ANCIENT INDIA ma BDfTK ANCIENT INDIA LANGUAGE AND RELIGIONS BT PROF. H. OLDENBERG CHICAGO THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY iLONDON: 17 JOHNSON'S COURT. FLEET ST., E. C.) 1896 TRANSLATIONS of the articles "Religion of the Veda" and "Buddhism" copyrighted by The Open Court Publishing Com- pany, 1896. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE The Study of Sanskrit i The Religion of the Veda 43 Buddhism 78 PUBLISHERS' NOTE. r I "^HE THREE essays forming this little volume originally JL appeared in the Deutsche Rundschau of Berlin and are now published in English by virtue of a special arrangement with their distinguished author. The first was translated by Prof. A. H. Gunlogsen of Tacoma, Washington, and the second and third by Dr. Otto W. Weyer of Elinira, N. Y. THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. study of Sanskrit, the science of the antiqui- J. ties of India, is about a century old. It was in the year 1784 that a number of men acting in Calcutta as judges or administrative officers of the East India Company, formed themselves into a scientific society, the Asiatic Society. We may say that the founding of the Asiatic Society was contemporaneous with the rise of a new branch of historical inquiry, the possi- bility of which preceding generations had barely or never thought of. Englishmen began the work ; soon it was taken up by other nations ; and in the course of time, in a much greater degree than is the case with the study of hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions, it has be- come ever more distinctly a branch of inquiry pecu- liarly German. The little band of workers who are busy in the workshops of this department of science, have not been accustomed to have the eyes of other men turned upon their doings their successes and failures. But, in spite, nay, rather in consequence of this, it is right that an attempt should be made to invite even the most disinterested to an inspection of these places of industry, and to point out, piece by piece, the work, or at least part of the work, that has been done there. 2 ANCIENT INDIA. There still lies formless in the workshops of this department of inquiry many a block of unhewn stone, which perhaps will forever resist the shaping hand. But still, under the active chisel, many a form has be- come visible, from whose features distant times and the past life of a strange people look down upon us a people who are related to us, yet whose ways are so far removed in every respect from our ways. We shall first cast a gfance at the beginning of In- dian research toward the close of the last century. We shall trace the way in which the new science, after the first hasty survey of its territory, at once concen- trated its efforts to a more profound investigation of its subject and advanced to an incomparably broader plane of study. We shall, above all, follow the diffi- cult course pursued in the study of the Veda, the most important of the literary remains of ancient India, a production with which even the works of the oldest Buddhism are not to be compared in point of histor- ical importance. Of the problems that this science encountered, its aspirations, and of the successes that attended its efforts in solving difficult questions, we may venture to give a description, or at least an outline. I. The first effective impulse to the study of Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature was given by Sir William Jones, who, in 1783, embarked for India to assume the post of Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William. The honor of having inaugurated a new era of philological inquiry, was heightened by the lus- tre and charm of personal character which this gifted and versatile man exerted upon his contempora- ries. In prose and in verse Jones is extolled by his THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 3 friends of both sexes as the phoenix of his time, " the most enlightened of the sons of men" encomiums many of which a calmer and more distant observer would be inclined to modify. The correspondence and other memoranda of Jones, which exist in great abundance,* furnish the reader of to-day rather the picture of an indefatigable and euphuistic dilettante, than that of an earnest investigator, apart from the fact that he was alike greatly deficient in discernment and zeal. As a young man we find Jones engaged in reading and reproducing in English verse, the works of Per- sian and Arabian poets; occasionally also with glimpses into Chinese literature. Then, again, a project of his own, an heroic epic a sort of new ^Eneid, for which, and certainly with ingenuity enough, the Phanician mythological deities were impressed into service was to celebrate the perfections of the English con- stitution. On the journey to India this man of thirty- seven sketched a catalogue of the works, which, God granting him life, he hoped to write after celebrated models. These models were carefully designated op- posite the separate projects of the outline. By the side of this heroic epic (after the pattern of Homer), we find a history of the war with America (after the patterns of Thucydides and Polybius), a philosophical and historical dialogue (after the pattern of Plato), and other plans of similar works. With this feeling of omnipotent self-assurance, wholly untroubled with doubts, Jones was placed in India before the task of opening a way into the gigan- * Edited by his biographer, Lord Teignmouth, and often given with more completeness than appears advisable considering the panegyrical charac- ter of the biography. 4 ANCIENT INDIA. tic masses of an unknown literature, of a strange and beautiful poetry. He was as well qualified for the pur- pose (perhaps in a higher degree so) as many a more earnest and gifted scholar might have been. The situation of affairs which he found in India forced it upon the European rulers of the land as a duty, to acquaint themselves with the Sanskrit lan- guage and its literature. The rapid extension and at the same time the redoubled activity of the English rule made it inconceivable that the existence of the old indigenous civilization and literature of the na- tion could long remain ignored or merely superfici- ally recognized. Preeminently did this necessity assert itself in the administration of justice, where the policy of the East India Company imperatively demanded that the na- tives should be suffered to retain as many of their laws and customs as it was possible to concede them. Already, in an act of parliament passed in 1772 in re- gard to the affairs of the company, a measure had been incorporated, at the suggestion of Warren Hast- ings, providing that Mohammedan and Indian lawyers should take part in court proceedings, in order to give effect to native laws and assist in the formulation of judgments. The dependence that thus resulted, of European judges upon the reliability or unreliability of Indian pandits, must have been trying indeed, to the conscientious jurist; for the assertions of Indian coun- cillors as to the principles of the Law of inheritance, contract, etc., contained in the native books, were sub- ject to no control. Warren Hastings, in order to obviate the difficulty, had a digest made by several Brahmanical juris- consults from the old Sanskrit law books, and this was THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 5 translated into English. The undertaking had but little success, principally because no European was to be found who could translate directly from the Sanskrit. A translation had first to be made from Sanskrit into Persian and from Persian again into English.* The necessity therefore of gaining direct access to the Sanskrit language was unquestionable. The under- taking was not an easy one, though it was still quite different from such apparently impossible feats of philological ingenuity as the deciphering of hiero- glyphic and cuneiform inscriptions. The knowledge and likewise the use of Sanskrit in India had lived on in unbroken tradition.f There were countless pandits who knew Sanskrit as well as the scholars of the Middle Ages knew Latin, and who were eminently competent to teach the language. It was easy to overcome the opposing Brahmanical pre- judices. To become master, however, of the obstacles which emanated from the indescribably intricate and perverted grammatical system J of the Hindus, offered greater difficulties, which could only be overcome by patience and enthusiasm. Just at the first moments of this trouble came the arrival of Sir William Jones in India. Immediately he was the central figure. From him came the found- ing of the Asiatic Society; from him, the impulse to a new revision of the Hindu law of contract and inheri- * Published in 1776, under the title, "A Code of Gentoo Law." tThis is the case at the present time. Compare, upon this point, Mas Mtiller's " India what can it teach us " p. 78 et seq. JThe original complaint of Paulinus a S. Bartholomaeo, a missionary in India about the time of Jones, is well known. "The devil, with a phenomenal display of ingenuity and craft, had incited the Brahmanical sages to invent a language so rich and so complex, that its mysteries might be concealed not only from the people at large, but even from the very scholars who were conversant with it." 6 ANCIENT INDIA. tance, this time undertaken on a surer basis. He as- sembled about him competent Brahmans versed in Sanskrit. In the year 1790 he wrote: "Every day I talk Sanskrit with the pandits; I hope before I leave India to understand it as I understand Latin." It was not now a question of research, but of ac- quisition, of study; that clear and satisfactory results might rapidly be acquired, and that a proper selection of noteworthy productions of the Hindu mind might be made and presented before the eyes of all. Jones translated the most delightful of all Hindu dramas, the story of the touching fate of the ascetic maiden, Sakuntala, who in the sylvan quiet of her retreat was seen and loved by the kingly hunter Dushjanta a work, full of the most delicate sentiment, exhaling fragrance like the summer splendor of Indian Nature, and sung in the delicate rhythms of Kalidasa, of in- spired eloquence.