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A History of Indian Literature v1.c7.s1: Extent and Significance of Indian Literature

A History of Indian Literature v1.c7.s1

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English

Extent and Significance of Indian Literature

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The history of Indian literature is the history of the mental activity of at least 3,000 years, as expressed in speech and writing. The home of this mental activity which has been almost uninterruptedly continuous through thousands of years, is a land which reaches from the Hindu-kush to Cape Comorin and covers an area of one and a half millions of square miles, equalling in extent the whole of Europe with the exception of Russia,—a land which stretches from 8° to 35° N. Lat., that is, from the hottest regions of the Equator to well within the temperate zone. But the influence which this literature, already in ancient times, exerted over the mental life of other nations, reaches far beyond the boundaries of India to Further India, to Tibet, as far as China, Japan and Korea, and in the South over Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula far away over the islands of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, while to the West the tracks of Indian mental life may be traced far into Central Asia to Eastern Turkestan, where, buried in the sands of the desert, Indian manuscripts have been found.

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As regards its contents, Indian literature embraces everything which the word "literature" comprises in its widest sense: religious and secular, epic, lyric, dramatic and didactic poetry, as well as narrative and scientific prose.

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In the foreground stands the religious literature. Not only the Brahmans in their Vedas and the Buddhists in their Tipiṭaka, but also many others of the numerous religious sects, which have sprung up in India, can produce an enormous number of literary works—hymns, sacrificial songs, incantations, myths and legends, sermons, theological treatises, polemical writings, manuals of instruction on ritual and religious discipline. In this literature there is an accumulation of absolutely priceless material, which no investigator of religion can afford to pass by. Besides this activity in the sphere of religious literature, which reaches back through thousands of years, and is still being continued at the present day, there have been in India since the oldest times also heroic songs, which in the course of centuries have become condensed into two great national epics—the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. The poets of the Indian Middle Ages during centuries drew upon the legends of these two epics, and epic poems arose, which in contradistinction to these popular epics, are designated as—ornate epics. But, while these poems, on account of their exaggerated artificiality, which often exceeds all bounds, do not by any means always suit our Western taste, Indian poets have bequeathed to us lyrical and dramatic works, which bear comparison for delicacy and intensity of feeling, and partly also for dramatic creative power, with the most beautiful productions of modern European literature. In one department of literature, that of the aphorism (gnomic poetry), the Indians have attained a mastery which has never been gained by any other nation. India is also the land of the fairy-tale and fable. The Indian collections of fairy-tales, fables and prose narratives have played no insignificant part in the history of world-literature. Indeed, fairy-tale research—that most attractive study of fairy-tales and fairy-tale motives and of their wanderings from people to people—has only become an independent branch of knowledge through Benfey's fundamental work on the famous Indian book of fables, the Pañcatantra.

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But one of the peculiarities of the Indian mind is that (it has never drawn a distinct line between purely artistic production and scientific work,) so that a division between "belles lettres" and didactic literature is not really possible in India. What appears to us a collection of fairy tales and fables is regarded by the Indians as a manual of political and moral instruction. On the other hand, history and biography have in India never been treated other than by poets and as a branch of epic poetry. Neither does a division between the forms of poetry and prose really exist in India. Every subject can be treated equally well in verses as in the prose form. We find novels which differ from the ornate epics in hardly anything except that the metrical form is wanting. Since the oldest times we find a special predilection for the mixture of prose and verse. For that which we call scientific literature, the prose form has been employed in India only for a small part, whereas verse has been used to a far greater extent. This is the case in works on philosophy and law, as also in those on medicine, astronomy, architecture, etc. Indeed, even grammars and dictionaries have been written by the Indians in metrical form. There is perhaps nothing more characteristic than that there exists a great classical epic in 22 Cantos, which pursues the definitely stated aim of illustrating and impressing the rules of grammar. Philosophy was very early a subject of literary activity in India, first in connection with the religious literature, but later also independently of the latter. Similarly, already in very early times, law and custom were,—also first in connection with religion,—made into subjects of a special law literature, written partly in verse and partly in prose. The importance of this law literature for the comparative study of law and social science is to-day appreciated to the full by prominent jurists and sociologists. Centuries before the birth of Christ, grammar was already studied in India, a science in which the Indians excel all the nations of antiquity. Lexicography, too, attains to a high age. The Indian court poets (Kavi) of later periods did not give utterance to that which a god revealed to them, but they studied the rules of grammar, and searched in dictionaries for rare and poetic expressions; they versified according to the teachings and rules which were laid down in scientific works on prosody and poetics. Since the earliest times the Indian mind had a particular predilection for detailed analysis and for the pedantic scientific treatment of all possible subjects. Therefore we find in India not only an abundant, and partly ancient, literature on politics and economics, medicine, astrology and astronomy, arithmetic and geometry; but also music, singing, dancing and dramatic art, magic and divination, and even erotics, are arranged in scientific systems and treated in special manuals of instruction.

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But in each single one of the above enumerated branches of literature there has accumulated, during the course of the centuries, a mass of literary productions which it is almost impossible to survey, largely through the fact that in nearly all departments of religious literature, as well as of poetry and science, the commentators developed a very eager activity. Thus especially some of the most important and most extensive works on grammar, philosophy and law are only commentaries on older works. Very frequently other commentaries were again written on these commentaries. Indeed, it is not a rare thing for an author in India to have added a commentary to his own work. Thus, it is no matter for wonder, that the sum total of Indian literature is almost overwhelming. And in spite of the fact that the catalogues of Indian MSS. which can be found in Indian and European libraries contain many thousands of book-titles and names of authors, innumerable works of Indian literature have been lost, and many names of older writers are known only through quotations by later writers, or have even completely disappeared.

