A History of Indian Literature v1.c5.1

v1.c5.1

The publishers of this work have announced in a notice that the series in which the present volume, dedicated to the oldest period of Indian literature, appears, is intended, "not for learned circles, but for the educated people of the nation." With this idea in mind, the class of reader which I have kept constantly in view in the course of my work is the reader who as yet knows nothing of Indian literature, and possesses no special Indological knowledge of any kind:—and yet not that reader who merely desires a desultory acquaintance with Indian literature in a leisure hour, but him who wants to make himself as thoroughly acquainted with it as it is at all possible without a knowledge of the Indian languages. An English, German or French literary history need only be a bare presentation of the course of development of a literature which presumably is already familiar. A history of Indian literature, however, in all cases in which there are no German translations—and this is unfortunately so in the majority of cases—must also instruct the German reader as far as possible in the contents of the literary productions, by means of quotations and summaries of the contents. In other words: A history of the literature must be at the same time a description of the literature. Thus of the national epics and the Purāṇas, with which the second half of the present volume deals, only few portions have so far become known in German translations. Without extensive descriptive summaries and quotations it is impossible for the reader to gain any conception at all of the works treated.