* Still more important than the version of Sakuntala was the publication of a second great work, which Jones translated, the Laws of Manu. It seemed as though a Lycurgus of a primitive oriental era had come to light; for this wonderful picture of a strange people's life was ascribed to the remotest antiquity a description of Brahmanical rule by the grace of Brah- ma, magnified and distorted by priestly pride, in which the people are nothing, the prince is little, the priest is everything. In the face of such an abruptly accumu- lated mass of unexpected revelations, respecting an an- * It was formerly thought, for reasons that have not withstood the assault of criticism, that Kalidasa flourished in the first century before Christ; it was the custom to compare him to the Roman poets of the Augustan era, whose contemporaries he in that event would about have been. In point of fact he must be assigned to an era several centuries later, about the sixth century after Christ. THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 7 cient civilization hitherto removed from all knowledge, how could one resist an attempt to give to that civili- zation and its language a place among known civili- zations and languages? Wherever the eye turned weighty and pregnant suggestions offered themselves, and with them the temptation to let fancy stray in aimless sallies. What is more, Jones was in no wise the man to resist such a temptation. The vocabulary and the grammatical structure of Sanskrit convinced him that the ancient language of the Hindus was re- lated to those of the Greeks, Romans, and Germans, that it must have been derived with them from a com- mon mother tongue.* But side by side with the con- ception of this incomparably suggestive idea, innumer- able fanciful theories abound in the works of Jones, concerning the relationship of the primitive peoples, where everything was found to be in some way related to everything else. Now the Hindu tongue was iden- tified with that of the Old Testament; now Hindu civ- ilization was brought into connection with South American civilization. Buddha was said to be Woden; and the pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt were claimed to show the style of the same workmen who built the Hindu cave-temples and chiseled the ancient images of Buddha. Fortunately for the new study of Sanskrit, the con- tinuation of the work begun by Jones fell to one of the most cautious and comprehensive observers of facts that have ever devoted their attention and talent to *The identity of Hindu words with those of Latin, Greek, and other lan- guages had been noticed by several before Jones, and likewise the correct ex- planation of this phenomenon, namely the kinship of the Hindu nation with the Latins and Greeks, had been declared by Father Pons as early as 1740. For fuller account, see Benfey, "History of the Science of Language," (Ge- tchichte der Spraclnvisscnschaft) pp. 222, 333-341. 8 ANCIENT INDIA. the study of oriental literatures. This was Henry Thomas Colebrooke (born 1765; went to India 1782), the most active in the active band of Indian adminis- trative officers. He officiated now as an officer of the government, now again as a justice, then as diplo- matist a man well versed in Indian agriculture and Indian trade. One can scarcely regard without as- tonishment the multitude of disclosures which, during the long period he devoted to Sanskrit, he was able to make from his incomparable collection of manu- scripts. These to-day are among the principle treas- ures of the India Office Library. From the province of Indian poetry, Colebrooke, who well knew the lim- its of his own power, kept aloof. But in the literature of law, grammar, philosophy, and astronomy, he had a wide reading, which in scope may never again be reached. He it was who made the first comprehen- sive disclosure in regard to the literature of the Veda. Colebrooke's investigations are poor in hypotheses; we may say he withheld too much from seeking to com- prehend the historical genesis of the subjects with which he dealt. But he established the actual foun- dation of broad provinces of Hindu research ; filled with wonder himself at the ever widening vistas of that literature which were now revealed to him, and awakening our just wonder by the sure and patient toil with which he sought to penetrate into those dis- tant parts. While Colebrooke was at the height of his activity, interest in Hindu inquiry began to be awakened in a country which has done more than any other land to make of Hindu research a firm and well-established science in Germany. For the discoveries of Jones and Colebrooke there THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. g could have been no more receptive soil than the Ger- many of that time, full of spirited interest in the old national poetry of all nations and occupied with the stirring movements rife in its own philosophy and lit- erature. Apparently, indeed, the latter were closely al- lied to the spirit of the distant Hindu literature; for here too oriental romanticism and poetical thought sought no less boldly than the absolute philosophy of Germany, to penetrate to the primal and formless source of all forms. From the beginning, poets stood in the foremost ranks among the Sanskritists of Ger- many ; there were the two Schlegels and Friedrich Ruckert, and beside these, careful and unassuming, the great founder of grammatical science, Franz Bopp. In the year 1808 appeared Friedrich Schlegel's work, Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Inder (The Language and Learning of the Hindus). From what was known to him of Hindu poetry and speculation, and according to his own ideas of the laws and aims of the human mind, Schlegel, with warm and fanciful eloquence, drew a picture of India as a land of exalted primitive wisdom. Hindu religion and Hindu poetry he described as replete with exuberant power and light, in comparison with which even the noblest phi- losophy and poetry of Greece was but a feeble spark The time from which the masterpieces of the Hindus dated, appeared to him a distant, gigantic, primeval age of spiritual culture. There was the home of those earnest teachings, full of gloomy tragedy, of the soul's migration, and of the dark fate which ordains for all beings their ways and their end: Obedient to this purpose set, they wander; from God to plants; Here, in the abhorred world of existence, that ever moves to destruction. While Schlegel gave to the world this fanciful I0 ANCIENT INDIA. picture of Hindu wisdom, highly effective from its prophetic perspectives, but still wanting in sober truth, Bopp applied himself, more unassumingly, but with an incomparably deeper grasp and patient sagacity, to investigating the grammatical structure of Sanskrit; and, on the recognized fact of the rela- tionship of this language with the Persian and the principal European tongues, to establishing the science of comparative grammar. In the year 1816 appeared his Conjugations system der Sanskritsprache in Ver- gleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, per- s isc hen, und germanischen Sprache (Conjugational Sys- tem of the Sanskrit Language in Comparison with that of the Greek, Latin, Persian, and Teutonic Lan- guages). This was no longer merely an attempt to find iso- lated similarities in the sounds of the words of related languages, but an attempt to trace back not only uniformities but also differences to their fixed laws; and thus in the life and growth of these languages, as they sprang from a common root and evolved them- selves into a rich complexity, to discover more and more the traces of a necessity