K1MT l.\Nt;fAi;K AND LITERATURE. 



SANSKRIT LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



M 



M an klJ drama series of tableaux vivan*, presenting faithful 

 portraitures "f the adored object of large body of enthusiast* the 

 work will always command the esteem of the lorers of literary worth. 

 It wm* publwhnl at Calcutta, 1854. 



The Miltagoviiida' of Jayadeva, written in the 1-th century, in 

 entirely different from the work* already described. It u a p.- in 

 intended for performance at a fextival of V inhnn, and belongs to that 

 flaw to which we ascribed Uie origin of tl.o drama. It exhibit* the 

 fwation of Kriabna from hi wife Kidha, his lore adrenturei with 

 the hepherd*iwe. and the reconciliation of the husband nn<l w ife, in .1 

 arie* of unngs, which are connected and introduced by strophe* w hi. h 

 describe the situations. The strophes were intended tor recitation, the 

 ongs to be sung. This is therefore the only Sanskrit p.- try w hirh \\ 

 IIIISSKM that can properly be called lyric, lint the songs are entirely 

 written on the nxxlol of" the Prakrit songs, which alone appear to have 

 been intended for singing, and they have throughout the Prakrit 

 metro. The word garinda itself is a Prakrit form of the word 

 gtfnulra, ' the master of the shepherdesses," which is one of the titli .- 

 of KruhiM. The scholiasts explain the pc<em in a mystic sense : 

 Krishna is the aoul, which emanated from Cioil. with whom it w,is 

 originnllT in union, but was drawn down from him by sinful objects (the 

 shepherdVests) ; at length, however, full of desire for ita original run it y , 

 it return* to Clod. In fact, the author himself, in certain passages, 

 eems to intimate that he had some such deep meaning in view : and 

 l>erhaps we may here find indications of the influence of the mystic 

 |et ry of Pereia. ( Printed at Calcutta, 1 806 ; and there is an excellent 

 Maa by Lassen, Bonn, 1836, 4to.) 



.VfimiftVa. As the old epic poems were especially designed for the 

 warrior-caste, so the Vaisyas, the third class, have a literature of their 

 own, the namtirt, of which the first which requires notice is Fable. 

 In the ' Rninayana ' and in Mnnu there are allusions to wi-ll known fables, 

 and others are related in the ' MahnbhArata.' The two chief works of 

 later time*, but which are still of some antiquity, are the ' Panchatan- 

 tra' and ' Hitopadesa.' [PII.PAT. in Bio<;. Div.] The ' Kath&nakas ' 

 are short narratives and tale. They ore known to us chiefly through 

 three modern prose works, which contain obvious marks of having 

 been derived from older metrical collections. They are called 

 VeUUapanchavinsati,' "the 25 tales of the ghost," by Slvadasa ; 

 ' Sukasaptati,' " the 70 tales of the parrot." known in Kuropo as the 

 Tutinimeb,' from a Persian translate >n ; anil the ' Sinhosanadvatrinsati,' 

 " the 32 tales of the statues on the throne of Vikramftdityo." The 

 whole series has only been printed in translations into the modern 

 languages of India. Lassen has published part of the Sanskrit original 

 of the ' VetAlapanchavinsati,' and the commencement of the ' Sukasaptati,' 

 in his ' Anthologia ; ' and Prof. R. Rpth has given extracts from the 

 Sanskrit text of the ' Sinhasanodvatrinsati,' in the ' Journal Asiatique ' 

 for 1845, vL 278, ff. But there is another still more important work, 

 a great collection of all the existing tales, which was undertaken by 

 Somadeva of Cashmere, in the 12th century; it is entitled ' Vrihat- 

 katha,' " the great narration." or ' Kathosaritsfigara,' " the ocean of the 

 streams of narrations." It is written in >li< epic metre, and in a .-imple 

 style. (About a fourth part of the work has been puMi-hrd by 

 Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1840.) Viewed with reference to their 

 the works of this collection arc peculiarly interesting to us, since even 

 in the middle ages they had found their way to Europe under various 

 forms, as ' The Book of the Seven Wise Masters,' &c. ; and the know- 

 ledge of the original text clears up many difficult questions of literary 

 y. Some of the oldest and best of the ' Tales of the Thousand 

 and Owe Nights ' have been drawn from this source, and even in the 

 Arabic version they retain many features which belong only to India. 

 See Prof. Bcnfey's translation of the ' Panchatantra,' Leipzig, 1859, 

 2 vols. 



There are two other kinds of narrative works, which need only be 

 noticed briefly : the cJiamp&i, which arc narrations in prose and verse, 

 sometimes written in the artificial style ; and the ckarttras, which are 

 short and wonderful stories from the history of some celebrated man. 

 Of thin last kind there arc two which relate to the kings Vikrnmaditya 

 and Bhoja, and at first sight appear to contain some valuable infor- 

 mation ; Imt they are entirely without authority, and have only served 

 to introduce error into questions of literary history. To the elaborate 

 prose works of this class belong the ' Daaakumaracharitra,' or " the 

 adventures of the ten princes ; " and the ' Kadambarl ; ' the former by. 

 Dandi, about the middl.- of the llth century, the latter by Van . 

 of a somewhat later date, and i ry almtru .- 



Lastly, in the ' VasaradattA,' a romance in prose, written by Bubaodhu 

 probably as early as the 7th century, the display of alliteration and the 

 love of ambiguity of import are carried to such an extent that the 

 work may truly be called an entire volume of puns. 



