A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s1.1

c9.s1.1

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.