dominated by definite principles. We can here only briefly touch upon the investi- gations made during the last seventy years, for which Bopp laid the foundation by the publication of his work. Rarely have such astonishing results been achieved by science as here. Elucidative of the early history of the languages of Homer and the old Italian monuments before they acquired the form in which we now find them written, the most unexpected wit- nesses were brought to give testimony; namely, the languages of the Hindus, the Germans, the Slavs, THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. n and the Celts. Of these related tongues, the one sheds light upon the obscure features of the others, just as natural history explains the stunted organs of some animals by pointing out the same organs in their orig- inal, perfect form, in other animals. The picture of the mother tongue, whose filial de- scendants are the languages of our linguistic family, was no~longer seen in merely vague or doubtful fea- tures. The laws under whose dominion the system of sounds and forms in the separate derived languages have been developed from the mother tongue, are be- ing ascertained ever more fully and formulated ever more sharply. From the very beginning the essential instrument, yes, the very foundation of this investigation, was the Sanskrit language. In the beginning, faith in the primitiveness of Sanskrit in comparison with the rela- ted languages was too strong. During the last few years, however, this erroneous conception has been fully rectified; and this in itself is a decided step in advance. We know now that the apparently simpler and clearer state of Sanskrit in sounds and forms is in many respects less primitive than the complicated re- lations of other languages, e. g., the Greek; and that we must often set out from these languages rather than from the Sanskrit, in order to make possible the explanation of Sanskrit forms. Thus Sanskrit now receives back the light which it has furnished for the historical understanding of the European languages.* * It may be permissible here to illustrate this reversion of methods in a sin- gle point that has become of especially great importance to grammar. The Greek has five short vowels, a, e, o, f, u. The Sanskrit has f and u corres- ponding to / and u; but to the three sounds, a, e, o corresponds in Sanskrit only a single vowel a. Thus, for example, the Greek apo (English, front) reads in Sanskrit apa; the a of the first syllable, and the o of the second syllable of the 12 ANCIENT INDIA. I must not attempt to follow in detail the course which the science of comparative grammar, apart from its connection with Hindu research, has taken. While the two branches of the study were rapidly ad- vanced by Germans particularly, and likewise in France by the sagacious Burnouf, new material kept pouring in from India no less rapidly. In two countries on the outskirts of Indian civilization, in the Himalayan valleys of Nepal, and in Ceylon, the sacred literature of the Buddhists, which had disappeared in India proper, was brought to light in two collections, one in Sanskrit and one in the popular dialect Pali. The in- genuity of Prinseps succeeded in deciphering the oldest Indian written characters on inscriptions and coins. In Calcutta was undertaken and completed in the Thirties the publication of the Mahabharata, a gi- gantic heroic poem of almost a hundred thousand Greek word is thus represented in Sanskrit by a. Or, to use another example, the Greek menos (English, courage) is in Sanskrit manas; Greek epheron (I carried) abharam. What now is the original, *". e.. what existed in the Indo- Germanic mother tongue for the three sounds of the Greek a, e, o, or the single sound of the Sanskrit a? When scholars began to study comparative philology upon the basis of the Sanskrit they thought the a and this was a conclusion apparently supported by the simplicity of the language to be alone the orig- inal sound; and were led to believe that this vowel was later divided on Euro- pean soil into three sounds, a, e, o. Investigations of the most recent time and for these we are to thank Amelung, Burgman, John Schmidt, and others have shown that the development of the vowel system took the opposite course. The vowels o, e, o were already in the Indo Germanic mother tongue; and in Sanskrit, or more accurately, before the time of Sanskrit, in the language which the ancestors of the Indians and Persians spoke when both formed one people, these vowels were merged into a single vowel Thus the e of esti and the o of apo are more original than the a of asti, apa. Now, we find in Sanskrit that where the Greek e corresponds to the San- skrit a, certain consonants preceding this vowel, as. e.g., k, are affected in a different way by the latter, than in instances where for the a of Sanskrit the Greek a or o is used. From the linguistic form of Sanskrit alone, which in the one case as in the other has a, it would not be intelligible why the k should each time meet a different fate. The Greek, in that it has preserved the orig- inal differences of the vowels, gives the key to an understanding of the peculiar transformations which have taken place in the /4-sound in large and importan' groups of Sanskrit words. THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 13 couplets, in whose vast cantos with their labyrinth of episodes and sub-episodes many generations of poets have brought together legends of the heroes and days of the olden time, of their struggles and flagellations. The sum and substance of all this newly-acquired knowledge has been incorporated in the great work of a Norwegian, who became, in Germany, a German in the Indische Alterthumskun.de (Hindu Antiquities) of- Christian Lassen. Lassen did not belong to the great pioneers of science, like Bopp. It must also be said that often that sagacity of philological thought is wanting in him, which sheds light on questions even where it affords no definite solution of them. And, indeed, was it not a herculean undertaking, a work like that of the Dana- ides, to explore the older periods of the Hindu past when, as the chief sources of information, one was solely limited to the great epic, and the law book of Manu? Even a surer critical power than Lassen pos- sessed could not have discovered much of history in the nebulous confusion of legends, in the invented se- ries of kings in Mahabharata, and in that colorless uni- formity which the style of the Hindu Virgils spreads unchangeably over the enormous periods of time of which they assume to inform us. In spite of this, Las- sen's Antiquities the work of tireless diligence and rare learning stands as a landmark in the history of Hindu investigations, uniting all the results of past time, and pointing out anew, by the very things in which it is lacking, still untried undertakings. Just at this time, however, when the first volume of Lassen's work, treating of the earliest periods, ap- peared, came the beginning of a movement which has severed the development of Hindu studies into two i 4 ANCIENT INDIA. parts. New personalities appeared upon the scene and pushed to the front a new series of problems, for the solution of which an apparently inexhaustible, and to this day, in a certain sense, a still inexhaustible supply of freshly acquired material was offered. This was the most important acquisition that has ever been added to our knowledge of the world's literature through any one branch of oriental inquiry the ac- quisition of the Veda for science. n. CONSIDERING the circumstances, this acquisition of the Veda for science can hardly be accounted a discovery. The existence and position in Hindu lit- erature of this great work, had long been known. At every step the writings that had previously been brought to light, pointed to the Veda as the source from which all proceeded even more strikingly than in the literature of Greece, we are led back, at every turn, to the poems of Homer. Manuscripts of the Vedic texts, moreover, were to be found, not only in India; they had long been possessed in great numbers by the libraries of Europe. But an attempt had scarcely, if at all, been made to lay hold of these and see if in the unmeasurable chaos of this mass of writings a firm ground for science could not be acquired. The Sanskrit of the great epic poems, or of Kalidasa, was understood well enough ; but of the dialect in which the most important parts of the Veda were written, no more was known than one familiar with the French of to-day would know of the language of the Troubadours. Without going deeply into the study it was easy to discern its inherent difficulties from the unwonted singularity of the text and its strange con- THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 15 tents, which, in part at least, were extremely compli- cated, and often involved in a maze of minor details. Would an earnest explorer of this territory, even in case he succeeded, be rewarded for his pains? It was a band of young German scholars who bent their energies to this work. Most of them are, or were till very lately, among us Max Miiller, Roth, and Weber. Two others, whose names shduld not be omitted here, Adalbert Kuhn and Benfey, died some years ago. There was no need of undertaking great expeditions, such as were those that set out for the investigation of Egyptian and Babylonian antiquity. Those monuments in whose colossal and strange forms fragments of a primeval age meet the eye, were want- ing in India. The knowledge which was to be ac- quired was not contained in inscriptions, but in man- uscripts.