A Sanskrit Grammar

materials of various character and period have been inwoven, until it has become a heterogeneous mass, a kind of cyclopedia for the warrior-caste. hard to separate into its constituent parts. The story of Nala, and the philosophical poem Bhagavad-Gitā. are two of the most noted of its episodes. The Rāmāyaṇa, the other most famous epic, is a work of another kind: though also worked over and more or less altered in its transmission to our time. it is the production, in the main, of a single author Vālmīki); and it is generally believed to be in part allegorical, representing the introduction of Aryan culture and dominion into Southern India. By its side stand a number of minor epics, of various authorship and period, as the Raghuvança (ascribed to the dramatist Kalidasa', the Maghakarya, the Bhaṭṭikavya (the last, written chiefly with the grammatical intent of illustrating by use as many as possible of the numerous formations which. through taught by the grammarians, find no place in the literature.

The Purāņas, a large class of works mostly of immense extent, are best mentioned in connection with the epics. They are pseudo-historical and prophetic in character, of modern date, and of very small value. Real history finds no place in Sanskrit literature, nor is there any conscious historical element in any of the works composing it.

Lyric poetry is represented by many works, some of which, as the Meghaduta and Gitagovinda, are of no mean order of merit.

The drama is a still more noteworthy and important branch. The first indications of dramatical inclination and capacity on the part of the Hindus are seen in certain hymns of the Veda, where a mythological or legendary situation is conceived dramatically, and set forth in the form of a dialogue — well-known examples are the dialogue of Sarama and the Panis, that of Yama and his sister Yami, that of Vasishtha and the rivers. that of Agni and the other gods but there are no extant intermediaries between these and the standard drama. The beginnings of the latter date from a period when in actual life the higher and educated

characters used Sanskrit, and the lower and uneducated used the popular dialects derived from it, the Prakrits; and their dialogue reflects this condition of things. Then, however, learning (not to call it pedantry) intervened, and stereotyped the new element; a Prakrit grammar grew up beside the Sanskrit grammar, according to the rules of which Prakrit could be made indefinitely on a substrate of Sanskrit; and none of the existing dramas need to date from the time of vernacular use of Prakrit, while most or all of them are undoubtedly much later. Among the dramatic authors, Kālidāsa is incomparably the chief, and his Çakuntalā as distinctly his masterpiece. His date has been a matter of much inquiry and controversy; it is doubtless some centuries later than our era. The only other work deserving to be mentioned along with Kalidasa's is the Mṛchakați of Çudraka, also of questionable period, but believed to be the oldest of the extant dramas.

A partly dramatic character belongs also to the fable, in which animals are represented as acting and speaking. The most noted works in this department are the Pañcatantra, which through Persian and Semitic versions has made its way all over the world, and contributes a considerable quota to the fable-literature of every European language, and, partly founded on it, the comparatively recent and popular Hitopadeça (salutary instruction').

Two of the leading departments of Sanskrit scientific literature, the legal and the grammatical, have been already sufficiently noticed; of those remaining, the most important by far is the philosophical. The beginnings of philosophical speculation are seen already in some of the later hymns of the Veda, more abundantly in the Brāhmaṇas and Āraṇyakas, and then especially in the Upanishads. The evolution and historic relation of the systems of philosophy, and the age of their text-books, are matters on which much obscurity still rests. There are six systems of primary rank, and reckoned as orthodox, although really standing in no accordance with approved religious doctrines. All of them seek the same end, the emancipation of the soul from the

necessity of continuing its existence in a succession of bodies, and its unification with the All-soul; but they differ in regard to the means by which they seek to attain this end.

The astronomical science of the Hindus is a reflection of that of Greece, and its literature is of recent date; but as mathematicians, in arithmetic and geometry, they have shown more independence. Their medical science, although its beginnings go back even to the Veda, in the use of medicinal plants with accompanying incantations, is of little account, and its proper literature by no means ancient.

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