HINDU LITERATURE. 273 CHAPTER VIII. Hindú Literature classified and found wanting. "Die Indische Literatur gillt allgemein für die älteste, von der wir schriftliche Dokumente besitzen, und das mit recht; die Gründe aber, die Man dafür bisher geltend gemacht hat, sind nicht die richtigen. * "Sind wir aus äusseren, geographischen, und inneren, religionsgeshichtlichen, Gründen berechtigt für die Indische Literatur ein hohes Alter anzunehmen, so steht es auf der andern Seite schlimm genug, wenn man nach chronologischen Daten für dieselbe sucht."-WEBER, Akademische Vorlesungen. Berlin, 1842. "WHERE now," said Blancombe, turning to Vidyáchárya, when he had gone some way with his table, "shall I put in the Vishnu Purána ?" "The eighteen Puránas," answered Vidyachárya, "are traced to the Súta (bard) Romaharshana, who received them from Vyása. Their name means old, and they are parts of our most ancient revelation." "Then where shall I put the Vedas?" asked Blancombe. "They also," replied Acharya, "were compiled by Vyása." "Do you say the same of the laws of Manu?" "They were given by Brahmá to the first Manu (Swayambhuvan), for the instruction of mankind; so that they are of the most venerable antiquity." "But," asked Blancombe, "does your account of the Puránas extend to such as the Vayu, Vishnu, Bhagavat, and Matsya?” Certainly," replied the other, "for it includes the whole eighteen." "Then here is an enormous difficulty," resumed Blancombe, " for let us look in the first place at the Vishnu. It professes in the outset to be taught by Parásara to Maitreya; but Maitreya is mentioned in the Mahabharata as contemporary with Duryodhana, who is about the time of the Great War, therefore many centuries later than the primeval date you have been suggesting. This, however, is not all; for the four Puránas I have just mentioned. give an account of Indian dynasties far down into the Christian era, as we have seen in the case of the Andhras. Your theory M. P. 18 274 LATENESS OF THE PURANAS. is, that such things are prophecies. Nor do I deny that the Allwise God might, if he had so thought good, have inspired Vyása or Romaharshana* to utter such predictions. But this minute sketching of history beforehand is not so ordinary in the course of the Divine government, that we can assume it to have taken place, unless the books which pretend it are remarkably well attested before the events come to pass. Can you quote any such testimonies to the Puránas, as they now stand?" "The name," answered the A'chárya, "is very ancient." "But we should want," resumed the other, "some precise verification of the identity of the books. Whereas, in fact, we have rather the contrary. For the celebrated grammarian, Amara Sinha, who was one of the nine gems in the court of Vicrama, defines a Purána as a book of five topics, and then he mentions topics, such as imperfectly correspond to what are found in the works now called Puránast. For they now consist of little beyond religious instruction, with some names of dynasties. How can we then assume them to have been written many centuries earlier than the dynasties which they mention? We are rather compelled by historical criticism to bring down the date of their composition. Nor is it necessarily wrong for us to do so, even according to your own doctors. For your treatises, I think, contain rules for discriminating between the sruti and the smriti, or between the earlier Scriptures and later traditions. It seems to be acknowledged in the Mímánsá, that 'a mistake may be made, and the work of a human author may be erroneously received as part of a sacred book by those who are unacquainted with its true origin‡.' As to the Sri Bhagavat Purána, the story goes that Vyása gave it not to Romaharshana, but to Suka, his son. Does not this imply a difference of origin? Some Hindú scholars have gone so far as to ascribe its composition to Vopadeva, who lived A. D. 1200 or 1300. This may seem to you * A various writing of the same name is Lomaharshana. Colebrooke, Vol. I. pp. 306, 307. GRADUAL GROWTH OF VEDAS. 275 a very modern date: but when I remember that the Brahmá Purána celebrates the temples of Orissa, which were not built until 1300 A. D., while both this and the others which mention comparatively modern dynasties have no appearance of being the most recent in the body of the Puránas, I cannot help thinking you should reconsider your whole theory. Judging partly from what I have read, and still more from what is told me by men who have made your sacred literature their life-study, it seems to bear clear signs of falling into periods, divisible by great epochs of time. Even the language of the Vedas is different altogether from that of the Puránas. There are letters, words, grammatical inflexions*, and idioms of speech in the one set of books, which are not in the other. Good scholars call the language of the Vedas prior to Sanscrit, rather than very Sanscrit. Still more evidently, the forms of faith, the objects of worship, and the range of ideas are different in the two. Nor is it only your sacred books, but Hindú literature in general, which carries marks on its face of having grown by steps, rather than sprung with unnatural impulse into life. Even the Vedas themselves have