* Our scholars repaired to London for a greater or less length of time, and the work was begun among the store of manuscripts possessed by the East India House. There was no lack of confidence. " It would be a disgrace," wrote Roth, "to the criticism and the in- genuity of our century which has deciphered the stone inscriptions of the Persian kings and the books of Zoroaster, if it did not succeed in reading in this enormous literature the intellectual history of the Hindu nation." Much that Roth expected has been accomplished or is on the way towards accomplishment. Of much that was hoped for at that time, we can now say that it was unattainable, and understand why. What has *The royal library at Berlin also acquired and owns a rich collection of Sanskrit manuscripts, for which a foundation was laid by the purchase, at the command of Frederick William IV., of the Chambers manuscripts. 16 ANCIENT INDIA. been attained, however, has given to the picture, which science formed of Hindu antiquity, an entirely different aspect. Unbounded in extent, this picture formerly seemed to lose itself in the nebulous depths of an im- measurable past. Now, determinate limits have been found, and the remotest initial point has been discov- ered for verifiable history. Authentic sources were disclosed, leading to the earliest age of Hindu civiliza- tion, from which, and regarding which, historical testimony in the usual sense of the word became ac- cessible ; and instead of the twilight, peopled with uncertain, shadowy giants, in which the epic poems made those times appear, the Veda opened to us a reality which we may hope to understand. Or, if in many instances, instead of the hoped for forms, it has afforded the eye but an empty space, even this was a step in advance. For then it was at least shown that the knowledge which was sought was not to be had ; and that which had been given as such, had disclosed itself as an imaginative picture born of the caprice of a later legend-maker. The literature of epic poetry, apparently, could no longer lay claim to an incalculable antiquity ; it sank back into a sort of Middle Ages, behind which the newly discovered, real antiquity loomed forth, studding the horizon of historical knowledge with significant forms. We shall now see how the task of understanding the Veda was accomplished, and shall describe at the same time what it was that had thus been acquired. We have here a newly disclosed literature of venerable an- tiquity, rich in marks of earnest effort, logically devel- oped in sharply, nay rigidly, characterized forms ; we have a newly discovered piece of history, forming the historical or shall we say unhistorical ? beginnings THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 17 of a people related to us by race, who at an early day set out in paths distinctly removed from the ways of all other peoples, and created their own strange forms of existence, bearing in them the germs of the mis- fortunes they have suffered. By what means did we succeed in understanding the Veda? Almost all the more important parts of the Vedic literature for the Veda, like the Bible, is not a sep- arate text, but a literature with wide ramifications are preserved in numerous, and, for the most part, relatively modern manuscripts. Only rarely are they older than a few centuries; since in the destructive climate of India it could not be otherwise. The texts, however, of these later manuscripts descend from re- mote antiquity. Before they came to be written in the present manuscripts, or written in manuscript - form at all, they encountered, in the course of great periods of time, many and manifold misfortunes. It is the task of the philological inquirer to ascertain the character of these events to determine the genetic history of the texts. It may be said that these texts in the shape they have been transmitted to us, resemble paintings by old masters, which bear unmistakable traces of alternate injuries and attempted restorations by competent and incompetent hands. What we want to know, so far as it lies in our power, is the form and general character in which they originally existed. The period to which the origin of the old Vedic poems belongs, we cannot assign in years, nor yet in centuries. But we know that these poems existed, when there was not a city in India, but only hamlets 1 8 ANCIENT INDIA. and castles; when the names of the powerful tribes which at a later time assumed the first rank among the nations of India were not even mentioned, no more so than in the Germany which Tacitus described were mentioned the names of Franks and Bavarians. It was the period of migrations, of endless, turbulent feuds among small unsettled tribes with their nobles and priests; people fought for pastures, and cows, and arable land. It was the period of conflict between the fair-skinned immigrants, who called themselves Arya, and the natives, the "dark people," the "unbelievers that propitate not the Gods." As yet the thought and belief of the Hindus did not seek the divine in those formless depths in which later ages conceived the idea of the eternal and hidden Brahma. Wherever in nature the brightest pictures met the eye and the mightiest tones struck the ear, there were their Gods the luminous arch of heaven, the red hues of dawn, the thundering storm-god and his followers, the winds. The Vedic Aryans had not yet reached their later abode on the two powerful sis- ter streams, the Ganges and the Yumna; the Sindhu (Indus) was still for them the " Mother Stream," of which one of the oldest poets of the Rig Veda says : * " From earth along the reach of Heaven riseth the sound; Ceaseless the roar of her waters, the bright one. As floods of thundering rain, poured from the darkened cloud-bosom, So rushes the Sindu, like the steer, the bellowing one." The poetry of the Rig Veda dates from the time of those wanderings and struggles that took place on the Indus and its tributary streams. Certain fam- ilies exercised the functions of priestly offices, and * Hundreds of Vedic melodies have been handed down to us in a form the interpretation of which can be subject to no real doubt. As it appears, they are the oldest but unfortunately the poorest memorials of musical antiquity. THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 19 possessed the acquisitions of an artificially connected speech together with a simple form of chant using but few tones. These families created Vedic poetry, and transmitted the art to their posterity. The songs of the Rig Veda, which are almost all sacrificial songs, were not really what we call popular poetry. We do not hear in them the language that pours forth from the soul of a nation, as it communes in poetical rhythm with itself. It was a poetry that wanted mainly the proper hearers the masses of the people who spoke through the mouth of the poet. Their hearers were God Agni, God Indra, or Goddess Dawn ; and the poet was not he whom the passionate impulses of his own soul or his own love of song and legend impelled to sing, but he was mainly one who belonged to a poet-family one of the families of men who in the course of time became united as a caste and erected ever more insu- perable barriers between their sacred existence and the profane reality of daily life. For the gods such a poet only " could frame a worthy poem, as an expe- rienced, skillful wheelwright makes a wagon," a poem which would be rewarded by the rich princely lords of the sacrifice, with steeds and kine, with golden or- naments and female slaves from the spoils of war. " Thy blessing," says a Vedic poet to a God,* " Rests with the givers, With the victors, the many valiant heroes, Who make gifts to us of clothing, kine, and horses; May they rejoice in the splendor and plenty of divine bounty. Let all things waste that they have won Who, without rewarding, would profit by our hymns to heaven. The godless ones, that boast their fortune, The transgressors cast them from the light of day." It has been fatal for all thought and poetry in In- dia, that a second world, filled with strangely fantastic *Rig Veda V. 42, 8-9. 