A History of Sanskrit Literature

Finally, we have as a division of the Sūtras, concerned with religious practice, the Çulva Sūtras. The thirtieth and last praçna of the great Kalpa Sūtra of Āpastamba is a treatise of this class. These are practical manuals giving the measurements necessary for the construction of the vedi, of the altars, and so forth. They show quite an advanced knowledge of geometry, and constitute the oldest Indian mathematical works.

The whole body of Vedic works composed in the Sūtra style, is according to the Indian traditional view, divided into six classes called Vedāngas (“members of the Veda”). These are çikshā or phonetics; chhandas, or metre; vyākaraṇa, or grammar; nirukta, or etymology; kalpa, or religious practice; and jyotisha, or astronomy. The first four were meant as aids to the correct reciting and understanding of the sacred texts; the last two deal with religious rites or duties, and their proper seasons. They all have their origin in the exigencies of religion, and the last four furnish the beginnings or (in one case) the full development of five branches of science that flourished in the post-Vedic period. In the fourth and sixth group the name of the class has been applied to designate a particular work representing it.

Of kalpa we have already treated at length above. No work representing astronomy has survived from the Vedic period; for the Vedic calendar, called jyotisha, the two recensions of which profess to belong to the Rigveda and Yajurveda respectively, dates from far on in the post-Vedic age.

The Taittirīya Āraṇyaka (vii. 1) already mentions çikshā, or phonetics, a subject which even then appears to have dealt with letters, accents, quantity, pronunciation, and euphonic rules. Several works bearing the title of çikshā have been preserved, but they are only late supplements of Vedic literature. They are short manuals containing directions for Vedic recitation and correct pronunciation. The earliest surviving results of phonetic studies are of course the Saṃhitā texts of the various Vedas, which were edited in accordance with euphonic rules. A further advance was made by the constitution of the pada-pāṭha, or word-text of the Vedas, which, by resolving the euphonic combinations and giving each word (even the parts of compounds) separately, in its original form unmodified by phonetic rules, furnished a basis for all subsequent studies. Yāska, Pāṇini, and other grammarians do not always accept the analyses of the Padapāṭhas when they think they understand a Vedic form better. Patanjali even directly contests their authoritativeness. The treatises really representative of Vedic phonetics are the Prātiçākhyas, which are directly connected with the Saṃhitā and Padapāṭha. It is their object to determine the relation of these to each other. In so doing they furnish a systematic account of Vedic euphonic combination, besides adding phonetic discussions to secure the correct recitation of the sacred texts. They are generally regarded as anterior to Pāṇini, who shows unmistakable points of contact with them. It is perhaps more correct to suppose that Pāṇini used the present Prātiçākhyas in an older form, as, whenever he touches on Vedic sandhi, he is always less complete in his statements than they are, while the Prātiçākhyas, especially that of the Atharva-veda, are dependent on the terminology of the grammarians. Four of these treatises have been preserved and published. One belongs to the Rigveda, another to the Atharva-, and two to the Yajur-veda, being attached to the Vājasaneyi and the Taittirīya Saṃhitā respectively. They are so called because intended for the use of each respective branch (çākhā) of the Vedas.

The Prātiçākhya Sūtra of the Rigveda is an extensive metrical work in three books, traditionally attributed to Çaunaka, the teacher of Āçvalāyana; it may, however, in its present form only be a production of the school of Çaunaka. This Prātiçākhya was later epitomised, with the addition of some supplementary matter, in a short treatise entitled Upalekha. The Taittirīya Prātiçākhya is particularly interesting owing to the various peculiar names of teachers occurring among the twenty which it mentions. The Vājasaneyi Prātiçākhya, in eight chapters, names Kātyāyana as its author, and mentions Çaunaka among other predecessors. The Atharva-veda Prātiçākhya, in four chapters, belonging to the school of the Çaunakas, is more grammatical than the other works of this class.

Metre, to which there are many scattered references in the Brāhmaṇas, is separately treated in a section of the Çānkhāyana Çrauta Sūtra (7, 27), in the last three sections (paṭalas) of the Rigveda Prātiçākhya, and especially in the Nidāna Sūtra, which belongs to the Sāmaveda. A part of the Chhandaḥ Sūtra of Pingala also deals with Vedic metres; but though it claims to be a Vedānga, it is in reality a late supplement, dealing chiefly with post-Vedic prosody, on which, indeed, it is the standard authority.

