Mādhava
saves her
and slays the priest.
and slays the priest.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v14 - Ibn to Juv
Further, the Epic, as
it now lies before us, includes whole books of philosophical, moral,
ethical, and didactic discourses, put into the mouths of the sages
who appear in the course of the tale.
A curious theory, founded on this fact, has lately been put forth
to the effect that the Mahābhārata' story is not its own excuse for
being, and that the moral and legal maxims are hung upon the
characters as upon lay figures, merely to make them attractive to
the common people. This theory has for support the important fact
that at the close of the Vedic period the old Vedic language was
become well-nigh unintelligible even to the priests, and that to incul-
cate moral saws it was necessary to speak in a tongue understanded
of the people. And this is true of the Epic. It is written in the
Sanskrit of the time, not in antiquated Vedic; and it is expressly
meant to be repeated at great festivals when the common people
and women » (who were rigorously excluded from hearing even the
unintelligible words of the holy Vedic texts) could hear and were
commanded to hear the recital. At the same time, this theory is
far too one-sided, and takes no account of the Epic character of the
poem in its older portions, or of the patent improbability of the gen-
esis thus imagined in the case of a poem so dramatic in its action.
Still less does this theory agree with historical facts; for we know
that the early Greek adventurers who followed Alexander distinctly
state that the Hindus had poems like Homer's, narrating the great
actions of their national heroes. Had these poems been chiefly moral
discourses, as with regard to its bulk the Bhārata' is to-day, the
observant Greeks would not have failed to notice the fact. On the
contrary, the most probable theory in regard to the origin of the Epic
is that certain national lays and tales of old, gradually collected,
## p. 7924 (#116) ###########################################
7924
INDIAN LITERATURE
formed the basis of the story; and that it was eventually enlarged
and systematized by the priests in the interest of their various sects
and of general morality, until it became what it is to-day, “the fifth
Veda” in importance, a huge storehouse of legend and didactic com-
position, through which, like a scarlet thread, runs the bloody story
of the Conflict between the Clans of Kurus and Pandus, which formed
the original Epic story.
In its present shape the Mahābhārata' is about seven times as
long as the Iliad and Odyssey put together, and contains some two
hundred thousand verses. Apart from what we may safely regard
as late didactic material, the character of this earlier Epic is heroic
in distinction from the Epic next to be considered. The style is
forcible, often terse and nervous, the action is well sustained, and
the whole effect produced is that of a poem written to commemo-
rate an actual conflict between members of rival clans, who lived
somewhat southeast of the Punjâb, but still near the old “Brahman-
land”; for the geographical central point of the events, the Troy
of this Iliad, is the town on the site of which is built the modern
Delhi. In the portrayal of character the Hindu poem has in fact
many analogies with its Grecian
counterpart. The noble devo-
tion and chivalric character of Arjuna, the chief hero, reminds us of
Hector; the wily and sinful Duryodhana is a second Ulysses; the
leader of one of the great hosts marshaled for the eighteen days'
war, Yudhi-sthira (literally “steady in battle”), reminds us again, not
only in name but in moral weakness and in heroic bravery, of the
Withstander, Agamemnon; and Krishnā, the devoted wife of Arjuna,
may be compared with Andromache. But these two Epics in their
events and actions have nothing more in common than all tales of
war; and the old theory that because of the resemblance in charac-
ter, the Hindu Epic may have been borrowed from the Greek, is now
quite given up.
The Bhārata' war is a war between rival cousins, of the house
of Bhārata, a race of heroes mentioned even in the Rig-Veda Collec-
tion. Duryodhana deprives his cousin Yudhisthira of his throne by
inducing him to gamble away his fortune, kingdom, family, and self;
and then banishes Yudhisthira and the latter's four brothers for
twelve years, not daring to kill them because they were “beloved
by the folk. ” The gambling was conducted in an unfair manner, and
the cousins feel that their banishment was really only the result of
unchivalric treachery, although pretended to be mercy in lieu of
death. When the twelve years are over, they collect armies of sym-
pathizers; and on the “Sacred Plain of the Kurus ” (Kurukshetra,
near Delhi, still the Holy Land of India) the great war is fought
out. The good prevails, Duryodhana is slain, Yudhisthira recovers
## p. 7925 (#117) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7925
his kingdom. All this is told so graphically and forcibly that,
although incumbered as it now is with extraneous matter, the Ma-
hābhārata' still has power to charm and enthrall. This Epic was
probably begun in the third or fourth century B. C. , and was com-
pleted with all extraneous additions soon after the Christian era.
The second great Epic of India arose not in the west like the
Mahābhārata,' but in the east, in the neighborhood of the seat of
Buddhism. It describes the Wandering of Rāma, the national hero
of the East, who is ostensibly in the tale the heir-apparent of Oude;
and from Rāma's wanderings (ayana) the poem is called the "Rāmā-
yana. ' In contrast with the heroic character of the Bhārata' tale,
the Rāmāyana' is distinctly romantic in style, and may be compared
with the Odyssey. In this much shorter story Rāma's conflict with
the southern barbarians is depicted; and the chief motif is the recap-
ture of Sītā, Rāma's wife, who during Rāma's unjust banishment by
his father was carried off by the king of the southern demons, and
kept in the latter's castle in Ceylon. Rāma's victorious conflict, and
the bridge which his monkey battalions built for him from the main-
land to the island, are still preserved in local name and legends in
southern India. As the geography of this tale shows, the date to
which it must be referred is much later than that of the Bhārata. '
There are, moreover, two main points of difference between the two
poems: first that of character and style already referred to; and sec-
ond the fact that the “Rāmāyana,' while undoubtedly built around
old legends, is still in its complete form the work of one single man,
the famous poet Vālmīki, who writes what the Hindus themselves
term an “Art-poem,” as distinguished from a Legend-poem, or Epic.
The Mahābhārata,' indeed, like most Hindu works, is also referred
to a sage, who in this instance bears the suspicious name of Vyāsa,
“the narrator”; but the poem itself is its own evidence of the fact
that no one author ever composed it in its entirety. On the other
hand, Vālmīki unquestionably wrote the whole of the Rāmāyana'
himself, and probably wrote it as an allegory; for Sītā, the heroine,
means “furrow,” and Rāma, the hero, stands for “plow. ” The poem
thus depicts the advance of Aryan civilization into the wild regions
of the south. Further, the style, metre, and language are both far
less simple than in the case of the Mahābhārata. ' The poem in its
present shape is probably a few centuries later than the Mahābhā-
rata, but the date cannot be determined with any exactness.
Of theories in regard to the Rāmāyana,' only two of the many
which are current demand attention. Some scholars hold that the
conflict allegorically depicted is one between Buddhists and Brah-
mans, and that the Odyssey is the model of the (late) Rāmāyana. '
Neither of these theories will stand criticism. There are no striking
»
(
## p. 7926 (#118) ###########################################
7926
INDIAN LITERATURE
(
indications of a religious allegory, nor are there any very remarkable
points of similarity between the recovery of Helen and that of Sītā.
On account of its sentimental style, the “Rāmāyana' has always been
a great favorite with the Hindus, especially with those disciples of
Vishnu who believe that Rāma was a human incarnation of their god.
To such believers the Wandering of Rāma) is a veritable Bible.
The Rāmāyana' has been imitated, abridged, copied, and altered, by
other sects as well. To a certain extent this is true also of the
Bhārata' poem, one of the characters here representing in popular
belief Krishna, another incarnation of Vishnu. But the Rāmāyana'
lends itself more easily to religious imitation, especially on the
religious-erotic side, which in India constitutes a large part of mod-
crn religious literature; and for this reason, in its rôle of a biblical as
well as a literary product, it has become even more popular than the
Mahābhārata. ' Its date is quite uncertain, but it may be referred
perhaps to the first century B. C.
The (Purānas': There are eighteen of these works, all ostensibly
religious literature, written in the usual Epic verse (of two octosyl-
labic hemistichs), and modeled on the religious portion of the Mahā-
bhārata. ' The name Purāna means “old” (tales), and the works
handed down under that name recount the deeds of deified heroes,
explain religious and moral doctrine, give an account of the glories
of past cycles and of what will happen in time to come; and besides
narration and speculation, they incidentally inculcate moral and reli-
gious truths. Not a small portion of the “Purānas’ is dedicated, how-
ever, to purely sectarian (half orthodox) teaching; and in the case of
later works of this sort it is evident that they were composed chiefly
as sectarian tracts. The style is loose and rambling, the language of
most of them is a slovenly Sanskrit, and the date of all of them
is doubtful. They probably began in the period of the beginning of
modern sectarian Brahmanism, in the first centuries after our era,
about the time that the last (religious) additions to the Mahābhārata'
were making; but the period of their composition extends up to quite
modern times. The Agni,' Mārkandeya,' and `Vishnu' Purānas seem
to be the oldest works of this class, and are the most important.
Others, like the Linga Purāna,' extol this Çivaite phallic worship:
and many of them are scarcely superior to the so-called Tantras,
tracts on obscure religious rites, which hardly deserve to be classed
as literature. In the oldest use of the word, Purāna connoted cosmo-
gonic speculation rather than tales; but this meaning applies to only
a small part of the modern Purāna.
As the Purāna' may be regarded as a continuation of the religious
side of the Mahābhārata,' so the Rāmāyana' is the model of a num-
ber of later kāvya, -i. e. , "art-poems of religious-erotic character.
## p. 7927 (#119) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7927
The best known and most important of these are attributed to Kāli-
dāsa, India's greatest dramatic author, who probably lived about 600
A. D. These are the “Setubandha,' the 'Raghuvança,' and the Kumā-
rasambhava. ' The first is in patois, and gives the history of Rāma.
The last two are in artificial Sanskrit, the second giving the gene-
alogy of Raghu and the third describing the birth of the love-god.
Besides these must be mentioned four more late “art-poems”: the
Bhatti-kāvya' (describing the race of Rāma), ascribed to the lyric
poet Bhartri-hari, who lived in the seventh century A. D. ; the Kirā-
tārjunīya' of Bhāravi, possibly of the sixth century; Māgha's poem
on Çiçupāla's death (date unknown); and the Naishadhiya,' of the
twelfth century. All of these are bombastic in style and too studied
in language. From the latest period comes further the "Nalodaya. '
The episode of Nala and Damayanti is one of the artless episodes of
the Mahābhārata'; and nothing shows more plainly the later deteri-
oration of taste than this Nalodaya,' the same story told in erotic
style and in language intensely artificial. The titles of these works
do not always reveal their character; for instance, the Bhatti-kāvya'
(above) is really intended to show the grammatical irregular forms
in the form of a poem.
Sanskrit Literature: (6) Fables and Drama. Between Epic and
Drama lies the class of writings represented in Europe by the works
of Æsop and Babrius. In India these Beast-Fables appear very
early in the Buddhist Jātakas (above). They have for us a peculiar
interest, in that many scholars hold these Indian fables to be the
model of the fables of Æsop, while others hold that the Hindu is the
copyist. In India, the fable, though not as an independent literary
product, may be traced back to the oldest Upanishads. The doctrine
of reincarnation (as shown in the Jātakas) lent itself admirably to the
growth of such compositions. But it is not necessary to suppose that
a phenomenon so native to peasant talent should be borrowed from
the Greek, or that the Greek should have borrowed the idea from
the Hindu. Greek fable is at least as old as Archilochus, and Hindu
fable can claim no older date. All that can be said with certainty
is that the great collection of Indian fables in Five Books (whence
the name, Panca-tantra) is one that has been widely read and trans-
lated in the Occident. This collection was made in the first centu-
ries of our era. In the fifth century it was translated into Persian
(Pahlavi), thence into Arabic, and in the eleventh century from Ara-
bic into Greek. From Greek it was translated into Hebrew in the
thirteenth century, thence into Latin, and finally into German in the
fifteenth century, being one of the first works to be printed in Europe.