20 ANCIENT INDIA. shapes, was established at an early day beside the real world. This was the place of sacrifice with its three sacred fires and the schools in which the virtu- osos of the sacrificial art were educated a sphere of strangest activity and the playground of a subtle, empty mummery, whose enervating power over the spirit of an entire nation we can scarcely comprehend in its full extent. The poetry of the Rig Veda shows us this process of disease at an early stage ; but it is there, and much of that which constitutes the essence of the Rig Veda, is rooted in it. In the foreground stands the sacrifice, and through- out, only the sacrifice. " By sacrifice the Gods made sacrifice ; these regulations were the first," it is said in a verse which is thrice repeated in the Rig Veda. The praise of the God for whom the sacrificial offerings were intended, his power, his victories, and the prayers for possessions which were hoped for in return for hu- man offerings the prosperity of flocks and posterity, long life, destruction of enemies, the hated and the godless such is the subject-matter of the multitudi- nous repetitions that recur throughout the hymns of the Rig Veda. Still, among these verse-making sacri- ficers there was not an utter absence of real poets. And thus among the stereotyped implorations and songs of praise we find here and there a great and beautiful picture the wonder of the poet's soul at the bright marvels of nature or the deep expression of an earnest inner life. A poet from the priestly family of the Bharadvajas sings of the goddess Ushas, the dawn : * *The Indian word Ushas is related to the Greek Eos, the Latin Aurora. THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. " We see thee, thou lovely one ; far, far, thou shinest. To heaven's heights thy brilliant light-beams dart. In beauteous splendor shimmering, unveilest thou thy bosom, Radiant with heaven's sheen, celestial queen of dawn 1 " The red bulls draw their chariot, Where in thy splendor thou o'erspread'st the heavens ; Thou drivest away night ; as a hero, a bow-man, As a swift charioteer frighteneth his enemies. " A beautiful path has been made for thee in the mountain. Thou unconquerable one, thou risest from out the waters. So bring thou us treasures to revive us on Our further course, queenly daughter of heaven."* Another poet sings of Parjanya, the rain God: f " Like the driver who forward whips his steeds, So he urges onward his messengers, the clouds. From afar the thunder-tone of the lion arises When the God makes rain pour from the clouds. " Parjanya's lightnings dart , the winds blow ; The floods pour from heaven ; up spring grass and plants. To all that lives and moves a quickening is imparted, When the God scatters his seeds on the earth. " At his command the earth bows deeply down ; At his command hoofed creatures come to life ; At his command bloom forth the bright flowers : May Parjanya grant us strong defence I " A flood of rain hast thou sent ; now cease; Thou didst make penetrable the desert wastes. For us thou hast caused plants to grow for food, And the prayer of men thou hast fulfilled." But we must turn from the description of Vedic poetry to examine the fortune that this production encountered on its way from distant antiquity to the present time, from the sacrificial places on the Indus to the workshops of the English and German philolo- gists. Here a conspicious fact is to be dwelt upon, * Rig Veda VI. 64. The hymn following is V. 83. t This God also reappears among the kindred peoples of Europe, as FiOr- gynn in the northern mythology, and among the Lithuanians and Prussians as the God Perkunas, of whom an old chronicle says : " Perkunas was the third idol; and him the people besought for storms, so that during his time they had rain and fair weather and suffered not from the thunder and the lightning." 22 ANCIENT INDIA. which belongs to the strangest phenomena of Indian history, so rich in strange events. The hymns of the Rig Veda, as well as the hymns of the other Vedas, have been composed, collected, and transmitted to succeeding ages. There has been incorporated in them a very large sacerdotal prose literature, devel- oped throughout the older and later divisions, and treating of the art and symbolism of sacrifice. There have also arisen heretical sects, like the Buddhists, who denied the authority of the Veda, and instead of its teachings reverenced as a sacred text the code of ordinances proclaimed by Buddha. And all this has taken place without the art of writing. In the Vedic ages writing was not known. At the time when Buddhism arose it was indeed known the Indians probably learned to write from Semites but it was used only for inditing short communications in practical life, not for writing books. We have very sure and characteristic information as to the role which the art of writing played, or rather did not play, in the church life of the Buddhists at a comparatively late age, say about 400 B. C. The sacred text of this sect affords a picture, executed even in its minutest features, of life in the houses and parks which the brethren in- habited. We can see the Buddhist monks pursue their daily life from morning to night ; we can see them in their wanderings and during their rest, in solitude and in intercourse with other monks, or laymen ; we know the equipment of the places occupied by them, their furniture, and the contents of their store-rooms. But nowhere do we hear that they read their sacred texts or copied them ; nowhere, that in the dwellings of the monks such things as writing utensils or manuscripts were found. THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 23 The memory of the spiritual brethren, "rich in hearing," what we to-day call a well-read man was then called one rich in hearing, took the place of a cloister library ; and if the knowledge of some indis- pensable text, as, e. g., the formula of confession which had to be recited at the full and new moon in the assembly of the brethren, was in danger of being lost among a body of priests, they acted on the dictum laid down in an old Buddhistic ordinance: "By these monks a monk shall immediately be sent to a neighboring parish. He must be thus instructed : 'Go, Brother, and when thou hast learned by heart the formula of confession, the complete one or the abre- viated one, come back to us.' " It must be admitted that under such circumstances all the conditions for the existence of books, and the relations between books and reader if it be allowed me for the sake of brevity to use these expressions must have been of a very different nature than in an age of writing or one of printing. A book could then exist only on condition that a body of men existed among whom it was taught and learned and transmitted from generation to generation. A book could be known only at the price of learning it by heart, or of having some one at hand who had thus learned it. Texts of a con- tent which only claimed a passing notice, could not as a rule exist. This was fatal for historical writing and generally speaking for all profane literature. Above all, the existing texts were subjected to the disfigure- ments that errors of memory, carelessness, or attempts at improvement on the part of the transmitters must have imported into them. Under conditions such as have been described above, the poetry of the Rig Veda has been handed 24 ANCIENT INDIA. down from generation to generation through many centuries. Separate poems were brought into the col- lection in the course of oral compilation and trans- mission. The collection was re-corrected on repeated occasions and was brought to greater completeness; again only by oral compilation and transmission. It is conceivable enough that thus the original structure yes, even the existence itself of special hymns was often injured, effaced, or destroyed. Remodeling de- stroyed their form. The lines of division between hymns standing side by side would often be forgotten and numbers of them would be merged into an ap- parent unity. Modern, and easily intelligible terms drove out the obsolete phrases and the ancient word- forms often the most valuable remains for the inves- tigator, whom they help to explain the history of the language, just as the scientist deduces from fossil re- mains the history of organic life. Especially fatal was it for the old and true form of the Vedic hymns that they have been stretched upon the Procrustean bed of grammatical analysis. Earlier and more strongly than in any other nation of antiquity, was interest and pleasure taken in India in scientifically dissecting language. Closely examining the separate sounds of speech and their underlying modifications, they employed exceptional ingenuity and discrimi- nation in constructing a system from which, when it became known in Europe, the science of our cen- tury found ample reason to learn much that was marvellous. The ingenuity and penetration of the students of Vedic literature has been burdened like a curse with that genuinely Hindu trait, subtlety; the joy which at times seems to border on malicious- ness of stretching and