is ascribed with equal confidence to Dignāga¹ and to Çaṅkarasvāmin²; a final judgement is difficult, and the matter has been dealt with by me at length in an article to appear elsewhere.³ It should also be noted that Professor Jacobi⁴ has now admitted that the *Nyāya Sūtra* knows the Vijñānavāda system, on the ground that the *Sūtra* in iv. 2. 26 deals with a Vijñānavāda tenet found in the *Laṅkāvatāra*; I have already dealt with this suggestion,⁵ and pointed out that it possesses no cogency. Professor Jacobi's further suggestion that Vātsyāyana knew Vasubandhu and may be placed *c.* 400 accords with the results adopted by me⁶ on the score of other evidence. He criticizes the well-known attempt of S. C. Vidyabhusana to prove that Uddyotakara and Dharmakīrti were contemporaries, on the ground that (1) Uddyotakara must have flourished a generation before Bāṇa since he was known to Subandhu, and (2) Dharmakīrti cannot have attained literary fame before Hiuen Tsang's stay in India, since he ignores him as an author of standing.
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These arguments are not conclusive, and it is quite possible that Subandhu, Bāṇa, Uddyotakara, and Dharmakīrti were more or less contemporaries; this issue also will be dealt with elsewhere. But Professor Jacobi renders it very probable that Dignāga, perhaps even Dharmakīrti, was known to the well-known *Maṇimēkhalai* in Tamil.⁷
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⁵ *Festgabe Garbe*, pp. 84–94. See also Prabhat Chandra Chakravarti, IHQ. ii. 478 ff.
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⁶ Verse 7; cf. Caraka, Sūtrasthāna, ix. 8.
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¹ S. K. Belvalkar, *Festgabe Garbe*, pp. 162-70; *Ind. Phil. Rev.*, ii. 141-54. *Contra*, Nilakantha Sastri, IA. 1. 172.
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² Stcherbatsky, *Festgabe Jacobi*, p. 372. What is said in POCM. 1924, pp. 475 ff., 523 ff. is inconclusive.
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³ The *Nyāyapraveça* is now published in GOS. 32 (vol. ii).
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⁴ *Festgabe Jacobi*, pp. 381-5; on Ānandajñāna, cf. p. 382, n. 1.
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⁵ IOC. ii. 612.
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¹ Vidhushekhara Bhattacharya, IHQ. iii. 152-60.
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² Tubianski, *Bulletin de l'Académie de l'USSR.* 1926, pp. 975 ff.
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³ IHQ. 1928.
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⁴ ZII. v. 305 f.
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⁵ *Indian Logic and Atomism*, pp. 23 f.
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⁶ Ibid., pp. 27 f.
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⁷ ZII. v. 305; the *Nyāyapraveça* was used in the *Maṇimēkhalai* (p. 309). On the vexed date of the Çangam literature, cf. K. G. Śankar, JRAS. 1924, pp. 664-7.
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On the interesting issue of the effect of Indian philosophy on Schopenhauer and of the present importance of that philosophy for western thought reference may be made to the *Fünfzehntes Jahrbuch der Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft*, 1928. An energetic polemic against the view of early influence of Indian on Greek philosophy has been delivered by Th. Hopfner,⁸ which at least has the merit of showing the precariousness of the assumptions of such influence. Part of the argument for Indian influence rests on the belief in early dates for the Indian schools of thought, and it is clear that there is great difficulty in arriving at definite conclusions on this issue. Thus Professor Das Gupta¹ places the *Laṅkāvatāra* before Açvaghoṣa, but the text we have seems to know the Vijñānavāda school and the barbarian inroads of *c.* A. D. 500.. Much stress has of late been laid on the Sāṁkhya philosophy,² as it is presented in the Saṁhitā of Caraka, but it seems to be overlooked that we have not the slightest proof that this or any special part of the text is really Caraka's.³
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⁸ *Orient und griechische Philosophie* (1925). For a probably forged reference to Apollonius of Tyana in a Sanskrit text, see M. Hiriyanna, IHQ. ii. 415.
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¹ *Hist. of Indian Phil.*, i. 280.
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² *Ibid.*, i. 280 f., 312 ff.
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³ Cf. Hoernle, *Archiv f. Gesch. d. Medizin*, i. 30 ff.; Jolly, *Munich Catal.*, p. 48. The list of Tantrayuktis in viii is, of course, by Dṛḍhabala, who again used the Uttaratantra of Suçruta; Ruben, *Festgabe Jacobi*, pp. 354-7.
