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A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s1: 1. The Sources of the Kāvya

A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s1

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English

1. The Sources of the Kāvya

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INDIA produced no historian of her Sanskrit literature, and, naturally enough, the appearance of great poets of the calibre of Kālidāsa, Bhāravi, and Māgha so eclipsed earlier efforts that their works and even their names passed into oblivion. Natural causes helped the result; it was difficult to multiply manuscripts, difficult to preserve them, and it is not surprising that the lesser poets should have passed from recollection. On the other hand, the absence of literary remains for the centuries just before and after the Christian era, and the fact that foreign invasions, Greeks, Parthians, and Çakas, and Yueh-chi deeply affected the north-west of India, gave an appearance of reason to Max Müller's famous suggestion¹ that there was a comparative cessation of literary activity in India until in the sixth century a great renaissance began with Kālidāsa and his contemporaries. The theory is now wholly discredited in the form in which it was put forward, if for no other reason than that it ignored the Brahmanical revival of the Gupta empire at the beginning of the fourth century A.D. But it lingers on in the form of the suggestion² that in the period up to that revival Sanskrit was little used for secular poetry, which was composed in Prākrit, until the reviving power of the Brahmins resulted in their creating the epic by translation from Prākrit originals, developed a lyric poetry to replace the simpler Prākrit songs of the people, and transformed the popular beast-fable and fairy-tale.

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¹ *India* (1883), pp. 281 ff. Contrast Lassen, *Ind. Alt.*, ii.² 1159 ff.

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² Bhandarkar, *Early Hist. of India* (1920), pp. 70 ff., who admits the existence of some Sanskrit literature, but places Açvaghoṣa under Kaniṣka *c.* A. D. 300. But as early as 185 B.C. there was a Brahmanical revival under Puṣyamitra; EHI. pp. 208 ff.; Przyluski, *La légende de l'empereur Açoka*, pp. 90 ff.

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For this theory of a Prākrit period of Indian literature preceding the Sanskrit period there is no evidence of value. The suggestion of the translation of the epic may be dismissed as absurd, but the case with other forms of literature is more worthy of consideration. The fairy-tale is a thing which readily circulates among the people long before it is dignified by literary treatment by the higher classes of society, and in point of fact there is a strong tradition to the effect that it was in a Prākrit dialect, though one closely allied to Sanskrit, that the great collection of such tales, which powerfully affected Sanskrit literature, as the *Bṛhatkathā* of Guṇāḍhya, was composed. Guṇāḍhya's work, however, is of very complex art and uncertain date, and in all probability came into being at a time when we have abundant evidence of the existence of Sanskrit literature, so that this instance is irrelevant to the contention in favour of a Prākrit period of literature. Equally little value attaches to the argument for the priority of Prākrit lyric. It was founded on a wholly misleading view of the antiquity of the anthology of Hāla, who was placed in the first century A. D. Against this view must be set the form of Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit, which shows a development in the language such as cannot be dated before the latter part of the second century A. D., if regard be paid to the evidence of the inscriptions and of the Prākrits of the dramas of Açvaghoṣa.¹ It is true that Vararuci's Prākrit grammar recognizes Māhārāṣṭrī of the type of the anthology, but there is no evidence that Vararuci is early in date, for his identification by later tradition with the Kātyāyana who criticized Pāṇini is without serious value. Jacobi,² on the other hand, has identified Hāla with the Sātavāhana under whom Jain tradition records a change in the Church calendar in A. D. 467. There is no cogent reason to accept or deny this date; what is clear is that so far as the evidence goes there is nothing to suggest great antiquity for Prākrit lyric. Lüders, who finds traces of its existence about the second century B. C. in the short inscriptions of the Sītābengā and Jogīmārā caves on the Rāmgarh hill, and who assigns to the same century the Hāthīgumphā inscription of Khāravela of Kaliṅga, which displays, though faintly, some of the characteristics of Sanskrit prose Kāvya, makes no claim for the priority of Prākrit to Sanskrit in these literary uses; on the contrary he acknowledges fully the coexistence of a Sanskrit literature.

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¹ *Bruchstücke buddh. Dramen*, pp. 61 ff. On the Sītābengā inscr. cf. Boyer, *Mélanges Lévi*, pp. 121 ff. Khāravela's date is still disputed.

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² *Ausg. Erzählungen in Mâhârâshṭrî*, p. xvii; cf. *Bhavisatta Kaha*, p. 83. The *Paumacariya* of Vimala Sūri, the oldest Māhārāṣṭrī epic, is not before A. D. 300 and may be much later (cf. *ibid.*, p. 59).

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Still less can be said for the priority of Prākrit in the sphere of the beast-fable. Such fables are readily current among the people, and the *Mahābhārata* shows their popularity in the circles to whom the epic appealed. The Jātaka tales of the Buddhists show likewise the skill by which they could be turned to the service of that faith, but of an early Prākrit fable literature we know little or nothing. On the other hand, the Sanskrit literature is marked by the fact that it adopts the fable to a definite purpose, the teaching to young princes and their entourage the practical conduct of life, and thus constitutes a new literary genre.

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The causes of the rise of Sanskrit literature are in fact obvious, and there was no need for writers in Prākrit to set an example. It would indeed have been surprising if the simplicity of the earlier epic had not gradually yielded to greater art. The Upaniṣads show us kings patronizing discussions between rival philosophers and rewarding richly the successful; we need not doubt that they were no less eager to listen to panegyrics of themselves or their race and to bestow guerdon not less lavishly. We have indeed in the Vedic lists of forms of literature references to the Nārāçaṁsīs, encomia,¹ which candour admitted to be full of lies, and we have actually preserved a few verses from which we can guess the high praise promiscuously bestowed on their patrons by the singers. Into the *Ṛgveda* itself have been admitted hymns which contrive to flatter patrons as well as extol the gods, and added verses, styled praises of gifts (*dānastutis*), recount the enormous rewards which a clever singer might obtain. We cannot doubt that from such contests must have sprung the desire to achieve ever-increasing perfection of literary form as compared with the more pedestrian style of the mere narrative of the epic.

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¹ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 445 f.

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In yet another sphere such heightening of style must have been striven after. The Vedic poets, who can compare¹ the goddess Dawn to a fair dancer, to a maiden who unveils her bosom to a lover, cannot have been incapable of producing love poetry for secular use. Nor is it doubtful that it was the early writers of the love lyric who enriched Sanskrit with a vast abundance of elaborate metres; for the flow of epic narrative such metrical forms were wholly unsuited; on the other hand, the limited theme of love demanded variety of expression if it were to be worthily developed. The gnomic utterance of which the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* has preserved some Vedic specimens naturally shared in the cultivation of the lyric, and the elaboration of verse doubtless reacted on prose style, inducing writers to seek to reproduce in that medium something of the elegance after which poets now habitually strove. There is, then, no justification for presuming a breach in literary continuity, and, despite the fact that so much has perished, we have indisputable proofs of the active cultivation of Sanskrit literature during the period from 200 B. C. to A. D. 200, when on one theory it had not yet come into being, and secular literature was composed in Prākrit.

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¹ Hirzel, *Gleichnisse und Metaphern im Ṛgveda* (1908). For the early, which is also the later, ideal of feminine beauty, see *Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, i. 2. 5. 16; iii. 5. 1. 11; the love charms of the *Atharva* attest the beginnings of erotic poetry (IS. v. 218 ff.).

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