The Hitopadeça,' or 'Friendly Instruction,' is another such collec-
tion; but it is based for the most part on the Pancatantra. As the
## p. 7928 (#120) ###########################################
7928
INDIAN LITERATURE
names.
name of the later work implies, the sententious side is here more
important: the moral' is put foremost, and a tale is told to illus-
trate it. Verse and prose alternate, as they do in our fairy stories.
Another famous collection is the Vetāla-pancavinçati, or Twenty-
five Tales of a Ghost. Still another quite modern one is called the
"Çuka-saptati, or (Seventy Tales of a Parrot. ' These are rather
inane in content; and tale is often wrapped within tale, like a puz-
zle, the moral being sententiously or aphoristically appended. The
longest collection of this sort is the Kathāsaritsāgara,' or (Ocean of
Tales, composed by Somadeva, a native of Kashmir, in the eleventh
century. The erotic character of many of these fables leads at a
comparatively early date to the development of genuine romances,
three of which, from the sixth and seventh centuries, are still extant:
the (Daçakumāracarita' of Dandin, the “Vāsavadattāl of Subhandhu,
and the Kādambari) of Bāna. The titles merely give the characters'
These romances are rather simple love stories, not too refined
in language. They may be compared with the products of late Greek
literature, which in this regard also anticipates the modern novel.
The romantic development of the fable, which is often in the
form of a love story, leads directly to the na, The extant drama
is no older than the extant lyric, but its origin can be traced fur-
ther back. It appears to have come from a curious mixture of fable
and religious rite. In the second and third centuries before Christ
the common people were entertained with Yātras,-i. e. , a kind of
mystery-play, in which the love affairs of Krishna-Vishnu (the god
Vishnu in anthropomorphic form as Krishna, the Divine hero of the
Mahābhārata) were represented on a stage; the action and dialogue
being naturally accompanied with song and dance, for Krishna is
fabled to have lived for a time as a neatherd on earth, where he
sported with the music-and-dance-loving maidens who also guarded
flocks near by. These idyls were exhibited as a religious perform-
From this union of dance, song, and religious mystery it hap-
pens that the Hindu drama is really melodramatic opera. The piece
must end well, and it is never without song and dance. There is no
real tragedy. Some scholars hold that Greek comedy has influenced
the Hindu stage, or even that the latter is a result of the conquest
of the “barbarians. ” Alexander is indeed said to have brought with
him all the paraphernalia of the drama; and this fact seems to be
reflected in the name of the stage curtain, the technical name of
which in Sanskrit is (Greek(Yavanikā, i. e. , Ionian). But the mys-
tery-plays seem to have had a popular origin, and dance plays and
actors are mentioned in the earliest Buddhist works; so that it seems
more likely that while the Greek invader perhaps taught the Hindu to
better his stage effects, the latter had already developed by hiinself
ance.
## p. 7929 (#121) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7929
the essentials of the drama. An analogy might be sought in the
development of the English drama, the direct course of which was rad-
ically altered and improved by the introduction of classical models
with the Revival of Learning. Possibly the jester, who plays quite
a rôle in the extant Hindu drama, may have been borrowed from the
Middle Comedy of the Greek. The various kinds of dramas are care-
fully distinguished by native rhetoricians; but among them all the
Nātaka' is the only real play in a modern sense. Others are elf and
genie fables, the scene of which is in the air or only half on earth,
etc. The Çakuntalā of Kālidāsa, the greatest Hindu dramatist, is an
instance of a Nātaka; but the same author has left another play the
scene of which (see below) is chiefly in the region of cloud nymphs,
and is quite removed from any appearance of reality. The Hindu
drama may have any number of acts, from one to ten; there is no
limit to the number of actors, and the unities of time and space are
freely violated. The language of the dramas is Sanskrit (which in
the earlier plays is comparatively simple in structure) and Prakrit
patois, which is reserved for woinen and men of low caste. In the
later drama the Sanskrit becomes very artificial, and the long com-
plicated sentences seem to be contrived with special reference to the
delight of sophisticated auditors in unraveling the meaning concealed
in the puzzle of words.
The most renowned of the early dramatists are Kālidāsa, men-
tioned above, Çūdraka (see below), and Bhavabhūti. The first of
these lived at the time when the great emperor Vikramāditya had
succeeded in routing the barbarian hosts that followed in the wake
of Alexander's conquest, and for centuries overwhelmed northern
India with rapine and ruin. It was the time also when Buddhism,
which had done much to retard the genius of Brahmanism, was
slowly fading out. Then, with the revival of Brahmanic faith and
literature, and above all under the patronage of the great emperor
who for the first time gave assured safety and peace to the dis-
tracted land, arose all at once a rejuvenated literature, Brahmanic
but not priestly, rather cosmopolitan, so to speak,-a veritable
Renaissance, as it has aptly been termed by Max Müller. Literature,
which at the hands of priests, its only remaining guardians, had
been content with adding moral and religious chapters to the Epic,
took a new departure. The old style was not imitated by the new
authors, who represent the sacerdotal caste no more. In a word, this
Renaissance betokens the new life which came from literature pass-
ing from priestly hands into the hands of cultivated laymen assured
of protection, patronage, and praise. Hence it happens that not
only drama and lyric, but also philosophy and science, all flourish at
this epoch, and the greatest poets and scientists adorn the court of
## p. 7930 (#122) ###########################################
7930
INDIAN LITERATURE
Vikramāditya, the Hindu Augustus, who in the first half of the sixth
century A. D. created an empire, and “bejeweled his throne ” (as the
Hindus say) with littérateurs. «Vikramāditya's gems” to this day
designates the little group of authors and scientists who lived at that
time, the best period of classical Sanskrit. Most famous among these
was the dramatic and lyric poet Kālidāsa; the astronomer Varāha-
mihira, whose Brihat-samhitā) is still a mine of curious facts and
contains all the astronomical science of the time; the redoubtable
Amarasinha, one of the greatest lexicographers of the world; the
learned Vararuci, the model grammarian; and many others whose
purely learned books must be excluded from best literature, but
whose works, in their variety and comprehensiveness, show how
wonderful a change had come over the literature.
To Kālidāsa three (extant) dramas are attributed; and since his
name stands at the head of this literature, it seems best to analyze
one or two of his plays as examples of Hindu dramatic art. It must
however be observed that Çūdraka, though admitted to be contem-
porary with Kālidāsa, is thought by some to be an older poet be-
cause of his style in the composition of the Mricchakatikā or (Toy
Cart' (literally (Clay Cart'), which seems to be one of the earliest
dramas. In distinction from the delicacy of Kālidāsa, Çūdraka is
especially famous for dramatic force and humor, so that he has
been called the most Shakesperean of Hindu dramatists. The author
is a king, unless, as some scholars opine, King Çūdraka covered
with his own name the authorship of a piece that was really writ-
ten by one of his subjects, — not an uncommon procedure in India.
The poet Dandin (see above) seems most likely to have been the
author of the Toy Cart,' as Çūdraka is otherwise a name unknown
in literature, and Dandin's style closely resembles that of the unknown
(Hindu Shakespeare. ' The chief persons of this play, which has ten
acts, are a poor merchant and a rich woman of the bayadère class;
there are a number of relations of the merchant, a jester, and a mass
of subsidiary characters. The plot is the love of the rich courtesan
for the poor merchant, whose noble character elevates her until she
attains her dearest wishes and is made his wife. The courtesan's
attempts to aid her destitute but worthy lover, her gradual growth
in appreciation of his character, her resolve to become morally
worthy of him, the tricks and misfortunes which thwart her, and
finally the means whereby the knot of difficulty is untied, are all
described with dramatic wit and power. The name of the drama is
taken from a slight incident in it. The merchant's little boy, weep-
ing because his toy cart, owing to his father's poverty, is made only
of clay, is overheard by the bayadère, who fills the cart with jewels
and bids him buy one of gold, like that of his rich neighbor's son.
## p. 7931 (#123) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7931
(
Kālidāsa has less drastic wit than the author of the “Toy Cart,'
but he is a finer poet. His three dramas, Çakuntalā,' Vikramor-
vaçi,' and Mālavikāgnimitra,' show throughout the same beauties
and the same defects: delicacy of imagination, great power of de-
scription, cleverness in character-study, and yet a certain lack of
strength, of the redundant force which with so sure a hand sweeps
the (Toy Cart' to its end through the maze of difficulties invented
to impede it, and at the same time overflows with apparently care-
less jest, with something of the rollicking fun that marks the genius
of Aristophanes.
Of Kālidāsa's three dramas, the first two repre-
sent the fable in dramatic form. Çakuntalā' is the best known in
Europe, as it is the most famous in India, and was fitly one of the
first works to be translated by early European scholars. Goethe has
praised it as the perfection of poetry; and it may be added that
Kālidāsa's genius is somewhat akin to Goethe's own, as has frequently
been observed by German scholars. Both the 'Çakuntalā) and the
Vikramorvaçi,' it is interesting to see, are dramatic developments of
old Vedic and Epic legends. The style, like the language, is simple;
the movement rapid; and the lyric songs, which are an important
factor in the drama, are composed with the sweetness' for which
the author is famous.
In the Cakuntalā' the plot is extremely simple. In the first act
the king secretly falls in love with Çakuntalā, the daughter of a
hermit, and she with him. This sentimental scene is followed by
one of burlesque humor, wherein the king's jester complains of the
passion for hunting which leads the king to frequent places where
there is nothing fit to eat. Çakuntalā's lovesick plaint, overheard by
the king, who thereupon declares himself and becomes her accepted
lover, forms the substance of the next act. The fourth tells that a
priest, whose dignity was offended by Çakuntalā's indifference to him,
curses her so that all lovers shall forget her; a curse subsequently
modified to mean that they shall forget her till they see a ring he
gives to her. The fifth act relates how Çakuntalā travels to court
and appears before the king, who cannot remember their intimate
relation, but is much moved by the sight of her. She seeks for the
ring, but it is lost! Pathos reigns in this scene. The sixth act again
introduces the antithetic element of burlesque to modify the senti-
mental effect produced in the last. Policemen hustle a fisherman
upon the stage, declaring that he has a ring of priceless value, which
he must have stolen. The seventh and eighth acts show how the
fisherman's ring (cut out of a fish which had swallowed it as Çakun-
talā dropped it in the water) gives the king recollection, and how he
finds Çakuntalā, who disappeared before the mystery of the ring was
cleared up and went grieving back to her father's hut. This whole
## p. 7932 (#124) ###########################################
7932
INDIAN LITERATURE
scene.
))
>
story is taken from the Mahābhārata,' embellished with dramatic
incidents.
