Part 8

The Indian Government has of late years ordered a kind of bibliographical survey of India to be made, and has sent some learned Sanskrit scholars, both European and native, to places where collections of Sanskrit MSS. are known to exist, in order to examine and catalogue them. Some of these catalogues have been published, and we learn from them that the number of separate works in Sanskrit, of which mss. are still in existence, amounts to about 10,000.[98] This is more, I believe, than the whole classical literature of Greece and Italy put together. Much of it, no doubt, will be called mere rubbish; but then you know that even in our days the writings of a very eminent philosopher have been called "mere rubbish." What I wish you to see is this, that there runs through the whole history of India, through its three or four thousand years, a high road, or, it is perhaps more accurate to say, a high mountain-path of literature. It may be remote from the turmoil of the plain, hardly visible perhaps to the millions of human beings in their daily struggle of life. It may have been trodden by a few solitary wanderers only. But to the historian of the human race, to the student of the development of the human mind, those few solitary wanderers are after all the true representatives of India from age to age. Do not let us be deceived. The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life.

To large multitudes in India, no doubt, Sanskrit literature was not merely a dead literature, it was simply non-existent; but the same might be said of almost every literature, and more particularly of the literatures of the ancient world.

Still, even beyond this, I am quite prepared to acknowledge to a certain extent the truth of the statement, that a great portion of Sanskrit literature has never been living and national, in the same sense in which the Greek and Roman literatures reflected at times the life of a whole nation; and it is quite true besides, that the Sanskrit books which are best known to the public at large, belong to what might correctly be called the Renaissance period of Indian literature, when those who wrote Sanskrit had themselves to learn the language, as we learn Latin, and were conscious that they were writing for a learned and cultivated public only, and not for the people at large.

This will require a fuller explanation.

We may divide the whole of Sanskrit literature, beginning with the Rig-Veda and ending with Dayananda's Introduction to his edition of the Rig-Veda, his by no means uninteresting Rig-Veda-bhumika, into two great periods: that preceding the great Turanian invasion, and that following it.

The former comprises the Vedic literature and the ancient literature of Buddhism, the latter all the rest.

If I call the invasion which is generally called the invasion of the _S_akas, or the Scythians, or Indo-Scythians, or Turushkas, the _Turanian[99] invasion_, it is simply because I do not as yet wish to commit myself more than I can help as to the nationality of the tribes who took possession of India, or, at least, of the government of India, from about the first century B.C. to the third century A.D.

They are best known by the name of _Yueh-chi_, this being the name by which they are called in Chinese chronicles. These Chinese chronicles form the principal source from which we derive our knowledge of these tribes, both before and after their invasion of India. Many theories have been started as to their relationship with other races. They are described as of pink and white complexion and as shooting from horseback; and as there was some similarity between their Chinese name _Yueh-chi_ and the _Gothi_ or _Goths_, they were identified by Remusat[100] with those German tribes, and by others with the _Getae_, the neighbors of the Goths. Tod went even a step farther, and traced the _G_ats in India and the Rajputs back to the _Yueh-chi_ and _Getae_.[101] Some light may come in time out of all this darkness, but for the present we must be satisfied with the fact that, between the first century before and the third century after our era, the greatest political revolution took place in India owing to the repeated inroads of Turanian, or, to use a still less objectionable term, of Northern tribes. Their presence in India, recorded by Chinese historians, is fully confirmed by coins, by inscriptions, and by the traditional history of the country, such as it is; but to my mind nothing attests the presence of these foreign invaders more clearly than the break, or, I could almost say, the blank in the Brahmanical literature of India from the first century before to the third century after our era.[102]

If we consider the political and social state of that country, we can easily understand what would happen in a case of invasion and conquest by a warlike race. The invaders would take possession of the strongholds or castles, and either remove the old Rajahs, or make them their vassals and agents. Everything else would then go on exactly as before. The rents would be paid, the taxes collected, and the life of the villagers, that is, of the great majority of the people of India, would go on almost undisturbed by the change of government. The only people who might suffer would be, or, at all events, might be the priestly caste, unless they should come to terms with the new conquerors. The priestly caste, however, was also to a great extent the literary caste, and the absence of their old patrons, the native Rajahs, might well produce for a time a complete cessation of literary activity. The rise of Buddhism and its formal adoption by King Asoka had already considerably shaken the power and influence of the old Brahmanic hierarchy. The Northern conquerors, whatever their religion may have been, were certainly not believers in the Veda. They seem to have made a kind of compromise with Buddhism, and it is probably due to that compromise, or to an amalgamation of _S_aka legends with Buddhist doctrines, that we owe the so-called Mahayana form of Buddhism--and more particularly the Amitabha worship--which was finally settled at the Council under Kanishka, one of the Turanian rulers of India in the first century A.D.