forcing things into an artistic THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 25 garment, of building up labyrinths of fine points, in whose involved courses the skilled and cunning stu- dent ostentatiously thought himself able to find his way. Thus, in this grammatical science, understanding and misunderstanding of the real truth are mingled in inexplicable confusion. That under the hands of such linguistic theorists the precious wealth of the old Vedic hymns has not remained inviolate, is easily comprehended. In some cases, isolated details of the traditions of prior epochs were caught and clung to with felicitous acumen ; in others, no hesitation was had in wiping out of existence entire domains of old and genuine phenomena to suit half-correct theo- ries, so that the most patient ingenuity of modern science will only be able to restore in part what has been lost. Finally, however, the caprice under which the hymns of the old singers must have suffered, had its end. The more people accustomed themselves to see in these poems not merely beautiful and efficacious prayers but a sacred revelation of the divine, the higher did their transmitted form even when this is, or seems to be, of necessity, so irregular rise in the respect of theologians, and the more careful must they have been to describe and preserve this form with all its dissim- ilarities. We possess a remarkable work it is composed in verse like many Hindu treatises and hand-books in which a grammarian, Caunaka, who must probably be placed about the time 400 B. C., has given a deep and unusually well-planned survey of the vocal peculiar- ities of the Rig Veda text. The study of Caunaka's work affords us the proof that from that time on the Vedic hymns, protected by the united care of gram- 2 6 ANCIENT INDIA. matical and religious respect for letters, have suffered no further appreciable corruptions. The most im- portant manuscripts of the Rig Veda which we know, may be two thousand years later than this hand-book of Caunaka's, but they bear all tests in a remarkable way if we compare them with it. The Rig Veda, indeed, which that Hindu scholar found, was not unlike a ruin. And it was hardly pos- sible by the help of Hindu scholarship to transmit it to posterity in a better condition than it was received But still the conscientious diligence of the Hindu lin- guists and divines accomplished something : for the last two thousand years it has preserved these vener- able fragments from the dangers of further decay. They lie there, untouched, just as they were in the days of Caunaka. And the investigation of our day, which has already succeeded in bringing forth from many a field of ruins the living features of a by-gone existence, is at work among them, now with the bold grasp of confident divination, now in the quiet uni- formity of slowly advancing deliberation, to deduce whatever it may of the real forms of those old priestly poems. in. WE may say, that the greatest undertakings planned and the most important results achieved in the field of Sanskrit research, are linked with the names of Ger- man investigators. If we add that this could not easily be otherwise, it is not from national vanity; we should but express the actual facts of the case, based upon the development of the science. It was natural that THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 27 the first movements toward the founding of Hindu re- search, the first attempts to grasp the vastly accumu- lated material and find provisional forms for it, should have been the work of Englishmen, men who spent a good part of their lives in India, and were there brought in constant contact with native Sanskrit scholars. But not less natural was it that the honor of instituting further progress and gaining a deeper in- sight should be accorded to Germans. The two fields of knowledge by which, especially, life and power were imparted to Hindu investigations were and are essen- tially German. These are comparative grammar, which we may say was founded by Bopp, and that profound and potent science, or perhaps more correctly ex- pressed art, of philology, which was practiced by Gottfried Hermann, and likewise by Karl Lachmann, a man imbued with the proud spirit of Lessing, full of acute and purposeful ability, exact and truthful in small matters as in great. Representatives of this philology, moved to antipathy by many characteristic features of the Hindu spirit, and not the least influ- enced by the assertion that Latin and Greek grammar has this or that to learn from the Sanskrit, might meet the new science of India with reserve or more than reserve. Still this could in no wise alter the truth that the study of Hindu texts, the investigation of Hindu literary remains, could be learned from no better teach- ers than from those masters who had succeeded in im- proving and interpreting the classical texts with un- erring certainty and excellence of method. It was a Leipsic disciple of Hermann and Haupt who, at the instigation of Burnouf, in 1845, in Paris, conceived the plan of publishing the Rig Veda with the commentary of its Hindu expounder, the abbot Sa- 28 ANCIENT INDIA. yana, who flourished in the i4th century after Christ. This was the great work of Max Muller, the first of of those fundamental undertakings on which Vedic philology rests. It was necessary above all to know how the Brahmins themselves translated the hymns of their forefathers, which were preserved in the Rig Veda, from the Vedic language into current Sanskrit, and how they solved the problems which the grammar of the Veda presented, by the means their own gram- matical system offers. Herein lay the indispensable foundation of all further investigation. It was ne- cessary to weigh the Hindu traditions concerning the explanation of the Veda, which erred in underestima- tion as well as overestimation, and to test the conse- quences of both errors, in order finally to learn the art of scientifically estimating them. This constitutes the great importance of Max Miiller's work extending through a quarter of a century (1849-1874). To com- plete was easy, but to begin was exceedingly difficult; for most of the grammatical and theological texts which formed the basis for Sayana's deductions, were, when Max Muller began the work, books sealed with seven seals. A few years after the first volume of Max Miiller's Rig Veda appeared, two other scholars united in a work of still greater magnitude. It has long since be- come to all Sanskritists the most indispensable tool for their labors. I refer to the Sanskrit dictionary, compiled under the commission of the Academy of St. Petersburg, Russia, by Roth and Bohtlingk. It was intended to make a dictionary for a language the greatest and most important part of whose texts were still not in print. The work was similar to that which the Grimm Brothers began at the same time THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 29 for the German language. Roth undertook the Vedic literature, the foundation of the whole ; Bohtlingk the later periods. Friendly investigators, and especially Weber, helped them by bringing into use the known and accessible texts or manuscripts that were service- able to them. The most important thing was, that the Veda had now for the first time setting aside a few previous studies to be gone through with a view to lexicography. The explanations which the Hindus themselves were wont to give of the words of the Vedic language were regarded as a valuable aid for under- standing it. But the matter did not rest here. "We do not hold it," said the two compilers in their preface, " to be our task to acquire that understanding of the Veda which was current in India some centuries ago ; but we seek the sense which the poets themselves gave to their hymns and maxims." They undertook "to get at the sense from the texts themselves, by collating all the passages related in word or meaning." In this way they hoped to re-establish the meaning of each word, not as a colorless conception, but in its individu- ality and therefore in its strength and beauty. The Veda was thus to re-acquire its living sense, the full wealth of its expression. The thought of the earliest antiquity was to appear to us in new forms full of life and reality. The execution of this work, carried on with tena- cious industry and brilliant success for four and twenty years (1852-1875), did not fall short of the magnitude of the plan originally conceived. In minor points we find it easy to point out numerous deficiencies and errors. The two compilers well knew that without that spirit of boldness which does not stand in fear of unavoidable errors, it were better never to undertake 3 o ANCIENT INDIA. their task. In face, however, of the great value of that which they have accomplished, all faults sink into in- significance. What a chasm separates their work from that of their predecessor, Wilson ! * In Wilson's work there is little