The tale of the second drama goes even further back, and relates
the loves of Urvaçi and Purūravas, who (see above) are known as
lovers in the Rig Veda collection. Urvaçi is the Psyche and Purū-
ravas is the Eros of India. This drama has only five acts, or rather
scenes, and may be called in part an elf drama. Urvaçi is a cloud
nymph, and she disappears from heaven, having been captured by a
monster. The first scene shows her attendant nymphs bewailing her
loss, and relates how the earthly king Purūravas rescues her and
falls in love with her. The king's jealous queen makes the next
The third scene is very curious. Urvaçī, having been rescued,
and being the fairest of all nymphs, is chosen (in heaven) as the
proper person to represent a goddess in a mystery-play given to
entertain the gods. At a certain point in the play she should say
“I love Purushottama” (the god); but instead of this, owing to the
love which has grown up in her for Purūravas, she makes a mistake
and says “I love Purūravas. ” A Divine seer, who has coached her for
the part, is doubly furious, both because she has made such a mess
of her part, and that a nymph of heaven should love a mortal. He
curses her to lose her place in heaven. God Indra modifies the curse
to be this, – that she shall be with her lover on earth till he sees
her child, when she may (or must) return to heaven. The fourth
act is almost wholly lyric. Urvaçi is on earth with Purūravas, but
she steps into a holy grove into which no woman may enter, and
thereupon is changed into a vine. The king seeks her, asking in
lyric strain of bird, bee, and flower, whither his love is gone. She is
finally found by means of a wonder-stone which has power to unite
people. The fifth act gives a pretty psychological situation. Urvaci's
expected child has been born, but she has carefully concealed it
lest the fact that Purūravas sees it should banish her. He however
sees the boy by accident. Then comes the conflict of sentiment: the
joy of the father in the son, the grief of the husband in the loss of
his wife. But the Hindu drama must leave no sadness.
The gods
change the curse again. Urvaçi may remain on earth till her hus-
band's death.
The outline of these two plays gives a notion of the substance if
not the beauty of Hindu dramatic art. Kālidāsa's third drama is the
love story of Mālavikā and Agnimitra, and is more complex than
the other legendary dramas. The third great dramatist belongs to
the eighth century. This is the Southerner, Bhavabhūti, who excels
in the grandeur rather than in the delicacy of his descriptions. He
also has left three great dramas: Mālatīmādhava,' or the tale of (the
heroine) Mālati's and (the hero) Mādhava's love; Mahāvīracarita,'
## p. 7933 (#125) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7933
-
n
and Uttararāmacarita. ' The first is deservedly the most famous,
and has been called the 'Romeo and Juliet' of India. It is a lo
drama in ten acts. The two young people love each other, and their
parents have agreed on the match. But political influence makes
them change their intentions. The lovers are separated and are for-
mally promised to other suitors by their parents, who dare not dis-
obey the king's express wish in this regard. Then a savage priest
appears, who steals away Mālati and is about to sacrifice her on the
altar of the terrible goddess Durgā, Çiva's wife.
Mādhava saves her
and slays the priest. All is about to end happily when a comical
Shakespearean sub-motif is introduced. Mādhava's friends in sport
substitute at the wedding a young man dressed as a girl, for Mālati.
Mālati, stolen again, is however finally found, and the drama ends
well, as usual. Conspicuous is the agency of Buddhist nuns in help-
ing the young people, and equally conspicuous is the diabolical char-
acter of the Brahmanic priest.
Between Bhavabhūti and Kālidāsa comes the author of a little
drama called the Ratnāvali, ascribed to the King Çrīharsha, but
probably written by one of his subjects - either Bāna, author of the
Kādambari' (see above), or Dhāvaka. It was written in the seventh
century, as nearly as can be determined, and to its author are also
attributed the Nāgananda' and Priyadarçikā. ' But though these fill
satisfactorily the blank between the sixth and eighth centuries, the
product of this time is distinctly inferior to that which immediately
precedes and follows, and Bhavabhūti is the next literary follower of
his older rival. In the following centuries, drama succeeded drama
with greater rapidity, and a large number of late inferior dramatic
compositions are extant. Among these one of the best is Mudrārā-
kshasa) or King's Guardian of the Seal”; a play that reminds us of
(Richelieu,' and is notable as being wholly a political drama. It is
forcibly and dramatically written, and some of the scenes are of great
power and intense interest. It is doubtful when its author, Viçākha-
datta, lived in the eighth or in the eleventh century. An admirable
drama by Kshemiçvara (uncertain date), entitled Canda-Kauçika' or
the Wrath of Kauçika, should also be mentioned as well worthy of
study. Among lesser lights of later times the best known dramatists
are Bhatta, of the tenth century, whose play called “Venisanhāra' or
Binding of the Braid” is based on an Epic incident; and Rājace-
khara, of the ninth century, who has left four rather indifferent dramas.
Sanskrit Literature: (C) Lyric. It may be said that even in the
Rig Veda Collection there is a lyric strain, perceptible not only in the
praises of the gods but also in one or two of the triumphant battle
hymns. At a later period the language of religious ecstasy in the
Upanishads, though framed in the simple octosyllabic verse, also rises
>
## p. 7934 (#126) ###########################################
7934
INDIAN LITERATURE
>
not infrequently to lyric heights; and this is especially true of some
of the short religious effusions to be found in Buddhistic literature.
But formal lyric, with its varied metre, its wild and pathetic strains,
appears first at the period of the Renaissance (see above). Here
too Kālidāsa's name heads the list, not only in virtue of the lyric
parts of his dramas, but because of his lyric poetry per se. His two
lyric poems are models for after time. One of these describes in
order the seasons, and hence is called (Ritu-sanhāra' or Union of
Seasons. ) * In varied note the poet gives us pictures of each of the
seasons: the summer heat, the joyful rains, the fresh autumn, the win-
ter, the “cool” season, and last the spring. Each is delineated with
true touches, which show that nothing escapes the fine observation of
the great poet. The effect of each season upon the mood of man
and beast is beautifully described. No land ever offered more superb
contrasts to the artist; and each feature is represented not only with
accuracy, but with such facile ease in the varied metres employed,
that to translate without the rhythmic flow is to lose more here than
in the case of any foreign lyric, not excepting that of Pindar. All
lyric depends for its beauty largely upon the rhythm, but in the case
of Kālidāsa no English version can satisfy at all; for the complex
metre cannot be imitated, and even if it could, the dexterous fitting
of plant names to the metrical flow of words, which gives exquisite
effect in the original, would be completely lost. Kālidāsa's other
lyric, the Meghadūta' or Cloud Messenger,' is quite well known in
Europe through the medium of many English and German transla-
tions. This pictures a lover sending a message by a cloud to his
beloved. Pathos, longing, despair, hope, all the passions of the lover,
are here rendered into verse in metre which, like that of the Ritu-
sanhāra,' defies imitation. The poem is of course erotic, but it is
filled with passages illustrating the fineness and delicacy of the lyric
master. The later poets were apt to imitate and exceed the model
in the erotic features, while they were left far behind in point of
style and execution.
Only a few of these later bards deserve special attention. As
in the case of the drama, much was subsequently written but little
was written well. Of these inferior works, however, the twenty-two
strophes called “Ghatakarpana' deserve to be spoken of because the
author lived at so early a date, being probably almost a contemporary
of Kālidāsa himself; while the Pancāçikā' of the eleventh century
may be cited as an example of the later erotic poems. The author
of the latter, probably Bilhana, describes in passionate language the
* See the translation of Grishma) from this poem under Sir Edwin Arnold,
Vol. ii. of this work.
## p. 7935 (#127) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7935
delight of a fortunate lover in the embrace of his mistress. No
detail of love's enjoyment is omitted, and the fifty strophes are quite
untranslatable in their indecency.
But long lyric effusions do not show the peculiar genius of the
Hindu lyric in its later development. In artificial language, where
every syllable is pregnant with meaning, the Hindu delights in giving
a complete idyl in as few verses as possible. Thus we have an
enormous mass of little poems, each without introduction or end,
describing a situation. This is often a lover's complaint, but as often
it is a meditative expression of some moral or even physical truth.
In short, in this lyric, which closes the development of native liter-
ature, we have a reversion to the aphoristic sententious style which
marked the close of the Vedic period; only in the latter the didactic
matter was the one thing considered, while in the sentimental apho-
ristic lyric, style and language were even more considered than was
the truth or fancy to be expressed. Even in the Epic, some of the
aphoristic verses are almost lyrical in this sense; and in the fables,
there is much that aspires to beauty in expression as well as to truth
in what is said.
Chief master of this sort of lyric, so well beloved and so often
imitated by Heine, is Bhartrihari. He was philosopher and poet, and
lived in the seventh century. According to tradition he was a Bud-
dhist monk, who, as was permitted to the monks, joined the order
seven times and seven times left it, being influenced beyond his own
control by desire for religion and in turn by love of the world. It is
said that he was so well aware of his weakness that when he was
a monk he always kept a horse ready harnessed, in order that if he
should feel overpowered by sinful desires, he might have the means
to escape and gratify them without delay. He wrote three 'Çataka,'
literally Centuries, of little lyrics (the “Çringāraçataka'). They are
marked by esprit, humor, and delicate sentiment. Another such col-
lection, the 'Çringāratilaka, is ascribed to Kālidāsa, but the author-
ship is not beyond doubt. A Century' of lyrics was also composed
by Amaru (Amaruçataka'), who is regarded as the greatest master
in depicting love scenes and in understanding women. Love is here,
as it usually is in this literature, rather coarse passion like that of
Sappho; but we have no right to demand modern refinement from
the ancients, and we are only surprised to find it in Kālidāsa. Still
another book of Centuries is written in a Prakrit patois. It is that
of Hāla, called simply his Seven Centuries (Saptaçataka').
erotic nature of the poems interchanges with what, in view of the
patois, is called by German critics volkspoesie; but there is probably
as little of the real folk here as in Theocritus. There are however
in Hāla, descriptions of nature which show a fine touch. The erotic
## p. 7936 (#128) ###########################################
7936
INDIAN LITERATURE
lyric of India closes with a wonderful production of almost modern
times, the Gitagovinda' of Jayadeva, a Bengal poet of the twelfth
century. This is a lyric-dramatic effusion describing the love of the
god Krishna-l'ishnu for his mistress Rādhā. It is an ode, and was
intended to be sung to music. The name comes from gorinda (neat-
herd, i. e. , Krishna, see above) and gita, song. As a literary product
this work may be defined as a sort of mystery-play, in point of lan-
guage refined to excess, but in the unbridled excess of its description
quite equal to Bilhana's Pancāçikā (see above). The intent of the
poem withal is quite religious. It is the model of modern devotional-
erotic poetry, which, in its strange mixture of worship and obscenity,
reminds one of Dionysiac rites.
FOURTH PERIOD: Modern Sanskrit and Dialectic Literature. — For
fully a hundred years before and for five hundred years after the
Christian era, India was overrun by northern barbarians. For the
next five hundred years the land enjoyed comparative security from
the Mohammedans. The Muslim indeed invaded India as early as the
eighth century, but Hindu rule was not overthrown till the latter
half of the tenth century. The next five hundred years, from the
crowning of Mahmud the devastator of India in 997, to the middle
of the sixteenth century, was a period of rapine and ruin. Under
Akbar, the Great Mogul, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, the land had
peace; but literary originality was totally destroyed by this very
security of the time. Persian, Christian, Jew, and Mohammedan lived
amicably together, discussing religion, philosophy, and literature at
Akbar's court. Moreover, the Portuguese landed in India in the fif-
teenth century and the English in 1600. From this time on, therefore,
Indian literature loses its old character. The first extant works of
this period, chiefly religious, are a reflex of the confluence of Hindu
and Mohammedan thought. Nor are they untouched by Christian
doctrine. As early as the seventh century Christians were welcomed
by a northern king, and the late Purānas have many traits taken
directly from the New Testament. But the terrible oppression of
the Mohammedan from about the years 1000 to 1500 leaves even the
centuries preceding Akbar's reign almost bare of original productions.
To the eleventh and twelfth centuries belong fable, drama, and lyric,
in steadily decreasing amount and value (see above); but the crushed
genius of the Hindus after this seems to be content with the manu-
facture of commentaries and of religious works (the animus of the
latter being a fierce sectarianism), till the catholicity of Akbar's reign
produces the refined and philosophic religious works of modern times.
