278 



Till: STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



and scientific d. liirimis 



:igs, for the Sanskrit literal uiv belongs 

 imaginative and creative, as well as a 

 serious and' thought ful. j>eople. 



.t Hindu work importance. 



'urn. ilat i! i . one thou- 



sand years before the Christian era. The in- 

 ;lated the moral and social 



life of the people, and prescribed punishments. 

 Purity of lr :<-tly enjoined. Two inter- 



esting epic poems belong to the classic period. 

 the Mahabharata. a semi-historical poem, treat- 

 ing of ancient rivalries and wars, and the Kama- 

 yana, a religious poem, describing the incarna- 

 tion of Vishnu. 



\rit. dating about one hundred 



before Christ, is varied in its theme, but lacks 



_ r nity of thought, which characterizes the 



xrit. 



Many speculative philosophies have had their 

 birth in India, some of them in strict opposition 

 to the teaching of the Vedas. Five centuries 

 before the Christian era a newer and purer 

 religion was taught by a monk of royal birth. 

 He was afterwards known as Buddha, the 

 Enlightened One. He taught his people -to live 

 : ity, one with another, to practice truth 

 and morality, to overthrow caste, and to abolish 

 Brahman sacrifices. The sacred books of 

 Buddha are called the Tripitka, one of them is 

 metaphysical, one disciplinary, and one contains 

 the Discourses of Buddha. They are written 

 in a dialect of the later Sanskrit, and are very 

 voluminous, containing more than five times 

 as much matter as in both the New and Old 

 Testament. The followers of Buddha are said 

 to number over three hundred millions. Bud- 

 dhism is not only one of the great religions of 

 India, but it has millions of followers in Thibet, 

 China, Japan, Corea, and all the countries of 

 the far East. It would be impossible to ac- 

 knowledge the full indebtedness of Western 

 literatures to the literary thought of India. 

 We have borrowed from every department, 

 but nowhere have we found richer treasures 

 than in romance and fairy tale. Stories written 

 in far-away India have been the delight of our 

 story-tellers, and many of the fairy tales of our 

 nurseries were first written for the joy of some 

 Hindu child. India is rich in literary treasures, 

 and we are richer because we have borrowed 

 from these treasures. 



PERSIAN LITERATURE 



The earliest language of Persia is the Zend, 

 which is closely allied to the Sanskrit. The 

 Vedic Aryans and the Zend-speaking Aryans 

 originally belonged to one community, and 

 spoke one language. Both language and litera- 

 ture reveal this unity of origin. We find simi- 

 larities in their cuneiform inscriptions. Like 

 the Sanskrit of India, the earliest literature of 

 Persia is preserved for us in the sacred writings. 

 These are known as the Zend-Avesta, Living 

 Word. 



The Avesta is among the most important of 

 the sacred writings found in the whole range of 

 Indo-European literatures. These writings are 

 attributed by the Persians to Zoroaster, who 

 lived probably twelve or fifteen centuries before 



the Christian era. Little is known of Zoroaster, 

 but it is said that like Buddha he was the great 

 teacher who reformed the religious system of 

 his country. The Parsees, or Fire-Worshippers 

 of India and Persia are to-day the followers of 

 rter. 



The Aveeta, though attributed to Zoroaster, 

 is not the work of a single man, but, like the 

 Vedas. is made up from fragments, which had 

 been repeated orally, and thus brought down 

 through generations. It is a collection of pro- 

 fessed revelations, instructions concerning ways 

 of living, prayers and confessions made to some 

 Supreme Being and to inferior gods, simple 

 hymns, some of which are grand, both in word 

 and thought. The Avesta recognizes One 

 Supreme Being, and exhorts to a pure way of 

 living. " Forsake the wrong," says Zoroaster, 

 ' ' and choose one of the two spirits, Good or 

 Base; you cannot serve both." 



Besides the Zend-Avesta, there are two other 

 sacred books, one a book of prayers and hymns, 

 and the other prayers to the Genii of the days. 

 The religion of Zoroaster prevailed for many 

 years in Persia. The Greeks adopted some of 

 the ideas into their philosophy, and through 

 them its influence was extended over Europe. 



When the Greeks under Alexander (331 B. C.) 

 conquered Persia and burned the capital at 

 Persepolis, they destroyed many inscriptions 

 and valuable records in the great library, which 

 had been collected by the Persian kings. After 

 the Greek conquest, the Persian language was 

 forced to give place to the language of their 

 conquerors, first the Greek, and then the Arabic 

 speech of the Mohammedans. 



In the Ninth Century, A. D., native dynasties 

 were restored, and from this time dates modern 

 Persian literature, which flourished for nine 

 centuries.' But the literature of modern Persia 

 is very unlike that of the ancient Empire. 

 Greek thought, together with the arts and 

 sciences of Arabia and the religion of Mohammed, 

 had transformed the life and spirit of the people, 

 and we find an entirely different literature in 

 this later period. Satires, love ditties, songs, 

 and religious hymns appeared, and many names 

 are found of minstrels who belonged to the 

 Tenth Century. The first Persian poet who 

 impressed his stamp upon every form of poetry 

 was Rudagi About 1000 A. D., Prince Kabus 

 is quoted as the author of the "Perfection of 

 Rhetoric" and also of poems. A generation 

 later Ansari wrote much verse in honor of the king. 



To these same centuries belong Dakaki and 

 Firduasi, court poets; Tabari, court historian; 

 Dadi, the great moral teacher; Hafiz, the writer 

 of love lyrics and pleasure songs; Omar Khay- 

 yam, so well known from the excellent trans- 

 lations of his quatrains into English. 



CHINESE LITERATURE 



The literature of China leads us back to the 

 remotest past in an almost unbroken line of 

 writings. The prose writings of the Chinese 

 philosophers, plain, grave, and concise render- 

 ings of moral maxims, and the primeval poetry, 

 including the oldest temperance ode in the 

 world, were preserved in the Sacred Books, 

 edited by Confucius. 