If then we divide the whole of Sanskrit literature into these two periods, the one anterior to the great Turanian invasion, the other posterior to it, we may call the literature of the former period _ancient_ and _natural_, that of the latter _modern_ and _artificial_.

Of the former period we possess, _first_, what has been called the _Veda_, _i.e._, Knowledge, in the widest sense of the word--a considerable mass of literature, yet evidently a wreck only, saved out of a general deluge; _secondly_, the works collected in the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka, now known to us chiefly in what is called the Pali dialect, the Gatha dialects, and Sanskrit, and probably much added to in later times.

The second period of Sanskrit literature comprehends everything else. Both periods may be subdivided again, but this does not concern us at present.

Now I am quite willing to admit that the literature of the second period, the modern Sanskrit literature, never was a living or national literature. It here and there contains remnants of earlier times, adapted to the literary, religious, and moral tastes of a later period; and whenever we are able to disentangle those ancient elements, they may serve to throw light on the past, and, to a certain extent, supplement what has been lost in the literature of the Vedic times. The metrical Law-books, for instance, contain old materials which existed during the Vedic period, partly in prose, as Sutras, partly in more ancient metres, as Gathas. The Epic poems, the Mahabharata and Ramaya_n_a, have taken the place of the old Itihasas and Akhyanas. The Pura_n_as, even, may contain materials, though much altered, of what was called in Vedic literature the Pura_n_a.[103]

But the great mass of that later literature is artificial or scholastic, full of interesting compositions, and by no means devoid of originality and occasional beauty; yet with all that, curious only, and appealing to the interests of the Oriental scholar far more than the broad human sympathies of the historian and the philosopher.

It is different with the ancient literature of India, the literature dominated by the Vedic and the Buddhistic religions. That literature opens to us a chapter in what has been called the Education of the Human Race, to which we can find no parallel anywhere else. Whoever cares for the historical growth of our language, that is, of our thoughts; whoever cares for the first intelligible development of religion and mythology; whoever cares for the first foundation of what in later times we call the sciences of astronomy, metronomy, grammar, and etymology; whoever cares for the first intimations of philosophical thought, for the first attempts at regulating family life, village life, and state life, as founded on religion, ceremonial, tradition and contract (samaya)--must in future pay the same attention to the literature of the Vedic period as to the literatures of Greece and Rome and Germany.

As to the lessons which the early literature of Buddhism may teach us, I need not dwell on them at present. If I may judge from the numerous questions that are addressed to me with regard to that religion and its striking coincidences with Christianity, Buddhism has already become a subject of general interest, and will and ought to become so more and more.[104] On that whole class of literature, however, it is not my intention to dwell in this short course of Lectures, which can hardly suffice even for a general survey of Vedic literature, and for an elucidation of the principal lessons which, I think, we may learn from the Hymns, the Brahma_n_as, the Upanishads, and the Sutras.