Finally, Kātyāyana’s two Anukramaṇīs or indices, mentioned below, each contains a section, varying but slightly from the other, on Vedic metres. These sections are, however, almost identical in matter with the sixteenth paṭala of the Rigveda Prātiçākhya, and may possibly be older than the corresponding passage in the Prātiçākhya, though the latter work as a whole is doubtless anterior to the Anukramaṇī.

The Padapāṭhas show that their authors had not only made investigations as to pronunciation and Sandhi, but already knew a good deal about the grammatical analysis of words; for they separate both the parts of compounds and the prefixes of verbs, as well as certain suffixes and terminations of nouns. They had doubtless already distinguished the four parts of speech (padajātāni), though these are first mentioned by Yāska as nāman, or “noun” (including sarva-nāman, “representing all nouns” or “pronouns”), ākhyāta, “predicate,” i.e. “verb”; upasarga, “supplement,” i.e. “preposition”; nipāta, “incidental addition,” i.e. “particle.” It is perhaps to the separation of these categories that the name for grammar, vyākaraṇa, originally referred, rather than to the analysis of words. Even the Brāhmaṇas bear evidence of linguistic investigations, for they mention various grammatical terms, such as “letter” (varṇa), “masculine” (vṛishan), “number” (vachana), “case-form” (vibhakti).Still more such references are to be found in the Āraṇyakas, the Upanishads, and the Sūtras. But the most important information we have of pre-Pāṇinean grammar is that found in Yāska’s work.

Grammatical studies must have been cultivated to a considerable extent before Yāska’s time, for he distinguishes a Northern and an Eastern school, besides mentioning nearly twenty predecessors, among whom Çākaṭāyana, Gārgya, and Çākalya are the most important. By the time of Yāska grammarians had learned to distinguish clearly between the stem and the formative elements of words; recognising the personal terminations and the tense affixes of the verb on the one hand, and primary (kṛit) or secondary (taddhita) nominal suffixes on the other. Yāska has an interesting discussion on the theory of Çākaṭāyana, which he himself follows, that nouns are derived from verbs. Gārgya and some other grammarians, he shows, admit this theory in a general way, but deny that it is applicable to all nouns. He criticises their objections, and finally dismisses them as untenable. On Çākaṭāyana’s theory of the verbal origin of nouns the whole system of Pāṇini is founded. The sūtra of that grammarian contains hundreds of rules dealing with Vedic forms; but these are of the nature of exceptions to the main body of his rules, which are meant to describe the Sanskrit language. His work almost entirely dominates the subsequent literature. Though belonging to the middle of the Sūtra period, it must be regarded as the definite starting-point of the post-Vedic age. Coming to be regarded as an infallible authority, Pāṇini superseded all his predecessors, whose works have consequently perished. Yāska alone survives, and that only because he was not directly a grammarian; for his work represents, and alone represents, the Vedānga “etymology.”

Yāska’s Nirukta is in reality a Vedic commentary, and is older by some centuries than any other exegetical work preserved in Sanskrit. Its bases are the Nighaṇṭus, collections of rare or obscure Vedic words, arranged for the use of teachers. Yāska had before him five such collections. The first three contain groups of synonyms, the fourth specially difficult words, and the fifth a classification of the Vedic gods. These Yāska explained for the most part in the twelve books of his commentary (to which two others were added later). In so doing he adduces as examples a large number of verses, chiefly from the Rigveda, which he interprets with many etymological remarks.

The first book is an introduction, dealing with the principles of grammar and exegesis. The second and third elucidate certain points in the synonymous nighaṇṭus; Books IV.–VI. comment on the fourth section, and VII.–XII. on the fifth. The Nirukta, besides being very important from the point of view of exegesis and grammar, is highly interesting as the earliest specimen of Sanskrit prose of the classical type, considerably earlier than Pāṇini himself. Yāska already uses essentially the same grammatical terminology as Pāṇini, employing, for instance, the same words for root (dhātu), primary, and secondary suffixes. But he must have lived a long time before Pāṇini; for a considerable number of important grammarians’ names are mentioned between them. Yāska must, therefore, go back to the fifth century, and undoubtedly belongs to the beginning of the Sūtra period.

