A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s9.8

v3.c35.s9.8

The Indian poets had a fancy for inserting aphoristic stanzas throughout. We find them in the epic, in the prose novel and even in the drama. They form a component part of the Buddhist and Jaina religious literature¹, as also of the religious and mundane narrative literature. The Śunaḥśepa-legend of the Aitareyabrāhmaṇa points to the existence of aphoristic literature even in the Vedic age. The scientific literature on law and politics (dharmaśāstra and nītiśāstra) is so full of poetical aphorisms that drawing a line of demarcation between gnomic poetry and scientific literature is often difficult. Numerous epigrams, that were current in literary circles and whose authors in usual course would have been forgotten, were brought together in collections, preferably in śatakas or "centuries" and many authors themselves wrote the whole collections of epigrams. The lines of demarcation between compilation and self-composed poems were often obliterated because of the fact that the latter, in case they became popular, were mutilated and added to by copyists in course of time.