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Some light has been thrown by the discoveries of manuscripts in East Turkestan on the *Bheḍa Saṁhitā*.⁴ A paper manuscript with a fragment of the text, which can be assigned to the ninth century A. D., suggests strongly that the text published from a single Telugu MS. presents a version of the Saṁhitā which has suffered alteration, a chapter on *raktapitta* in the Nidānasthāna having been replaced by one on *kāsa*. Another manuscript fragment, written on leather, from South Turkestan or Northern India, dating probably from the end of the second century A. D., say a hundred years before the manuscript of the *Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā* and fifty years after the manuscript of Açvaghoṣa's plays, is of interest, as it preserves a tradition of a doctrine of eight or ten *rasas* as opposed to the six which Caraka and Suçruta recognize, and which are generally accepted in Indian medicine. It is possible that we here have a trace of an older medical system, which was ultimately superseded by the system of Ātreya, on which the work of Caraka is based.
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⁴ H. Lüders, *Festgabe Garbe*, pp. 148 ff.; for the doubtful character of Caraka's text, see also pp. 154 f.
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The vexed issue of the indebtedness of Arabia and Europe to India for the numerical system has been reconsidered by Sukumar Ranjan Das,⁵ who has dealt at length with Dr. Kaye's views.
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⁵ IHQ. ii. 97-120; iii. 356-75. See also D. E. Smith, *Hist. of Math.*, vol. ii, ch. ii.
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Some of the evidence adduced is clearly inconclusive. The *Arthaçāstra* knows (ii. 7) an elaborate system of keeping accounts, but its date cannot be assumed as the fourth century B. C., nor does in any case the keeping of accounts imply any definite system of the use of numerals similar to that attested for the sixth century A. D.¹ References to boys learning reckoning (*saṁkhyāna*)² are equally inconclusive, and the date of the *Lalitavistara* is very uncertain. But the use of *çūnya* in the *Chandassūtra* of Piṅgala³ must be accorded due weight, and the Indian hypothesis has gained strength from the new investigations accorded to it. But certainty is unattainable, and it may be observed that, while the identification of Puliça with Paulus of Alexandria is merely conjectural, it is not sufficient to dispose of it by pointing out that Puliça was an authority on astronomy, Paulus on astrology, for we have nothing to show that the latter did not deal with astronomy, as would be natural enough in a professed astrologer.⁴
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¹ The Sumerians (*c.* 3000 B. C.) and the Egyptians had elaborate systems of account-keeping; see D. E. Smith, *Hist. of Math.*, i. 37 ff.
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² *Arthaçāstra*, i. 5; *Lalitavistara*, x. 15.
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³ viii. 29 f.; Weber, IS. viii. 169, 444 ff. It must be noted that this part is not probably early, and is not to be assigned to the 2nd cent. B. C. (IHQ. iii. 374).
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⁴ On the *ketus* and their influence on men's fates, see Ballālasena's *Adbhutasāgara* (12th cent.), and J. von Negelein, *Festgabe Jacobi*, pp. 440 ff.; *Festgabe Garbe*, pp. 47–53.
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On the question of the origin of Sanskrit no conclusive evidence has been recently adduced. Professor Hertel's conviction of the late date of the *Ṛgveda* and of Zoroaster is not likely to secure general acceptance, despite its ingenuity,⁵ nor is a recent and not less ingenious effort⁶ to show that the Aryans lived for a time together under strong Mitanni influences and only turned definitely east, to break up into Indians and Iranians, after the Mitanni *débâcle* in the middle of the fourteenth century B. C. The deductions drawn from certain terms, and from the similarity of Çiva to the Himmels-und Wettergott of Asia Minor, whose name in Mitanni was Tešup, and of Pārvatī to the Great Mother of Asia Minor, Hepa in Mitanni, and from the syllabic Brāhmī script, are all suggestive, but without probative force. Very interesting and worthy of serious consideration in the field of comparative philology are the arguments recently adduced by Professor Max Walleser¹ to refute the at present accepted theory regarding the merger in Sanskrit of the three vowels *a e o* into *a*, and to show that Sanskrit preserved as late as the seventh century A. D. the labio-velar consonants. One point is of special interest, as it confirms a view in which I differ from Professor Liebich,² the question of the priority of the *Taittirīya Prātiçākhya* to Pāṇini; it is made most probable that the distinction between *ā* and *a* as connected with the openness of the former and the closed character of the latter vowel was not noted by the *Ṛk* or *Taittirīya Prātiçākhyas* but by the *Atharva Prātiçākhya*, the *Vājasaneyi Prātiçākhya*, and Pāṇini. Liebich's argument against the priority of the *Taittirīya Prātiçākhya* to Pāṇini rests merely on the identity of certain Sūtras in both texts and the use of *pragraha* for *pragṛhya*. The latter appears to give no possible indication of relative position in time; it may be a local variant, which accords with other evidence as to the provenance of the text; the former fact is most naturally explained by the certainty that Pāṇini's work embodies much earlier material, which was made use of also by the Prātiçākhya, unless Pāṇini simply is the debtor to the Prātiçākhya.