The narrow and devoutly furious sectarian tracts are known as Tan-
tras (i. e. , books or Bibles). They describe minutely the obscure rites
of the lower religious orders. Other works of this class are called
## p. 7937 (#129) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7937
Āgamas, or « Traditional works,” which scarcely differ from the late
sectarian Purānas. Most of these late Purānas claim for themselves a
great antiquity; but none is probably older than the ninth century,
and many of them are as late as the fifteenth or sixteenth centu-
ries. Beside these devotional works stands a mass of late Smriti or
« Tradition”; generally in the form of a miscellaneous assortment
of rules, called a law-book, but partaking largely of the character of
a Purāna. The formal History of Sects) forms one of the liter-
ary features of this time. In the ninth century appears the first of
these, by Ananda Giri, a pupil of Çankara. In the fourteenth century
another was composed by Madhava Acārya. This may be designated
also as the greatest period of commentators. In the seventh century,
during the period following on the Renaissance (see above), the ancient
Brahmanism was re-established ritually by Kumārila. Later scholars
contented themselves with writing commentaries on the Vedic texts.
Best known of these is Sāyana, who in the fourteenth century re-
edited with his exhaustive commentary the Rig Veda Collection and
other early texts.
The sectaries did, however, produce some original matter. Nota-
bly is this the case with the Rāma-Vishnu sects; that is, the sects
that believe in Rāma (rather than in Krishna) as an incarnation of
Vishnu. These sects, or at least their leaders, are in general more
philosophical than are the Krishna sects. Thus in the twelfth cen-
tury Rāmānuja, the next able philosopher after Çankara (above),
founded a new sect; and this sect possesses the most important San-
skrit poem of modern times, the Ramcaritmanas) of Tulasidāsa, who
is generally acknowledged to be the strongest modern Hindu poet.
He lived in the sixteenth century, and his Ramcaritmanas) a sort
of modern (Rāmāyana,' a New Testament to that older Bible of the
Rāma sect. The Krishna sect has on the other hand, as its older
Bible, a religious chapter of the Mahābhārata' (called the Bhagavat
Gita' or Divine Song); but for a New Testament it has only the
trashy Bhāgavata Purāna. '
Commentaries not only on Vedic texts but on modern sects also
characterize this period. Thus in the sixteenth century a Life of
Krishna,' virtually a commentary on the doctrines of his sect, was
written by Vallabha, one of the few Krishnaite scholars. But mod-
ern religious literature is usually a plain combination of Mohamine-
danism, Hinduism, and Christianity; notably so in the compositions
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but not less surely so
in every work since the sixteenth. Thus the famous "Ādi-granth' or
Original Bible) of the Sikhs is a sixteenth-century composite of
Mohammedan and Hindu thought; although Kabir and Nānak, the
first leaders of this sect, who lived in the fifteenth century, actually
XIV-497
## p. 7938 (#130) ###########################################
7938
INDIAN LITERATURE
))
broke with both these State religions, and formed what they claimed
was a “new” faith. The same again is true in regard to the Bible of
the Dādū Pānthis of the seventeenth century: while Rāmmohun Roy
(born in 1772) and the numerous leaders of Samājas Congregations,
who followed him, have done nothing more than make latter-day
Upanishads based on eclectic Christian doctrine superadded to more
native teaching - a curious amalgam, which represents very well the
parasitic character of modern religious literature in India. Some of
this is in Sanskrit, some in Tamil (the language of the Southern
Dravidians), and some in local Hindu patois. Of these, the sacred
Kural of Tiruvalluvar, and the Prem Sāgar or Ocean of Love, are
typical examples. In general, besides such religious works, Tamil
literature is composed either of reproduced Sanskrit works or of
folk tales, and may therefore be omitted from the best literature”
of India, inasmuch as it lacks either originality or the qualities that
constitute the right to be called fine literature. A good deal of folk
poetry and folk stories, both in Tamil and in Hindu patois, has been
published, but the value of this literature is not great. Even bucolic
“Epics” have been discovered, and one missionary has actually found
an Epic among the wild tribes! But the ballads are too rude and
the stories are too stupid to be classed as literature. They are the
oral, long-winded, tiresome productions common to all peasants from
Greenland to India, interesting only to the student of folk-lore, and
valuable merely as showing how small is the literary merit that lies
in the unaided (more particularly in the not touched up) genius of
the common people.
In the domain of the late literature which is impregnated with
foreign ideas, one passes beyond the true province of Indian liter-
ature. No less does one exceed the limit of Sanskrit literature in
speaking of modern works written in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is still writ-
ten and spoken, but so is Latin; and Sanskrit literature stops with
the aftergrowth of the Renaissance just as truly as Latin literature
ceases with the silver age. The Sanskrit writings of the last few
centuries are to Sanskrit literature what the Latin of the Middle Ages
is to Latin literature. The age when Sanskrit was a people's lan-
guage is long since past; and even in the later drama it is probable
that the artificial Sanskrit employed is a true index of its decline as
a spoken tongue, and that in ordinary conversation even the Brah-
mans used the colloquial patois of their respective homes. In one of
these dramas it is said that there is nothing more ridiculous than a
man singing pianissimo and a woman speaking Sanskrit; while, as
we have seen, even the early drama made all low-caste men and
women converse in patois. In the Epic there is no indication that
the characters used any other language than Sanskrit. It is there
## p. 7939 (#131) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7939
((
>
considered a mark of cultivation to be able to “speak in patois," as
if this were an accomplishment. Pānini's explicit rules for “dialects,"
and the fact that the earlier Buddhistic works are preserved not in
Sanskrit but in Pāli, show that Sanskrit was a local language to a
great extent, and that, as the exponent of the Brahmanic faith, it was
probabiy more or less a revived language even at the period of the
Renaissance. In the northwest, Sanskrit was probably spoken at the
same time that it was unused in other districts; and as the various
patois gradually encroached upon it, it became, as its name denotes,
the “cultivated” or «refined" language, in contradistinction to Pra-
krit, the natural language or local patois.
In closing this outline of Indian literature, it will not be amiss to
point out, if only for convenience in remembering its long course of
three thousand years, the semi-millennium groups into which it nat-
urally falls in respect of time. In the sense of original Hindu compo-
sitions, Indian literature extends from about 1500 B. C. to 1500 A. D.
The first five hundred years go to the completion of the Rig-Veda
Collection. Then follow about five hundred years of Vedic decline,
additions, elucidations, the Ritual period. A religious and sectarian
literary awakening succeeds this epoch. It is typified by the first
Upanishads and by the growth of Buddhism; while Vedic literature
expires in Sūtras, a period of five hundred years, from about B. C.
500 to our era. Another era of five hundred years covers a time of
political ruin at the hands of barbarians and decadent Buddhism,
from our era to 500 A. D. Then in the sixth century comes the liter-
ary awakening, the Renaissance, the effect of which in the growth of
art endures till, about 1000 A. D. , the Mohammedan again brings ruin
to India, The decline of this art follows during five hundred years
more in the works of inferior poets and the rise of commentators.
After 1500 A. D. the literature is no longer Indian. ”
{. w. Hopkins.
HYMNS OF THE RIG-VEDA
FIRST HYMN ADDRESSED TO AGNI, THE SACRIFICIAL FIRE
1
WORSHIP Agni, who is the priest of the house, the divine priest
of the sacrifice, and the priest of oblations. He gives wealth.
He is the god Agni, who was adored by the ancient Seers,
and he is fit to be worshiped by those [that live] to-day. May
he conduct the gods to us. By means of Agni one can acquire
## p. 7940 (#132) ###########################################
7940
INDIAN LITERATURE
wealth, prosperity from day to day, and the glory of excellent
heroes. O Agni, whatever be the rite that thou surroundest on
every side, that sacrifice reaches the gods. . May the Agni who
gives oblations, who is the wisest priest, the true one, the most
famous, may this god in company with all the other gods ap-
proach to us. Thou doest good to every one that worships thee,
O Agni, and this is thy real virtue. Unto thee, O Agni, day by
day, at evening and at morning, we come with prayer bringing
obeisance to thee to thee, who art the lord of sacrifice and the
brilliant protector of the rite, who art magnified in thine own
dwelling. Be thou easy of access to us and lead us on to happi-
ness, as if thou wert father and we thy sons.
HYMN TO THE DEIFIED MOON-PLANT SOMA
Thou
HOU, O Soma, art the wisest in understanding; thou guidest
us by the straightest pathway; and it is through thy direc-
tion that our wise fathers got happiness among the gods.
Thou didst become wisest in wisdom, 0 Soma; most skillful
in skill. Thou obtainest all things; thou art a bull in strength
and in greatness; thou art splendid in thy splendor, O thou that
seest man. The laws of the god of heaven are thine; high and
deep are thy places, O Soma, thou art bright as the sun; thou
deservest our worship. Whatever places thou hast, whether in
earth or in heaven, whether in the mountains, the plants, or the
waters, do thou in all of these meet our oblations, and accept
them, King Soma, being kindly disposed and not hurtful to us.
Thou, O Soma, art the true lord, thou art the king, thou art the
slayer of the demon who withholds the rain; thou art the strength
that gives success.
Thou bestowest bliss upon old and
young; and to the pious thou givest power to live.
then, O Soma, upon all sides, guard us from him that sins; may
no harm touch the one who is thy friend. Be our benefactor,
and help us to all the enjoyments wherever thou canst aid thy
worshiper. Accept this our sacrifice, and this our song; be well
pleased with us, and come to us; do us good, O Soma.
nify thee in song, we who are clever in words. Be merciful and
come to us.
Guard us,
We mag-
## p. 7941 (#133) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7941
VEDIC HYMN TO INDRA, THE STORM GOD
I
NDRA hath grown great, he hath grown great for heroic deeds.
He alone is without age, he alone hath riches to give. Indra
hath extended himself beyond earth and heaven; the half of
him is equal to both the worlds. So great is he, so high is his
godly nature. There is none that can impair what he hath estab-
lished. He is a Sun, conspicuous day by day, and being wisely
strong he divides his wide dominions. To-day, even now, thou
hewest a pathway for the rivers. The hills bow down [before
thee] as were they friends; the wide spaces of the universe are
knit together by thee. 'Tis true that no other is like unto Indra;
nor is any god or mortal more venerable. Thou didst slay the
great snake that hemmed in the rain; thou didst let out the
waters to the ocean. Thou didst free the waters, opening wide
the doors; thou didst break the stronghold of the mountains.
Thou hast become the king of all that moves, bringing to light
the sun, the dawn, and heaven.
VEDIC HYMN TO DAWN
Asplendid "as waves of water
.
LOFT the lights of Dawn, gleaming for beauty, have risen
Ushas [Aurora) makes fair
the paths, she makes all things accessible. She is good,
munificent, and kindly disposed. Thou art lovely in appearance;
thou shinest through the wide spaces; up to heaven fly thy fiery
glowing beams. Thou revealest thy bosom, adorning thyself, O
Dawn, and gleamest bright in thy greatness. The red clouds
bear her along, her the blessed one, who extendeth far and wide.
She compels the darkness as a hero armed with arrows routs his
foes. Thy ways are fair, thy paths upon the mountains. Thou
goest in calm across the waters, self-shining one. O thou, whose
paths are wide, thou lofty daughter of the sky, bring to us wealth
and nourishment. Bring sustenance, O Dawn, who dost bring us
good as thou willst. Though thou art indeed the daughter of the
sky, yet dost thou come to us bright and early every morning,
when we pray to thee [to come). At thy clear dawning the birds
fly from their nests; and [from their homes come] men who
seek for food.
it now lies before us, includes whole books of philosophical, moral,
ethical, and didactic discourses, put into the mouths of the sages
who appear in the course of the tale.