more than a fair enumeration of the meanings which Hindu traditions assigned to the words ; for his dictionary the Veda scarcely exists, if it does so at all. Here in the work of Roth and Bohtlingk on the other hand, is brought to light the immense wealth, replete with oriental splendor, of the richest of all languages ; the history of each word, and likewise the fortunes that have befallen it in the different periods of the lit- erature and have determined its meaning, are brought before our eyes. The difference between the two great periods in which the development of Hindu research falls, could not be incorporated more clearly than in these two dictionaries. In the one instance are found the beginnings, which English science, resting imme- diately on the shoulders of the Indian pandits, has made ; in the other is the continuation of English work conducted by strict philological methods to a breadth and depth incomparably beyond those begin- nings, and at the head of this undertaking stand Ger- man scholars. To Muller's great edition of the Rig Veda and to the St. Petersburg Dictionary further investigations have been added in great abundance, and these have more and more extended the limits of our knowledge of the Veda. Already a new generation of laborers have taken their places beside the original pioneers in these once so impassable regions. As a whole, or in its separate parts, the Rig Veda has been repeatedly * Wilson's dictionary appeared in 1819; a second edition in 1832. THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 31 translated. Its stock of words and inflections has been studied and overhauled from ever new points of view and with ever new questions in mind. To many a picturesque word of the strong, harsh Vedic language its full weight has thus been given back. The principles and practices according to which the old collectors and revisers of the Veda text pro- ceeded, are now being examined by us with a view to being able to determine what came into their hands as tradition and what they themselves imported into the traditions. The readings of the passages quoted from the Rig Veda in the other Vedas are being col- lected, in order to trace in them the remains of the genuine and oldest textual form. The religion and mythology of the Veda have been described ; the na- tional life of the Vedic tribes has been portrayed in all its phases. The texts afford the data for such a portraiture of these features that it has justly been said that the description given surpasses in clearness and accuracy Tacitus's account of the national life of the Germans.* Finally an attempt has been made or rather an attempt will have to be made, for even at this time the work is in its beginnings to discover amid the masses of Vedic prayers and sacrificial hymns something which must be an especially welcome find to scientific curiosity the beginning of the Indian Epic.f There could be no doubt that in so poetical a period the pleasure of romancing produced abundant fruit. Short narratives, short hymns must then have * H. Zimmer : Altindisches Leben : die Cultur der vedischen Arier. (Ancient Indian Life : the Civilization of the Vedic Aryans.) Berlin, 1879, p. vii. t The remarks here made on the beginnings of the Indian Epic rest on conceptions which I have before briefly sought to establish. Zeitschri/t tier DcHtschen Morgcnldnd, Gesellsch., 1885, p. 52, et seq. 32 ANCIENT INDIA. existed, enclosed, as it were, in narrow frames. Thus, in general, are the beginnings of epic poetry shaped, before poetic ability rises and ventures to narrate in wider scope and with more complicated structure the fate of men and heroes. It seemed, however, as though those beginnings of the Indian epic were lost. But they were preserved, though to be sure in a peculiarly fragmentary form. In the Rig Veda there is many a medley of apparently disconnected verses in which we have thought to discover the accumulated sweep- ings of poetic workshops. In fact we have here the fragmentary remains of epic narratives. These verses were once inserted in a prose framework ; the narrative part of the Epic being in prose, and the speeches and counter-speeches in verse, just as, often, in Grimm's fairy-tales when the poor daughter of the king or the powerful dwarf has to speak an especially weighty or touching word, a rhyme or two appears. Now, only the verses were memorized in their fixed original form by the Vedic tale-tellers. The prose, each new narrator would render with fresh words ; until finally its original subject-matter fell into almost total oblivion, and the verses alone survived, appearing sometimes as a series of dialogues suffi- ciently long and full of meaning to enable us to gain an understanding of the whole, and then again as un- recognizable fragments no more admitting an infer- ence as to their proper place and connection in the story of which they form a part than to keep the same comparison a couple of rhymes in one of Grimm's fairy-tales would enable us to restore the whole tale. It may be permitted for the sake of making clear what has been said, to cite here a passage from one of THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 33 those old narratives whose connection, at least as a whole, may be conjecturally determined.* The scene is between gods and demons, its subject is the great battle which was fought in heaven, the thunder fight, which for the strife-loving spirit of that age was the pattern of their own victories. Vritra, the envious fiend, kept the waters of the clouds in captivity, that they might not pour down upon the earth; but God Indra smote the demon with his thunderbolt and let the lib- erated waters flow. Indra this must have been said in the lost prose introduction to the narrative felt, as he entered the battle, too weak for his terrible oppo- nent. The gods, faint-hearted, withdrew from his side. Only one offered himself as an ally, Vayu (the wind),f the swiftest of the gods, but he demanded as a reward for his fidelity, part of the sacrificial draught of Soma, which men offer to Indra. Vayu speaks : " Tis I. I come to thee the foremost, as is meet; Behind me march in full array, the Gods. Givest thou me, O Indra, but a share of sacrifice, And thou shalt do, with my alliance, valiant deeds of might." Indra accepted the alliance : " Of the honied draught I give thee the first portion ; Thine shall it be ; for thee shall be pressed the Soma. Thou shalt stand as friend at my right hand ; Then shall we slay the serried hosts of our foe." Then a new person appears, a human singer. We know not whether a definite one among the great saints of that early time, the prophets of the later generation of singers, was thought of or not. He wished to praise Indra ; but can Indra now be praised? The hostile demon is not yet conquered ; doubts as to * Rig Veda 8,100. I omit a few verses of obscure meaning, and say noth- ing of difficulties, for which this is not the place to give a solution. t He is also called Vata. This name has been identified though the cor- rectness of this is highly questionable with the German name Woden. 34 ANCIENT INDIA Indra and his might come to the singer. He says to his people : " A song of praise bring ye who long for a blessing, If truth be truth, sing ye the praise of Indra." " There is no Indra," then said many a one, " Who saw him ? Who is he whom we shall praise ?" Then Indra himself gives answer to the weak- hearted : " Here stand I before thee, look hither, O Singer In lofty strength I tower above all beings. The laws of sacred order make me strong ; I, the smiter, smite the worlds." The confidence of the pious in their God is re- stored, his hymn of praise is sounded. And now Indra enters the conflict. The falcon has brought him the Soma, and in the intoxication of the ambrosial drink, the victorious one hurls his thunderbolt at the demon. Like a tree smitten by lightning, falls the enemy. Now the waters may flow forth from their prisons : " Now hasten forth I Scatter thyself freely I He who detained thee is no more. Deep into the side of Vitra has been hurled The dreaded thunderbolt of Indra. " Swift as thought sped the Falcon along ; Pierced into the citadel, the brazen. And up to heaven, to the thunderer, The soaring falcon bore the Soma. " In the sea the thunderbolt rests, Deep engulfed in the watery billows. The flowing and ever-constant waters To him bring generous gifts." I pass over the difficult conclusion of the poem the creation of language by Indra after the battle with Vitra. One fourth of the languages that exist on earth, Indra formed into clear and intelligible speech ; these are the languages of men. The other three fourths, however, have remained indistinct and incompre- THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 35 hensible ; these are the languages that quadrupeds and birds and all insects speak. This is one of the early narratives of the Hindus concerning the deeds of