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⁵ On Zoroaster's date cf. Keith, IHQ. iii. 683–9.
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⁶ W. Porzig, ZII. v. 265–80.
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¹ ZII. v. 193-202; *Zur Aussprache des Sanskrit und Tibetischen* (1926).
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² *Zur Einführung in die indische einheimische Sprachwissenschaft*, ii. 47.
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In an exhaustive analysis of Yāska's etymologies³ Dr. Hannes Sköld has suggested that certain of the suggested derivations are only explicable on the ground that Yāska was familiar with and used a Middle Indian (Prākrit) speech. Beside this suggestion may be placed the opinion recently expressed by Professor H. Lüders,⁴ that the language of Açoka's Chancery was 'eine Art Hochsprache', while the actually spoken speech was much further advanced and probably had reached the stage represented in the literary Prākrits, though it is candidly admitted that the latter point cannot be said yet to have been established. Nor, it may be added, are Sköld's proofs regarding Yāska free from much doubt. But the more important issue is whether the matter is really to be viewed in the light suggested, of a contrast between actually spoken language and a Hochsprache. It is rather, it appears to me, a matter of class speeches; Yāska spoke Sanskrit much as he wrote it, and the officials of Açoka equally conversed in a speech essentially similar to that in which they wrote, while contemporaneously lower classes of the population spoke in dialects which were far further advanced in phonetic change. It is clear that the Aryan invaders succeeded in imposing their speech on many of the earlier inhabitants of the country, and there is no cogent argument to refute the natural belief that strange Prācritic forms, such as we find sporadically even in the *Ṛgveda*, when not mere later corruptions are often loan-words from class dialects with which the speakers of the more conservative form of speech were in contact. The influence of lower speech-forms was doubtless of increasing importance, since it evoked the elaborate grammatical studies summed up in the *Aṣṭādhyāyī*, testifying to the anxiety of the priests to preserve the Bhāṣā from corruption, and Patañjali's insistence¹ on the evils of barbarisms doubtless proves their occurrence. But there seems no ground for conceiving of the position as one in which the priests used a formal language only in their business, and discarded it for a true vernacular in daily life. There seems a very fair analogy with the standard English of the higher classes of society in this country; the East-end curate's true vernacular is standard English, though he ought to be able to adapt his speech to the comprehension of the dockers if he works at a mission, and a landowner's true vernacular is that which he habitually uses in his own circle, not that in which he talks familiarly to his farm workers or villagers of the old type, whose dialect often is as different from standard English as an old Prākrit from Sanskrit. The presence of many Sanskritized versions of Prākrit terms, to which Zachariae² has suggested an interesting addition in the term *protha*,³ is a perfectly natural phenomenon where higher and lower speeches exist contemporaneously in the same community, apart altogether from the further possibilities of speech mixture due to the development of local as well as class dialects. At any rate arguments used to deny vernacular character to Sanskrit are quite adequate to prove the same hypothesis of standard English, which unquestionably is a true vernacular.¹
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³ *The Nirukta*, pp. 128 ff.
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⁴ ZII. v. 259.
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¹ So already Kātyāyana, Vārttika 12 on Pāṇini, i. 3. 1. Sköld's effort (IA. lv. 181 ff.) to prove Pāṇini older than the *Ṛk Prātiçākhya* cannot be accepted, for the reasons given by B. Liebich, *Zur Einführung in die ind. einheim. Sprachwissenschaft*, ii. 30 f.
c3.111
² ZII. v. 228-31.
c3.112
³ A variant for *pāntham* in the verse cited (from Bhāṣya on Pāṇini, i. 4. 56) below, p. 46. For the idea cf. *Çakuntalā*, iv. (ed. Cappeller), p. 48.
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¹ An interesting loan-word is suggested in *kampana* or *kampanā* (below, p. 170) by B. Liebich (*Festgabe Streitberg*, pp. 230-2) who sees in it a derivative of *campus*. Liebich has a most amusing note (*ZII.* v. 153-63) showing how in *Pañcatantra*, i. 7 (below, p. 257) the original version has a bug, not a flea, but the latter was introduced by Burzōe's version. Burzōe's alleged narrative is suspected by Sir E. Denison Ross (*Ocean of Story*, v. pp. v ff.; *BSOS.* iii. 443), but the existence of a Pahlavi rendering, which alone is of importance to Indologists, is not questioned.