A curious theory, founded on this fact, has lately been put forth
to the effect that the Mahābhārata' story is not its own excuse for
being, and that the moral and legal maxims are hung upon the
characters as upon lay figures, merely to make them attractive to
the common people. This theory has for support the important fact
that at the close of the Vedic period the old Vedic language was
become well-nigh unintelligible even to the priests, and that to incul-
cate moral saws it was necessary to speak in a tongue understanded
of the people. And this is true of the Epic. It is written in the
Sanskrit of the time, not in antiquated Vedic; and it is expressly
meant to be repeated at great festivals when the common people
and women » (who were rigorously excluded from hearing even the
unintelligible words of the holy Vedic texts) could hear and were
commanded to hear the recital. At the same time, this theory is
far too one-sided, and takes no account of the Epic character of the
poem in its older portions, or of the patent improbability of the gen-
esis thus imagined in the case of a poem so dramatic in its action.
Still less does this theory agree with historical facts; for we know
that the early Greek adventurers who followed Alexander distinctly
state that the Hindus had poems like Homer's, narrating the great
actions of their national heroes. Had these poems been chiefly moral
discourses, as with regard to its bulk the Bhārata' is to-day, the
observant Greeks would not have failed to notice the fact. On the
contrary, the most probable theory in regard to the origin of the Epic
is that certain national lays and tales of old, gradually collected,
## p. 7924 (#116) ###########################################
7924
INDIAN LITERATURE
formed the basis of the story; and that it was eventually enlarged
and systematized by the priests in the interest of their various sects
and of general morality, until it became what it is to-day, “the fifth
Veda” in importance, a huge storehouse of legend and didactic com-
position, through which, like a scarlet thread, runs the bloody story
of the Conflict between the Clans of Kurus and Pandus, which formed
the original Epic story.
In its present shape the Mahābhārata' is about seven times as
long as the Iliad and Odyssey put together, and contains some two
hundred thousand verses. Apart from what we may safely regard
as late didactic material, the character of this earlier Epic is heroic
in distinction from the Epic next to be considered. The style is
forcible, often terse and nervous, the action is well sustained, and
the whole effect produced is that of a poem written to commemo-
rate an actual conflict between members of rival clans, who lived
somewhat southeast of the Punjâb, but still near the old “Brahman-
land”; for the geographical central point of the events, the Troy
of this Iliad, is the town on the site of which is built the modern
Delhi. In the portrayal of character the Hindu poem has in fact
many analogies with its Grecian
counterpart. The noble devo-
tion and chivalric character of Arjuna, the chief hero, reminds us of
Hector; the wily and sinful Duryodhana is a second Ulysses; the
leader of one of the great hosts marshaled for the eighteen days'
war, Yudhi-sthira (literally “steady in battle”), reminds us again, not
only in name but in moral weakness and in heroic bravery, of the
Withstander, Agamemnon; and Krishnā, the devoted wife of Arjuna,
may be compared with Andromache. But these two Epics in their
events and actions have nothing more in common than all tales of
war; and the old theory that because of the resemblance in charac-
ter, the Hindu Epic may have been borrowed from the Greek, is now
quite given up.
The Bhārata' war is a war between rival cousins, of the house
of Bhārata, a race of heroes mentioned even in the Rig-Veda Collec-
tion. Duryodhana deprives his cousin Yudhisthira of his throne by
inducing him to gamble away his fortune, kingdom, family, and self;
and then banishes Yudhisthira and the latter's four brothers for
twelve years, not daring to kill them because they were “beloved
by the folk. ” The gambling was conducted in an unfair manner, and
the cousins feel that their banishment was really only the result of
unchivalric treachery, although pretended to be mercy in lieu of
death. When the twelve years are over, they collect armies of sym-
pathizers; and on the “Sacred Plain of the Kurus ” (Kurukshetra,
near Delhi, still the Holy Land of India) the great war is fought
out. The good prevails, Duryodhana is slain, Yudhisthira recovers
## p. 7925 (#117) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7925
his kingdom. All this is told so graphically and forcibly that,
although incumbered as it now is with extraneous matter, the Ma-
hābhārata' still has power to charm and enthrall. This Epic was
probably begun in the third or fourth century B. C. , and was com-
pleted with all extraneous additions soon after the Christian era.
The second great Epic of India arose not in the west like the
Mahābhārata,' but in the east, in the neighborhood of the seat of
Buddhism. It describes the Wandering of Rāma, the national hero
of the East, who is ostensibly in the tale the heir-apparent of Oude;
and from Rāma's wanderings (ayana) the poem is called the "Rāmā-
yana. ' In contrast with the heroic character of the Bhārata' tale,
the Rāmāyana' is distinctly romantic in style, and may be compared
with the Odyssey. In this much shorter story Rāma's conflict with
the southern barbarians is depicted; and the chief motif is the recap-
ture of Sītā, Rāma's wife, who during Rāma's unjust banishment by
his father was carried off by the king of the southern demons, and
kept in the latter's castle in Ceylon. Rāma's victorious conflict, and
the bridge which his monkey battalions built for him from the main-
land to the island, are still preserved in local name and legends in
southern India. As the geography of this tale shows, the date to
which it must be referred is much later than that of the Bhārata. '
There are, moreover, two main points of difference between the two
poems: first that of character and style already referred to; and sec-
ond the fact that the “Rāmāyana,' while undoubtedly built around
old legends, is still in its complete form the work of one single man,
the famous poet Vālmīki, who writes what the Hindus themselves
term an “Art-poem,” as distinguished from a Legend-poem, or Epic.
The Mahābhārata,' indeed, like most Hindu works, is also referred
to a sage, who in this instance bears the suspicious name of Vyāsa,
“the narrator”; but the poem itself is its own evidence of the fact
that no one author ever composed it in its entirety. On the other
hand, Vālmīki unquestionably wrote the whole of the Rāmāyana'
himself, and probably wrote it as an allegory; for Sītā, the heroine,
means “furrow,” and Rāma, the hero, stands for “plow. ” The poem
thus depicts the advance of Aryan civilization into the wild regions
of the south. Further, the style, metre, and language are both far
less simple than in the case of the Mahābhārata. ' The poem in its
present shape is probably a few centuries later than the Mahābhā-
rata, but the date cannot be determined with any exactness.
Of theories in regard to the Rāmāyana,' only two of the many
which are current demand attention. Some scholars hold that the
conflict allegorically depicted is one between Buddhists and Brah-
mans, and that the Odyssey is the model of the (late) Rāmāyana. '
Neither of these theories will stand criticism. There are no striking
»
(
## p. 7926 (#118) ###########################################
7926
INDIAN LITERATURE
(
indications of a religious allegory, nor are there any very remarkable
points of similarity between the recovery of Helen and that of Sītā.
On account of its sentimental style, the “Rāmāyana' has always been
a great favorite with the Hindus, especially with those disciples of
Vishnu who believe that Rāma was a human incarnation of their god.
To such believers the Wandering of Rāma) is a veritable Bible.
The Rāmāyana' has been imitated, abridged, copied, and altered, by
other sects as well. To a certain extent this is true also of the
Bhārata' poem, one of the characters here representing in popular
belief Krishna, another incarnation of Vishnu. But the Rāmāyana'
lends itself more easily to religious imitation, especially on the
religious-erotic side, which in India constitutes a large part of mod-
crn religious literature; and for this reason, in its rôle of a biblical as
well as a literary product, it has become even more popular than the
Mahābhārata. ' Its date is quite uncertain, but it may be referred
perhaps to the first century B. C.
The (Purānas': There are eighteen of these works, all ostensibly
religious literature, written in the usual Epic verse (of two octosyl-
labic hemistichs), and modeled on the religious portion of the Mahā-
bhārata. ' The name Purāna means “old” (tales), and the works
handed down under that name recount the deeds of deified heroes,
explain religious and moral doctrine, give an account of the glories
of past cycles and of what will happen in time to come; and besides
narration and speculation, they incidentally inculcate moral and reli-
gious truths. Not a small portion of the “Purānas’ is dedicated, how-
ever, to purely sectarian (half orthodox) teaching; and in the case of
later works of this sort it is evident that they were composed chiefly
as sectarian tracts. The style is loose and rambling, the language of
most of them is a slovenly Sanskrit, and the date of all of them
is doubtful. They probably began in the period of the beginning of
modern sectarian Brahmanism, in the first centuries after our era,
about the time that the last (religious) additions to the Mahābhārata'
were making; but the period of their composition extends up to quite
modern times. The Agni,' Mārkandeya,' and `Vishnu' Purānas seem
to be the oldest works of this class, and are the most important.
Others, like the Linga Purāna,' extol this Çivaite phallic worship:
and many of them are scarcely superior to the so-called Tantras,
tracts on obscure religious rites, which hardly deserve to be classed
as literature. In the oldest use of the word, Purāna connoted cosmo-
gonic speculation rather than tales; but this meaning applies to only
a small part of the modern Purāna.
As the Purāna' may be regarded as a continuation of the religious
side of the Mahābhārata,' so the Rāmāyana' is the model of a num-
ber of later kāvya, -i. e. , "art-poems of religious-erotic character.
## p. 7927 (#119) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7927
The best known and most important of these are attributed to Kāli-
dāsa, India's greatest dramatic author, who probably lived about 600
A. D. These are the “Setubandha,' the 'Raghuvança,' and the Kumā-
rasambhava. ' The first is in patois, and gives the history of Rāma.
The last two are in artificial Sanskrit, the second giving the gene-
alogy of Raghu and the third describing the birth of the love-god.
Besides these must be mentioned four more late “art-poems”: the
Bhatti-kāvya' (describing the race of Rāma), ascribed to the lyric
poet Bhartri-hari, who lived in the seventh century A. D. ; the Kirā-
tārjunīya' of Bhāravi, possibly of the sixth century; Māgha's poem
on Çiçupāla's death (date unknown); and the Naishadhiya,' of the
twelfth century. All of these are bombastic in style and too studied
in language. From the latest period comes further the "Nalodaya. '
The episode of Nala and Damayanti is one of the artless episodes of
the Mahābhārata'; and nothing shows more plainly the later deteri-
oration of taste than this Nalodaya,' the same story told in erotic
style and in language intensely artificial. The titles of these works
do not always reveal their character; for instance, the Bhatti-kāvya'
(above) is really intended to show the grammatical irregular forms
in the form of a poem.
Sanskrit Literature: (6) Fables and Drama. Between Epic and
Drama lies the class of writings represented in Europe by the works
of Æsop and Babrius. In India these Beast-Fables appear very
early in the Buddhist Jātakas (above). They have for us a peculiar
interest, in that many scholars hold these Indian fables to be the
model of the fables of Æsop, while others hold that the Hindu is the
copyist. In India, the fable, though not as an independent literary
product, may be traced back to the oldest Upanishads. The doctrine
of reincarnation (as shown in the Jātakas) lent itself admirably to the
growth of such compositions. But it is not necessary to suppose that
a phenomenon so native to peasant talent should be borrowed from
the Greek, or that the Greek should have borrowed the idea from
the Hindu. Greek fable is at least as old as Archilochus, and Hindu
fable can claim no older date. All that can be said with certainty
is that the great collection of Indian fables in Five Books (whence
the name, Panca-tantra) is one that has been widely read and trans-
lated in the Occident. This collection was made in the first centu-
ries of our era. In the fifth century it was translated into Persian
(Pahlavi), thence into Arabic, and in the eleventh century from Ara-
bic into Greek. From Greek it was translated into Hebrew in the
thirteenth century, thence into Latin, and finally into German in the
fifteenth century, being one of the first works to be printed in Europe.
