Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/307

Rh LITERATURE.] SANS KBIT 287 Didactic poetry. cloud, will have to sail in his airy voyage. This little masterpiece has called forth a number of mpre or less suc- cessful imitations, such as Lakshmidasa's Suka-sandesa, or " parrot-message," lately edited by the maharaja of Tra van- core. Another much admired descriptive poem by Ksilidasa is the Ritu-samhdra, 1 or "collection of the seasons," in which the attractive features of the six seasons are suc- cessively set forth. As regards religious lyrics, the fruit of sectarian fervour, a large collection of hymns and detached stanzas, extolling some special deity, might be made from Puranas and other works. Of independent productions of this kind only a few of the more important can be mentioned here. ankaracharya, the great Vedantist, who probably lived in the 7th century, is credited with several devo- tional poems, especially the Ananda-lahari, or " wave of joy," a hymn of 103 stanzas, in praise of the goddess Par- vati. The Silrya-sataka, or century of stanzas in praise of $urya, the sun, is ascribed to Maydra, the contemporary (and, according to a tradition, the father-in-law) of Bana (in the early part of the 7th century). The latter poet himself composed the Chandikdstotra, a hymn of 102 stanzas, extolling Diva's consort. The Kliandaprasasti, a poem celebrating the ten avataras of Vishnu, is ascribed to no other than Hanuman, the monkey general, himself. Jayadeva's beautiful poem GUagovinda, which, like most productions concerning Krishna, is of a very sensuous character, has already been referred to. The particular branch of didactic poetry in which India is especially rich is that of moral maxims, expressed in single stanzas or couplets, and forming the chief vehicle of the Niti-sdstra or ethic science. Excellent collections of such aphorisms have been published, in Sanskrit and German by Dr v. Bohtlingk, and in English by Dr J. Muir. Probably the oldest original collection of this kind is that ascribed to Chanakya, and entitled Rdjanitisa- muchchaya, " collection on the conduct of kings " tradi- tionally connected with the Machiavellian minister of Chandragupta, but (in its present form) doubtless much later of which there are several recensions, especially a shorter one of one hundred couplets, and a larger one of some three hundred. Another old collection is the Kdmandakiya-NUisdra? ascribed to Kamandaki, who is said to have been the disciple of Chanakya. Under the name of Bhartrihari have been handed down three centuries of sententious couplets, one of which, the niti-sataka, relates to ethics, whilst the other two, the s"ringdra- and vairdgya-s"atakas, consist of amatory and devotional verses respectively. The Niti-pradipa, or "lamp of conduct," consisting of sixteen stanzas, is ascribed to Vetalabhatta who is mentioned as one of nine gems at Vikramaditya's court (c. 550 A.D.). The AmarA-dataka, consisting of a hundred stanzas, ascribed to a King Amaru (sometimes wrongly to Sankara), and the Chaura-suratajmnchds'ikd, by Bilhana (llth century), are of an entirely erotic character. 6. Fables and Narratives. For purposes of popular in- struction stanzas of an ethical import were early worked up with existing prose fables and popular stories, pro- bably in imitation of the Buddhist jdtakas, or birth- stories. A collection of this kind, intended as a manual for the guidance of princes (in usum delphini), was trans- lated into Pahlavi in the reign of the Persian king Chosru Nushirvan, 531-579 A.D. ; but neither this translation nor the original is any longer extant. A Syriac transla- tion, however, made from the Pahlavi in the same century, under the title of "Qualilag and Dimnag" from the 1 The first Sanskrit book published (by Sir W. Jones), 1792. Text and Latin transl. by P. v. Bohlen. Partly transl., in verse, by E. T. H. Griffith, Specimens of Old Indian Poetry. 2 Edited by Rajendralala Mitra, Bibl. Ind. Sanskrit "Karataka and Damanaka," two jackals who play an important part as the lion's counsellors has been discovered and published. The Sanskrit original, which probably consisted of fourteen chapters, was after- wards recast, the result being the existing Panchatantra, 3 or " five books" (or headings). A popular summary of this work, in four books, the Hitopadesaf or " Salutary counsel," is ascribed to the Brahman Vishnusarman. Other highly popular collections of stories and fairy tales, interspersed with moral maxims, are the Vetdla-pan- chaviriisati or " twenty-five (stories) of the Vetala" (the original of the Baital Pachisi), ascribed either to Jambhala Datta, or to Sivadasa (while Prof. Weber suggests that Vetala-bhatta may have been the author), and at all events older than the 12th century, since Somadeva has used it; the Suka-saptati, or " seventy (stories related) by the parrot," the author and age of which are unknown ; and the Simhdsana-dvdtrimsikd) or " thirty-two (tales) of the throne," being laudatory stories regarding VikramMitya, related by thirty-two statues, standing round the old throne of that famous monarch, to King Bhoja of Dhar^l to dis- courage him from sitting down on it. This work is ascribed to Kshemankara, and was probably composed in the time of Bhoja (who died in 1053) from older stories in the Maharashtra dialect. The original text has, however, undergone many modifications, and is now known in several different recensions. Of about the same date are two great storehouses of fairy tales, composed entirely in slokas, viz., the Vrihat-Jcathd, or "great story," by Kshemendra, also called Kshemankara, who wrote c. 1020-40, under King Ananta, and the Katlid-sarit-sdgaraf or " the ocean of the streams of story," composed by Somadeva, in the beginning of the 12th century, to console the mother of King Harshadeva on her son's death. Both these works are based on a work in the Paisachi dialect, of the 6th century, viz., Gunadhya's Vrihat-kathd. In higher class prose works of fiction the Sanskrit literature is extremely poor ; and the few productions of this kind of which it can boast are of a highly artificial and pedantic character. These include the Dadakumdra- charita, 6 or " the adventures of the ten princes," composed by Dandin, about the 6th century, and the Vdsavadattd, 7 by Subandhu, the contemporary of the poet Bana (c. 620), who himself wrote the first part of a novel, the Kddambari, 8 afterwards completed by his son. B. SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. I. LAW (Dharma). Among the technical treatises of the later LAW. Vedic period, certain portions of the Kalpa-sutras, or manuals of ceremonial, peculiar to particular schools, were referred to as the earliest attempts at a systematic treatment of law subjects. These are the Dfutrma-stitras, or "rules of (religious) law," also called Sdmaydclidrika-stitras, or "rules of conventional usage (samaya- achara). " It is doubtful whether such treatises were at any time qiiite as numerous as the Grihyasutras, or rules of domestic or family rites, to which they are closely allied, and of which indeed they may originally have been an outgrowth. That the number of those actually extant is comparatively small is, however, chiefly due to the fact that this class of works was supplanted by another of a more popular kind, which covered the same ground. The Dharmasutras consist chiefly of strings of terse rules, containing the essentials of the science, and intended to be committed to memory, and to be expounded orally by the teacher thus forming, as it were, epitomes of class lectures. These rules are interspersed with couplets or "gathas," in various metres, either composed by the author himself or quoted from elsewhere, which generally give the substance of the preceding rules. One can well understand why such couplets should gradually have become more popular, and 3 Edited by Kosegarten, G. Biihler, and F. Kielhorn; transl. by Th. Benfey, E. Lancereau, L. Fritze. 4 Edited and transl. by F. Johnson. 5 Edited by II. Brockhaus ; transl. by C. H. Tawney. 6 Edited by H. H. Wilson ; freely translated by P. W. Jacob. 7 Edited by F. Hall, Bibl. Ind. 8 Edited by Madana Mohana Sarman, and by P. Peterson.