History of Classical Sanskrit Literature c5.56

c5.56

"History is the one weak spot in Indian literature. It is, in fact, non-existent. The total lack of the historical sense is so characteristic, that the whole course of Sanskrit literature is darkened by the shadow of the defect, suffering as it does from the entire absence of exact chronology....Two causes seem to have combined to bring about this remarkable result. In the first place, early India wrote no *history*, because it never made any. The ancient Indians never went through a struggle for life, like Greeks in the Persian and the Romans in the Punic wars, such as would have welded their tribes into a nation, and developed political greatness. Secondly, the Brāhmans, whose task it