The Hitopadeça,' or 'Friendly Instruction,' is another such collec-
tion; but it is based for the most part on the Pancatantra. As the
## p. 7928 (#120) ###########################################
7928
INDIAN LITERATURE
names.
name of the later work implies, the sententious side is here more
important: the moral' is put foremost, and a tale is told to illus-
trate it. Verse and prose alternate, as they do in our fairy stories.
Another famous collection is the Vetāla-pancavinçati, or Twenty-
five Tales of a Ghost. Still another quite modern one is called the
"Çuka-saptati, or (Seventy Tales of a Parrot. ' These are rather
inane in content; and tale is often wrapped within tale, like a puz-
zle, the moral being sententiously or aphoristically appended. The
longest collection of this sort is the Kathāsaritsāgara,' or (Ocean of
Tales, composed by Somadeva, a native of Kashmir, in the eleventh
century. The erotic character of many of these fables leads at a
comparatively early date to the development of genuine romances,
three of which, from the sixth and seventh centuries, are still extant:
the (Daçakumāracarita' of Dandin, the “Vāsavadattāl of Subhandhu,
and the Kādambari) of Bāna. The titles merely give the characters'
These romances are rather simple love stories, not too refined
in language. They may be compared with the products of late Greek
literature, which in this regard also anticipates the modern novel.
The romantic development of the fable, which is often in the
form of a love story, leads directly to the na, The extant drama
is no older than the extant lyric, but its origin can be traced fur-
ther back. It appears to have come from a curious mixture of fable
and religious rite. In the second and third centuries before Christ
the common people were entertained with Yātras,-i. e. , a kind of
mystery-play, in which the love affairs of Krishna-Vishnu (the god
Vishnu in anthropomorphic form as Krishna, the Divine hero of the
Mahābhārata) were represented on a stage; the action and dialogue
being naturally accompanied with song and dance, for Krishna is
fabled to have lived for a time as a neatherd on earth, where he
sported with the music-and-dance-loving maidens who also guarded
flocks near by. These idyls were exhibited as a religious perform-
From this union of dance, song, and religious mystery it hap-
pens that the Hindu drama is really melodramatic opera. The piece
must end well, and it is never without song and dance. There is no
real tragedy. Some scholars hold that Greek comedy has influenced
the Hindu stage, or even that the latter is a result of the conquest
of the “barbarians. ” Alexander is indeed said to have brought with
him all the paraphernalia of the drama; and this fact seems to be
reflected in the name of the stage curtain, the technical name of
which in Sanskrit is (Greek(Yavanikā, i. e. , Ionian). But the mys-
tery-plays seem to have had a popular origin, and dance plays and
actors are mentioned in the earliest Buddhist works; so that it seems
more likely that while the Greek invader perhaps taught the Hindu to
better his stage effects, the latter had already developed by hiinself
ance.
## p. 7929 (#121) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7929
the essentials of the drama. An analogy might be sought in the
development of the English drama, the direct course of which was rad-
ically altered and improved by the introduction of classical models
with the Revival of Learning. Possibly the jester, who plays quite
a rôle in the extant Hindu drama, may have been borrowed from the
Middle Comedy of the Greek. The various kinds of dramas are care-
fully distinguished by native rhetoricians; but among them all the
Nātaka' is the only real play in a modern sense. Others are elf and
genie fables, the scene of which is in the air or only half on earth,
etc. The Çakuntalā of Kālidāsa, the greatest Hindu dramatist, is an
instance of a Nātaka; but the same author has left another play the
scene of which (see below) is chiefly in the region of cloud nymphs,
and is quite removed from any appearance of reality. The Hindu
drama may have any number of acts, from one to ten; there is no
limit to the number of actors, and the unities of time and space are
freely violated. The language of the dramas is Sanskrit (which in
the earlier plays is comparatively simple in structure) and Prakrit
patois, which is reserved for woinen and men of low caste. In the
later drama the Sanskrit becomes very artificial, and the long com-
plicated sentences seem to be contrived with special reference to the
delight of sophisticated auditors in unraveling the meaning concealed
in the puzzle of words.
The most renowned of the early dramatists are Kālidāsa, men-
tioned above, Çūdraka (see below), and Bhavabhūti. The first of
these lived at the time when the great emperor Vikramāditya had
succeeded in routing the barbarian hosts that followed in the wake
of Alexander's conquest, and for centuries overwhelmed northern
India with rapine and ruin. It was the time also when Buddhism,
which had done much to retard the genius of Brahmanism, was
slowly fading out. Then, with the revival of Brahmanic faith and
literature, and above all under the patronage of the great emperor
who for the first time gave assured safety and peace to the dis-
tracted land, arose all at once a rejuvenated literature, Brahmanic
but not priestly, rather cosmopolitan, so to speak,-a veritable
Renaissance, as it has aptly been termed by Max Müller. Literature,
which at the hands of priests, its only remaining guardians, had
been content with adding moral and religious chapters to the Epic,
took a new departure. The old style was not imitated by the new
authors, who represent the sacerdotal caste no more. In a word, this
Renaissance betokens the new life which came from literature pass-
ing from priestly hands into the hands of cultivated laymen assured
of protection, patronage, and praise. Hence it happens that not
only drama and lyric, but also philosophy and science, all flourish at
this epoch, and the greatest poets and scientists adorn the court of
## p. 7930 (#122) ###########################################
7930
INDIAN LITERATURE
Vikramāditya, the Hindu Augustus, who in the first half of the sixth
century A. D. created an empire, and “bejeweled his throne ” (as the
Hindus say) with littérateurs. «Vikramāditya's gems” to this day
designates the little group of authors and scientists who lived at that
time, the best period of classical Sanskrit. Most famous among these
was the dramatic and lyric poet Kālidāsa; the astronomer Varāha-
mihira, whose Brihat-samhitā) is still a mine of curious facts and
contains all the astronomical science of the time; the redoubtable
Amarasinha, one of the greatest lexicographers of the world; the
learned Vararuci, the model grammarian; and many others whose
purely learned books must be excluded from best literature, but
whose works, in their variety and comprehensiveness, show how
wonderful a change had come over the literature.
To Kālidāsa three (extant) dramas are attributed; and since his
name stands at the head of this literature, it seems best to analyze
one or two of his plays as examples of Hindu dramatic art. It must
however be observed that Çūdraka, though admitted to be contem-
porary with Kālidāsa, is thought by some to be an older poet be-
cause of his style in the composition of the Mricchakatikā or (Toy
Cart' (literally (Clay Cart'), which seems to be one of the earliest
dramas. In distinction from the delicacy of Kālidāsa, Çūdraka is
especially famous for dramatic force and humor, so that he has
been called the most Shakesperean of Hindu dramatists. The author
is a king, unless, as some scholars opine, King Çūdraka covered
with his own name the authorship of a piece that was really writ-
ten by one of his subjects, — not an uncommon procedure in India.
The poet Dandin (see above) seems most likely to have been the
author of the Toy Cart,' as Çūdraka is otherwise a name unknown
in literature, and Dandin's style closely resembles that of the unknown
(Hindu Shakespeare. ' The chief persons of this play, which has ten
acts, are a poor merchant and a rich woman of the bayadère class;
there are a number of relations of the merchant, a jester, and a mass
of subsidiary characters. The plot is the love of the rich courtesan
for the poor merchant, whose noble character elevates her until she
attains her dearest wishes and is made his wife. The courtesan's
attempts to aid her destitute but worthy lover, her gradual growth
in appreciation of his character, her resolve to become morally
worthy of him, the tricks and misfortunes which thwart her, and
finally the means whereby the knot of difficulty is untied, are all
described with dramatic wit and power. The name of the drama is
taken from a slight incident in it. The merchant's little boy, weep-
ing because his toy cart, owing to his father's poverty, is made only
of clay, is overheard by the bayadère, who fills the cart with jewels
and bids him buy one of gold, like that of his rich neighbor's son.
## p. 7931 (#123) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7931
(
Kālidāsa has less drastic wit than the author of the “Toy Cart,'
but he is a finer poet. His three dramas, Çakuntalā,' Vikramor-
vaçi,' and Mālavikāgnimitra,' show throughout the same beauties
and the same defects: delicacy of imagination, great power of de-
scription, cleverness in character-study, and yet a certain lack of
strength, of the redundant force which with so sure a hand sweeps
the (Toy Cart' to its end through the maze of difficulties invented
to impede it, and at the same time overflows with apparently care-
less jest, with something of the rollicking fun that marks the genius
of Aristophanes.
Of Kālidāsa's three dramas, the first two repre-
sent the fable in dramatic form. Çakuntalā' is the best known in
Europe, as it is the most famous in India, and was fitly one of the
first works to be translated by early European scholars. Goethe has
praised it as the perfection of poetry; and it may be added that
Kālidāsa's genius is somewhat akin to Goethe's own, as has frequently
been observed by German scholars. Both the 'Çakuntalā) and the
Vikramorvaçi,' it is interesting to see, are dramatic developments of
old Vedic and Epic legends. The style, like the language, is simple;
the movement rapid; and the lyric songs, which are an important
factor in the drama, are composed with the sweetness' for which
the author is famous.
In the Cakuntalā' the plot is extremely simple. In the first act
the king secretly falls in love with Çakuntalā, the daughter of a
hermit, and she with him. This sentimental scene is followed by
one of burlesque humor, wherein the king's jester complains of the
passion for hunting which leads the king to frequent places where
there is nothing fit to eat. Çakuntalā's lovesick plaint, overheard by
the king, who thereupon declares himself and becomes her accepted
lover, forms the substance of the next act. The fourth tells that a
priest, whose dignity was offended by Çakuntalā's indifference to him,
curses her so that all lovers shall forget her; a curse subsequently
modified to mean that they shall forget her till they see a ring he
gives to her. The fifth act relates how Çakuntalā travels to court
and appears before the king, who cannot remember their intimate
relation, but is much moved by the sight of her. She seeks for the
ring, but it is lost! Pathos reigns in this scene. The sixth act again
introduces the antithetic element of burlesque to modify the senti-
mental effect produced in the last. Policemen hustle a fisherman
upon the stage, declaring that he has a ring of priceless value, which
he must have stolen. The seventh and eighth acts show how the
fisherman's ring (cut out of a fish which had swallowed it as Çakun-
talā dropped it in the water) gives the king recollection, and how he
finds Çakuntalā, who disappeared before the mystery of the ring was
cleared up and went grieving back to her father's hut. This whole
## p. 7932 (#124) ###########################################
7932
INDIAN LITERATURE
scene.
))
>
story is taken from the Mahābhārata,' embellished with dramatic
incidents.