One point of very great importance proved by the Nirukta is that the Rigveda had a very fixed form in Yāska’s time, and was essentially identical with our text. His deviations are very insignificant. Thus in one passage (X. 29. I) he reads vāyó as one word, against vā yó as two words in Çākalya’s Pada text. Yāska’s paraphrases show that he also occasionally differed from the Saṃhitā text, though the quotations themselves from the Rigveda have been corrected so as to agree absolutely with the traditional text. But these slight variations are probably due to mistakes in the Nirukta rather than to varieties of reading in the Rigveda. There are a few insignificant deviations of this kind even in Sāyaṇa, but they are always manifestly oversights on the part of the commentator.

To the Sūtras is attached a very extensive literature of Pariçishṭas or “supplements,” which seem to have existed in all the Vedic schools. They contain details on matters only touched upon in the Sūtras, or supplementary information about subjects not dealt with at all by them. Thus, there is the Āçvalāyana Gṛihya-pariçishṭa, in four chapters, connected with the Rigveda. The Gobhila saṃgraha-pariçishṭa is a compendium of Gṛihya practices in general, with a special leaning towards magical rites, which came to be attached to the Sāmaveda. Closely related to, and probably later than this work, is the Karma-pradīpa (“lamp of rites”), also variously called sāma-gṛihya- or chhāndogyagṛihya-pariçishṭa, chhandoga-pariçishṭa, Gobhila-smṛiti, attributed to the Kātyāyana of the White Yajurveda or to Gobhila. It deals with the same subjects, though independently, as the Gṛihya saṃgraha, with which it occasionally agrees in whole çlokas.

Of great importance for the understanding of the sacrificial ceremonial are the Prayogas (“Manuals”) and Paddhatis (“Guides”), of which a vast number exist in manuscript. These works represent both the Çrauta and the Gṛihya ritual according to the various schools. The Prayogas describe the course of each sacrifice and the functions of the different groups of priests, solely from the point of view of practical performance, while the Paddhatis rather follow the systematic accounts of the Sūtras and sketch their contents. There are also versified accounts of the ritual called Kārikās, which are directly attached to Sūtras or to Paddhatis. The oldest of them appears to be the Kārikā of Kumārila (c. 700 A.D.).

Of a supplementary character are also the class of writings called Anukramaṇīs or Vedic Indices, which give lists of the hymns, the authors, the metres, and the deities in the order in which they occur in the various Saṃhitās. To the Rigveda belonged seven of these works, all attributed to Çaunaka, and composed in the mixture of the çloka and trishṭubh metre, which is also found in Çaunaka’s Rigveda Prātiçākhya. There is also a General Index or Sarvānukramaṇī which is attributed to Kātyāyana, and epitomises in the Sūtra style the contents of the metrical indices. Of the metrical indices five have been preserved. The Ārshānukramaṇī, containing rather less than 300 çlokas, gives a list of the Rishis or authors of the Rigveda. Its present text represents a modernised form of that which was known to the commentator Shaḍguruçishya in the twelfth century. The Chhandonukramaṇī, which is of almost exactly the same length, enumerates the metres in which the hymns of the Rigveda are composed. It also states for each book the number of verses in each metre as well as the aggregate in all metres. The Anuvākānukramaṇī is a short index containing only about forty verses. It states the initial words of each of the eighty-five anuvākas or lessons into which the Rigveda is divided, and the number of hymns contained in these anuvākas. It further states that the Rigveda contains 1017 hymns (or 1025 according to the Vāshkala recension), 10,580–1/2 verses, 153,826 words, 432,000 syllables, besides some other statistical details. The number of verses given does not exactly tally with various calculations that have recently been made, but the differences are only slight, and may be due to the way in which certain repeated verses were counted by the author of the index.