some variety. First, we have the Mantras, or hymns in honour of certain deities, who have been mentioned, destined probably to be sung at sacrifices. Then there are the Brahmanas, i. e. (what we might call rubrics, or at least) ritualistic comments and directions. Probably the Upanishads, or episodical speculations, should be considered much later than the simpler hymns of the old nature-worship. Much later down will come a stage, (which must have been after a long interval) when all these things will require grammatical explanation; and, accordingly, the grammatical systems, first of Yaska, and later of Panini, will be developed. Again, some of your own traditions, and even the laws of Manu†, speak of three Vedas, and the Atharvan is not universally ranked so high as the other three. Scholars *Wilson, Sanscrit Grammar and Lexicon; Lassen, I. A. B. II. pp. 734-862; Weber, Indische Studien, and Vorlesungen, (quoted above); M. Müller, in Bunsen's Latest Researches. + Manu, B. 1. § 23. who have compared it with the others critically*, notice that its style is more formally liturgical. It no longer expresses the fresh burst of devotion, as of poetry, poured forth on the feeling into song; but it mutters ritual as a sort of charm, or formal incantation. Depend upon it, the Vyása (arranger) who arranged all such diverse elements under the head of the four Vedas, must have been not one man, but many; or else must be of a date far more recent than the hymns of the Rig-Veda. Good scholars think, they can even trace changes of place indicated in the hymns, as the Aryan race pushed forward its conquests into India. Hence they conclude, that the earlier kings of the solar race did not reign in Oude, but more to the North-west. It is sufficient for my purpose to make you notice, that the collection of books, which you call the Vedas, is not the work of a day, and not primeval. Nor do I ask you to believe this on my authority, but on that of your sacred books, which proclaim this of themselves. Ask the hymns of the Rig-Veda to tell you, if their authors were not older than those who altered them somewhat into the kindred hymns of the Yajúr-Vedas, and then of the Sáma, and still later, of the Atharvan. Ask them especially, whether they lived in the same land, or knew the same customs and laws, as either the legislator Manu, or the bards of the Mahábhárata. "If we continue this sort of investigation, the question arises, where are we to place the great Epic poems? The Mahábhárata, again, has its Vyása; but it must be written later than the war it celebrates, and therefore much within twelve centuries of the Christian era. Again, it bears traces of having been traditionally recited. It has vast episodes of religious speculation and cosmogony; and it is exceedingly difficult to fancy that the Bhagavadgita was explained by Crishna to Arjuna in the intervals of a battle. This seems rather to be a highly imaginative mode of introducing in poetry some religious speculation. Nor is it easy to say, how far such introduction of matter comparatively modern * Lassen and Weber, as before. may have been carried. But the narrative, or heroic portion of the poem, speaks a different spirit from that of the Vedas. It is not shepherd or priest hymning the genial influences of nature, but is the warrior caste putting forth their strength, and disputing in its consciousness the palm of priority with the intellect of the Brahman. Or rather, perhaps, we see the kings unwillingly accepting a yoke their fathers had not known, but which the Brahmans fastened first on their subjects, and then on themselves. The struggle of Viswamitra, as the soldier king, with Vasishtha, the ascetic Brahman, shews us Indian society fermenting, and not yet settled in its sad immobility of form. Yet, as a whole, the Mahábhárata is thought by good judges* to be a more rounded composition, and to betray a greater development of the Brahmanical system than the older Rámáyana. The older poem is a simpler narrative of a legendary conquest, and has more of popular life, with signs of having been sung at feasts and sacrifices. You would tell me, it should be traced up to Válmíki, who is called contemporary with Ráma; but the interval of time must have been pretty long, for imagination to have magnified the heroes of the poem into a size which betokens the dimness of distance. When men are described as of superhuman size and prowess, and their exploits as the work of enchantment, and their enemies as now demons and now monkeys, this does not mean that the things were literally so, but that the describer sees them through a haze of distance and imagination. Speaking generally, however, we may say that the two great Epic Poems attest the growth of the Hindú mind out of a state in which the forces of Nature exercised a paramount influence over life, into one which had a fuller consciousness of human activity, and a series of struggles and developments, yet with the genius of the older time moulding the new. * There is some discrepance between the judgments of Lassen and Weber as to the two poems: but it is allowed that the Mahábhárata contains materials of very different ages, with more of formal speculation than the Rámáyana and less of popular legend. |