The tale of the second drama goes even further back, and relates
the loves of Urvaçi and Purūravas, who (see above) are known as
lovers in the Rig Veda collection. Urvaçi is the Psyche and Purū-
ravas is the Eros of India. This drama has only five acts, or rather
scenes, and may be called in part an elf drama. Urvaçi is a cloud
nymph, and she disappears from heaven, having been captured by a
monster. The first scene shows her attendant nymphs bewailing her
loss, and relates how the earthly king Purūravas rescues her and
falls in love with her. The king's jealous queen makes the next
The third scene is very curious. Urvaçī, having been rescued,
and being the fairest of all nymphs, is chosen (in heaven) as the
proper person to represent a goddess in a mystery-play given to
entertain the gods. At a certain point in the play she should say
“I love Purushottama” (the god); but instead of this, owing to the
love which has grown up in her for Purūravas, she makes a mistake
and says “I love Purūravas. ” A Divine seer, who has coached her for
the part, is doubly furious, both because she has made such a mess
of her part, and that a nymph of heaven should love a mortal. He
curses her to lose her place in heaven. God Indra modifies the curse
to be this, – that she shall be with her lover on earth till he sees
her child, when she may (or must) return to heaven. The fourth
act is almost wholly lyric. Urvaçi is on earth with Purūravas, but
she steps into a holy grove into which no woman may enter, and
thereupon is changed into a vine. The king seeks her, asking in
lyric strain of bird, bee, and flower, whither his love is gone. She is
finally found by means of a wonder-stone which has power to unite
people. The fifth act gives a pretty psychological situation. Urvaci's
expected child has been born, but she has carefully concealed it
lest the fact that Purūravas sees it should banish her. He however
sees the boy by accident. Then comes the conflict of sentiment: the
joy of the father in the son, the grief of the husband in the loss of
his wife. But the Hindu drama must leave no sadness.
The gods
change the curse again. Urvaçi may remain on earth till her hus-
band's death.
The outline of these two plays gives a notion of the substance if
not the beauty of Hindu dramatic art. Kālidāsa's third drama is the
love story of Mālavikā and Agnimitra, and is more complex than
the other legendary dramas. The third great dramatist belongs to
the eighth century. This is the Southerner, Bhavabhūti, who excels
in the grandeur rather than in the delicacy of his descriptions. He
also has left three great dramas: Mālatīmādhava,' or the tale of (the
heroine) Mālati's and (the hero) Mādhava's love; Mahāvīracarita,'
## p. 7933 (#125) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7933
-
n
and Uttararāmacarita. ' The first is deservedly the most famous,
and has been called the 'Romeo and Juliet' of India. It is a lo
drama in ten acts. The two young people love each other, and their
parents have agreed on the match. But political influence makes
them change their intentions. The lovers are separated and are for-
mally promised to other suitors by their parents, who dare not dis-
obey the king's express wish in this regard. Then a savage priest
appears, who steals away Mālati and is about to sacrifice her on the
altar of the terrible goddess Durgā, Çiva's wife.
Mādhava saves her
and slays the priest. All is about to end happily when a comical
Shakespearean sub-motif is introduced. Mādhava's friends in sport
substitute at the wedding a young man dressed as a girl, for Mālati.
Mālati, stolen again, is however finally found, and the drama ends
well, as usual. Conspicuous is the agency of Buddhist nuns in help-
ing the young people, and equally conspicuous is the diabolical char-
acter of the Brahmanic priest.
Between Bhavabhūti and Kālidāsa comes the author of a little
drama called the Ratnāvali, ascribed to the King Çrīharsha, but
probably written by one of his subjects - either Bāna, author of the
Kādambari' (see above), or Dhāvaka. It was written in the seventh
century, as nearly as can be determined, and to its author are also
attributed the Nāgananda' and Priyadarçikā. ' But though these fill
satisfactorily the blank between the sixth and eighth centuries, the
product of this time is distinctly inferior to that which immediately
precedes and follows, and Bhavabhūti is the next literary follower of
his older rival. In the following centuries, drama succeeded drama
with greater rapidity, and a large number of late inferior dramatic
compositions are extant. Among these one of the best is Mudrārā-
kshasa) or King's Guardian of the Seal”; a play that reminds us of
(Richelieu,' and is notable as being wholly a political drama. It is
forcibly and dramatically written, and some of the scenes are of great
power and intense interest. It is doubtful when its author, Viçākha-
datta, lived in the eighth or in the eleventh century. An admirable
drama by Kshemiçvara (uncertain date), entitled Canda-Kauçika' or
the Wrath of Kauçika, should also be mentioned as well worthy of
study. Among lesser lights of later times the best known dramatists
are Bhatta, of the tenth century, whose play called “Venisanhāra' or
Binding of the Braid” is based on an Epic incident; and Rājace-
khara, of the ninth century, who has left four rather indifferent dramas.
Sanskrit Literature: (C) Lyric. It may be said that even in the
Rig Veda Collection there is a lyric strain, perceptible not only in the
praises of the gods but also in one or two of the triumphant battle
hymns. At a later period the language of religious ecstasy in the
Upanishads, though framed in the simple octosyllabic verse, also rises
>
## p. 7934 (#126) ###########################################
7934
INDIAN LITERATURE
>
not infrequently to lyric heights; and this is especially true of some
of the short religious effusions to be found in Buddhistic literature.
But formal lyric, with its varied metre, its wild and pathetic strains,
appears first at the period of the Renaissance (see above). Here
too Kālidāsa's name heads the list, not only in virtue of the lyric
parts of his dramas, but because of his lyric poetry per se. His two
lyric poems are models for after time. One of these describes in
order the seasons, and hence is called (Ritu-sanhāra' or Union of
Seasons. ) * In varied note the poet gives us pictures of each of the
seasons: the summer heat, the joyful rains, the fresh autumn, the win-
ter, the “cool” season, and last the spring. Each is delineated with
true touches, which show that nothing escapes the fine observation of
the great poet. The effect of each season upon the mood of man
and beast is beautifully described. No land ever offered more superb
contrasts to the artist; and each feature is represented not only with
accuracy, but with such facile ease in the varied metres employed,
that to translate without the rhythmic flow is to lose more here than
in the case of any foreign lyric, not excepting that of Pindar. All
lyric depends for its beauty largely upon the rhythm, but in the case
of Kālidāsa no English version can satisfy at all; for the complex
metre cannot be imitated, and even if it could, the dexterous fitting
of plant names to the metrical flow of words, which gives exquisite
effect in the original, would be completely lost. Kālidāsa's other
lyric, the Meghadūta' or Cloud Messenger,' is quite well known in
Europe through the medium of many English and German transla-
tions. This pictures a lover sending a message by a cloud to his
beloved. Pathos, longing, despair, hope, all the passions of the lover,
are here rendered into verse in metre which, like that of the Ritu-
sanhāra,' defies imitation. The poem is of course erotic, but it is
filled with passages illustrating the fineness and delicacy of the lyric
master. The later poets were apt to imitate and exceed the model
in the erotic features, while they were left far behind in point of
style and execution.
Only a few of these later bards deserve special attention. As
in the case of the drama, much was subsequently written but little
was written well. Of these inferior works, however, the twenty-two
strophes called “Ghatakarpana' deserve to be spoken of because the
author lived at so early a date, being probably almost a contemporary
of Kālidāsa himself; while the Pancāçikā' of the eleventh century
may be cited as an example of the later erotic poems. The author
of the latter, probably Bilhana, describes in passionate language the
* See the translation of Grishma) from this poem under Sir Edwin Arnold,
Vol. ii. of this work.
## p. 7935 (#127) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7935
delight of a fortunate lover in the embrace of his mistress. No
detail of love's enjoyment is omitted, and the fifty strophes are quite
untranslatable in their indecency.
But long lyric effusions do not show the peculiar genius of the
Hindu lyric in its later development. In artificial language, where
every syllable is pregnant with meaning, the Hindu delights in giving
a complete idyl in as few verses as possible. Thus we have an
enormous mass of little poems, each without introduction or end,
describing a situation. This is often a lover's complaint, but as often
it is a meditative expression of some moral or even physical truth.
In short, in this lyric, which closes the development of native liter-
ature, we have a reversion to the aphoristic sententious style which
marked the close of the Vedic period; only in the latter the didactic
matter was the one thing considered, while in the sentimental apho-
ristic lyric, style and language were even more considered than was
the truth or fancy to be expressed. Even in the Epic, some of the
aphoristic verses are almost lyrical in this sense; and in the fables,
there is much that aspires to beauty in expression as well as to truth
in what is said.
Chief master of this sort of lyric, so well beloved and so often
imitated by Heine, is Bhartrihari. He was philosopher and poet, and
lived in the seventh century. According to tradition he was a Bud-
dhist monk, who, as was permitted to the monks, joined the order
seven times and seven times left it, being influenced beyond his own
control by desire for religion and in turn by love of the world. It is
said that he was so well aware of his weakness that when he was
a monk he always kept a horse ready harnessed, in order that if he
should feel overpowered by sinful desires, he might have the means
to escape and gratify them without delay. He wrote three 'Çataka,'
literally Centuries, of little lyrics (the “Çringāraçataka'). They are
marked by esprit, humor, and delicate sentiment. Another such col-
lection, the 'Çringāratilaka, is ascribed to Kālidāsa, but the author-
ship is not beyond doubt. A Century' of lyrics was also composed
by Amaru (Amaruçataka'), who is regarded as the greatest master
in depicting love scenes and in understanding women. Love is here,
as it usually is in this literature, rather coarse passion like that of
Sappho; but we have no right to demand modern refinement from
the ancients, and we are only surprised to find it in Kālidāsa. Still
another book of Centuries is written in a Prakrit patois. It is that
of Hāla, called simply his Seven Centuries (Saptaçataka').
erotic nature of the poems interchanges with what, in view of the
patois, is called by German critics volkspoesie; but there is probably
as little of the real folk here as in Theocritus. There are however
in Hāla, descriptions of nature which show a fine touch. The erotic
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7936
INDIAN LITERATURE
lyric of India closes with a wonderful production of almost modern
times, the Gitagovinda' of Jayadeva, a Bengal poet of the twelfth
century. This is a lyric-dramatic effusion describing the love of the
god Krishna-l'ishnu for his mistress Rādhā. It is an ode, and was
intended to be sung to music. The name comes from gorinda (neat-
herd, i. e. , Krishna, see above) and gita, song. As a literary product
this work may be defined as a sort of mystery-play, in point of lan-
guage refined to excess, but in the unbridled excess of its description
quite equal to Bilhana's Pancāçikā (see above). The intent of the
poem withal is quite religious. It is the model of modern devotional-
erotic poetry, which, in its strange mixture of worship and obscenity,
reminds one of Dionysiac rites.
FOURTH PERIOD: Modern Sanskrit and Dialectic Literature. — For
fully a hundred years before and for five hundred years after the
Christian era, India was overrun by northern barbarians. For the
next five hundred years the land enjoyed comparative security from
the Mohammedans. The Muslim indeed invaded India as early as the
eighth century, but Hindu rule was not overthrown till the latter
half of the tenth century. The next five hundred years, from the
crowning of Mahmud the devastator of India in 997, to the middle
of the sixteenth century, was a period of rapine and ruin. Under
Akbar, the Great Mogul, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, the land had
peace; but literary originality was totally destroyed by this very
security of the time. Persian, Christian, Jew, and Mohammedan lived
amicably together, discussing religion, philosophy, and literature at
Akbar's court. Moreover, the Portuguese landed in India in the fif-
teenth century and the English in 1600. From this time on, therefore,
Indian literature loses its old character. The first extant works of
this period, chiefly religious, are a reflex of the confluence of Hindu
and Mohammedan thought. Nor are they untouched by Christian
doctrine. As early as the seventh century Christians were welcomed
by a northern king, and the late Purānas have many traits taken
directly from the New Testament. But the terrible oppression of
the Mohammedan from about the years 1000 to 1500 leaves even the
centuries preceding Akbar's reign almost bare of original productions.
To the eleventh and twelfth centuries belong fable, drama, and lyric,
in steadily decreasing amount and value (see above); but the crushed
genius of the Hindus after this seems to be content with the manu-
facture of commentaries and of religious works (the animus of the
latter being a fierce sectarianism), till the catholicity of Akbar's reign
produces the refined and philosophic religious works of modern times.
