A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t2.133

v2.c19.s3.t2.133

The great importance of these pictures of life for our knowledge of the social conditions, especially of the social position of woman in ancient India, is self-evident. It need hardly be mentioned how largely, too, such pictures contribute to the animation of these poems, which always move in the same circles of ideas, namely the glorification of the Arhat ideal, though regarded from various points of view, thus giving the non-Buddhist reader the impression of a certain monotony.⁴ Sure enough, in the "Songs of the Elders," the charming descriptions of nature are largely instrumental in making many of these religious poems real gems of Indian lyric poetry. The love of nature which we have already met with in the Rāmāyaṇa as a prominent feature of Indian poetry, which we admire in the ornate epics and in the love lyrics, and even in the didactic gnomic poetry, was not foreign to these monks inspite of all their renunciation of the world. More poet than monk, they delight in lingering over the description of the forest and mountain scenery, in the midst of which the solitary sage pursues his meditations. When the thunder rolls and the torrential rain pours down out of the dark clouds, the liberated monk sits in bliss in his rock cave. Even the saint who is indifferent to pleasure and pain, does not refrain from describing the spring.¹