Page:Stories of India's Gods & Heroes.djvu/13

Rh Puranas is definitely religious, and most of them are written to glorify some god in particular. They generally begin with an account of the origin of the world, and go on to describe the various appearances and achievements of the god. The scope which this arrangement gives for stories of every kind is practically unbounded.

If we turn now to consider very briefly some of the most remarkable points about this great literature, the first thing to which I would draw attention is the vast period which it covers. We are fairly safe in carrying the limits of "classical" Sanskrit as late as about 1,000 A.D.—a very rough estimate, no doubt—and we thus see that, beginning with the Vedas, the whole covers a period of no less than 2,500 years. The Sanskrit of the Veda differs from that of the Epics much as the language of Homer differs from that of Sophocles; but we still have a period of something like 2,000 years during which the language has continued to put forth books great and small with less alteration in the style and vocabulary than has taken place during the last three centuries in Britain. This is due mainly, no doubt, to the fact that Sanskrit was a sacred language, and occupied, among the various kingdoms of India, a place similar to that taken by Latin during the Middle Ages in Europe.

Considering the enormous time which the literature had for its development, three further points strike us as remarkable.

In the first place, all the works from which these tales are taken, and the great majority of Sanskrit writings in general, are either properly religious