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Moreover, the fact that Sanskrit was thus regularly used in conversation by the upper classes, court circles eventually following the example of the Brahmins in this regard, helps to explain the constant influence exercised by the higher form of speech on the vernaculars which reveals itself *inter alia* in the constant influx of Tatsamas, words whose phonetic state runs counter to the tendencies of the vernacular. It is quite impossible to explain this phenomenon adequately by the theory of borrowing from literature only; those who adapted the vernaculars for the purpose of writing in any form or literary composition were doubtless in constant touch with circles in which Sanskrit was actually in living use. Doubtless, important changes to the disadvantage of Sanskrit as a spoken language resulted from the Mahomedan invasions, which culminated in the substitution of a new speech in official use at the courts of Mahomedan rulers, but for the period from A. D. 300 up to 1200, dealt with in this work, there is little evidence of any fundamental change in the extent or character of the use of Sanskrit; the same impression is given by the *Kāmasūtra*, perhaps *c.* 400, the *Kāvyamīmāṅsā* of Rājaçekhara (*c.* 900), and Bilhaṇa (*c.* 1100).
First 120 of 132 passages. Read on
Linked texts (59)
- Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit
- Aṣṭādhyāyī — Pāṇini, Sanskrit
- Pañcatantra — Viṣṇuśarman, Sanskrit
- Padmapurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Kathāsaritsāgara — Somadeva Bhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
- Garuḍapurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā — Vāgbhaṭa, Sanskrit
- Carakasaṃhitā — Agniveśa (Āyurveda) & Caraka, Sanskrit
- Suśrutasaṃhitā — Suśruta & Nāgārjuna (siddha/alchemist), Sanskrit
- Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra — Bhoja, Sanskrit
- Adbhutasāgara — Ballālasena & Lakṣmaṇasena, Sanskrit
- Mānasāra — Sanskrit
- Maṇimēkalai — Cīttalaic Cāttaṉār, Tamil
- Nāṭyaśāstra — Bharata, Sanskrit
- Bheḷasaṃhitā — Bheḷa, Sanskrit
- Mṛcchakaṭika — Śūdraka, Sanskrit
- Kāvyaprakāśa — Mammaṭa & Alaṭa, Sanskrit
- Laṅkāvatārasūtra — Sanskrit
- Gauḍavaho — Vākpatirāja, Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit
- Svapnavāsavadatta — Bhāsa, Sanskrit
- Ṛgvedaprātiśākhya — Śaunaka, Sanskrit
- Kirātārjunīya — Bhāravi, Sanskrit
- Subhāṣitāvali — Vallabhadeva (anthologist), Sanskrit
- Vājasaneyiprātiśākhya — Kātyāyana (Vājasaneyi sūtrakāra), Sanskrit
- Kāvyamīmāṃsā — Rājaśekhara, Sanskrit
- Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā Dṛṣṭāntapaṅkti — Kumāralāta, Sanskrit
- Daśakumāracarita — Daṇḍin, Sanskrit
- Śṛṅgāraprakāśa — Bhoja, Sanskrit
- Taittirīyaprātiśākhya — Sanskrit
- Nirukta — Yāska, Sanskrit
- Bhāvaprakāśa — Bhāvamiśra 1550, Sanskrit
- Śaunakīyā Caturādhyāyikā — Śaunaka, Sanskrit
- Harṣacarita — Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
- Taittirīyāraṇyaka — Sanskrit
- Ṛtusaṃhāra — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit
- Nāgānanda — Harṣavardhana, Sanskrit
- Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa — Bhāsa, Sanskrit
- Cārudatta — Bhāsa, Sanskrit
- Kādambarī — Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
- Ratnāvalī — Harṣavardhana, Sanskrit
- Nyāyapraveśa — Śaṅkarasvāmin, Sanskrit
- Kāmasūtra — Vātsyāyana Mallanāga, Sanskrit
- Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
- Śukasaptati — Sanskrit
- Jātakamālā — Āryaśūra, Sanskrit
- Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra — Maitreyanātha & Asaṅga, Sanskrit
- Epigraphia Carnatica
- Vetālapañcaviṃśatikā — Sanskrit
- Abhijñānaśākuntala — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit
- Viśvakarmaśilpa — Viśvakarman, Sanskrit
- Trikāṇḍaśeṣa — Puruṣottamadeva, Sanskrit
- Nāṭakalakṣaṇaratnakośa — Sāgaranandin, Sanskrit
- Nāṭyadarpaṇa — Rāmacandrasūri & Guṇacandra, Sanskrit
- Avantisundarīkathā — Daṇḍin, Sanskrit
- Śyainikaśāstra — Rudradeva, Sanskrit
- Uttararāmacarita — Bhavabhūti, Sanskrit
- Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi — Śaktibhadra, Sanskrit
- Pārvatīpariṇaya — Vāmanabhaṭṭa Bāṇa, Sanskrit
- Priyadarśikā — Śrīharṣa, Sanskrit