A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s3.19

v3.c35.s3.19

¹ See above II, 84f., trans. p. 106. It was long believed that in the first century A.D. there came into existence a formal literary style in course of development in Sanskrit literature, and that in the 6th century A.D. took place a “renaissance of Sanskrit literature” for the first time (see Max Müller, India, What it can teach us, London 1882, Indien in seiner weltgeschichtlichen Bedeutung, Leipzig, 1884). This theory in particular has been fully developed by G. Bühler in Die indischen Inschriften und das Alter der indischen Kunstpoesie (SWA 1890). Cf. also Haraprasād Śāstri in the JASB 6, 1910, 305ff. R.G. Bhandarkar (A Peep into the Early History of India, JBRAS 1900, p. 407 f., Reprint p. 52 f.) in fact does not believe in a complete cessation of Sanskrit literature, but in its irregular development during the centuries of Buddhism and Prākrit literature from the 1st century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. It does not appear correct to speak about a “Prākrit period” of Indian literature, as has been done by F. Lacôte, *Essai sur Guṇāḍhya et la Bṛhatkathā*, Paris 1908, like Jacobi Ausgewählte Erzählungen in Māhārāṣṭrī, p. XIf.), to have preceded the classical period. Prākrit poetry is the composition of certain class of people, apparently of several courts, certainly belonging to different sects, but our study has not revealed any particular period of which we possess an Indian literature in which Prākrit alone, and not Sanskrit as well, happened to be the literary medium.