There is another short index, known as yet only in two MSS., called the Pādānukramaṇī, or “index of lines” (pādas), and composed in the same mixed metre as the others. The Sūktānukramaṇī, which has not survived, and is only known by name, probably consisted only of the initial words (pratīkas) of the hymns. It probably perished because the Sarvānukramaṇī would have rendered such a work superfluous. No MS. of the Devatānukramaṇī or “Index of gods” exists, but ten quotations from it have been preserved by the commentator Shaḍguruçishya. It must have been superseded by the Bṛihaddevatā, an index of the “many gods,” a much more extensive work than any of the other Anukramaṇīs, as it contains about 1200 çlokas interspersed with occasional trishṭubhs. It is divided into eight adhyāyas corresponding to the ashṭakas of the Rigveda. Following the order of the Rigveda, its main object is to state the deity for each verse. But as it contains a large number of illustrative myths and legends, it is of great value as an early collection of stories. It is to a considerable extent based on Yāska’s Nirukta. Besides Yāska himself and other teachers named by that scholar, it also mentions Bhāguri and Āçvalāyana as well as the Nidāna Sūtra, A peculiarity of this work is that it refers to a number of supplementary hymns (khilas) which do not form part of the canonical text of the Rigveda.

Later, at least, than the original form of these metrical Anukramaṇīs, is the Sarvānukramaṇī of Kātyāyana, which combines the data contained in them within the compass of a single work. Composed in the Sūtra style, it is of considerable length, occupying about forty-six pages in the printed edition. For every hymn in the Rigveda it states the initial word or words, the number of its verses, as well as the author, the deity, and the metre, even for single verses. There is an introduction in twelve sections, nine of which form a short treatise on Vedic metres corresponding to the last three sections of the Rigveda Prātiçākhya. The author begins with the statement that he is going to supply an index of the pratīkas and so forth of the Rigveda according to the authorities (yathopadeçam), because without such knowledge the Çrauta and Smārta rites cannot be accomplished. These authorities are doubtless the metrical indices described above. For the text of the Sarvānukramaṇī, which is composed in a concise Sūtra style, not only contains some metrical lines (pādas), but also a number of passages either directly taken from the Ārshānukramaṇī and the Bṛihaddevatā, or with their metrical wording but slightly altered. Another metrical work attributed to Çaunaka is the Ṛigvidhāna, which describes the magical effects produced by the recitation of hymns or single verses of the Rigveda.

To the Pariçishṭas of the Sāmaveda belong the two indices called Ārsha and Daivata, enumerating respectively the Rishis and deities of the text of the Naigeya branch of the Sāmaveda. They quote Yāska, Çaunaka, and Āçvalāyana among others. There are also two Anukramaṇīs attached to the Black Yajurveda. That of the Ātreya school consists of two parts, the first of which is in prose, and the second in çlokas. It contains little more than an enumeration of names referring to the contents of its Saṃhitā. The Anukramaṇī of the Chārāyaṇīya school of the Kāṭhaka is an index of the authors of the various sections and verses. Its statements regarding passages derived from the Rigveda differ much from those of the Sarvānukramaṇī of the Rigveda, giving a number of totally new names. It claims to be the work of Atri, who communicated it to Laugākshi. The Anukramaṇī of the White Yajurveda in the Mādhyaṃdina recension, attributed to Kātyāyana, consists of five sections. The first four are an index of authors, deities, and metres. The authors of verses taken from the Rigveda generally agree with those in the Sarvānukramaṇī. There are, however, a good many exceptions, several new names belonging to a later period, some even to that of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa. The fifth section gives a summary account of the metres occurring in the text. It is identical with the corresponding portion of the introduction to the Sarvānukramaṇī, which was probably the original position of the section. There are many other Pariçishṭas of the White Yajurveda, all attributed to Kātyāyana. Only three of these need be mentioned here. The Nigama-pariçishṭa, a glossary of synonymous words occurring in the White Yajurveda, has a lexicographical interest. The Pravarādhyāya, or “Chapter on Ancestors,” is a list of Brahman families drawn up for the purpose of determining the forbidden degrees of relationship in marriage, and of indicating the priests suitable for the performance of sacrifice. The Charaṇa-vyūha, or “Exposition of the Schools” of the various Vedas, is a very late work of little importance, giving a far less complete enumeration of the Vedic schools than certain sections of the Vishṇu- and the Vāyu-Purāṇa. There is also a Charaṇa-vyūha among the Pariçishṭas of the Atharva-veda, which number upwards of seventy. This work makes the statement that the Atharva contains 2000 hymns and 12,380 verses.

