The History of Indian Literature c8.37

c8.37

For the knowledge of metre also, rich materials have been handed down to us in the Sútras. The singers of the hymns themselves must naturally have been cognisant of the metrical laws observed in them. But we also find the technical names of some metres now and then mentioned in the later songs of the Ṛik. In the Bráhmaṇas the oddest tricks are played with them, and their harmony is in some mystical fashion brought into connection with the harmony of the world, in fact stated to be its fundamental cause. The simple minds of these thinkers were too much charmed by their rhythm not to be led into these and similar symbolisings. The further development of metre afterwards led to special inquiries into its laws. Such investigations have been preserved to us, both in Sútras¹⁵ treating directly of metre, *e.g.*, the Nidána-Sútra, and in the Anukramaṇís, a peculiar class of works, which, adhering to the order of each Saṃhitá, assign a poet, a metre, and a deity to each song or prayer. They may, therefore, perhaps belong to a later period than most of the Sútras, to a time when the text of each Saṃhitá was already extant in its final form, and distributed as we there find it into larger and smaller sections for the better regulation of its study. One of the smallest sections formed the pupil’s task on each occasion.—The preservation of the tradition concerning the authors and the origin of the prayers is too intimately connected herewith to be dissociated from the linguistic Sútras, although the class of works to which it gave rise is of an entirely different character. The most ancient of such traditions are to be found, as above stated, in the Bráhmaṇas themselves. These latter also contain legends regarding the origin and the author of this or that particular form of worship; and on such occasions the Bráhmaṇa frequently appeals to Gáthás, or stanzas, preserved by oral transmission among the people. It is evidently in these legends that we must look for the origin of the more extensive Itihásas and Puráṇas, works which but enlarged the range of their subject, but which in every other respect proceeded after the same fashion, as is shown by several of the earlier fragments preserved, *e.g.*, in the Mahá-Bhárata. The most ancient work of the kind hitherto known is the Bṛihaddevatá by Śaunaka, in *ślokas*, which, however, strictly follows the order of the Ṛik-Saṃhitá, and proves by its very title that it has only an accidental connection with this class of works. Its object properly is to specify the deity for each verse of the Ṛik-Saṃhitá. But in so doing, it supports its views with so many legends, that we are fully justified in classing it here. It, however, like the other Anukramaṇís, belongs to a much later period than most of the Sútras, since it presupposes Yáska, the author of the Nirukti, of whom I have to speak presently; it is, in fact, essentially based upon his work. [See Adalb. Kuhn in *I. St.*, i. 101–120.]