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All these facts—the high age, the wide geographical distribution, the extent, and the wealth, the aesthetic value and still more the value from the point of view of the history of culture, of Indian literature—would fully suffice to justify our interest in this great, original, and ancient literature. But here is something else in addition to this, which gives, just to Indian literature, a quite particular interest. The Indo-Aryan languages, together with the Iranian, form the most easterly branch of that great family of languages, to which also our language and indeed most of the languages of Europe belong, and which is called Indo-European. It was indeed this very literature of India, the investigation of which led to the discovery of this affinity of languages, a discovery which was so truly epoch-making, because it threw such an astonishing new light upon the pre-historic relations between the peoples. For, from the affinity of languages, one was forced to conclude that there was a former unity of languages, and this again presupposed a closer tie between the peoples speaking these Indo-European languages. There certainly are widespread and considerable errors concerning this relationship of the Indo-European peoples prevailing even to-day. People speak of an Indo-European "race," which does not exist at all, and never has existed. One also hears at times that Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Germanic peoples and Slavs are of the same blood, descendants of one and the same Indo-European "primitive stock." These were far too hasty conclusions. But though it is even more than doubtful whether the peoples which speak Indo-European languages are all descended from a common origin, still it must not be doubted that a common language, this most important instrument of all mental activity, implies a relationship of mind and a common culture. Though the Indians are not flesh of our flesh, or bone of our bone, we may yet discover mind of our mind in the world of Indian thought. In order, however, to attain to a knowledge of the "Indo-European mind," *i.e.* of that which may be called the Indo-European peculiarity in thought, reflection and poetry of these peoples, it is absolutely essential for the one-sided knowledge of the Indo-European character, which we have acquired by the study of European literatures, to be completed by an acquaintance with the Indo-European mind as evidenced in the distant East. It is for this reason that (Indian literature, more especially, forms a necessary complement to the classical literature of Ancient Greece and Rome for all who would guard themselves against a one-sided view of the Indo-European character.) Indian literature cannot, indeed, be compared with Greek literature in regard to artistic merit. The world of Indian thought has not, it is true, exercised by any means such an influence over modern European ideas as did Greek and Roman culture. (But if we wish to learn to understand the beginnings of our own culture, if we wish to understand the oldest Indo-European culture, we must go to India, where the oldest literature of an Indo-European people is preserved. For whatever view we may adopt on the problem of the antiquity of Indian literature, we can safely say that the oldest monument of the literature of the Indians is at the same time the oldest monument of Indo-European literature which we possess.)

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Moreover, the immediate influence which the literature of India has exercised over our own literature, too, should not be under-estimated. We shall see that the narrative literature of Europe is dependent on the Indian fable literature in no small degree. It is more especially German literature and German philosophy which, since the beginning of the 19th century, have been greatly influenced by Indian ideas, and it is quite probable that this influence is still on the increase, and that it will be augmented still further in the course of the present century.

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For that affinity of mind which is revealed to us in the unity of the Indo-European languages, is still clearly recognisable to-day, and nowhere so markedly as between Indians and Germans. The striking points of agreement between the German and Indian mind have often been pointed out.¹ "The Indians," says Leopold von Schroeder, "are the nation of romanticists of antiquity : the Germans are the romanticists of modern times." G. Brandes has already referred to the tendency towards contemplation and abstract speculation as well as to the inclination towards pantheism in the case of both Germans and Indians. Moreover, the German and the Indian character meet in many other respects, in a striking manner. It is not only German poets who have sung of "Weltschmerz" (world-sorrow). "Weltschmerz" is also the basic idea upon which the doctrine of Buddha is built up; and more than one Indian poet has lamented the suffering and woe of the world, the transitoriness and the vanity of all earthly things in words which remind us forcibly of our great poet of "Weltschmerz," Nikolaus Lenau. And when Heine says:

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¹ Thus especially by *G. Brandes*, "Hauptströmungen der Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts," Berlin 1872, I, p. 270, and by *Leopold von Schroeder*, "Indiens Literatur und Cultur," Leipzig 1887, p. 6 f.

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"Sweet is sleep, but death is better,
Best of all is it never to be born,"

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he expresses the same idea as those Indian philosophers, who aspire to nothing more ardently than to that death after which there is no further re-birth. Again, sentimentality and feeling for Nature are the common property of German and Indian poetry, whilst they are foreign, say, to Hebrew or Greek poetry. Germans and Indians love descriptions of Nature; and both Indian and German poets delight in connecting the joys and sorrows of man with the Nature which surrounds him. There is yet another, quite different province, in which we encounter the similarity between Germans and Indians. Mention has already been made of the tendency of the Indians to work out scientific systems; and we are justified in saying that the Indians were the nation of scholars of antiquity, just as the Germans are the nation of scholars of to-day. (In the earliest ages the Indians already analysed their ancient sacred writings with a view to philology, classified the linguistic phenomena as a scientific system, and developed their grammar so highly that even to-day modern philology can use their attainments as a foundation;) likewise Germans of to-day are the undisputed leaders in all fields of philology and linguistic science.

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In the field of Indian philology and in the research of Indian literature, too, the Germans have been the leaders and pioneers. Much as we are indebted to the English, who, as the rulers of India, took up the study of Indian language and literature as a result of practical needs, much as some prominent French, Italian, Dutch, Danish, American, Russian, and,—which should not be forgotten—native Indian scholars, have done for the investigation of Indian literature and culture,—the Germans have undoubtedly taken the lion’s share in publishing critical editions of texts, explaining and investigating them, and in compiling dictionaries and grammars. A brief survey of the history of Indological studies will show us this.

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