In concluding this account of Vedic literature, I cannot omit to say a few words about Sāyaṇa, the great mediæval Vedic scholar, to whom or to whose initiation we owe a number of valuable commentaries on the Rigveda, the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka, as well as the Taittirīya Saṃhitā, Brāhmaṇa, and Āraṇyaka, besides a number of other works. His comments on the two Saṃhitās would appear to have been only partially composed by himself and to have been completed by his pupils. He died in 1387, having written his works under Bukka I. (1350–79), whose teacher and minister he calls himself, and his successor, Harihara (1379–99). These princes belonged to a family which, throwing off the Muhammadan yoke in the earlier half of the fourteenth century, founded the dynasty of Vijayanagara (“city of victory”), now Hampi, on the Tungabhadrā, in the Bellary district. Sāyaṇa’s elder brother, Mādhava, was minister of King Bukka, and died as abbot of the monastery of Çṛingeri, under the name of Vidyāraṇyasvāmin. Not only did he too produce works of his own, but Sāyaṇa’s commentaries, as composed under his patronage, were dedicated to him as mādhavīya, or (“influenced by Mādhava”). By an interesting coincidence Professor Max Müller’s second edition of the Rigveda, with the commentary of Sāyaṇa, was brought out under the auspices of a Mahārāja of Vijayanagara. The latter city has, however, nothing to do with that from which King Bukka derived his title.

Chapter X

The Epics

(Circa 500–50 B.C.)

In turning from the Vedic to the Sanskrit period, we are confronted with a literature which is essentially different from that of the earlier age in matter, spirit, and form. Vedic literature is essentially religious; Sanskrit literature, abundantly developed in every other direction, is profane. But, doubtless as a result of the speculative tendencies of the Upanishads, a moralising spirit at the same time breathes through it as a whole. The religion itself which now prevails is very different from that of the Vedic age. For in the new period the three great gods, Brahmā, Vishṇu, and Çiva are the chief objects of worship. The important deities of the Veda have sunk to a subordinate position, though Indra is still relatively prominent as the chief of a warrior’s heaven. Some new gods of lesser rank have arisen, such as Kubera, god of wealth; Gaṇeça, god of learning; Kārttikeya, god of war; Çrī or Lakshmī, goddess of beauty and fortune; Durgā or Pārvatī, the terrible spouse of Çiva; besides the serpent deities and several classes of demigods and demons.

While the spirit of Vedic literature, at least in its earlier phase, is optimistic, Sanskrit poetry is pervaded by Weltschmerz, resulting from the now universally accepted doctrine of transmigration. To that doctrine, according to which beings pass by gradations from Brahmā through men and animals to the lowest forms of existence, is doubtless also largely due the fantastic element characteristic of this later poetry. Here, for instance, we read of Vishṇu coming down to earth in the shape of animals, of sages and saints wandering between heaven and earth, of human kings visiting Indra in heaven.

Hand in hand with this fondness for introducing the marvellous and supernatural into the description of human events goes a tendency to exaggeration. Thus King Viçvāmitra, we are told, practised penance for thousands of years in succession; and the power of asceticism is described as so great as to cause even the worlds and the gods to tremble. The very bulk of the Mahābhārata, consisting as it does of more than 200,000 lines, is a concrete illustration of this defective sense of proportion.

As regards the form in which it is presented to us, Sanskrit literature contrasts with that of both the earlier and the later Vedic period. While prose was employed in the Yajurvedas and the Brāhmaṇas, and finally attained to a certain degree of development, it almost disappears in Sanskrit, nearly every branch of literature being treated in verse, often much to the detriment of the subject, as in the case of law. The only departments almost entirely restricted to the use of prose are grammar and philosophy, but the cramped and enigmatical style in which these subjects are treated hardly deserves the name of prose at all. Literary prose is found only in fables, fairy tales, romances, and partially in the drama. In consequence of this neglect, the prose of the later period compares unfavourably with that of the Brāhmaṇas. Even the style of the romances or prose kāvyas, subject as it is to the strict rules of poetics, is as clumsy as that of the grammatical commentaries; for the use of immense compounds, like those of the Sūtras, is one of its essential characteristics.