A History of Sanskrit Literature c13.10

c13.10

It would be a mistake to suppose that Sanskrit literature came into being only at the close of the Vedic period, or that it merely forms its continuation and development. As a profane literature, it must, in its earliest phases, which are lost, have been contemporaneous with the religious literature of the Vedas. Beside the productions of the latest Vedic period, that of the Upanishads and Sūtras, there grew up, on the one hand, the rich Pāli literature of Buddhism, and, on the other, the earliest form of Sanskrit poetry in the shape of epic tales. We have seen that even the *Rigveda* contains some hymns of a narrative character. Later we find in the Brāhmaṇas a number of short legends, mostly in prose, but sometimes partly metrical, as the story of Çunaḥçepa in the *Aitareya*. Again, the *Nirukta*, which must date from the fifth century B.C., contains many prose tales, and the oldest existing collection of Vedic legend, the metrical *Bṛihaddevatā*, cannot belong to a much later time.