The narrow and devoutly furious sectarian tracts are known as Tan-
tras (i. e. , books or Bibles). They describe minutely the obscure rites
of the lower religious orders. Other works of this class are called
## p. 7937 (#129) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7937
Āgamas, or « Traditional works,” which scarcely differ from the late
sectarian Purānas. Most of these late Purānas claim for themselves a
great antiquity; but none is probably older than the ninth century,
and many of them are as late as the fifteenth or sixteenth centu-
ries. Beside these devotional works stands a mass of late Smriti or
« Tradition”; generally in the form of a miscellaneous assortment
of rules, called a law-book, but partaking largely of the character of
a Purāna. The formal History of Sects) forms one of the liter-
ary features of this time. In the ninth century appears the first of
these, by Ananda Giri, a pupil of Çankara. In the fourteenth century
another was composed by Madhava Acārya. This may be designated
also as the greatest period of commentators. In the seventh century,
during the period following on the Renaissance (see above), the ancient
Brahmanism was re-established ritually by Kumārila. Later scholars
contented themselves with writing commentaries on the Vedic texts.
Best known of these is Sāyana, who in the fourteenth century re-
edited with his exhaustive commentary the Rig Veda Collection and
other early texts.
The sectaries did, however, produce some original matter. Nota-
bly is this the case with the Rāma-Vishnu sects; that is, the sects
that believe in Rāma (rather than in Krishna) as an incarnation of
Vishnu. These sects, or at least their leaders, are in general more
philosophical than are the Krishna sects. Thus in the twelfth cen-
tury Rāmānuja, the next able philosopher after Çankara (above),
founded a new sect; and this sect possesses the most important San-
skrit poem of modern times, the Ramcaritmanas) of Tulasidāsa, who
is generally acknowledged to be the strongest modern Hindu poet.
He lived in the sixteenth century, and his Ramcaritmanas) a sort
of modern (Rāmāyana,' a New Testament to that older Bible of the
Rāma sect. The Krishna sect has on the other hand, as its older
Bible, a religious chapter of the Mahābhārata' (called the Bhagavat
Gita' or Divine Song); but for a New Testament it has only the
trashy Bhāgavata Purāna. '
Commentaries not only on Vedic texts but on modern sects also
characterize this period. Thus in the sixteenth century a Life of
Krishna,' virtually a commentary on the doctrines of his sect, was
written by Vallabha, one of the few Krishnaite scholars. But mod-
ern religious literature is usually a plain combination of Mohamine-
danism, Hinduism, and Christianity; notably so in the compositions
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but not less surely so
in every work since the sixteenth. Thus the famous "Ādi-granth' or
Original Bible) of the Sikhs is a sixteenth-century composite of
Mohammedan and Hindu thought; although Kabir and Nānak, the
first leaders of this sect, who lived in the fifteenth century, actually
XIV-497
## p. 7938 (#130) ###########################################
7938
INDIAN LITERATURE
))
broke with both these State religions, and formed what they claimed
was a “new” faith. The same again is true in regard to the Bible of
the Dādū Pānthis of the seventeenth century: while Rāmmohun Roy
(born in 1772) and the numerous leaders of Samājas Congregations,
who followed him, have done nothing more than make latter-day
Upanishads based on eclectic Christian doctrine superadded to more
native teaching - a curious amalgam, which represents very well the
parasitic character of modern religious literature in India. Some of
this is in Sanskrit, some in Tamil (the language of the Southern
Dravidians), and some in local Hindu patois. Of these, the sacred
Kural of Tiruvalluvar, and the Prem Sāgar or Ocean of Love, are
typical examples. In general, besides such religious works, Tamil
literature is composed either of reproduced Sanskrit works or of
folk tales, and may therefore be omitted from the best literature”
of India, inasmuch as it lacks either originality or the qualities that
constitute the right to be called fine literature. A good deal of folk
poetry and folk stories, both in Tamil and in Hindu patois, has been
published, but the value of this literature is not great. Even bucolic
“Epics” have been discovered, and one missionary has actually found
an Epic among the wild tribes! But the ballads are too rude and
the stories are too stupid to be classed as literature. They are the
oral, long-winded, tiresome productions common to all peasants from
Greenland to India, interesting only to the student of folk-lore, and
valuable merely as showing how small is the literary merit that lies
in the unaided (more particularly in the not touched up) genius of
the common people.
In the domain of the late literature which is impregnated with
foreign ideas, one passes beyond the true province of Indian liter-
ature. No less does one exceed the limit of Sanskrit literature in
speaking of modern works written in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is still writ-
ten and spoken, but so is Latin; and Sanskrit literature stops with
the aftergrowth of the Renaissance just as truly as Latin literature
ceases with the silver age. The Sanskrit writings of the last few
centuries are to Sanskrit literature what the Latin of the Middle Ages
is to Latin literature. The age when Sanskrit was a people's lan-
guage is long since past; and even in the later drama it is probable
that the artificial Sanskrit employed is a true index of its decline as
a spoken tongue, and that in ordinary conversation even the Brah-
mans used the colloquial patois of their respective homes. In one of
these dramas it is said that there is nothing more ridiculous than a
man singing pianissimo and a woman speaking Sanskrit; while, as
we have seen, even the early drama made all low-caste men and
women converse in patois. In the Epic there is no indication that
the characters used any other language than Sanskrit. It is there
## p. 7939 (#131) ###########################################
INDIAN LITERATURE
7939
((
>
considered a mark of cultivation to be able to “speak in patois," as
if this were an accomplishment. Pānini's explicit rules for “dialects,"
and the fact that the earlier Buddhistic works are preserved not in
Sanskrit but in Pāli, show that Sanskrit was a local language to a
great extent, and that, as the exponent of the Brahmanic faith, it was
probabiy more or less a revived language even at the period of the
Renaissance. In the northwest, Sanskrit was probably spoken at the
same time that it was unused in other districts; and as the various
patois gradually encroached upon it, it became, as its name denotes,
the “cultivated” or «refined" language, in contradistinction to Pra-
krit, the natural language or local patois.
In closing this outline of Indian literature, it will not be amiss to
point out, if only for convenience in remembering its long course of
three thousand years, the semi-millennium groups into which it nat-
urally falls in respect of time. In the sense of original Hindu compo-
sitions, Indian literature extends from about 1500 B. C. to 1500 A. D.
The first five hundred years go to the completion of the Rig-Veda
Collection. Then follow about five hundred years of Vedic decline,
additions, elucidations, the Ritual period. A religious and sectarian
literary awakening succeeds this epoch. It is typified by the first
Upanishads and by the growth of Buddhism; while Vedic literature
expires in Sūtras, a period of five hundred years, from about B. C.
500 to our era. Another era of five hundred years covers a time of
political ruin at the hands of barbarians and decadent Buddhism,
from our era to 500 A. D. Then in the sixth century comes the liter-
ary awakening, the Renaissance, the effect of which in the growth of
art endures till, about 1000 A. D. , the Mohammedan again brings ruin
to India, The decline of this art follows during five hundred years
more in the works of inferior poets and the rise of commentators.
After 1500 A. D. the literature is no longer Indian. ”
{. w. Hopkins.
HYMNS OF THE RIG-VEDA
FIRST HYMN ADDRESSED TO AGNI, THE SACRIFICIAL FIRE
1
WORSHIP Agni, who is the priest of the house, the divine priest
of the sacrifice, and the priest of oblations. He gives wealth.
He is the god Agni, who was adored by the ancient Seers,
and he is fit to be worshiped by those [that live] to-day. May
he conduct the gods to us. By means of Agni one can acquire
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7940
INDIAN LITERATURE
wealth, prosperity from day to day, and the glory of excellent
heroes. O Agni, whatever be the rite that thou surroundest on
every side, that sacrifice reaches the gods. . May the Agni who
gives oblations, who is the wisest priest, the true one, the most
famous, may this god in company with all the other gods ap-
proach to us. Thou doest good to every one that worships thee,
O Agni, and this is thy real virtue. Unto thee, O Agni, day by
day, at evening and at morning, we come with prayer bringing
obeisance to thee to thee, who art the lord of sacrifice and the
brilliant protector of the rite, who art magnified in thine own
dwelling. Be thou easy of access to us and lead us on to happi-
ness, as if thou wert father and we thy sons.
HYMN TO THE DEIFIED MOON-PLANT SOMA
Thou
HOU, O Soma, art the wisest in understanding; thou guidest
us by the straightest pathway; and it is through thy direc-
tion that our wise fathers got happiness among the gods.
Thou didst become wisest in wisdom, 0 Soma; most skillful
in skill. Thou obtainest all things; thou art a bull in strength
and in greatness; thou art splendid in thy splendor, O thou that
seest man. The laws of the god of heaven are thine; high and
deep are thy places, O Soma, thou art bright as the sun; thou
deservest our worship. Whatever places thou hast, whether in
earth or in heaven, whether in the mountains, the plants, or the
waters, do thou in all of these meet our oblations, and accept
them, King Soma, being kindly disposed and not hurtful to us.
Thou, O Soma, art the true lord, thou art the king, thou art the
slayer of the demon who withholds the rain; thou art the strength
that gives success.
Thou bestowest bliss upon old and
young; and to the pious thou givest power to live.
then, O Soma, upon all sides, guard us from him that sins; may
no harm touch the one who is thy friend. Be our benefactor,
and help us to all the enjoyments wherever thou canst aid thy
worshiper. Accept this our sacrifice, and this our song; be well
pleased with us, and come to us; do us good, O Soma.
nify thee in song, we who are clever in words. Be merciful and
come to us.
Guard us,
We mag-
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INDIAN LITERATURE
7941
VEDIC HYMN TO INDRA, THE STORM GOD
I
NDRA hath grown great, he hath grown great for heroic deeds.
He alone is without age, he alone hath riches to give. Indra
hath extended himself beyond earth and heaven; the half of
him is equal to both the worlds. So great is he, so high is his
godly nature. There is none that can impair what he hath estab-
lished. He is a Sun, conspicuous day by day, and being wisely
strong he divides his wide dominions. To-day, even now, thou
hewest a pathway for the rivers. The hills bow down [before
thee] as were they friends; the wide spaces of the universe are
knit together by thee. 'Tis true that no other is like unto Indra;
nor is any god or mortal more venerable. Thou didst slay the
great snake that hemmed in the rain; thou didst let out the
waters to the ocean. Thou didst free the waters, opening wide
the doors; thou didst break the stronghold of the mountains.
Thou hast become the king of all that moves, bringing to light
the sun, the dawn, and heaven.
VEDIC HYMN TO DAWN
Asplendid "as waves of water
.
LOFT the lights of Dawn, gleaming for beauty, have risen
Ushas [Aurora) makes fair
the paths, she makes all things accessible. She is good,
munificent, and kindly disposed. Thou art lovely in appearance;
thou shinest through the wide spaces; up to heaven fly thy fiery
glowing beams. Thou revealest thy bosom, adorning thyself, O
Dawn, and gleamest bright in thy greatness. The red clouds
bear her along, her the blessed one, who extendeth far and wide.
She compels the darkness as a hero armed with arrows routs his
foes. Thy ways are fair, thy paths upon the mountains. Thou
goest in calm across the waters, self-shining one. O thou, whose
paths are wide, thou lofty daughter of the sky, bring to us wealth
and nourishment. Bring sustenance, O Dawn, who dost bring us
good as thou willst. Though thou art indeed the daughter of the
sky, yet dost thou come to us bright and early every morning,
when we pray to thee [to come). At thy clear dawning the birds
fly from their nests; and [from their homes come] men who
seek for food.