It was a real misfortune that Sanskrit literature became first known to the learned public in Europe through specimens belonging to the second, or, what I called, the Renaissance period. The Bhagavadgita, the plays of Kalidasa, such as _S_akuntala or Urva_s_i, a few episodes from the Mahabharata and Ramaya_n_a, such as those of Nala and the Ya_gn_adattabadha, the fables of the Hitopadesa, and the sentences of Bhart_ri_hari are, no doubt, extremely curious; and as, at the time when they first became known in Europe, they were represented to be of extreme antiquity, and the work of a people formerly supposed to be quite incapable of high literary efforts, they naturally attracted the attention of men such as Sir William Jones in England, Herder and Goethe in Germany, who were pleased to speak of them in terms of highest admiration. It was the fashion at that time to speak of Kalidasa, as, for instance, Alexander von Humboldt did even in so recent a work as his Kosmos, as "the great contemporary of Virgil and Horace, who lived at the splendid court of Vikramaditya," this Vikramaditya being supposed to be the founder of the Samvat era, 56 B.C. But all this is now changed. Whoever the Vikramaditya was who is supposed to have defeated the _S_akas, and to have founded another era, the Samvat era, 56 B.C., he certainly did not live in the first century B.C. Nor are the Indians looked upon any longer as an illiterate race, and their poetry as popular and artless. On the contrary, they are judged now by the same standards as Persians and Arabs, Italians or French; and, measured by that standard, such works as Kalidasa's plays are not superior to many plays that have long been allowed to rest in dust and peace on the shelves of our libraries. Their antiquity is no longer believed in by any critical Sanskrit scholar. Kalidasa is mentioned with Bharavi as a famous poet in an inscription[105] dated A.D. 585-6 (507 _S_aka era), and for the present I see no reason to place him much earlier. As to the Laws of Manu, which used to be assigned to a fabulous antiquity,[106] and are so still sometimes by those who write at random or at second-hand, I doubt whether, in their present form, they can be older than the fourth century of our era, nay I am quite prepared to see an even later date assigned to them. I know this will seem heresy to many Sanskrit scholars, but we must try to be honest to ourselves. Is there any evidence to constrain us to assign the Manava-dharma-_s_astra, such as we now possess it, written in continuous _S_lokas, to any date anterior to 300 A.D.? And if there is not, why should we not openly state it, challenge opposition, and feel grateful if our doubts can be removed?

That Manu was a name of high legal authority before that time, and that Manu and the Manavam are frequently quoted in the ancient legal Sutras, is quite true; but this serves only to confirm the conviction that the literature which succeeded the Turanian invasion is full of wrecks saved from the intervening deluge. If what we call the _Laws of Manu_ had really existed as a code of laws, like the Code of Justinian, during previous centuries, is it likely that it should nowhere have been quoted and appealed to?

Varahamihira (who died 587 A.D.) refers to Manu several times, but not to a Manava-dharma-_s_astra; and the only time where he seems actually to quote a number of verses from Manu, these verses are not to be met with in our text.[107]

I believe it will be found that the century in which Varahamihara lived and wrote was the age of the literary Renaissance in India.[108] That Kalidasa and Bharavi were famous at that time, we know from the evidence of inscriptions. We also know that during that century the fame of Indian literature had reached Persia, and that the King of Persia, Khosru Nushirvan, sent his physician, Barzoi, to India, in order to translate the fables of the Pa_nk_atantra, or rather their original, from Sanskrit into Pahlavi. The famous "Nine Gems," or "the nine classics," as we should say, have been referred, at least in part, to the same age,[109] and I doubt whether we shall be able to assign a much earlier date to anything we possess of Sanskrit literature, excepting always the Vedic and Buddhistic writings.

Although the specimens of this modern Sanskrit literature, when they first became known, served to arouse a general interest, and serve even now to keep alive a certain superficial sympathy for Indian literature, more serious students had soon disposed of these compositions, and while gladly admitting their claim to be called pretty and attractive, could not think of allowing to Sanskrit literature a place among the world-literatures, a place by the side of Greek and Latin, Italian, French, English, or German.

There was indeed a time when people began to imagine that all that was worth knowing about Indian literature was known, and that the only ground on which Sanskrit could claim a place among the recognized branches of learning in a university was its usefulness for the study of the Science of Language.

At that very time, however, now about forty years ago, a new start was made, which has given to Sanskrit scholarship an entirely new character. The chief author of that movement was Burnouf, then professor at the _College de France_ in Paris, an excellent scholar, but at the same time a man of wide views and true historical instincts, and the last man to waste his life on mere Nalas and _S_akuntalas. Being brought up in the old traditions of the classical school in France (his father was the author of the well-known Greek Grammar), then for a time a promising young barrister, with influential friends such as Guizot, Thiers, Mignet, Villemain, at his side, and with a brilliant future before him, he was not likely to spend his life on pretty Sanskrit ditties. What he wanted when he threw himself on Sanskrit was history, human history, world-history, and with an unerring grasp he laid hold of Vedic literature and Buddhist literature, as the two stepping-stones in the slough of Indian literature. He died young, and has left a few arches only of the building he wished to rear. But his spirit lived on in his pupils and his friends, and few would deny that the first impulse, directly or indirectly, to all that has been accomplished since by the students of Vedic and Buddhist literature, was given by Burnouf and his lectures at the _College de France_.

