A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s3.36

c7.s3.36

As the passage of time made Sanskrit more and more a language of culture, it reveals in increasing measure a lack of delicate sensibility to idiomatic use of words, such as is engendered by usage in a living speech more closely in touch with ordinary life. The defect, however, is sometimes exaggerated, for it must not be forgotten that poets of all times are apt, through considerations of metre or desire for effect,¹ to adopt unusual senses of words and to strain meanings; Pindar and Propertius illustrate a tendency which is found more or less markedly throughout classical literature, while the Alexandrian Lykophron is guilty of as distinct linguistic monstrosities as any Indian poet. The tendency in their case was accentuated by the growing love for paronomasias, and the tendency to study poetic dictionaries which gave lists of synonyms, ignoring the fact that in reality two terms are practically never really coextensive in sense. The grammatical knowledge of the poets also led them into inventing terms or using terms in senses etymologically unexceptionable but not sanctioned by usage.