their gods and heroes. We must not endeavor here, to restore the lost portions written in prose which served to connect the strophes. To make the modern reader clear as to the connection of the verses, another method of expression must be chosen than that peculiar to the narrators of the Vedic epoch. As it appears, they were content with recount- ing the necessary facts, or rather with recalling them to their hearers, in short and scanty sentences. The verses set in the narrative are not wanting, however, in flights of poetic eloquence as the poem of Indra's battle will have shown. Without the finer shades of human soul-life, it is true, yet in earnest simple greatness, like mountains or old gigantic trees, the heroic figures of these ancient sagas stand forth. What takes place among them is similar, nay more than similar, to that which takes place in nature. For as yet the primitive natural significance of those gods has hardly been veiled by the human vesture which they wear, and in the narratives of their deeds the great pictures of nature's life with its wonders and terrors are everywhere present. The duty of bringing together and interpreting such fragments of this most ancient Epic activity, Vedic investigators must reckon among their most fruitful though perhaps not their easiest tasks. IV. AT this stage of our inquiry, the question arises, What do we know of the history of India in the age which produced the Vedas ? Where does the pos- 36 ANCIENT INDIA. sibility here begin of fixing events chronologically ? In that part of the province of history in which this precision is lacking, can any determinate lines of an- other sort be drawn ? Of a history of ancient India in the sense in which we speak of the history of Rome, or in the manner in which the history of the Israelitic nation is recounted in the Old Testament, the Vedas afford us no testi- mony. A succession of events clearly united with one another, the presence of energetic personalities, whose aspirations and achievements we can understand, mo- mentous struggles for the institution and security of civil government these are things of which nothing is told to us. We may add that these are things which seem to have existed in Ancient India less than in any other civilized nation. The more we know of the his- tory of this people the more it appears like an incohe- rent mass of chance occurrences. These occurrences are wanting in that firm bearing and significant sense which the power of a willing and conscious national purpose imparts to its doings. Only in the history of thought, and especially of religious thought, do we tread, in India, upon solid ground. Of a history in any other sense we can here scarcely speak. And a peo- ple who has no history, has of course no written his- torical works. In those eras in which, among soundly organized nations, interest in the past and its connection with the struggles and sufferings of the present awakes, when the Herodotuses and Fabiuses, the nar- rators of that which has happened, are wont to arise, the literary activity of India was absorbed in theolog- ical and philosophical speculation. In all occurrences was seen but one aspect, namely, that they were tran- THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 37 sitory; and everything transitory was recognized, we may not say as a simile, yet as something absolutely worthless, an unfortunate nothing, from which the sage was bound to divert his thoughts. We can thus easily see how fully we must renounce our hopes of an exact result, when the question is raised as to the time to which the little we know of the outer vicissitudes of the ancient Hindu tribes must be assigned, and, especially, as to the time in which the great literary remains of the Veda and the changes which it wrought in the Hindu world of thought be- long. The basis that might serve toward definitely answering these questions of chronology lists of kings with statements of the duration of each reign is wholly wanting for the Vedic period. Of early times at least no such lists have been handed down to us; there are no traces indeed that such ever existed. The later catalogues, however, which have been fab- ricated in the shops of the Indian compilers, can to- day no more be taken into consideration as the basis of earnest research, than the statements of the Roman chroniclers as to how many years King Romulus and King Numa reigned. How unusual it was in the Ve- dic times for the Hindus to ask the "when" of events, is shown very clearly by the fact, that no expression was in current use by which any year but the present was distinguishable from any other year. The result of this for us, and likewise, of course, for the science of Ancient India, is that those long centuries were and are practically synonymous with immeasurable time. The standard by which we are accustomed to compute the distance of historical ante- cedence in our thoughts or imaginations, fail us in this richly developed civilization as completely as in the 38 ANCIENT INDIA. prehistoric domains of the stone age, in the first feeble glimmerings of human existence. In fact, as prehistoric research tries to compute the duration of the past ages which have given to the earth's surface its form, so as to determine approximately the age of the human remains embedded in the strata of the earth; so, in a similar way, the investigation of the Hindu Vedas, in its attempts to compute the age of the Veda, has sought refuge in the gradual changes that have imperceptibly taken place in the course of centuries, in that great time-measurer, the starry heavens. There was found in a work, classed as one of the Vedas, an astronomical statement which has served as a basis for such computations. The result attained was that this particular work datedfrom the year 1181 B. C. (according to another reckoning 1391 B. C.). Unfortunately, the belief that in this way certain data are to be acquired had to vanish quickly enough. It was soon found out that the Vedic statement is not sufficient to afford any tenable basis for astronomical computations. Thus it remains that for the times of the Vedas there is no fixed chronological date. And to any one who knows of what things the Hindu au- thors were wont to speak, and of what not, it will be tolerably certain, that even the richest and most unex- pected discoveries of new texts, though they may vastly extend our knowledge in other respects, will in this respect make no changes whatever. There are two great events in the history of India with which this darkness begins to be dispelled the one approximately, and the other accurately, referable to an ascertainable point of time. These are the ad- vent of Buddha and the contact of the Hindus with THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 39 the Greeks under Alexander the Great and his succes- sors. That it was the old Buddhistic communities in In- dia that first began the work of gathering up the con- nected traditions within historical memory, seems certain. At least this corresponds with the apparent and accepted course of events. To Vedic and Brah- manical philosophy all earthly fortunes were abso- lutely worthless a vanity of vanities; and over against them stood the significant stillness of the Eter- nal, undisturbed by any change. But for the follow- ers of Buddha, there was a point at which this Eternal entered the world of temporal things, and thus there was for them a piece of history which maintained its place beside or rather directly within their religious teachings. This was the history of the advent of Buddha and the life of the communities founded by him. There is a firm recollection of the assemblies in which the most honored and learned leaders of the communities, and great bands of monks coming to- gether from far and wide, determined weighty points of doctrine and ritual. The kings under whom these councils were held are named, and the prede- cessors of these kings are mentioned even as far back as the pious King Bimbisara, the contemporary and zealous protector of Buddha. Of the series of kings which in this way have been fixed by the chron- icles of the Buddhistic order, two figures are espe- cially prominent Tschandragupta (i. e., the one pro- tected by the Moon) and his grandson Asoka (the Painless). Tschandragupta is a personality well known to Greek and Roman historians. They call him San- drokyptos, and relate that after the death of Alexander 4 o ANCIENT INDIA. the Great (in the year 323 B. C.), he successfully op- posed the power of the Greeks on their invasion into India, and lifted himself from a humble position to that of ruler of a wide kingdom. Asoka, on the other hand, is not mentioned by the Greeks; but in one of his inscriptions by him were made the oldest inscrip- tions discovered in India, and these have been found on walls and pillars in the most distant parts of the peninsula he himself speaks of Antijoka, king of the lona (lonians, /.