Before we proceed to the scientific literature, we must add to thu 

 narrative class the scanty remains of 



Litiraiitre. The peculiarly contemplative cast of mind 

 which dixtinguiahes the natives of India, and the circumstance of the 

 whole country having never been formed into a single kingd. 

 of small independent ^ovr-rnmenta, will sufficiently 

 entire want of historical writing. With the ' 

 dem rhroniele of Orissa (abridged by Stirling. 



historical work in existence in the 

 Chronicle of Canhmere,' properly entitled 'RAjataranginl,' 



for the 

 of a ver 



"the stream of the kings;" it was written in the VJth century by 

 Kalhana, partly from ancient sources, which he .-peri. illy inn 

 There have I won three successive continuations of this chronicle, which 

 describe the period of the Mohammedan dominion down to Akbar. 

 The work is written in the aitifici.il style, in the epic metre, and has a 

 K'-od deal of the form of a ' Piirnna.' The first, part of it has been 

 drawn almost entirely from Buddhist sources. It was first made 

 known in Europe by Wilson's analysis (' Auiat. Uesear.,' xv.) ; after- 

 wards edited at Calcutta, 1835, 4to. ; and lastly, the first six : 

 with a French translation of the whole work by Troyer, were published. 

 at Paris in 1840-52, in 3 vols. The Buddhists, on the other hand, have 

 a histoi-y, chronologically worthy of credit, which is continued 

 a. 'cording to the series of their patriarchs. Hitherto the only publi- 

 cation of the original Indian text has been that of the ' Mahi'ivansa,' in 

 Pali, by Tumour. (Colombo, 1837, vol. i., 4to.) This defioietio] of 

 historical literature is in some degree compensated 1 iy n : 

 script ions of various ages, which have been found in all parts of India. 

 and most of -which have ftitherto successfully been deciphered. As 

 many of them contain genealogies and other matters which indicate 

 the time when they were written, they ore of inestimable value for 

 historical inquiries, being almost the only documents which wo possess. 

 As to any other historical notices, we are entirely indebted to the 

 writings of the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Arabians, which have 

 been very useful, at least for settling dates. 



Scientific Literiiturr. The sciences to which the natives of India 

 have been original contributors, are philosophy, grammar, and astro- 

 nomy, together with algebra. 



PhUotopKy is of great antiquity in India. The contemplative 

 character of the natives must have early led them to metaphysical 

 speculations, and the collision which must soon have occurred between 

 the results of those speculations and the revealed word of tho Vedas, 

 would become a principal cause of the wider extension of philosophy. 

 Hence arose many systems ; of those which ore held to be orthodox 

 we ore specially acquainted only with six ; but as these six are related 

 to each other by twos, they can only be regarded as three distinct 

 systems. We ore acquainted with them only in their complete form, 

 in which they have a mutual relation to each other, and we are not 

 able to point out their historical development. 



The XSnl-hya system however must be regarded as the first and 

 most ancient, and this system, on certain mythological grounds, has 

 been traced back to Kapila. It is founded on a duality of soul and 

 matter (or nature); the first being the free, pure, uncreated, and 

 uncrcating principle ; the second, the creating power of nature, blind 

 and purposeless. The one cannot be thought of without the other ; 

 they form for themselves the yet undeveloped being, and from them 

 proceeds, by a regular gradation, from the spiritual to the intellectual, 

 and then to the most corporeal, the whole visible world. Every human 

 being indeed possesses the spirit, but in union with the senses ; and 

 his task is, by the conquest of the senses through the medium of 

 the intellect, to attain to the final deliverance, " moksha," or blessedness, 

 which is accomplished in the " jnana," that is, the "gnosis," knowledge. 

 But this system had an appearance of atheism, and therefore under- 

 went a reformation in the Yoya system of Patanjali. 

 established, that knowledge is the way to attain to the final delivi 

 but knowledge itself can only be obtained thfough " yoga," absorption 

 into God and mystical union with him, and a perfect abstraction from 

 everything which can disturb the mind or awake the passions The 

 system further assumes, that the pure spirit is the creator, and thus it 

 connects itself with the notions which belong to religion ; it also adopt.- 

 the metempsychosis, inasmuch as it fixes degrees of the yoga ; the 

 spirit comes back to inhabit new bodies till it has attained tho highest 

 degree of the yoga. The Vedas are also held in esteem as means of 

 knowledge, but they are not valued more highly than other meane, 

 since a man is to perform what is said in the Vedas freely, and not 

 merely on account of the written word. Hence i the saying, 



that the "yogin " is exalted above the V' 



The doctrines of the Buddhists ore founded on the Sankhya system, 

 which they carry out into all ite consequences, both in their religion 

 and politics. [Bi-Dim.v.] 



The second system is the flySya, of which Gotama is the author. 

 This system is entirely confined to logic and dialectic, on which it has 

 been constructed even in the most minute particulars. It is therefore 

 more in accordance than the Sankhya with tho other gyutr. 

 the natives of India generally have bestowed much labour on the 

 of logic, MI philoM.; fall the diiTcrr , vo occupied 



ith it. The number of the Nyftya writings is very 

 The \'aiahika system may be looked upon as a reformation of the 

 Nyaya. It is derived from Kanftda. It applies the logical principle 

 to nature, and has arrived at a complete atomic doctrine by the 

 resolution of all substances into their elements. It asserts that there 

 is a union of atoms, which however is purely mechanical; so that, 

 contrary to tho Saiikhya, in its consequences it necessarily loads to 

 iiiatcri.ili.-iu. 



The third ny.-tem, the M' m ,;,, '* . (he lii>t ; which was 



edlcd .laimini, is directly opposed to the two former. It maintains 



religion and the revealed won! of the Vcda,and isa positive theological 



;;ly it is occupied chiefly in commenting upon the 



Vodas, and in reconciling their contradictions. The. first part of this 



