Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c13.2

c13.2

The ideas which the legal and political writers expounded became part and parcel of the Hindu cultural tradition. They are reflected in literature, in poetry, in fiction, in biography and in history. Here is little that is original but the form and setting of the traditional wisdom are interesting. It need hardly be added that the works to be noticed here are written indiscriminately in verse or prose or partly in both. In ancient India, all subjects from the most abstruse to the most trivial, were handled in prose or verse equally well. The old theory of a Renaissance of Sanskrit literature in the Gupta age or in the sixth century is now completely discarded. Sylvain Levi suggests that the initiative of the Śaka satraps of the second century A.D. in Western India was responsible for the extension of Sanskrit to the meaner purposes of secular writing. But the works of Aśvaghoṣa who flourished in the age of Kaniṣka, either in the latter half of the first century A.D. or probably at the latest in the middle of the second century, leave no doubt that Sanskrit was already employed for various purposes.¹ Aśvaghoṣa is no mere dilettante; he is a master. The ground for him must have been prepared by others. It has been said that Sanskrit poetry is essentially aristocratic,