The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c14.s1.4

c14.s1.4

A complete history of Hindu literature whether in Sanskrit² or the Prakrit languages it is impossible yet to attempt. A catalogue of catalogues, the *Catalogus Catalogorum*, has been compiled by Aufrecht. It contains the shortest possible notices of about twenty five thousand manuscripts in Sanskrit. Thousands of other manuscripts remain still to be explored, tabulated and indexed. In the meantime a hasty glance at Aufrecht's volumes is enough to convince us that Sanskrit literature is the literature of every human activity from cooking, dancing, painting, cattle-breeding, gardening and grooming to erotics, thieving, warfare, navigation, and manufacture of military implements, in other words, of *dharma*, *artha*, *kâma*, and *mokṣa*. Needless to observe, economic, political and legal treatises occupy a great deal of space.¹