What then, you may ask, do we find in that ancient Sanskrit literature and cannot find anywhere else? My answer is: We find there the Aryan man, whom we know in his various characters, as Greek, Roman, German, Celt, and Slave, in an entirely new character. Whereas in his migrations northward his active and political energies are called out and brought to their highest perfection, we find the other side of the human character, the passive and meditative, carried to its fullest growth in India. In some of the hymns of the Rig-Veda we can still watch an earlier phase. We see the Aryan tribes taking possession of the land, and under the guidance of such warlike gods as Indra and the Maruts, defending their new homes against the assaults of the black-skinned aborigines as well as against the inroads of later Aryan colonists. But that period of war soon came to an end, and when the great mass of the people had once settled down in their homesteads, the military and political duties seem to have been monopolized by what we call a _caste_,[110] that is by a small aristocracy, while the great majority of the people were satisfied with spending their days within the narrow spheres of their villages, little concerned about the outside world, and content with the gifts that nature bestowed on them, without much labor. We read in the Mahabharata (XIII. 22):

"There is fruit on the trees in every forest, which every one who likes may pluck without trouble. There is cool and sweet water in the pure rivers here and there. There is a soft bed made of the twigs of beautiful creepers. And yet wretched people suffer pain at the door of the rich!"

At first sight we may feel inclined to call this quiet enjoyment of life, this mere looking on, a degeneracy rather than a growth. It seems so different from what _we_ think life ought to be. Yet, from a higher point of view it may appear that those Southern Aryans have chosen the good part, or at least the part good for them, while we, Northern Aryans, have been careful and troubled about many things.

It is at all events a problem worth considering whether, as there is in nature a South and a North, there are not two hemispheres also in human nature, both worth developing--the active, combative, and political on one side, the passive, meditative, and philosophical on the other; and for the solution of that problem no literature furnishes such ample materials as that of the Veda, beginning with the Hymns and ending with the Upanishads. We enter into a new world--not always an attractive one, least of all to us; but it possesses one charm, it is real, it is of natural growth, and like everything of natural growth, I believe it had a hidden purpose, and was intended to teach us some kind of lesson that is worth learning, and that certainly we could learn nowhere else. We are not called upon either to admire or to despise that ancient Vedic literature; we have simply to study and to try to understand it.

There have been silly persons who have represented the development of the Indian mind as superior to any other, nay, who would make us go back to the Veda or to the sacred writings of the Buddhists in order to find there a truer religion, a purer morality, and a more sublime philosophy than our own. I shall not even mention the names of these writers or the titles of their works. But I feel equally impatient when I see other scholars criticising the ancient literature of India as if it were the work of the nineteenth century, as if it represented an enemy that must be defeated, and that can claim no mercy at our hands. That the Veda is full of childish, silly, even to our minds monstrous conceptions, who would deny? But even these monstrosities are interesting and instructive; nay, many of them, if we can but make allowance for different ways of thought and language, contain germs of truth and rays of light, all the more striking because breaking upon us through the veil of the darkest night.

Here lies the general, the truly human interest which the _ancient_ literature of India possesses, and which gives it a claim on the attention, not only of Oriental scholars or of students of ancient history, but of every educated man and woman.

There are problems which we may put aside for a time, ay, which we must put aside while engaged each in our own hard struggle for life, but which will recur for all that, and which, whenever they do recur, will stir us more deeply than we like to confess to others, or even to ourselves. It is true that with us one day only out of seven is set apart for rest and meditation, and for the consideration of what the Greeks called [Greek: ta megista]--"the greatest things." It is true that that seventh day also is passed by many of us either in mere church-going routine or in thoughtless rest. But whether on week-days or on Sundays, whether in youth or in old age, there are moments, rare though they be, yet for all that the most critical moments of our life, when the old simple questions of humanity return to us in all their intensity, and we ask ourselves, What are we? What is this life on earth meant for? Are we to have no rest here, but to be always toiling and building up our own happiness out of the ruins of the happiness of our neighbors? And when we have made our home on earth as comfortable as it can be made with steam and gas and electricity, are we really so much happier than the Hindu in his primitive homestead?